by Paul Sussman
He struggled towards the door, looking at me out of the corner of his eyes, taking in my ink-stained white pyjamas, dusty feet and wax-encrusted face. He was clearly troubled by my appearance, and I could hear his wheezing getting thicker by the second. He didn’t say anything, however. Like all medics, Dr Bannen plays his cards very close to his chest.
‘We had the most beautiful sunrise this morning,’ I said, endeavouring to put him at his ease (it is, I find, always the patient who has to calm the doctor rather than the other way around). ‘And an amazing sunset last night too. Huge and red it was, like molten rock. It’s as if nature’s gearing up for the new millennium, don’t you think? Putting on a firework display all of its own.’
He looked at me uncertainly, struggling to fathom my meaning. Dr Bannen, I fear, has never quite got to grips with the way my mind works.
‘I read it was something to do with ozone,’ he puffed. ‘Too many armpit sprays or something. Damaging the atmosphere.’
‘Well, if that’s damage, let’s have a bit more of it!’ I laughed. ‘Lots more of it. The more damage the better!’
He reached the door and deposited the box on the front step, before gasping his way back to the van and picking up another load.
‘You’re looking well, Mr Phoenix,’ he remarked, steering the conversation back on to firmer ground. ‘Extremely well.’
‘Are you suggesting I didn’t look well beforehand, Dr Bannen?’ I teased.
‘No, no, not at all. It’s just that you seem . . . well, more sprightly. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were getting younger.’
‘Is that so! Well, I’m pleased to hear it. Don’t worry, I’ll get the last one.’
I pulled the remaining box of supplies from the back of the car and carried it over to the door. Dr Bannen had already deposited his second box on the step and was recovering an errant tin of peaches that had dropped out en route.
‘Doing anything for Christmas Day?’ he asked, replacing the tin in its box.
‘Oh, nothing really,’ I replied. ‘Just a quiet one, as usual. You?’
‘We’ll be down at Elsie’s mother’s,’ he said. ‘She’s a bit gaga these days, so we don’t like to leave her alone. It should be nice and peaceful, though her cats wreak havoc with my chest.’
Whereupon, as if to emphasize the point, he launched into an extended fit of coughing, his lungs emitting the most frightful hacks and gargles so that a pair of seagulls, sitting on the battlement above, took fright and, leaping into the air, flapped away up the coast at top speed. So bad did the fit become, and so uncontrollably did his body vibrate under its onslaught, that he was forced to lean forward and place both hands against the castle wall lest the violence of his coughing should knock him right off his feet. Bent double like that, his shoulders heaving up and down, he looked rather like Sisyphus toiling uphill with his giant rock.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, concerned.
He nodded his head.
‘It’ll huh huh huh huh go away in a minute.’
‘Should I slap you on the back?’
‘No!’ he spluttered, his wheezing redoubling at the prospect of physical contact. ‘Just huh huh huh huh a minute.’
He continued juddering and snorting for some while, and I was beginning to wonder whether I shouldn’t bundle him into his Land Rover and convey him down to civilization when, as suddenly as it had started, the fit came to an end. Aside from his face being a dark shade of magenta, and very sweaty, he appeared otherwise unaffected.
‘Sorry about that,’ he puffed. ‘Now, where were we?’
He straightened his shirt, the collar of which had gone rather askew, and walked stiffly back to his vehicle, slamming shut its rear doors. He then took a notebook from his pocket and, with an old pencil, began ticking off my supplies.
‘That’s ten bottles of wine, five white, five red, 200 Embassy – you really should cut down your smoking, Mr Phoenix – two pints of milk, two loaves of bread, 3lbs of potatoes, a pound of cheese—’
A sudden, rapid, unexpected cough forced him to stop mid-sentence. He stood stock still, shoulders braced, eyes swivelling suspiciously to left and right, waiting for the inevitable onslaught that the cough appeared to herald. The latter thankfully failed to materialize, however, and after breathing very slowly and very carefully for a moment, he sighed with relief and continued with the list.
‘. . . six eggs, two onions, five tins of curried mackerel fillets, two tins of peaches in syrup, two Battenberg cakes and a packet of garibaldi biscuits.’
