Prelude To A Certain Midnight

Such a man, it might be argued, would look for some way to make the most of his manhood. He might do evil in order to keep it locked up in his heart — to be able to smile to himself occasionally, between midnight and dawn.

‘You think I’m nobody,’ he would say, inside himself. ‘I am not nobody. I’m dangerous, but you’ll never know.’

Asta remembered that a little man not unlike Mr Scripture had been convicted of firing ricks not far from where she had lived thirty years before. He was a tailor with a club-foot, appropriately nicknamed ‘Rabbits’; he really did look remarkably like a rabbit escaped from a snare, hopping and lamely bobbing, twitching its poor little nose. A convicted poacher had been suspected, but at the last moment Rabbits came forward with the pride of hell in his eyes and the terror of the magistrate in his quavering voice, and confessed, oflering incontrovertible evidence against himself. Asked why he had put a match to three haystacks, Rabbits had replied: ‘Because I wanted to.’

Rabbits had been married to a big, noisy wife — like Crippen, or like Scripture. Mr Scripture might easily have killed Sonia Sabbatani. Asta could see the little man, prim and respectable, coming home an hour or two late on a foggy afternoon. Out comes Oonagh, sloppy in a sweaty old rayon dressinggown, stuffing back into place a pale, pear-shaped breast, tightening her girdle, at the same time screaming: ‘Where have you been?’ Delayed by the fog, Oonagh dear. ‘— And I suppose you expect me to sit and wait for you? Open yourself a tin of salmon, my Lord-and-Master, and bring me up a cup of tea when you’ve finished. And mind you wash the plate. I’ve got a pain. I’m lying down. You and your Fog! Ach, you shrimp!’

And Mr Scripture with a couple of words of cringing acquiescence goes to the kitchen and puts on the kettle … and smiles at the dirty dishes. The kettle sings and bubbles; and so does his heart… .

Why not?

Or why not Graham Strindberg? He was a plunger into strange depths. He believed that there was a God, and that there was a Devil. But not knowing exactly how things stood he did not like to commit himself. Graham Strindberg saw everything from every viewpoint, all at the same time; and he saw himself as a self-supporting state, beautifully mountainous, elegantly painted with sunsets, traditionally neutral. He was a little Switzerland in an embattled universe. Equally protected, the agents of heaven and of hell sunned themselves by the placid lakes of his retirement. He was neutral territory, where the saints and the demons were all one, as long as they did not assert themselves by daylight.

Yet what queer contracts might be mace under the blanket of the dark?

Good is a gentleman; Evil is a cad — a gentleman gone wrong. Good is a dog; Evil is a fox. Good, as a gentleman, tries to think well of the watchful enemy; but Evil knows all the tricks.

Given a certain midnight (thought Asta), such neutral territory might find itself possessed by the Powers of Evil. Shame and remorse might come with the daylight… but a sçrangled child would still be lying with a blackened face in a rotting house… .

Impossible, impossible! cried the daytime mind of Asta Thundersley. Why impossible? asked the scavenging intelligence of the dark. What has lie done that is good? What has he done that is evil? He can fly into a rage. To which Side Of The Fron tier does his anger belong?

Asta shook her head. Rain was falling: dawn was far away. She made herself some tea. The kitchen was warm: the stove was a good one — it never went out, and one dirty little shovelful of coke kept its fire alive for a day and a night. This was a comforting thought. So much kindly warmth out of a handful of slaggy cinders! Putting her elbows on the table she fitted her resolute chin into the cup of her joined hands. She was calmer now, and drowsy; almost at peace.

If Asta had closed her eyes then she might have fallen asleep; but she opened them and saw, on the lowest rack of the dresser, a large oval dish, biscuit-coloured and patterned in high relief. This dish had not been used upstairs for many years. The pattern crept in and out around a lobster.

Mothmar! said Asta, starting up. The body of the lobster resembled Mothmar’s nose, and the extended claws his eyebrows. Mothmar Acord had a baked, glazed, pitted face — a dish-shaped face, discoloured by oriental suns and high fevers, and distorted by unholy passions. The oval dish might have been Mothmar’s head on a pillow — only the mouth was not there. His mouth was difficult to describe and impossible to forget. The upper lip was a Cupid’s bow: the lower was sucked away so that it radiated wrinkles like the ribs of a fan. Under heavy brows like frayed packing-string, his murderous little blue eyes stared you out of countenance and then withdrew into spider webs of wrinkles while the mouth smiled downwards. He had lived most of his life in the tropics; drank soberly for hours, and then suddenly got drunk and pinched you viciously, always smiling. Mothmar had the air of a man gone rotten without ripening, in too much sunshine — the kind of sunshine from which a man tries to hide, and so goes yellow and decays.

Why not Mothmar Acord? Why not?

But if it comes to the matter of that, why not Sinclair Wensday? There was a pleasant fellow, tall and popular, well-spoken, well-mannered, generous, and good-looking in that tired, dissipated way which makes women interested. Sometimes he was gloomy: sometimes he was hilarious — it was whispered that Sinclair Wensday took drugs — he had what they call a ‘cocaine personality’. Nothing was proved. It was known that he had had love affairs with two or three girls of the neighbourhood. Men wondered how Sinclair Wensday could have anything to do with anyone but his wife, Avril, who was extremely beautiful. Women wondered how Avril could have anything to do with any man but Sinclair, who, they were agreed, was terribly attractive. He looked like Galahad gone to the devil. When she was sullen and quiet Avril might have sat to a painter of biblical pictures: she was a martyr with dull red hair and half-closed eyes, seeing Paradise between the bars of black lashes. Then, when she smiled — which was seldom — she looked like a whore. Everybody knew that Avril and her husband loved each other. Yet they could not live together — they separated for ever about four times a year. Sinclair Wensday would come into the Bar Bacchus with wild eyes, his collar unbuttoned, and a drying scratch on his cheek. He would look left and right with desperate expectation; then lose a couple of inches of stature as he sank into himself at the bar. ‘Well, this is it,’ he would say, gulping liquor, ‘once and for all, this is it…’

Soon he would vomit unassimilated miseries. Avril slept with this one, Avril slept with that one, Avril went to bed with the other one… but he loved her, loved her!

At the same time, in the Firedrake two streets away, Avril would be rolling a sleeve to show a bruise, or pointing to a black eye and sobbing: ‘This is it. Definitely, this is it.’ And she would describe how Sinclair slunk out to make love to half the women in town.

In a week they would be together again in the Bar Bacchus, squeezing hands half in love and half in loathing, exchanging glances and sighs, and snarls.

Who could say how such savage love might end? It was nothing but hate and lust, thirst for power and the desire to be hurt and to hurt! Why not Sinclair Wensday?

Asta sighed in the middle of a yawn, or yawned in the middle of a sigh; whispered ‘Murderers, murderers,’ and fell asleep.

Mrs Kipling came down at half-past seven next morning and saw her bent over the table with her stubborn forehead in the crook of her left arm. An end of her grizzled hair was floating in a cup of cold tea, and her right hand clutched a teaspoon.

‘Tea, Kipling!’ shouted Asta, starting up.

Mrs Kipling screamed: she had thought — almost hoped — that Asta was dead.

27

At eight o’clock the first post came. The postman had to ring: one of the envelopes was too bulky to pass through the slot of the letter-box. It came from Schiff, and was stuffed with samples of carnival novelties; paper hats, coloured streamers, coiled toys designed to stretch out squeaking and tickle your neighbour, uninflated rubber balloons of unconventional patterns, red card. board noses, masks, balls of pith for throwing at people, and all kinds of amusing invitation-cards.

Near the bottom of the second page Schiff had written:

‘… To be for the present unhappy in the position to not on account of certain circumstances over which I have no control be, as I ordinarily would, in a position to gladly and with my hand on my heart as one friend to another offer you free of charge my services, gives me grief and unhappiness. My Formule I give freely and hope to, in happier circumstances over which I trust I shall have the fullest control, give more as it is in my nature to ordinarily do. I at, however, the present sad moment, am by the circumstances with grief compelled to ask Consultant Fee L5 . o . o. (Five Pounds Exactly.) The Formule, which I baptize in the name of BATTLEAXE, is as research has made clear a psychic laxative and brain-cathartic of the first order. Put on the Market it could not fail to succeed, in which case I have a cheaper formula almost equally as good as the one that I have with all possible admiration and respect pinned to this note…’

The Formule, on Page Three, was as follows:

THE FORMULE

According to Quantity, in the Following Proportion

Take 1 Bot. ORANGE CURACAO

1 Bot. VERY DRY GIN

1 Bot. MANDARIN

1/4 Bot. BRANDY

1/4 Bot. ABRICOTINE

1/8 Bot. COINTREAU

A Dash of ORANGE BITTERS.

Mix the above very thoroughly.

Now, squeeze out and carefully strain the juice of 24 fresh oranges. Mix this juice with the above Mixture, very thoroughly. Put in ice-box and freeze very cold.

WHEN READY TO SERVE:

Fill a large tumbler 5/8 (five eighths) full with the Mixture as above.

Almost fill your tumbler then with Champagne.

It need not be Vintage Champagne.

Add a slice of orange, a slice of fresh peach, a finely-cut curl of orange-peel.

Serve Bitterly Cold.

If the Formule is preferred weaker, dilute with Champagne.

I recommend ROUSPETEUR FRERES, which I can get for you at not disadvantageous prices. Many people prefer it weaker. It is argued that the Formule is better in the following proportions:

3/8 (three eighths) Mixture

5/8 (five eighths) ROUSPETEUR PRERES CHAMPAGNE

Swizzle with swizzle-stick.

This tastes like fruit-juice, and is good.

After that she opened letters from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to this, that, or the other.

She was tired and sad. Her thoughts were wandering … Whosoever kicks a dog kicks a man by proxy: that was her opinion. A blow-fly is an evil thing, better dead.

Kill the blow-fly and have done.

Find pleasure in tearing off the wings or the legs of that fly, and the time will come when you will have graduated from fly to mouse, mouse to rat, rat to cat, cat to dog, dog to child —

Enough, enough is enough! (Asta shuddered). Pull a fly’s wings off, and you rip off the wings of a bird.

Pluck off the fly’s legs and you tear a man between four wild horses.

Kill if you must, but kill clean! That which you must kill so that you may live is your adversary. Then kill it quickly, and have done: the longer it lives in pain, the greater its power in the end.

The tormented beetle takes a terrible revenge at last … the imprisoned gold-fish rounds up its jailers in hundreds and thousands … the game-cock or the terrier dying in the pit sets man against man in vaster pits at long last: the tortured beast is master of the world when all is said and done.

All cruelty is one.

‘Down with it!’ cried the spirit of Asta Thundersley, as she plunged into the day’s correspondence, most of which referred to the case of a woman in Buckinghamshire who kept underfed ducks in a basement. Eagles, chickens, ducks … aviators, in fantrymen, sailors … heavens above, earth beneath, and waters under the earth — all cruelty and oppression were one. There was only one calloused heart in the Universe, and only one good heart. There was only the Devil on one hand and God on the other.

‘_Ha!_’ said Asta. The hairs at the nape of her neck bristled and grew damp. She was about to make a fool of herself again — this time about ducks.

At four o’clock Thea Olivia, who had eaten three-quarters of a pound of meat, some vegetables, and a bit of cheese as big as your fist off a tray in her room, came down in lavender-andgrey for tea.

‘My inky-fingers?’ she said to Asta, who was licking an envelope. ‘How is my little inky-fingers?’

‘Hello, Duck,’ said Asta.

28

The man who had murdered Sonia Sabbatani dressed himself with care. He was an extremely sensitive man, dainty in his habits, sensitive to harsh words, and given to misinterpreting sidelong glances. His nostrils, also, were uncomfortably sensitive. If he had not been smoking too much — ten cigarettes in a day were too much, for he smoked only to defend himself against other people’s breath — he could shut his eyes and recognize people he had met by their smell. He was, therefore, considerate of other people’s nostrils. Anxious not to give offence, he scoured his body, especially his feet, as thoroughly as a surgeon scours his hands, twice a day. He detested above all things the odour of breath. It offended him profoundly. He had the nose of a tobacco-blender or a tea-taster, and could tell with reasonable accuracy at half a yard what anyone had eaten since breakfast time. Radishes disgusted him; cheese turned his stomach; beer caused him to retch. At the same time this man liked to meet people. He was a young man with his way to make in the world — a man with ambition — and it was necessary for him to make contacts, as the saying goes. So he had developed a remarkable knack of controlling his breathing. He never in any circumstances inhaled through his nose while anyone in his immediate vicinity was breathing out through the mouth. His sensitivity cut both ways: it seemed to him that he must offend others as others offended him. So he had cultivated a trick of holding his breath. He had been holding his breath, off and on, for nearly twenty years. Thus, his shoulders were drawn back and his chest thrust forward: he had acquired the lungs of a pearl-fisher. His trepidation in relation to bad smells had given birth to highly individual ways of standing, looking, and holding his head. He was of normal height. In talking to a short man he held his head high with the chin thrust out. And if he happened to be in intimate conversation with a tall man he kept his nose down, tucking in his chin and still contriving to look the other straight in the eye. So he had what might have been mistaken for a military carriage: only he leaned backwards. His distinct erectness contrasted oddly with the expression of his face. The nostrils appeared to be struggling between a tendency to expand in an interested sniff, and snap shut in a spasm of distaste. He kept most of his mouth closed when he talked, using only one side of it — the side farthest from whoever he was talking to. He knew that this habit might lead people to believe that he was trying to make himself look tough; so he made his expression affable by means of his eyes and eyebrows. The Murderer’s eyes were singularly unexpressive; but he could force his eyebrows into a whimsical, almost apologetic expression. He had one devouring fear — that somebody with bad teeth or bronchitis (he could diagnose a bronchial halitosis at three-and-a-half feet) might come up to him and talk right into his face. So, when anyone came near him he put out an anxious hand. If the person speaking to him was a man, the murderer took him by the lapel; if a woman, by the elbow. In any case, he kept people at a distance. And still he wanted to be with people.

He had bathed fastidiously. Now he knotted his tie. He was pleased with himself, and smiled at his reflection in the mirror. The reflection smiled back at him slyly and knowingly, and nodded as if to say: We two have something on each other, but we are in accord. You keep my secret and I’ll keep yours.

The Murderer looked at his little clock. It was twenty-seven minutes past six; too early, much too early. He did not want to hurry. He would sit, perfectly calmly, and then — say in an hour — go out and walk slowly to Asta’s place. And there he would sit very quietly in one of those deep cool chairs with the linen covers… the cool, clean linen covers that did not in any circumstances provoke perspiration… sit, and be nice to people, and let people be nice to him, and eat canapes and drink one or two drinks, and make a gentlemanly evening of it. A party was always useful: one never knew whom one might meet. Asta Thundersley was a lady; eccentric, but unquestionably a lady. It all helped: in any case, the cost of an evening meal was saved.

The Murderer was in a pleasant humour, in love with the world. He shook open the evening paper. EMERALD — INSURANCE CO. FIGHTS WIDOW’S CLAIM. The unhappy burglar had paid up his premiums, but the Comet Fire and Life maintained that Emerald had committed suicide.

Too bad, too bad….

Near the centre of the third column smaller type said: Girl Sonia. Killer Still Free. The Police had a clue.

He laughed: at least, his face remained unchanged, and his stomach laughed.

Who could swear to me? he asked himself. Who, could swear on the Book? Clue! What clue? There is no clue, and they know it. Otherwise, why do they squeeze the story down and away? Their argument is, of course, that they have more in their minds than they want to say. But in our case, exactly what have they got? There was a black fog. if ten witnesses saw me pick the child up outside the School — what would their oaths be worth? In that fog, nothing. It happened to Sonia Sabbatani. So what? She might have been any of two or three hundred children. Clues? Hah! What clues?

I am standing on the corner of the street, and the girl happens to come by. ‘See you safely home.?’ I ask her, and she says: ‘Thanks very much, Mister So-and-So.’ She knew my voice. Face, figure, walk, anything at all — I didn’t reccgnize her myself in that fog, until she spoke! if I didn’t even know it was her until I heard her voice, how is anybody to know that the man is me?

Be calm, be reasonable — no nerves, no jitters; nothing but calm, calm! Black fog, and the night coming: what would anyone’s testimony be worth? Anyone’s oath, anywhere? And who was there in that dead old street? Nobody. Why should anyone be there? No property to protect — condemned houses. nothing more — why should a policeman, even, be there?

No reason at all. And there wasn’t anybody anywhere.

Yes, I was naughty. I was very naughty indeed….

The Murderer shook his head, got out of his chair and carefully brushed his teeth.

… I deserve to be hanged. But even if they caught me, they wouldn’t hang me. They’d say I was insane. But I’m not. And they won’t catch me anyway. It wasn’t a nice thing to do. But the only alternative would have been to take Sonia to her home, and that would have been the end of that: she knew my voice. You can’t safely loiter about the same place twice. In that kind of weather you’re as good as masked like the Klu-Klux-Klan. Kill and have done. In any case, what did I mean to do? To kill? Simply to kill. it is a pity that it had to be little Sonia Sabbatani; but it had to be someone. Next time (he had not the slightest doubt that there would be a next time), next time, he would see… .

But this was the first kill, and he still thrilled with a curious mixture of pride and of shame at the thought of it like a young girl who has gone out and lost her virginity on the sly. He knew now what Zarathustra meant when he spoke of the murderer who ‘thirsted for the pleasure of the knife’. Of course, he had not used a knife. He owned several knives, but used them only to sharpen pencils, or to play with; their lean, cold blades, honed sharp and brightly polished, gave him a sense of power, made him feel dangerous. He liked to open and shut them — especially one wicked Spanish knife, with an engraved blade that might have been designed for cruel murder. This blade locked back by means of a primitive yet efficient device consisting of a perforated steel spring and a ratchet. It opened with a noise like the grinding of iron teeth, and ‘there it was, ten inthes long; the very sight of it made the blood stand still. It amused him sometimes to stand before a mirror, knife in fist, making quick, ferocious passes at himself, and dreaming dreams … always dreaming dreams… dreams of blood and death.

No, he had not used a knife this time.

