Had Bartels been a normally strong-looking fellow, I do not think I would have acted as I did, but he looked pathetic in that hospital bed, with the big, healthy detective sitting by the bedside. They had pulled the bed somewhat away from the wall, so that the detective sat discreetly behind the line of Bartels’ vision.
They had put a screen round his bed, too, and he lay there with his head and chest and left arm swathed in bandages.
He had, they told me, a fractured base of the skull, together with two broken ribs and considerable bruising and laceration of the head and right side.
There was a risk of haemorrhage of blood to the brain with fatal results, and he would be in danger for some days.
“He would not normally be allowed visitors,” said the ward sister, in a cool, tinny voice. “However, he seemed to be unable to settle down until he had seen you.” She looked at me disapprovingly and added: “You mustn’t stay more than a few minutes.”
I nodded, and walked down the ward to the bed where he lay.
He opened his eyes when I placed my hand on his, and smiled his wide, thin-lipped smile.
“This is a pretty pickle,” he whispered, and I saw the police officer lean forward, notebook in hand, to catch his words.
“Get better,” I said. “Then we’ll sort things out.”
“It’ll take some sorting out.”
His spectacles had been smashed in the accident, and he gazed up at me short-sightedly. For lack of anything better to say, I repeated: “Get better, first, Barty.”
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and I wondered if he had fallen asleep. But he opened them after a while and said:
“I wonder if Beatrice will ever understand. I don’t suppose so. Poor Beatrice.”
I sought round desperately for something to say to distract his thoughts from Beatrice.
“I’m afraid your car’s a bit of a mess,” I said inanely.
He smiled faintly. “So am I.”
“You’ll be all right,” I said.
He closed his eyes again, and his mind reverted to Beatrice, and when he spoke his voice was so low that I joined the police officer in bending down to catch his words.
“Tell her, try to explain to her, that I only acted out of pity. Didn’t want her to suffer, you know.” He sighed and added: “Pity. Bad thing, pity. Much better to be normal, like you, Pete.”
“I’ll tell her,” I answered. “I’ll tell her, Barty. She’ll understand. She’s a very intelligent girl.”
He nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Very intelligent girl, Pete. Tell her what I said.”
He remained quiet for fully half a minute, then sighed again, and added: “But I doubt if she will understand. It’s a bit too much to ask.”
I saw the police officer scribbling in his notebook.
A nurse put her head round the door, and made signs that I would have to leave. I put my hand on his again.
“I must go now, Barty. You’ve got to have plenty of rest.”
He suddenly opened his eyes, then, and stared at me.
To my horror I realized that they were filled with fear, and his pallor had been transformed by a sudden rush of blood to his face. I had seen him look like that before.
There was the same wild look as I had seen when they threw the rug over his head at the picnic at the chateau; the same terrified look which Mary, the American girl, must have seen the evening when we had locked them both into a bedroom; and the same piteous, frightened expression as I had seen, in those almost forgotten schooldays, when we had pushed him under the vaulting horse in the gymnasium during the singing lessons.
But I didn’t think of all that then. I only saw the terror. I didn’t know what was the matter. I didn’t think he was afraid of dying, and I was right, but I couldn’t guess what was in his mind. I increased my pressure on his hand.
“What’s up, Barty?” I asked, softly.
“Locked doors,” he whispered.
I looked round. There were no locked doors, as far as I could see. There was only a screen round the bed, and even then there was a wide gap between the screen and the wall.
“They won’t understand,” he murmured.
“Who won’t?”
He shook his head, while the fear burned and blazed in his eyes, and I felt his hand grow damp and hot in mine.
“They’ll put me in prison, Pete.”
I saw the police officer begin to scribble again in his notebook. “Locked doors, and pitch darkness at night. I can’t stand it, Pete. I’d rather die than that.”
I saw the police officer bending nearer, anxious not to miss a word. I felt Bartels’ hand beneath my own begin to clench and twist and pull at the bedclothes. I gripped it harder still, and stared at him groping for something to say.
As I searched in my mind for some words of comfort, I heard him murmur to me to bend closer. I put my head down, and he said:
“Put your ear against my lips, Pete.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the police officer draw as close as he could. But Bartels only said five words: “Altrapeine-please, Pete. Please, Pete.”
I raised my head, and caught the police officer’s eye, and saw the question forming on his lips.
“All right,” I said in a normal, loud voice. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”
The fear slowly seeped from Bartels’ face. Now there was only a mute, sad appeal in his eyes. I got up, and picked up my hat.
