It was about 8.30, and Bartels and Lorna had finished the soup, and were just finishing the liver and bacon, sitting before the fire, the trolley between them, and George the corgi was looking hopefully from one to the other. Lorna said:
“How’s Beatrice?”
Bartels, picking about with his liver and bacon, looked at her in surprise.
“Why?” he asked in an astonished tone.
“Didn’t she have palpitations, or something, once?” asked Lorna, breaking a promise.
“Oh, that. Yes, she did, once.” He was about to add: “Her heart is sound enough, though,” when he stopped himself.
How much did a layman know about palpitations? he wondered. Did a woman like Lorna know that palpitations due to a few too many aspirins, a purely temporary allergy, had no significance at all? Might it not be as well to prepare her in some way for the news about Beatrice?
He toyed with the idea, then cut off a corner of liver and gave it to the corgi, and watched the dog eat it and look up for more. He put the idea aside. There was no point in trying to be too clever.
Lorna had finished the liver and bacon, and had turned towards the fire. She was peeling an orange, saying nothing, throwing the peel in the fire. Bartels mentally picked up the idea again, turned it round and round, and over. Why not? What harm could it do? One mustn’t overdo it, of course. Just toss the sentence out casually.
“Hearts can be a bit tricky,” he said absently, and left it at that. He was tempted to elaborate, but he resisted the urge, and congratulated himself upon his artistry.
“Yes,” said Lorna, still staring into the fire.
“Cigarette?” Bartels extended his case.
Lorna shook her head silently, began dividing her orange up into segments. The corgi, seeing nothing further was to be gained in the way of liver, walked to the grate and curled up for a nap.
After a while, Bartels said: “What’s the matter? You’re very thoughtful.”
“I’ve good cause to be.” She looked at him and smiled sadly.
“Why? What’s the matter?”
Some premonition of disaster, or the unaccustomed sadness on Lorna Dickson’s face, gave Bartels a curious feeling in the pit of his stomach. He shifted uneasily in his chair.
“What’s the matter?” he asked for the third time. “For heaven’s sake tell me; don’t just sit there.”
“Barty,” she began. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about what I’m going to say-there is no other man who means as much to me as you and never has been since Ronald was killed.”
She paused while Bartels, wide-eyed, still and unblinking, heard the wild tolling of alarm bells above the crash and surge of breakers on a rocky beach, and above that, louder and louder, the roll of drumbeats, in his breast, his head, every part of his body even to his fingertips.
Lorna was looking him straight in the face now. Her lips were slightly parted, her serenity was disturbed, but the inner beauty, glimpsed through the grey-blue eyes, was untarnished.
She rose and came and sat on the arm of Bartels’ chair, and put her arm round his shoulders, and pressed him against her side.
“Barty, I don’t think we can go through with this thing, dearest. I have given it a lot of thought. I don’t think it’s fair to Beatrice, and above all, it might be dangerous for her.” She hesitated, groping for the right phrase. “Above all, I don’t think it’s even fair to you-or me.”
“Why?” whispered Bartels.
The alarm bells had ceased tolling, the breakers had receded, leaving exposed the jagged black rocks of despair. But the drums were still beating louder and faster than ever.
“Why, Lorna? Why? Lorna, darling Lorna, you can’t let me down now. Not at this stage.”
She began to stroke his light brown hair, trying ineffectually to flatten the bits which stood up on the crown of his head.
“Do you wish me to marry you to avoid letting you down? From a sense of duty? Is that what you are suggesting?”
“This is only a passing qualm, Lorna.”
He tried desperately to sound cheerful. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. Come on, let’s have a drink! What’s yours?”
He tried to get out of the chair, but she gently pushed him back. “Not now, my dear. This is not a time for drinks. This is the moment for clear thinking and talking.”
He sat back in the chair, then, very still, his eyes staring at the ceiling, pale and drawn, the firelight reflected in the lenses of his spectacles.
“Don’t you see?” said Lorna miserably. “Don’t you see? If anything happened to her, we should never forgive ourselves. She would always be between us.”
“Would she?” asked Bartels bitterly. “Would she really? So they say in books of fiction. She would always be between us. Her shadow would come between us. Our happiness would turn sour. I know, I know, I’ve read about it. I wonder whether it is true. I doubt it.”
“I, for one, can’t risk it.”
The plans, the precautions, the hesitations, the fears, all were pointless. Beatrice was to die, a sacrificial victim on an altar of failure.
Even if Lorna changed her mind before he left, when she heard that Beatrice was dead she would think that he had taken matters into his own hands, had told her the truth; and that Beatrice had had a heart attack as a result. Lorna would never forgive him or herself.
