King of the World

by Celia Fremlin

  Never in the world would she be able to summon up that sort of courage. That sort of foolhardiness, rather – crazy, disastrous foolhardiness: because once Mervyn knew that she disbelieved his story, it wouldn’t be long before he realised that she must at least suspect that their son was dead, and that Mervyn was responsible.

  And then … and then? All alone in the flat, with no certainty as to when any of the others would come in …?

  No, no. Soon she would be perusing the phoney letter, and as she did she must not allow the faintest quiver of doubt or suspicion to cross her face or to sound in her voice. “That’s wonderful, Mervyn,” she would have to say in response to whatever ludicrously rosy picture he’d concocted. Say it as if she meant it, too. Somehow contrive to make her tense features light up with the kind of delight that an anxious mother might be expected to feel at this sudden alleviation of her fears.

  She couldn’t do it. Just couldn’t. While the agonisingly contrived smile might be held in place on her lips, what would be happening to her eyes? Eyes, the windows of the soul, through which all her grief, distrust and terror would be plainly seen, should Mervyn actually look into them while she was speaking. Of course, he often didn’t look at her while she was speaking. Indeed, he mostly didn’t. But on this occasion he would. Oh, how he would! Already she seemed to see those grey, shining eyes grow cold with hatred as they gazed deep, deep into hers, plumbing her secret knowledge.

  No, and no again. The only safe thing would be not to see the letter at all: to find some excuse for not inviting him into the flat and thus to evade him here and now, out in the safe, bustling street, surrounded by strangers, her unwitting protectors, under whose collective gaze he could not force her to invite him in.

  Not force, no. But some things are stronger than force. What would he make of her lack of interest in this wonderful, reassuring letter from her son? How could a concerned and loving mother not want to see it? Her reluctance to do so would be as clear an indication of her disbelief as would any outright accusation of lying.

  Besides, she did want to see it, didn’t she?

  Just in case.

  In case of what? Nothing, of course; but all the same, in case. In case, in case …

  “Well, all right,” she found herself saying; and while she fumbled in her handbag for the keys, Mervyn sprang ahead of her up the steps so jauntily, and with such a mission-accomplished sort of air, that he might have been mounting a platform to receive some prestigious award: or, more realistically, as if gaining access to this building had been the sole object of his visit, and this object had now been triumphantly accomplished.

  Chapter 24

  “Nice place you’ve got here,” Mervyn said pleasantly, like any well-brought-up visitor, as he looked around his wife’s current living-room. And indeed the room was looking rather good this evening, with the standard-lamp throwing its warm light on the white walls and the heavy gold-brown curtains. It was tidy, too. This very morning, Bridget had scooped up for the paper-salvage all the outdated and unread newspapers and magazines that had littered the place for days. Diana’s scatter-cushions, bright and variegated as a herbaceous border in high summer, looked their very best now that they no longer had to compete for house-room on the sofa with last week’s Sunday supplements.

  “Do sit down,” said Norah, caught up willy-nilly in the hostess – visitor mode; and when her husband had settled himself under the lamp, she drew up a low stool embroidered in cross-stitch by Diana’s grandmother, and tried to position herself so that the light would fall on Mervyn’s features rather than her own; after which mini-precaution she ventured, with face slightly averted to take the forged letter from his outstretched hand.

  And forged it was. She could see this without any doubt almost as soon as she had taken it from its envelope, and though this was exactly what she had been expecting all along, she was taken by surprise by the pang of pure disappointment that flashed through her. Until this moment, she had not realised that, somewhere deep in her heart, she’d been nursing a tiny spark of hope that maybe her husband wasn’t lying; that maybe his fairy-tale happy ending for their troubled son was a reality; that Christopher was not only alive and well, but normal, magically cured of his mental illness.

  Of course, it was not so. The very first sentence convinced her of that.

