Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper Page 8

  On the writing table, Mr Bowling noticed a letter which began and tailed off.

  ‘My dear Vera,

  ‘I have been wondering what to reply to your last letter, and I have decided to split my answer into two parts. Firstly, my dear Vera, I want to explain my …’

  Dear, oh, dear, Mr Bowling thought sadly, what a tedious letter it must have been going to be!

  He said sadly and softly:

  ‘I’d better go down and tell Miss Brown. And we’d better get a doctor. Mere formality, of course, but there it is.’

  He slipped out.

  Alice, Miss Hull and Mr Gunter stood in a group staring at the body on the bed. Alice was now sobbing unrestrainedly and saying how fond of him she had always been, which was the silly sort of thing the dear old thing would be expected to say in the circumstances.

  Miss Brown awoke from a gentle dream about yellow jasmine growing on the garden wall at home, and dear father sitting in his deck chair there smoking a Turkish cigarette, and heard the pleasant, educated accent of that delightful Mr Bowling saying apologetically and very tactfully:

  ‘I’m terribly sorry to intrude upon you, Miss Brown? Are you awake? I’m afraid poor Winthrop passed away last night …’

  Mr Bowling stood at his frying pan and became aware that a sensation of excitement pervaded him. He regretted it, deep within himself, because he did not feel it was sporting to enjoy any sensation at the expense of poor Winthrop; but, he thought, hang it all, a man could not prevent inner emotions which rose from subconscious reason.

  It was the emotion of the hunt. The hunt was up; if the end of the hunt was as grave as he hoped and expected it to be, perhaps he was entitled to the present sensation of excitement, while it lasted.

  Strange voices were in the house, and strange footsteps had gone up the stairs. Joan had come in twice, to whisper a kind of panic, she greatly feared old Alice may have seen her in the bed with him, and as she told Miss Brown everything, she felt rather worried,

  ‘Why worry?’ he commented vaguely, and turned the rasher over.

  ‘Because she’ll make me leave,’ she cried, vexed. Then she went out again.

  Alice came in three times to say wasn’t it awful, and to say Dr Gilestone was here, and to say Dr Gilestone had gone, and to say he hadn’t made any remark at all about the cause of death, but he’d looked grave.

  Miss Brown came in, with her hat on, to say how terribly sorry she was that her tenants had been disturbed, and that she did so hope Miss Hull wouldn’t give notice, she was looking rather pale.

  He poked thoughtfully at the rasher. Mr Bowling’s kitchen arrangements were a sort of cupboard with four shelves high up, and a cooking stove midway, balanced on top of a small refrigerator. There were two of everything, cups, saucers, milk jugs, basins, spoons, forks and knives, and the frying pan hung up on a nail as a rule, as did the saucepan now. There were strong bacon fumes which charged across the room and out of the window. He usually stood to eat, because to sit at it meant crossing the room to the little round table, which had a habit of collapsing, and then you had to start all over again from scratch. If it didn’t collapse, then you forgot something, and had to trail miles back again to get whatever it was.

  In another corner of the room was a brown screen, behind which you could wash with running water, though you couldn’t possibly shave, on account of the mirror being too low and giving you a crick in the back, and it being a sort of glazed brown on the surface, and it being so hung that any light there was fell slap across the back of your own head and blotted out everything.

  He stood eating and deciding:

  ‘I’ll shave in the bathroom today. That bloody mirror.’

  And he wondered what the shaving arrangements were like in prison. Did you go to the Scrubs, or where was it nowadays? Pentonville?

  And he thought with a sigh:

  ‘The sooner it’s over, the better!’

  Then he stood rather still, listening.

  CHAPTER VIII

  HE was standing washing up when the knock came.

  He went quickly to the door, holding the dish cloth with the red stripe, and the white cup, and wearing on his face the expression of anxious concern how-is-the-patient-now sort of thing, and seeing the police officer there, though in plain clothes he looked the complete copper, put on his face the look ah-worse-I-fear-I’m-so-sorry.

  ‘Hallo, old chap,’ he said, quietly as at a funeral.

