Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper Page 5

  Mr Bowling was wondering whether Mr Watson’s teeth would be likely to fall out, they might get to the back of his throat, and choke up the epiglottis. It might not look like murder, then.

  The conversation veered round towards the blitz again.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Watson said, ‘I was very shocked indeed to hear about your poor wife.’

  ‘Oh, well …’

  ‘I know what it’s like. I lost my wife suddenly one Saturday afternoon,’ he said, rather as if he’d taken her shopping, and it had happened that way.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘A bus …’

  ‘I say! I’m sorry, a beastly thing, that!’

  ‘But these things happen! Sad! Sad! But we’ve all got to go sometime.’

  ‘That’s true enough.’

  ‘Well, now, come into the dining room. There are various things to go into. And I expect you want my signature.’

  They went into the dining room. It was very neat, and there was a picture of Mr Watson’s married daughter sitting in a deck chair at Margate and showing the most hideous legs. She really looked a corker. There was a plant in the firegrate, and on the table were Mr Watson’s pens and bits of blotting, all very fussy and neat, everything at right angles to everything else. He was like an old hen with his things. He sat busily down in his salt-and-pepper suit and started frowning about his money and his policies and his views on the Stock Exchange in general. The moment he saw the policy Mr Bowling had planned to try and get him to sign, he seized it in his bony fingers and stared.

  Mr Bowling got to his left side, a little behind him.

  ‘Whatever’s this?’ Mr Watson exclaimed. ‘This won’t do at all,’ he said, and suddenly tore it up into little pieces.

  He turned round towards Mr Bowling as if for another form, and Mr Bowling put his thick hand out. He suddenly and rather thoughtfully put his hand on Mr Watson’s moustache, and pressed Mr Watson’s head back so that it rested on his own chest, and the chair tilted and came back, and he quite easily dragged Mr Watson backwards out of sight of the little bay window. He felt the back of his legs touching the red plush settee, and he allowed himself to say quietly: ‘Take it easily, then it won’t take at all long,’ to Mr Watson, whose expression, if it was possible to judge it, was that of a startled child being forced to play a game he had never played before, and didn’t really like.

  Mr Watson poised in mid-air, on the tilted chair, but generously supported in every possible way by his companion, over-toppled the chair, which fell on its side with a mild bump. Some footsteps went up the road, and some footsteps came down the road.

  Mr Watson had started to do extraordinary things with his hands. He seized Mr Bowling’s two ears, and contrived to give a very sharp and fairly prolonged twist to them. After that, he transferred his grip to Mr Bowling’s hair.

  When that had but little effect, he started up a bit of a spluttering, covering Mr Bowling’s hand with spittle, and managing to grip in pincer movements at the backs of Mr Bowling’s hams.

  There was quite a strong smell of geraniums, Mr Bowling noticed. It was not unpleasant. He thought several times: ‘What is actually happening? Am I dreaming?’

  If he was dreaming, the dream continued.

  The red plush settee again touched the backs of his calves. Mr Watson was frantically trying to get freed by a rapid series of shakes. He shook his stomach to and fro, and wriggled. Mr Bowling permitted himself to sit and get a better purchase, as it occurred to him that Mr Watson might be going to take rather longer than Ivy had. Mr Watson’s grey eyes began to show a neat mixture of astonishment and increasing terror, and he wriggled and spreadeagled his long pepper-and-salt legs, and managed to get a bit of breath in through his nose. Mr Bowling tightened the vacuum there, and pressed hard at the moustache, which was a trifle ticklish. Mr Watson’s attitude was a trifle obscene. Various things began to pass rapidly through Mr Bowling’s brain, which had begun to be astonishingly clear. He thought, well, this was rather amazing, he hadn’t wasted much time, so he was doing it after all—and why? There was no money in it, none whatever: now, why was that thought such a comfort? Why? Why, because, one supposed, fraud was rather a shabby thing; even if it was money belonging to a company worth millions, it was still fraud. And another thing, did it occur to one that somebody else may be at that moment in the little house? In the kitchen, perhaps? And another thing: where did one get this method from? It was pretty effective. Burke and Hare used to do it. Had one read of it first, or thought of it first and then read of it? The subconscious was a very interesting thing. Did people realise that places were sometimes haunted by the future—as well as by the past? Did one …?

