31st Of February

by Julian Symons

  “Deceivers ever.” Fletchley’s great head swung pendulously from side to side and two more tears rolled smoothly over the blubber of his cheeks. “Who could ’a thought that a girl like Elaine would go off – go off night after night. A well-set-up girl like Elaine. Who could ’a thought it.”

  “Take advertisement, a virdual syntagma.”

  “But I want you to know, Andy, that nothing said or done was in jealousy. You believe me, old boy, don’t you?”

  Fletchley was obviously much moved. Anderson said: “I believe you.”

  “A well-set-up girl. Say what you like, at Woman Beautiful they’re all well-set-up girls. Like Val. Your little woman was a well-set-up girl and where did it get her?” Fletchley began to sob, loudly and miserably. “She died. Your little woman died a miserable, a sudden death.”

  The words dropped, dropped, how did they drop – like bombs, like vitriol? – into the pool of Anderson’s peace. He felt anger and yet the peace, his sense of the profound unimportance of what Fletchley was saying, underlay the anger which (like, perhaps, a thick coating of oil?) rested on the surface and made his own voice say sharply: “A sudden death – what do you mean a sudden death?”

  “Sudden and sad. I wrote today, old boy, one of my little pieces. “She will not see the spring, nor hear the bluetit sing, nor see the lambkins gambol in the meadow. I thought of Val.”

  “Sudden death. You mean —” as Anderson spoke the words their relation to football matches and music hall jokes – “you mean foul play.”

  “My dear old boy.” Fletchley’s tears stopped.

  “That’s what you mean, is it? Foul play.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Andy.”

  “If not foul play, why sudden death? Out with it, Fletchley.” The peace still existed deep down, very deep down, but the surface anger was fairly boiling away, there could be no doubt of that.

  Half turning away, rubbing fat tear-stained cheeks, his whole sagging body shivering with distain, Fletchley muttered words well in the tradition of foul play: “If the cap fits—”

  From the depth of his inner peace, remote in a fastness impenetrable by anger and unsusceptible to words, Anderson saw and felt what happened next: the endlessly deliberate action with which his right arm moved, forward and upward (would it never reach?), until it collided violently with an obstacle. Violently, violently; and yet in that happy seclusion where his spirit rested imperturbable, Anderson was almost unaware of the impact of fist on flesh, experienced only as one feels the disturbance of a hair that has strayed across the face. He saw, however, the colour of a fist, strong, brownish, hairy, against unhealthy white; he saw the badly articulated body move slowly backward and sink to ground; he saw the pin of blood, that gathered to a large ruby, and was then comically a river of red tears, But the wbole thing became at last a fag, too much trouble to follow: quite deliberately he withdrew his eyes from the body wriggling on the floor, his ears from the orchestra about to spray over him prompted by the fistic overture; deliberately he withdrew from it all and settled in that landscape of the heart which he had always known to exist, but had never before been lucky enough to find.

  8

  He was walking down a long narrow road which seemed to have no ending. Tall houses upon either side turned upon him their unfriendly night faces, Nobody but himself seemed to be moving, so that it must be late perhaps very late. Where had he been and what had he been doing? He found himself wishing for a door to open and show behind it a rich panel of light from within, for the scream of a radio set, for some footsteps other than his own to tap the pavement. There was something disturbing in this apparently purposeful but actually aimless movement of leg after leg. He could not be quite sure that he was awake.

  A hand placed, quite casually, upon his forehead, came away wet. Was it with blood? But beneath a street lamp’s yellow light he saw that a fine straight rain was falling. His forehead, of course, was wet with it. But he was conscious that for some reason or another his forehead should not be wet. Why not? And then the same hand passed over his hair revealed that he was not wearing a hat. He must have left it at the party.

  At the end of the endless road he turned left into a road apparently identical with it. The circles of faint light round the street lamps; the high, blind houses; the absence of people or noise. But there was something else wrong, some strange stiffness affected him. His movements, he discovered, were like those of one struggling against an impediment. Could he, in some way, have been injured? He began gingerly to prod ribs, side and shoulders. Then he realized the cause of the trouble and began to laugh. He was wearing the wrong coat.