  The policeman’s expression changed within seconds of seeing Mr Bowling. He looked in that state of mind which says:

  ‘Oh, I say Sir now.’

  ‘Good morning, sir.’ he said, and sounded apologetic.

  Mr Bowling said in grave tones to come right in.

  ‘Thank you, sir. It’s just about the unfortunate matter upstairs, you know …’

  ‘Quite, quite.’

  ‘Only,’ the copper said, ‘the doctor won’t sign a death certificate, and as there’ll be a post mortem, we’ve got to make a few enquiries.’

  Mr Bowling looked extremely grave and shocked, and the copper said who he was, and produced a picture of himself in a wallet which looked like a passport. The photograph, Mr Bowling thought, was exceedingly good and flattering, and felt constrained to say so. He laughed.

  ‘Not that one should joke at a time like this,’ his laugh faded. ‘But it struck me.’

  The copper laughed softly. He looked about twenty-one, but must have been more than that.

  He said he’d just got to know who was in the house last night, and so on. Mr Bowling said he fully understood, and he said he was in the house the entire evening and night. He said why wouldn’t the doctor sign a death certificate, and was told that Mr Winthrop had been smothered.

  ‘Smothered?’ said Mr Bowling.

  ‘We are wondering if any outside agent could have got in. Or if he had any enemies.’

  ‘I couldn’t imagine him having any enemies,’ Mr Bowling said.

  ‘Very likeable and interesting, I believe.’

  ‘Quite a good chap.’

  ‘A great friend of yours, sir?’

  Mr Bowling said Winthrop often came in for a chat, and had actually been in only yesterday morning to invite him to bridge on the Thursday next, and he’d accepted.

  When the copper went off to question somebody else, Joan slipped in again with some ridiculous talk about wondering if the police thought she’d murdered Mr Winthrop.

  ‘You?’ he said.

  She was scared and she said:

  ‘Well, they think it’s murder. Personally, I should think it was a housebreaker or someone. I can’t imagine Mr Gunter doing it, or anyone else here? And Alice says they think he was killed last night about eleven or so, that was just when I came into your room and you were … or I thought you were having a bath.’ She stared vacantly. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Walking,’ he said, and burst out laughing.

  She hurried on with the news: ‘So in case they thought it was me, I said I was in here with you all the evening, and stayed all night! I don’t care if Miss Brown is shocked, I don’t suppose she’s a virgin either.’ She slipped out, frowning anxiously.

  His face fell.

  When the detective returned and said: ‘I have to ask you if you were alone last evening and last night, sir, I’m sorry to …’ he replied sharply:

  ‘Why shouldn’t I have been alone?’

  But the fellow suddenly winked.

  ‘As a matter of fact, sir,’ he said, ‘Alice saw her come in here! Though she wasn’t sure of the time!’ He winked again and went out.

  He sat and stared in front of him, anger rising.

  Alice? Prowling about and watching his movements? Well, what else had she seen, perhaps? There was a grave discrepancy of about four minutes or more?

  Emotions battled within him; one minute he saw that the police would never even suspect him, and he felt pleased and superior: the next minute he felt sure that Alice would give him away
, she’d seen everything—and he felt resigned and dejected.

  He sat and waited.

  It had begun to rain. It was a nice summer rain and it brought down the first brown leaves with it. It hissed sleepily on the tarred road outside.

  Nothing further happened and the house seemed quiet.

  Alice came in at teatime. Her face was red with crying, and her eyes, which were puffy in any case, looked like Cornish pasties. He was having his tea and he thought, now we shall hear something. When do they come for me?

  But she said, pouting:

  ‘I hope you’re ashamed, Mr Bowling, taking up with a hussy like that! I saw her slip into your room last night, I was doing the curtain on the landing down there! I never thought you’d take up with a hussy like that, sir,’ she half complained, half teased. ‘And then when I came in this morning and saw her in your bed? …’

  She pouted, head on one side.

  He stirred his tea despondently, thinking wearily:

  ‘If this mare doesn’t clear out of it I think I shall vomit!’

  ‘Do you hear, Mr Bowling?’ she teased in a motherly, thick-skinned way.

  He smiled good-temperedly.

