The Best of Gerald Kersh

by Gerald Kersh

I nodded, not knowing exactly what she meant. To tell you the truth (it might have been on account of my bang on the head) I was a little irritated with her now. I could not help thinking: Uncle Arnold, in her position, by this time would have been sitting up and shouting: ‘A scratch, damme, a bloody scratch! Get some wine – red wine – that makes blood! And steak, bleeding, underdone! Bustle about, you dago dogs!’ … I couldn’t banish from my mind the image of the old gentleman as he lay in the Cottage Hospital: every inch a proper man, but smiling with a kind of tenderness, and eager to give, to pay, all rancour forgotten.

  I said: ‘You have made sacrifices, Mavis, no doubt. For your Art. So have I made sacrifices, for your Art!’

  She laughed, in a lightly-fluttering, high-pitched way, and said: ‘Oh no! What, you? Sacrifices? Oh no! I sacrificed my body for my Art!’

  A great cold came over me then. ‘You sacrificed your body to whom?’

  ‘To you, of course,’ she said.

  Quite calmly, I believe, I said: ‘Very likely. But for your Art, and my love of you, Mavis, I have sacrificed my immortal soul.’

  ‘Don’t let’s be intense,’ said she, wearily, ‘because I don’t think I could bear it.’

  A strange, unpleasant light made a sickly sunrise in my disordered head. ‘Why, I believe you were really in love with Abaloni!’ I cried.

  ‘Please, Rod, let’s not go into that, now!’

  And then I knew that it was the choreographer Abaloni whom Mavis had always truly loved. There surged up in me a great white hate – boiling bubble-to-bubble with my love for her. In circumstances such as this, a man feels at the tip of his tongue some stupendous speech … and comes out with something trite and silly.

  I could only say: ‘Abaloni’s fat!’

  ‘You’re no oil painting,’ said she.

  Before I could find words to say in reply, Mavis sat up. For the moment, I thought that she was crying, because tears were running down her cheeks, and I said: ‘Dear Mavis, forgive my inadequacies, and pardon me if I hurt you. I love you most dearly. If it will be better for you to be with Abaloni, then go. I thought you loved me. I was a fool to think so. Take half of what I have, and go to Abaloni——’

  But she was not crying. She could not catch her breath.

  I called for the doctor. He said: ‘It happens, occasionally. There are people, especially women, who are affected like this in the mountains by changes in atmospheric pressure. Come away, and let her rest.’

  I came away with the nurse, who put me to bed with cold towels on my head. Next morning, when I went to see Mavis, she said: ‘I must have been sort of woozy yesterday. Rod, did I say all sorts of silly things? … I can sit up today. Let’s go home soon…. But tell me – did I talk all kinds of silliness?’

  ‘Not a word,’ I said.

  ‘I must have had a temperature,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me, but I seem to have caught a virus, or something——’ Mavis began to struggle for breath, and the sound that she made – how can I describe it? – was as if she had been caught at that fine point between breathing-in and breathing-out. She agonised, at last, in a convulsive combination of coughing and sneezing.

  ‘The doctor says this has something to do with atmospheric pressure,’ I told her. ‘As soon as he gives permission, I’ll take you home. I’m sorry our little holiday turned out so wretchedly.’

  Mavis said: ‘Please, Rod, let it be soon! I can’t breathe here…. Do you very much mind not kissing me, Rod? This might be catching. Yes, that’s it – it might be catching. Do you mind awfully leaving me alone a bit? Pretty please?’

  I had to say: ‘Look, Mavis – did you mean what you said last night about loving Abaloni?’

  She became angry at this, and cried: ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, do try to be civilised just for once in your life! Please leave me alone, Rod. Sort of go away, kind of, for the moment; and tomorrow, perhaps.’

  So I left her, and went to see the doctor. He handed me a cablegram. It was from my uncle’s solicitor, Mr Coote. My uncle, Sir Arnold Arnold, had died suddenly in Paris: would I, his heir and executor, return to London at my earliest convenience?