  There was no stopping the amazing pace of his thoughts. His life raced backwards and forwards. He was holding Colton behind the chapel. Now it was Mr Watson again. Now it was poor Ivy.

  Now it was Mr Watson.

  Why was it? Why was he doing it? And why did he now know he was going to do several more murders? Murders? Don’t call them that—such a vulgar word.

  Then it came to him swiftly and clearly that he was doing it because he was so thoroughly disappointed in himself and his life; he wanted to be caught.

  He wanted it.

  Suddenly Mr Watson managed to give a violent lurch.

  But it didn’t mean anything. His face was black, his head had sunk, his body gave a kind of twist and Mr Bowling held him a few moments more and then allowed it to collapse face downwards into the red cushion. He pulled up the sagging knees and dumped them on the settee and stood up. He was panting.

  Presently, Mr Bowling straightened his collar, took up his papers and hat and went out of the house.

  He smiled in the summer sunshine and decided to go to the pictures.

  He went to the Metropole in Victoria, somehow he felt more at home in Victoria than Fulham, it was near to Queenie, where he would go later on. For the present, he wanted the quiet and the dark, but not the quiet and the dark of solitude.

  He wanted to think things out.

  He presently decided that he was a fox. He wanted the chase, he expected to be caught, and he even wanted that. He wanted the hunters to have every chance.

  He was one of life’s misfits. A bungler with money, and with life; just a poor devil with an artistic soul, ruined by education. Cursed or blessed with a weak heart, and thereby useless to his country in matters to do with killing; just a knock-about. Yes, yes, he thought in the pictures, the sooner they catch me, the better: though not a soul will ever understand. Not a soul.

  He sat in the pictures with his eyes shut, in very severe mental agony.

  Half way through the big picture, he fell fast asleep. When he woke up, people were roaring with laughter. He roared with laughter too until tears came.

  Then he slipped out and hurriedly bought a newspaper.

  CHAPTER V

  QUEENIE was waiting for him in the new flat she and Rodney had recently chosen. They still stuck to Belgravia, it was a habit, it was home, they knew all the locals.

  Locals were their background.

  Queenie was wife-hunting for Mr Bowling. ‘Dear Bill,’ as she called him. ‘I must have a scout round,’ she told Rodney in her pleasant way.

  ‘I doubt if you need trouble,’ Rodney said. He took what he called rather a poor view of that Bowling fellow.

  ‘Whyever?’ Queenie teased him now and again.

  ‘I hate cynics,’ Rodney commented, and he argued with Queenie that there was too much of the cynic about that Bowling fellow. She wouldn’t agree, saying that ‘old Bill simply wants understanding.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t understand him, then!’

  ‘And he’s going through something,’ she frowned. She was vague about this, usually tossing it aside with a laugh.

  Rodney liked to say that Bill had been rather rude to him about the Civil Service being what he called ‘departmental minded’, licking each other’s boots in a time-serving way in the interests of advancement,
and afterwards running each other down behind each other’s backs. All individuality, Mr Bowling pronounced, was unhesitatingly sacrificed in the interests of pay day. On top of this, that fellow Bowling had got a bit tight one night and it had got back to him that Bowling thought him ‘typical’ of the M.O.I. If you offered yourself for a war job there, (Bowling reported) they put you through an exam, and only when you passed it suddenly thought of asking you about your grade of health. If you said you were Grade One, Two or Three, they said, sorry, can’t employ you unless you’re Grade Four, old chap, and looked brightly at you, almost proud of the waste of time and paper involved in the preliminary correspondence and the exam! And Bowling had said: ‘The perfect job for dear old Rodney—suit him down to the ground.’

  Queenie seemed to side with Bowling and was an extraordinary staunch champion of his. She was vehement.

