The Other Passenger

by John Keir Cross

  “Good morning, Mr. Broome,” said the van boy who delivered his bundle of papers. “All right?”

  “Couldn’t be better, Bert,” said Mr. Broome.

  “And Mrs. Broome O.K.?”

  “Oh yes.” And he smiled in his little loose toothless smile. “She’s in the pink, Bert—in the pink . . .”

  Now all that day, as Mr. Broome worked on in his shop, he was thinking. He began in the morning by thinking how strange it was that he was so calm. He, Felix Broome, forty-five, a man of no importance, had committed a murder. He who had never been able to make up his mind to do anything had at last done one supreme and dramatic thing. He had killed his wife and buried her in the cellar—yet behold, he was calmly going about his business as if nothing had happened.

  Where was the sense of guilt that was supposed to overwhelm murderers?—where were the agonies of remorse that were said to assail them? If he felt anything at all it was a sense of relief—and occasionally, mingling with it, a sense of power and achievement. Later on in the day this feeling increased. Sometimes, as he handed a paper or some tobacco to a customer, he felt like leaning over the counter and saying:

  “Excuse me, sir, but I thought I would just like to let you know that I have murdered my wife. We had been married for fifteen years and I hated her, sir—she stank. So I murdered her, sir—she’s downstairs in the cellar now, under three feet of earth. Anything else, sir—some pipe-cleaners, matches?”

  He pictured the sensation—the startled customer scuttling from the shop and calling a policeman. And, later on, the headlines in the papers—papers that would be sold over the very counter on which he leaned. Wise Woman would get a shock if she knew that Worried, to whom she had given such excellent advice, had finished actually by murdering his partner! “Plan little surprises” indeed! He had planned one of the biggest surprises in history—he, Felix Broome—a man of no account and a dreamer.

  At this point, as he leaned on his counter, Mr. Broome sighed deeply. It need never have happened. The fifteen years of misery need never have happened. If only—if only . . .

  And there came into his mind a sudden image of a white whirling skirt. Esmeralda—she would have solved it.

  At lunchtime he went to the little room at the back of the shop and cut himself some bread and cheese and boiled some tea on the gas-ring. And as he chewed his meal slowly (having put in his false teeth for the purpose), he began to think over a plan of campaign. One thing was clear—he had to get out of London. And in some way he had to disguise himself. If he left off his toupee and wore his false teeth continuously, that would make a considerable difference to his appearance. Then he could shave off his moustache. Fortunately, no photograph of him existed—he had always had a horror of cameras. And he had no relatives—at least, only one: a cousin in Canada—and she had not seen him for twenty years.

  He would go, he decided, to the North of England—to Bradford, say, or Burnley: one of the vague black cities, on the top of the map, he had often heard of but never visited. Upstairs, in a hole in the mattress (the very mattress on which Nancy had died), he had almost three hundred pounds—his savings. With this sum it should be possible to start a little tobacconist’s shop.

  It was indeed curious, he reflected again, how calm he felt. He was quite confident that he would not be found out. As soon as it grew dark he would close the shop, gather together his few more precious belongings, and simply disappear. It would be some days before anyone got suspicious because the shop was closed—there was no one likely to call. If he put a card on the door—“Closed till further notice”—that would satisfy Bert the van boy and Miss Ickman upstairs. Eventually, no doubt, there would be a search—an advertisement about the missing Mr. and Mrs. Broome would appear in the Sunday papers. Perhaps one day the police would discover Nancy’s remains in the cellar—but what would it matter? By that time he would have started his new business in Blackburn or wherever it was—he would be comfortably established under a new name and with a different appearance. What could he call himself? Black? Thomson? Clarke? There was, he remembered, a significance in names. What about Nancy’s­ maiden name—Gilbert? Too obvious, perhaps—a clue that might give him away. Yet he could always use it as a first name. A sudden curious allusion came into his mind. A few days before, he had been reading an article in one of the cheaper and more spectacular weeklies—The Real Bluebeard, it had been called. And he remembered that the name of the famous wife-murderer had been Gilles de Rais. Why not call himself Gilbert Ray? A good name—and a significant one. Gilbert Ray, Tobacconist and Newsagent . . .

