The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix

by Paul Sussman

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I’VE HAD THE most unfortunate experience with Dr Bannen. So engrossed was I in writing the above that I didn’t hear his Land Rover when it pulled up outside at 3 p.m. And then when he knocked at the door I assumed it was the phantom knocker again, and I rushed up to the roof and leant over the battlements and shouted: ‘Fuck off, you horrible little shit! Fuck off and leave me alone!’ And poor old Dr Bannen thought I was talking to him and had the most appalling wheezing fit, huffing and puffing, and practically coughing himself right off the edge of the cliff.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Dr Bannen,’ I cried, hurrying downstairs and out of the front door. ‘What a terrible mistake. I thought you were somebody else. A blond child.’

  This seemed to upset him even more, his face turning so purple it was practically black, as though he’d been down a coal mine.

  ‘What can I do, Dr Bannen?’ I asked, concerned. ‘Should I slap you on the back?’

  He waved his arms frantically, indicating that that was the last thing on God’s earth I should do.

  ‘Wa . . . huh huh huh . . . wa . . . huh huh huh . . . water.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, I’ll fetch you some right away.’

  I slipped back into the castle and returned with a large glass of tap water with an apologetic slice of lemon in it.

  ‘Here you are, Dr Bannen.’

  He shook his head despairingly.

  ‘Allergic to citrus fruits,’ he wheezed.

  I threw the water away and fetched another glass, which he downed in one gulp. His breathing eased up a little, and his face inched its way slowly back through the colour spectrum from purple to pink.

  ‘I really can’t say how sorry I am, Dr Bannen,’ I apologized again. ‘A terrible misunderstanding. It’s just that someone’s been banging on my castle door all week, and making rude noises through the letterbox, and I’m at the end of my tether. I feel like a prisoner in my own home.’

  I explained about the knocking, and the raspberries, and the stone throwing, and the face in the bracken and all the other strange things that had gone on since I last saw him.

  ‘I don’t know who’s doing it, but it’s driving me mad. To start with, it was innocuous enough, but now it’s happening on an hourly basis. A half-hourly basis. It’s like I’m under siege. Someone seems to want to drive me insane.’

  Dr Bannen, now all but recovered from his convulsions, tutted and shook his head.

  ‘I can understand your frustration, Mr Phoenix,’ he wheezed. ‘You gave me a bit of a shock there, but having heard your story I can see why you were so upset. A face in the bracken, you say?’

  ‘That’s right. A pale face, with blond hair. I thought it might have been a rabbit or something. And they threw an egg too. It landed on the dome.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘Extraordinary.’

  ‘I’ve tried to catch them, but they’re always too quick. Even when I stand right behind the door I still can’t get it open in time to see who it is. I’ve even tried giving them money to go away, but it hasn’t done any good. I’m at my wits’ end.’

  ‘Have you contacted the police?’

  ‘I don’t see what they could do. And I don’t want to make a big fuss. I just want to be left alone and in peace. I don’t want people blowing raspberries through my letterbox.’

  He agreed that it was indeed a most unacceptable state of affairs, and promised to ask around in the village for anyone matching the description of my tormentor, although I doubt he will. Despite his professions of support, I don’t think he actually believed a word I’d said and was simply humouring me, like a psychiatrist humours a particularly truculent patient. I could see it in his eyes. He thought I’d made the whole thing up. That I’d gone gaga.

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter,’ I said, sighing. ‘Your arrival seems to have frightened him off, whoever he is, and hopefully he won’t come back again. Come on, let’s unload the car. And I really am very sorry about swearing at you like that.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he coughed. ‘All in the line of duty.’

  We went to and fro in silence, removing the boxes of provisions and placing them on the doorstep. (I had, of course, kept the front door well closed – couldn’t have Dr Bannen seeing my suicide note. His lungs wouldn’t have coped.) I thought about mentioning the hammering in my back, which was by now so intense it at times threatened to knock me right off my feet, but decided against it. If he had trouble believing there was someone knocking on my door, I couldn’t see the erstwhile doctor having much idea what to do about a pair of delinquent wings. So I kept quiet on the matter.