  ‘What do the police think?’ he said. ‘One doesn’t come across murder every day.’

  The word brought her to her senses and her handkerchief came out again.

  ‘Murder,’ she said in tones of horror. ‘Only to think of it!’

  He smirked.

  ‘Good Lor’, why make so much fuss, Alice? Murder’s a very over-rated word. It’s the fault of fiction. We don’t squirm about in horror when we hear a king has been murdered, we call it assassination and get on with our breakfast. But when Mr Jones crowns Mrs Jones, probably because she richly deserves it, we call it murder and rush and stare at her miserable little house! What is the matter with us all? If old Winthrop’s been murdered, I daresay there’s a good reason for it all somewhere? People are being murdered all over the world this very moment in a revolting and often brutal fashion—but we can only hope that there’s a scheme of things behind it all? See my meaning?’

  She chewed her handkerchief and said rather coyly she thought he was callous about Mr Winthrop. It was a tease.

  ‘Callous? Why only the other day, Alice, you told me he was the biggest bore you’d ever met! If somebody’s smothered him, then they’ve done you a good turn! I believe you smothered him yourself!’

  Her hands flew up.

  She cried:

  ‘Oh, there, Mr Bowling, how can you, really?’ and her face went mottled.

  He was thinking:

  ‘That detective must be as balmy as the doctor who examined old Watson! What is the matter with people?’

  He said slowly and quietly to Alice.

  ‘Will you let me confide in you?’

  Her face lit up. ‘Confide in me?’ she said hopefully.

  He leaned forward.

  ‘I smothered old Winthrop myself,’ he said quietly. ‘I was in here, and I heard him standing outside my door. He didn’t come in, and I heard him going on upstairs to his room. I crept after him, Alice, and, just as he was reaching the top stair, I pounced. I got my hand over his mouth and nose, pulled him down, and held him there, kicking, until I felt sure he was dead.’

  She flushed, maternally.

  ‘Oh, sir, really …!’

  ‘And, the whole time, you were on the landing doing the curtain! Now, go and fetch the police in here again!’

  He sat looking sourly at the bread and butter.

  She exploded into a shy laugh and threw up her hands and went once again:

  ‘Oh, sir, really …!’

  ‘Really!’

  ‘No, Mr Bowling, you …’

  ‘It’s true, I tell you! Fetch the police,’ he cried angrily.

  She cried again:

  ‘Oh, there, how can you, Mr Bowling, really?’ and she said that Mr Winthrop had been taken to the morgue, at least, his poor corpse had, and after he, or it, had been cut open, then the police would know a bit more about it. It was thought he’d had a struggle, and his nose and mouth looked bruised, and Miss Brown was checking up all latchkeys, to see if any were lost, and perhaps been picked up by the assassin. She said Mr Winthrop’s brother was coming tomorrow, he’d just wired from Skegness, and that his wife was coming today if she could get permission from E.N.S.A. Finally she said that the young detective had confided that he didn’t think it was murder at all, and that they often disagreed with the doctors.

  ‘Well, what does he think it is, then?’

  ‘He thinks he had a fit and fell downstairs and banged his poor nose. The blood went to his head, naturally, in that position, and then his heart failed. Nothing was stolen, you see, so far as is known.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Bowling quietly.

  Suddenly he remembered that not a soul had remarked on his scratched hand.

  He pulled it out of his pocket, and Alice cried at once:

  ‘Oh, that Moggie, she scratched mine just the very same, and only last night, in the very same place—look!’

  He looked and thought:

  ‘Now I am going to vomit!’