‘Perfect,’ I said.
A broad smile broke across his face. Dr Bannen is one of those people for whom there are few greater pleasures in life than compiling long lists of things and then reading them out correctly in public. He looked as proud as a child who has just won an elocution prize at school.
Having confirmed that he’d delivered the correct groceries, Dr Bannen then handed over my pension money – he collects my cash weekly for me from the local post office – whereupon I handed most of it back to pay for the items he’d just listed.
‘I’m thinking of buying myself a yacht,’ I joked, indicating the paltry heap of change left in my hand.
Dr Bannen smiled awkwardly, as he always does when I make a joke, and then dived once more into the sanctuary of his pocket notebook, as if to seek safety therein from my uncertain humour,
‘Now,’ he said, leafing through its pages until he came to an empty one. ‘What will you be wanting for next week?’
Given that next week I intended to kill myself, additional groceries weren’t strictly necessary. I couldn’t very well tell Dr Bannen that, however, or he’d have done something annoying like contact the social services, or send the local vicar up to talk me out of it. I therefore thought it best to simply carry on as normal, and duly ordered exactly the same supplies as I had the week before.
‘There is just one thing,’ I added. ‘I need a bottle of good wine. Very good wine. Claret.’
‘Having a celebration, are we?’ he wheezed.
‘You could put it like that.’ I smiled. ‘Yes, that’s just what it is. A celebration.’
‘Well, there’s one of those specialist wine shops in town,’ he went on, ‘so I could get you something when I’m next in. Anything particular?’
There were, indeed, many particular wines I would have liked to kill myself with. A Margaux 1900, for instance. Or a Lafite 1920. How wonderful it would be, I mused, to settle down in my dome on the night of my death, pill in hand, stars blazing above me, and to ease my going with a glass or two of Haut-Brion 1919 or a Le Pin ’66. The thought of it set my mouth watering, and sent a shiver of pleasure down my murderous old spine.
The chances of Dr Bannen finding such superlative wines at such short notice, however, even in a specialist wine shop, were not good, and even if he could I probably wouldn’t be able to afford them. I therefore decided to lower my sights a little, and instead asked him to purchase any claret with a price tag of over £30.
‘If you can find a Grand Puy Lacoste ’78 or a Troplong Mondot ’82, all the better,’ I told him. ‘Otherwise, whatever you can find.’
‘You do know your wines, don’t you!’ exclaimed Dr Bannen as he scribbled these two names down in his notebook. ‘For myself, I just like a nice glass of Blue Nun with a couple of ice cubes. Although those Bulgarian reds are very drinkable.’
‘A little too sour for my liking,’ I admitted.
‘Well, each to his own, Mr Phoenix,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I need to be off. Elsie doesn’t like to be left alone in the surgery for too long. Gives her the jitters.’ (Dr Bannen always signs off with these particular words and, although he says them with great earnestness, I’m not entirely convinced they’re true. From what he’s told me of Mrs Bannen, she doesn’t sound at all like the sort of person who’d get jittery and, although I’d never say as much, I suspect he’s merely using her as an excuse to get away from me as quickly as possible.)
‘Right you are, Dr Bannen,’ I said, standing back as he clambered into his Land Rover and slammed shut the door. ‘Be seeing you next week.’
He started the engine.
‘Merry Christmas, Mr Phoenix!’
‘And the same to you, Dr Bannen.’
He waved his hand and reversed round in front of the castle, pointing his vehicle downhill. Suddenly, however, he cut the engine and, leaning down beneath the passenger seat, pulled out a large bowl with a cloth over the top. He wound down his window and passed the bowl out.
‘I’ll forget my own head one of these days,’ he panted. ‘Elsie asked me to give this to you. She doesn’t like the thought of you up here all on your own at Christmas. I said, “He’s perfectly all right. He just likes a bit of privacy,” but she insisted. It’s a plum pudding.’
