My Name is Michael Sibley

by John Bingham

  That’s what his look said, as clearly as if he had spoken the words aloud. Poor old Mike, it seemed to say.

  Later that night, when I was alone with Kate, she said, “You don’t think it would be a good idea to go in with John Prosset and Day?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “I was only thinking that as a partner you would be more your own master. You would have more time to write books and things. That’s all I was thinking.”

  “I don’t trust Herbert Day, for one thing.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do, darling.”

  I fell back upon the same words I had used to Prosset. I could think of nothing else. “I am a newspaperman, not a businessman.”

  She sensed something in the tone of my voice. She said, “Is anything the matter?”

  “Of course there isn’t. What should there be?”

  “You do want to go down to the cottage on Saturday, don’t you? Because if you don’t, we can easily cancel it.”

  “Nothing is the matter.”

  “You do want to go down, don’t you?” she persisted.

  “Yes; I want to go down.”

  “You do like John Prosset, don’t you?”

  “Of course I like him. He’s my old school friend. We’ve never had a row in our lives.”

  I could not humiliate myself in her eyes by telling her the truth. To have done so would have been to reveal myself in her eyes as a poor-spirited, backboneless creature, and I knew that in general that was not true.

  I had stood up to many people, held my own in varying circumstances and acquitted myself in a manner of which I had no reason to be ashamed. It was only Prosset against whom I could make no kind of headway whatever. Prosset had only to look at me speculatively with a faint, amused look in his eyes to have me all keyed up and tense, wondering miserably what attack, direct or oblique, he was about to make on me.

  Only Prosset could turn me into a rabbit, but who would believe that? If I told the whole story to Kate, I should be playing into Prosset’s hands. By comparison with the poor showing I should make, he would rise in stature. Would Kate believe in her heart that only Prosset could have this effect on me? I doubted it.

  “Prosset and I are, and always will be, the best of friends,” I said doggedly.

  Kate came and sat on the arm of my chair.

  “I think he likes me, too, you know. I’m glad. I want all your friends to like me. Actually, I like being liked, if you know what I mean. It sounds silly, but I do.”

  “You haven’t made a bad start,” I said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Except in sudden cases of ungovernable rage or when discovered in some criminal act and cornered, one person does not suddenly decide to kill another. It is a thing which grows upon you gradually.

  At odd moments you begin to think how nice it would be if somebody were to die suddenly, painlessly, peacefully, from natural causes. Barely have you realized along which lines your thoughts are running than you pull yourself up short. You tell yourself insistently that you hope he or she will live to a ripe old age, but though the words form themselves in your brain they lack conviction, until in the end you reconcile yourself to the idea that if they die peacefully you will not be unduly upset.

  In the case of somebody you hate, as I hated Prosset, the next stage comes fairly quickly. You begin to think out, purely for fun, you tell yourself, how you would kill an enemy if you should ever wish to do so. It rapidly becomes clear that in a highly populated and civilized country this problem is by no means easy of solution, but you do not despair. You persevere until you have perfected a plan which, if you wished to kill him—though naturally the idea is unthinkable—could be put into action with the minimum of danger to yourself.

  I myself came to the conclusion that the only safe method is to push your victim over a cliff.

  Here you are not faced with the troublesome business of disposing of the body nor, if you should be questioned, of explaining away awkward wounds or suggestive grains of arsenic. The body is there for all to see, the wounds are only those which have been incurred as a result of the fall. Providing the timing is right, there need be no signs of struggle on the top of the cliff, and providing the cliff is high enough there need be little fear that the victim will tell the truth before he dies. Suspicion may be heavy, perhaps, particularly if there is a good motive for the crime, but there can be no proof unless luck is badly against you.

  You cannot guard against ill luck. There is some risk, as there must always be.

  The victim’s fall may be broken by some protruding branch, bush or ledge; such miracles do happen, and have happened in cases of accidental falls, and there is no reason to suppose that they could not happen in a case of attempted murder. In which case you would go to jail for a very long stretch.

  Or it may chance that a coastguard trains his telescope on that part of the coast for the first time for years and catches you in the act; or some ardent bird-watcher, gathering material for an essay on the breeding habits of a certain species of gull, may be observing you as you walk along the cliff past his hideout with the victim; and curse you for frightening the birds and interfering with his hobby.

  If that sort of thing happens you will be hanged, of course.

  I went through all these preliminary mental phases towards the end of my association with Prosset, but for long I lacked the final impetus which could induce me to risk my neck. For long I did not contemplate killing him, but merely watched with ever-increasing apprehension as affairs came to a climax.

  For two weekends in succession I was engineered into taking Kate down to Ockleton. The cottage had been at one time a coastguard’s station, and stood at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea about a mile from the village. To reach the sea you made your way through a small front garden, out through a side gate, and down a steep path to a sandy cove. This small cove was cut off from beaches on either side by headlands of rugged rock across which it was possible to clamber; but so much labour was involved, and so much time, that few people ever did, so that the beach was almost always deserted.