There was, he thought, the Pleasure of the Thumbs; the Pleasure of the Strangler. ‘_Under my thumb_.’ How apt some of these metaphors were. There was power, absolute power, power ever life and death. Your thumbs sank in. You felt the heaving and the writhing of the little body. But it was doomed. You were DOOM. You were the Angel of Death. You were God. You could take life or give it back. You could — and did — let the little creature breathe again for a second or two. Why curtail a pleasure by gluttonous haste? You are a gourmet — you prolong your pleasures, tease yourself a little, and so increase your enjoyment of things. So you let the victim, the sacrificial offering, come back to life a little — not sufficiently alive to scream: that would never do. Just for two or three gulps of breath. Then — Under the Thumb, Under the Thumb! Who could have imagined that a child’s heart could beat so hard? Well, all good things must have an end. You finished it off at last.

All the same, next time he would use a knife. This might be a little dangerous, because of the splashes. Still, did they ever catch Jack the Ripper? And how many crimes did Fritz I-Iaarmann get away with before he had the bad luck to be caught? Or Peter Kürten. These two men ended on the gallows, it is true. Yet how calmly they died! Why? Because they had died in the knowledge that they had lived, and lived, and lived — lived more red-blooded life in their forty-year lifetimes than your ordinary respectable law-abiding citizen could live in a hundred years. It was dangerous, yes. But the danger that followed the kill was, so to speak, the savoury that rounded off the roast.

Next time the knife. Not the nice Spanish knife, the knife christened ‘Dago Pete’; but a very ordinary knife, a bread knife, a sixpenny vegetable knife, a kitchen knife, a shoemaker’s knife.

And after that, if only to baffle the Police by a variation of the modus operandi, a piece of cord. And after that … well, it would all depend upon circumstances.

29

Soon, having fallen into a reverie, the Murderer began to be sorry for himself. The ccstasy was passing. He told himself again that he had been ‘naughty’. Somewhere inside him a snivelling voice said: It isn’t my fault, I couldn’t help it. He reasoned with himself:

It isn’t my fault. Look at Peter Kürten. He said: ‘The woman who took me up when I first came out of prison was one whose temperament was the very opposite to my own. She liked cruel treatment.’ And then the Public Prosecutor said: ‘That, of course, will have increased the sadistic leanings.’…

There you are! Lots of boys have the impulse to be cruel, to kill. Lots of boys want to hunt down animals in jungles and kill them, be detectives and hunt down men and hang them — which amounts to the same thing. But they don’t all go out and be naughty in the same way as I have been naughty. I shouldn’t have been encouraged — given a big sexual thrill in that way.

I would still be a nice shy boy, doing nothing wrong — I mean to say nothing actually illegal — if it hadn’t been for Her.

She enjoyed being ill-treated. I would have been too timid even to suggest that kind of game. She suggested it. She made me feel that my manhood depended upon my power to hurt. If they hang me, they ought to hang Her. They cut Peter Kürten’s head off for seventy crimes of violence. What did they do to the woman who brought out what was in him? Nothing. Is this justice?

The Murderer went to his bookshelf and read what Professor Hübner had said:

‘_Sadism is infinitely many-sided and comprises a wide field, including anything from dreams of torturing animals, the exaggerated punishment of children, of fire-mania, to lust-murders, which are generally arrived at by a series of progressive actions. A certain tendency to cruelty was born in Kürten. Everything else has been acquired. In his case the meeting with the woman twice his age with the masochistic tendencies; the reading of works of sexual pathology, combined with his ego. tistical megalomania, were responsible for the extent of his sadism. This developed gradually_.’

‘And what about me?’ said the Murderer, ‘what about me?’

The best thing was to put it out of his mind for the time being. The thing of which he had frequently dreamed with pleasurable shudders had happened. It was going to happen again. But he felt a certain delicacy about it. If anyone talked to him of it, he would feel embarrassed.

But he thanked God that his mind could focus itself upon big, noble issues.

Almost with tears in his eyes, the Murderer thought of Mankind, for he liked to think of himself as the kindest and sweetest of men, full of noble sentiments, and motivated by a desire to benefit mankind. He devoted a considerable proportion of his daydreaming to fantasies of conquest, or sometimes of self-immolation.

Sometimes he saw himself as a martyr.

Down in the smoky torture-chamber behind his everyday mind he stretched himself on an imaginary rack by the wild, leaping light of flaring flambeaux. The winches creaked; the ropes snapped taut and shrieked as they strained over the blocks. The torturers gasped and grunted as they threw their weight upon the windlasses. But he, the hero, made no sound, except for the snapping of his dislocated joints. He smiled quietly into the faces of the executioners. ‘Now will you talk?’ He only smiled. The Hooded Inquisitor made a sign. The torturers put out their strength. In the dancing torchlight the strong muscles of their shoulders and backs seemed to jump and tremble like imprisoned things that wanted to burst their way out. The agony was unbearable: yet he bore it. ‘Now will you give us the names of your confederates?’

He smiled. At last, as he lay dying (one of his legs had come off) the Inquisitor said to him in a voice of awe: ‘You’re an obstinate heretic, but by all His Saints, you are a man!’

Sometimes — it depended upon his mood, which in turn depended upon the events of the day — he was riding into a conquered city upon a great white horse.

From head to foot he was encased in sombre, black armour. The lurid light of a blazing building writhed upon hauberk, gorget, and cuisse. His visor, thrown back, left uncovered his face, which was noble and proud, stern but pure. Behind him rode his Knights clad all in steel; and behind them marched his Men-at-Arms under a forest of gleaming spears. As he rode, thousands of the townsmen he had liberated came thronging about him, weeping with gratitude, fighting for one little bit of the dung of his horse which they would preserve as a holy relic.

‘_God bless the Liberator!_’ He rode on; stern, preoccupied. In the great castle taken from the Tyrant he sat upon a great velvet chair, magnificent in a robe of velvet blacker than night, embroidered with gold arabesques, and did justice. Cold and clean but terrible was the justice of the Liberator! The Baron Otmar starved the poor? Then let him be bound with silken cords and left to die of hunger in sight of a table laid with innumerable dishes of savoury meat … but give him a cup of water every day, so that he may live long enough to know the meaning of hunger.

The Baron Something had worked his vassals to death? Then let him be imprisoned in a cell in which there was a cage containing ten thousand starving rats and let this cage be devised so that only by the forward and backward movement of a stiff, heavy lever could the rats be prevented from escaping. Let him work that one out! And in the streets oxen were being roasted whole, wine spurted from the fountains, and everyone cried: ‘God bless the Liberator!’

Again, he was the captain of a great liner. In the middle of one dreadful night, there was a grinding crash. The ship had struck an iceberg and was sinking fast. Women and children first! He brandished a big, blue revolver. Back there, you dogs, and let the women and children get into the boats first! A man — an enormous, handsome Greek god of a man, who had always showed off his superior muscles and weight — leapt forward, mad with panic. The revolver spat yellow fire, and the handsome face became, abruptly, like strawberry jam. All the other men stood, cowed, while the women and the children got into the boats. Everyone on deck got off. Only he, the captain, was left. ‘For God’s sake, Skipper, come down.’ No, the weight of one more passenger might sink the boat; he would go down with his ship. But as the boats pulled away (he could hear everybody saying that the captain was a saint and a hero) he heard a little whimpering cry. Somewhere a girl was imprisoned. He lifted beams of a ton weight, tore down barriers of broken iron, smashed bulkheads with a blow of the fist, and there she was, radiant and beautiful, but terrified. The fear of death was upon her. ‘There, there little woman…’ The shock of the collision had torn off all her outer garments. He took her on deck. The ship was settling. The boats had disappeared. ‘This is the end,’ he said. They locked in an unbreakable embrace as the ship went down… .

The Murderer was always thankful that he was not selfish like other men, and rejoiced in his social-mindedness. He could not meet a beggar in the street without giving away a coin or two and saying a few sympathetic words. He was a member of two or three societies devoted to the abolition of corporal punishment, and what not. He would have been among the first to protest against the use of pigs and goats in the atom-bomb test at Bikini. There were occasions when he saw himself as a great militant humanitarian. He was something of a Socialist. He knew that Good must be pitiless. In fantasy, he was the man who, with his own hand, cut to pieces the Justice of the Peace who ordered the birching of a small boy; and, although it was not expedient to say so, he saw Herr Hitler’s point. The pure man must be strong. Purity and strength are correlated. He must be like pure iron — malleable, yet the strongest thing in the world. Out of his malleability must be forged… for the sake of example a Knife … a Knife to cut the throat of Evil.

And then he was in a quiet town. Once again he was the Liberator — pure and passionate yet cold, a Leader, a god. Under the cover of the Law-Protected roofs — here, there, everywhere, waiting for his word — his legions waited. He gave the Word. From Ealing to Barking, from Enfield to Harrow, the mob arose. The screams of the evil-doers rose high above the thunder of applause. This was the Night of the Long Knife … and in due course he sat in judgement. Lisping, shrugging, gesticulating, shuffling, the Ringleaders of the Adversaries were brought before him. Should he kill them? Yes, but not immediately. They and theirs must be stamped out, stamped out utterly for ever. ‘Question them!’ and then he was looking down, while stretched upon a rack someone gibbered and told everything out of a bleeding mouth.

And later, there was peace in the world, his peace, and the world cried: ‘_Hail, Peacemaker!_’

His peace, the Peace of the Murderer, had necessarily to be preceded by violence. His world would give birth to a new baby; but first of all, there would be plenty of birth pangs. His peace would be something like the exhaustion of the mother of the first-born; a little death, the blood washed away. And in ten thousand places new grass would be growing. Loving mankind as he did, he had persuaded himself that people needed to be thinned out — above all, that the world needed the guidance of a leader of steel-clad knights, a man with a pale, set face, riding that white horse.

Here was his Ideal Man — the Leader. Sometimes he felt that, circumstances being favourable, he could have achieved such leadership. Then he saw himself walking along an interminable avenue of waving hands towards a great wreath-hung platform, while a hundred thousand voices thundered: ‘Hail, Peacemaker! Hail, Liberator!’ His face was even paler and more firmly set than usual as he climbed the steps. One lock of hair (the only good thing that ever dared to rebel against him) fell across his forehead. He let it stay where it fell, and raised a hand for silence. With one flick of the wrist he stilled that storm of approbation. Then he spoke, standing in a floodlight; the vast hall threw back thunderous echoes. Then his terrible, urgent voice dashed the echoes back where they belonged and silenced them. He was a tempest, a raging torrent. Two hundred thousand eyes were fixed in adoration upon his face. His wild, incandescent eyes were holding hypnotically the gaze of a multitude a hundred thousand strong. And how he talked! With what fire, with what passion! Whenever he paused for breath, the pent-up breath of the listening multitude let itself out in such cheering as had never been heard before in the whole history of the world. He raised a hand again. Then he continued. His arguments clamped down hard, inescapable… like the thumbs of a strangler. His phrases were incisive; they bit deep … like Spanish knives. And the end of the speech was the beginning of a new world….

Still, always, when the daydream had spent itself, he knew that he was not a leader of men; he remembered that he was shy of men. He knew that he would never shout his will into the face of mankind; because he shrank away from mankind and feared a defiant reply. A bus conductor, a taxi-driver, a shop walker, or a beggar in the street could abash him with a nonchalant rejoinder. He dreaded the rough, rude answer. For this reason, as he was well aware, he was invariably kind and gentle with people; full of understanding. He had almost persuaded himself that there was a good deal of the saint in him. All the same, he knew that if he could have had his way some insolent man or woman would have gone crashing down with splintered teeth more often than he could remember.

No, he could not actually lead men. But he could, he was convinced, have been a power behind a leader … if he could have cultivated a certain courage of the subtle Machiavellian sort. But all his courage, Machiavellian or animal, was a dream dreamed in a furnished room in front of a gas lire. Black armour? He would not have the strength to walk in armour, black or white, to the end of the street. As for the high-stepping white horse, he would be afraid to lay his hand on the pommel of its saddle. If he could have brought himself to sit astride the humblest old hack of a horse, he would have patted its neck with an uncertain hand and said: ‘There, there, poor old fellow,’ like Mr Winkle. He did not even have a pale set face — except when he saw himself in a glass in the privacy of his bedsitting-room.

Yet he felt that he could have been a Leader, a Liberator; given luck.

30

He was constantly thinking of everything, and of nothing. There was such a woolly hood of preoccupation over the eyes and ears of this man that occasionally he seemed to be blind and deaf — the absent-minded uncle with his ‘_Ha! Where was I?_’ and ‘_Uh? What was that again?_’ Once, visiting a newlymarried friend who had set up house on the fifth floor of a block of flats, he fell into a typical state of abstraction… .

He saw himself as married to his friend’s wife and installed in this apartment. His wife found him somehow unsatisfactory: she took a lover. He knew that she had her lover, but said nothing. He was the quiet man, the Watcher by Night — he could wait. Oh, he knew all about the agonized embraces, the desperate meetings and anguished partings! He knew. But he could wait. He was the Schemer, the Patient One. At last the moment was his. There came a fragrant night in late spring. The sittingroom window faced westward. Clouds like Spanish knives had shaved red slices out of the grey-blue sky. Nana was in the bathroom. ‘Ah, dear, dear!’ he murmured, ‘look at the grey of the pavement below! Look.’ (There was little time to lose.) ‘Look at the people like ants below — down there, just look!’

And then a quick stoop — hands to the ankles, heave up, thrust out hard; and back to the easy chair, flipping over the pages of an album as the cistern went Ha-hoosh and the lady came back with an air of abstraction… .

Calm, brother, calm, in anticipation of the buzz and twitter from below! ‘Where’s Tom?’ The Murderer is bewildered: ‘Here, surely?’

Then the scream; the stampede in the passage, and the thumb squeezing the life out of the battery of the electric bell.

‘He fell, sir — fell down, smack at my feet!’

‘Now take it easy. He fell at your feet. Then what? You looked where? Upwards? You did. And you saw what? What did you say? You “sort of saw the gentleman take a jump”? Think again, my friend. The gentleman was looking out of the window while I was in the room. Come, now — “take a jump”, you say. Let’s get this clear. Are you telling us the gentleman jumped out of the window?’

‘Yes, sir: that’s how it looked to me.’

‘I ran scarcely credit this, my friend…. No, no, Nana — please don’t look! One thing only — one very little thing — how long were you in the bathroom?’

‘A few minutes; not more than four or five: probably less than five minutes.’

‘Pray be calm, my dear — relax and be calm, my dear!’

He, the deceived husband, was wet with anguish. Nana was looking at him: she knew! He gave her a look out of the lefthand oorners of his eyes, indicating that he knew she knew. Then her eyes changed: she worshipped him… .

‘A penny for your thoughts,’ said his host.

The Murderer stared. ‘_Hah?_’ Then he laughed, and the company laughed with him — that dreamer, that man of dreams. Nana was rubbing her cheek against her husband’s shoulder.

‘Oh-oh, please, please excuse me,’ the Murderer said. ‘I seem to go into a trance these days. Do please forgive me…’

A roar of laughter, a replenishment of glasses, a slapping of shoulders, an offering of sandwiches. But the Murderer wanted ti go home and dream some dreams. … He was still blinking in his dazed way.

‘What a dreamy fellow you are!’ said his host.

Soon he excused himself, saying that he had some work to do, and walked slowly homewards. He resented a spatter of rain that forced him to run for a bus. How can a man dream dreams while he is running? Still, it would never do to get his suit wet. His grey suit was the only presentable one he possessed.

When he had gone the others talked about him. The newlymarried wife said: ‘I suppose he’s all right, but I’m not sure that I like him.’

‘Why, what’s the matter with him?’

‘I don’t know. Nothing, I suppose. I don’t know what it is, but somehow there’s just something… I don’t know what… something creepy about him.’

‘Creepy? What, him? Oh come, come, darling! He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘I didn’t say he would. I only said that he gave me the creeps — why, goodness knows. It’s just a feeling.’

‘You know what it is? It’s that dreamy look of his,’ said a girl named Muriel, ‘like a zombie.’

‘And what’s a zombie?’

‘Isn’t it a sort of walking corpse?’

‘Well, I see what you mean,’ said the host, ‘I must admit that he does, as it were, look as if he was walking in his sleep. But he’s all right. I’ve known him for ages. Gentle sort of creature, terribly fond of children.’

‘Is he married?’ asked Muriel.

The host laughed; this question amused him. ‘Married? Gobd Lord no! I couldn’t imagine him marrying anybody, could you?’

‘Why not? Is he impotent?’

‘How the devil should I know?’

‘Is he queer?

‘No, I should say definitely not queer. I don’t think he’s got much interest in sex at all. At least, I don’t associate him with anything of the kind. The peculiar thing about him is that women find him attractive. What they see in him I can’t imagine. But I know quite a few girls who have more or less fallen for him. I wonder why?’

Muriel said: ‘Oh, I don’t know. He isn’t so bad really. I think he’s rather interesting.’

‘In what way interesting?’ asked Nana.

‘I don’t know. Just one of those things. Sort of interesting.’

The host said: ‘I know what it is. It’s the same as with those professional polygamists. They’re irresistible to women because they’d so obviously make good, faithful, docile husbands. You couldn’t imagine him, for instance, rushing from pub to pub or brothel to brothel night after night, could you? No; security, nice quiet devotion, the pay envelope intact every Friday night, that’s what you’d expect from our old pal. House-trained, obedient, born to be henpecked. That’s what most women like, especially widows with a little money of their own.’

Nana said: ‘You know too much about women. If you’re not careful, I shall henpeck you.’

‘Then I shall lock you up in a dark room and feed you on bread and water, and break your spirit that way.’

The girl Muriel asked: ‘What does he do?’

The host looked blank and then said: ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I think he writes.’

‘Well, everybody writes nowadays. What does he write?’

‘He’s very cagy about it. But once I caught him reading the Weekly Sweetheart. You know, that tuppenny rag that has stories about mill-girls and baronets and all that sort of thing. It’s my theory that he writes that kind of stuff, but I couldn’t say for certain. I shouldn’t be surprised though, because he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.’

Muriel nodded and said: ‘Well, I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to admit that I wrote tripe like that, would you?’

The wife said: ‘I don’t see why not. What’s the matter with it? There’s nothing shameful in it, is there? I’d just as soon write stories about mill-girls and baronets as go about in corduroy trousers writing highbrow poetry. It’s an honest living, and —’

Her husband whooped with laughter and shouted: ‘Ah-ha ! Here speaks the married woman! Honest living! Ah-ha! Ah-ha — the pay envelope, the pay envelope! There you are, you see the irresistible fascination of the pay envelope, eh?’

‘Darling, don’t be such a bloody idiot,’ said his wife.

‘I wasn’t saying there was anything wrong in writing that sort of stuff,’ said Muriel, ‘but if a man happens to be shy and sensitive.., you know what I mean.’

