“Not really. He said I was a damned fool—I ought to have gone the other way.”
“What did he mean—what way?”
“I don’t know what he meant,” I said. “I suppose he was delirious. Didn’t know what he was talking about.”
“Well, this house is a fine monument to his memory,” said Greta. “I think we’ll stick to it, don’t you?”
I stared at her. “Of course. Do you think I’m going to live anywhere else?”
“We can’t live here all the time,” said Greta. “Not all the year round. Buried in a hole like this village?”
“But it’s where I want to live—it’s where I always meant to live.”
“Yes, of course. But after all, Mike, we’ve got all the money in the world. We can go anywhere! We can go all over the Continent—we’ll go on safari in Africa. We’ll have adventures. We’ll go and look for things—exciting pictures. We’ll go to the Angkor Vat. Don’t you want to have an adventurous life?”
“Well, I suppose so…But we’ll always come back here, won’t we?”
I had a queer feeling, a queer feeling that something had gone wrong somewhere. That’s all I’d ever thought of. My House and Greta. I hadn’t wanted anything else. But she did. I saw that. She was just beginning. Beginning to want things. Beginning to know she could have them. I had a sudden cruel foreboding. I began to shiver.
“What’s the matter with you, Mike—you’re shivering. Have you caught a cold or something?”
“It’s not that,” I said.
“What’s happened, Mike?”
“I saw Ellie,” I said.
“What do you mean, you saw Ellie?”
“As I was walking up the road I turned the corner and there she was, standing under a fir tree, looking at—I mean looking towards me.”
Greta stared.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You—you imagined things.”
“Perhaps one does imagine things. This is Gipsy’s Acre after all. Ellie was there all right, looking—looking quite happy. Just like herself as though she’d—she’d always been there and was always going to be there.”
“Mike!” Greta took hold of my shoulder. She shook me. “Mike, don’t say things like that. Had you been drinking before you got here?”
“No, I waited till I got here to you. I knew you’d have champagne waiting for us.”
“Well, let’s forget Ellie and drink to ourselves.”
“It was Ellie,” I said obstinately.
“Of course it wasn’t Ellie! It was just a trick of the light—something like that.”
“It was Ellie, and she was standing there. She was looking—looking for me and at me. But she couldn’t see me. Greta, she couldn’t see me.” My voice rose. “And I know why. I know why she couldn’t see me.”
“What do you mean?”
It was then that I whispered for the first time under my breath:
“Because that wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. There was nothing for her to see but Endless Night.” Then I shouted out in a panic-stricken voice, “Some are born to Sweet Delight, and some are born to Endless Night. Me, Greta, me.
“Do you remember, Greta,” I said, “how she sat on that sofa? She used to play that song on her guitar, singing it in her gentle voice. You must remember.
“‘Every night and every morn,’” I sang it under my breath, “‘Some to misery are born. Every morn and every night some are born to sweet delight.’ That’s Ellie, Greta. She was born to sweet delight. ‘Some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night.’ That’s what Mum knew about me. She knew I was born to endless night. I hadn’t got there yet. But she knew. And Santonix knew. He knew I was heading that way. But it mightn’t have happened. There was just a moment, just one moment, the time Ellie sang that song. I could have been quite happy, couldn’t I, really, married to Ellie? I could have gone on being married to Ellie.”
“No, you couldn’t,” said Greta. “I never thought you were the type of person who lost your nerve, Mike.” She shook me roughly by the shoulder again. “Wake up.”
I stared at her.
“I’m sorry, Greta. What have I been saying?”
“I suppose they got you down over there in the States. But you did all right, didn’t you? I mean, all the investments are all right?”
“Everything’s fixed,” I said. “Everything’s fixed for our future. Our glorious, glorious future.”
“You speak very queerly. I’d like to know what Lippincott says in his letter.”