  When I read this, I put my head between my hands and sat for a while rocking to and fro in deep grief. Then this grief was overlaid with black fear. Was it I who killed him? I wondered. But I reassured myself – this could not be: oysters would not be in season until the first of September. So I went back to Mavis’s bedside.

  ‘Oh, please, Rod——’ she began.

  ‘– I must go back to England immediately,’ I said. ‘My uncle’s dead.’

  Her face was radiant as she cried: ‘Oh, how – terrible! Oh, I’m so – sorry!’

  I could almost have killed her then. But I stooped to kiss her. I hope I shall not long remember – I am sure that I shall never forget – the quick little gesture of revulsion with which she turned away as soon as my lips touched her cheek. ‘Better hurry, Rod, darling,’ she said: and began to weep.

  ‘You’re crying!’ I said.

  ‘So are you,’ said she.

  ‘I loved the old man very much, I think,’ I said, ‘and you even more, Mavis. Until soon. Good-bye.’

  I arranged for transportation to the nearest airport. Before I left I sent for the woman who had given of her blood to my wife and, in genuine gratitude, put some money into her hand, and thanked her most warmly.

  She burst into tears and rushed out of the room.

  When I went to see Mr Coote in his office in Staple Inn, my worst fears were confirmed. Discreetly congratulating me upon my inheritance, which, even after death duties had been paid, would still leave me rich – Coote told me the story of my uncle’s death:

  ‘… As you no doubt know, the late Sir Arnold was of – de mortuis nil nisi bonum – an impatient, an impetuous disposition. Oh dear! In a nutshell: the oyster season being over, he resented having to live on “slops” – he said he’d be damned if he would, and said in Paris they served oysters all the year round. “And what the devil’s the matter with a fat Portuguese oyster, damn it all?” Sir Arnold said.’

  ‘Go on, Mr Coote!’

  ‘To proceed … Sir Arnold went to Paris. He went straight from the train to Fratelli’s Restaurant, ordered three dozen of the finest Portuguese oysters and half a bottle of wine. He ate the oysters, drank the wine, and collapsed in a convulsion; a sort of asthmatic convulsion, but of the most violent kind. And this, I regret to say, was too much for his poor heart…. Now, please, oh, please, you really must pull yourself together! … Dunhill! A glass of water, quick!——’

  For, at this, I fainted.

  *

  The Victorian novelists used to call it a ‘brain fever’. Now, I believe, we refer to my condition then as a ‘nervous breakdown’. I was put to bed and given opiates and sedatives – bromide of this, bromide of that. But always, when the world slipped away, and I slid out of it into the cool dark, I was snatched out of my black, drugged peace by fantastic nightmares.

  In these, invariably, my Uncle Arnold appeared, curiously blue in the face and unpleasantly bloated, wheezing: ‘Give me credit for it, Rod, my boy – never dreamed you had it in you to kill your old uncle! … But you ought to have done it with a poker, or even the paper-knife, face-to-face like a man … I could have forgiven you for that, Rod. But yours was a woman’s trick, a poisoner’s trick…. I’ll lime you for that, my fine-feathered friend – I’ll give you a taste of your own medicine – I’ll give you a dose of your own poison, you woman, you!’

  Then my uncle coughed himself into dissolution, and I awoke with a loud cry.

  I might have lain there for a week or more; only on the third morning there came a telegram from Mavis, saying that she was arriving at Victoria Station by the boat train from Paris the following day. I got out of bed at once, and made myself presentable, and was pacing the platform a good hour before the train came in. She was more beautiful than ever. ‘Oh, Mavis, Mavis!’ I cried, kissing her.


  To my horror and astonishment, her eyes filled with tears, and her chest heaved in a fit of coughing that sounded like thin steel chains being shaken in a cardboard box. ‘For God’s sake go away!’ she said, as soon as she could talk. ‘You make me ill!’

  I am too tired to write more. What Mavis said is true. Literally, I make her ill. I understand, now, the sudden violent emotion of the woman who gave Mavis her blood in that transfusion – Solomona, her name was, I think. I have inquired since, and tests have been made. Solomona is violently allergic to my kind of red hair.

  Therefore Mavis, who is all I have to live for, finds that my presence is poisonous to her. So she has left me, and I am dreadfully alone.