  ‘I heard you went down to the village the other day,’ he said after a while, trying to sound casual but clearly itching to hear about my little foray into the outside world. ‘I met Nurse Patel in the post office and she told me.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘By sight. Nice woman. Indian. She said you needed some pens.’

  I heaved the last box out of the Land Rover and trudged towards the front door.

  ‘She was very kind. I was rather tired after the walk down the track and so she went into the village for me. It was a great help.’

  ‘You should have asked me. I would have got them for you.’

  ‘It was something of an emergency,’ I explained. ‘I needed them immediately and couldn’t wait till today.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘She said her name was Emily.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The nurse.’

  ‘Did she? I don’t know. Doesn’t sound very Indian, does it? Here, let me help you with that.’

  He relieved me of the last box, plonked it on the doorstep and then counted out my pension money. For the following week we left it that he’d simply bring the same again. I naturally made no mention of the fact that the following week I’d be dead.

  ‘Perhaps I misheard,’ I said as he handed me my cash.

  ‘Misheard?’ He repeated as I handed him back most of the money to pay for my supplies.

  ‘Nurse Patel’s first name. Perhaps she didn’t say Emily at all. It’s just that I once knew someone called Emily. Maybe she’s called something completely different.’

  He clearly didn’t have the least idea what I was going on about, and, as he always did when I was confusing him, took refuge in his notebook, carefully folding away the notes I had just given him and ticking off the provisions he’d just unloaded as though the familiarity of the goods on his list offered some sort of shield against my ramblings. He remained in the book until I’d fallen silent, whereupon he judged it safe to emerge once again.

  ‘Now,’ he huffed, going round to the far side of his Land Rover, opening the door and removing a plastic bag with ‘Gordon’s Grapes’ stencilled on the side from the passenger seat. ‘I’ve got that wine you ordered. The special wine. I’m afraid they didn’t have any of the ones you asked for, so I got this. I hope it’s OK. The man in the shop recommended it. Said for the price it was very reasonable. You get a free poster of the wine-growing regions of France as well.’

  He came back round and gave me the bag. I pulled out a slightly dusty bottle with a frayed label.

  ‘A Domaine de Chevalier 1982,’ I said, delighted. ‘Excellent. Absolutely excellent. I couldn’t have chosen better myself.’

  ‘It was £32.50. You did say it had to be over £30.’

  ‘I did indeed,’ I replied. ‘Your man was right. For the price it’s very reasonable.’

  I disappeared into the castle and returned with the money to pay him, my meagre savings now utterly exhausted.

  ‘Seeing the year out in style, are we?’ he rasped.

  ‘Absolutely. It’s not every day you get to stand on the threshold of a new millennium. This should ease things along very nicely.’

  I examined the bottle for a moment in the watery afternoon light, and then returned it to its bag.

  ‘They’ve got a big firework display down
in the village tonight,’ said Dr Bannen. ‘You should have a good view from up here. Apparently it’s going to be a corker, although I’ll have to watch it from indoors. The smoke gets right down my windpipe.’

  He removed a large check handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose into it, and then made for the front of his car.

  ‘Anyway, I’d better be off, Mr Phoenix. Elsie doesn’t like to be left alone in the surgery for too long. Gives her the jitters.’

  I smiled at his traditional parting line, feeling, as I did so, a twinge of sadness that this was the last time I’d ever see him. He might have thought I was a fruitcake, but he’s always been civil to me, and I took a step forward, intending to shake hands with him. As I did so, however, he turned towards me and the handshake somehow transmuted into a full-scale hug.

  ‘Goodbye, dear Dr Bannen,’ I said, patting the back of his tweed jacket. ‘You’ve been so good to me.’