  It was a long climb from the cottage, too, and the path was steep and somewhat unsafe in places; a handrail had formerly afforded some sort of safeguard at the narrower points, but this had partly rotted away, and nobody had bothered to repair it. It was an ideal place in which to eliminate an enemy by the method which I had planned.

  It seemed that when the last coastguard had folded his telescope and had been transferred elsewhere, the cottage had for some years remained uninhabited. Then a painter of seascapes, a man of little talent but possessed of private means and great enthusiasm, had bought and furnished the place and lived in it for some eighteen months before moving to the South of France, where the colours are brighter and simpler to put on canvas.

  This man had put the cottage in the hands of local agents, and sometimes during the better weather a family would take it, or a writer in search of peace and quiet in which to finish a book would live in it. It was stone-built and sturdy, heavily timbered inside, and consisted of a kitchen and living room on the ground floor and two small bedrooms upstairs. Somebody, presumably the well-to-do painter, had built a little wooden shed from the kitchen and installed an old-fashioned bath and geyser in it.

  The furniture was of dark oak. There was a window seat in the living room covered with what once had been bright-flowered chintz; it was now faded and stained with sea water, and the carpets were threadbare. Behind the cottage was a patch of grass and some trees, stunted and twisted by the sea winds. It was a shabby enough little place, but Prosset made much of it, pointing out the exhilarating quality of the air, the fine view, and the pleasures of early morning bathing for those who cared to clamber down to the sea before breakfast.

  Succeeding tenants had left their traces behind them. In an outhouse was a doll’s pram with one wheel missing, and a large pile of dusty wine and brandy bottles whose contents had doubtless bee
n swallowed by the artist. There was some manuscript paper and a few torn carbons in a drawer in the writing desk, and some fishing tackle mouldering in a heap in the shed which called itself the bathroom. On the bookshelf in the living room was the usual collection of cheap novels, one or two yellow French love stories, and, for some reason, a set of three volumes on human anatomy.

  Such was the cottage which Prosset had rented for a year; you could approach it either along the road which ran through the village, and which served the other cottages along that part of the coast, or you could take a short cut, bypass the village, and use an old twisting road which was now little more than a disused cart track partially overgrown with weeds.

  During both the weekends we were fortunate with our weather, and spent the time lazing on the beach or in the garden or walking along the cliffs. In the evenings we went into the village and had drinks at the Anchor. Kate thoroughly enjoyed it all; and there is no doubt that we came back on the Monday mornings looking the better for the change.

  Looking back, I think that Prosset acted with considerable subtlety.

  For the first afternoon and evening which we spent with him during the first weekend, his attitude was impeccable. To Kate he was friendly and amusing, but the greater part of his attentions were devoted to me. It was as though I were the honoured guest and Kate the very welcome addition to the party. He spoke of our schooldays, recalling various amusing episodes in which he and David and I had been involved. He talked of the House, and speculated about what had happened to the various people who had been with us during those four years. We recalled the tragic affair of Ackersley, the idiosyncrasies of some of the masters, and generally indulged in the sort of talk which old school friends enjoy. It was delightful.

  I was a fool to succumb to it all, but I did. I have never been able to harbour bitterness, and have always been a sucker for a warm approach and any suggestion that bygones are best forgotten.

  It may be admirable in theory, very Christian and praiseworthy, but in the world as constituted today it is crass stupidity. Today you have to be hard and wary, and unforgetting, otherwise you are riding for a fall, as I was riding for a fall at Coastguard’s Cottage with Prosset and Kate.

  He looked so open and friendly and frank; so healthy, with his raven-black hair and suntanned face; and when he smiled at me with his eyes and talked nostalgically of the old days I said to myself that whatever he had been in the past, he was changing. He was mellowing, becoming more human.

  Perhaps I can make a close friend of him yet, I thought, and for a couple of hours or so on the first Saturday night at Ockleton I was happy. I was glad I had come. There we were, Kate whom I loved, Prosset with whom I seemed to be reconciled, and myself who wanted to be friendly and on good terms with everybody. It was a fine beginning. I felt a glow inside me, and it wasn’t all due to the whisky at the Anchor.

  So I agreed readily enough when Prosset said he hoped we would come down again the following weekend. “Just to kind of cement firmly the friendship of us three,” he said.

  I not only agreed, I went further, and said, “If by any chance I have to work, you could always get Marjorie to come down with you, Kate. John wouldn’t mind, would you?”

  “Certainly not. Let ’em all come. Who is Marjorie?”

  “A friend of mine,” said Kate. “I haven’t seen her as much as I used to do, since Mike came on the scene. Poor Marjorie.”

  “Is she blonde and is she lovely?” asked Prosset, simulating an evil leer.

  “She is not. She is mousy and dumpy on the outside, and on the inside she is angelic.”

  “She sounds awful,” said Prosset cheerfully. “Let her come by all means, if old Mike can’t turn up, but I expect he will be able to.”

  I slept in the room next to Kate upstairs, because Prosset insisted that as the host he must occupy the sofa in the living room. I slept very well indeed, because the air and the talk and the drinks had tired me, and because I was mentally at ease, with no inkling of what lay ahead.

