King Coffin: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  He gave a little shiver, the night had turned cool, got up to switch on the lights.

  Jones!

  Of course.

  That was why his heart had begun beating—it was the theater night, it was Tuesday, Jones would perhaps be at the Orpheum. But there was no rush—: if Jones went there at all, he would be there all the evening. The show itself would probably be dull, it wasn’t really necessary to go till near the end. And in some respects this would be better. For if in fact (as he had half considered just before he fell asleep) an opportunity should occur tonight; if in some unexpected way Jones should prove vulnerable, or the circumstances propitious, for the thing itself—if for a moment, in the subway, Jones should detach himself from whoever might be with him, or on leaving the theater, or on getting off the Huron Avenue car—not that any of these things was likely or that in any case the scene itself would be the most suitable—he would be prepared for it, the revolver was in his pocket; and it would be safer, of course, if he had not been too long visible in the theater.… Yes, that had been the idea, when he fell asleep; but now, after dark, after waking in the dark to a subtle sense of change, of void, it all seemed oddly improbable, and as if not properly outlined: a little vague: a little unreal. What he needed was a wash, cold water on the eyes and wrists—what he needed was a drink. Then the thing could be looked at more calmly, more clearly. And after all, what was the hurry?

  Moreover, was it quite certain that the revolver was the best way? Better, perhaps, to make an appointment with Jones to discuss the advertising project, drive him out to Concord, into the country, as if to meet the mythical “partner”—there would be no difficulties about that, it would be ridiculously easy—no one would know about it, not a soul, it could be done in daylight—and even if done with the revolver, there, in some wooded lane——

  He turned his back on the vision, walked slowly across the room to the Chinese waterfall, stared at it, in the silence seemed almost to hear the headlong rush of the gray torrent: it was his own silence, his own world, it was himself who waited there in the little red pavilion among trees on the edge of the twisted crag, listening to that sound as of a pouring and terrible chaos. He leaned toward it, as if the better to hear it, the better to see it, but found that it wasn’t in fact the waterfall he was looking at, or trying to hear, but the little man who had become his shadow, the little man who stood alone with him in the center of the world. Jones was beside him in the car, Jones with his absurd tweed hat, the brown feather at the side, the cheap fur collar, the little red notebook in his hand. Jones turned toward him and said—what was it that he said? Jones was smiling at him sidelong, under the clipped moustache, was looking ridiculously competent as always, nodded with a knowing air, seemed to be about to say that he knew a trick or two worth two of that. And all the while, Jones was confidingly, almost invitingly, opening his heart to a pistol shot.…

  In the bathroom, he ran the cold water over his extended wrists, let it run till it freshened, smiled slightly at the tall image which stooped forward from the greenish mirror. He said aloud:

  —Are you getting into a panic about this? Are you being quite straight with yourself about this? Is your voice a little unsteady?

  The weakness which he felt in the lips that shaped these words did not show in the reflection, the mouth was calm and curt, a little derisive, the fine eyes regarded him narrowly and ironically; and then as he stood still the whole beautiful face (despite its undeniable pallor) smiled at him with an air of enigmatic affection and power. The lynx-eyes were astonishingly clear, laughed with a private light of their own, the voice said to him:

  —What are you afraid of? Don’t be a fool. The murder is now pure. It has now reached a perfection in idea. To be alone with Jones—is that so difficult or painful? Is it any deeper a corruption—or evil—than to be alone with yourself? alone with your own shadow? It is merely the sacrifice of a shadow.

  He repeated softly the word shadow, to watch the movement of his lips, drew the tip of a finger across an eyebrow, as if merely for contact with the bold image which seemed so haughtily to keep its distance, considered for a moment the resemblance of the forehead to Kay’s. The speech was peculiar, did not quite seem his own, came out of a subtly different level of consciousness, like that of a dream—like the words of Gerta in the dream, miles of aching arches of eyebrows, or whatever they had been. But it was a comfort to hear his own voice, to hear it speaking so calmly and effectively, and to see moreover that his bearing was as imperturbable as ever. Resting both hands flat on the marble he leaned forward and said:

  —The face is that of a genius. You must expect to have misgivings, that is the penalty of the solitary spirit! The one who dwells in the abyss.