“Tomorrow?” murmured Bartels.
“I’ll come and see you tomorrow, if you’re well enough,” I replied in the soothing tones one uses to sick people. “Now get some rest, Barty.”
I went out, round the screen, and had begun to walk down the ward, when I heard footsteps behind me, and felt a hand on my arm. I looked round and saw it was the police officer.
“May I have a word with you outside, sir?”
“If you wish.”
We walked to the door, and stopped in the passage outside the ward.
“I must ask you what he said to you, sir.”
He stood in front of me, tall and solidly built, healthily red in the face. His hair was cut very short above the ears, his brown eyes were alert and restless. They were the eyes of a person who is accustomed to watch the faces of others for reactions, for the telltale flicker of the eyes, the movement of the mouth which indicates dismay; the eyes of a man accustomed to dominate; eyes which did not waver, but nevertheless moved and roamed over the face of the person to whom he was talking. They were not exactly hostile, but neither were they sympathetic or friendly.
I thought, by way of contrast, of Bartels’ eyes, so full of fear, so filled with silent appeal. I had a swift mental vision of a host of other eyes, hard, implacable eyes gazing at Bartels in the years to come. Police officers’ eyes, warders’ eyes, newspapermen’s eyes in court, warders’ eyes again, fellow convicts’ eyes. Gazing at him as he panicked in his cell, gazing at him in the dock, and again, through the years, in his cell.
I think it was at that moment that I decided to do as Bartels wished.
“It was nothing to do with your investigation,” I answered, and made as if to pass him; but he stood solidly in my way.
“I see, sir.” He tapped his teeth with the chewed end of a pencil.
He made no move. “Well?” I said.
“I take it that in that case you would have no objection to telling me what he said, sir.”
Again I was conscious of his eyes, unbelieving and unyielding, roaming over my face. I react rather brusquely to that sort of thing.
“Actually, I would,” I said abruptly.
“May I ask why, sir?” Police officers always seem to call you “sir” a great deal. It doesn’t mean a thing.
“For personal reasons.” I saw his hard mouth tighten.
“There is an offence known as obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty.”
I laughed, then, at this bluff, and saw his eyes flinch.
“Who is obstructing whom at this moment?” He ignored the question.
“I take it, sir, that you decline to say what he told you, sir?”
We looked at each other for a full ten seconds, eye to eye, in silence. I sighed.
“All right, if you really insist. Do you?”
“It would be helpful, sir.”
The expression on his face relaxed. I could read his thoughts as though he had spoken them aloud: firmness, he was thinking, firmness-that’s what counts. They always come clean.
“He asked me to pray for him,” I said. “He asked me to go into a church and pray for him.”
I went into my darkroom, and stared at the row of bottles, and in particular at the altrapeine bottle. I knew, of course, little about the case, except that it was known that something of a poisonous nature had been placed in Beatrice’s medicine bottle, and that Bartels had apparently put it there. So much the Inspector had told me, edging round the subject in the way the police do when they are not certain of the reliability of the person they are questioning.
Now I could guess what the poison was. Later, when I had become very friendly with the Inspector, and read Bartels’ statement, I learnt where and how he bought it.
It was eight o’clock in the morning when the Inspector had called. He had taken his statement from Beatrice Bartels and he had then come to me. He had asked for the names of any of Bartels’ friends, and mine had headed the list.
I told him a great deal about Bartels, but nothing about Lorna Dickson. I guessed Bartels would not have mentioned her. I saw no reason why I should. Beatrice had not died. There was no call for society to revenge itself for a murder which never took place, or for Lorna to be involved.
Maybe, I was wrong, but that is the way I thought.
I saw the Inspector inching nearer to the subject of a mistress as a motive, and mentally stood back and admired his technique.
First, he asked what particular friends might help to throw any light on the affair. I told him that I did not think any of Bartels’ friends could.
Then he said that doubtless there would be one or two broken hearts in the province if Bartels died, and when I looked at him and pretended to seem puzzled, he said slyly: “Well, you know what they say about commercial travellers, sir. Not that I’d be one to frown on a little innocent larking now and again.”
When that failed, he asked point blank if Bartels had any liaison outside the bonds of marriage. But I was ready for him by then.
“None, as far as I know,” I said, looking him full in the face. “None at all. I always considered him to be devoted to his wife.”
So after my visit to the hospital I stood gazing at the altrapeine bottle in the darkroom, pondering that which Bartels had planned. Although some time had elapsed, I still felt numbed by the shock of events. As yet they made little sense, because I had not yet understood the fatal weakness which was his downfall.