  “Dear Mum and Dad,

  You will be pleased to hear that we are now nicely settled under canvas, and are having a super time. The weather is glorious, and we’re out all day walking in the hills …”

  None of this was remotely like Christopher. He wouldn’t have said any of these things, let alone written them. And had Mervyn really not noticed how long it was since their son had called them “Mum” or “Dad”? He had been addressing them as “Norah” and “Mervyn” for years now – how could his father be unaware of this? How could he possibly know so little about his own son?

  The answer, of course, was simple when you thought about it. For years now, Mervyn had been deliberately setting himself not to know the truth about his son’s mental condition: it was little wonder, then, that he’d ended up knowing almost nothing about the boy at all.

  While Mervyn sat quietly under the lamp, never taking his eyes off his wife’s face, she scanned the document as best she could. It was long – nearly five pages – and the forged script, cramped and tiny, was even harder to read than the genuine article would have been; but she persevered, and at last, with face still averted, she re-folded the document and replaced it in its envelope before handing it back to her husband. Already she had noticed the post-mark. The letter had indeed come from Derbyshire.

  So he’d actually taken the trouble to drive up there to post it, in the interests of verisimilitude. What finesse, what determination!

  Or was it sheer panic? And if so, to what further lengths might sheer panic take him?

  “It sounds wonderful,” she said carefully, exactly as she had planned to say it; “But …”

  Here she stopped, appalled by her own indiscretion. She hadn’t planned on any “Buts”. She had intended to acquiesce in everything, to query nothing, to appear innocent of any doubts; and now here she was, on the verge of giving herself away. She had been just about to say: “But Mervyn, he can’t possibly be going to do what he says here. How on earth can he go straight from a camping holiday in Derbyshire to a trek through North Africa without coming home first? What about clothes – passport – foreign currency?”

  Almost, she had begun actually to worry about these things, before recalling that none of it was of the smallest importance because Christopher was dead.

  Such a lot of things no longer needed to be worried about, now that Christopher was dead. Once again she was assailed by that strange sense of small darting lights in a great darkness; of a mighty weight having been lifted, leaving her relaxed and light, and curiously at peace. Even Mervyn himself seemed less of a burden, less to be feared, now that Christopher was dead.

  Mervyn, too, was relaxing, she could feel it. For him, as well as for her, a moment of dreadful danger had been successfully bypassed. They were like two climbers, roped together, edging their way along some narrow and precarious ledge: the slightest loss of nerve, the slightest false step by either of them would have sent them both crashing onto the jagged rocks below.

  No such false step had been taken, no such loss of nerve had been suffered, and so now here they were, in a place of comparative safety with the perilous abyss behind them: that is, with the forged letter safely unqueried between them.

  No wonder it seemed like the time for a celebratory drink, even though the nature of the celebration was unmentionable; and when Norah expressed qualms about raiding her friends’ drinks cupboard in their absence, what should be more natural than that Mervyn should reach into his brief-case for the bottle of whisky he had brought along.

  “A present for you all,” he explained, pouring a generous quantity into each of the glasses that Norah had set out on th
e small table. “I’d thought that your friends might be here too, actually: When are they coming back, do you know?”

  Norah wasn’t sure. Bridget, she guessed, would be in quite soon, she’d said something about having a lot of work to get through this evening in preparation for some event tomorrow. Diana, on the other hand, might be quite late, she was probably out with Alistair this evening.

  Alistair? Who is Alistair? – and soon Norah found herself giving her husband quite a detailed run-down on her flatmates and their various doings and avocations. He seemed really interested, asking her question after question, to which she responded as best she could. The whisky was beginning to go to her head; the narrow, restricted life which she had perforce endured during the last few years had virtually cut her off from normal social occasions, and her system had become unused to alcohol. She felt now as if her head was floating lightly on her shoulders, like a balloon. A pleasant enough sensation – very pleasant, in fact. It was pleasant, too, to find herself having a conversation with her husband which consisted of something other than defending herself against non-stop criticism. Indeed, far from criticising her present life style, or blaming her for having left him, he was showing himself quite unwontedly considerate and understanding.