He heard Lorna say: “I know what this means to you.” He thought how often people said that, and how little they really knew. He heard her add: “Believe me, I would like to have married you more than anything. But not this way.”
“Not this way,” he repeated softly.
That’s what he had said when Beatrice had her little palpitations and was so scared and unhappy.
Not this way. My freedom, yes, he had said, but not this way, not by her death; and later he had modified it, and said, not by her death in fear or pain.
“Don’t let’s come to any final decision tonight,” he implored her, but again he thought: What’s the use? If Beatrice dies, Lorna will blame me and herself.
“I think it’s as hard for me as for you,” said Lorna. “And I’ve already come to the decision. I shall feel no different tomorrow.”
Suddenly, she put her arms round him and placed her cheek against his brow, as he had to her earlier in the evening.
“Oh, my dear, I know it’s hard, but try not to take it too badly. Let’s see if we can’t get through to the end of our lives now without causing too much damage.”
After a while he said, quite simply: “All right, if that’s what you want.” He put her from him, firmly but not roughly, and rose to his feet. “Mind if I have that drink now?”
Lorna went over to the drinks table, poured him out a whisky, and handed him the glass.
“Aren’t you drinking?”
She shook her head, and stood by the grate, both hands on the mantelpiece, looking down into the fire. He drank half the whisky without a pause.
“What about us-now?” he asked.
“I think we should break it up,” whispered Lorna. “Half and half is no good, Barty.”
“All right,” he said, and drank off the remainder of the whisky. “As you wish.” He replaced the glass on the table.
“Don’t you think it better?” asked Lorna, still staring into the fire.
“As you wish,” said Bartels again. “I am going now. Thank you for your past kindness. Also for tonight’s supper.”
Lorna swung round quickly from the mantelpiece.
“Don’t let’s part like that, Barty, dearest.”
“Like what?”
“In bitterness.”
She made to put her arms round his neck, but he drew back.
“Don’t let’s part like that, either.”
She let her arms fall to her sides. “You think I’m beastly, I know, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want that to happen.”
Bartels sighed and shook his head impatiently.
“I think you might have let me know a little earlier, that’s all.”
He was beginning to feel the panic rising inside him, in recurring waves; rising and subsiding, then rising again. Provided Beatrice adhered to her plans, he had time to get back. But he had to leave at once to be on the safe side. He had to go, now, without delay.
His emotions were confused, the pain caused by Lorna’s decision was anaesthetized by the fear that Beatrice might die for nothing, and the shock of Lorna’s words was deadened by the urgent need to get back to London as fast as he could.
Deep down, he was bitter and hurt, but those feelings were temporarily submerged beneath the turmoil of other emotions. He resented now every minute he had to spend in the house. He glanced at the clock. It was 9.10. An hour and a half. Less, to be safe.
He moved towards the door. He moved slowly, because the position was in one respect as it had been earlier: he could not afford to act unnaturally.
At the door, he turned. Lorna was standing in the middle of the room, looking after him.
“Let’s pretend I’m nipping down to the local to buy a bottle of gin,” he said. “Let’s make it easy, like that.”
His hand was on the door-knob when a thought occurred to him, and he paused, and came back into the room, and stood staring at the carpet, while the blood rushed into his face, as it always did when he was suffering from a sudden shock.
She had a habit of keeping his letters, and he had sent her a great many. He was trying to think quickly, to remember any phrase or phrases he may have written which, if the worst came to the worst, would sound damning in a court of law.
For a few seconds all he could think was: Thompson and Bywaters, Mrs Thompson, Frederick Bywaters, what had she written that had sounded so damning in court? Glass, it was something to do with glass. “I have tried the ground glass in his food, but it didn’t work,” something like that. Dramatizing herself, some said.
Her letters were found in his seachest, or somewhere. Both were hanged. His thoughts raced on. They put a white bag over your head, so that you felt all shut in, suffocating, worse than being in a locked room or a dark tunnel. He’d shout and struggle if they tried to do that to him, and it’d all be sordid and undignified.
A wave of claustrophobia swept over him, so that perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he had to clench his fists and breathe deeply, until, little by little, he could force his thoughts back to the letters he had written to Lorna.
Lorna Dickson stared at him. “Are you feeling all right, Barty?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m all right. Just let me think for one moment.”
She said nothing, but moved over to the side table and poured out a small glass of brandy. She brought it over to him, but he only said:
“No, no, thank you. Not that. Just let me think clearly, Lorna. Clearly, just for a minute.”
