Prelude to a Certain Midnight

by Gerald Kersh

  “My dear good lady, how could I possibly remember? The drinks Asta gave us last night were so tremendous – how could anyone remember anything?”

  “I was saying, I took the cigarette-end out of your trousers and wiped the ash and all that away with my handkerchief.”

  “Are you quite sure I can’t get you a cup of tea? Or else there’s some milk…”

  Almost suffocated with emotion Thea Olivia went on: “I was going to tell you about my hankie. I have – at least I used to have – three or four dozen cambric handkerchiefs, very old ones; very fine ones. And you know – at least any woman knows – you know you use them only for dabbing, just once. I suppose you know?”

  “Of course I know.”

  “I used one of my handkerchiefs on the turn-up of your trousers last night. I’m in the habit of rinsing my cambric handkerchiefs every night before I go to bed. I did so last night. And what do you think I found in it?”

  “Should I know?”

  “Coal dust.”

  She watched Tobit Osbert’s face, but he only smiled and said: “And so?”

  Thea Olivia paused again, not knowing what to say, and felt a sense of impending defeat: “You didn’t talk like that last night,” she said.

  “Didn’t I?”

  “I want you to tell me where you got that coal dust.”

  “Why?”

  “I suppose you know that the poor little girl everybody’s so sorry for was killed in a place where there was coal dust?”

  “Was she?”

  “Yes, she was. I know somebody who was there.”

  “Perhaps your somebody did it.”

  Thea Olivia looked from the gas fire to the table covered with papers, and thence to the face – the calm, confident, firm yet dreamy face of Tobit Osbert, and she felt that nothing she could say might ever make a point.

  “Do please let me offer you just one little cup of tea,” said Osbert.

  Feeling that she needed to play for time, Thea Olivia said: “Thank you very much. I think I’d like a cup of tea.”

  The gas ring gasped and roared as the little tin kettle clanked down. Looking at his expressionless, fixed face, she detected the beginning of a sidelong look and a suppressed smile.

  “Or perhaps you’d rather come out with me to some place or other, Miss Thundersley?”

  “No, thank you very much. I’d rather… chat with you here, if I may, Mr Osbert.”

  His smile stopped trying to suppress itself and spread. The corners of his eyes wrinkled. Last night he had appeared to be a gentle, amiable young man; even a desirable young man. But now he appeared to Thea Olivia as sly, mocking, and indefinably repulsive. He reminded her of a painting she had seen in an exhibition: it depicted a man in a black suit and, from a distance of about three yards, looked almost like a tinted photograph. The man in the picture was, at this distance, altogether nondescript. He was standing in a self-conscious attitude against a vaguely familiar background of trees and fields, such as photographers used to hang in their studios; and one of his hands was awkwardly poised on the tip of a sawn-off tree-trunk flagrantly made of papier-mâché, while the other held a bowler hat. But when Thea Olivia took two little ladylike steps forward, this seemingly inoffensive picture became so horrible that she actually let out a little genteel shriek. In the folds of the respectable jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, there were things that should have been elsewhere – small pale worms which had passed at first as highlights upon a shabby but presentable surface. The five teeth exposed by the prim smile were toe-nails. Queer little things with wicked black eyes were coming out of his scalp and peeping through the parting in his hair; one of the buttons of his shirt was a gorged and bloated bug, and in place of eyes he had purplish blue bruise-coloured finger-prints. She had been told that this was Super Realism, and that it represented a Suburb. She was astonished, later, to hear than an American had bought this picture for a large sum of money: it would have given her nightmares – and did, for several Rights until she got it out of her mind.

  Tobit Osbert, on close inspection – now that her suspicions were aroused – was like that picture. He appeared to Thea Olivia as sick, a product of corruption. She thought that his eyes were twisted so that they made her look in two directions at once: they were eyes into which she found it impossible to look while she talked to him; and she hated that. Also, she saw, or thought that she saw, a certain loathsome wetness in his smile; and the smile itself was creepy, mean, and cunning, yet at the same time odiously confident and detestably familiar. Somewhere she had seen it all before.

