He'd Rather Be Dead

by George Bellairs

  I got on speaking terms with Ware in time, but he never guessed my identity till the last. We first met at the golf club, which I joined for the sake of business. He often insulted me, for my game suffered as soon as I came up against him or played as his partner on those chance occasions when they drew us together in competitions. He once called me a piddling little runt!

  It was as much as I could do not to tell him I was a chip off the old block!

  I pondered my revenge, but deferred it again and again. I could do nothing else but postpone it, for he flourished and was powerful. Short of killing him, there was nothing for it but to bide my time and hope. The drawback of my illegitimacy weighed relentlessly upon me, for I knew no decent girl would want me. At the thought of thus remaining like a hungry waif for ever looking in the cookshop window yet unable to feast on the good things within, I grew like a heavily-charged infernal machine, merely requiring the ultimate spark to the fuse to complete its destructive work.

  The fire came with the death of my dog.

  When Ware thrashed my setter and caused her, in panic, to run under a passing car, it sealed his doom. I said nothing when they told me. I was too stunned, for she was better than any human friend I ever had. Those who love dogs will understand. No doubt, everyone who knew thought me a coward. But I planned more than a public brawl. I would shoot Ware and myself.

  Then, suddenly, two surprising things happened. Ware became my patient, and I fell in love with Grace Latrobe.

  Ware must have had some idea of making amends for the dog, for he made an appointment for my professional attentions. When he did this, I bought a book on poisons. I would change the weapons!

  As for Grace, I met her through Preedy, a local doctor, who took to me for the reason that we were both starting practices from nothing. One night, in a burst of confidence after a few drinks at the Winter Gardens, Grace sentimentally confessed that she’d never had a father. Illegitimate, too! She suddenly became the key which would unlock the torture chamber of my soul, capable of freeing me from all the pent-up passion, hatred and inferiority there. I took the first chance of telling her I loved her. She discouraged my pleading. I implored almost in tears for just a word or a sign of hope. She confessed that she loved Preedy and had promised to marry him when her divorce came through.

  Chronologically the events were:

  Death of dog.

  Ware made appointment.

  Proposed to Grace Latrobe; turned down.

  My mind reacted like clockwork:

  (a) Kill Ware.

  (b) By poison.

  (c) Try to secure poison from Preedy, who had a public grievance against Ware, to whom his father’s suicide was said to be due. As my successful rival, Preedy should unwittingly co-operate in the destruction of Ware and, if I could manage it, he’d swing for it and leave Grace to me.

  My luck took a temporary turn for the better.

  Just before Ware was due to keep his appointment, Preedy and I went to the annual dinner at the Roosters’ Club. We’d almost drunk ourselves under the table there in past years. To protect myself from a recurrence of this, I went off alcohol altogether, pleading an ulcerated stomach. I saw Preedy home and before handing him over, helpless, to Grace, who was there doing his book-keeping, I stole four grains of strychnine from his stock, helping myself to his keys. In his condition, he didn’t know a thing about it.

  A few days later, Ware arrived for treatment. I’d thought out a plan. Ware had assisted in it, because when he made the appointment over the phone, he had said I wasn’t to tell anyone he was coming. “You’re not getting a free advertisement out of me,” he said. “So don’t broadcast it that you’re my dentist. No testimonials till you’ve proved your worth.” That suited me. So much the worse for him.

  I planned to suggest a local anaesthetic on the strength of the threat that the job was near the nerve and would hurt. Then, I’d give him adrenalin first, followed by a dose of strychnine, which would kill him later. Where the poison took him didn’t matter to me, so long as he was far enough away from Oxford Crescent. Maybe they’d think it was a seizure or a heart attack. In any case, nobody would suspect me. It appears I was too sanguine. The police are clever these days.

  When I’d got Ware in the chair and persuaded him to have an injection, I turned coward. Yes, I funked it! I just couldn’t give the injection, my hand seemed to lose contact with my brain, my head whirled, and I couldn’t go on.

