Death of a Commuter (19 page)

“I'm a motor-cyclist myself.”

“Then you'll get on with George. He's mad on the thing. Here, there and everywhere. For his business, of course. He's with an estate agent here. But I believe he's thinking of leaving. He tells me he has made a successful speculation on his own account. He's always been ambitious.”

“What is the charge for the room you have free?”

“We don't do lunches,” explained Mrs. Hamley. “You get a good English breakfast and a meal at night. I have to charge ten guineas, I'm afraid.”

Carolus agreed to this and paid a week in advance as his luggage, he said was being brought by a friend later in the day.
His room was an attic with a small electric fire with a coin-insertion meter. The bed was narrow and the carpet sparse. This was the kind of living which must make bachelordom impossible, he thought.

But at last he had run to earth the most mysterious figure in this curious affair, the man in the train, the face at the window, and found him to be—on paper at least—George Catford, nephew to the cosy Mrs. Hamley, employee in an estate agent's, keen motor-cyclist, an everyday member of the community.

Yet his first sight of George Catford that evening in the ill-lit hall was somehow both eerie and forbidding. Catford had just come in, having ridden up on his motor-cycle, and was garbed in black oilskins. He stood quite motionless as Carolus approached, watching intently, and for a sickening moment Carolus thought he must have identified him somehow. When Catford spoke it was in that curiously deep voice which had so impressed the men in the railway compartment, and also Flood.

“Is that your motor-cycle outside?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Same as mine. Criterion. You staying here?”

“For a time,” said Carolus, not too cordially.

“What brings you to Buttsfield?” asked George Catford, remaining immobile. There was something feline in his steady observant stare.

“Business,” retorted Carolus.

It was his policy from the first to make all the advances come from Catford.

“Cagey, aren't you? I'm only asking.”

“I know. It's all right. I've got a lot on my mind,” said Carolus.

George Catford at last moved towards the little cloakroom in which Carolus had removed his overalls.

That was their first unpromising encounter and it left Carolus with an unpleasant taste in his mouth. There was something which Mrs. Stick would have called ‘creepy' about George Catford. But he knew that the young man was curious about him.

There was a communal dining-room in which were a number of small tables rather close together, and when Carolus came down he found his place had been laid at Catford's.

“If you'd rather sit at the big table you can,” Catford said. “But you'll be asked all your business there.”

“All right Thanks,” said Carolus, taking his place.

“This is my aunt's hotel. She thinks everyone ought to mix. It's not my idea.”

“Nor mine,” said Carolus.

“Haven't I seen you before somewhere?”

“I shouldn't think so. I only arrived today. Got some insurance work to do in the district”

“Ah. I'm with Willows and Willows the estate agents. But I don't expect to be here much longer. I want to go abroad. Had enough of this place.”

“Where d'you mean to go?”

“Don't know yet Away from all this. I've always had a fancy for Algeria.”

“Disturbing at present, I should have thought.”

“I should like that. I'm not a home-loving type.”

Then the conversation became technical.

“What can you get out of that bike of yours?” asked Catford, and Carolus who had as usual mugged up his facts was able to reply. He saw Mrs. Hamley beaming across the room.

Catford said nothing which might not have been said by any young estate agent in a place like Rosehurst, yet Carolus knew that he was not mistaken in thinking that about him there was something very odd indeed, something sinister and quite ruthless. Trying to analyse his feelings about Catford, Carolus came to the conclusion that in a sense he was not real, was not in the least what he appeared to be and only spoke from the upper crust of his mind while underneath, his manner, out of sight and hearing of those who knew him, was another self, primitive, cruel and greedy for power. The man was a potential murderer. People were nothing to him; in his jungle dreams he dominated the world. But all this came with time. On that first evening Carolus only knew that he had not come to Rosehurst in vain.

Like so many schizophrenics, however, Catford could not keep his mouth shut. He was under an impulse stronger than himself to impress Carolus. Perhaps he had been starved of love as a child, perhaps he had been born with a tormenting subconscious knowledge of his own mediocrity which made him cry for someone's admiration, or perhaps he recognised in Carolus all he could never be. Whatever the cause, as the days passed he grew more and more arrogant and boastful and more revealing of his inner nature. Carolus listened fascinated to all he said and sometimes heard the voice of madness in it. Carolus allowed himself to be drawn into Catford's confidence as though unwillingly, but when he showed diffidence Catford grew more emphatic and far-fetched.

