by John Bingham
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.
&nbs
p; “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.