‘Why, thank you, Dr Bannen,’ I said, taking the proffered bowl. ‘And please thank Mrs Bannen. That’s a very kind thought. I shall enjoy eating it. I don’t think I’ve had a Christmas pudding since . . . well, for a good few years now. Thank you. I’m touched.’
‘Happy holiday!’ he wheezed, restarting the engine, putting the car in gear and clattering off downhill in a swirl of dust, tooting his horn as he went. As always, I felt a certain relief that he had gone, leaving me once again to the luxury of my solitude. Also, however, a slight despondency. Sometimes I get just a little bit lonely in my aloneness.
I carried my plum pudding into the castle – it really did smell very good – and then one by one brought in the boxes of provisions, placing them side by side on the rickety old table in the kitchen. It was as I picked up the last of these that I had a curious feeling I was being watched. Why, I don’t know, some sixth sense perhaps; but I had the distinct impression that someone, somewhere, was observing my movements. A slight shiver rippled down my spine.
Still holding the box, I screwed up my eyes and looked back and forth across the hills that rise behind the castle like the billows of a large green duvet, scanning them for anything out of the ordinary. All seemed as empty and peaceful as ever, however, and, concluding I’d been imagining things, I was just turning to go back inside when something hit me in the buttock.
‘Ow!’ I yelled, spinning round. ‘What the fuck—!’
On the ground at my feet lay a small, round, white pebble. It definitely hadn’t been there a moment ago (I know all the ground within ten feet of the castle entrance like the back of my own hand) and was clearly the thing that just had hit me. I stooped, picked it up and then, casting my eyes rapidly over the undulating beds of bracken that come to within 20 feet of the castle door, I hurried back inside, slamming and locking the door behind me.
Someone had attacked me, and I had no idea who.
I’m now back at the foyer wall, writing down the left-hand side of the kitchen doorframe. I can’t get that bloody stone out of my mind, nor the thought that it is in some way connected to that mysterious knocking on the door yesterday. I want these things to stop. Suicide, after all, should be about a diminution of irritants, not the introduction of new ones.
The sun is fast sinking westwards, and it’s now very murky in my front vestibule. I’ve got the electric light on, and have a new candle strapped to my forehead, the latter’s flickering flame sending smudged fists of shadow punching up and down the wall before me. My cheeks are hardening beneath a layer of wax; the squeak of my pen echoes about the empty interior of my home. I’m slowly getting back into my rhythm after the shock of the stone. My work is soothing me.
In about two lines’ time I shall curl around the corner into the kitchen and get going on the murder of Lord Slaggsby. Before I do, however, I ought to say something I’ve been meaning to for a couple of days now. It is this: I ABSOLUTELY BLOODY LOVE MY NOTE!!!
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE LONGEST I’VE ever gone without murdering anyone is 24 years, a period that began in 1945 after the deaths of the albino twins, and terminated, literally, in 1969, with the killing of Lord Slaggsby. So protracted was this era of peace and tranquillity and goodwill to all men, and so wholly uncharacteristic, that I seriously began to wonder if perhaps my murdering days were over. If I’d finally run out of steam.
Of course, it didn’t work out like that. And I have to say, in retrospect, I’m glad it didn’t (although Walter, Keith, His Lordship and Mrs Bunshop probably aren’t). If I’d stopped murdering in 1945, after all, I wouldn’t have left myself nearly enough material to fill all the walls of my castle. It’s almost as if, subconsciously at least, I kept bumping people off simply so as to be able to write a good suicide note.
I had expected my journey home from Germany in April 1945 to be a tortuously slow one. The war, after all, was still raging, and all was turmoil and confusion. Thanks to Emily’s official-looking document, however, I got back faster than I could possibly have hoped. I had merely to wave the thing and people literally fell over themselves to help me, so that barely three days after setting out from Bremen I found myself stepping off a troop ship on to Dover docks, the white cliffs towering above me, bright and welcoming in the morning sunlight. For me, at least, the war was over.
I spent six weeks in a comfortable, if rather sparse, military hospital, and was demobbed on 19th June 1945, jumping to the head of the queue, courtesy of Emily’s document. In return for five years of my time, the War Office presented me with one three-piece suit (blue), two white shirts, a disgusting brown tie, a rail pass and precisely five pounds three shillings and sixpence cash. More important, despite the upheavals of the war years, I still had The Photo and, of course, The Pill. Hitler might have ravaged half the known world, but he wasn’t getting his hands on those!