  To-day Mr Osbert was working.- He was wearing a pair of seedy flannel trousers, slippers, and a short-sleeved shirt which left uncovered his white, wiry arms. He begged pardon for this and, while the gas roared under the kettle, put on an exhausted old blue blazer, upon the breast pocket of which a shield-shaped patch of darker blue marked the place where a badge had once been sewn. She could not stop looking at his hands. They were, of course, hands like any other hands; only something behind them had made them kill, and take pleasure in killing, the child named Sonia Sabbatani.

  He said: “My dear Miss Thundersley, I wonder what in the world makes you think I have anything to do with that horrible business!”

  “I didn’t say you had, Mr Osbert. I only said that after I had dusted the turned-up parts of your… your trousers,” said Thea Olivia, blushing, “I found some coal dust. And I wanted to ask you where you had got it.”

  “And what if I tell you that I might have got it putting coal on the fire?” said Tobit Osbert playfully.

  “What fire? You have a gas fire,” said Thea Olivia, who felt her heart bouncing like a punch-ball in an echoing gymnasium.

  “Why, of course I have a gas fire, Miss Thundersley. Who said I hadn’t? But I’m only at home to work and sleep. I pay lots of visits. Lots of my friends have coal fires, and I often build them up. Actually I’m a homely sort of man, Miss Thundersley. I like making myself useful about the place. Do you know what? I can even cook. Only the other day I cooked dinner at a friend’s house. And there, by the by, I had to put coal in the kitchen stove. Now you mention it, there you are. Coal. Goodness knows why you drag me into this business, Miss Thundersley, Ah-ah! Kettle’s boiling. Do you like it strong or weak?’ ‘Anything at all, thank you. It doesn’t matter a bit.”

  “Milk of course?”

  “Well, thank you, yes… No, thank you very much, no sugar.”

  “I hope this is drinkable. But I beg your pardon. You were saying, Miss Thundersley?”

  Thea Olivia no longer knew exactly what she had been saying. The virtue had gone out of her. Still, like an exhausted captain in a retreat, she rallied one last staggering platoon of words and said: “Quite simply…There was, as I was saying, coal dust. To put it plainly, there was coal dust. Coal dust which you can account for, of course, but all the same… coal dust. I believe… I mean, I have been told, I have seen it on the pictures, it is common knowledge, that the police can find out all kinds of things from dust. I mean, there are all sorts of coal. I mean, nowadays, with microscopes and all that sort of thing, they can identify… well, they can identify practically anything they like. They can look through a microscope and tell you, let us say, where such and such kind of wool came from – just looking at dust – or whether this, that, or the other sort of dust came from this or that street… I don’t think I’m making myself quite clear, but perhaps you understand what I mean, Mr Osbert?”

  “Oh, perfectly, my dear Miss Thundersley. Is your tea all right?”

  “Thank you, yes. Yes, thank you very much. What was I saying? Now you’ve put me off. No, no, I’ve got it.” Thea Olivia Thundersley made her last desperate charge. She said: “All that coal dust in your… your trousers. You say you must have got it in one of your friends’ houses, perhaps cooking dinners, or something. If you say so, I must believe you. I have no reason to disbelieve you, Mr Osbert. Why should you tell me stories? I believe that what you sa
y is true.”

  “But I haven’t said anything, Miss Thundersley.”

  “I believe that what you say is true, Mr Osbert. But to set my mind at rest… I will gladly defray any incidental expenses, if I may say so without giving you offence… Would you, for instance, allow those garments to be examined under microscopes et cetera by, for example, Scotland Yard?”

  “I do hope that tea’s all right. I’m not much of a hand at tea. I’m no good at this sort of thing. Do excuse me.”

  “I thought you said you cooked your friends’ dinners.”

  “Oh, but I do! I do indeed, Miss Thundersley, but as you no doubt know – anyone can cook a dinner, whereas there is an art in making a good cup of tea.”

  “No, but would you?”

  “I beg your pardon, would I what?”

