31st Of February

by Julian Symons

  But that, after all, was not the end of her. She got up, kept her finger on the doorbell, which chimed most musically, and cried to be let in. What stupidity! And what effrontery! Did she take him for a fool? He was suddenly very angry and, standing on the other side of the door, shouted at her a mixture of insults and obscenities – rather shameful words, perhaps, and he waited for Fletchley to come down. But Fletchley did not come down; Fletchley was out somewhere. Go away, Anderson heard a voice screaming. Go away. And at last she went away, walking slowly and dejectedly, dabbing at her face with a handkerchief. He opened the door of his own flat, tiptoed into the sitting room and looked out through a window (the curtain edge lifted the merest fraction) until she had turned the corner. He had won the first round. Now to sit back and take stock of the situation.

  But the kind of stocktaking he had promised himself – the rational working out of his own position, the plans for his own defence – proved impossible, after all. For when, hesitantly, he had pressed the switch and the fluorescent light, cold, even and blue, shone out into the room, it illuminated also the fact that only yesterday the enemy had been here, poking and snuffling, opening doors and sniffing out secrets. How ridiculous to have made that prodigious struggle to keep the woman out tonight when yesterday she or her friends had invaded his privacy and discovered the mysterious things they wanted to know. Looking round at the room, catching sight of the dirty whisky glasses, he felt utter hopelessness. And beneath the hopelessness, fear.

  He sat in the chromium-armed chair and put his hand in his pocket. And now the first thing he pulled out was the letter from Val, creased and crumpled but unmistakably in her hand. Another dip – and here was the anonymous letter that had strayed mysteriously into Greatorex’s overcoat. Why had he been unable to find these things when he talked to Elaine? He stared at them, spread out upon his knees. But the words were blurred in front of his eyes, and he quickly lost interest in the letters and let them drop to the floor.

  Groping on the carpet for these dropped letters, he found the evening paper that had been dropped so neatly and, it now appeared, cunningly inside the door. They had had a purpose in leaving the paper, for they had a purpose in every-thing. Was it to try to scare him with a paper dated February the Fourth? He looked at the type, but it danced away from him. It danced away – and yet after a moment the date was clear, although everything else wavered up and down. The date upon the newspaper sneered at him in letters and numerals that grew larger until they exploded in his brain. The date was the thirty-first of February. And at that moment, when clear warning was given him – but warning of what? – he noticed the smell.

  Head raised, nostrils sniffing apart, he was able to separate from the faint odour of dust another smell equally familiar: the smell of a particular scent. Lovely Evening, that Val used. And the smell, pungent now in his nostrils (how could he have failed to notice it before?), came from the bedroom. Now he knew that the struggle and victory outside had been an illusion. On the thirty-first of February the last fight must be fought and won before he could rest.

  How many seconds, how many minutes, how many hours, were used up while he switched off the light at the door, moved silently to the door of the bedroom, and then with one decisive gesture flung it back. The darkness within was almost complete, but still his eyes recognized, deceptively motionless upon the bed, the faithless woman he had married. This, then, was the struggle for which the events of these last days had prepared him; and shouting like a battle cry, The Thirty-first of February, he flung himself upon the bed.

  But this woman was a hundred times more cunning and skilful than the one in the street. She slipped into his clutches and out again; is was impossible to get a grip on her; she fought silently and at times invisibly. His throat was constricted and, gasping, he pulled at the invisible hands, breaking their grip, tearing at collar and tie as he rolled to the floor. The Thirty-first of February, he cried again and, struggling wildly with her, felt his face cut by pieces of glass, the blood running down it warmly. He kicked out, but she brought down something heavy which struck him in the stomach. He moved his head, and something else was shattered just where his head had been. He brushed a hand across his eyes and pursued her again, unable to see clearly where she was, blundering round the room, catching and losing her.