The husband said: ‘Oh sure, sure, we know what you mean all right, we know what you mean, Muriel, my dear. You and your Weekly Sweetheart.’

‘I wonder —’ said Muriel, and then stopped.

‘You see, darling, she wonders. She wonders,’ said the husband, affectionately patting the hindquarters of his wife. ‘There’s the secret of that fatal fascination. He gets them wondering, my poppet, he gets them wondering. He gives them food for thought.’

‘All he gives me is the creeps,’ she said, toying with the lobe of his ear.

‘Oh, forget him, my poppet!’

‘With pleasure, my own!’

31

While this conversation was in progress, the Murderer was back in his bedsitting-room. He had switched on the light, drawn the curtains, taken off and carefully hung up his only decent grey suit, and put on a tired-looking old blue woollen dressinggown. He had work to do. The idea of work was distasteful to him: he just wanted to dream. But a man must eat, keep a roof ovei his head, and dress respectably. He had a craving for new suits. Once in a while he saw himself as Beau Brummell swaggering in impeccable coats, immaculate linen, and cravats that took an hour to tie — the haughty, the intolerably insolent, the fastidious buck whose wit was more to be feared than… say, a Spanish knife — an elegant Blade.

He caught himself on the shadowy verge of another daydream and dragged himself to his little table. He had to work. The Ubiquity Press paid him a guinea a thousand words. There were men who made fat livings out of Ubiquity at that rate, but they could work like demons: words seemed to pour out of them like sugar from a torn paper-bag. The Murderer was something of an artist: he laid out his second-hand sentences with the meticulosity of a rag-picker sorting rubbish; by hand, with a fine-pointed pen. At present he was working on a new serial for The Knuckleduster, a boys’ paper that specialized in tales of violence. He had invented a character named ‘Ironskin Obst’ who had discovered a serum that gave his skin the impregnability of fine steel without impairing its flexibility. Fire a gun at Obst and the bullet flattened itself against his forehead; throw him off a cliff, and instead of smashing himself on the rocks below Obst smashed the rocks. Hit him, and you beat your hand to pulp. The only way to get at Ironskin was with a blowlamp — and an extra-special blowlamp at that. The Villain had such a blowlamp.

The pity of it was that words came so slowly. He had to exert himself to make five pounds a week, and he detested exertion; he wanted to dream.

He sat down sighing, dipped a long, sharp, shiny nib in the ink-pot and began to write:

IRONSKIN OBST!

by

DASHWOOD STEEL

He liked this nom-de-plume even better than the one with which he signed his stories in Young Detective Weekly — ‘Dirk Pike’. Readers of The Thunderbolt knew him as ‘Lance Stockmar’. Sometimes he contributed to The Smasher under the pseudonym ‘Carver Riddle’. When he wrote for the Weekly Sweetheart he took pleasure in signing himself ‘Rayon Knickerbocker’. But ‘Dashwood Steel’ was the name he liked best of all — the name he would have chosen for himself if he had had any say in the matter.

Ironskin Obst laughed as the red-hot iron seared his eyeballs, he wrote. Then he nibbled his penholder. If only such things could be! But no, no dreams just now! Work… .

Nothing could hurt him. Knives broke and bullets rebounded from the serum-strengthened body of Ironskin Obst. Even fire was powerless to hurt him.

But oh, oh, oh if only such things could be! Oh for impregnability, and the attributes of Samson Herk, who could poke his finger through the side of a submarine! Such physical strength, combined with the powers of Svenska Xgali, the Schoolboy Hypnotist… .

But the sneering oblong mouth of the gas fire asks for shillings.

To work!

Genius is ninety per cent perspiration… which smells. The world is grim and hard, and stinks. What can a sensitive man do?

He wrote.

32

His landlady, who spoke of him as the nicest gentleman she had ever let rooms to, had put flowers on his dressing-table. The Murderer selected a small yellow chrysanthemum and stuck it in his buttonhole.

Then he went out. He walked slowly. It was not that he did not know where Frame Place was: he wanted to give himself the thrill that came of talking to a policeman.

‘Oh, officer…’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I wonder if you could tell me the best way to get to Frame Place?’

‘Well now, Frame Place, let’s see. Go straight along as you’re going, and when you get to the end of the street turn right, take the first on your left, go straight on and bear right left, and there you are. It’s a kind of crescent, sort of.’

The Murderer went on his way. He was laughing to himself. If that poor fool of a policeman had lifted out a hand and grabbed him by the collar, he would have made himself a sergeant. And there he was, pounding a beat, while he — the Murderer –was at large.

On the next street corner he asked. another policeman for a light.

‘You’re welcome, sir, if I’ve got one.’

The Murderer walked steadily up the long shadowy street. He was thinking, incongruously, of his father, who had died in the War, of his mother, who had come of a good family, of his uncle-by-marriage, who was an ironmonger, of his mother’s sister, who was remotely related to a baronet, and of his brother, who was a corn chandler….

He reached Asta Thundersley’s house in Frame Place by the river.

Another man in a grey suit had just rung the bell. The Murderer said: ‘I’m rather afraid we must be a little early.’

The other man, who seemed also to be of a quiet, reticent disposition, said: ‘Oh yes. I shouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t right. Early, yes; I’m rather afraid we must be.’

They looked at each other. After what he thought was a decent interval the Murderer approached the bell-push with an extended forefinger; whereupon the other man retreated several paces — obviously he did not want the people of the house to think that he had had the temerity to ring twice. The Murderer saw this and paused. They avoided each other’s eyes. But just then a man and a woman came up. The man looked crushed and angry — as if everything had been squeezed out of him except one deep, dark hate. And it was easy to see that the woman was the object and the inspiration of this hate. She was a big. blonde, with little pale eyes set too close to a nose shaped like a potato. Her face appeared flat and powdery as a flounder dusted with flour before it is thrown into a frying-pan; and her mouth protruded like the scalloped edge of a pie. Without hesitation she thrust a hand forward and held her thumb on the button of the bell for a good five seconds. Then The Tiger Fitzpatrick threw the door open and, muttering something that sounded like an apology, uncouthly bowed them in.

But as the door was closing someone pushed it. Another guest had arrived, the whites of whose eyes were yellow and bloodshot, and he carried a curiously carved stick of some brown and yellow tropical wood.

The guests exchanged glances but did not speak to one another. The Tiger Fitzpatrick conducted them to the sittingroom.

This room was divided by tall green folding doors which had been thrown back. At the far end Asta Thundersley’s caterers had laid out an immense table on trestles, covered with a pure white cloth, and upon this table stood three massive fivebranched candlesticks. Between the candlesticks there were two immense punch bowls, each of which contained at least two gallons of a turbid orange-coloured mixture, the pungent smell of which filled the place. To the excited eyes of the Murderer it seemed that there were five hundred glasses in the foreground, five hundred bottles of champagne in the background, and five hundred dishes of rare and complicated canapes on the left and the right. Asta Thundersley came forward, roaring words of welcome and gripping hands.

She was dressed in brocade. Her strong, meaty shoulders were bare. Her square nails were painted light red; she seemed to be a little ashamed of them. From time to time she put her hands behind her and picked off a flake of varnish. Her sister, Tot, on the other hand, looked cool, sweet, calm, and comfortable.

She had placed herself advantageously near the fireplace, with the light behind her, and was dressed in lavender-grey. About her throat she had tied a velvet band, to the front of which was pinned an amethyst — no other jewellery; only an antique watch in a double case with a fern-leaf pattern in amethysts and tiny diamonds. Thea Olivia’s hands were small and exquisite, and she knew exactly what to do with them. Whenever Asta saw her, she shook her head in an involuntary gesture of admiration. That sister of hers was perfect — whatever she did was right — her hands, her feet, her knees, her chin, every hair and everything was in its proper place. Asta was convinced that beside her sister she looked as she felt — a clumsy idiot. Her admiration was not unmixed with resentment. She had spent three hours and three guineas on her appearance that day.

She puffed away uneasy speculation in one great snort and, as the bell rang again, said to The Tiger Fitzpatrick in a whisper which might have been heard three doors away: ‘Keep on your toes, you punch-drunk idiot, or, as God is my judge, I’ll knock your head off.’

Shocket the Bloodsucker arrived with Titch Whitbread, a boy of twenty with a complexion of blood and cream, and thick blond hair. Titch Whitbread would have been conventionally handsome if the bridge of his nose had not been beaten in and his left ear knocked out of shape. But he had a full set of strong, white teeth which he displayed in a tireless grin of spontaneous delight. Everyone took to him immediately. He was engagingly boyish; there was something about him that made women want to look into his round blue eyes and talk baby-talk. Titch Whitbread was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the house and by the accents of the people making conversation. Here was Class.

He grinned over a glass of ginger ale, answered if he was spoken to, and looked so happy that hardened victims of boredom, seeing his radiant face, felt a tenderness for him — a small, sad glow of nostalgia for youth and innocence.

But Shocket the Bloodsucker talked for the two of them. When Shocket opened his mouth, which he did continuously, you were reminded of a piece of steak in which a butcher has made a preliminary cut. Out of this red, glutinous gash came a monotonous, husky voice with the penetrative quality of a cowbell in a mist.

‘… and this is Titch Whitbread. He’s a killer. He’s a murderer. Do you see that left hand? There’s a dose of chloroform in it. And do you see that right hand? I’ll tell you something. One poke with that right hand, and your face is nothing but the place where your teeth used to be. No, no! Don’t give Titch anything to drink. He won’t drink it. He’s a good, clean boy. I don’t mind if I do! I’m a father to ‘em — isn’t that right, Titch? I never let ‘em out of my sight. You ask Scotty Landauer. Who got Scotty into the running for the middle-weight championship? Me — old Shocket. And, by God, Scotty would have taken the championship off of Joey Hands; only Scotty wasn’t a clean boy. Broke training — late nights, beer, women (if you’ll excuse the expression) — that was the ruination of Scotty. Nothing like that about Titch, I swear it on my mother’s grave! No, may I be struck down dead this minute — no, may I never see my daughters alive again! I should be paralysed and may my children be paralysed, and my wife should choke on the next piece of bread she eats, Titch Whitbread is the next champion! I should be knocked down by a taxi and it should squash my guts out the next time I cross the road — may I go blind and beg in the streets — Titch is the next champion! He can hit like Sam Langford, he can take punishment like George Cook, he’s a lion — he’s a tiger — he’s a clean-living boy — he’s got more science than Einstein! And if I tell you that left hand is a dose of chloroform, that left hand is a dose of chloroform! All I want is for somebody, so they should guarantee Titch thirty thousand pounds in the next ten years, and — may I die a lingering death of cancer if what I say isn’t as true as fifty Bibles — they’d make sixty thousand pounds! On my dying oath!’

Cigarette, who was watching Titch Whitbread with hot-eyed, dreamy abstraction, said: ‘Why, I think that’s wonderful!’

Shocket stopped talking, blew his nose into a handkerchief which he afterwards unfolded and scrutinized with the air of a man who is reading a threatening letter from a creditor, and watched her closely. She had already emptied two glasses. It had brought out a smoulder on her cheeks. She was beginning, in her avid way, to look from face to face among the gathering guests. She wanted to recognize somebody, to make new contacts. Tobit Osbert and Catchy were engaged in polite conversation with Thea Olivia, behind whom hovered Sir Storrington Thirst, leaning familiarly upon the shoulder of Graham Strindberg. Cigarette sauntered over with her glass.

Thea Olivia was saying: ‘I know I’m a silly old woman and you’ll laugh at me, but I simply don’t understand. I admit that I simply don’t understand why these people do such things. Why do they? What benefit do they get out of it? It all seems so useless.’

Graham Strindberg said: ‘They re made that way:

Sir Storrington Thirst said: ‘They get a kick out of it. I knew a man in Kenya —’

‘It’s so horrible, vile!’ said Catchy, ‘hanging is much too good for anyone who doe’s a thing like that. Much too good. He deserves — why, I don’t know what he deserves. He deserves to be cut into little bits.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Sir Storrington, ‘little bits, quite right.’

Tobit Osbert shrugged a non-committal shoulder and said: ‘No, I can’t say I agree with you altogether there, Sir Storrington. One simply doesn’t do that sort of thing. Find him out, try him properly, and hang him quickly if he’s guilty. That’s the only thing to do. But no little bits. Certain people have no right to live among their fellow men. It seems to me that the thing to do is to stop them. I mean, to put an end to them.’

‘How do they get to be like that?’ asked Thea Olivia.

‘Environment, upbringing,’ said Catchy, ‘that’s the root of it all.’

Sir Storrington said: ‘I don’t quite get what you mean.’

‘Well,’ said Catchy, ‘what I mean to say is, the way you’re brought up. I don’t quite know how to put it. I know what I want to say but I don’t know how to say it.

In an ingratiating growl Sir Storrington said: ‘Can’t say I see eye to eye with you there, my dear. Look at me. Why, for the slightest word, I got hell. Why, if I failed to cell my father “sir”, he knocked me down. Remember once, I was accused of stealing pears. Didn’t steal pears. Naturally denied stealing pears, was horse-whipped twice, once for stealing pears and the second time for lying. Couldn’t sit, stand or lie down for a fortnight. Went into a high fever. Then my young brother owned up — he’d stolen the pears. I may say that I’d known it all along, but had said nothing; brothers stick together, what? I went to my father and said: “Hope and trust you’re convinced that I’m not a liar now, sir?” Father said: “Yes, my son, I’m convinced. But take this for your temerity — for daring to address me in that tone of voice.” And gave me about three dozen with a malacca walking-stick that had a silver knob carved to look like an elephant’s head. Upbringing? Environment? Never had any worth mentioning. Can’t say I believe in it. Father used to grab me by the ankle and hold me down out of a four-storey window, supposed to give one a horror of heights. Have I a horror of heights? Once, for a bet, I walked blindfold around the top of the Flatiron Building, New York. Do I go about killing little girls, on account of environment? Stuff!’

‘Oh Christ!’ said Cigarette, ‘is everybody still talking about this Sonia Sabbatani business? Everywhere I go, all I hear is Sonia Sabbatani, Sonia Sabbatani, Sonia Sabbatani: murder, murder, murder. Can’t anybody talk about anything else, for God’s sake?’

Tobit Osbert said: ‘But it really is a bad business. I knew the Sabbatanis. Sam did me more than one good turn. It brings the real monstrousness of the thing home to you, in a case like that.’

‘I never saw Toby cry before,’ said Catchy.

‘Did you really cry?’ asked Thea Olivia with tender coquetry.

‘I didn’t actually cry. I saw the grief of the others, and it may be that tears came into my eyes.’

‘Yes, Toby, and ran down your face,’ said Catchy.

‘You mustn’t be ashamed of having cried. It does you credit,’ said Thea Olivia.

Graham Strindberg muttered: ‘Where was God? Where was God?’

Suddenly Cigarette’s eyes became narrow and hard. They were focused on the face of a man who stood talking to Asta Thundersley in another corner of the room. ‘Look,’ said Cigarette, ‘look who we’ve got here. Dicks!’

‘Dicks?’ asked Thea Olivia. ‘Who is Mr flicks?’

‘I mean detectives,’ said Cigarette. She was looking at the man who at that time was Detective-Inspector, but now is Chief Inspector, Turpin.

BOOK THREE

33

The affair of Chicken Eyes Emerald having been resolved, Turpin was taking time off. Now, in his strenuous, jerky way, he was resting.

Normally, after a long-drawn-out job of work, Turpin took his wife to a cinema and spent a calm hour or two, smoking an inexpensive cigar and admiring the footwork of Fred Astaire. He laughed until he choked (‘laughed like a lavatory’, as the Bar Bacchus crowd would have said) at Mickey Mouse, and could give a tolerable imitation of Donald Duck. After the pictures, Turpin and his wife went home arm-in-arm, in perfect accord, never exchanging two words until they reached their doorstep, when she said: ‘I hope you’ve got your key …’ Then there would be supper. The implacable man-hunter loved his long, lazy evenings at home, where there was always something to be done — a nail here, a screw there, a dab of glue and a firm hand at such-and-such a joint — something to be done which he seldom did. He was the laughing-stock of the family. The children called him In-A-Minute — he was always putting things off. In the end it was Mrs Turpin who unstopped the sink or fixed the rattling window.

But she had gone to visit her mother. He was alone. Turpin found no pleasure in the cinema if his wife was not with him: there was no one to whisper to. Asta Thundersley’s invitation intrigued him. There was no harm in paying half an hour’s visit. He had met Asta twice — call it three times — and considered her as a lunatic, wrong-headed in a good direction, but not quite right.

Officially, he could not approve of Asta; yet she was a person after his own heart. She was angry and rebellious: that was silly. She knew exactly what she hated: he could not blame her for that. Her heart got into her throat: he was not out of sympathy with the noise she made. There had been occasions when Turpin had teetered on the verge of an outburst in the high, wide and handsome manner of Asta Thundersley. But the sort of scene she was capable of making over the impoliteness of a bus conductor would have cost him his position: detectives may not make scenes. They should not even express anger. Two or three times in his life Turpin would have given anything but his job for the joy of exploding like an overstrained boiler. But he was bound by the cold white bands of legal dialectic. Still, he envied Asta, who, privileged as a woman and a popular eccentric, could push open doors marked ‘Private’, grab terrified officials by the collar, beat people over the head with her umbrella and shout at the top of her voice wherever she happened to be She had guts where her brains ought to have been, he thought; but he liked guts. -

He was not in the habit of accepting invitations, and not much of a man for drinking-parties. But it is a good thing for a man in Turpin’s business to see a little of everything. Everything was experience, and experience sharpened the wits. The world was a great whirling grindstone upon which Turpin unostentatiously ground himself keener and keener like a headsman’s axe. ft was interesting, a Bohemian party like this: you never knew what you might find.

He was saying: ‘If it’s all the same to you, Miss, I think I’d just as soon have a glass of beer. If it’s not putting you to any inconvenience.’

Asta poured out a bottle of Bass, filling a glass with froth so that Turpin, wishing her good health and taking a polite sip, appeared for a moment to have become vulnerable yet dandified, with a neat little white moustache such as used to be worn by Mr Lewis Stone. Then she took him aside and whispered:

‘You know, I think the man who killed little Sonia Sabbatani must be here tonight.’

Detective-Inspector Turpin said: ‘Oh yes? Is that a fact?’

‘I’m sure of it.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘I’ve been working things out. Practically every man here tonight is a suspect. Practically everyone.’