But there was nothing in his letters. He was sure of that. There was no reason why there should be. What could there be? He hardly ever mentioned Beatrice in his letters.
He sought to concentrate his mind more narrowly upon recent letters-letters from Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, the south coast.
What had he written from Manchester, where he had bought the altrapeine? There was a mention of Beatrice in that letter, a reference to a talk with Lorna about telling Beatrice the truth, asking her to release him. It was before he had made up his mind to act differently. Only he hadn’t made it as clear as that in the letter.
Then he remembered the words he had used, and the significance of them again sent the blood rushing to his face.
“About Beatrice,” he had written, “I shall arrive at the cottage tomorrow evening. We shall be alone this weekend. A good opportunity to do it.”
And now he remembered another, an earlier one, written from Cardiff. Sometime ago now; but that didn’t matter, that didn’t matter at all, that merely tended to show how long a time he had been premeditating it all: “I will spend the first part of the evening with you, my beloved, and from you I will draw the strength to enable me to do that which we both know has to be done sometime.”
He sat down on the arm of an easy chair and covered his face with his hands. Lorna came to his side and put her arm once more round his shoulders.
“What is it, Barty?”
He put his hands down, and got up and moved to the mantelpiece, and stood there irresolutely, still trying to think of other references, still trying to decide what to do.
There was at least one other reference, but he couldn’t exactly recall it, except to remember that he had thanked her for reassuring him that he would be justified in doing what he contemplated.
All were references to the talk which at one time he thought he would have with Beatrice; each and every one, taken in conjunction with other factors, was enough to sway the minds of a jury; enough to implicate Lorna as well as himself.
They hanged Mrs Thompson. What of Lorna? What chance does “the other woman” have in cases like this?
Counsel in court. Bewigged, hard, implacable Counsel. Hitching up his gown, smiling, self-confident.
“You have, then, members of the jury, ample evidence that the death of Mrs Bartels was calculated to further the sordid plans of both the accused.
“You have evidence that Mrs Bartels died from the effects of a poison which it is extremely difficult to detect, the symptoms of which, but for the praiseworthy vigilance of the local practitioner, might easily have been confused with those indicating coronary thrombosis.
“You have the evidence of the Manchester chemist that a man, whom he has identified as the prisoner Bartels, bought altrapeine in his shop, that he had removed his glasses to make himself less readily identified, and that he signed the poisons book using the name and address of a perfectly respectable Leeds businessman who bore no resemblance to the prisoner, and has never bought altrapeine in his life.
“And you have those highly significant remarks in his letters to the woman Lorna Dickson: ‘We shall be alone this weekend. A good opportunity to do it.’ And again: ‘from you I will draw the strength to enable me to do that which we both know has to be done sometime.’ Note the words, please: that which we both know has to be done. Ample evidence, I submit, that the woman Dickson knew that this horrible crime was going to take place.”
The witness Miss Latimer. The hotel bartender. Agitated and distressed.
And on and on and on.
Nobody would put anything but the most sordid constructions on his love for Lorna. Nobody would believe that it was love and not sensual lust which had prompted the crime.
Bartels swung round from the fire. It was 9.20 now. He said abruptly:
“Lorna, my dear, may I have back the letters I wrote to you-now?”
Lorna said: “Of course you can have them back. But you don’t want them tonight, surely?”
“Wouldn’t it be better?”
“What do you want to do with them? Burn them, I suppose?”
“It is better for both of us to have them out of the way.”
Lorna smiled faintly. “You are being very practical, Barty.” She thought for a moment and added: “Won’t you trust me to burn them for you? Or post them to you at your office, if you wish?”
“It’s the sort of thing one can forget,” said Bartels, trying to keep his voice steady. “It might be better if you gave them to me now, Lorna. If you don’t mind, that is.”
“My dear, they are all over the place. Some in the bureau, some in the drawer of my dressing table, all over the place.”
Bartels thought: Ten minutes to collect them, or fifteen minutes, or perhaps more. And then no guarantee that he had them all, that he had the important ones. What was the good of it? Better to go now, and drive fast. Already ten minutes had gone by.
“You don’t think I’m going to blackmail you with them, do you, Barty?” Lorna spoke jestingly, trying to lift the tension which had settled in the room.
But he answered her seriously. “No.” He shook his head. “No, I know you wouldn’t do that. No, it’s not that at all.”
He couldn’t press the matter any further. Apart from the time factor, it would look peculiar. He felt that already he had gone further than he should have done.