  … When the post mortem and inquest brought in an open verdict, and when nothing whatever happened of any kind, his mood grew restless and bitter. He thought: ‘It’s quite absurd. Chaps do a murder, and then go about in the Hell of a sweat waiting to be arrested: I go about in the Hell of a sweat because I’m afraid I won’t be arrested!’ It had its comical aspect, and sometimes he would stop in the street, pink with sun and health, and burst out laughing. ‘I’m blowed!’ he’d cry brightly. ‘Well, I dunno, I’m sure! Americans think our police too wonderful, what? What am I to do, go into a police station and do in the sergeant there and then? Or what?’ He would stand in the park staring about, hands deep in his trousers pockets, and bursting out laughing. ‘Struth! What?’ He would stare at the kids, and the yachts, and the Palace, and wander round by the artificial garden. Then, in another mood, a very frequent one indeed, he’d wander about Notting Hill Gate and Ladbroke Grove, knocking back one or two in The Mitre, and then wandering up the hill and into St John’s Church, kneeling at the altar there and pleading with real tears in his eyes: ‘Lord—why don’t you want me?’ He had fits of getting tight for about a week, mid-day and at night, and then not having a drink at all for a fortnight or so. ‘Recuperating,’ he called it to Queenie when they met sometimes, ‘what? Ha, ha! Go without drink for a bit and it gives you a proper kick next time when you start again!’ She always said, these days: ‘Oh, now, Bill, I nearly forgot, I want you to meet an awfully nice girl I’ve got for you, I know you’ll like her!’ She made him laugh. He liked them all right, but there was no heart to it. For some reason or other, he thought, his life-handicap was to be deprived of love, and by love he meant real and mutual love, not pyjamas and a bed. But there, everyone had their handicap, some blokes had to be blind, deaf or lame, or cursed with a mother-in-law of the music hall school, and what could be worse than that? Life clearly wasn’t meant to be easy. One woman Queenie trotted out, he liked very much, she had sense, but there you were, she had nothing else at all, except a very large pair of feet, she kept making him think of football. She had these feet, upon which she shoved enormous brogues, they had great brown tongues like desperately thirsty spaniels. Yet she had the nicest ideas and a soothing voice, didn’t belch smoke in your face, or cover your lips with orange paint. She said what was the matter with him was that he wasn’t go-ahead enough.

  ‘Go-ahead enough,’ he pondered reasonably against himself.

  ‘Yes. You don’t mind my saying it?’

  ‘Oh, I’m always self-analysing,’ he said cheerily.

  ‘Well, for instance, your music. And your unhappy marriage. If …’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he interrupted, laughing, ‘if I’d got it in me, I’d have made a go of it! You don’t need influence, all you need is hard work and the ruddy will to win! Yes, I daresay you’re ri
ght, my dear!’ He sat looking rueful.

  ‘Well, there’s something in it, Bill? But I’m not being in the least defeatist, dear, I’m thinking of now, and I’m thinking of the future. You’re not old.’

  He smiled ruefully.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m a bit of a wash-out,’ he said, ‘all the same!’

  ‘Oh,’ she cried, so sincerely, ‘you are so wrong, Bill. There’s lots in you. If only my love for you could bring it out?’

  He smiled wanly.

  ‘You don’t love me,’ he said, knowing he spoke the truth, ‘you only think you do! You want a home, you want a man, you want a background! Everyone does!

  His move into the brand new flat was a mental effort. At the back of his mind he respected the police, and he did really expect to receive visitors any minute. The police were not fools, and although there were such things as flukes, accidents and mistakes, there wasn’t very much you could get away with nowadays. You could fool some of the people some of the time, or even all of the people, but you couldn’t fool all of the people all of the time. He didn’t really know whether to move in or not, he was fed up with where he was, and with Joan and Alice, and with Mr Gunter who now seemed under the impression a new friendship had been formed between them. Mr Gunter could not take a hint, and Mr Bowling thought, ‘If I don’t go now, Gunter will be occupying Winthrop’s place on the stairs next, and that will be a very dull finish!’ He wandered about with his hands in his pockets, listening to every door bell and wondering if it was for him.

  He went into Notting Hill Gate and vaguely ordered a piano for the new flat. It cost a packet, and he was in two minds about buying it, saying to the man, ‘I really don’t know, old lad, I haven’t really made up my mind to take it,’ and then the next minute, having asked for a record of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Well, I’d better have the piano as well, I suppose.’ He smiled and pulled out his wallet. ‘I don’t want to disappoint you, I expect you get some commission.’

  ‘It’s exceedingly thoughtful of you, sir!’

  ‘Not a bit of it, if we can’t think about each other these times, well …!’

  ‘Exactly, sir! But I appreciate it all the same!’