Smiling, Turpin glanced at the crowd. At least sixty people were drinking great glasses of Schiff’s cloudy orange-coloured mixture.

‘While you’re about it, you might have invited the rest of London,’ said Turpin.

‘Why be more of an idiot than God made you, for God’s sake? Do you take me for a fool? The man who killed poor little Sonia was one of the Bar Bacchus crowd.’

‘You know that for a fact, I dare say?’

‘I’m absolutely sure of it.’

‘Well, no doubt you’ve got your very good reasons.’

‘Look here, Turpin, work it out for yourself —’

‘I wish I could work it out for myself, Miss Thundersley, but it isn’t my department. All the same, I’d like to hear what I’ve got to work out for myself, if you know what I mean.’

‘That poor little girl was enticed — lured — inveigled into the filthy coal-cellar of that horrible house. I’ve been a little girl myself. You’ve never been a little girl, Dick, so let me tell you. There isn’t one girl in a million who’d go with a stranger into a deserted house. So she must have known him. Well, how could she have known him? Through her father’s shop. Sam Sabbatani is one of those homely little tradesmen: his wife and kid were always in and out of the shop. Everyone who set foot in the place was one of the family. Poor Mrs Sabbatani is for ever bringing in cups of tea. She’s made that way. You know the type of person I mean. Well, as it happens, Sam made a bit of a connexion at the Bar Bacchus. He’s still got a little advertisement hung up there — done in red and black lettering, in a little brown frame. You know Gonger the barman? Well, Sam Sabbatani made an arrangement with him — Gonger displayed Sam’s showcard, and Sam pressed Gonger’s suits and kept him in white jackets. You ask Gonger, you ask Sam Sabbatani. Most of Sam’s customers came from the Bar Bacchus. Work it out, Turpin, work it out!’

‘There isn’t anything to work out,’ said Turpin, smiling.

It was then that Cigarette, looking hostile, spoke of Dicks, or detectives.

A waiter, observing that her glass was empty, paused with a tray of full glasses. Cigarette took one and put back the glass she had emptied, saying: ‘There’s more in this stuff than meets the eye, comrade.’

Then she gulped about a quarter of a pint of Schiff’s Form ule, and became angry. She strode over to Detective-Inspector Turpin, knocking down a little three-legged table on her way, and cried:

‘How dare you come here? You copper’s nark, you dirty little bogey! What are you doing in the company of decent human beings! You filthy bloodhound, why aren’t.you out? Why aren’t you out hunting; why aren’t you out hunting better men to death, you stinking dirty wolf? You murdered Chicken Eyes Emerald. You murdered him! You dirty coward! You wouldn’t have dared to meet him face to face as man to man — no, no, you had to be mob-handed, you beast, with thousands of coppers behind you, all hunting down one man. You hound! And I suppose you’ve come here to gloat, to show off! You —’

‘— Cigarette, shut up,’ said Asta.

‘I’m sorry. I know I’m your guest,’ said Cigarette. ‘But I won’t shut up! Christ Almighty, instead of hounding better men to death, why don’t these bastards go out and find out who killed that little girl?’

‘All right,’ said Detective-Inspector Turpin, ‘take it easy, just take it easy.’

He took a full glass from a passing waiter, handed it tc Cigarette, and said: ‘Let’s have a drink.’

She drank, and she melted. Looking sideways at Turpin through her eyelashes she said, in a different voice: ‘I’m sorry. I behaved like a perfect pig. You won’t believe me, but ordinarily I have quite good manners. I don’t know what came over me. Will you forgive me? Do, please, say you forgive me.’

‘Nothing to forgive, I’m sure.’

‘Call me Cigarette. Everybody calls me Cigarette. Do please forget what I said. I didn’t mean a word of it.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘Do you know me?’

Turpin knew her; but he said: ‘I can’t say I’ve had the privilege.’

‘I was Chicken’s girl. Does that convey anything to you?’

‘Ah-ha?’

‘He was a rat, you know.’

‘So?’

‘But I loved him. I loved him, Turpin!’

‘It’s all over now,’ said Turpin. ‘Be sociable, eh?’

‘I like you, Turpin. Turpin, tell me all about yourself.’

‘_You’ve_ just told me.’

‘What’s your wife like?’

‘What makes you ask, miss?

‘Do you make love to her often, Turpin?’ asked Cigarette.

‘Why don’t you finish that nice drink?’

‘Oh, Turpin, Turpin, I do think you’re pretty terrific! You know, for a little while I hated you. But now I think you’re pretty damned fine. Do you know what? My father used to hunt silly little foxes. But you, you hunt real live men. My God, Turpin, it takes something to hunt down a man like the Chicken — it does! He was a man! … And you’re a better man …’ said Cigarette, with certain inward explosions that presaged hysterics. ‘You’re a — ha-hup, ha-hup —’

‘You can cut that out,’ said Detective-Inspector Turpin, in an undertone like cracked ice made articulate. ‘I’ve heard it all before. Have another drink and get properly drunk, and go home and sleep; and get up, and get drunk again to-morrow, and go to sleep again. But just for now be quiet. Is that clear?’

‘Yes,’ said Cigarette, quietly crying.

Turpin side-stepped like a boxer and disappeared into the thickening crowd.

‘Turp! … Turp!’ cried Cigarette, in a gulping voice. ‘Stand by me, Turp! Let’s play games, Turp — I’ll hide, and you’ve got to find me —’

A waiter was passing. She exchanged her half-empty glass for a full one. There was a numbness in her cheeks. None of Asta’s guests was quite sober now.

34

Oonagh Scripture was leaning upon Sinclair Wensday, who was caressing her shoulder and exchanging glances with a fat, towheaded girl whom nobody knew. His wife Avril was watching him with her right eye and ogling Alan Shakespeare with her left: from time to time they exchanged a look of quiet hate. Muriel, having recognized the Murderer, had rushed across the room to embrace him; but he was deep in conversation with Thea Olivia now, together with Hemmeridge, Graham Strindberg, and Mothmar Acord. Milton Catt intercepted her: they embraced. Tony Mungo clutched her wrist and kissed it; Geezle bowed. Roget, demonstrating a trick with a tray and three glasses, made a clang and a clash; and then Sir Storrington Thirst made noise and mess scraping up glass and drink with a fire-shovel. Ayesha Babbington had interested herself in the trapezius-muscies of Milton Catt, who at the same time was being palpated by Shocket the Bloodsucker, who was saying: ‘Train! Train! May my mother, God rest her dear soul, rot in hell — may my children, God bless them, be given to Narzy Degenerates — I’ll make you light-heavyweight champion. It’s an offer. May I go blind and paralysed if I die! May my wife and children go deaf and dumb and blind and paralysed! Would I say this if I didn’t mean it?’

There was a silence. ‘Titch!’ cried Shocket, looking wildly about the place. ‘Titch, did I done you harm? If so, when?’

‘Never no harm to me, Bloodsucker.’

‘There you are then, you see?’ said Shocket to Milton Catt. ‘You see? I never did no harm, not to nobody. I tell the man I can make him a light-heavyweight champion already, and he looks at me like I done a murder. Gratitude!’

At the sound of the word Murder, conversation clicked back to the topic that had occupied everybody’s time for the past ten days — Sonia Sabbatani. That crime was still interesting in the locality. The corpse was still fresh. In a few more days they would have talked it stale. Then it would begin to bore them, and they’d drop it and forget it.

‘Still no news of that awful business?’ said Ayesha Babbington. ‘God above, what do we keep the Police for?’

‘Just so. Is it for this sort of thing that we ruin ourselves paying taxes?’ said Sir Storrington.

Hemmeridge, in his sibilant, simpering, effeminate voice said: ‘Of course, there’ll be lots more now, you know.’

‘Good lord, what a horrible thought!’ said Tobit Osbert. He was holding Catchy’s hand. Catchy squeezed his wrist.

‘Why, don’t you see, one murder makes many,’ said Hemmeridge.

‘I’ve heard that said about marriage,’ said Mothmar Acord, with a lowering look, compounded of low cunning and secret scorn. This man seemed always to be on the verge of an outburst of mad rage or contemptuous laughter.

‘Well, it’s pretty much the same sort of thing, don’t you see,’ said Hemmeridge, with a titter. ‘Nonetheless, people go to a wedding and it puts ideas in their heads. They think it would be really rather nice to go and have a wedding themselves and some of them do go and have a wedding themselves. Same with christenings. Girl sees pretty little pink ready-made baby, going goo, goo, and thinks that she would rather like to find a delicious little living doll like that under her own cabbage leaf or in her own doctor’s little black bag — according to what her mother has told her, don’t you see, and up goes the birth-rate. And as I think I was saying, it’s much the same thing with this affair. Man kills little girl. Man gets away with it. Lots of people want to kill little girls only they need a little encouragement.’

‘You’re perfectly right,’ said Schiff. ‘It’s perfectly natural. It’s fundamental. Read Das Buch von Es.’

‘If you’ll have the goodness to allow me to finish my sentence,’ said Hemmeridge, petulantly, ‘lots of people think it would be really an awfully nice thing to go out and kill somebody. Only most of us, thank goodness, do our killing in our dreams. I mean, we get someone else to do our killing for us. I mean, we go out and buy a nice bloodthirsty detective story, or one of those Americanish tough-guy books in which the hero is a bit of a murderer thinly disguised as a private detective and goes about slapping glamorous female poisoners in the face or tearing their clothes off or something.’ He giggled, swallowed a mouthful of his drink and continued: ‘Thank goodness, what? Look at me. Here I am, in the land of the living, not quite dead of malnutrition, neatly dressed and in clean linen. For this I must thank the general public’s enjoyment of murder. Since, as you may or may not know, I write crime stories myself — when I happen to think of a good bloodthirsty plot. Do you see this grey suit 1 am wearing? It was bought out of the blood of a dismembered heiress in a trunk at Waterloo Station. Do you see this rather nice silk tie? I got it out of a mad surgeon who loved to vivisect people and make them into peculiar shapes. It was all that was left over after I had paid certain arrears of board and lodging. I do like to have something to show for money received on account of my crimes — I always buy myself a little something or other; a tie, a card of bachelor buttons, a pair of sixpenny cuff-links, or even a pair of gloves. But what was I saying? Oh yes. One murder makes many. That, by the by, would be a goodish title for a story, wouldn’t it? The sort of fellow that goes out and kills little Sonia What’s-her-name is, actually, not at all rare. He nearly always gets away with it, don’t you see? It’s like diving into ice-cold water — you only have to make your mind up to it, and once the first shock is over there is a pleasant tingle and glow. It gives you a certain sense of power, don’t you see: something like well-being, having done it once, you’ll do it again, and then again, and yet again. You mark my words, one murder makes many, I repeat. And furthermore, encouraged by the failure of the police — poor things — to find the perpetrator of this much-publicized atrocity, someone else will find his nerve and take his quick, wild plunge through the thin ice into those strangely stimulating dark still waters of death.’

Hemmeridge drained his glass. A waiter gave him a fresh drink. Mr Pink, who had been listening and nodding, said: ‘But look here, sir! This is dreadful! No, this really is dreadful! You know that what you’re doing isn’t nice — I mean, writing that sort of nasty story and putting nasty ideas into people’s heads — you know what you’re doing and still you go on doing it. Why? You ought to stop doing it at once, as soon as you realize that what you’re doing is wrong. Oughtn’t you now? Be honest! eh?’

‘Oh, my dear fellow!’ cried Hemmeridge, laughing, ‘what difference can it possibly make? People like that sort of nonsense. If there had been no murder, we should have had to invent it. Besides, if — te-he! if I may coin a phrase, a man must live, and please don’t say “_Je ne vois pas la nécessité_”.’

‘Oh, but I know that a man must live,’ said Pink. ‘I do, I do indeed, I honestly and solemnly assure you, but a man can live in all sorts of ways.’

‘Ah, yes, Mr Pink. But I happen to be in my little way a writer.’

‘But, Mr Hemmeridge, so was Thackeray, so was Tolstoy. So is the great Ernest Hemingway.’

‘And so are you, Mr Pink.’

Mr Pink blushed like a fourteen-year-old girl, and said: ‘No, no, really not. Not a writer, only an interpreter and, by the way, Mr Hemmeridge, you are a literary man, and may perhaps advise me. Last night I had an idea.’

‘A revelation surely?’ murmured Tobit Osbert.

Hemmeridge giggled into his glass, but Mr Pink went on very seriously: ‘You know, I believe, that I have been trying to put the eternal truths into everyday language. Well, last night it occurred to me that it might be possible to translate some of the writings of St John of The Cross into popular songs. Take this for instance: “_As to my affairs, daughter, let them not trouble you, for none of them troubles me…. These things are not done by men, but by God, Who knows what is meet for us and ordains things for our good. Think only that God ordaini all. And where there is no love, put love, and you will find love_.” Now what do you say to that as a kind of dance-music song? Title: “_You’ve got to put what you want where you want it_.” Or again, take this passage: “_For, in order to pass from the all to the All, Thou hast to deny thyself wholly in all_.” Now that is, if I may say so. a little elusive to the modern mind. Might one not transcribe it as — “_Go chase yourself and catch yourself_”? What do you think?’

Before Hemmeridge could reply, Mothmar Acord said: ‘I don’t really see what all the kafuffie is about. What is there so extraordinary in a kid being killed? One of these days I dare say there will be a war, and then we’ll knock over millions of ‘em, and congratulate ourselves.’

Thea Olivia, with a little cry of horror, said: ‘You mustn’t say such things!’

Looking down at his freckled hands Mothmar Acord lifted a shoulder and a corner of his mouth and sauntered away to talk to Avril Wensday.

Tobit Osbert said: ‘It seems to me that Mr Acord isn’t quite right in what he said. Dropping a bomb is one thing. Getting hold of someone by the throat and choking them and — excuse me, madam — raping them, is another thing. Look down from a very high building. Look down from the Monument in the City, and even from that little height people don’t look like people any more. You know how it is when you live in a high building. The higher you live, the more you get into the habit of throwing things out of the window. It seems to me that a man in an aeroplane thousands of feet above the ground can throw down bombs, or germs, or anything horrible that you can think of, and still be quite a nice young man.’

‘Until he comes to think of it,’ said Hemmeridge.

‘He knows not what he does,’ said Mr Pink, laying one of his nervous hands upon Osbert’s left shoulder.

‘Yes, Mr Pink, that is more or less what I mean to say. He should be, as it were, forgiven because he sort of does not know what he does. He presses a button or pulls a lever and he’s a mile away from the scene of the crime even before the crime is committed — I mean, before the bomb goes off and kills men, women, and children. But a man who stands about on street corners in the dark and waits for a little girl to pass and takes advantage of the fact that she knows him and trusts him in order to do what that man did who killed Sonia Sabbatani — he is a murderer.’

‘Yes,’ said Mr Pink, biting his nails, ‘but having learned of the effect of a bomb, is your brother …? I wonder…’

He paused and Graham Strindberg said: ‘Yet why should such things be? Why should Evil be? If Evil exists, and is powerful, is God allpowerful? Since there is evil, if God is allpowerful how can he be all-good? If God is all-good how can he be allpowerful?’

With something like irritation, Mr Pink replied:

‘I don’t know, Mr Strindberg.’ He was by this time quietly drunk and his eyes were like stars reflected in the rippling surface of a puddle. ‘I really don’t know, my dear sir! How can I know? God doesn’t tell me his business, does he? Who the deuce are you thatyou must know everything? Do your toe-nails insist on knowing what your head is doing? Does the body of the martyr understand the soul that tells it to burn at the stake? In Macaulay there is an account of an old Puritan after Sedgemoor: he had had his arm smashed and was cutting it off himself with his own knife, sternly repeating the Lord’s Prayer, with a face of iron and no expression of pain. What was that arm to question the will of that man? It was hurt? It was crushed? Its nerves cried out, yes? Yet I tell you that because of the unyielding spirit of. that old man to whom God gave that arm, the misery of his poor flesh brought forth something good and beautiful. You must do what you know is good. Ask no questions. Expect no answers. Have faith. Believe me — do please believe me — God is good. He is! He is!’

‘If He is good, is God allpowerful, then?’ asked Graham Strindberg.

‘Yes!’ shouted Mr Pink.

Tom Beano appeared from nowhere in particular and roared: Don’t make a fool of yourself, Pink! … Is Pink at his old games again?. Godding and Christing? Gooding and evilling? Everything-is-for-the-best-in-this-best-of-all-possible-worlding? … Cut it out, Pink. This is a sociable party. Face facts. Who burned Giordano Bruno?’

Beano flourished a half-empty glass. He was red in the face, and his eyes were narrowed.

‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Thea Olivia.

Tobit Osbert started to say: ‘We were talking about —’

‘— I know, I know, I know,’ said Beano. ‘And there you are again, Pink. Where’s the good in that business?’

‘Beano, you know as well as I do that there isn’t any good in it.,

‘Is there bad in it, Pink?’

‘I should jolly well think so!’

‘Why, then? Come on, Pink. Why? Tell us why!’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know why anything!‘ cried Mr Pink, with tears in the corners of his eyes. ‘I know what. I don’t know why. And so do you, Tom Beano, so do you!’

‘So do I what, Pink?’

‘Beano, you know right from wrong.’

‘Aha?’ said Beano, closing one eye. ‘And what if I do?’

‘Oh dear me, dear me!‘ said Mr Pink. ‘All this is vanity, Tom Beano, and you know it. How dare you talk the way you talk? How dare you do it? How dare you ask me “Where was God”? Where were you, Tom Beano? Where were you when that deed was done?’

‘All right, then, and where were you?’ asked Beano.

‘I was spoiling sheets of foolscap paper,’ said Mr Pink, slowly. ‘Scribble, scribble, scribble…’ The tears in his eyes pushed themselves forward and came out.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you, Pink,’ said Beano.

‘You didn’t upset me, bless you, Torn.’

‘Then what the hell are you crying for?’

‘Beano! Does some crazy conceit make you believe that anything you could say might get a tear out of my eye? God forgive you!’

‘Ah! God forgive me, eh? Now listen to reason. Is God allpowerful: yes or no?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yet you ask God to forgive me. Is that so?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now listen …’

‘Oh, please!’ said Tobit Osbert. ‘Do stop it!’

Sir Storrington slapped every back within reach and stammered: ‘Kiss and be friends, what?’ Thea Olivia, in her satisfied way, glanced from face to face. Hemmeridge, who was annoyed, looked away. Shocket the Bloodsucker was leering at her. The word had already got around that Thea Olivia was very wealthy and had, as people said, ‘Ideas’.