He looked at her helplessly, his brown eyes worried behind the old-fashioned spectacles, his hair standing up slightly on the crown of his head. His face, with the wide mouth and thin straight nose, normally sallow, was flushed by the whisky he had drunk, and the heat of the room, and his state of excitement.
“Never mind,” he said slowly. “Don’t let’s bother about them tonight.”
“I’ll post them to you tomorrow, Barty-to your office, by registered post, marked private and personal, shall I?” She tried to seem brisk and normal.
“No,” said Bartels quickly. “Don’t bother to do that. Burn them, Lorna, tomorrow morning. The whole lot, without fail.”
Lorna nodded. “As you wish.”
Bartels looked once round the room, and then at Lorna Dickson. She stood under the chandelier, and returned his gaze. For fully a minute they stared at each other, sad-eyed, uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what to say now that the moment had come to part.
Bartels felt little bitterness now. Numbly, through the pain and the eddies of fear in the back of his mind, he realized that this was the end of his search. Whatever happened, there would be no love in his life of the kind of which he had dreamed as a boy, because there never would be and never could be another Lorna.
Watching Lorna, he began to doubt for the first time whether in fact she was, or ever had been, truly in love with him. Else why had she shown comparatively little emotion this evening?
Surely, if one were in love, as he was, you forged ahead irrespective of other people’s feelings, ruthlessly, driven on by a fire which nothing could withstand. You cared nothing for anybody, you were prepared to strike, and even to destroy as he had planned to destroy.
That was it, that was the test: you were prepared to destroy. Lorna wouldn’t go even halfway with him on that score.
Illogically, he felt irritated at her calm. Childishly, he thought that she might at least pretend to feel more emotion. Petulantly, he thought that greater signs of distress were even his just due.
But he said nothing.
He turned round suddenly, and opened the drawing-room door and went into the hall and put on his coat and hat and gloves, and walked slowly to the front door.
Lorna followed him to the front door, and the corgi dog, thinking that a walk might be in the offing, was at her heels.
He opened the door and the dog went out. Bartels paused.
“Well, what are you going to do now?” he asked inconsequentially. “Going to bed?”
She nodded. “I’m tired.”
He pulled out his cigarette case, and offered her one, and when she refused, lit one himself.
“I’ll wait till you’re upstairs-as usual.”
It was an old custom. When she was upstairs she would open her window and wave to him.
Only now did she show any real emotion. She tried to smile. Her lips trembled. Bartels looked quickly away, and walked through the doorway.
“Well, I’m off,” he said. Outside, he turned round and said: “Well, goodbye, Lorna.” He hesitated a second; he wanted to add: “Goodbye, darling.” But he didn’t.
She stood in the doorway while the corgi walked past her into the warmth of the house. She raised her hand and waved; it was a confused, feeble little movement. She said nothing.
That was the last picture he had of her, standing in the doorway while the corgi dog walked past her. Then she closed the door.
He walked to the little garden gate and waited as usual. The light went out in the porch. The light went out in the drawing room, and in the hall, and he thought: She is going up the stairs now.
The light went on in her bedroom.
He waited for half a minute, wondering whether she would open the window; holding his cigarette ready to wave to her, as he had always done in the past.
But the window remained shut. A sob of self-pity rose in his throat.
He drove along the lane as fast as possible in third gear, to warm up the engine, swung into the main road, and changed into top.
Where the road filtered into the main London-Guildford road he slowed down, dropped into Cobham, drove along the winding road through Cobham, and then accelerated up to fifty.
The snow still lay on the grass verges and partly cloaked the hedges, but the continual traffic had mostly cleared the road itself. He drove with the car astride one of the lanes of catseyes, and the long lines of little reflector studs, looming up endlessly out of the darkness ahead, threw back the light of his headlamps so that he had the impression of a continuous stream of tracer bullets entering the body of the car, entering his own body and causing the pain which dragged interminably at his inside.
There was not a great deal of traffic about. The night air and the temperature, still below freezing point, had kept most people indoors. But now and again he passed a car, and occasionally a coach, the windows misted up, the interior alight and suggestive of warmth and human company. Bartels, in the dark interior of his car, alone with his fear, thought again of the letters he had written.
“Never put anything on paper, old boy,” that’s what they had said, the knowing ones in the Army; the ones who boasted of their conquests, in the Mess; the love-spivs, and fly Casanovas, the speculators in fornication, and the gamblers in the dicey game of adultery. “Tell ’em what you like, but don’t put it on paper, old boy…no letters, old boy, no letters…women always keep ’em…fatal.” The damnable thing was that they were right, and he had been wrong.