  It all changed next day. There was nothing very marked at first. A woman might not have noticed it. But just as a woman can read another woman’s mind more easily than a man, so a man is quick to note certain actions in another man which would be undetected by a member of the opposite sex.

  What it boiled down to was that I was no longer the honoured guest. It was Kate to whom Prosset mostly turned during the conversation, who was supposed to appreciate the little jokes which he made against me. And she, poor dear, only too anxious to make a good impression on one of my friends, encouraged him in his sallies.

  I had to join in the laughter, too, of course. What else could I have done except pretend to take it all in good part? But now I understood the previous evening. He had prepared the ground well. He had established himself in Kate’s eyes as a devoted old school friend, a man who held me in great affection. Thereafter anything he said to my detriment, any little barbed reminiscences or disparaging remarks, would be considered devoid of all malice or cruelty. Just fun, that’s all. Just an old school friend pulling his pal’s leg, that’s all.

  There was a good deal of it. He was at his best. He performed wonders. And there was little one could do about it. There rarely is. If you laugh with your tormentor, you invite further attack. If you show feeling, you look a fool and may as well pack up and go home. The only thing to do is to counter-attack; for that you require a wit as keen as the other man’s, and I was never a good talker or much good at repartee.

  The second weekend was even worse. Mid-week I made a halfhearted attempt to avoid going down. I said to Kate, “About this weekend, are you very keen to go?”

  She looked at me in surprise. “Well, I thought it was all fixed?”

  “So it is. But I suppose we could put it off somehow.”

  “But why? I thought you enjoyed yourself last weekend!”

  “So I did. It’s just that I quite like being alone with you. That’s the only reason I asked.”

  I could see she looked disappointed. I gave in.

  “Forget it, Kate. It was just a passing thought.”

  “I think we ought to go, Mike, as we said we would.”

  “Forget it,” I said again. “We’ll go.”

  I could have invented some job for the office, and let Marjorie go with Kate. But it was too late for that sort of thing. Now I could not bear the thought of Kate and Prosset being together without me. My hate was now mixed with jealousy. Perhaps in some degree it always had been, but this was a different sort of jealousy. It was sex jealousy, than which there is nothing more emotionally terrible or tormenting in the world. So I went down with Kate.

  He was in excellent form again that weekend. Most witty.

  Then Whitsun was almost upon us.

  Prosset had invited us down for Whitsun, but we had declined. When he had pressed his invitation, I had compromised by saying that we might drive down for one day, the Sunday, if the weather was fine, but that we would not stay the night. I only agreed to it because I thought Kate would like it.

  He knew that every Friday evening I stayed in at my digs to write. At about four o’clock on the Friday afternoon before Whitsun I was at the office going through the London evening papers when the telephone sounded. It was Kate.

  She said, “Mike, John Prosset has rung me up. He wants to know if I would care to go dog racing this evening. You remember I told him I had never seen any dog racing.”

  “Yes, I remember,” I answered. I felt suddenly shaky and almost ill. “What did you say, Katie?”

  “Well, I said I’d love to, provided you agreed. You don’t mind, do you? I mean, you’ll be at your digs all the evening, anyway. It’ll be something to do.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “Why should I? Have a good time.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t mind. How are you, darling?”

  “I’m very well, thank you.”

  I could hear old Charlie Baines, who was in charge of the office, talki
ng on the telephone to somebody in the Midlands; somebody else was rattling away on a typewriter in a corner of the room. Above both noises I could hear the rapid thudding of my own heart.

  “You sound very stern, Mike. Is anything the matter?”

  I made a supreme effort to sound normal. “Why, no; nothing at all. Just a bit busy, that’s all, darling. Have a good time. Don’t go to bed too late.”

  “I won’t. See you tomorrow?”

  “See you tomorrow,” I said. “And by the way, tell John we shall not be coming down at all this weekend. I’ll explain later.” I rang off.

  I looked at the telephone receiver before replacing it. I saw it was glistening with moisture from the palm of my hand. I took out my handkerchief and wiped it before replacing it in position.

  I tried to decide how much I was the victim of selfishness and jealousy, and how much I was moved by concern for Kate’s welfare. Two voices were disputing inside me.

  One was insisting that I was mainly concerned with what was best for Kate. It was telling me that I was really very noble at heart, and that I would gladly sacrifice myself for Kate’s happiness if I could be convinced that it was in her interests to surrender her to Prosset. I was worried, said this voice, only because I knew that Prosset would never marry her, that she was not the type of girl whom Prosset would ever marry, and that if she fell in love with him it could only lead to disaster. This was a very loud voice indeed, and almost bellowed at me, doubtless because it knew it had a weak case.

  The smaller, feebler voice was hardly more than a whisper, but I knew it could not be shut out because it was the truth, though I did not want the truth at that moment. It was less flattering: I was feeling just as any other man feels when he thinks some other chap may steal his girl. The very thought of it involved possessiveness, hurt pride, wounded vanity, incredulity and helpless fury all rolled into one giant ball of pain; and rendered the worse because with the jealousy there was mingled the feeling, born of old and perpetuated through the years, that in any contest with Prosset I was beaten before I started.