  “I’ll have to kill the nerve, sir,” I managed to say. “I’ll put in an arsenic dressing, and perhaps you can call the day after tomorrow again …”

  “Damn you, you bungling little duffer,” said Ware in his usual blustering fashion. “I’ve too much on, then. I’ve a luncheon at one, and at eleven I’ve to call on Dr. Preedy for an injection for these confounded colds I get every autumn.”

  I pricked up my ears. An injection by Preedy! My very chance. Right into my hands! It was as much as I could do not to beg of Ware to come as I’d suggested.

  “If you come after you’ve seen the doctor, I won’t take ten minutes,” I lied.

  “Very well,” said Ware. “And see you don’t. I’ll be here.”

  All my nervousness vanished. I almost leapt for joy. I took a stiff dose of bromide to steady my nerves just before the appointment and when Ware was next in the chair, I calmly set about my task.

  I took out the temporary filling with which I had stuffed his canine tooth. I suggested a slight local anaesthetic again. I injected the adrenalin. As I drew the strychnine into the barrel of the syringe, I felt as light as air. I wanted to shout aloud in triumph. All the time Ware kept his eyes fixed on me as though puzzled about something. I drove the plunger home in the gum. I’d done it! Hastily I stopped the hole in the tooth. He’d be past worrying about his teeth by the time that canine began to ache!

  As soon as he had left the room, my nerve cracked. I wished I hadn’t done it. I felt sorry for him … But there was another patient being ushered in. An extraction, and he asked for a local anaesthetic! I couldn’t have given another injection to save my life. I managed to persuade him to have gas. A fellow called Dashwood, an auctioneer’s tout, he was. How I got through it, I don’t know. I fumbled the valves of the gas apparatus and didn’t give the patient enough. I broke the tooth in the gum and, to end all, the fool recovered himself and rushed from the place howling and spitting blood. All I cared about was, had he seen Ware? No, he hadn’t, said my housekeeper, because she’d put Ware in the dining-room instead of the waiting room, on account of his being Mayor. I was pleased at first and then I could have screamed. My mother’s photograph was in the room where Ware had been, he must have recognised it, for it was taken at the time he knew her. Had he guessed who I was? That probably accounted for the queer looks he kept giving me.

  Well, the job was done. Ware died in a more spectacular fashion than I could ever have devised. And Preedy looked like being accused of the crime. I thought I was safe until Grace Latrobe called on me and said she knew that I’d stolen the strychnine the night I brought Preedy home drunk! She’d come in, she said, as I was tucking something in the pocket in which the doctor kept his keys. She said she wasn’t going to let her lover suffer and would go to the police unless I went myself and at least confessed to taking the poison from Preedy’s stock. I couldn’t do that. She’d chosen Preedy, and would have to suffer. I watched her go home from the upper window of my house. I changed into my golf clothes, took out my clubs and my bike, and was ready to follow her when she came out again. If she spotted me, well, I was just off for a game.

  Strangely enough, Grace went to the amusement park. Why, I can’t for the life of me guess. I cycled behind her, saw her enter, parked my cycle and clubs behind one of the shows and followed her. I lost her a time or two, but found her again. I’d learned to know her hair anywhere. Here, I could get very sentimental, but there is no time for self-pity now. I saw her go into the House of Nonsense.

  I’d parked my bi
ke behind the House of Nonsense and knew there was a back entrance. I went through the little door and eventually found myself in a room full of eccentric mirrors. My own image, pulled about like a piece of tortured India-rubber, confronted me and seemed to reflect my anguished spirit. I hid behind a pillar until Grace arrived. Then I followed her into the darkest room and strangled her, pushing her through a door which led from the place down a chute into the open air. This done, I hurried back. I saw that I was weeping as I again passed those nightmare mirrors. The convex glasses threw back a hideous distortion at which I almost screamed. Around me, the shouts of flappers in the midst of all the Nonsense drowned every sound but their own. I rushed into the open air, stole away on my cycle, rode across the beach to the links and, hiding the machine in a ditch, began to play golf, stopping the first pair of players I met and asking them the time to give myself an alibi. I thought I was safe. I felt more safe when first I met Littlejohn!