  It is impossible for her to live with me. But it is impossible for me to live without her.

  I see no occasion further to prolong my existence.

  With this, I end the narrative of my confession: God is just.

  The Crewel Needle

  CERTAIN others I know, in my position, sir, have gone out of their minds – took to parading the streets with banners, and what not, shouting UNFAIR! Well, thank God, I was always steady-minded. I could always see the other side of things. So, although I really was unjustly dismissed the Force, I could still keep my balance. I could see the reason for the injustice behind my dismissal, and could get around to blaming myself for not keeping my silly mouth shut.

  Actually, you know, I wasn’t really sacked. I was told that if I wanted to keep what there was of my pension, I had better resign on grounds of ill-health. So I did, and serve me right. I should never have made my statement without first having my evidence corroborated. However, no bitterness – that ends badly, mark my words. Justifiable or unjustifiable, bitterness leads to prejudice, which, carried far enough, is the same thing as madness. … I started life in the Army, d’you see, where you learn to digest a bit of injustice here and there; because, if you do not, it gets you down and you go doolally.

  Many is the good man I’ve known who has ruined himself by expecting too much justice. Now I ask you, what sane man in this world really expects to get what he properly deserves? Right or wrong?

  If I had been thirty years wiser thirty years ago, I might have been retired now on an Inspector’s pension. Only, in the matter of an Open Verdict, I didn’t have the sense to say nothing. I was young and foolish, d’you see, and therefore over-eager. There was a girl I was very keen on, and I was anxious to better myself – she was used to something a cut above what I could offer her. D’you see?

  I was supposed to be an intelligent officer, as far as that goes in the Police Force. But that isn’t quite good enough. In those days all the so-called intelligence in the world wouldn’t get a policeman very far – seniority aside – unless he had a kind of spectacular way of showing it.

  I’m not embittered, mind you. Nothing against the Force. Only I ought to have known when to stop talking.

  *

  At first, like everybody else, I thought nothing of it. The police were called in after the doctor, merely as a matter of routine, d’you see. I was on the beat then, in Hammersmith. Towards about eight o’clock one Sunday morning, neighbours on either side of a little house on Spindleberry Road were disturbed by the hysterical crying of a child at No. 9.

  At first there was some talk of the N.S.P.C.C., but there was no question of that, because the people at No. 9 were, simply, a little orphan girl, aged eight, and her aunt, Miss Pantile, who thought the world of her niece and, far from ill-treating the child, had a tendency to spoil her; because the little girl, whose name was Titania, was delicate, having had rheumatic fever.

  As is not uncommon, the houses in Spindleberry Road are numbered, odd coming up and even going down. The neighbours in question, therefore, were Nos. 7 and 11. Spindleberry Road, like so many of them put up around Brook Green before the turn of the century, is simply a parallel of brick barracks, sort of sectionalised and numbered. Under each number, a porch. In front of each porch, iron railings and an iron gate. At the back of each and every house, a bit of garden. I mention this, d’you see, because these houses, from a policeman’s point of view, present only an elementary problem: they are accessible from front or back only.

  Beg pardon – I’ve never quite lost the habit of making everything I say a kind of Report…. Well, hearing child crying, neighbours knock at door. No answer. No. 7 shouts through letter-box: ‘Open the door and let us in, Titania!’ Child keeps on crying. Various neighbours try windows, but every window is locked from the inside. At last No. 11, a retired captain of the Mercantile Marine, in the presence of witnesses, bursts in the back door.

  Meanwhile, one of the lady neighbours has come to get a policeman, and has found me at the corner of Rowan Road. I appear on the scene.

  Not to bother you, sir, with the formalities: being within my rights, as I see them in this case, I go in, having whistled for another policeman who happens to be my Sergeant. The house is in no way disturbed, but all the time, upstairs, this child is screaming as if she is being murdered, over and over again: ‘Auntie Lily’s dead! Auntie Lily’s dead!’

  The bedroom is locked on the inside. Sergeant and I force the lock, and there comes out at us a terrified little golden-headed girl, frightened out of her wits. The woman from No. 11 soothes her as best she can, but the Sergeant and I concentrate our attention upon Miss Lily Pantile, who is lying on a bed with her eyes and mouth wide open, stone dead.