  ‘My dear,’ she laughed, ‘you just don’t know him! He’s as honest and open as the day. According to his lights! Which is more than one can say for some—I don’t mean you, you old pencil!’ She often called him an old pencil, because of his work at the M.O.I. She teased him about being a pencil and a bit of paper. ‘Try and be nice to him, won’t you, darling. He’s had a tough break. Married too young. No cash. This time he must try and marry a bit of money, it’s the only thing for a man of his temperament. There’s no shame in it, it’s logic, and he’s got music in him.’

  ‘He’s not very good looking, is he?’

  ‘Hark at him! And nor are you! You old pencil!’

  ‘I mean, he always looks as if … as if he’s acting a part. As if he’s out of his sphere.’

  ‘He is out of sphere. The poor lamb. He ought to live on his country estate. Or somebody ought to leave him some dough and a title. He’d probably do wonders for charity and write a symphony or something.’

  ‘H’ar!’

  ‘I’ll give you h’ar, my sweet. You lay off my boy friend. He’s thoroughly sincere. And decidedly religious, we’ve had some rare old talks in our day. I wonder if Doris would like him. She’s pretty. And kind. Bill ought to have somebody a bit maternal.’

  When he came in, she noticed that his hand was clammy. She thought he was nervous about Rodney being there.

  ‘My word,’ Bill said, staring round at the new place, ‘this is pretty posh, what?’

  Rodney Wellington saw him come in. He thought he looked what he would call well dressed. Sports jacket and grey flannels, well creased. Bowing slightly as he shook hands, suave manners, perfectly poised. Thin fair hair slightly grey, nicely done at the left side, white cuffs showing a bit. He looked like a rather nice schoolmaster. And yet that something a little … grotesque? His head was queerly shaped, barbers must be fascinated; not unlike a rather neat mangold wurzle? And that colour in his face—an over-pink: like a man who drinks whisky secretly and to excess.

  But he didn’t do that, did he?

  Sorry, but not possible to like him as much as Queenie does, oh, educated, granted, not the Varsity, but …

  ‘How are you, Rodney?’

  ‘How do you do? Glad to see you!’

  Liar, thought Mr Bowling, but laughed pleasantly at something Queenie said. He suddenly felt a whole lot better. Normal again. It had been a dreadful afternoon. Black, black depression.

  Doris came in.

  A whole crowd came in. It was a big flat, and suddenly Mr Bowling was saying to Doris that he wanted one like it. Why live in a single room, for pity’s sake?

  Doris was nice. She was perky and liked to show her taut little figure. She wore a permanent broad smile and was well dressed. She’d been on the stage, in films, on the radio, in shops, in clubs as a hostess, on an airliner, and was just going into munitions. They made no particular contact of any kind, beyond a mutual curiosity. She had decided she would like to sleep with him, and would do so if he asked her. But he astonished her later, after poker, by telling her he saw no happiness in promiscuity, and was against Free Love. She felt very surprised at first, but then, looking at him again, was not so surprised. There was something sincere about him, as Queenie had said. He was bright and didn’t seem the moody kind, though you couldn’t possibly tell that at a first meeting. He looked at her once, rather sadly, and although they never met again, she remembered him for a very long time. She said to Queenie after:

  ‘You don’t often meet an interesting man. I liked him.’

  … When he got home, it was late, and there was not the need to tiptoe upstairs for fear of being bored by someone; old Winthrop would be safely in bed upstairs surrounded by his acid bottles and cables and chemistry books: old Miss Brown, doubtless with her floppy hat on, for he had never seen her without it, would be asleep in one of these rooms downstairs, he was never quite sure where she hung out. Alice, the maid, would be in the basement with the cat.

  He chuckled and went up to his room. Went in and took care not to put the light on, he had left the windows open and the blackout down, despite Alice’s protestations. Alice liked to cart her bulky form round the place doing all the curtains and things, or the police started ringing the bell ‘and it upsets Miss Brown.’