  Chuckling to himself quietly, he took out his false teeth and went back into the shop. He popped a jelly baby into his mouth to suck by way of dessert. Then he sniffed lovingly at one of the earthenware tobacco jars. It was a pity, he thought, that he would have to leave his carefully-collected stock. But still—it was only for a little while. It would not take him long to gather more—when he started up again as Gilbert Ray.

  There was little doing in the way of business during the afternoon. Mr. Broome found himself looking forward to six o’clock, when he could put up the shutters and start disguising himself. He had a lot to do. He had checked in a timetable that there was a train to Blackburn at 10.15—everything had to be ready by then.

  He started putting up the shutters at ten to six. Then he went into the back shop again and fried himself an egg. He was just on the point of going upstairs to the bedroom to start on his disguise when he had a sudden uneasy thought. Had he bolted the shop door?

  As he went through to examine the lock a sudden whiff of Nancy’s perfume filled his nostrils. He paused—then shrugged and moved on to the door.

  Surely enough, by an oversight, he had forgotten to fix the snib. With a little grunt of annoyance he stooped to remedy the mistake. And suddenly he had an overwhelming sense that someone was standing just outside. The feeling was powerful—ridiculous but powerful. A little ashamed of himself, he swung the door open—and then his little eyes grew round and his loose mouth sagged open stupidly.

  A little girl in a white dress was standing facing him—a little girl whose long hair was tied charmingly in a bow of pink ribbon. And as he stared, she swept him a low and graceful curtsey.

  “Esmeralda!” he gasped.

  “How do you do, dear father,” she said with a smile. “May I come in?”

  Still smiling at him sweetly, she walked past him into the shop. He shivered—and again in his nostrils he felt a distant whiff of Nancy’s Woolworth’s perfume. He closed the door with a slam, locking it with trembling fingers. Then he turned and followed the little girl up the stairs in a daze.

  * * * *

  And now they were sitting in the bedroom facing each other. She was exactly as he had pictured her so often—petite, exquisitely pretty, with small, quick gestures. She sat primly on the edge of a chair, her feet barely touching the ground—and all the time she smiled.

  As for him, he did not know what to say or to do. He felt dazed—unable to comprehend what had happened—unwilling even to try to comprehend it. Was it a dream? Had he stupidly fallen asleep—at the very moment when he ought to be packing feverishly for his flight to Blackburn? He remembered how he had fallen asleep just after he had murdered Nancy—a curious, stupid thing to do. Was he perhaps a little bit mad? After all, there must, he thought, be something unusual in a man who suddenly murders his wife—who sets about covering up his tracks with the care and calmness he had given to the task that day. He did not know—he did not know anything: except that Esmeralda, about whom he had thought and dreamed so often, was now sitting in some unaccountable way before him, smiling at him. And she was lovely—she was only thirteen, but she was lovely. He almost felt like weeping.

  He realised that she was speaking to him.

  “Dear father,” she was saying, “don’t be surprised that I have come to you at last. After all, there was only one thing ever that kept me away.”

  He look
ed up at her. Her smile was rigid—in a way it was a little frightening. He almost wished that she would relax it—yet he realised that in his dreams she always had been smiling. He had never seen her with any other expression.

  “You mean——?” he said dazedly: and she nodded.

  “Yes. Mother. But she’s safely out of the way, isn’t she? Oh I always hoped you’d do that to her someday, father. She was such an ugly bitch!”

  There was something hideous in the way she spoke—it alarmed him. She was only thirteen. His brain was in a whirl—things were growing wild and grotesque and somehow beyond his control. If only she wouldn’t smile!

  “You see, father,” she went on, leaning forwards a little, “I would only have been the same as her. You signed a paper, you know—do you remember? Fifteen years ago! . . . You said that any children you and Nancy had would be brought up to be like her. It might have been all right at the very beginning—she was quite presentable then, wasn’t she? And she didn’t stink.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he gasped.