  The local doctor was called, of course, and he said that, as far as he could tell, this poor old maiden lady had died of something like a cerebral hæmorrhage at about three o’clock in the morning. On a superficial examination, this was as far as he cared to commit himself. He suggested that this was a matter for the coroner.

  And that, as far as everybody was concerned, was that, d’you see. Only it was not. At the Inquest, it appeared that poor Miss Pantile had met her death through a most unusual injury. A gold-eyed crewel needle had been driven through her skull, and into her brain, about three inches above the left ear!

  Now here, if you like, was a mystery with a capital M.

  Miss Pantile lived alone with her eight-year-old niece. She had enough money of her own to support them both, but sometimes made a little extra by crewel work – you know, embroidering with silks on a canvas background. She was especially good at crewelling roses for cushion covers. The needle she favoured – she had packets and packets of them – was the Cumberland Crewel Gold Eye, one of which had found its way, nobody knew how, through her skull and into her brain. But how could it possibly have found its way there? – that was the question.

  There was no lack of conjecture, you may be sure. Doctors cited dozens of instances of women – tailoresses and dressmakers, particularly – who had suddenly fallen dead through having needles embedded in various vital organs. Involuntary muscular contractions, it was demonstrated, could easily send an accidentally-stuck-in needle, or portion of a needle, working its way between the muscles for extraordinary distances, until it reached, for example, the heart….

  The coroner was inclined to accept this as a solution, and declare a verdict of Death by Misadventure. Only the doctor wouldn’t have that. Such cases, he said, had come to his attention, especially in the East End of London; and, in every case, the needle extracted had been in a certain way corroded, or calcified, as the case might be. In the case of Miss Lily Pantile, the crewel needle – upon the evidence of a noted pathologist – had been driven into the skull from the outside, with superhuman force. Part of the gold eye of the needle had been found protruding from the deceased’s scalp…. What did the coroner make of that? – the doctor asked.

  The coroner was not anxious to make anything of it but routine inquiry.

  In the opinion of the doctor, could an able-bodied man have driven a needle through a human skull with his fingers?

  Definitely, no.

  Might this needle, then, have been driven into Miss Pantile’s skull with some instrument, such as a
hammer?

  Possibly; but only by someone of ‘preternatural skill’ in the use of fine steel instruments of exceptional delicacy….

  The doctor reminded the coroner that even experienced needlewomen frequently broke far heavier needles than this gold-headed crewel needle, working with cloth of close texture. The human skull, the doctor said – calling the coroner, with his forensic experience, to witness – was a most remarkably difficult thing to penetrate, even with a specially designed instrument like a trephine.

  The coroner said that one had, however, to admit the possibility of a crewel needle being driven through a middle-aged woman’s skull with a hammer, in the hands of a highly-skilled man.

  … So it went on, d’you see. The doctor lost his temper and invited anyone to produce an engraver, say, or cabinet-maker, to drive a crewel needle through a human skull with a hammer ‘with such consummate dexterity’ – they were his words, sir – as to leave the needle unbroken, and the surrounding skin unmarked, as was the case with Miss Pantile.

  There, d’you see, the coroner had him. He said, in substance: ‘You have proved that this needle could not have found its way into the late Miss Pantile’s brain from inside. You have also proved that this needle could not have found its way into Miss Pantile’s brain from outside.’

  Reprimanding somebody for laughing, then, he declared an Open Verdict.

  So the case was closed. A verdict is a verdict, but coroners are only coroners, even though they may be backed by the Home Office pathologist. And somehow or other, for me, this verdict was not good enough. If I had been that coroner, I thought to myself, I would have made it: Wilful Murder by a Person, or Persons, Unknown.

  All fine and large. But what person, or what persons, known or unknown, with specialised skill enough to get into a sealed house, and into a locked room, hammer a fine needle into a lady’s skull, and get out again, locking all the doors behind him, or them, from the inside – all without waking an eight-year-old girl sleeping by the side of the victim?