  The vibrant murmur died in the little room, he paused, then went on, speaking slowly, watching the shape of his mouth, the eagerness of his eyes in his white face.

  —Behind this forehead is the tree, the vision of the tree, it is an imagination which can do what it likes. You hear? Do what it likes … Jasper Ammen.

  Jasper Ammen.

  He turned smiling away from the smiling image, and extinguished the light; in the silence of the other room he picked up the pencil and book from the floor. The book lay open, he put it on the table and read:

  “Rule 2. No bizarre typographical arrangement of text in obvious violation of good taste is permitted. Type of heads and text must not be more than 12 points wide (1-6 inch) in its widest stroke.… All illustrations to be no darker than the equivalent of a number 8 Ben Day when laid on metal. Where accents are required ⅛ square inch of solid black may be used, but not as mass shading.”

  But not as mass shading.

  The voice of Jones, yes; but this was beginning to be a bore, it was tiresome, and of course it was now a little unnecessary. Of this aspect of Jones, enough was already known, the notes were ample; if any further conversation with him should become needed—for instance, in the drive to Concord to meet the mythical partner—the notes would serve. It was even a question—and as he reflected on this he found that he was about to sit down again, but decided not to—whether enough was not known altogether. In a sense, yes! In a sense. A great deal had certainly been learned. The picture was pretty complete, it was satisfactory as far as it went, but there was still room for something more immediate. The scene in Alpine Street, for example, had partially supplied this lack; but only to suggest the need for more. What was the trained nurse for—if that was what she was? And the child’s cot? It was possible to argue, of course, that the significance of these things lay outside the real problem—but that in turn depended on how one saw the problem. They might not contribute anything to the ease or success of the final action—that was true enough—but they certainly contributed something else, something almost as good. The Alpine Street episode had been profoundly and beautifully natural, it was essentially the right sort of thing, he reminded himself that in the talk with Toppan he had said there could be no limit in the matter of pure knowledge; and if Jones appeared tonight at the Orpheum, that too would have the same delicious weight and immediacy. It was even (if one looked at it like this) a question whether in the approach—! But no.

  And then there was yesterday’s thing—the failure of Jones to appear from his house at the usual time; and instead, the arrival of a mud-spattered doctor’s car, with its little green cross, and the doctor staying in the house for over an hour. Was the child ill? or the mother? Why had the child never been seen in all this time, or the mother either? Was the child perhaps a chronic invalid? This would of course explain the good-natured casualness of the Alpine Street scene—or partially. Or on the other hand was it possible—and the idea suddenly arrested him in his pacing of the floor, it was as startling as a blow—that all this business was simply the preparation for a child? Good God! That would explain everything.…

  The discovery came as a shock, he stood very still, stared out at the dark roof of the Club, saw the light turned off in t
he little attic window, heard voices from the club yard below. It must be an initiation night, the doors of cars were banging, the voices were loud, a little drunken. One of them was saying:

  —Say, wait for me, will you?

  He says wait. Oh-h-h-h, he floats through the air with the greatest of ease——

  —The flying young man on the daring trapeze——

  —Where’s Putnam? Hi, Putnam!

  —Oh, come on, let’s go.

  The car started, the voices trailed away round the corner, there was a sound of some one running, the slamming of a door, a moment of silence, then a simultaneous outburst of shouting farther off.