  Anderson could not have said why the discovery that he was wearing an overcoat much too small for him should have amused him so much. Crowing and hooting with laughter, he capered down the road, and in a moment heard the distant hooting of a motor horn. The sound gave him much pleasure. He passed a shuttered and silent public house, It was, then, after eleven o’clock – but, of course, he knew that, for he could not have reached the Pollexfen party before ten. And as he remembered the Pollexfen party his mind moved back to the strange triangle at VV’s flat and he laughed again, laughed until he felt he must burst the buttons of his borrowed overcoat, and at further thought of the overcoat stood, quite helpless with laughter, propped against a sign outside the pub. He turned his face upward to the sky to catch the rain and as he did so distinguished in the faint light the outline of a figure with cloven hoofs and harlequin’s clothes. Above the figure was the word Demon. It was strange, he thought, that there should be two demons in London with exactly the same sign. Then his laughter was stopped as tape is cut by scissors. There were not two Demons. This was the Demon he knew, the pub at the corner of Joseph Street.

  It is again impossible to explain rationally why the discovery that his legs had guided him home should have cancelled Anderson’s uproarious mirth, but it is a fact that he was remarkably reluctant to turn the corner into Joseph Street and enter his flat. He felt that some disastrous news awaited him there; and it was only by a great effort of will that he pushed away from the signpost that had supported his uncontrollable laughter and turned into Joseph Street. Then he stood still. Joseph Street, like the other streets through which he had walked, was dark and silent. But not altogether dark. Through the windows of his own flat, inadequately contained by the gappy curtains, two fingers of light stuck out into the road.

  Anderson’s next actions, the thirty steps taken to his own front door, the key inserted in lock, entrance hall crossed, and the last decisive action of turning the Yale key to open the door of his own flat, were as difficult as any he had performed in his life. When they were done he felt relief, although he had no idea of what lay behind the closed door of the sitting room. He smelled cigar smoke, which somehow reassured him; and, opening the door, he saw Inspector Cresse filling one of the chromium-armed chairs, hands folded on stomach, staring placidly ahead of him like a musical comedy Buddha. Cigar smoke was thick in the room, a cigar was in the Inspector’s mouth, and the stubs of two more lay in an ashtray. Slowly, and it seemed in several movements, the Inspector rose from the chair. The two men stood looking at each other and then the Inspector, a courteous host, waved a hand. “Come in, come in, and make yourself at home. There’s been a little trouble.”

  “Trouble?” And now Anderson, looking round the room, saw that a great wind might have blown through it. The carpet had been pulled up and then thrown aside, a pouffe had been slit open, seats of some chairs had been removed. The pictures, stacked against the wall, had their backs cut away. The Inspector followed Anderson’s roving gaze with heavy interest. “And the tubular lamps,” he said, “and the fire elements. Unscrewed them to see what they could find. Thorough.” He nodded amiably toward the bedroom door. “In there, too. Chaos, I’m afraid. Mattress and pillows, all that kind of thing. Even took the back out of that portrait of your wife. I don’t call that playing the game.”

  And the writin
g desk? Anderson had carefully refrained from looking at it; but that, he realized, might be in itself suspicious. He looked, and the Inspector’s eyes, at the moment singularly mild, followed. The writing desk was open. Bills, letters, papers, lay confused within it. The drawer beneath had been opened also. Had the searcher discovered the hidden panel, and the limp black book?

  “Quite a neat job,” the Inspector said. “Didn’t force the lock there. Used a skeleton key.” Anderson stared and stared, in bewilderment. Presumably the person responsible for this raid was Val’s lover? But what could have been his purpose? To get some more letters, perhaps, which he knew Val had left here? But that seemed ridiculous.

  “You’re looking a bit under the weather,” the Inspector said. “Let me pour you a drink, and perhaps you won’t take it as a liberty if I pour myself one, too. I haven’t done so, because I never take drink or bite in another man’s home without invitation.” He stopped in the act of pouring whisky.

  “Is that really your coat? It seems to be a very bad fit.”