I saw a gentle, kindly little man who had plotted a ruthless, diabolical murder, and the apparent and appalling contradiction bewildered me.
Only later was I able to realize that, in fact, there was no contradiction at all; that it was pity, kindness, and humanity which drove Bartels to his doom. Without those three virtues, without their unbalancing effect upon a sensitive and delicate mind, there would have been no attempted murder.
At that time, however, it all seemed so unnecessary.
I could see no reason why he could not just leave Beatrice; those of us who are in the hotel business are inclined to regard such actions as unfortunate, perhaps, but commonplace enough.
I had not had time, either, to look back over the years and see how the lack of love in his youth had made him so crave it in later years that he was prepared to kill to win it.
After a while, I went out of the darkroom, but I did not take the poison bottle with me. I went out of my flat, and along to the reference room of the public library, and there made certain researches among the medical books.
In the end, I came to the same conclusion about altrapeine as that at which Bartels had arrived. I went back to the flat, and heated up some of the coffee left over from breakfast, and took it into the drawing room.
I drank three cups of coffee, black and very sweet, one after the other, sipping them slowly, and trying to erase certain pictures from my mind, but at the end of the third cup, I knew that I would not succeed.
I told myself that even in prison a man could receive expert psychological treatment. But cold reason could not efface the actualities I had seen. It could not wipe from the heart the distress caused by the wild, pitiful appeal which had flamed in the eyes of Bartels as he lay in the hospital bed, with the red-faced detective sitting by his side: the trapped bird, caught in the legal net, broadcasting, without any attempt at concealment, the waves of its fear, beating against the net, hopelessly and monstrously stripped of all dignity and pride.
What fears were these, and how incomprehensible to the normal person, that they should cause a man to lose his self-respect, cause his eyes to dilate wildly, and his face to flush, and his hand to crush and twist a counterpane!
I, who have been blessed by nature with a more stolid temperament, who have known but little fear in my life, tried in vain to capture a hint of such terrors.
I only knew they existed, because I had seen the look on Bartels’ face. I had seen some such look upon the face of a gravely wounded soldier before the doctor arrived with the merciful dose of morphine.
I saw no such release for Bartels.
Indeed, I saw no mercy for him at all, but only the seas of panic, and the long dark years in the long grey corridors; and the sense of the loss of Lorna Dickson; and the burden of the knowledge of failure.
I lit a cigarette and considered the practical side of the matter. I told myself that Bartels was a fool, and I was even more of a fool to risk disgrace and punishment for his sake.
Nevertheless, I fetched the altrapeine bottle and made my plans. They were simple enough.
I went to the hospital in the late afternoon of the following day, as the light was fading. The sister in charge informed me that Bartels had had a restless night, but that failing a sudden relapse his chance of recovery was reasonable.
The same detective was on duty, and he greeted me with a curt nod. I knew that this man was an antagonist, that I had to be careful of him, but I felt cool enough, and I held, in my left hand, the small flat paper packet, open at one end, so that its contents would slide forth easily.
I would like to be able to record that my last talk with Philip Bartels had a hidden drama unperceived by the detective with his mackintosh and his horrible notebook, and chewed pencil, and his hard, alert eyes, and his slightly protruding ears; that it contained obscure phrases of significance to both of us.
Such was not the case.
I sat by the side of his bed, on a hard chair.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
He nodded and smiled. “I’ve felt worse.”
“Is there anything you want, Barty? Fruit? Can you eat fruit?”
“Not yet,” he murmured. “No fruit yet.”
“Are they treating you well?”
“Quite well,” he murmured.
“It’s still bitterly cold outside,” I said. He nodded.
“And Beatrice?” he asked softly.
“I’ve not seen Beatrice yet. Her mother has come up.”
“Have any of the others heard?”
“Nobody,” I said. “Nobody at all.”
He seemed content, and closed his eyes for a while. The detective put his notebook down and relaxed. A gust of wind blew against the windows and rattled them, and the sound caused Bartels to open his eyes.
He said nothing, but held my eyes with his own. The detective, now that the conversation had lapsed, sat picking at a button on his mackintosh, inattentive and bored.
I had to know whether Bartels had changed his mind, and raised my eyebrows in silent question. Because of his short sight, I doubt if he saw, but he smiled slightly and nodded. He looked peaceful and contented, like a child who, after lamentations and protests, is now tucked up in bed and warm and reconciled. Indeed, he looked happier at that moment than I had seen him look for months. It was as though all his personal problems were resolved. Having no future he had no worries. He was about to leave the world, which had proved too much for him, and he was not sorry.