  “Oh you do—of course you do! Do you think I don’t know you, after all these years? You liked her body a lot at the beginning. Do you remember the first time you saw her without her clothes on? That time when you went to Brighton for a day and missed the last train home?—and you went to an hotel and registered as Mr. and Mrs. Broome? It was before you were married, father.”

  Her tone was arch and horrible. He felt himself sweating slightly under the collar.

  “I hated her body,” he said, in a muffled little whisper.

  “Not at first, father,” she said. “You can’t pretend that you hated it at first. It was only later, when she began to—well, father” (and she sank her voice to a low salacious whisper), “when you began to grow old!”

  There was a long silence. Mr. Broome felt a curious nightmare listlessness in all his limbs—he was weak and helpless. Things had suddenly turned inside out—it was not what he had ever meant—not it at all.

  “Who are you?” he gasped at length. “Are you a demon?”

  “Father, dear!” she remonstrated. “I’m your own dear daughter! Don’t you recognise me? You’ve seen me a hundred times in your dreams—you’ve heard people talking about me. I’m Esmeralda, father dear.”

  “You’re not,” he said, speaking thickly, with an effort. “You aren’t Esmeralda. Esmeralda is a little girl—I mean, I’ve always thought of her as a little girl—if I could have—I mean, if Nancy could have . . .”

  She laughed—a shrill, stagey, impersonal laugh.

  “Oh father, father! You haven’t known in the least bit what it’s all been about, have you! You’ve thought it was all something else. You’ve sat in your shop and you’ve read the stories in the magazines, and you’ve thought it was all something else altogether! Poor old father! Shall I tell you something, father? Shall I tell you the story of your life?—the real story of your life?”

  He stared at her, unable to speak. She went on smiling. And she got down from her chair and walked over towards him till she was only a yard away from him. Then she knelt down on the floor and leaned back on her heels—still smiling.

  “Do you remember, father, thirty years ago? You were fifteen—you had just left school. You were apprenticed to a draper in the Harrow Road—Carradine’s. You were very shy, father—oh terribly shy. You used to blush if anyone spoke to you. And the girls called you baby-face, father—do you remember that? Do you remember Miss Dobie, father?”

  “Stop it—stop it,” he groaned.

  “Oh father—I’m only beginning! You can’t stop me now—there’s such a lot to say. Don’t you remember—the ladies’ combinations?”

  She laughed again—her eyes bright and hard and glistening. He stared at her helplessly, in horror.

  “Miss Dobie was twenty-eight, father, and you were sixteen. She was a bitch, wasn’t she?—all the men said so. The way she used to torture you—made you go into the underwear window and dress the dummies in Carradine’s Special Line in Ladies’ Combinations!—in full view of the public, too! Beastly, wasn’t it. You hated her, father. But you couldn’t help yourself, could you?—she was far too powerful for you. That night when she had you to her room—smuggled you into the ladies’ hostel she lived in at Earl’s Court—do you remember it, father? You were trembling all the time—it was all so new—you were only sixteen . . .”

  “For Christ’s sake, stop it!” he cried. “It’s filthy—it’s filthy! Stop it!”

  “It’s the story of your life, father. It’s why you killed mother. And father——” (and she lowered her voice to a whisper again) “—it’s why you created me!”

  Mr. Broome held his breath. He was aware of footsteps outside—they came to him as from an enormous distance. It was the policeman beginning his evening beat—walking slowly and comfortably in a sane quiet world.

  “Poor father, poor father,” went on the crouching figure at his feet. “You hardly knew all this, did you? You didn’t ever have a real chance. After Miss Dobie it was Alice. Do you remember Alice? You and she at the Dance Palais, just after your twenty-first birthday? Learning the Charleston. Do you remember that long spangly dress that she wore—cut square at the neck and with a low waist? And when you danced the last waltz, when the lights were low, and you were very close to her—so close that your face was buried in her hair . . . and it filled your nostrils, father—it was like a brown shag tobacco, all stringy, but fragrant—you couldn’t get enough of the scent of her . . .”