A good opportunity to do it. To do what? Murder, of course, that’s what any jury would say. That which we both know has to be done. What? Murder, obviously: he and Lorna in the dock, Lorna looking at the judge, unafraid. Blue-grey eyes and firm chin. Un-afraid, because she believed in British justice.
No innocent person is ever hanged in England, people said.
Better that a hundred guilty persons should escape than that one innocent person be punished unjustly. That’s what people said.
Justice, British justice, world renowned, and a jury, doing its best, but swayed by the instincts and prejudices inherited over the centuries: respectable men and women trying to rid their minds of the knowledge that Lorna was the third point in the eternal triangle.
What chance had “the other woman” on a murder charge before ten respectable men and two respectable housewives?
Before he found the answer, he saw the dark car as it slid past him, and took no notice of it, but pulled further in to the side of the road to let it go by. He always kept an eye on his driving mirror, and he had seen no car behind him.
It must have been following him without sidelights, or else it must have swooped upon him out of a side road where it had been lurking.
The bell throbbed loud and clear as the dark car passed, and speeded up, and then drew in to the side of the road some yards ahead. Now he saw the POLICE sign, illuminated above the roof, and a hand waving him to slow down and stop.
So soon, Beatrice dead so soon.
But it wasn’t fair. They shouldn’t have known he was on this road. Even if they had found her, and had found the number of his car, they shouldn’t have known he was on this road. They shouldn’t have been able to diagnose the cause of death so soon.
A question leaped at him out of the darkness, suddenly and without warning. What proof was there that Beatrice, a human being, would react to the drug in the same way as the dog Brutus? He gripped the steering wheel to fight down his fears.
Subsidiary questions crowded in upon him. Supposing the book on poisons had been wrong? Supposing she had managed to reach the phone before she lost consciousness? People react differently to drugs.
Supposing she had had her moment of fear after all, her seconds of terror; like the attack of palpitations, only ten times worse, and in her panic had called out his name: “Barty!” Perhaps she had called a second time, instinctively, even though aware that he was not there: “Barty! I feel so queer, Barty!”
Calling to him for help, calling to her murderer, in implicit faith, and staggering to dial 999, and dying in fear and pain after all, like the butterfly in the flames.
His heart throbbed in his throat. He had an absurd urge to ignore the signal, to sweep past the police, and on for a few yards, and then make a wild break across the fields.
But he pulled up behind the police car, and lowered the window by the driving seat, and sat waiting while a wave of nausea swept over him. Two officers got out of the police car and walked towards him. One stood in front of the car, and wrote down his registration number in a book. The other came up to the car, and bent down and put his face through the window.
“Are you aware that you have no rear light, sir?”
“No rear light?” whispered Bartels. “No rear light?”
“No, sir. Perhaps you would care to get out and confirm what I have said?”
They want to see if I’m sober, thought Bartels, they want to see me walk to the rear of the car, and see whether I walk properly. Perhaps he smelt the whisky on my breath. I must be careful not to slip on the icy road as I get out; slip and fall to the ground; I must be careful not to slip as I walk to the rear of the car; I must walk carefully, but not too carefully; I mustn’t hold on to the side of the car, even though I might normally do so on a road like this. That would look bad. If they take me in charge, it is the end. And I must not enunciate my words too carefully when I talk to them. That would be bad, too. Mustn’t speak too carefully, and mustn’t speak thickly. If I’m arrested, Beatrice will die, be consumed in the flames as the butterfly was burned in the grate.
Bartels opened the door and got out. He walked slowly but steadily to the rear of the car.
The police officer pointed. “See, sir? No light.”
Bartels gave the light a bang with his hand, and the bulb lit up.
“That’s better,” said the police officer.
“Bad connection,” said Bartels, and smiled.
“You were, of course, committing an offence, sir; you realize that?”
Bartels nodded. “I suppose so.”
“Have you your driving licence with you, sir?”
“You’re not going to report me for this, surely?”
“Have you your driving licence with you, sir?” the officer said again.
“Yes.”
Bartels felt in his pocket and took out the licence. The officer examined it, slowly and methodically, and entered some particulars in a notebook.
Oh, God, prayed Bartels, make him get a move on, make him hurry up: the minutes are passing. Oh, God, if You exist, make this man hurry.
The police officer handed back the licence. Bartels turned to get into his car again. The police officer said:
“Have you your certificate of insurance with you, sir?”
“I have, I assure you. And it’s in order. Must you see it? I am in rather a hurry.”