She knew that everyone believed that she wanted a husband; and smiled inside herself. She wanted someone with a bronze head and a chiselled mouth, a few inches taller than herself; diffident, with a suggestion of passion; impecunious yet proud — a terrible but sensitive man, intellectually isolated, envied by men and adored by women; a man into whose reluctant hand it would be necessary to press (with conspiracies and blandishments) the occasional five-pound note when the waiter was not looking.

He would be honourable: his sufferings would know no bounds. From time to time he would try to commit suicide but she would be there in the nick of time, to divert the pistol or catch his ankles as he dived over the edge of the sixth-storey penthouse roof. (He was not the sort of sneak that crawls into a gas oven or opens a vein in a hot bath.) He would need looking after. There would be important papers … documents … perhaps somewhere or other an importunate wife.

She would alter all that.

Gently, coolly, caressingly — cheek to bronze cheek, hand to fevered forehead — Thea Olivia would coax out folly like a blackhead and cream the pitted surface of his soul.

One day he would leave her. But she would wait. He’d come back — sheepish, stinking of Chanel Number Five, red-eyed, gulping, repentant — and she would receive him quietly, yet with something like ecstasy, everything having been forgiven. Later, looking down at his handsome, exhausted face, she would say to herself: ‘_Poor wretch. All men are alike_ …’ After all he was only a man … will-less, maculate, hungry for forgiveness.

Thea Olivia could have made do with Sir Storrington, Tobit Osbert, Hemmeridge, or Tom Beano: there was plenty in them to occupy her great capacity for forgiveness and Sean Mac Gabhann might have done at a pinch; or Graham Strindberg. It would, in fact, be rather pleasant to give Mac Gabhann money. She would know what he was after when he became sweet, attentive, and full of charm, when his fascinating Irish brogue cooed and purred at double pressure. She would see through it, and, knowing that she was going to give in in any case, pretend to be adamant. No, not another shilling, you naughty, improvident man! Then he would turn his charm up like a gas jet: he would glow with charm as he set himself the task of wooing the cheque-book out of her little papier-mache and mother-ofpearl desk. In the end, when he thought that he had failed and was on the verge of an attack of the sulks, she would hand him an envelope and tell him with a little silvery laugh that she had written him the cheque the night before.

It would be fun, too, with Graham Strindberg. He was so tolerant; they could spend their days being tolerant together. As for Sir Storrington, he was a naughty boy also. He drank. She would try to cure him of that, to wheedle him out of his bad habits; be a mother to him; wean him from the black bottle. In that case she would be Lady Thirst; which would sound very pleasant indeed.

Or she could take Tom Beano in hand, reason with him, and bring him to God. To Tobit Osbert she would be a kind, clever, beloved mama — a guiding star. She would pull that loose-knit personality together, and make something of him; and then how grateful he would be!

Of course, there would be no sex in it; Thea Olivia had never thought much about that kind of thing. She was pure in her dreams of marriage. In point of fact, she would not have married the best man in the world to save his life. She had her dreams; they were enough for her. She was taking no chances. If anything happened to break those dreams, what would be left? The dirty realities of a sordid world. It was better to dream. She looked again at the animated face of Sean Mac Gabhann and smiled at him, in her immaculate, maternal way. But he was in conversation with Monty Bar-Kochba. It was an uneasy conversation. The Zionist and the Irish Nationalist found themselves in complete accord. This had never happened before, and the novelty of the situation struck them both tongue-tied.

Monty Bar-Kochba looked at Mac Gabhann with suspicion. But then, he looked at everybody with suspicion. His soul was a fine filter that could separate from the current of any conversation a little muddy residue of unsuspected insults. You have, no doubt, blown a mouthful of cigarette smoke through a stretched handkerchief in order to demonstrate to your friends the sticky, tarry muck that comes and goes with a whiff of soothing, innocent tobacco. Bar-Kochba was that handkerchief, stretched taut and breathed.

He had said: ‘I can’t understand what all the fuss is about. A lunatic here, in this city, has raped and murdered a girl. One little girl, one little Jewish girl is raped and murdered. And there you are, all of you horrified, up in arms! Yet is it not a fact that in Germany Hitler has been in power for over two years, and has raped and murdered thousands and thousands and thousands of Jewish girls? And there you are up in arms? No! You recognize Hitler, you honour Hitler, you send ambassadors to Hitler! One Jewish girl is raped and murdered on your own doorstep. Oh yes, that makes you indignant because it might be your own daughter! But ten thousand Jewish girls raped and murdered in Germany mean nothing to you. Hypocrisy! Smuggery, humbuggery!’

Mr Pink who was ambling from group to group on uncertain feet, said: ‘Just so, friend. It’s all the same thing.’

‘How do you mean — same thing?’

Sean Mac Gabhann, with something of a sneer, said: ‘Will you be after telling me if any of you horrified people were half as horrified by what the Black and Tans did to us in Ireland?’

‘It’s exactly the same thing,’ said Mr Pink, and slurring some of his words, ‘zactlythesamething. People like to be on the safe side. People want to go on living. Yes? Well. People wait for murder to become leg-leg-legitimatized. When murder is leg — made legal — everything’s all right for murderers. People can serve the Devil in the name of God. They can find, as the Americans say, new angles. Convince themselves that in torturing and raping and killing they are working for the good of the Race. False! False! Mark my words, lots of people everywhere would do what that man did to Sonia Sabbatani, if only a few hundred people were doing the same sort of thing at the same time. Look at lynch mobs in the Southern States of America. All of a sudden, up jumps a führer, and shouts Let’s lynch this nigger! And all sorts and conditions of men throw down their tools, and rush together, and make a mad, murderous mob that wants to break places open and tear poor human beings out, and march by torchlight, and hang unhappy wretches on trees. All of a sudden, in a small town, up jump two thousand red-handed murderers. They are everywhere all the time, friend, everywhere! In every man there lurks a hungry beast. Mr Whateveryou-call-yourself, there isn’t any difference at all between that poor little girl who was murdered the other day and the tens of thousands you were telling us of. Given the opportunity, Catholics murder Protestants, Protestants murder Catholics, Catholics murder Jews and Jews slay Amalekites. Given a Mullah, the Moslems murder the Christians. In everyone there is a little egg full of murder waiting to be hatched. Crack it! Crack it and throw it out! Individual regeneration is everything. Christian girl, Jew girl —’

Bar-Kochba said, in a dangerous voice: ‘You’d better mind your language.’

‘My language? How has my language offended you, sir?’

‘I didn’t quite like the way you said that. What do you mean by Jew girl? You mean Jewish girl, don’t you?’

‘I mean exactly what I say, sir, and I’ll thank you not to grip me by the arm.’

‘You’re all the same,’ said Bar-Kochba, and he went into one of his silences — one of those grey silences in which he seemed to lose all colour and become one with his clothes. He talked to people without looking at them.

35

The Murderer, who appeared to be half asleep, was looking for Turpin, who had side-stepped and slipped away when Cigarette had begun to hiccup herself into hysterics. When, at last, Turpin’s face appeared again, between the beefy red face of Asta Thundersley and the tightly-waved head of Mrs Scripture, the Murderer found it impossible to look away from the man. The thick, cloudy, ice-cold, orange-coloured drink was creeping around in his head. He felt happy and reckless. He believed that if he had a pen and some paper he could, at this moment, write formidable prose. He would describe Detective-Inspector Turpin as a man made of mysterious grey squares, whose eyes alone were conspicuous — pale, bright, white-grey eyes, so similar in colour to the flame of burning sulphur that one expected them to give out a choking stench. No detail escaped him: he noted the narrow soft collar held, under the knot of the three-andsixpenny tie, by a fourpenny gilt pin; the severe grey suit; the old-fashioned gold watch-chain (obviously a legacy from his father) that hung between the lower pockets of his waistcoat. The pallid, puffy face of Turpin indicated that he needed sleep. Murderer found it impossible to look away from the man. The suit, he calculated, could not have cost more than four pounds. Yes, the suit had been bought for about four pounds; the shoes were procurable at nineteen shillings, the shirt — with two collars thrown in — could be got for about six-and-sixpence in the City. The Murderer smiled inwardly. Here he sat, ten feet away from a Scotland Yard man, a full-blown detective-inspector, who, if he only knew what was what, could put out a hand and, simply by grasping his shoulder, hurry himself towards a chief inspectorship.

He took another drink. In the five seconds that passed between the swallow and the gentle clink of the carefully-put-down glass, the Murderer found himself in the clutch of an irresistible yearning to get up, walk over to Turpin, and give himself up.

He drank again and, as the stuff that tasted like orange juice went down, determined to make an end of the matter before Turpin left the house.

He slid everyday prudence into the pigeon-hole of another daydream. Now he saw himself as a nonchalant man of ice and fire, making as great a sensation as any man had ever made in that locality, by means of a gesture.

He would save this gesture for its proper moment. When that moment came he would approach Detective-Inspector Turpin, touch him on the shoulder in the manner of a policeman making an arrest and say:

‘Look here, my dear sir. I really am getting a little sick of all this conjecture touching the murder of that little girl Sonia Sabbatani. As a topic of conversation it’s becoming a bore. Anything rather than a bore, don’t you think? Let’s face it. I did it.’

Taking a fresh glass from one of the waiters, he swallowed two or three more mouthfuls, turning the matter over in his mind.

Might it not be better simply, apropos of nothing, taking advantage of a blank space in the conversation, to say in a worldweary way: ‘Oh, look here, I’m the man who killed Sonia Sabbatani’?

Again, it might be better to wait until the talk, inevitably, got around to the murder, and then say:

‘Oh, that? I did that.’

It needed working out. His head was swimming.

While his eyes were open it seemed actually to be swimming — striking out clumsily to keep itself above a sort of sticky, turbid pool in which he felt that he was immersed. As soon as he closed his eyes they seemed to roll up and backward, until they looked into the dome of his skull. Then he saw something indescribable — a kaleidoscope seen through something like an opal. Wretched little pieces of tinfoil, broken glass, crockery, metal, and paper spun between mirrors and came to rest in queer and beautiful patterns — and as soon as the Murderer settled down to admire these patterns there was a whirr and a buzz, and everything dis persed. It twirled away, and came to rest in a fresh pattern.

Someone said: ‘You’re dreaming.’

He replied: ‘Yes, yes … I’m afraid I am …’

Then he opened his eyes and saw the elegant, old-fashioned room, full of cigarette smoke, at the edge of which Asta Thundersley, red and damp as an autumnal dawn, was bullying the barman:

‘Mix, you idle man, mix! What did I hire you for? To get drunk?’

The barman began to laugh like a man who is being tickled under the arms. His eyes were unnaturally bright, and his face had become mottled.

Meanwhile Sinclair Wensday was flirting conspicuously with Catchy, occasionally darting venomous glances in the direction of his wife Avril, who, looking at him with the eyes of an angry cat, deliberately rested her head on the shoulder of the young man called Roget. Five or six glasses had reduced him to the self-revelatory stage of intoxication.

‘You know,’ he was saying, ‘I’m good for nothing. I’m good for nothing at all. Some people, I mean, find happiness. Not me. I don’t know what it feels like to be happy. I’m not a man, I’m a slave. A slave,’ he repeated, while two maudlin tears trickled down his vacant face. ‘Yes, that’s all I am, a slave, a slave to pity.’

‘You poor dear!’

‘You understand me. Pity, that’s what it is, pity! I’m too soft. I hate to hurt people’s feelings; I’d rather kill a man than hurt his feelings.— do you know that? And it’s all my mother’s fault. I hate my mother. I suppose you think that’s a terrible thing to say, don’t you?’

‘I see you have the courage of your convictions,’ said Avril.

‘No, I haven’t. I haven’t got the courage of anything. I haven’t got the courage … of … of … a daffodil. A daffodil fights for its bit of hold in the soil. But could I fight for anything? No. And it’s all my mother’s fault. Did she ever treat me as a human being? I tell you, dezir sweet Avril, she always treated me like a dog, a dog!’

‘There, there, don’t cry.’

‘How can I help crying if my mother treats me like a dog? How can I help it? If I had had a father things might have been different, but I never had a father. He died in the War, at Ypres. There was an explosion and he was missing. The next time we meet, you kind, sweet, beautiful woman, I’ll bring you his photograph. He sits on that little chair like a man on a throne. Why did he have to die? Tell me, why did he have to leave me all alone with my horrible mother? Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She was afraid of losing me,’ said Roget, weeping. ‘She lost him and she didn’t want to lose me. She wouldn’t let me play football in case I got kicked, and she wouldn’t let me play cricket in case somebody hit me with a bat. And she wouldn’t let me let off fireworks on Guy Fawkes day in case I burnt my fingers, and she wouldn’t let me go and play with other boys in case one of them knocked me down and I fractured my skull on the pavement, and she wouldn’t let me cross the road and she wouldn’t let me climb trees. She wouldn’t let me do anything. She kept me on a lead, she turned me into a dog, a dog, a dog! She wouldn’t let me talk to any girls in case they led me astray or gave me diseases. You don’t know what I’ve had to go through! Everybody else had a pony. Not me, oh no, not little me. I might have fallen off, or it might have bitten me, or kicked me. She reads all the filthy newspapers, damn her, and she keeps a big book full of little bits she cuts out all about little boys who’ve had horrible accidents. Little boys and little girls. Sometimes they’ve been to a circus and they go home and try and do a trapeze act, and hang their bloody little selves. Or sometimes they blow up a toy balloon, and it goes the wrong way and they choke themselves. So she never let me go to a circus, so she never let me have a toy balloon, so she filleted every bit of fish because once in some paper or other she saw something about some nauseating brat who swallowed a bone in a bit of fried cod. She never let me do anything. I wanted to be a writer, but she read somewhere, in some idiotic book, that writers are all womanizers and drunkards, and she didn’t want me to go into business because she read somewhere in a paper about a business man who defaulted and blew his brains out. And here I am, here I am!’

‘Then why don’t you simply put on your hat and walk out?’

Roget cried like a child, wrinkling up his face, and said: ‘It’s pity! Pity is the ruin of me. She’d be so broken-hearted if I went away. She’d die. She told me so. I’m all she has and you don’t know — you’ll never know — you couldn’t possibly know how that woman has suffered. Oh my God, how I hate that woman! But she’s sick, very sick. Or at least, she pretends she is, and one of these days…’

‘— One of these days you’ll come into her money and go on the loose, I suppose?’

‘You’ve said it exactly. How well you understand me! One of these days..,.. Listen, I’m going to tell you something.’

He paused. Avril said: ‘Well?’

But Roget apparently had thought better of it. He looked as if he was going to be sick; but Avril’s eyes were elsewhere. Her husband had moved from Catchy to Oonagh Scripture, and Mothmar Acord had taken his place. That leering, sinister man approached Catchy with frank, open lustfulness, putting a hand on the back of her neck, which in those days was cool and round and fine of texture; a famous neck, solid-looking as ivory. He said: ‘You’re a very good-looking girl, aren’t you?’

‘Do you think so?’

‘I do. You can see I do. I want you to tell me something.’

‘What would you like me to tell you?’

‘Are you a masochist, by any chance?’

‘Why do you ask?’ said Catchy in an uncertain voice.

Mothmar Acord replied: ‘There’s something about you that invites violence.’

At this, a pleasurable tremor passed from the base of Catchy’s skull to the base of her spine and she felt her heart beating and her toes curling inwards. They exchanged glances. Asta Thundersley, whci had approached with a couple of full glasses, heard the end of the conversation and observed the interchange of looks.

She remembered this later.

36

It seemed to Asta that her foolish, futile party had been limping on since the beginning of last week. She began to jeer — not to laugh, but to jeer at herself for having organized it. Sir Storrington approached her and said: ‘My God, Asta, what the devil have you given us? My dear good lady, these are knock-out-drops. I’d give a good deal to know what you put in it.’

Instantly Schiff, who appeared to be listening to everything in a dozen places at the same time, popped out with a dishevelled head and said: ‘This is my Form ule. It is I who have invented this. What do you mean by a good deal? I’m always ready, Baronet, to make a deal.’

At this Sir Storrington Thirst gave him the look that he kept for his creditors; but then, stung by an idea, he took Schiff aside and said that his estate was somewhat embarrassed but the name of Sir Storrington Thirst was a good name — at least it sounded remarkably good — and was available for a consideration, as a name to print on a label. Schiff made a note of this in a note-book with a transparent cover bound with wire. When Sir Storrington said: ‘That’s a clever sort of idea, that little book of yours,’ Schiff told him that he could get them wholesale at 72/- a gross.

‘There’s a lady who has found herself a friend,’ he concluded with a wink, pointing in the direction of Cigarette.

Shocket the Bloodsucker was sitting, half asleep, in a spidery. legged little chair. Near-by, Cigarette and Titch Whitbread were gazing into each other’s eyes.

Although the Murderer had been involving himself with almost feverish gaiety in conversations to the left and the right of him, he had not let Detective-Inspector Turpin slip out of his range of vision. He was a punctilious man. He liked everything in his life to be carefully timed. He agreed with the preacher — to everything there was a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven. There was a time to save, and a time to cast away. He was on the look-out for an effective moment. Detective-Inspector Turpin was now making distant yet friendly conversation with Cigarette and Muriel. Asta Thundersley was pressing a drink into his hand, and Turpin was refusing. The Murderer watched the detective-inspector’s face. He saw the twinkle of the watchful eyes and the little, quick smile of the pallid, disciplined lips. Turpin was refusing. Asta was insisting. Then, with a brusque gesture, Turpin surrendered. He took the glass. This pleased Asta Thundersley, who drank his health. Turpin raised his glass to his lips, tilted his head backwards, and made his Adam’s apple move up and down. One would have sworn that he was drinking; but the Murderer could see that the level of the orange-coloured liquid in the glass had not sunk. Asta had taken a great gulp; Muriel and Cigarette had emptied their glasses. But Turpin was keeping his wits about him, and that was exactly what the Murderer wanted.

He rose. There was a queer sensation, reminiscent of warm cotton-wool, under the soles of his feet, and his head felt like a gum into which a dentist, before a difficult drilling, has injected an anaesthetic. He pinched himself under the left eye. His thumb and forefinger might have come together a yard away; he felt nothing; only well-being.

This was going to be good. This was going to be sensational. Given the right moment — one of those little chasms of silence that inevitably crack open any uproar — he would tell the world in general, and Detective-Inspector Turpin in particular, the whole truth of the matter.

Muriel was saying: ‘Oh, Mr Turpin! Cigarette just told me you’re a detective. Are there any women detectives?’