I pulled his letter towards me and opened it. There was nothing inside except a cutting from a paper. Not a new cutting, it was old and rather rubbed. I stared down at it. It was a picture of a street. I recognized the street, with rather a grand building in the background. It was a street in Hamburg with some people coming towards the photographer. Two people in the forefront walking arm in arm. They were Greta and myself. So Lippincott had known. He’d known all along that I already knew Greta. Somebody must have sent him this cutting some time, probably with no nefarious intention. Just amused perhaps to recognize Miss Greta Andersen walking along the streets of Hamburg. He had known I knew Greta and I remembered how particularly he had asked me whether I had met or not met Greta Andersen. I had denied it, of course, but he’d known I was lying. It must have begun his suspicion of me.
I was suddenly afraid of Lippincott. He couldn’t suspect, of course, that I’d killed Ellie. He suspected something, though. Perhaps he suspected even that.
“Look,” I said to Greta, “he knew we knew each other. He’s known it all along. I’ve always hated that old fox and he’s always hated you,” I said. “When he knows that we’re going to marry, he’ll suspect.” But then I knew that Lippincott had certainly suspected Greta and I were going to marry, he suspected that we knew each other, he suspected perhaps that we were lovers.
“Mike, will you stop being a panic-stricken rabbit? Yes, that’s what I said. A panic-stricken rabbit. I admired you. I’ve always admired you. But now you’re falling to pieces. You’re afraid of everyone.”
“Don’t say that to me.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“Endless night.”
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was still wondering just what it meant. Endless night. It meant blackness. It meant that I wasn’t there to be seen. I could see the dead but the dead couldn’t see me although I was living. They couldn’t see me because I wasn’t really there. The man who loved Ellie wasn’t really there. He’d entered of his own accord into endless night. I bent my head lower towards the ground.
“Endless night,” I said again.
“Stop saying that,” Greta screamed. “Stand up! Be a man, Mike. Don’t give in to this absurd superstitious fancy.”
“How can I help it?” I said. “I’ve sold my soul to Gipsy’s Acre, haven’t I? Gipsy’s Acre’s never been safe. It’s never been safe for anyone. It wasn’t safe for Ellie and it isn’t safe for me. Perhaps it isn’t safe for you.”
“What do you mean?”
I got up. I went towards her. I loved her. Yes, I loved her still with a last tense sexual desire. But love, hate, desire—aren’t they all the same? Three in one and one in three. I could never have hated Ellie, but I hated Greta. I enjoyed hating her. I hated her with all my heart and with a leaping joyous wish—I couldn’t wait for the safe ways, I didn’t want to wait for them, I came nearer to her.
“You filthy bitch!” I said. “You hateful, glorious, golden-haired bitch. You’re not safe, Greta. You’re not safe from me. Do you understand? I’ve learnt to enjoy—to enjoy killing people. I was excited the day that I knew Ellie had gone out with that horse to her death. I enjoyed myself all the morning because of killing, but I’ve never got near enough to killing until now. This is different. I want more than just knowing that someone’s going to die because of a capsule they swallowed at breakfast time. I want more than pushing an old woman over a quarry. I want to use my hands.”
/> Greta was afraid now. She, whom I’d belonged to ever since I met her that day in Hamburg, met her and gone on to pretend illness, to throw up my job, to stay there with her. Yes, I’d belonged to her then, body and soul. I didn’t belong to her now. I was myself. I was coming into another kind of kingdom to the one I’d dreamed of.
She was afraid. I loved seeing her afraid and I fastened my hands round her neck. Yes, even now when I am sitting here writing down all about myself (which, mind you, is a very happy thing to do)—to write all about yourself and what you’ve been through and what you felt and thought and how you deceived everyone—yes, it’s wonderful to do, yes I was wonderfully happy when I killed Greta….
Twenty-four
There isn’t really very much to say after that. I mean, things came to a climax there. One forgets, I suppose, that there can’t be anything better to follow—that you’ve had it all. I just sat there for a long time. I don’t know when They came. I don’t know whether They all came at once…They couldn’t have been there all along because they wouldn’t have let me kill Greta. I noticed that God was there first. I don’t mean God, I’m confused, I mean Major Phillpot. I’d liked him always, he’d been nice to me. He was rather like God in some ways, I think. I mean if God had been a human being and not something supernatural—up in the sky somewhere. He was a very fair man, very fair and kind. He looked after things and people. Tried to do his best for people.