  “I’m sure you can’t have forgotten what I was saying,” said Thea Olivia, almost in tears. “I was asking you, and I believe that you remember as well as I do, I was asking you whether you would let the Scotland Yard people examine your trousers.”

  Tobit Osbert nodded and, making a little astonished gesture, said: “Why, of course!”

  Struggling with her instinctive reticence and hacking it away tentacle by tentacle, Thea Olivia managed to say: “I understand (you understand, Mr Osbert), I understand that I have no legal right to speak to you like this. In fact no right at all. As a matter of fact, I believe, in point of fact, that I am wasting your time and mine – not that my time is of any value to me, but I’m sure your time is very valuable to you. What I mean to say is, if I may be allowed to say so without offence – I’d gladly recompense you (because I know that you are a literary gentleman, and might have been earning the Lord knows how many pounds while I’ve been taking up your time) – glad, I mean, to, to, to…”

  She wanted to say that she would pay twenty pounds to Tobit Osbert if he would let the police put a microscope on his trousers, but she could not say it. He, however, guessed it and said:

  “I do wish I had some biscuits to offer you. Or could you eat a little bread and butter? I can cut it quite thin… No? Well, you know best, Miss Thundersley. Do forgive me. I’m afraid I side-tracked you. I may be wrong, but I somehow seemed to gather that you wanted to have my clothes examined by – it seems funny – the police?”

  “Yes,” said Thea Olivia; and now she could get it out. “That’s right. And I’d gladly recompense you for any trouble – ”

  “I’d be only too happy,” said Tobit Osbert.

  In a flat, disillusioned tone, Thea Olivia said: “I’m very glad to hear it.” It occurred to her that she was making as big a fool of herself as her sister Asta.

  “I should be only too delighted,” said Osbert, “only…”

  “Only what?” asked Thea Olivia, almost hopefully.

  “It would give me all the pleasure in the world, my dear Miss Thundersley,” said Osbert with a theatrical sort of deliberation, “but I sent that suit to be dry-cleaned and pressed this morning. You don’t know what pleasure it would have given me to be able to do what you asked of me, but there it is. I can’t.”

  “It may not be too late,” said Thea Olivia. “You can’t have sent it off very long ago. You can call it back, surely?”

  There was a silence. Then Osbert said: “You’re not drinking your tea. I’m afraid it isn’t much good. Shall I make you a fresh cup? If only you’d tell me just how you like it…”

  “I know I’m a silly old woman – very silly, and very old. But won’t you get that suit back, Mr Osbert? I know I’ve wasted most of your valuable morning. Don’t be offended – you are a professional man – let me pay you, say, twenty-five guineas for wasting your morning, if you get that suit back. Say I’m a little bit crazy like my sis – I mean, humour me in this, it is merely a fancy. Will you do it for me?”

  Tobit Osbert looked at her steadily. His face had been politely serious. Now it changed. One tiny smile altered it as an impalpable corrugation changes a reflection in a mirror.

  “No,” he said.

  “No?”

  With severity in his voice and derision at the corner of his mouth, Tobit Osbert said: “My dear madam, I’m afraid you don’t quite realize that you are talking to a gentleman. We had a delightful evening last night, and I’ll always remember it. But I don’t think you can be quite yourself this morning. Do you realize that you have come into my room, more or less accused me of a very horrible murder, and actually offered me money to demonstrate to you whether or no I have committed it? Do you seriously, I ask you in all seriousness, do you seriously, my dear madam, expect me to accept money in such circumstances? For what do you take me? I don’t think I understand you.”

  Thea Olivia looked at the shabby rug and the downtrodden linoleum; raised her eyes to the flaky ceiling, and at last looked into the eyes of Tobit Osbert; and she saw that he was laughing at her.

  She rose.

  “I do beg your pardon. That tea couldn’t have been any good,” he said.

  “One last thing, Mr Osbert: will you tell me to whom you sent your suit to be cleaned and pressed?”

  “Since you put it that way, madam, no, I won’t.”

  “Then I can only say Good Day.”