Turpin said: ‘I suppose so,’ and looked at his watch.

‘How do you get that sort of job, Mr Turpin?’ asked Muriel. ‘I think I’d be good at that sort of job — don’t you, darling?’ she said to the Murderer, who had come, swaying, to join them.

‘I should make enquiries if I were you,’ said Turpin.

At this the Murderer, taken by a fit of laughter in the middle of a gulp of drink, was seized with a fit of coughing. It was merely a matter of a mouthful going the wrong way, yet it sounded so awful that two or three people came to bang him on the back, and for two or three seconds conversation stopped while everyone looked towards him.

He looked around and saw himself as the centre of a little crowd. Thea Olivia was offering him a tumblerful of soda water, and this, somehow, was irresistibly funny. In five seconds this dear little old lady, smelling of lavender and dressed in lavender, would recoil from him as from a decaying corpse in a cellar… in a cellar soiled with coal dust under the basement of a condemned house … a condemned house in a fog…

Now was the time to say it. Now was the time to say: ‘Look here, Detective-Inspector Turpin, has it never occurred to you that I — who don’t eat sweets — went to Geogharty’s sweet shop three days before the murder and bought three Pierrot Gourmand lollipops? Has it ever occurred to you, copper, to wonder exactly why I bought those? Did it ever occur to you, my good fool, to wonder why there was one of these in Sonia Sabbatani’s pocket? Do you realize that the other two of the three I bought are in my room? Are you aware, Turpin, that I am offering you a rope with which to hang me? Let us make this perfectly clear: I killed Sonia Sabbatani.’

He drew a deep breath, moistened his lips, and began: ‘Listen to me just for a moment! I want to tell you something.’

‘Well?’ said Turpin.

‘I want you all to listen,’ said the Murderer. ‘I have something important — most important —’

Then there was a disturbance.

Shocket the Bloodsucker and Mr Schiff came to blows. They had been discussing the relative merits of the Austrians and the English. Schiff had said:

‘The Austrians have, if you will allow me to say so, vivacity.’

‘Listen, I agree with you — or may L be struck down dead this minute,’ said Shocket.

‘Yet the English have a certain something, a confidence, a solidness.’

‘I should live so sure, you’ve hit the nail on the head.’

‘Yet, allow me to say so, your Viennese has more life in him than your Londoner.’

‘More life? You should live so sure! What’s the matter with England?’

‘I swear to you, most solemnly, that I was saying not a word against England. Your Englishman, indeed, is a better man than your Viennese.’

‘You should live so sure! What’s the matter with the Viennese? My father, God rest his soul, came from Vienna. What’s the matter with that?’

‘I beg you to be reasonable.’

‘He begs me to be reasonable,’ said Shocket, looking at the ceiling with one anguished eye and keeping the other on Schiff. ‘That’s as much as to say that I’m unreasonable.’

Then Shocket struck Schiff on the shoulder, and Schiff pushed Shocket away. Titch Whitbread bounded forward and separated them, saying: ‘Break it up, break it up, Bloodsucker. Ladies present! Break it up.’

Then Asta, throwing an arm about Titch’s shoulders, and calling him a good boy, told Shocket to behave himself. Everybody laughed. The silence was broken.

Looking again at his watch, Turpin said: ‘Well, it’s been a very pleasant evening, but —,

‘Please don’t go yet. There’s something very important I want to say to you,’ said the Murderer. Turpin looked at him. He saw a man of indeterminate age and colour, whose average body was wrapped in the kind of clothes to which no witness could satisfactorily swear in a court of law. The man was a little drunk, somewhat exalted. His face had gone loose.

‘Well. go ahead then,’ said Turpin.

37

There was a pause.

‘It’s only ten o’clock. You can’t possibly go yet,’ said Asta.

‘I’m a married man,’ said Turpin. ‘My good lady’ll be waiting with a rolling-pin.’

In the six or seven seconds that passed while they exchanged these few words, the Murderer had more visions. He had drawn a deep breath and looked down at his hands, gathering himself. Now the world was to know that these soft-looking, ill-shaped hands were weapons of atrocious murder. He winked back at an asterisk of reflected electric light on his right thumb-nail, and this fascinated him. It appeared to throb like a heart, spin like a catherine-wheel, and finally throw out a great cone of bluewhite light like a cinema-projector. On a shaky screen between his eyes and the back of his head, then, there flickered a spasmodically-moving picture in mauve, grey-green, and yellowishpink. A bell was tolling. He could hear it, and he knew that it was striking eight. There were grey-green tears upon the yellowishpink cheeks of the priest. But he was smiling. A mauve and yellowishpink jailer shook his head in grudging admiration…. There was the grey-green prison yard… . He felt wood under his feet. Something soft was slipped over his head. Everything became grey-mauve. A slippery roughness touched his neck. I won’t hurt you, said a business-like voice — and then the world fell away from beneath him, and there was a stab of light and an abominable jolt.

The Murderer hiccupped.

‘Go on, go ahead,’ said Detective-Inspector Turpin.

‘My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky,’ said the Murderer.

‘And how right you are,’ said Turpin. ‘Well, thank you very much, Miss Thundersley, for a very pleasant evening.’

‘Allow me, at least, to shake you by the hand,’ said the Murderer.

Turpin gripped his hand and let it fall.

‘You think I’m weak in the hands, perhaps?’ said the Murderer. ‘Then wait a minute!’

‘Strong as a lion. Give all I possess for a grip like yours,’ said Turpin. ‘Good night, Miss. Good night all.’

‘Ah-ah-ah! You silly man!’ cried Thea Olivia, stooping to pick a burning cigarette-end out of the Murderer’s trousercuff. ‘Do you want to burn your nice suit?’

‘Oh no, no! Dear lady! Not on your knees before me!’

She had thrown the cigarette-end into an ashtray, and was making a great to-do over the brushing away of the ashes. Thea Olivia used handkerchiefs of the finest cambric, so exquisite that only she could wash them. In her excitement she had whisked out one of these to dust the Murderer’s trousercuff.

‘You need a nurse, you silly man,’ she said.

‘I am a baby,’ he confessed: and added, with a lowering look: ‘if you prefer to think of me in that way.’

Catchy laid a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t you think —’ she began.

‘It might surprise you to know what I think,’ he replied.

Thea Olivia, looking from face to face in the crowd that surrounded her, was bewildered and a little frightened.

‘You know, I think —’ she said, making a decorous little bow.

At this the groups began to disintegrate. Asta looked glum and sullen, but said little. She heard Cigarette saying to Mothmar Acord:

‘Do I go home with you or do you come home with me?’

Acord seemed to go into a little sieep while he made calculations. Then he pointed a forefinger at Catchy and said:

‘_You_ are coming home with me.’

Catchy nodded, and they linked arms.

‘Nobody loves me,’ said Cigarette, more tragically than she had wanted to sound.

‘Oh, but I do,’ said Wensday, stroking her neck. Then he saw that Avril, who had been watching him, was hooking her chin over the shoulder of Tobit Osbert, who was drowsily drunk. ‘But I’m a respectable married man,’ Wensday added, going to the side of his wife and taking her hand in a grip which was nieant to appear affectionate and intended to hurt.

Hate had got into the atmosphere. Everyone wanted to go away and, in quiet quarrels, say unforgivable things to near and dear ones. Mothmar Acord gave Asta a hand like a rubber glove full of cold water. Cigarette insisted on kissing her. Mrs Scripture caught at her hand and then dropped it as if she had picked up somebody else’s soiled handkerchief. Titch Whitbread, still smiling with pure delight, cautiously squeezed her fingers in his gentle, mighty hand, and swore eternal friendship. Soon everyone was gone but Schiff. He was always the first to arrive and the last to leave.

‘Your friend Amy Dory,’ he said in a throaty whisper. ‘So another boy friend! Also Hemmeridge; also Osbert; also Soskin; also Roget; also Milton Catt; also Strindberg; also Mothmar Acord. Ha-ha! No more Tobit Osbert, eh?’

‘Oh, go away!’ said Asta Thundersley.

‘A good sedative, take,’ said Schiff.

‘Go to hell, Schiff — be a good fellow.’

‘Why not? Good night till now.’

‘Good night, Schiff!’

‘You will be seeing me.’

He left the house. Asta kicked the sittingroom door shut and turned and looked about her. Everywhere there floated and sank dust and ashes in the dregs of sticky glasses, and the place was disgusting with stale tobacco smoke. Two cigarettes had burnt themselves out on the mantelpiece. Another had been surreptitiously extinguished upon an oval silver frame that surrounded a photograph of Thea Olivia when she was young and pretty. One of the guests had pocketed a leaf-shaped jade ashtray. The ashtray was worth less than ten shillings, yet Asta was deeply and bitterly hurt. If whoever it was had said: ‘I like it,’ she would have replied: ‘Do, please, take it.’ But, no. People must pilfer — guests, invited in good faith!

She was sick to death of everybody in the world; sick and tired.

Asta took hold of a blue-and-white Chinese vase, and raised it high, intending to throw it with a great smash into the fireplace. Two cigarette-ends and a shower of ashes came out of the neck of it and ran into her armpit. At the same time something sizzled behind the sofa. She put down the vase and looked for the source of the noise. Mr Pink was asleep on the floor.

She looked at him in a white rage, grasped the vase again and, after a little deliberation, angrily put a soft cushion under his head and with a whispered damn-and-blast covered him with a tigerskin rug.

The rain was pouring down. ‘God, what am I to do?’ said Asta Thundersley.

But if, at that moment, the Voice of God had answered: ‘_What are you to do about what, my daughter?_’ she would have found nothing to say in reply — only that she was unhappy because of the badness of men and women, and that her heart was sore at the imperfection of this rough, unfinished world.

Thea Olivia came in elegant and decorous in a pink-flowered black dressinggown that covered her from white throat to roseembroidered slippers.

‘_Good_ night, my dear,’ she began to say; but stopped with a gasp in the middle of the second word, shocked by the spectacle of big red Asta weeping as noisily as a dog drinks, into a little blue handkerchief.

‘Darling! What is it?’

‘Leave me alone, Tot — do leave me alone. I’ve got the miseries …’

‘Let me get you —’

‘I ask you … leave me alone,’ said Asta, crying like a schoolboy.

Thea Olivia went to her bedroom.

38

It was her habit punctiliously to wash her handkerchief before she went to bed, and to hang it up to dry for a meticulous ironing next day, or the day after. She was worried about her handkerchief. What a fool she had been, to give way to impulse and use it as a duster on the turn-up of a trouser-leg! Thea Olivia let warm water run into the hand-basin in her bedroom, and cautiously opened her handkerchief.

She was horrified and disgusted.

In the folds of the cambric was a gritty blackness.

Exploring this grit with her delicate finger-tips, and smelling it with one fine nostril, she recognized it.

It was coal dust.

Such stuff was ruin to cambric, destruction to delicate fabric of any kind. What madness had taken possession of her, that she had gone down with only one handkerchief — a Good Handkerchief designed for dabbing, instead of a Bad Handkerchief into which one might blow?

She bathed, rather than rinsed, that handkerchief. The blackness trickled away. The cambric, held against the light, was unpunctured.

Thea Olivia was profoundly relieved. She squeezed the handkerchief very tenderly, and hung it to dry on the towel rail. There were not many squares of cambric like that left in this cottony, shoddy world. Thea Olivia loved little, exquisite things, and the more fragile they were the better she loved them. It was impossible for her to go to sleep if she had not first arranged, by the side of her bed, one flower in a precious vase of Chinese porcelain which a hearty sneeze might have blown to fragments. Also, she carried with her an extra-special tea-set. It was over a hundred years old. You would have been reluctant to pick up the saucer: it looked as though it might bruise like the petal of a camellia. It was possible, in the right light and at the right angle, to read a newspaper through the side of the cup. Cup, saucer, diminutive plate, tiny tea-pot, hot-water pot, milkjug (which you might have fitted into your left ear) and sugarbasin, all stood in order upon a silver tray as thin as paper. Cities had been demolished, great grey stone cathedrals had been cracked like hazel nuts, an empire had fallen, and still Tot’s little tea-set remained, unchipped, uncracked, serenely preserved like her virginity. When she travelled she wrapped it in so many layers of wadding and tissue-paper that — together with her little tortoise-shell tea caddy and miniature silver kettle and spirit lamp — it occupied twelve cubic feet of space.

Before she could think of composing herself for sleep, every. thing had to be in its right place.

Thea Olivia took off part of the crowning glory that was her hair, shook it out, brushed it, and put it carefully aside. A patterned vase on the mantelpiece offended her — it had been turned so that the visible part of the pattern did not match that of the vase on the other side. She readjusted this. A little rug was disarranged. She rearranged it. She did not touch the window, because she was convinced that she would find dust on the frame. The fire, she reassured herself, had settled down to a respectable dying glow, and the room was comfortably warm. Thea Olivia looked once more towards the jewellery she had taken off before she washed her handkerchief. She never moved a mile without a quaint little pale porcelain hand, mounted in a whimsical porcelain saucer: on the fingers of this little hand she always hung her rings, arranging her bracelets and brooches below.

She felt the bed. It was dry and warm. A pillow was patted down, another pillow was shaken up, and everything was ready, except the night-light — a squat cylinder of wax in a rosecoloured saucer of water. She lit this with a very small match out of a tiny box tucked into a silver container, assured herself that it was burning, then turned out the main light, took off her clothes, put on a pale blue nightdress, and went to bed, settling down with a sigh of pleasure.

Thea Olivia always said her prayers when she was comfortably arranged in her deep, warm bed. She did not like kneeling; it hurt her knees and distracted her. It was her contention that a prayer is more effective, goes quicker to God, if one can put one’s whole heart and soul into it. It was necessary to detach the mind from the body — and how could you do that if your knees ached? No, better to be comfortable, discard the body in a good feather bed, and then give all of your untroubled mind to asking the Lord to preserve you from the perils and the dangers of the coming night; throwing in a good word for your relatives and friends.

Thea Olivia was not displeased with her evening. She had met all sorts of new people who would provide her with much to dream about. Yet she was not entirely happy.

There was something wrong with Asta, poor Asta, dear Asta — sweet silly Asta who took upon her big shoulders all the troubles of the world. She felt tendevly towards Asta, and was grieved at having seen her broken down and wretched. And because of what? This murder of the little girl with the Russian, or Italian, name. How like Asta that was! As long as Thea Olivia could remember, Asta had always made a fool of herself, involving herself in affairs that were none of her business. Nice, foolish Asta had wasted her strength, her time, and her money on things that were the business of the Approved Societies, the National Institutions, and even the Police; and there Asta was, crying downstairs in a smoky sittingroom between two vases of dying chrysanthemums into which ill bred men and not unquestionable women had surreptitiously popped cigarette-ends. Dear Asta, good kind Asta — Asta was always on the go. Always sure of herself, always shouting at the top of her voice, making herself conspicuous, and in the end discrediting herself. Who but Asta would be so hot-headed, so crazily ambitious, as to butt her way into a murder case? Who but Asta would have been out, plodding about in dirty cellars when she might have been at home by a good clear fire reading an interesting or even an instructive book? Who but big-hearted, foolish Asta would take somebody else’s business so terribly to heart that she could weep noisily and without restraint into a sixpenny handkerchief — and a bright blue handkerchief at that?

How different we are, thought Thea Olivia drowsily. We might almost be strangers. We are as different as kitten and bulldog. Poor Asta. Wild horses couldn’t drag her to Hartnell for something fit to wear. Poor Asta. I can picture her rushing into Barkers like a whirlwind: ‘Give me a suit, quick! … What suit? Any suit! None of your frills and fal-lals, girl! Just a suit. Something durable. There, that’ll do, that hairy check tweed thing over there. Take it off the hook. Wrap it up. Quick, where’s the Shoe Department? … Hey, you! Give me a good solid pair of brogues, size 7 1/2 — get a move on! Very wide fitting — plenty of room in them — good heavy soles —’

Then in the middle of a little affectionate laugh, Thea Olivia thought of something so horrible that she cried aloud and sat bolt upright, with one fluttering hand over her fluttering heart.

She remembered Asta’s shoes that afternoon when she had come in, sick and angry at the atrocity in the coal-cellar.

She remembered the gritty, black grains she had washed out of the cambric handkerchief that was drying on the towel rail. She felt as if a cold, clammy hand had suddenly clutched at the base of her spine. It occurred to Thea Olivia that she, with her cambric handkerchief, had dusted away damning evidence from the trousers of a rapist and a child murderer.

She got out of bed, pushed her slender little feet into her pretty slippers, and put on her dressinggown. Her impulse was to run downstairs to Asta and tell her everything. That man, that man in the grey suit — she had forgotten his name — it would come back — that well-spoken, rather dreamy man — he ought to be questioned. The cuff of his trouser-leg was full of coal dust. The Police ought to be informed! There was no time to waste!

She switched on the light, and paused while she looked in the mirror and patted her hair and arranged her dressinggown so that it covered her throat. She was tremulous and very pale: she hated the idea of being seen in that state, so she gave herself a minute or two in which to compose herself.

She soon became calm, and then she began to wonder …

39

Downstairs in the stale-smelling sittingroom, Asta Thundersley, hot-eyed and melancholy, wrestled with shadows.

She felt now that if a bit of grit flew into her eye she would have to argue with herself before she found it worth while to blink. She felt that if she sat on a pin she would not start up but shrug her shoulders; that if her worst enemy spat in her face she would quietly beg him for the loan of his handkerchief. She was in the No-Man’s-Land between light and dark. She felt like a long forsaken house in late autumn, under a grey sky, with a wet wind blowing while the night comes down and somewhere a broken gate lugubriously flaps. To her the lamp was only something that uncovered an emptiness. One last tarry bit of coal caught fire and shot out a spear-head of flame; and this, to Asta, was only another sharp white tooth in the closing jaws of the cold outer Dark. She was, she thought, a coffin in which there softly rattled the colourless dust that had been Asta Thundersley. She felt like the cooling cinders of a fire that is going out; like a hilt without a sword, a cracked pot, a gouged eye, a relic. There was no more life in her than there is poetry in an ink-pot.

Once again, she was revealed to herself as a crazy, helpless woman at whom Satan laughed; a stumpy maypole set up for the diversion of all the dancing devils of hell.

Midnight struck.