  The discovery came as a peculiar shock, the night had mysteriously and deeply opened, but in one direction only; a swift tunnel of half-light; and as if it were an immense telescope, he looked along it to the far little amphitheater of brightness where obscure small figures were bending to obscure small tasks. His heart had begun beating loudly again, there was a real danger here, something uncalculated, a departure into a new dimension, a hindrance, a definite threat. But also there was a renewal of challenge; with the new danger came a fresh and sharpened necessity for energy and decision. If this were so, then once again the time element had become pressing; to look squarely at the situation itself was in fact to regard the face of a clock; and all the more so because of Gerta’s threat, and her report of Sandbach’s threat—the absurd possibility that Sandbach, in a moment of spleen or jealousy, might actually try to report him! How likely was this?

  Gerta had not telephoned, had merely sent him a note, one line, saying, “I really mean it. Gerta.”

  Sandbach had remained silent, invisible, had not attempted to communicate either with himself or—apparently—with Toppan. And Toppan’s diary, when examined night before last, had not been written up. Which might mean anything or nothing. At any rate, it had been impossible to confirm his suspicion that Toppan—presumably on Gerta’s suggestion?—was watching him. Had it actually been Toppan?

  On Saturday night, when he had first noticed the shadowy figure under the arclight at the corner of Sparks Street he had not taken the idea seriously, had merely and fleetingly thought something in the gait familiar, and something also in the slope of the shoulders under the white raincoat. But last night, when he had abruptly come on the same figure at the same place, and half a block later had begun to wonder whether it mightn’t be Toppan, and doubled back through Royal Avenue, only to find that the figure had vanished—the suspicion had deepened, especially in retrospect. The technique, too, was recognizable—to stand so directly under the arc-light that the hat rim cast the face and upperpart of the body into a dense penumbra of shadow. And hadn’t there been a momentary flash of spectacles? Moreover, when he had gone to Toppan’s room, on returning, Toppan was out. Which again might mean anything or nothing.

  The thing had become a little suffocating; like a physical pressure on the breast; there was certainly a shadow of danger, it was a nuisance, and observable in the foreground was the fact that to some extent the situation threatened to get out of control. But in essentials, this was good, this was right; he turned away from the window and regarded the map on the wall with a deepening of his sense of power; the city was there below him, the lights glided along those streets, the feet, the faces, the minds, beneath all those roofs the lives lay open, his glance went down to them from above. And this hostile alliance, if now it had at last really come into being, as Gerta’s attitude indicated, had of course not only been foreseen by him from the very outset but actually willed. There was nothing new in it, nothing strange, it was all his own creation, and if now there was a danger the danger was simply the shape of his own idea. Toppan and Sandbach and Gerta might indeed be plotting together, they might be whispering, call each other up by telephone, have their secret meetings, they might flatter themselves that they knew more than he did, could outguess him, anticipate him, by studious co-operation attempt to surround him, but his own advantage remained what it had always been: that none of them, not even Gerta, was quite sure of his intentions, and none of them—especially now—shared his entire confidence. At no point could they be quite sure that he was not simply making fools of them, that he would not suddenly turn on them and say that it had all been a joke, an elaborate joke, simply the theme for a fantastic novel, and themselves nothing whatever but the dupes of an experiment. They were aware of this. Between the assumption that he was mad or cruel, on the one hand, and the hope that it was a hoax, on the other, they must run to and fro, their eyes perpetually fixed on a moving shadow, their hands perpetually withheld from any overt action. They could guess, they could spy, but what could they do? They were still, as much as Jones, at his mercy. Just the same——

  Suppose they were to warn Jones. Suppose they had discovered Jones, knew who he was, where he lived. This much they might safely do?

  It came down, in short, to the question of time.