  Anderson struggled out of the overcoat, and threw it on a chair. “I picked it up by mistake at a party.”

  “Gadding about.” A large finger wagged at Anderson. Behind it the white face with its two deep furrows was placid. “Do you know it’s one o’clock? I’ve been here two hours. But you guessed that, I daresay, by the stubs. They’re Upman cigars – take nearly an hour to smoke – two and a half gone. I ought to charge them up to you.”

  “Why are you waiting for me? What are you doing here?”

  “The ingratitude of mankind.” Now, for the moment an absolutely farcical figure, the Inspector ran a hand over his shining bald head. “Usually we policemen are slated for inefficiency. Try to be efficient, try to help people a little, and are they pleased? They certainly aren’t. But let me tell you about it.” He produced a notebook from an inner pocket and referred to it. “At 8.48 this evening PC Johnson observed that the front door of Number 10 Joseph Street stood wide open. He rang the bell and, receiving no reply from upper or lower floor, entered the hall. The door to the upper flat was closed, but he found the door to the lower flat standing open. He entered and found–” the Inspector stopped reading “this.”

  “That tells me nothing.” Anderson stared now unashamedly at the open lower drawer of the writing desk. “It doesn’t tell me why you’re here.”

  “I take an interest in you.” The Inspector’s hands were clasped against his stomach.

  “You pursue me.”

  “Oh now – really.” The furrows deepened, the mouth curved in deprecation.

  “What about this afternoon? A message left for me in the office given to a girl who might make anything of it. ‘The air is unhealthy in Melian Street.’ That sort of thing is disgraceful, I say, disgraceful. It is persecution.” Anderson had not meant to shout, but the sight of this large man sitting in his wrecked room, drinking whisky, somehow induced anger with this policeman and all his kind.

  “Now now, Mr Anderson, I’m really surprised at you. Persecution, indeed. I was trying to be helpful.”

  “Helpful!”

  “A word to the wise, you know. I happened to notice you coming out of that – establishment, shall we call it? I was surprised – not shocked, you understand, but surprised – and I was worried. Within a few days that establishment may be raided. It would be a pity if you were there, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t look well. I was trying to be thoughtful, but do you appreciate it? No, you think I was persecuting you. Really, Mr Anderson, sometimes I agree with Gilbert and Sullivan.”

  “Gilbert and Sullivan?”

  “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one. That’s a very true saying, though not intellectual enough for you I expect.” In the same comfortable voice, almost apologetically, the Inspector said: “But I shall have to ask a few questions.”

  “Me? Ask me?”

  “Why yes, Mr Anderson. I must tell you that we are not satisfied.”

  “Not satisfied?” Anderson repeated stupidly. He sat looking round at the disorder of the room.

  Without ceasing to look at Anderson, the Inspector pulled a nail file from his pocket and began to file his large well-kept nails. As he did this, he went on talking in the same conversational half-tone; and beneath his quiet, coarse voice there lay the faint rasp of the file. “I’ll tell you something now, Mr Anderson. This morning we had another of those anonymous letters. Very nasty, too; beastly things they are altogether. Don’t ask me what it said, because I can’t tell you, but you can take my word for it, it was nasty. Take no notice, you may say, and that’s all very fine. But then what about this business tonight? A few days ago you told me you hadn’t an enemy, but it looks as if you have. Eh, Mr Anderson?”

  “I didn’t speak.”

  “I thought you mentioned a name.”

  “A name?”

  “Your enemy’s name. You told me a little while ago that you had no enemy. That’s not true, is it? You have got one, and you know who it is.”

  “You want to know the name of my enemy?”

  “That would be interesting.” The Inspector stopped filing his nails.

  “The name of my enemy,” Anderson leaned forward and spoke with an intensity the remark hardly warranted, “is Anderson.”

  Obligingly, the Inspector leaned forward, too. Poised on their chair edges, they confronted each other like eager dogs. “Your brother, is that? I didn’t know you had one.”

  “Myself!”

  The Inspector’s interest notably diminished. He dropped back into the lap of his chair and as he did so dropped the emotional level of the conversation. “A man’s worst enemy is himself! Well, I suppose you’re right, but it hardly answers what I want to know, does it?”