Asta dozed, and in a second of sleep, between two nods, she had a vivid dream of something she had seen many years before, at the end of a happy birthday, when the world was as fresh as an apple. Her father had taken her to a music-hall, and there was a juggler who filled Asta’s soul with wonder and delight. Standing in a beam of light, twinkling like a skyful of stars in his spangled tights, the juggler did new and marvellous things. Last and best of all, turning off the applause with a twist of one supple hand, he took a piece of fine tissue-paper and balanced it on the end of his nose. The paper wanted to fly away on every current of air in the darkened, draughty theatre, but the juggler made it stand. He remained, a strong man straining all his muscles to balance this flimsy bit of paper, for about ten seconds. Then he struck a match and set fire to the upper end of the balanced tissue-paper. It burnt down until the flame touched his nose and went out. The ash remained, miraculously balanced, for another ten seconds. Then the juggler jerked his head and the ash, floating down, disintegrated in the sizzling spotlight.

You know how, in a dream, you touch new heights and become aware of unexpected profundities in the most trivial of memories. You dream that you are untying a shoe-lace, and with the pleasant little jolt of the undone knot, there comes into your mind a certain sensation of lightness and of power, as if you had done something great and wonderful. Or you may be dreaming that you are rocking on your heels on a window-ledge fifty storeys above a misty pavement; and you know that you cannot keep your balance, and are afraid. Sometimes, by God’s grace, you have time to get an aide-de-camp to the vedettes of a reserve of courage that waits — that is always waiting for a signal— on one of your flanks at the edge of the nightmare. Courage charges in, like the Greys and the Gordons in the old battle print; you are rallied; you hurl_yourself right into the darkest, dirtiest part of the dream, and cut your way through.

Instead of falling you are flying.

The memory of that bit of burnt paper, coming back into Asta’s mind in that brief dream, made her laugh. She did not laugh as one laughs heartily at a good joke. She did not laugh at the end of her teeth in anger or in scorn. She laughed, in her little sleep, as a child laughs when you show it the solution to an exceptionally mystifying yet simple trick.

The sound of this laugh awoke her. She felt a great deal better. Mrs Kipling, who had an eye on the heel-taps in the bottles and the dregs of the glasses, was loitering about the place with a hypocritical air of anxiety to be of service to her mistress.

‘Kipling, put out all the lights and go to bed,’ said Asta, going upstairs.

After two or three great clumping strides she remembered that her sister Tot had gone to bed and was probably asleep; so she took off her shoes, went on her way cautiously, and at last got to bed with as little noise as she was capable of making.

Then Mrs Kipling and The Tiger Fitzpatrick slunk out to talk of old times over what the guests had left of the liquor.

40

Asta was awake, as usual, by seven o’clock in the morning, but she made less noise than usual while she dressed. She was almost tone-deaf, yet she sang Russian drinking songs in her bath when she was alone in the house. But she would not for any consideration disturb the dangerous old lady whom she described as her little sister’. After a silent, unsatisfactory bath, she got into her loose tweed suit, knotted about her bullock-throat a yellowdotted tie, and went (quietly for her) down to breakfast.

She was astonished to find Thea Olivia downstairs before her, dressed in a becoming garment of pink and grey, and seated in a Queen Anne chair with a high back. Mrs Kipling was dancing attendance, as she always did when Thea Olivia paid a visit.

‘What are you doing up so early, Tot?’ said Asta.

‘Good morning, Asta dear.’

‘Good morning. What are you doing up so early? What’s the matter with you? Couldn’t you sleep? Since when did you get out of bed before nine o’clock?’

Thea Olivia said: ‘Dear Asta!’

‘Look at her! Bags under her eyes!’ said Asta. ‘What happened? I know. That idiot Kipling. If I’ve told her once I’ve told her a thousand times to give you a hot-water bottle. Two bottles. I didn’t have time to see to it myself. I know, I know you, I know you to the heart and soul, Tot — you’d suffer on the rack rather than complain, but I know. Kipling!’

‘No, please. Everything was just as it should be, Asta dear, I assure you.’

‘What are you so angry about? I was only asking. I’ve never known you to be visible before nine or ten o’clock before.’

‘I think your party excited me.’

‘All the better. You need exciting, Tot. You know,’ said Asta, half defiantly, ‘you know I live my own kind of life here. Breakfast is breakfast. What are you going to have? Kidneys? Bacon? Eggs? Kippers? Finnon haddie? Say the word. Have an egg and haddock.’

Thea Olivia, to Asta’s astonishment, said: ‘I only want a cup of tea.’

For the first time in living memory Asta Thundersley was quiet at the breakfast table. She was marvelling at her sister’s presence; and her sister was amazed at her silence.

They looked at each other. There was suspicion on both sides. Asta was full of a desire to slap her sister on the back, take hold of her with her enormous red hands, pick her up and swing her round and whirl her off her feet. Asta wanted to make conversation, to talk about people.

‘What did you think of the party?’ she asked. ‘It struck me as being a complete failure. Didn’t it you?’

‘Do you mean as a party?’

‘Yes, Tot darling, as a party. As anything. A failure. Socially or otherwise - not a success How did it strike you? Be honest. D’you know what? Before I went to bed I found Pink asleep on the floor — fast asleep on the floor. I’ve often wondered whether that man was one of God’s holy innocents or just another common drunk. What’s your impression, Tot darling?’

‘Mr Pink. That’s the little gentleman who keeps talking about God, isn’t it? Well, I don’t think he’s just a common drunk. I think he’s a good sort of man, don’t you?’

‘Look here, Tot, I insist on your having at least an egg. Come now, a lightly-boiled egg in a cup. Then you can put little bits of bread into it like you used to.’

‘I couldn’t face an egg,’ said Thea Olivia, almost in agony. ‘I only want … I’ll have some toast, some toast and some marmalade; some of that dark brown marmalade. On the whole, Asta, I think it was a very good party.’

‘You seemed to make quite a hit.’

‘No, you don’t really mean that? I didn’t do a thing. I just kept still. Who were all those young men that kept talking to me?’

‘Why, Tot darling, everybody was talking to you all the time. Which young men do you mean? There was young Hemmeridge, and there was Mothmar Acord. There was —’

‘That young man in the grey suit.’

‘Oh, you mean Tobit Osbert.’

‘The one that got so drunk.’

‘They were all drunk, Tot my sweet. And lots of them were wearing grey suits. You mean Tobit Osbert, do you? Why, I do believe you’ve fallen in love with him. Now what on earth for? You’re old enough to be his mother.’

‘Oh dear Asta, my dear Asta — can’t I just make ordinary conversation without your assuming all kinds of things? Tobit Osbert, that’s the man. He promised to get in touch with me about … a book I wanted to borrow. There’s a book he has, and he said he’d lend it to me.’

‘What sort of book?’

‘A book about the Crusaders.’

‘I’ve got his address somewhere in my little black book,’ said Asta, referring to her address book. ‘I’ll get it for you later. Or do you want it now?’

‘Oh no, not now. Any time will do.’

After breakfast Asta remembered that she had an appointment with a certain Mr Partridge, who was telling her something about a scandal concerning the adoption of illegitimate children. She went out at nine o’clock. As soon as the door had slammed behind Asta, and the sound of her big, heavy-heeled feet had ceased to ring and snap between the front door and the end of the street, Thea Olivia went to the long, old-fashioned, untidy walnut desk in the room described as ‘the study’, and looked for a black book. She found several. One of them was like a digest of Who’s Who; another resembled the note-book of somebody who has had to study Whitaker’s Almanack. A third contained some queer record of letters that had been sent to a Secretary of State. The fourth was full of addresses and telephone numbers. The numbers were written down, together with the exchanges, tolerably clearly. But the names were represented generally by initial letters, so that Thea Olivia had to apologize to Theodore Oxford, Ted Oliver, Timothy Ogden, Timothy O’Brien, and Tudor Owen, before she got an ‘I’ll see if he’s in’ from a woman who sounded like a landlady. Then she heard feet coming down creaking stairs, and her heart thumped as a gentle voice said:

‘Tobit Osbert speaking. Who is that, please?’

‘This is Miss Thea Olivia Thundersley. I hope you will excuse me for disturbing you so early, but I wanted — if it’s perfectly convenient — to have a word with you. It’s rather urgent. I’d be so glad if we could meet fairly soon. Can we?’

‘Why, whenever you like, of course. Where shall we meet? At the — I was going to say at the Savoy, but it’s always so full of a certain sort of… you know what I mean? Shall I come along to your place?’

‘No, I think it might be better if I came to yours. May I?’

‘Why, yes, of course it would. Only I feel I ought to warn you. I live in a bedsitting-room. It isn’t much of a place.’

‘Can I come along now?’

‘By all means, if you like. But I ought to tell you that I have an appointment in about three-quarters of an hour from now — if that’s all right.’

‘I’m coming now.’

‘Righty-ho.’

41

Osbert lived in a square, not far from Mornington Crescent. His landlady was a thin, scowling woman with terocious eyebrows and terrified eyes. She told Thea Olivia where to go, and so she found herself in a bedsitting-room — remarkably neat considering that it was occupied by a man — overlooking a sodden and neglected garden, behind which was visible part of a zinc roof, sooty, striated with rain.

She said: ‘Mr Osbert. Last night I washed my hankie.’

She paused, gulping back her heart, which had crept up into the back of her throat.

‘Could I offer you a cup of tea?’

‘No, I don’t want a cup of tea. I mean, thank you so much. But I really couldn’t. I’ve already had - . . Mr Osbert. I don’t know if you remember last night. We were all very happy and merry and bright together, and… I don’t know if you remember… You dropped a lighted cigarette. Do you remember? Do tell me, do you remember?’

Osbert looked at her steadily for a moment, and then said: ‘Why no, I can’t say that I do.’

‘Mr Osbert,’ said Thea Olivia, breathing with a hissing noise, ‘you were on the point of saying something — I don’t know what — and then you let your cigarette fall, and it fell into the turnedup part of your trousers, and I took it out and brushed the place where it had fallen. Or don’t you remember that?’

‘My dear good lady, how could I possibly remember? The drinks Asta gave us last night were so tremendous — how could anyone remember anything?’

‘I was saying, I took the cigarette-end out of your trousers and wiped the ash and all that away with my handkerchief.’

‘Are you quite sure I can’t get you a cup of tea? Or else there’s some milk…’

Almost suffocated with emotion Thea Olivia went on: ‘I was going to tell you about my hankie. I have — at least I used to have — three or four dozen cambric handkerchiefs, very old ones; very fine ones. And you know — at least any woman knows — you know you use them only for dabbing, just once. I suppose you know?’

‘Of course I know.’

‘I used one of my handkerchiefs on the turn-up of your trousers last night. I’m in the habit of rinsing my cambric handkerchiefs every night before I go to bed. I did so last night. And what do you think I found in it?’

‘Should I know?’

‘Coal dust.’

She watched Tobit Osbert’s face, but he only smiled and said: ‘And so?’

Thea Olivia paused again, not knowing what to say, and felt a sense of impending defeat: ‘You didn’t talk like that last night,’ she said.

‘Didn’t I?’

‘I want you to tell me where you got that coal dust.’

‘Why?’

‘I suppose you know that the poor little girl everybody’s so sorry for was killed in a place where there was coal dust?’

‘Was she?’

‘Yes, she was. I know somebody who was there.’

‘Perhaps your somebody did it.’

Thea Olivia looked from the gas fire to the table covered with papers, and thence to the face — the calm, confident, firm yet dreamy face of TobitOsbert, and she felt that nothing she could say might ever make a point.

‘Do please let me offer you just one little cup of tea,’ said Osbert.

Feeling that she needed to play for time, Thea Olivia said: ‘Thank you very much. I think I’d like a cup of tea.’

The gas ring gasped and roared as the little tin kettle clanked down. Looking at his expressionless, fixed face, she detected the beginning of a sidelong look and a suppressed smile.

‘Or perhaps you’d rather come out with me to some place or other, Miss Thundersley?’

‘No, dank you very much. I’d rather… chat with you here, if I may, Mr Osbert.’

His smile stopped trying to suppress itself and spread. The corners of his eyes wrinkled. Last night he had appeared to be a gentle, amiable young man; even a desirable young man. But now he appeared to Thea Olivia as sly, mocking, and indefinably repulsive. He reminded her of a painting she had seen in an exhibition: it depicted a man in a black suit and, from a distance of about three yards, looked almost like a tinted photograph. The man in the picture was, at this distance, altogether nonclescript. He was standing in a self-conscious attitude against a vaguely familiar background of trees and fields, such as photographers used to hang in their studios; and one of his hands was awkwardly poised on the tip of a sawn-off tree-trunk flagrantly made of papier-mâche’, while the other held a bowler hat. But when Thea Olivia took two little ladylike steps forward, this seemingly inoffensive picture became so horrible that she actually let out a little genteel shriek. In the folds of the respectable jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, there were things that should have been elsewhere — small pale worms which had passed at first as highlights upon a shabby but presentable surface. The five teeth exposed by the prim smile were toe-nails. Queer little things with wicked black eyes were coming out of his scalp and peeping through the parting in his hair; one of the buttons of his shirt was a gorged and bloated bug, and in place of eyes he had purplish blue bruise-coloured fingerprints. She had been told that this was Super Realism, and that it represented a Suburb. She was astonished, later, to hear than an American had bought this picture for a large sum of money: it would have given her nightmares — and did, for several nights until she got it out of her mind.

Tobit Osbert, on close inspection — now that her suspicions were aroused — was like that picture. He appeared to Thea Olivia as sick, a product of corruption. She thought that his eyes were twisted so that they made her look in two directions at once: they were eyes into which she found it impossible to look while she talked to him; and she hated that. Also, she saw, or thought that she saw, a certain loathsome wetness in his smile; and the smile itself was creepy, mean, and cunning, yet at the same time odiously confident and detestably familiar. Somewhere she had seen it all before.

To-day Mr Osbert was working. He was wearing a pair of seedy flannel trousers, slippers, and a short-sleeved shirt which left uncovered his white, wiry arms. He begged pardon for this and, while the gas roared under the kettle, put on an exhausted old blue blazer, upon the breast pocket of which a shieldshaped patch of darker blue marked the place where a badge had once been sewn. She could not stop looking at his hands. They were, of course, hands like any other hands; only something behind them had made them kill, and take pleasure in killing, the child named Sonia Sabbatani.

He said: ‘My dear Miss Thundersley, I wonder what in the world makes you think I have anything to do with that horrible business!’

‘I didn’t say you had, Mr Osbert. I only said that after I had dusted the turnedup parts of your … your trousers,’ said Thea Olivia, blushing, ‘I found some coal dust. And I wanted to ask you where you had got it.’

‘And what if I tell you that I might have got it putting coal on the fire?’ said Tobit Osbert playfully.

‘What fire? You have a gas fire,’ said Thea Olivia, wko felt her heart bouncing like a punch-ball in an echoing gymnasium.

‘Why, of course I have a gas fire, Miss Thundersley. Who said I hadn’t? But I’m only at home to work and sleep. I pay lots of visits. Lots of my friends have coal fires, and I often build them up. Actually I’m a homely sort of man, Miss Thundersley. I like making myself useful about the place. Do you know what? I can even cook. Only the other day I cooked dinner at a friend’s house. And there, by the by, I had to put coal in the kitchen stove. Now you mention it, there you are. Coal. Goodness knows why you drag me into this business, Miss Thundersley. Ah-ah! Kettle’s boiling. Do you like it strong or weak?’

‘Anything at all, thank you. It doesn’t matter a bit.’

‘Milk of course?’

‘Well, thank you, yes. … No, thank you very much, no sugar.’

‘I hope this is drinkable. But I beg your pardon. You were saying, Miss Thundersley?’

Thea Olivia no longer knew exactly what she had been saying. The virtue had gone out of her. Still, like an exhausted captain in a retreat, she rallied one last staggering platoon of words and said: ‘Quite simply. … There was, as I was saying, coal dust. To put it plainly, there was coal dust. Coal dust which you can account for, of course, but all the same … coal dust. I believe … I mean, I have been told, I have seen it on the pictures, it is common knowledge, that the police can find out all kinds of things from dust. I mean, there are all sorts of coal. I mean, nowadays, with microscopes and all that sort of thing, they can identify… well, they can identify practically anything they like. They can look through a microscope and tell you, let us say, where such and such kind of wool came from — just looking at dust — or whether this, that, or the other sort of dust came from this or that street… I don’t think I’m making myself quite clear, but perhaps you understand what I mean, Mr Osbert?’

‘Oh, perfectly, my dear Miss Thundersley. Is your tea all right?’

‘Thank you, yes. Yes, thank you very much. What was I saying? Now you’ve put me off. No, no, I’ve got it.’ Thea Olivia Thundersley made her last desperate charge. She said: ‘All that coal dust in your … your trousers. You say you must have got it in one of your friends’ houses, perhaps cooking dinners, or something. If you say so, I must believe you. I have no reason to disbelieve you, Mr Osbert. Why should you tell me stories? I believe that what you say is true.’

‘But I haven’t said anything, Miss Thundersley.’

‘I believe that what you say is true, Mr Osbert. But to set my mind at rest … I will gladly defray any incidental expenses, if I may say so without giving you offence. … Would you, for instance, allow those garments to be examined under microscopes et cetera by, for example, Scotland Yard?’

‘I do hope that tea’s all right. I’m not much of a hand at tea. I’m no good at this sort of thing. Do excuse me.’

‘I thought you said you cooked your friends’ dinners.’

‘Oh, but I do! I do indeed, Miss Thundersley, but as you no doubt know — anyone can cook a dinner, whereas there is an art in making a good cup of tea.’

‘No, but would you?’

‘I beg your pardon, would I what?’

‘I’m sure you can’t have forgotten what I was saying,’ said Thea Olivia, almost in tears. ‘I was asking you, and I believe that you remember as well as I do, I was asking you whether you would let the Scotland Yard people examine your trousers.’

Tobit Osbert nodded and, making a little astonished gesture, said: ‘Why, of course!’

Struggling with her instinctive reticence and hacking it away tentacle by tentacle, Thea Olivia managed to say: ‘I understand (you understand, Mr Osbert), I understand that I have no legal right to speak to you like this. In fact no right at all. As a matter of fact, I believe, in point of fact, that I am wasting your time and mine — not that my time is of any value to me, but I’m sure your time is very valuable to you. What I mean to say is, if I may be allowed to say so without offence — I’d gladly recompense you (because I know that you are a literary gentleman, and might have been earning the Lord knows how many pounds while I’ve been taking up your time) — glad, I mean, to, to, to…’

She wanted to say that she would pay twenty pounds to Tobit Osbert if he would let the police put a microscope on his trousers, but she could not say it. He, however, guessed it and said:

‘I do wish I had some biscuits to offer you. Or could you eat a little bread and butter? I can cut it quite thin. … No? Well, you know best, Miss Thundersley. Do forgive me. I’m afraid I side-tracked you. I may be wrong, but I somehow seemed to gather that you wanted to have my clothes examined by — it seems funny — the police?’