  “I’m sorry you have to go so soon.”

  Thea Olivia went back to Asta’s house, full of frustration.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Forty-Two

  The Murderer sat down to write. He had sent his suit to be cleaned by Sam Sabbatani, who gave his dyeing and cleaning to the great Goldberg Dye Works which takes in half the dirty clothes in London every morning at nine o’clock. The firm of Goldberg makes a speciality of what they call ‘mourning orders’ and will dye anything funereally black within twenty-four hours. Tobit Osbert found a certain refined pleasure in the contemplation of the fact that Sam Sabbatani, still red-eyed and thunderstruck with grief, was washing away evidence which might possibly have convicted the murderer of his daughter for three and sixpence – on the slate, at that.

  Tobit Osbert checked himself on the edge of one of his daydreams. No, there must be no day-dreaming now, discipline above all things, self-control. He had an article to write for The Theoretician, which would be paid for on delivery. He needed the six guineas, and, as it happened, he really wanted to write the article, which was a critical one on the subject of books for the young. In this, too, there was to be found a certain refined pleasure, a titillation, an indefinable thrill, half intellectual and half voluptuous. So he saved his little day-dream for later, and settled down to a survey of the works of Beatrix Potter. In a little while he would make a name for himself. Meanwhile there was enough to do to keep him occupied for three or four days – which was just as well, since his only presentable suit was at the cleaners. But by next week he would be able to buy himself a new suit. There was a tailor near Cambridge Circus who produced an excellent suit for five pounds. Tobit Osbert had his eye on a piece of gentlemanly drab cloth with the faintest, discreet-est block check, which he planned to have made up – single-breasted, perhaps, with two intriguing little slits in the tail of the jacket. Dare he have very harrow trousers, without turn-ups? That might convey an impression of elegant nonchalance. In such a get-up one might lounge about with a gay little scarf around the neck, and introduce oneself to anybody, with a free and easy sportsmanlike looseness in one’s manner of approach.

  But enough! Discipline! No day-dreams! To work!

  All the same, he thought as he dipped his pen into the inkpot, the world is full of pleasures for a man who knows how to appreciate things. He would have gone to Sam Sabbatani for his new suit; but the fact of the matter was that he owed Sam a little money, and was going to owe him three-and-sixpence more in forty-eight hours.

  And in this, too, there was refined pleasure.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Forty-Three

  Angry with herself and with all the world, Thea Olivia went back to Asta’s house in Frame
Place by the river. She wanted to smash things and to kick people, herself first of all. She was a fool like her sister, she decided. She, Thea Olivia, the only sane girl in the family, had involved herself in something that was none of her business. She walked part of the way because she wanted to get the smell of Osbert’s room out of her nostrils. It was not that the room had a characteristic odour – far from it – but the air of the place, sucked dry by the gas fire, seemed to have got into the back of her nose, so that she was glad to draw deep breaths of the wet and smoky air of the streets. She had no doubt that Osbert had committed that murder. For one mad minute she toyed with the idea of going to the police and telling them what she knew. But then she asked herself: “What do I know?”

  Everything; she knew everything, but she could prove nothing. Thea Olivia had read many crime stories – she had little to do but read – she realized that there was nothing to say, and shuddered at the thought of an interrogation in a cold green-painted waiting-room. She could not even mention the affair to Asta. Asta would fly into a fury and rush everywhere in all directions at once, shouting at the top of her voice, raising scandal and making the most appalling scenes. If one gave Asta the merest sniff of suspicion she (so to speak) threw up her trunk and stuck out her ears and charged, screaming, like an elephant. It did not matter to Asta if she was proved to be wrong: she never admitted it and, even if forced to an admission, did not care. As a matter of fact, Asta loved a commotion for its own sake.

  But the end of it would be that Thea Olivia would be dragged into this filthy affair; jostled into the witness-box, hauled into the Old Bailey and made to stand up to be cross-examined by some such deadly Counsel as Norman Birkett. And for what? A false alarm. It was not for nothing that she read the writings of the best informed authors of detective stories.