  The light came on, and he stood still. If she had brought in reinforcements there was little hope. Panting, he turned slowly to face the door. There, solid as a bowler-hatted bulldog, with legs apart and face graven into sad lines, stood her chief ally, and behind him faces that he had known in a past life, the woman at the door, a young fresh face that was unrecognizable, men in blue. Would they be too much for him? It was with the consciousness of defeat that he cried for the third time The Thirty-first of February, and was among them, fighting with the strength of virtue, knocking off the bulldog’s – 2017 – The Thirty-first of February – Fifty-three – BJ–198 hat and getting the snarling beast down to the floor, squeezing the corded throat. Then he felt a dull pain in his head, spreading all over it, his hands became strengthless, he slipped down, down, down into defeat, into permanent and shameful defeat.

  The 14th of April

  The two men walked up the gravel drive toward the large grey building. They walked in step, without speaking. Neither of them noticed the brightness of the blue sky, or the geometrically neat gardens on either side. At the door of the building the younger of the two, a fair-haired inconspicuous figure in a brown suit, paused and said: “What are you trying to prove?”

  His companion was taller and bulkier, and looked even larger than he was because on this April day he wore a thick, dark overcoat. He lifted his bowler hat, wiped his forehead, replaced the hat and said, “What?”

  “What are you trying to prove? Isn’t it enough for you to have driven an innocent man mad?”

  “Innocent,” the other said with a bursting, incredulous impatience. “You think like the Commissioner. I’ve been asked to resign.” He sneered. “My handling of the case is not approved. Unorthodox methods.”

  “That’s a polite name for burgling a suspect’s flat and frightening him out of his wits.”

  The other turned on him savagely. “I suppose you think the responsibility worries me, do you? You were careful not to say anything at the time.”

  “I carried out your orders. But I haven’t hated a job more than the one of harrying that poor wretch since I became a policeman ten years ago.” Greatorex added with deceptive mildness: “It’s the first time I’ve ever driven an innocent man mad, you see; You’re used to it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You like to watch them squirm, Cresse. You like to pull off their wings and see them crawl over the table under your omniscient eye. You’re a sadist.” The big man made a noise. “What about Mrs Lowson, that woman who strangled her baby because she thought it was growing up to be a mental defective? She committed suicide after some friendly chats with you. What about Makepeace, that forger who’d gone straight for years until you picked him up. You framed him, didn’t you?”

  Cresse said violently: “He was a criminal. Habitual. Filth. Scum.”

  “A sadist, Cresse, you’re a sadist. You like to play God.”

  “A policeman,” Inspector Cresse said, “is God – or God’s earthly substitute.” The strong shape of his body was firmly outlined against the grey building. “Justice should be intelligent. If we are obstructed by the forms of legality in reaching the ends of justice, the forms of legality must be ignored.” His flat white face was eager, his voice persuasive. “And what did we do that would distress an innocent man? A few hints were dropped here and there. We telephoned Sir Malcolm Buntz and arranged that you should be installed in the firm as his nephew. Nobody else was told. You changed the date on his calendar. His flat was searched. What was there in that to upset an innocent man?”

  “The letter,” Greatorex said. He seemed during this recital to have shrunk inside his suit, and in sp
ite of the warmth of the day he was almost shivering.

  “The letter,” said the Inspector blandly. “A tribute to your skill as an amateur forger, although of course it would never have deceived a handwriting expert. And, after all, what was the effect of the letter?”

  Still shrinking inside his brown suit, Greatorex said: “It helped to send him off his head.”

  “Not at all. At the most it tipped the scale for a man who was obviously guilty. But take it for a moment that you’re right. What was there in the letter to frighten an innocent man? Why didn’t he tell me he was being persecuted? Why didn’t he say his journal had been stolen? Because he was afraid of the truth. My God, man,” Cresse said with the first approach he had shown to loss of self-control, “even the Commissioner didn’t dare to suggest outright that he was innocent. He didn’t deny that my methods worked. He simply said that he couldn’t possibly approve of them, and that he’d warned me before, etcetera, etcetera.” The graven lines were deep on the Inspector’s face as he looked up at the sky. “They don’t want people who get results.”