I don’t know how much he’d known about me. I remembered the curious way he looked at me that morning in the sale room when he said that I was “fey.” I wonder why he thought I happened to be fey that day.
Then when we were there with that little crumpled heap on the ground that was Ellie in her riding habit…I wonder if he knew then or had some idea that I’d had something to do with it.
After Greta’s death, as I say I just sat there in my chair, staring down at my champagne glass. It was empty. Everything was very empty, very empty indeed. There was just one light that we’d switched on, Greta and I, but it was in the corner. It didn’t give much light and the sun—I think the sun must have set a long time ago. I just sat there and wondered what was going to happen next with a sort of dull wonder.
Then, I suppose, the people began coming. Perhaps a lot of people came at once. They came very quietly, if so, or else I wasn’t hearing or noticing anybody.
Perhaps if Santonix had been there he would have told me what to do. Santonix was dead. He’d gone a different way to my way, so he wouldn’t be any help. Nobody really would be any help.
After a bit I noticed Dr. Shaw. He was so quiet I hardly knew he was there at first. He was sitting quite near me, just waiting for something. After a while I thought he was waiting for me to speak. I said to him:
“I’ve come home.”
There were one or two other people moving somewhere behind him. They seemed to be waiting, to be waiting for something that he was going to do.
“Greta’s dead,” I said. “I killed her. I expect you’d better take the body away, hadn’t you?”
Somebody somewhere let off a flash bulb. It must have been a police photographer photographing the body. Dr. Shaw turned his head and said sharply:
“Not yet.”
He turned his head round back to me again. I leaned towards him and said:
“I saw Ellie tonight.”
“Did you? Where?”
“Outside standing under a fir tree. It was the place I first saw her, you know.” I paused a moment and then said, “She didn’t see me…She couldn’t see me because I wasn’t there.” And after a while I said, “That upset me. It upset me very much.”
Dr. Shaw said, “It was in the capsule, wasn’t it? Cyanide in the capsule? That’s what you gave Ellie that morning?”
“It was for her hay fever,” I said, “she always took a capsule as a preventative against her allergy when she went riding. Greta and I fixed up one or two of the capsules with wasp stuff from the garden shed and joined them together again. We did it up in the Folly. Smart, wasn’t it?” And I laughed. It was an odd sort of laugh, I heard it myself. It was more like a queer little giggle. I said, “You’d examined all the things she took, hadn’t you, when you came to see her ankle? Sleeping pills, the allergy capsules, and they were all quite all right, weren’t they? No harm in any of them.”
“No harm,” said Dr. Shaw. “They were quite innocent.”
“That was rather clever really, wasn’t it?” I said.
“You’ve been quite clever, yes, but not clever enough.”
“All the same I don’t see how you found out.”
“We found out when there was a second death, the death you didn’t mean to happen.”
“Claudia Hardcastle?”
“Yes. She died the same way as Ellie. She fell from her horse in the hunting field. Claudia was a healthy girl too, but she just fell from her horse and died. The time wasn’t so long there, you see. They picked her up almost at once and there was still the smell of cyanide to go by. If she’d lain in the open air like Ellie for a couple of hours, there’d have been nothing—nothing to smell, nothing to find. I don’t see how Claudia got the capsule, though. Unless you’d left one behind in the Folly. Claudia used to go to the Folly sometimes. Her fingerprints were there and she dropped a lighter there.”
“We must have been careless. Filling them was rather tricky.”
Then I said:
“You suspected I had something to do with Ellie’s death, didn’t you? All of you?” I looked round at the shadowy figures. “Perhaps all of you.”
“Very often one knows. But I wasn’t sure whether we’d be able to do anything about it.”
“You ought to caution me,” I said reprovingly.
“I’m not a police officer,” said Dr. Shaw.
“What are you then?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“I don’t need a doctor,” I said.