Once demobbed, I found myself temporary lodgings in a rather grotty boarding house on the outskirts of Hastings, settling down therein to decide my future. What I was going to do, I had no idea. I had no friends or relatives to turn to, no evident skills, and precious little money. Emily was somewhere in Germany and, after six years of war, England was in a shambles. As has been the case so many times in my life, I was at a complete dead end. And as has also been the case so many times in my life, something popped up, quite unexpectedly. An opportunity.
It popped up in a newspaper. The Times. I was sitting in the grotty lounge of my grotty lodging, sipping weak and grotty tea, when I spotted a small advert in the Domestic Situations Vacant column of that day’s Times:
Wanted. Manservant to foremost peer of the realm. Duties to include valeting, butlering, secretarial. Moral rectitude and utmost probity essential. Experience likewise. Must appreciate Wagner. Apply, with references to:
Slaggsby of Tripally, Tripally Hall, Northumberland.
As adverts go, this one was, on the face of it, not that promising. After all, I had no experience whatsoever in the areas specified; wouldn’t know a piece of Wagner music if it dropped on my head from a hundred feet; and, as a mass murderer, could hardly be described as a man of rectitude and probity. What’s more, I didn’t have any references.
I was, nonetheless, for no obvious reason other than that I liked the idea of hobnobbing with the gentry, rather taken with the advert, and replied straight away. I got over the references problem by writing them myself, inventing, variously, an Italian count, a French Baron and a multi-millionaire American industrialist, all of whom claimed, in the most flattering terms imaginable, that I was without doubt the best manservant they’d ever had, bar none. I was rather pleased with my handiwork, and posted it off first class that afternoon. Three days later I had a reply, by telegram: Come immediately stop Tripally station nearest stop Expect day after tomorrow stop Slaggsby end.
And there it was. I set off the next morning, doing a dawn bunk from my grotty lodging and making my way slowly northwards by train into the rolling woody wilds of northern England. The journey took longer than I had expected, and it was not until the day after the day after tomorrow that I eventually disembarked at Tripally station and walked the two miles up to Tripally
Hall, passing through its huge, rusted iron gates and so into another world, another life, another murder. I was 45 at the time, and had a moustache. A woman on the train told me I looked like Errol Flynn.
Tripally Hall, where I was to reside for the next quarter of a century, was a most impressive affair, standing in the midst of extensive woods and parklands, and commanding a spectacular view downwards to the distant rooftops of Tripally village, nestling in the valley below on the far side of a frothing, pebbly river. Say what you like about Lord Slaggsby’s death, it at least occurred in nice surroundings.
The Hall itself was a two-storeyed structure of rather dour grey-brown sandstone, to either end of which, and at right angles to the main body of the building, had been added two wings in similarly coloured stone. Looked at from above, it would have resembled an elongated letter H, the original and oldest part of the house, forming the central horizontal. It had a large, iron-studded front door, mossy cylindrical towers at the end of each wing, and windows that seemed just a little too small for the walls in which they were set, giving an overall impression of a series of crossed eyes traversing the front and sides of the building. The whole thing exuded an air of defiant, slumberous inertia, as though the twentieth century had yet to percolate upwards past the rusted front gates.
‘What on earth have I let myself in for?’ I mused as I stood before the front door. ‘It’s like a bloody mausoleum.’
Whereupon, quite ignoring my own misgivings, I yanked the bell-pull and waited expectantly as it tinkled far off in the distant bowels of the building.
It was some five minutes before I heard footsteps approaching the door from the inside, by which point I had tugged the bell-pull twice more and walked right the way round the outside of the building. Finally, however, there was a clunk of bolts being drawn back and the slow creak of the door as it swung inwards to reveal a fierce-looking grey-haired lady with narrow eyes, serge stockings and a hare lip.
‘I suppose you’ve come about the parsnips!’ she hissed.