  Littlejohn has neither the sleuth-like appearance of the traditional criminologist, nor the crushing relentlessness of the official detectives of fiction. He looks more like a country gentleman and moves with slow, purposeful ease, as though he’s all day to do the job in, yet is taking every step with his goal well in mind. A well-groomed, clear-eyed, well-built man of middle age, with a fresh complexion and a close-clipped moustache. I felt my scheme might be proof against him, especially if, as I suspected, Boumphrey would not put all his cards on the table, lest it be discovered how the Chief Constable’s path had crossed my own, and his blackmailing of Ware should come to light. Whilst Boumphrey had never, I am sure, disclosed my identity to Sir Gideon, he had nevertheless held me as a trump card to further his plans.

  I first met Littlejohn in the long bar of the Winter Gardens, where, for some reason, the efficient and incorruptible Inspector Hazard had led him. I had heard that Boumphrey had called in Scotland Yard right away, and I was on the lookout for their man, for it was to be Rex v. Fenwick henceforth, and if Littlejohn got the wrong man, Preedy, as I’d planned, Rex had lost, although nobody but I would know it.

  At first, seeing him good-humouredly drinking beer at the bar, I thought I was as safe as houses against Littlejohn. I spoke to him and Hazard. I followed him to the Grand Hotel in the darkness, I heard him bidding his wife good-night, for I was in the next telephone box, and I saw him drink a nightcap of cocoa. Cocoa! I suddenly realised that I was up against someone unusual. I stayed for long outside the hotel, wondering which was his room and what he was doing. As I prepared to depart, a cigarette-end fell at my feet like a spent rocket, and I wondered if Littlejohn himself had been watching me from above and had thrown down the gauge in that fashion.

  I couldn’t work, and I neglected my practice. I followed the Inspector at a distance fascinated by his technique. I kept hovering round him unseen, like a moth which is compelled instinctively to wheel round and round the flame in which it finally perishes. Or, more correctly, I was like the quarry hunted by hounds which, somehow, in the tangle of trails, has got behind, instead of in front of its pursuers.

  Littlejohn astonished me one night by even going to the cinema, where I sat behind him and Hazard, trying to overhear their conversation and, for my pains, getting a lot of information about Manchester, of all places, where it seems, Littlejohn started his career and Hazard was shortly being transferred. Nothing was said of the crime I had so skilfully engineered. I would have liked to hear their professional opinion of it.

  But later, when Littlejohn called on me, I knew I wasn’t as safe as I had imagined. I had already become alarmed by the results of cautiously trailing him round the town, where he seemed interested in a number of local big-wigs and a trio of clergymen. I wanted particularly to know what Father Manfred had told him and resorted to a cunning subterfuge to get the priest to talk.

  I had learned that the Catholic priest had been with my father when he died. I was anxious to know whether or not anything had been said at the death. That was a day full of emotion for me. On the one hand, I had to deal with Grace Latrobe; on the other, I must know my father’s last words.

  I pretended to be visiting the church to view the alterations. There, I met Father Manfred and, feigning interest in the dead benefactor of the place, I turned the conversation skilfully to the death of Ware.

  “Did he die reconciled to the Church?” I asked Manfred, my mouth dry with anguish and the blood racing through my veins like a boiling torrent.

  “Yes,” came the answer. “And like David, mourning Absalom, he died with the words ‘My son! My son!’ on his lips.”

  And with that, the crafty Jesuit fixed me with his steely, relentless eyes, which seem to bore right into your soul.

  Had Ware, I wondered, named his murderer in confession to the priest before his death? If in confession, I was safe, for Manfred’s lips would be sealed. Otherwise …

  After the inquest on Grace, I began to feel a return of confidence. Littlejohn had kept out of my way, although, unseen, I had hung on his heels every minute I could spare. At night, I followed my man to the Jolly Sailor. There, pretending to eat a meal, which I took from the serving-table and set around me to make it appear that I’d been there some time (fool that I was, I dispelled the myth that I suffered from stomach trouble by choosing lobster in my haste!). I felt that the end had truly come when the idiotic Dashwood started boasting about the mess I’d made of his face. And he had met Ware on his way out!