  Almost sulkily, Greatorex repeated: “He was innocent. I believe he was innocent.”

  “You’re innocent,” the Inspector sneered. He ticked off points on his fingers. “Think of the case against him. One, the money. Five thousand pounds is not to be sneezed at when you’re slipping in your job. Two, he hated his wife. You remember that journal? ‘I can’t see why I didn’t push her down the stairs long ago.’ Do you want anything clearer than that?”

  “That doesn’t prove anything. It’s the kind of thing any man might write who didn’t get on with his wife.”

  “Didn’t get on with his wife,” Cresse echoed mockingly.

  “And he’d been playing around with Elaine Fletchley.”

  “She denied it.”

  “What would you expect her to do – give it to us on a plate? He blew a fuse on that cellar staircase deliberately. Or how was it that Fletchley a few minutes earlier found the light still working? Then he hit his wife on the head and fractured her skull, she fell down the stairs and broke her neck.”

  “You don’t know that Fletchley told the truth.”

  “Why should he lie? And what about the matches? What can you say about the matches?” The man in the brown suit said nothing about the matches. “Where did those matches come from that lay by her body? She left the kitchen to go to the cellar – Anderson said she had no matches in her hand. She had no pockets in her dress. She walked along a passage where there was no ledge on which matches could have rested. She switched on the cellar light and found it didn’t work. She started down the stairs – where could she have got hold of the matches? There’s only one explanation for them being by her body. Anderson put them there after he’d killed her. What other explanation can you offer, can anyone offer?”

  “I don’t know,” the other said. “Perhaps she was holding a box of matches in her hand and he didn’t notice them. Perhaps someone had left a box at the head of the cellar stairs.” He said weakly: “Funny things happen.”

  “But not as funny as that.” The Inspector chuckled softly.

  The sound was not pleasant. “We scared him, didn’t we, with our letters and the little tricks we played, the calendar and the messages. It was fun.”

  “And events helped us – if you can call it helping,” the younger man said. “All the trouble at the office – the mess he got into over Kiddy Modes, Reverton trying to get rid of him, the Hey Presto business.” He shuddered. “I shall never forget his face that night all puffed and red with that poisonous stuff, and bloody where he’d cut himself fighting with a ghost.”

  “And by the way,” the Inspector said, still moved by his internal amusement, “I understand they’re not putting that stuff on the market. It’s back in the experimental stage. One person in ten had a skin allergic to it.” There was a silence. “No use hanging about any longer.” He turned to go in. Greatorex caught his arm.

  “I can’t go in there.”

  The Inspector turned to look at him. “Don’t be a fool.”

  “What do you expect to prove?” Greatorex repeated insistently. “What do you expect him to tell you?”

  “If he’s able to recognize me,” the Inspector said slowly, “if this madness of his isn’t all a stunt – if I can get a written confession to put before the Commissioner – then we’ll see what he has to say about orthodox methods and resignation.”

  “I don’t want to see it,” Greatorex said. He shuddered. “I don’t want to see you with him.”

  The Inspector stared at him. Then he began to laugh. The laughter grew until it filled his whole hard body, until he took off his hard hat and revealed the great shining bald head. Between gusts of laughter he said: “You know, Greatorex, I’m not sure you shouldn’t be in this place.” He was still laughing when he entered the grey building.

  Inside the asylum he was received deferentially, but perhaps a little ambiguously. “You must be prepared for a change in him,” the doctor said, “He has grown a beard. He has a horror of shaving.”

  “I’ve seen worse things than a man with a beard,” the Inspector said. “Can he talk sensibly?”

  “That depends,” said the doctor. He had a fresh face and a shock of white hair. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I want to ask a few questions about the murder of his wife. Can it do any harm to discuss it?”

