Mrs Pargeter 01; A Nice Class of Corpse

∨ A Nice Class of Corpse ∧

45

TUESDAY, 12 MARCH – 2.30 p.m.

The worst has happened. As I feared, now it is not only Mrs Pargeter who knows my secret, but someone else as well. And that person is my dearest friend. He came and told me after lunch. He had read this book and he knew all about my murders. He was sorry for me, he said, but was quite firm that I should go to the police and confess. If I didn’t, he said, he would.

So now I am faced with a frightful dilemma. Either I give myself up, or I have to murder the one person left in the world who means anything to me. And still murder Mrs Pargeter – and who knows how many others before I feel secure? I now begin to suffer that self-contempt and hopelessness that murderers are supposed to feel. The crime is one that at first gives you a sensation of power, of controlling events, but how briefly that euphoria lasts! How quickly one realises that the crime itself is in control! How I wish I had never embarked on this course!

And yet when I started – such a comparatively short time ago – it all seemed to make such good sense. I was in such a corner over the gambling debts. I had borrowed on the strength of my pension and used every other resource I possessed. They were threatening all kinds of things, but what worried me most was the threat that they would tell Miss Naismith. I was well set up at the Devereux and I planned to stay here for the rest of my days. For someone like me to be branded publicly as the kind of bounder who doesn’t pay his gambling debts would have been insupportable.

I was in pretty total despair about it, when by chance, in a private conversation with me, Mrs Selsby let slip about the unusual provisions of her will. I’m afraid from that moment I considered murder as a way out of my difficulties, and once the idea had caught hold of me, it grew stronger and stronger, until it became an obsession. I had only one aim and that was to kill Mrs Selsby.

But of course it didn’t stop there. Mrs Mendlingham had seen what had happened and came to me with a proposition – if she kept quiet, then I was to use my influence to prevent Miss Naismith from turning her out of the Devereux. Of course that was ridiculous. I had no influence with Miss Naismith, and I think, anyway, she had already made up her mind that Mrs Mendlingham should go. So there was no security for me till the old woman was dead.

But then Mrs Pargeter started meddling. I tried to kill her, using cyanide from a suicide ring I’d had made up during the War, but I failed. Never mind, I’ll try again – or at least I think I will.

Because where all was certainty, now all is doubt. Now that I am faced with the prospect of having to kill a friend, the situation is so different. The two old women were near the end, anyway. Mrs Pargeter seems a pleasant enough soul, but I do not know her well nor feel any particular loyalty to her. But to have to kill him – I don’t know if I can bring myself to do it.

I will go out for a walk with him. That will be best. Talk to him – see if I can make him change his mind about going to the police. And, if he won’t change his mind, then I’ll have to try and kill him.

Or, if I can’t bring myself to do that, perhaps I’ll have to kill myself instead.