He raised his hand to his forehead, and then carelessly placed it near the side table, the forefinger pointing, as if by chance, to the plastic tumbler, containing water.
Now, for the first time, I felt tense and keyed up, I knew that Bartels would make the opening gambit, and that I would have to follow.
It came quite suddenly:
“Pete?”
“Yes,” I said, and saw the detective begin to pay attention again.
“Could you get me a little more water out of the tap?”
I got up and took the plastic tumbler. It was still half-full, and although the light in the room was heavily shaded, I placed my hand round the tumbler lest the detective should see the level of the water through the thin material.
I walked over to the handbasin and ran the water for a moment, keeping my left hand on the tap. I ran a little water into the mug, and tipped my left hand so that the white powder flowed into the mug.
I turned off the tap, and walked back to the bed.
“Are you sure you want a drink, Barty?”
He nodded. “If you don’t mind. I’m so sorry to trouble you,” he added. He put out his hand for the mug, but I shook my head.
“Let me hold it for you,” I said. I raised his head with my left hand, and put the tumbler to his lips. I was conscious of hearing the detective speak. I heard him above the beating of my heart, and was irritated; he said something about Bartels not being supposed to drink too much.
Bartels emptied the tumbler.
I said: “I’ll refill it, in case you need some more later.” I rinsed out the receptacle, twice, added some water, and replaced it on the side table.
“You shouldn’t let him drink all that,” said the detective peevishly.
“No,” I said. “No, perhaps I was wrong.”
Bartels looked up at me from his pillow. He said:
“I think perhaps you had better go, Pete. Thanks for everything. I feel a little tired. I think I’ll sleep.”
I stood up and looked down at him.
“Well, so long, Barty,” I said. “Good luck.”
He said nothing more, but lay with his eyes closed.
“Visits tire him,” said the detective, pulling a cheap, paperbacked edition of some novel from his mackintosh pocket and beginning to read. I doubt if he even saw Bartels die.
First I heard the sound of the Americans’ car on the distant Orleans-Blois highway, then the engine noise died away as it slowed to turn into the poplar drive, then the sound increased as it accelerated up the drive.
I could not see it at first, because the chateau lay between me and the drive, but eventually I saw the light from the headlamps reflected from the trees at the side of the house, and then, once again, there was only the soft moonlight.
I slipped deeper into the wood, and walked softly along the path which led past the chateau, and past the ruined tennis courts. Behind me I heard men talking and a woman laugh. I walked more quickly, and once, as something stirred in the undergrowth by the side of the path, I felt the gooseflesh again run over my skin.
I rounded each bend in the path with a conscious effort, each time afraid lest I should see before me a figure on the path. The sweet, nostalgic melancholy of the sunset hours had departed, and loneliness and apprehension had taken its place.
I wanted no more of the chateau, and knew that I would never visit it again. I had thought that it would hold for me nothing but the tender memories of youthful happiness, that here Bartels and I, and Beatrice, and Ingrid, and all the rest of that cheerful crowd could meet within the compass of my mind, and be reunited for an hour or so, and talk and walk and laugh and love as we had done in the days gone by.
But it didn’t work out that way.
Fear became mixed with the joy, and remorse and self-reproach stretched out their long, strong fingers and smeared the images. I suppose there is always that risk if you revisit a place where you think you can regain for a while your earlier rapture.
Moreover, one small doubt remained unresolved.
I thought of it as I made my way along the side of the drive, and to where my car stood, its sidelights unlit, a menace to all on the highway.
I thought of it as I drove back to Orleans, and again later, when they asked me whether I had enjoyed “my sentimental journey,” as they called it.
I said I had, of course, though the doubt still nagged at me, and they laughed indulgently. Only Lorna, dear Lorna, my wife, did not laugh, did not even smile; for Lorna had advised me not to go.
My doubt is, I suppose, a case of scruples.
It is due to the fact that as I held the tumbler to Bartels’ lips, and watched him drink, a thought flashed through my mind which I tried instantly to repress.
The thought was: He’ll never kiss her with those lips again. She’s safe now, beyond all risk or doubt: she’s mine.
I wish the thought had never occurred to me. But it cannot be helped now. I am, as I have indicated, a worldly type, little prone to introspection. The memory of that thought will grow fainter.
I won Lorna, and what I win I hold, and nothing, not even the shades of Philip Bartels, shall ever come between us: I was always a better man than Bartels, better at everything, including murder.