  He fumbled about and undressed in the dark, dropping his clothes vaguely on the floor. He stood on one leg by the open window, smelling the warm night, it was pitch dark, he couldn’t see any stars. The slow footsteps of a policeman on patrol came up the road, stopped, came on again, dwindled slowly away again. And he thought:

  ‘The sooner they come for me, the better. Yes, the sooner the whole bally business is over, the better it will be. The feeble mess I made with that paste and policy! I’m just not cut out for a crook. Always be yourself, that’s the ticket. I wonder if they’ve spotted poor old Watson yet, and I wonder if I left a clue behind. I hope I left something. It’ll make an interesting trial, all his bally affairs in perfect order, nothing missing? You realise, my dear chap, with his face stuffed into that cushion, some old doctor may think he had a heart attack and suffocated himself? Or can they tell? Probably they can tell a thing like that. They’re so darned clever these days. Finger prints? I daresay I left one or two. They’ll be sure to come to me, somebody probably saw me going along to his little house, or coming away from it? Poor old Watson, hope it wasn’t too unpleasant, no desire to hurt anyone, but it hadn’t taken very long.’

  He hopped about on one leg, pulling off a sock. He got into his pyjamas and got into bed. Alice had turned the bed down, these rooms were better than most, distinct attempts at comfort and refinement. All the same, the great idea was to get a nice furnished flat like Queenie’s, three or four rooms, then one could have a few of the folks round, cards, or some music. Tomorrow slip up to that flaming insurance office and say: ‘Sorry, old boy, I’m chucking the insurance racket. Going back into Civil Defence, or war work of some kind. Time I did.’ Messrs Rosin and Nash, unless they’d been called up by now, could have his little clientele. Also, they might have news of Watson. ‘I say, Bowling, one of your clients pegged out yesterday. Have you been told? Old Watson, Peel Street, Fulham.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes.’ And perhaps they’d say: ‘Murder, Bowling. What can you make of that? The poor blighter got strangled or something. The police are there now.’

  Perhaps they’d say:

  ‘Ah, there you are, Bowling I think a Police Inspector’s wanting to see you. When did you last see Watson? Somebody’s snuffed him out.’

  He put an arm out to the radio and switched it on, thinking, yes, I suppose I’ve got about eight hundred quid, that’ll be quite enough to last me till this thing is through. Of course, it’s a form of suicide, really—but a darned interesting and sporting one, it’ll give an exciting run whichever way you look at it.

  But when he went to the office next day, nobody said a word about Watson, or about anything; even about old school ties. They were one and all bored to death with his news about leaving insurance, too many of the firm had left already, what was one more?

  ‘Well, cheer
io,’ he said vaguely, and thought: ‘My God, to think I stuck you all for so long, miserable lot of …’ He went down in the lift and stepped out buoyantly into Holborn and shouted for a taxi. What a joy to yell for a bally taxi. He charged cheerily back home to see if anything had happened in any form about old Watson, but nothing whatever had, it was exceedingly uncanny. It occurred to him the old chap might stay face down on that settee for weeks. Surely the postman or milkman have kicked up a shindy by now? He felt rather upset. It interfered with his plans. What was the good of going into a new flat if one was going to be arrested in a day or two? He went to bed, got up, played the piano, went in the park and sat in deck chairs in the sun, went to the pictures, saw Queenie, and pub-crawled for three more days. Nothing whatever happened in any shape or form. One morning he woke up in a good humour and there was a letter forwarded to him care of the office. It was from Watson’s daughter at Kingston, and he laughed aloud, both with humour and suddenly relief from strain. She ‘regretted to inform’ him that her father had ‘had a seizure’ and the funeral was yesterday. ‘He was quite all right when the charwoman came at ten, and at eleven she went out to do the shopping. She was not gone more than twenty minutes, and when she came back he was dead.’ This gave him a considerable thrill. The charwoman might have come in any second, and caught him. If that wasn’t giving the hunters a sporting chance, what was? ‘… But what I am really writing to say is did my father ever say anything to you about his will, I want to contest the will, for I fear he may have been out of his mind, for he has left every penny to a home for little dogs, I thought I could perhaps get evidence concerning his state of mind, and I know he liked talking to you. It would be nice if you wrote, and of course my husband and I would be only too glad to remunerate you for any trouble you took, I enclose a stamp. It seems very hard, doesn’t it, because we were devoted, and I have this house to keep up, and the little car, and times are very worrying. Yours sincerely, Fanny Heaton. P.S. I shall await your reply with anxiety, and so will my husband, who sends his kindest regards.’