  The bolt was shot! I hastened to confess to Littlejohn that Ware had been with me just before the banquet, pretending that I’d not known the police were interested in the dead man’s movements and that I had suddenly thought myself guilty of not helping the law with what I knew. The man almost treated my information with levity! Said he’d call to see me about it tomorrow! But I knew in my bones that there would be no letting-up by that cocoa-drinking bulldog. I was truly in the soup, but hoped the motive wouldn’t come to light.

  Next morning, I received the promised visit. He was very efficient in his questioning and kept me to the point, refusing every bait I held out in an effort to find precisely where he was in the course of investigation. He asked for details of the filling I performed on Ware’s tooth and brought up the matter of my dog, too. I thought when he went that I’d acquitted myself satisfactorily and had made no slips.

  My satisfaction was short-lived. On going to the waiting-room I noticed that the book on Toxicology had been moved. Fool! Why the hell had I left it there and, above all, why hadn’t I locked the case securely? I was getting over-confident and had better take care. I took out the book and turned it over and over. Had he suspected anything? I was soon to know.

  Hardly had I closed the bookcase and, full of agitation, commenced to make an awful job of a patient’s tooth, when Littlejohn was back. He’d discovered in some way or other, that Grace had visited me on the day of her death. I was thoroughly taken aback and scared, although I don’t think I showed it. I made excuses and said she’d wanted a tooth filling. I even pretended to consult a card on the file concerning the precise nature of the work. I thought I’d got away with it again, for he seemed satisfied and then, just as he was at the door, he turned and pitched me a body-line ball. He asked me for an alibi on the afternoon of Grace’s death! I recited the piece I’d already rehearsed and he went away, convinced or not, I had no idea.

  I was too excited to work anymore that day. I packed off my patient and set about finding out what Littlejohn had been up to. I called on Mottershead, the bookseller, who as soon as I arrived, unwittingly knocked me for six by saying that if I wanted to sell my Forensic Medicine, he knew a gent who’d buy it from me for a profit. Yes, the chap had been in a short time ago, asking who’d recently purchased the book. And to complete the terror, a group of old idlers in the gardens greeted me as I passed with the gleeful comment that a fellow had been tracing Grace’s movements on the day of her death and they’d told him they had seen her going in my place about noon. How pleased the doddering old
fools seemed about it all, staring accusingly with their rheumy lizard’s eyes and sucking their toothless gums! I called them a pack of gossiping old dotards and left them with something to talk about for days to come.

  In a turmoil of fear, I hurried to the golf links. I wanted to be sure that Littlejohn hadn’t deduced anything about my movements at the time of Grace’s death. He was there when I arrived! And walking across the fairway, almost retracing my steps from the links to the House of Nonsense! Dashwood, the idiot, almost laid him low with a golf ball. Would that he had! An unseen spectator, I cowered behind a gorse bush on the sixth hole and, I confess, I sweat blood and actually retched with excited fear as I saw what was going on.

  What next? I almost feared to follow Littlejohn and Hazard, yet I was now as closely bound to Littlejohn as a Doppelgänger, an unseen wraith, until the case ended either with my release or my doom.

  A rift appeared in the clouds. The police called on Preedy. Maybe Littlejohn wasn’t satisfied about the doctor after all and couldn’t make a case against me, so was after Preedy and would bring my schemes to success after all.

  All night, I have been writing this account and asking myself what the next step will be …

  *

  Another day, and this time a barren one. I have tried to think what I would do if I were Littlejohn. My brain seems utterly devoid of power and arid of ideas. Wait. Yes. I know what I’d do. Why haven’t I thought of it before? Why, I’d try to unearth the past life of my quarry and find out his connection with Ware. I will ring up some old ragbags of spinsters in Follington, who were once friends of my mother. Nothing happens in that town without their long ears hearing it, or their prying eyes spotting it round the lace curtains.

  *

  Yes, yes … Oh God! … yes, yes. Someone has been in Follington, a lawyer or somebody, enquiring about my mother and me. I am lost. I feel like rushing out, button-holing Littlejohn, and asking him to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. Have the doctors discovered the puncture I made in Ware’s gum? How went it with Preedy? Has he told them anything which threw light on the theft of strychnine?