  The Inspector’s obtuseness made Anderson anxious to disentangle his own fine shade of meaning. “You don’t understand me. These things that you describe – the anonymous letters, the wrecking of this flat – they are things that I might have done myself. They awaken a response in me. The anonymous letters – spying through the keyhole and telling the world the secrets we’ve seen inside the room – that’s a thing I might have done. And then the flat – look at it now. Do you remember what this room looked like the last time you saw it, how every ghastly object was in the right place, every filthy little cushion and lampshade just as my wife had them. Now I see it all utterly disordered, everything completely boss-eyed, and do you know what I wonder, Inspector? I wonder why I didn’t do it all myself years ago.” Anderson had meant to speak perfectly quietly, but in spite of himself his voice had risen a little. The Inspector, nevertheless, continued almost perfectly obtuse.

  “Well, you do say the oddest things, Mr Anderson. I don’t hold much with all this modern psychology stuff myself.”

  It was injudicious to shout, Anderson knew, but now he fairly shouted. “Psychology, nonsense. Don’t be a fool, man. I’m saying that the actions of this man, whoever he is, are actions I can understand. The desire to destroy, that’s what I’m talking about, is that plain enough for you? Because he wasn’t searching here for anything, there was nothing to search for. Hatred was moving, hatred of me, the wish to wreck my life, to destroy anything that belongs to me. And I feel that impulse, too. Do I make myself clear? To make disorder out of order, to wreck, tear, kill –” Abruptly Anderson stopped. The word hung in the air between them, a word for which, in the Inspector’s terms, there was no possible explanation or excuse. But, so far from asking him to explain it, the Inspector merely sat filing his nails. When at last he spoke it was to take up Anderson’s remarks at one remove and with a rambling clumsiness, a missing of the essential point that seemed, on this evening at least, characteristic of him.

  “It’s funny, now, that you should be talking about order and disorder, because my wife’s great on them, too. Did I tell you I was married? Well, anyway, I am, and two kids as well. Here we are in the front garden.” With the pathetic pride of an amateur conjurer the Inspector whipped from his walle
t a photograph. Anderson looked at a pretty woman in a smock, flanked by two young boys. Their slightly bovine faces, staring earnestly into the camera, were recognizably of the kind that would later attain their father’s flat weightiness. A rather younger Inspector, less bulky and with a thick fringe of hair round the side of his head, looked at them with the affection of an overgrown bulldog.

  “Very nice,” Anderson said. He handed back the photograph and thought: Wreck, tear, kill – what could have possessed him to use such words. He had been drunk, it was true, at one time in the evening, and now it was very late, and he was so tired that he hardly knew what he was saying. He looked at his wristwatch. Two o’clock. Would the man never go?

  “The apple of their mother’s eye – and their father’s, too,” the Inspector said earnestly. “But I was telling you about my wife. Order, she says, you must have order or how can life go on? And she tells that to the kids, and makes them understand it. There’s a time and a place, she says, for skylarking, and the time’s not lunchtime and the place isn’t the dining room. And she makes the punishment fit the crime – to use another Gilbertian phrase. If the kids throw food about at the dining table they have to do the washing up, if they come into the house with muddy boots the wife puts mud on their clothes and makes them clean it off. She’s got a sense of humour, and that’s a wonderful thing.”

  Good God, Anderson thought, no wonder the poor little creatures look bovine. But the Inspector was droning on. “I say to the wife that it’s only a little bit of fun they’re having, but she will have it I’m wrong. Disorder, she says, is wicked. I must tell you, though,” the Inspector said with one of his devastating lapses into bathos, “that she was brought up a Non-conformist. I say to her sometimes that the state of disorder is a state of nature. Do you know what she says to that? The state of order is a state of grace. It’s from the impulse to disorder, she says, that these Mussolinis and Hitlers gain power. And if she were here tonight she’d say to you that it was quite right to say that the impulse to make disorder out of order was the same as the impulse to kill. Killing is disorder, that’s what she’d say. And what would you say to that?”