‘Yes,’ said Thea Olivia; and now she could get it out. ‘That’s right. And I’d gladly recompense you for any trouble —’

‘I’d be only too happy,’ said Tobit Osbert.

In a flat, disillusioned tone, Thea Olivia said: ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ It occurred to her that she was making as big a fool of herself as her sister Asta.

‘… should be only too delighted,’ said Osbert, ‘only…’

‘Only what?’ asked Thea Olivia, almost hopefully.

‘It would give me all the pleasure in the world, my dear Miss Thundersley,’ said Osbert with a theatrical sort of deliberation, ‘but I sent that suit to be dry-cleaned and pressed this morning. You don’t know what pleasure it would have given me to be able to do what you asked of me, but there it is. I can’t.’

‘It may not be too late,’ said Thea Olivia. ‘You can’t have sent it off very long ago. You can call it back, surely?’

There was a silence. Then Osbert said: ‘You’re not drinking your tea. I’m afraid it isn’t much good. Shall I make you a fresh cup? If only you’d tell me just how you like it…’

‘I know I’m a silly old woman — very silly, and very old. But won’t you get that suit back, Mr Osbert? I know I’ve wasted most of your valuable morning. Don’t be offended — you are a professional man — let me pay you, say, twenty-five guineas for wasting your morning, if you get that suit back. Say I’m a little bit crazy like my sis — I mean, humour me in this, it is merely a fancy. Will you do it for me?’

Tobit Osbert looked at her steadily. His face had been politely serious. Now it changed. One tiny smile altered it as an impalpable corrugation changes a reflection in a mirror.

‘No,’ he said.

‘No?’

With severity in his voice and derision at the corner of his mouth, Tobit Osbert said: ‘My dear madam, I’m afraid you don’t quite realize that you are talking to a gentleman. We had a delightful evening last night, and I’ll always remember it. But I don’t think you can be quite yourself this morning. Do you realize that you have come into my room, more or less accused me of a very horrible murder, and actually offered me money to demonstrate to you whether or no I have committed it? Do you seriously, I ask you in all seriousness, do you seriously, my dear madam, expect me to accept money in such circumstances? For what do you take me? I don’t think I understand you.’

Thea Olivia looked at the shabby rug and the downtrodden linoleum; raised her eyes to the flaky ceiling, and at last looked into the eyes of Tobit Osbert; and she saw that he was laughing at her.

She rose.

‘I do beg your pardon. That tea couldn’t have been any good,’ he said.

‘One last thing, Mr Osbert: will you tell me to whom you sent your suit to be cleaned and pressed?’

‘Since you put it that way, madam, no, I won’t.’

‘Then I can only say Good Day.’

‘I’m sorry you have to go so soon.’

Thea Olivia went back to Asta’s house, full of frustration.

42

The Murderer sat down to write. He had sent his suit to be cleaned by Sam Sabbatani, who gave his dyeing and cleaning to the great Goldberg Dye Works which takes in half the dirty clothes in London every morning at nine o’clock. The firm of Goldberg makes a speciality of what they call ‘mourning orders’ and will dye anything funereally black within twenty-four hours.

Tobit Osbert found a certain refined pleasure in the contemplation of the fact that Sam Sabbatani, still red-eyed and thunderstruck with grief, was washing away evidence which might possibly have convicted the murderer of his daughter for three and sixpence — on the slate, at that.

Tobit Osbert checked himself on the edge of one of his daydreams. No, there must be no daydreaming now, discipline above all things, self-control. He had an article to write for The Theoretician, which would be paid for on delivery. He needed the six guineas, and, as it happened, he really wanted to write the article, which was a critical one on the subject of books for the young. In this, too, there was to be found a certain refined pleasure, a titillation, an indefinable thrill, half intellectual and half voluptuous. So he saved his little daydream for later, and settled down to a survey of the works of Beatrix Potter. In a little while he would make a name for himself. Meanwhile there was enough to do to keep him occupied for three or four days — which was just as well, since his only presentable suit was at the cleaners. But by next week he would be able to buy himself a new suit. There was a tailor near Cambridge Circus who produced an excellent suit for five pounds. Tobit Osbert had his eye on a piece of gentlemanly drab cloth with the faintest, discreetest block check, which he planned to have made up — singlebreasted, perhaps, with two intriguing little slits in the tail of the jacket. Dare he have very narrow trousers, without turn-ups? That might convey an impression of elegant nonchalance. In such a get-up one might lounge about with a gay little scarf around the neck, and introduce oneself to anybody, with a free and easy sportsmanlike looseness in one’s manner of approach.

But enough! Discipline! No daydreams! To work!

All the same, he thought as he dipped his pen into the inkpot, the world is full of pleasures for a man who knows how to appreciate things. He would have gone to Sam Sabbatani for his new suit; but the fact of the matter was that he owed Sam a little money, and was going to owe him three-and-sixpence more in forty-eight hours.

And in this, too, there was refined pleasure.

43

Angry with herself and with all the world, Thea Olivia went back to Asta’s house in Frame Place by the river. She wanted to smash things and to kick people, herself first of all. She was a fool like her sister, she decided. She, Thea Olivia, the only sane girl in the family, had involved herself in something that was none of her business. She walked part of the way because she wanted to get the smell of Osbert’s room out of her nostrils. It was not that the room had a characteristic odour — far from it — but the air of the place, sucked dry by the gas fire, seemed to have got into the back of her nose, so that she was glad to draw deep breaths of the wet and smoky air of the streets. She had no doubt that Osbert had committed that murder. For one mad minute she toyed with the idea of going to the police and telling them what she knew. But then she asked herself: ‘What do I know?’

Everything; she knew everything, but she could prove nothing. Thea Olivia had read many crime stories — she had little to do but read — she realized that there was nothing to say, and shuddered at the thought of an interrogation in a cold greenpainted waiting-room. She could not even mention the affair to Asta. Asta would fly into a fury and rush everywhere in all directions at once, shouting at the top of her voice, raising scandal and making the most appalling scenes. If one gave Asta the merest sniff of suspicion she (so to speak) threw up her trunk and stuck out her ears and charged, screaming, like an elephant. It did not matter to Asta if she was proved to be wrong: she never admitted it and, even if forced to an admission, did not care. As a matter of fact, Asta loved a commotion for its own sake.

But the end of it would be that Thea Olivia would be dragged into this filthy affair; jostled into the witness-box, hauled into the Old Bailey and made to stand up to be cross-examined by sonic such deadly Counsel as Norman Birkett. And for what? A false alarm. It was not for nothing that she read the writings of the best informed authors of detective stories.

Now, if she went and told Asta, the whole world would be turned upside down before lunch-time. Apart from everything else, who knew what Scotland Yard had up its sleeve?

She was surprised to see that she had reached the Embankment. The grubby grey river slid away to the sea. She saw, through the heavy wet air that hung like damp gauze, the spidery outlines of a gas works and of two enormous cranes on the other side. Several sea-gulls, driven inland by the bad weather, were wheeling, screeching, over the dirty water. Thea Olivia decided, suddenly, that she wanted to go away. She wanted to visit Cousin Oxford Thundersley in Hampshire. She wanted to make friends with her grand-niece Olivia, who had been named after her because somebody had an eye on her money, and invite the girl to come with her on a long holiday, preferably to the south of France.

Thea Olivia hurried back to Asta’s house, and found that her sister had gone out. She asked Mrs Kipling to help her with her packing; gave The Tiger Fitzpatrick a pound note and told him to bring her luggage downstairs.

Then she picked up the cambric handkerchief, carried it at arm’s length to the fireplace and dropped it into the fire. It was still damp so it hissed like a snake; then writhed, shrivelled, caught fire, and in a second or two burnt away to a flake of ash which the draft whisked up the chimney and out into the heavy, threatening air of the sad, dripping city.

Then she sat at one of the little tables and wrote a note. In this note she said that she did not feel very well, because the unexpectedly damp weather was bringing on an attack of bronchitis, and so she was going away. No doubt it seemed strange to leave so abruptly, but Asta would, she was sure, understand and sympathize. She was leaving because she did not want to impose herself on Asta as a sick woman — Asta had so many demands on her already. With a couple of blessings and many expressions of affection Thea Olivia signed her name with a couple of x’s for kisses, put the note in an envelope and, in a taxi loaded with luggage, went off to Waterloo Station.

Asta came home at about four o’clock, read her sister’s note, and fell into what was, for her, a state of abstraction — she kicked a little table across the room, poked the fire until a great lump of blazing coal fell out, which she picked up with a pair of tongs that were too short, so that she burnt her fingers and threw the tongs across the room. She felt uneasy. She was convinced that Thea Olivia had been offended by the unconventional nature of the cocktail party of the previous evening. ‘If you don’t like it, lump it! If it doesn’t suit you, you can go to the dickens!’ she shouted in the empty room, and sat down to write an acrimonious letter which began:

My dearest Tot,

I quite understand that I am not good enough for you and that my way of living is offensive to your very refined tastes, socalled. But —

‘Oh, to hell with it,’ she said, tore the sheet of paper into little pieces, squeezed the pieces into a ball and threw it into the fire.

After that, irritated and depressed, she went to the Bar Bacchus to have a drink and a chat, and there she met Osbert’s girl friend, Catchy, who was slouching at the bar looking tired and defiant — which meant that she was ashamed of herself.

At the end of the bar, by the wall, the stool next to the one on which Catchy was sitting was vacant. Asta Thundersley, squeezing past, laid a hand between the shoulders of Catchy, who started away with a cry of pain and a sickly smile and said: ‘Ohoh! No touchy!’

‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ asked Asta.

Obviously it hurt Catchy to move her shoulders, so she shrugged one side of her face — hitched up her right cheek and let it drop — and said: ‘Oh, he-men, he-men…’

Gonger the barman had mixed Asta’s usual Tom Collins. She swallowed a mouthful of it and then what Catchy had said seemed to tick in her head like a time-bomb. She remembered all that Detective-Inspector Turpin had said to her one morning: ‘_Somebody who gets a thrill out of suffering: it might be a woman, it might be a man. Up comes the willing victim, which is all that this shy torturer, as you might call him, this murderer who is afraid to commit his murder — this willing victim is all that he needs to make him feel powerful_.’

And then Asta knew that the submissive Catchy, who said that she only wanted to make men happy, made happy only those men that needed victims, willing victims. She gave strength and confidence and comfort only to Evil. She was a back to be beaten, a backside to be lashed, a pair of wrists and a pair of ankles to be tied up — she was a training depot for murderers.

Asta Thundersley’s big red face grew larger and redder. She got off her stool, drew herself up, and shouted: ‘Damn you! Take that!’ — and, bringing up her right hand, slapped Catchy’s face, adding: ‘You destroy the world! You are filth! You are the devil! I hate you!’

Then Asta walked out of the Bar Bacchus.

It was regarded as really extraordinary that, for the first time in living memory, Asta Thundersley had left a drink unfinished.

Catchy went into hysterics.

44

And so it comes to pass that Asta Thundersley is the one human being in the whole world of whom Catchy speaks with acrimony, even after all these years — all these dreary and terrible years, during which so many good men have died, so many strong men have got tired, so many soft hearts have hardened, and so many beloved ones have been blown to dust.

Catchy could easily have forgotten that slap in the face, in spite of the fact that a slap in the face from Asta was something not easily forgotten. But, somehow, the words that had gone before the blow stuck in her mind. They touched a spring in her head, and somewhere a little door opened. Between Catchy and her pleasures, thereafter, there intruded nasty little visions of dead children.

All the same, she has not fundamentally changed. Not fundamentally. Now, if and when she is required to assist in the reinforcement of someone’s dirty self-esteem, she collaborates willingly. But she cries afterwards.

There is, she feels, a great deal to cry for. She feels, especially in the dim hours before half-past eleven in the morning, that nobody loves her, everybody hates her, and life is not what it used to be in the good old gay days when the Bar Bacchus was full of life and everyone was sweet and kind to her.

From time to time she says, with a look of wild incredulity, that she simply cannot believe that so many people can have changed so much in such a little time. It is true that things have happened. The Sonia Sabbatani affair became a bore. Franco jostled it away into the lower right-hand corners of the newspapers when he began to poke his Moorish spear-head into the guts of Spain. Hitler, to whose name we still prefixed a polite Herr, was getting ready to take Czechoslovakia. Things were happening in the world, and things — very terrible things — have happened, compared with which the murder of the Sabbatani girl is nothing but a flea bite.

Yet, as Mr Pink never tires of reiterating: ‘It is all the same sort of thing. Maidanek, Belsen, Auschwitz, Sonia Sabbatani — the difference is only a matter of scale and legality.’

He is still around. God knows what has happened to most of the rest. Gonger has retired. Mrs Sabbatani, living in misery with her sisterin-law Sarah, is drifting to bankruptcy. Sam is dead, and is prayed for every year on the anniversary of his death. The Tiger Fitzpatrick and Mrs Kipling are going downhill as fast as they can possibly go; Turpin has become chief inspector; Schiff has made money by marketing a mixture of cheap gin and horse-radish which is called Ish; Shocket the Bloodsucker fell dead of a stroke, and nobody mourns him; Titch Whitbread, having lost the sight of one eye, makes a good living whistling for taxis outside a West End restaurant; Hemmeridge, to everyone’s astonishment, died like a proper man in the Western Desert; Goggs the butcher went to jail for black market operations and then seemed to evaporate. All the others have simply gone away, and no one even thinks of them. Thea Olivia continues to visit members of her family. Generally, she is received with hypocritical shrieks of false delight: she has fifty thousand pounds to leave when she dies. Her patchwork quilt is six feet long and five feet wide, and still unfinished; she wants to add and add and add to it — she will see to it that the work lasts as long as her eyesight. She is an exquisite needlewoman and her quilt keeps her happy. God knows what she thinks of as the fine, goldeyed needle goes in and out. She has washed Tobit Osbert out of her mind.

45

He has got into Public Relations and is doing tolerably well.

There is no doubt about it — the man has charm. He still takes his nieces to the circus, and the joke still holds good — that he does not take the children, but they take him. Now, as ever, he gasps at the whip-crack and laughs until he cries at the clowns, the Joeys and the Aiphonses as they tumble in.

It was always the same with Uncle Toby. He always sucked in an anxious breath while the lion-tamers cowed the tawny, snarling big cats. When the wire-walker who pretended to be drunk climbed up the pylon to the high wire and, reeling and stumbling, seemed about to fall, he half-rose with sweat on his face. The little girls laughed at their silly uncle. Did he not realize that it was all an act? Didn’t he know that in a circus such things were done every day, year in and year out? Silly uncle, nice uncle! Simple-minded uncle!

The children could not be expected to know that he went to the circus, as he went to musical reviews, half hoping that something unexpected might happen.

The Equestrienne might fall off the great white horse. The leopard that watched, crouching, lashing its tail, might spring and rend. There was one chance in a million that the intoxicated-looking man on the high wire might just for that once really be drunk, and fall; and oh, the soft wicked thud of the body in the sawdust!

There was the Woman who hung by the chin on the edge of a sabre; and there were the Flying Foxes, three men and a girl. One of them always pretended, on the high trapeze, to miss his cue. There was a moment of frightful tension. Say, just say, that he had been up a little too late the night before and for one split second lost confidence? The Murderer knew how easily, in a split second, a man can lose confidence. Or say that the girl, who fascinated and terrified the whole world with her triple somersaults, under-estimated or over-estimated her take-off by the merest mote of time, so that the big man missed? He could see the madly clutching fingers grasping nothing; hear the screams of the spectators. … The big man swung himself back to his platform, but before he reached it the girl was bouncing on the sawdust, while everyone stood up, stretched taut with horror.

Meanwhile, to the left and the right of him, his nieces squealed with delight.

Then there were the side-shows. There were midgets, bearded ladies, living skeletons, ‘The Ugliest Woman in the World’, and the ‘Limbless Wonder’. This last-named freak had a beautiful head, and an indeterminate torso without arms or legs. She painted in water-colour, holding the brush between her teeth. He could watch her for hours.

Also he liked the Midgets that lived in dolls’ houses — men and women of mature age; the biggest was no taller than a four-year-old child. How nice to be with such people, the strongest of whom he could pick up with one hand!

After these exhibitions, there were always things to do. One spieler invited him to ‘smash up the happy home’. At the end of a brightly-lit blind-alley stood a representation of a peaceful kitchen — a table set with plates, cups, and dishes; and a dresser full of plates and cups and saucers. You bought the right to smash everything — seven balls cost a shilling. You took careful aim and threw. A teacup flew to fragments; a dinner plate dropped to shards. Crash! — and a soup plate tinkled down. Respectable husbands of wives and fathers of families slapped down their shillings and hurled their wooden balls at ‘The Happy Home’.

And the Shooting Galleries, too, had clay figures of men and animals which, when hit with a little lead bullet, burst asunder like Judas Iscariot. Or there was a tired-looking little old man in a high silk hat. You could see him in his entirety, but he was protected up to the crown of his head by a wire fence. Only the hat was vulnerable and you knocked that off — with wooden balls again. The nieces shrieked with glee and congratulated their uncle on his skill.

There was a softer side to this idealist; he loved to amuse the children.

Above everything — the crack of little rifles, the spank of wooden balls against skittles, the smash of broken crockery, and the twang of the wire fence that guarded the man in the silk hat — there was the gay scream of the calliope and the shrieks of the young ladies coming out of the ‘Haunted House’. Here, passing down dark passages made comically horrible by dancing skeletons and uncertain floors, you arrived at a chute. It let you down with a rush. Scores of young men jostled one another at the bottom of the chute. As the girls slid down, kicking and shrieking, the watchful spectators could rely upon a glimpse of underwear, and sometimes that which it was supposed to conceal.

Having taken his nieces home, he generally went back to the fun fair alone.

46

Asta, as I write, is being talked into militancy on the side of August Lang Fowler, who claims to have recorded the thin, high, agonized cry of cut flowers.

Only Catchy goes regularly to the Bar Bacchus nowadays — and about her there clings, always, an atmosphere of guilt, of maudlin grief, stale liquor, and decay that makes you long for a good high wind to blow her and her kind from the face of the earth, the fly-blown face of the exhausted earth.

THE END