  “You devil, you devil!” said Broome, in a low sobbing voice.

  “I’m only telling you, father,” she said, gently and ironically. “I’m letting you know, that’s all. It isn’t what people imagine it to be, is it, father? Nothing is—not quite. People never do things for the reasons they think they do—do they? It’s always something else—something nagging on in the background . . . Oh, it was glorious last night—wasn’t it, father! That magnificent moment!”

  “What do you mean?” he gasped.

  “You know what I mean—when you lay the pillow and put your hands round her throat. She was in your power, father—at last it was that way round: someone was in your power—instead of it being the other way—you in someone else’s power. That’s what made it, wasn’t it, father?”

  Mr. Broome raised his trembling hands to clasp his temples. Something terrible and unutterably beastly had happened to him—out of the blue. He had been so calm—so infinitely superior to things. He had worked quietly in his shop all day, he had made his plans, he had been so sure of himself. And now, from nowhere, came this foul and raging insanity. He grew aware of the thin ironic voice going on and on.

  “Yes—Miss Dobie, and Alice: and the strange girl you met when you were on holiday that time at Weston-super-Mare—Margie her name was—and Enid, that you met at your cousin’s farewell party, when she went to Canada, and finally Nancy. It was always the same, wasn’t it, father? Life is always the same thing, happening over and over again. That’s what none of them understands, isn’t it? Wise Woman has no suspicion that that’s the real truth about things, has she? Or she could never write such rubbish about Romance being supplanted by Boredom and Indifference, and the Tiny Hands of Children Reuniting Parted Hearts—now could she? It’s all the same thing. I bet if you met Wise Woman herself, she’d stink of scent too—and she’d be like Nancy was when she had had too many pink gins. They wouldn’t leave you alone, father—not one of them. They’re all the same.”

  A terrible dry sob came out of the little man on the chair.

  “Esmeralda,” he cried, “for God’s sake don’t say any more—don’t say it! Go away—leave me. You’re different—it isn’t you that has been saying these things. Something has happened to my brain—I’m imagining this—it’s the strain—it’s been too much. I’ll go away—just let me get away from this bloody room. It’ll be all right then. But don’t go on about these things—for Christ’s sake, don’t say any more.”


  He remained for a long time with his eyes closed. There was a rushing noise in his head. From infinitely far away he heard the footsteps of the policeman as they passed the house again. He did not dare to look up. Above all things in the world he did not dare to encounter the beastly rigid smile of the creature on the floor.

  And then he realised that she was speaking again.

  “Poor father, poor father,” she said: and it seemed that her tone was different—was quieter and less ironical. “One illusion must be left—it’s always the way, isn’t it. The strongest man must always preserve at least one illusion—and you aren’t a strong man, father, are you—you’re the weakest man in the world . . . Ah, you don’t remember, do you? You can’t see far enough down, can you? And even if you could, you couldn’t piece things together, could you? They wouldn’t make sense, even if you did—things never make sense, not real things. It’s all a jumble—it doesn’t connect. Yet sometimes, if you look at it all quickly, there suddenly seems to be a sort of thread . . .”

  He still did not look up, and she went on quietly:

  “The little girl, father—the kernel of it all . . . You were thirteen—it was at school. And do you remember you were made to sit beside her, as punishment? And she smiled at you when the teacher wasn’t looking. And she had a little string of cheap glass beads round her throat—and they were green—and she told you they were emeralds. Do you remember that, father, and mark it—emeralds? And you were reading a book in school that year—dreadfully dull, you thought, but they made you read it. Notre-Dame de Paris. It was about a hunchback. And it seemed to you that there was something infinitely pitiable about that hunchback—there was something wrong with him, he was despised by everyone. He was just like you, father.”

  There was a long silence. Broome held his breath. The small voice went on.

  “Yes, father—they all despised him. Except . . . there was the girl. Do you remember the girl in that book? She was all different. She was poetry, she was romance, she was all the warm and the lovely things, she was beautiful—oh, beautiful! Do you remember her name, father?”