  He didn’t actually push me off, he was far too polite for that, but he stiffened noticeably, and his breath, still wheezy after his earlier coughing fit, began to scrape and scratch like sandpaper rubbed across a brick. I was tempted to exacerbate his discomfort by planting a kiss on his cheek, but, realizing that such a gesture might well cause his ailing respiratory system to pack in altogether, settled instead for giving him a good hard squeeze, before letting him go.

  ‘I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate your coming all the way up here with my shopping,’ I went on, backing away slightly. ‘I know you think I’m a bit strange, but you’ve always been very kind to me and I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you properly for that.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ he gasped painfully, moving a little to his left so as to bring the Land Rover’s open front door between us. ‘Please don’t mention it. Ever again. It’s really not necessary. All part of the job.’

  ‘Well, just so long as you know I’m grateful.’

  ‘I do!’ he wheezed. ‘I do!’

  He pulled the door protectively around him as though it were some sort of bathrobe, and stared at me nervously. He was clearly terrified I might try to embrace him a second time, and to put him at his ease I backed away several more feet.

  ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you’ve been my lifeline. A Happy New Year, Dr Bannen. A Happy New Thousand Years. And the same to Mrs Bannen.’

  He remained motionless for a moment, his cheek twitching slightly, his chest heaving in and out like a pair of blacksmith’s bellows, and then, apparently convinced the danger was over, relaxed somewhat.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Phoenix,’ he said. ‘Thank you. And the same to you.’

  He edged out from behind his door and, rather to my surprise, extended his hand.

  ‘Happy New Year.’

  It was a touching gesture, especially considering how scared of me he clearly was, and, stepping forward, I shook. It’s strange how even the most insubstantial of people assume an overwhelming significance when you know you’ll never see them again. I held his palm, his rather sweaty palm, for a moment, and then we each backed away, me to the castle doorstep, he into the driver’s seat of his Land Rover.

  ‘I didn’t even ask you if you had a good Christmas,’ I said.

  ‘Very nice,’ he replied, slamming the Land Rover door and starting the engine. ‘Although Elsie’s mother had a bit of a turn during The Towering Inferno. Seemed to think the whole thing had been sparked off by her electric blanket. Got very upset. What about yourself?’

  ‘Very peaceful,’ I said. ‘By the way, I’ve still got Mrs Bannen’s pudding bowl.’

  ‘Give it to me next week,’ he said, swinging the Land Rover around and pointing it down towards the village. ‘Hope you enjoyed it.’

  ‘It was the most wonderful pudding I’ve ever tasted.’

  ‘I’ll let Elsie know,’ he shouted. ‘She’ll be ever so pleased. Goodbye, Mr Phoenix. See you next week!’

  And with a beep of his horn he lurched off downhill. He stopped after 50 yards, however, and reversed back up to the castle.

  ‘I’ll forget my own head one of these days,’ he said. ‘This came for you.’

  He handed a large white envelope out of the window before driving off again with a toot and a cough. I watched him as he wound his way down towards the village, and then, when he was out of sight, ripped open the letter, the first I had ever received at the castle – and probably the last too. This is what it said inside.

  ‘I am delighted to send you my warm congratulations on your hundredth birthday, together with my best wishes for an enjoyable celebration. Elizabeth R.’

  Would you believe it! A telegram from the Queen. I wonder what she’d say if she knew what sort of celebration I’d got planned tonight. Silly old moo.

  It’s 7 p.m. and in just six hours I’ll be dead. There’s still a lot to do, and not much time to do it in. I need to keep pushing on. No rest for the suicidal.

  I hadn’t finished describing Miss Wasply’s murder when Dr Bannen arrived at 3 p.m. – so much for my boast that I could get it done in under ten hours – and it was only two hours after he’d left that I finally brought the whole episode to a close. It spilled out of the upstairs gallery by a few lines, but only a few. Aside from Mr Popplethwaite. it’s by far the best-fitting of all my murders.