In rather a hurry, that was bad. He shouldn’t have said that. That was the sort of thing which is remembered. And on the night in question, members of the jury, he was seen to be in a distressed and agitated condition, both by the bartender of the hotel in Cobham, and by a police patrol who chanced to stop him. Bad, bad.
He heard the officer say: “May I see it, sir?”
He took out his wallet and extracted the certificate of insurance. The man examined it and handed it back.
“Where are you coming from, sir?”
“Near Woking.”
“And your destination?”
“London.”
“That’s all, thank you, sir. Good night.”
But from the other side of the car, the second officer suddenly said:
“Just one moment, sir. You don’t appear to have a roadfund licence, properly displayed on the windscreen.”
“It’s fallen off,” said Bartels.
He pulled open the door of the car and frantically felt for it on the floor by the front passenger seat.
“It’s in a holder which is attached to the windscreen by suction, and it’s an old one, and the rubber has perished, and it falls off now and again.”
He continued to grope in the darkness. “Here it is,” he said at length.
The second officer examined it carefully.
“You know it’s an offence to drive a vehicle without a roadfund licence properly displayed on the windscreen, sir?”
“Yes, but I had it. I had it with me. And it’s in order.”
“It wasn’t displayed, sir.”
“No,” said Bartels. “It wasn’t displayed.” His voice shook a little. How long had they wasted? Five minutes, ten minutes?
“I’ll get it seen to,” added Bartels humbly. “I’ll get it seen to, tomorrow.”
“Better get a new one, sir,” said the second officer. “That’d be the best thing in the long run, sir. Get a new one.”
“I’ll get a new one tomorrow,” said Bartels desperately. “Is that all?”
“That’s all, sir. Good night.”
“Good night,” said Bartels.
He climbed back into the driving seat. The officers walked back to their car. Bartels waited until the police car had started, watched it, as it slid swiftly forward, and saw the tail light grow smaller in the distance.
He switched on his own engine, and drove on. It had begun to snow again, not continuously, but intermittently. Bartels switched on the windscreen wiper, and noted with relief that it was working again.
He drove more slowly for a mile or two, while he sorted things out in his mind. The incident had shaken him. He tried to think whether he had said or done anything he should not have done, apart from showing some impatience.
He didn’t like their questions about where he was coming from, and what was his destination. He had told Beatrice he was going to Colchester. Supposing she had mentioned it to somebody else, and that came out, combined with the fact that he had now been officially noted as being on the road from Woking?
Why had he told her that lie? It was stupid and pointless. He could as well have said his dinner was in Woking.
One after another they cropped up, he thought, the unforeseeable little things which you cannot reasonably cater for. Everything seems simple and straightforward at first, but it isn’t.
Sin is not simple. Virtue is simple but not easy, and sin is easy but not simple. Sin is tortuous and twisted, involving lies, and lies within lies, and the bending and warping of the conscience, and subterfuges and concealments, and the ever-present necessity to be on your guard, to watch your every action, to rein in your tongue, to act normally when you yearn to show emotion; only to discover that in acting, as you thought, in a normal manner, you have in fact acted abnormally.
He was halfway between Cobham and Esher, and saw by the dashboard clock that it was 9.40. He began to calculate.
The Kingston Bypass took thirteen minutes, at night, he knew that one; from the London end of the bypass to his flat took not more than twenty minutes, that totalled thirty-three minutes.
He had to be back by 10.30 at the latest, which meant that he had seventeen minutes to reach Esher, pass through Esher, and reach the bypass which was a couple of minutes’ drive further on.
He had ample time, provided Beatrice adhered to her routine, and at the moment when he came to this conclusion he knew without a shadow of doubt that he would not reach his flat, after all, not by 10.30 or even by 11.30.
Something would stop him.
Something would reach out of the night around him, something which was watching him now, with a laugh in its throat; observing him drop speed from fifty miles an hour to forty-five, and then to forty; smiling to see him peer through the windscreen at the road ahead.
It, or its minion, lurked in every side turning, ready to shoot out at him in splintering collision; sat at the wheel of each oncoming car, drunk and unfit to be driving; laid its hand upon the over-burdened boughs of the snow-covered trees under which he passed, ready to drop a branch in his path.
It wasn’t even snowing now, and he stopped the windscreen wiper, and the road ahead lay clear and white in the moonlight, but Bartels knew that that made no difference to the inevitable end. He dropped speed still further, to thirty-five miles an hour, and slowed down at each side turning; and hugged the side of the road when a lorry rumbled up from behind and passed him and thundered on.
He drove carefully, tense and alert, but he knew it made no difference because he knew now that the something which would reach out for him would not take such obvious forms as he had imagined.
