Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate

Author:Raymond Postgate [Postgate, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2017-06-29T07:00:00+00:00

6

On Monday morning next Edward Gillingham leapt lightly off his bicycle and walked in by the front door. Mrs. van Beer was taken by surprise. She had forgotten that the tutor was due to resume his duties that day. If she had remembered, she would have put him off. Indeed, she began to go downstairs to say that Philip was ill; but it was too late. Philip had heard him come in and rushed to meet him, gripping him by the wrist fiercely and almost dragging him to the schoolroom. Edward was startled by this vehemence, and perhaps for the first time looked at his pupil closely.

He saw the eyes sunken in and red-edged, the sallow peaked face more sallow and peaked than ever, and a general expression of deep misery. His conscience rebuked him. He had never paid enough attention to the child. After all Philip was an intelligent boy, interested in his work and with a mind worth developing. It wasn’t his fault if he was pert and given to fits of bad temper. Any one who had to live with that ghastly aunt would show traces of it. He must be kinder to him. He spoke to him as they sat down at the table, in a warmer tone than usual.

“It’s very nice to see you again, Philip.” He smiled at him as friendlily as he could.

The result startled him. Philip laid his head on his arms and burst into tears. His sobbing was not loud, but it was violent; his body shook with it. Edward rose in alarm and put his arm round his shoulders. “What is it, old man?” he said. “Tell me. Is there anything I can do?”

This evidence of affection, a thing so little known to Philip, had as its first effect to worsen the crisis, but in a few minutes he began to control himself. “She murdered him,” was the first coherent sentence he got out; and then in due course brought out the whole story.

Edward wrote that evening about it to a young woman named Ellen Cartmell. (She was twenty-three to his twenty-four; to the world she was moderately pretty, with a snub nose, a wide mouth, a fresh complexion and rather thick ankles; to him she was unparalleledly beautiful and lightened any room as soon as she came into it. That is to say, he was in love.)

“This morning (he said) I had a curious and unpleas-

ant experience. You remember me telling you about Philip Arkwright, the boy whom I tutor and who lives with a very disagreeable aunt named van Beer? Well, before I could get down to work he suddenly started howling; and when he was able to talk he said the aunt was a murderer. She keeps him very much under her thumb—won’t let him play with other children, and treats him as an invalid.

“It appears she quite wantonly killed his rabbit, the only thing he has to play with. There was hardly a shadow of an excuse and it sounds very malicious.

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