“That remains to be seen.”
I looked at Phillpot then, and I said:
“What are you doing? Come here to judge me, to preside at my trial?”
“I’m only a Justice of the Peace,” he said. “I’m here as a friend.”
“A friend of mine?” That startled me.
“A friend of Ellie’s,” he said.
I didn’t understand. None of it made sense to me but I couldn’t help feeling rather important. All of them there! Police and doctor, Shaw and Phillpot who was a busy man in his way. The whole thing was very complicated. I began to lose count of things. I was very tired, you see. I used to get tired suddenly and go to sleep….
And all the coming and going. People came to see me, all sorts of people. Lawyers, a solicitor, I think, and another kind of lawyer with him and doctors. Several doctors. They bothered me and I didn’t want to answer them.
One of them kept asking me if there was anything I wanted. I said there was. I said there was only one thing I wanted. I said I wanted a ballpen and a lot of paper. I wanted, you see, to write all about it, how it all came to happen. I wanted to tell them what I’d felt, what I’d thought. The more I thought about myself, the more interesting I thought it would be to everybody. Because I was interesting. I was a really interesting person and I’d done interesting things.
The doctors—one doctor, anyway—seemed to think it was a good idea. I said:
“You always let people make a statement, so why can’t I write my statement out? Some day, perhaps, everybody can read it.”
They let me do it. I couldn’t write very long on end. I used to get tired. Somebody used a phrase like “diminished responsibility” and somebody else disagreed. All sorts of things you hear. Sometimes they don’t think you’re even listening. Then I had to appear in court and I wanted them to fetch me my best suit because I had to make a good figure there. It seemed they had had detectives watching me. For some time. Those new servants. I think they’d been engaged or put on my trail by Lippincott. They found out too many things about me an
d Greta. Funny, after she was dead I never thought of Greta much…After I’d killed her she didn’t seem to matter any more.
I tried to bring back the splendid triumphant feeling that I’d had when I strangled her. But even that was gone away….
They brought my mother to see me quite suddenly one day. There she was looking at me from the doorway. She didn’t look as anxious as she used to look. I think all she looked now was sad. She hadn’t much to say and nor had I. All she said was:
“I tried, Mike. I tried very hard to keep you safe. I failed. I was always afraid that I should fail.”
I said, “All right, Mum, it wasn’t your fault. I chose to go the way I wanted.”
And I thought suddenly, “That’s what Santonix said. He was afraid for me, too. He hadn’t been able to do anything either. Nobody could have done anything—except perhaps I myself…I don’t know. I’m not sure. But every now and then I remember—I remember that day when Ellie said to me, ‘What are you thinking of when you look at me like that?’ and I said, ‘Like what?’ She said, ‘As though you loved me.’ I suppose in a way I did love her. I could have loved her. She was so sweet, Ellie. Sweet delight….”
I suppose the trouble with me was that I wanted things too much, always. Wanted them, too, the easy way, the greedy way.
That first time, that first day I came to Gipsy’s Acre and met Ellie. As we were going down the road again we met Esther. It put it into my head that day, the warning she gave Ellie, put it in my head to pay her. I knew she was the kind who would do anything for money. I’d pay her. She’d start warning Ellie and frightening her, making her feel that she was in danger. I thought it might make it seem more possible then that Ellie had died from shock. That first day, I know now, I’m sure of it, Esther was really frightened. She was really frightened for Ellie. She warned her, warned her to go away, have nothing to do with Gipsy’s Acre. She was warning her, of course, to have nothing to do with me. I didn’t understand that. Ellie didn’t understand either.
Was it me Ellie was afraid of? I think it must have been though she didn’t know it herself. She knew there was something threatening her, she knew there was danger. Santonix knew the evil in me, too, just like my mother. Perhaps all three of them knew. Ellie knew but she didn’t mind, she never minded. It’s odd, very odd. I know now. We were very happy together. Yes, very happy. I wish I’d known then that we were happy…I had my chance. Perhaps everyone has a chance. I—turned my back on it.