He knew it, because each time he took some precaution he heard it giggle delightedly in his ear, like a sadistic young schoolboy torturing a frog.
He knew it would not operate through an engine defect, or a mechanical defect of any kind; nor through a puncture, or a tyre burst. Nothing so prosaic as that.
He crawled through Esher at twenty miles an hour, and when he had passed through the town, and came to the first traffic roundabout on the way back, and joined the bypass, he felt better.
His nerve returned, and he increased speed.
There was no more giggling in his ear; the schoolboy stood back, the frog made off afresh. There was nothing to fear now, except time.
The bypass stretched ahead, broad, sometimes gently curving, well illuminated in the appropriate places, and properly controlled by traffic lights and roundabouts. There were no side turnings where danger could lurk, and ample room for cars to pass.
When he came to the double carriageway, he increased speed to fifty. He felt ashamed of the time he had wasted through his overcautious driving, but not unhopeful that he would arrive home with a quarter of an hour or more to spare.
Beatrice rarely started going to bed before 10.30 or 10.45; sometimes not till 11.15. He pictured himself going into the flat, greeting her as she sat by the fire having her final cup of weak China tea. Then casually going into the bedroom, and taking the bottle from the bedside.
After that, he would have to throw the altrapeine down the drain in the bathroom, and wash out the bottle and throw it in the dustbin, or put it in his overcoat pocket; it would be of no further importance, anyway.
The one he had bought at lunch time, the one containing the remains of pure stomach powder, he would leave by the bedside. If she was in the bedroom he would announce that he had left the dinner early because he had not been feeling very well, and ask if he could have the remains of her medicine. She would certainly agree. He smiled at how easy it would be.
The frog was getting uppish, now.
The path of sin was not so tortuous after all, it was straightening out nicely, and as to the future, as to Lorna, that, too, could be considered in due course. He passed the second and third roundabouts, thinking of sin, and the Seven Deadly Sins, which are said to be Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Gluttony, Anger, Envy, and Sloth; and he tried to discover which it was that had led him to his present position.
He was not proud; indeed, in some ways he was rather meek. He did not covet Lorna, because covetousness involved desiring that which belonged to somebody else, and Lorna belonged to nobody.
He did not lust after her, either; his feelings were too gentle, too tender, and above all too protective; and the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins did not seem to come into the picture.
What, then, had been the driving force?
He wondered if the secret lay in some sort of secondary products of the Seven Deadly Sins, and toyed with the thought in a morbid desire to lay bare the basic defect in his character.
He tried to persuade himself that in wishing to shelter Lorna from the difficulties of the world, he was in reality wishing to see himself as the knight errant, the recipient of her gratitude and praise; a desire which was possibly a watery by-product of pride and lust. By the bonds of marriage, he belonged to Beatrice, yet he wished to belong to Lorna: was this, in some twisted, inverted form, a manifestation of covetousness? He shook his head. It was all far-fetched and unconvincing.
Far ahead, he could see the lights of the fifth roundabout, and glanced at the clock and saw that he was now making good time.
He reverted to the consideration of lust, because it was something to do, something to keep his mind off what he might find when he got home.
Expressed in its simplest form the position was that he, Bartels, wanted a certain woman. To get her, he was prepared to kill. That was it, there you had it: you had to put from your mind the excuses, the consoling thoughts of doing things for Lorna’s good. You were not conscious of lust, of any overwhelming carnal desires, but the mere fact that you were prepared to kill to get her indicated that they were there in your subconscious.
But what of the much-extolled virtues of pity and mercy? If it were not for pity and mercy, he thought bitterly, I could have walked out on Beatrice like millions of other husbands have done in the past, and will do in the future.
The scandal would be short-lived, and you don’t go to prison for it. They don’t hang you for it. But they hang you if you kill your wife just because you have so much pity in you that you cannot leave her in loneliness.
If things went wrong, he would be ranked with Crippen. He would be portrayed as a callous monster in the eyes of posterity. But who knows what went on in the mind of the little man called Crippen? Who knows? thought Bartels again.
He was drawing near to the fifth roundabout when he thought of how he would feel if he were put in prison, perhaps not even hanged, just put in prison, for years, behind locked doors.
Shut in, in a tiny cell, for hours on end each day and night. So that the walls pressed in on you, and the ceiling pressed down upon you, nearer and nearer, and closer and closer, and you could bang on the door and break the skin on your hands, and scream yourself hoarse, and it did not avail. And when the lights went out, there was the darkness, thick and cloying, and that suffocated you; and what with the darkness and the walls, you knew you were not really in a prison at all.