  “Well, Norah, dear, it does sound to me as if you’ve fallen on your feet for the time being. You seem to be pretty happy here, in this nice flat, and with these nice friends you’ve found. Why don’t you stay on for a bit? I’m beginning to feel that you’ve maybe done the right thing – for us both. Perhaps a spell away from each other is just what we need. For a while, anyway.”

  Just what we need. Just what you need, anyway. So that I won’t be there watching the post for letters that don’t come from North Africa. So that when you tell me about that imaginary telephone call from Tripoli, I won’t be able to say, But why didn’t you call me to the telephone to speak to him?

  That sort of thing. If I’m living somewhere else, it will be much, much easier for you to keep up the deception.

  Easier, too, for me to pretend that I believe all these lies … But the sequence of her thoughts was becoming blurred now … difficult to follow. How much whisky had he given her? And was it neat? Had he forgotten to add water from the pretty cut-glass carafe that she’d brought in with the glasses? Or had he …? Was he …? She was trying, now, to respond to this suggestion of his that they should live apart for a while. She was trying to say “Yes”, but somehow the word had become amazingly hard to pronounce: she tried and tried, but it just would not come.

  I’m drunk, she thought wonderingly, and with a flicker of pride. I’m really drunk, for the first time in years! No, for the first time ever. I’ve never in my life felt as drunk as this, not even at those parties when I was young …

  And this was the last thought she could clearly remember thinking.

  Chapter 25

  When, an hour or so later, Bridget arrived home and saw the male figure slumped in the armchair under the standard-lamp in the sitting-room, its long legs stretched out possessively across the pale carpet, she did not at once recognise it as Dr Payne. In fact, she thought for a moment that it was Alistair, and her relief at finding it wasn’t was tempered only by her annoyance at finding who it was.

  “There goes my quiet evening!” was her first thought – modified almost at once by the realisation that, unwelcome though he might be, the man wasn’t her visitor. There was no reason why she should spend time entertaining him. He was Norah’s.

  Where was Norah, anyway?

  “Where’s Norah?” she asked, a trifle sharply, after the shortest possible exchange of greetings. “I suppose she knows you’re here?”

  For a few moments he did not answer, just looked her up and down in what seemed an unnecessarily intent scrutiny. Then:

  “She’s in her room,” he said carefully. “Asleep, I have reason to suppose.”

  “Asleep?” The full bothersomeness of the situation burst upon her, and she was furious. She, Bridget, was going to have to spend precious minutes doing something about this visitor, who wasn’t hers at all. It was outrageous. Flat-sharing could only work if each member takes full responsibility for his/her own visitors, leaving the others free to get on with their lives. This was just about the most important of all the unwritten rules for this kind of sharing, and Norah had transgressed it unforgiveably.

  Asleep, indeed!

  “I’ll go and wake her,” she offered, as curtly as she dared, but was halted, as she turned towards the door, by the visitor’s urgent protest.

  “No, no! She’s very tired. She’s had a hard day, and I’ve persuaded her to go and lie down. And besides, Miss Sadler, it is not Norah whom I have come to see. It’s yourself. It just happened that I ran into her outside, and she was kind enough to let me in so that I could wait for you indoors. As perhaps you’ve guessed, I have an important business matter to discuss with you. I have to have a word with you – in private …”

  “With me? But you hardly know me. What is all this?” While she spoke, her curiosity by now aroused, Bridget was pulling up a chair so as to sit facing him across the coffee table. “What is it you want to say? I’m afraid I haven’t a lot of time, and so …”

  “Relax, my dear. It won’t take a lot of time. The business we need to transact could take less than five minutes, so long as we are both sensible and rational about it. As I am sure we shall be. Already, from our admittedly short acquaintance, I have formed the opinion that you are an outstandingly sensible and rational young woman. Am I not right?”