  If they were, as he had himself planned, closing in on him, if his own plan was narrowing its scope, then the moment could not be far off when, instead of the luxuriation in knowledge—which was after all nothing but a preliminary—must come the pure terribleness of the deed. One day: two days: or three. Three at the most. If a telephone call tomorrow, an arrangement for the trip to Concord on Thursday——

  A copy of The Cambridge Sun lay on the red table under the map, he had brought it up from the hallway downstairs with a view to reading the strange little social notes, under the caption Observatory Hill, which dealt weekly with the lives of those unhappy citizens who dwelt with Jones in the waste land beyond the Observatory and Saint Peter’s Church. He bent over it, ran his eye down the column of absurd paragraphs. These people of importance! Mr. Patrick Ronan of Upland Road, well-known druggist, is in Massachusetts General Hospital with an infected foot.… Last rites for Mrs. Margaret (McDonald) Connelly of Harvard, Mass., who died Saturday were held Tuesday at the home of her daughter, Mrs. F. F. Dugan, Fayerweather Street. A requiem high mass was said at Saint Peter’s Church at nine o’clock.… Mrs. Clarence Ricker, of 299 Concord Avenue, entertained her friends at a party held at her home Sunday evening.… Miss Giulia Abetabile is sojourning in South Carolina.… Funeral of Mr. Riley.… Surprise party for the talented young dancer, Peter Willwert: a banquet lunch served.… A baseball game at the Timothy Corcoran ground on Raymond Street.… Glamorous Spring Formal Plaza.… Last Saturday’s meeting of Bob’s Kiddie Klub at the Central Square Theater opened with the usual Hi-Bob from the audience and the singing of the theme-song. For the first number Bob presented another Bob, namely Bob Murphy, a Cambridge boy who started things going with a snappy toe dance. Next came an old friend of Bob’s, Marie Phelan, who pleased the audience with a toe-tap with a jump-rope. This number is as difficult to do as it is to say. The show closed with a snappy military tap by the Personality Kid, Aimee Dolon.…

  Glamorous Spring Formal Plaza. What in God’s name was that!

  And all this ridiculous ant-hill, the activities of these ridiculous ants—Jones among them——

  He slammed the paper down into the metal wastebasket, seized his hat, banged the door behind him without turning out the lights, walked with a kind of drunken swiftness along the corridor, and as he waited for the elevator to come up, said aloud:

  —“A different sense and grade of purity.… Such a tendency distinguishes—it is a noble tendency—it also separates. The pity of the saint is a pity for the filth of the human, all too human. And there are grades and heights where pity it regarded by him as impurity, as filth.”

  The front door was open, the evening was warm and windless, arrived at the Square he turned to the left and entered the noisy and crowded little bar, pushed through to the back, leaned over the man who sat on the corner stool and ordered a double Manhattan.

  —A double?

  —Yes, I said a double. And with two cherries.

  —Yes, sir.

  And pity must speak with a revolver.
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  He patted the hard shape in his side pocket, picked out the two red cherries with the toothpick, swallowed the sweet fire at a gulp, and in another minute was running down the metal treads of the stairs to the subway, aware that it was half past eight. Much would depend on getting a seat on the left-hand side of the theater, as near the front box where Jones—if he came—would sit. But this ought not to be difficult, for at the Orpheum people were always coming and going, he could change his seat for one farther forward whenever opportunity offered, gradually get within range. Not, of course, for anything so absurd as rifle-practice, simply for vision. But it was amusing, just the same, to recall that queer business at the Beach Theater, several years before, when night after night the unknown individual had flung down his missiles into the audience—doorknobs, lumps of coal, fragments of metal—for his solitary pleasure in random murder, and for so long undetected. He had been an usher, had flung them down from the top-most balcony, over the heads of the gallery gods, and without being able to see where they landed: though most of them, he must have known, had to fall fairly far forward, so that as a matter of fact the orchestra had lived in perpetual terror. The ambulance stood always at the stage door, a doctor was handy, but all the while the newspapers hadn’t breathed a word about it—superb example of the venality of the press. Had he been insane? and if so, what sort? Perhaps not at all. And if it had really been as easy as all that, and if in some way tonight an opportunity did offer itself—for instance, in the dark little passage which led at the side, beneath heavy plush curtains, to the ground-floor boxes——