You were buried alive.
You were in your coffin, deep under the earth, slowly suffocating to death, in the darkness and the loneliness and the silence of the earth. Nobody would release you because nobody could hear you, and everybody thought you were dead, and nobody knew the doctor had made a mistake, and you had merely been in a cataleptic trance; feeling yourself being put in a shroud, and hearing the coffin lid come down, and feeling the swaying motion of the coffin-bearers, and the sound of the earth falling remorse-lessly above your head; falling, and falling, and falling, more and ever more of it, till the sounds grew fainter and only the silence remained.
He was shivering again now, fighting against the old, the dark shocking terrors, his hands wet upon the wheel.
He was near to the roundabout, when the black cat, emblem of good luck, but young and inexperienced, ran swiftly across the road before his car. Its ears were laid back, its tail arched like a squirrel’s.
For a second he had glimpsed the young cat’s eyes, green fire in the light of his headlamps, and then it was in front of him.
Bartels didn’t run it over.
He might have done so, had he had time to think it all out, but he acted instinctively, as he was bound to do, in the only way in which he, Philip Bartels, could have been expected to act.
Bartels braked.
If there had not been any snow, it might have been all right. If the coach, approaching from the right, with its lighted interior, had been a few minutes earlier, or later, it might not have been so bad, either.
As the car swung in a circle, darted sideways, hit the TURN LEFT sign, he heard the screaming of the coach brakes, and saw it swerve ineffectually, and crash with its fender into his own car, and felt the stab of pain in his side. It was only then that he felt afraid.
Even then it was only for a second.
He saw it looming over him, and heard the crash, and felt the pain, and hazily noted the strange stillness which followed for a brief moment the noise of the impact.
Before he lost consciousness he heard himself murmur: “Beatrice,” and was faintly surprised.
Extract from a police report prepared by Inspector Macdonald, of the Metropolitan Police Force, and shown to me, Peter Harding, in confidence, at a later date:
On 26 February, at about 10.40 p.m., as a result of a telephone message to the effect that Beatrice Bartels, a married woman, of 34 Alvington Court, W8, was in danger of unknowingly taking a draught of medicine containing some poisonous substance, namely altrapeine, or that she may already have taken such medicine, I proceeded to the address in question, accompanied by Sergeant Wellings of this station, where I observed through a glass panel in the front door that a light appeared to be burning in the flat.
I rang the bell and knocked, but received no answer.
In view of the nature of the message which had been received, I instructed Sergeant Wellings to force an entry. This was effected by breaking a portion of the glass panel, and releasing the latch from inside.
An inspection of the flat showed that it was empty.
At 10.55 p.m. a woman who subsequently proved to be Mrs Bartels entered the flat, stating that she had been to the cinema and had left the light burning to discourage burglars.
I said to her: “A man called Philip Bartels, who states that he is your husband, has been involved in a motor-car accident and is lying seriously injured in Richmond Hospital. This man has caused a message to be sent to the police to the effect that a poisonous substance, namely altrapeine, has been introduced into some medicine which he anticipated you would take before retiring to bed this evening.”
Mrs Bartels replied: “There must be some mistake. I do not understand.”
I then said to her: “Did you, in fact, intend to take some medicine before retiring this evening?”
She replied: “Yes.”
I asked her where this medicine was to be found, and she replied: “It is beside my bed.”
I went with her into a bedroom, and on a table by the side of the bed I saw a bottle containing a small amount of white powder. I informed Mrs Bartels that it would be necessary for me to remove the bottle and contents for examination, and she replied: “Is that really necessary?”
I informed her again that it was necessary, and she made no reply. I then asked Mrs Bartels if she wanted to visit her husband in hospital, in view of his condition, and she replied: “Later, perhaps. Not just now.” She was in a distressed state.
I left Sergeant Wellings with Mrs Bartels, and returned to this station, where, in view of the verbal statement already made by the husband, Philip Bartels, I made arrangements for police officers to attend Richmond Hospital with a view to taking any further statement from Bartels which he might care to make, and should he be in a position to make one.
Bartels lapsed into unconsciousness again during the night, but at 6.30 a.m., approximately, he recovered consciousness and made the statement which is attached to this report, but which he was not in a fit enough condition to sign.
Thus far, the police report was accurate. But the rest of it was inaccurate, on one particular, at least, which is why I said, at the beginning of this record of the affair, that one other person thought he knew all about the case, whereas in fact he didn’t. Inspector Macdonald thought he had it all tidied up in his file, in view of Bartels’ statement.
He was wrong.