  I’ve now written my way across and around the landing wall from the door of the gallery to that of my bedroom, through which I will be passing in just a couple of paragraphs’ time. My bedroom, of course, is the last room of my life. A quarter of the way around it is the door to the roof stairs, which is where my note will end, and with it me too. I need to increase the size of my writing somewhat, so as to hit the mark perfectly. I don’t have much more to say now.

  I’m using the second of my two purple pens (the first, remember, was used up filling in the space above each doorway). If I write sparingly it should last me right the way through to the end. I’m glad. It’s so much nicer than that horrible shit-brown of the last pen in each pack. Purple is a good colour to die in.

  The knocking’s started up again, and the raspberries – they stopped briefly after Dr Bannen’s visit – but I’m just ignoring them. And my back too. I’m closing myself off. Barricading myself in the mansions of my memory. Fuck them. Fuck the world. They – it – can’t hurt me now. Nothing and no one can hurt me now. Except me, of course.

  Now, however, I must do my last murder. Or my first murder, depending on which way you look at these things. It’s a quick one, and I reckon I can probably fit it into a single column. Let’s see.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I DON’T REALLY remember much about my very first murder, committed in the early hours of Monday, 1st January 1900. In fact, I don’t remember anything about it at all, and am therefore wholly reliant upon second-hand accounts for what follows.

  It was my mother that I killed, and I did it with my head, which had, apparently, assumed a most unnatural position relative to the entrance to her womb. The more she tried to force me from her, the more damage I caused, ripping her poor delicate insides to shreds. I was eventually delivered by Caesarean section, but by then she was gone. Father, I am told, wept for an entire week.

  Notices of her death appeared in The Times, the Inventors’ Review and on page nine of the February issue of Patents Magazine, alongside an article on Mr Hardcastle’s Patent Pneumatic Boot-Trees. I used to possess copies of all of these, but they have, over the years, been lost or destroyed.

  I do, however, still have a photo of her – a dog-eared, fading, crumpled old thing that I carry with me wherever I go. The Photo. She is wearing a high-necked white dress and is smiling wanly into camera. Father was right. She was beautiful. Aside from Emily, she’s the only person I’ve ever really loved, even though I never actually knew her.

  She’s buried in a desolate corner of Highgate Cemetery, in a grave with a large stone angel in place of a headstone. I used to visit it a lot as a child, but haven’t been for years now. The last I saw of it the angel
was wrapped in a thick muffler of ivy, and one of its outspread wings had dropped off.

  And that’s all I can really tell you. I wasn’t even a minute old when I started murdering. Like I said way back at the beginning of this note, I’m a natural-born killer. Always have been, always will be. There’s no escaping destiny.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  AND THAT COMPLETES my tally. Ten decades, ten murders (eleven, if you count the albino twins as two). And now the story’s all but finished. And so, too, my life. I must give the castle a quick tidy, spruce myself up a bit, maybe make myself one final meal (curried mackerel fillets with melted cheese on top . . . Yummmmm!). And then it’s up to the dome to die. I’d like to see the fireworks before I go. I’ve always enjoyed fireworks. They’re like dreams in the sky.

  Before any of that, however, I must tell you what happened the other night with Emily. The night before I started the note. The night why I started the note. It is, you see, the key to the whole thing. Had Emily not done what she did, none of this would be going on. I’d still be wanting to live. The Pill would have stayed in my pocket. As with so many things in my life, with all things in my life, it all leads back to Emily.

  Eleven nights ago, that being the night of Monday, 20th December, I was sitting up in my dome gazing out into the darkness, as I had done every night, without exception, since I first arrived in the castle 15 years previously. The air was cold, with a slight hint of frost, and I had wrapped a thick blanket around my shoulders, like a shawl. The sky was clear, and full of stars. I was on my thirtieth or fortieth cigarette of the day.

  I didn’t notice the knocking at first, for I was lost in a twilight world of empty thoughts and barren recollections. Gradually, however, over a period of minutes, I became aware of a hammering on the front door. It took a further few moments for awareness to translate itself into action, whereupon I rose stiffly to my feet and shuffled across the roof to the western battlements (how much older I was just a week ago!).