  “Look, Dr Payne, will you please get on and tell me what you are driving at. As I’ve already told you, I haven’t a lot of time. What is it you want to say to me? What have you come for?”

  “Now, now Miss Sadler. Don’t start playing silly games. Not with me. It doesn’t suit you. You know perfectly well what I’ve come for. I want you to withdraw your allegations.”

  “My allegations?” For a moment Bridget was genuinely at a loss. Then: “Oh, you mean …?”

  “Yes, that is precisely what I mean. Your allegations about a gun having been found in my garden. And about some fantastically unlikely behaviour on the part of my son Christopher. It has come to my ears that you have seen fit to take these bizarre inventions of yours to the police, and to report them formally as if they were facts. All I’m asking you to do is to withdraw these false statements. Now. Tonight.”

  “Withdraw them? I’m sorry, Dr Payne, but you must have taken leave of your senses. Of course I can’t withdraw them. They are not ‘false allegations’, they are a true account of the facts, as you know perfectly well. We, the general public, were asked to report to the police any unusual incident we may have noticed around the time of the murder. These were unusual incidents, by anyone’s standards, and so of course I reported them. It was my plain and obvious duty to do so. And, to be honest, Dr Payne, I can’t understand why you should be so bothered about my revelations. You’d already handed in the gun found in your flower-bed, and so they must have realised already that …”

  Her sentence stayed unfinished. That primitive and little-used instinct that warns of hidden danger coursed through her veins; and as she found herself staring into those heavy-lidded grey eyes, shining like polished metal in the lamplight, she became aware, also, of the unnatural stillness of those handsome, well-schooled features; and she knew, as clearly as if he had spoken the words aloud, that he hadn’t handed in the gun to the police. Hadn’t reported it, nothing. Her report, then, had been highly significant. It had been only this account of hers about the events of Sunday evening which had drawn police attention to Dr Payne’s home at all. For the body still hadn’t been identified. Perhaps it never would be. Christopher hadn’t been reported missing. If it hadn’t been for her conscientious visit to the police, there would have been nothing whatever to link the distinguished Dr Payne with the murder in any way. He knew this; and now she knew it too.

  “All I’m asking you to do,”
he continued, in controlled and level tones, “Is to withdraw your statement. There will be no great difficulty about this, I assure you. It happens all the time, you know, in these sorts of cases. Some over-eager member of the public, yearning to see their picture in the papers, rushes off to the police with a cock-and-bull story which they hope will get them into the news. Or even on T.V.. And then, when they’ve cooled down, when they’ve gone home and thought about it, they get cold feet. They begin to realise that their story can’t be substantiated, and that they may be getting themselves into all sorts of trouble. And so they scuttle back with their tails between their legs to withdraw it all. In my profession, I get called in to advise on this sort of thing quite often, and I’m familiar with the procedures. The worst that will happen to one of these impulsive romancers is a bit of a talking-to for wasting police time. However, since they’ve confessed and apologised – especially if they do so promptly, before any police time has been wasted, then the whole matter will be allowed to drop. And so this is why, my dear Miss Sadler, it’s important that you should withdraw your allegations at once – this very night. For your own sake. I have my car here, I could give you a lift to the police station right now …”

  “And if you did –” Bridget’s voice was tight with fury “If you did, you do realise what I would say to them, don’t you? I would report to them your intrusion into my home this evening, and I would inform them of your purpose in tracking me down. I would report to them word-for-word, everything you have been saying. I have been listening carefully, you know. Careful listening and accurate reporting back is part of my job …”

  She sat back, waiting for the explosion of anger – fear – hatred – something. But it did not come. For several seconds he did not speak, but seemed to be studying her face, her whole demeanour, as if she was one of his patients: assessing her, no doubt, in accordance with some sort of psychological template.