The Nice and the Good Read Free Page B

from him in the building. There was no mistaking that sound. Octavian knew the sound well though it was many years since, as a soldier, he had last heard it. His body knew it as he stood there rigid with memory and with the sense, now so unfamiliar to him, of confronting the demands of the awful, of the utterly new.
    Octavian went to the door. The hot stuffy corridor, amid the rushing murmur of London, was quite still. He wished to call out “What is it? What has happened?” but found he could not. He turned back into the room with an instinctive movement in the direction of his telephone, his natural lifeline and connection with the world. Just then he heard running steps.
    “Sir, Sir, something terrible has occurred!”
    The office messenger, McGrath, a pale-blue-eyed ginger-haired man with a white face and a pink mouth, stood shuddering in the doorway.
    “Get out.” Richard Biranne, one of Octavian’s Under Secretaries, pushed past McGrath, propelled McGrath out of the door, closed the door.
    “What on earth is it?” said Octavian.
    Biranne leaned back against the door. He breathed deeply for a moment and then said in his usual high-pitched and rather precise voice, “Look, Octavian, I know this is scarcely credible, but Radeechy has just shot himself.”
    “Radeechy? Good God. Is he dead?”
    “Yes.”
    Octavian sat down, He straightened out the piece of cream-coloured paper on the red blotter. He read the unfinished sentence. Then he got up again. “I’d better come and—see.” He moved to the door which Biranne held open for him. “I suppose we’d better call Scotland Yard.”
    “I’ve already taken the liberty of doing so,” said Biranne.
    Radeechy’s room was on the floor below. A little crowd of people stood at its closed door, arms pendant, mouths open. They were being addressed by McGrath.
    “Go away,” said Octavian. They stared at him. “Go to your rooms,” he said. They moved slowly off. “You too,” he said to McGrath. Biranne was unlocking the door.
    Through the opening door Octavian saw Radeechy lying with his head turned sideways upon the desk. The two men went in and Biranne locked the door on the inside and after a moment’s thought unlocked it again.
    The reddish brown flesh of Radeechy’s neck was bulging out over his stiff white collar. Octavian wondered at once if his eyes were open, but the shadowed face could only have been seen by peering. Radeechy’s left arm hung down toward the floor. His right arm was upon the desk with the gun, an old service revolver, near to the hand. Octavian was finding it necessary to take a deliberate grip on himself, to respire slowly and assemble his senses and tell himself who he was. He had seen many dead men. But he had never seen a dead man suddenly on a summer afternoon in Whitehall with his flesh bulging out above a stiff collar.
    Octavian quickly informed himself that he was the head of the department and must behave calmly and take charge.
    He said to Biranne, “Who found him?”
    “I did. I was nearly outside his door when I heard the shot.”
    “I suppose there’s no doubt he’s dead?” The question sounded weird, almost embarrassed.
    Biranne said, “He’s dead all right. Look at the wound.” He pointed.
    Octavian moved nearer. He moved round the desk on the side away from Radeechy’s face and leaning over the chair saw a round hole in the back of the head, a little to the rightof the slight depression at the base of the skull. The hole was quite large, a dark orifice with blackened edges. A little blood, not much, had run down inside the collar.
    “He must have pointed the gun into his mouth,” said Biranne. “The bullet went right through.”
    Octavian noticed the neatness of the recently clipped grey hair upon the warm vulnerable neck. He had an impulse to touch it, to touch the material of Radeechy’s jacket, to pulp it timidly, curiously. Here were the assembled parts of a human being, its clothes and carnal