  “I don’t think,” the doctor said, “that anything can do him harm.”

  “You mean he’s incurably mad.”

  “That’s hardly a clinical way of putting it,” the doctor murmured. “But he will certainly never stand trial, if you have that in mind. Shall we go?” The Inspector nodded and the doctor pressed the bell. To the burly white-coated man who came in he said: “How is Anderson?”

  “Quiet. He’s writing.”

  “Writing,” the Inspector said. “That may be important,”

  “We shall see,” the doctor said.

  Inspector Cresse was not an impressionable man, but he felt a little strange when the door of the room was opened and he saw what appeared to be a complete stranger bent at a table, writing. “Is this—”

  “This is Anderson,” the doctor said. “Here is a visitor for you, Anderson.”

  The man at the table hurriedly closed the book in which he had been writing and pushed it into a drawer of the table. Then he looked at his visitors. The lower part of his face was hidden by a straggling beard of a dull brown colour, but the features themselves had changed curiously in shape and texture. The whole face was fatter and somehow blunted, and had lost its look of intelligence. The eyes, which had in the Inspector’s memory looked watchful and hunted, were now like dull buttons.

  “Well, Mr Anderson,” the Inspector said, “so we meet again. You remember me, don’t you?” He held out his hand, but Anderson did not take it.

  “Certainly I remember you. Your name is Rex.”

  “Cresse.”

  “Rex Imperator, son of the Almighty.” Anderson stood up and made a mocking bow. “Where is your companion?”

  “My companion?”

  “The greater Rex, your drinking friend, advertising manager to God. An amiable youngster, but deceitful. He told me God fathered him on Sir Malcolm Buntz.”

  The Inspector said to the doctor: “Are you sure this isn’t all put on? I believe he knows quite well who I am.”

  “We shall see,” the doctor said. “What have you been writing, Anderson?”

  The blunt features twisted into an unpleasant expression of cunning. Anderson shook his head.

  “About her?”

  Anderson nodded.

  “May we see it?”

  With a look of alarm Anderson shook his head again.

  “Let us see it, Anderson,” the doctor said pleasantly. “I will keep her away.” He said to the Inspector: “He thinks his wife comes to torment him, and that writing in the book is the only thing that stops her.”

&nbs
p; “You can’t keep her away,” Anderson said. He took the book out of the drawer, and held it close to him.

  “I shall put a spell on her.”

  “She knows all your spells,” Anderson said. “She came last night, tearing and scratching. She knew the date.”

  “What date?” The doctor glanced at the Inspector.

  “The thirty-first of February,” Anderson said. He began to cry out in a high voice, over and over again: “The thirty-first of February, the thirty-first of February.” He stood up in the middle of the room and flapped his arms like wings. “Here she is,” he screamed. The book dropped to the ground. The doctor picked it up.

  The room was square, with no furniture in it except the table and a bed, both bolted to the ground. Anderson ran from side to side of the room, holding his hands to his head, uttering shrill unintelligible noises, like an animal in pain. He blundered into the three men standing there as if they were statues. Then, still with those inhuman cries coming from his mouth, he began to knock his head against the wall. The man in the white coat locked Anderson’s arms behind his back and threw him on the bed. There he lay quietly, with his face turned away from them.

  The doctor opened the book. Each page was covered with thousands of fine lines of incoherent scribbling written across, up, and down the page. A few disconnected words could be made out in various pages: London, God, wife, scheme. The doctor looked at the Inspector. The Inspector shrugged his shoulders.

  Outside in the April sunlight Greatorex was waiting. The Inspector said nothing, but clapped his bowler hat on his head.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. He’s mad.”

  “He made no confession.”

  “No.”

  “Then we shall never know,” Greatorex said. “We shall never know whether he was guilty.”

  “He was guilty,” the Inspector said. “But he is mad. There will be no confession.”