On the third night they had a drink together at the local.

“Though I don't drink much. Until lately I've concentrated everything on saving enough money to get out of England. I've been treated very unfairly in this country. Some day I may tell you all about it. I had to have the motor-bike, though. To get out of this town. I like to sit on a hill somewhere with a lot of the countryside spread out beneath me and think my own thoughts.”

So did Hitler, reflected Carolus. But he encouraged him to go on.

“I've always had big ideas. Ever since I was a kid. I've always meant to be someone. I didn't mean to go on all my life working for others. I was determined to get to the top—quick.”

“Big ideas, as you call them, may take a man to the top. Or they may land him in prison.”

Catford fixed those cold eyes on him and said, “Someone been talking about me?”

“No. Why?”

“Because I have been in prison. Only six months on a faked-up charge about some cheques. So you may be right. One way or the other. But now it's going to be the other. I'm going right Up.”

There was a long pause.

“D'you know the Great Ring, near here?” Catford asked suddenly.

Carolus stared at his glass, amazed at the question and wondering what was to come.

“Heard of it,” he said.

“That's a place I like,” he said. “I spend hours up there. I kind of feel at home. In the summer you can see four counties. You can't understand what I feel when I'm up there. Even at night I know it's all around me …”

The lunatic, the lover and the poet, thought Carolus. But George Catford was not mad in any ordinary sense of the word. There was no warmth in him. He confided in Carolus because it pleased him but he had not a thought for Carolus. Beyond his first cautious curiosity he had no interest in him at all.

“I've always believed my chance would come,” he went on relentlessly. “I don't mean just come without my doing anything to find it. I don't believe in that You've got to be ready for your chance.”

“Chance of what?”

“Chance of getting on top. Chance of escaping a bloody life like I've had. Look at all the poor fools filling in the football pools and thinking it will come that way. Sitting there waiting for the results and saying ‘someone's going to have it so it might be me!' I'm sorry for them. The chances are so big against them that it's the same as if they didn't buy a ticket But if you watch, if you're ready to grab it, it will come all right. You can be sure of that. It has done for me.”

“Have another drink?” said Carolus hopefully.

“No, thanks. I don't drink really. Don't need to. I can take things as they are. Don't need drink. A man like me …”

Carolus had been waiting for those words. ‘A man like me' —what he meant was that there was no man like him. That he was unique.

“A man like me knows where he's going,” went on George Catford. “Always have known. When I was at school I used to look at the other kids, and think you poor little sods, you're going to spend your whole lives working to feed yourselves,
your wives and your children. All right, you can throw in television and a drink now'n again. But what else
are
they doing? Think I was going to be satisfied with that?”

Carolus lit a cheroot and watched him.

“How far have you got?” he asked gently, as though afraid to interrupt the man's thoughts.

Catford replied with a horrifying kind of inner exaltation. “How far have I got? I'm
there.”

“Rich?” ventured Carolus.

“Rich enough to get rich.”

“I see. Yes, they say the first thousand's the hardest.”

“They used to say that. Now it's the first five thousand. You've travelled a lot. Where would you go, if you were me? Money sticks to money. Only I want the right place. Africa? South America?”

“I don't know. I've no experience of … investment.”

“I don't want to invest. I want to speculate. Watch it grow like that beanstalk in the story. It'll do that for me. I've always known it would once I could start it off. You see, my aunt brought me up. Both parents died before I knew them. One bomb got them both. My aunt's never understood the first thing about me. How could she? How could anyone? A man like me is never understood. But he's felt. There'll be a lot of people know about me.”

Carolus tried to send him in a new direction.

“Do you ever think of getting married?” he asked.

For the first time Carolus saw George Catford's smile and it was not pleasant.

“Me? Married? Can you imagine it? I could never be tied down like that. If there was polygamy that might be different. I'd never stand married life as you understand it When I'm right where I mean to be it will be time to think about women. I could have had plenty, mind you. There's one over at Brenstead now …”

“Brenstead! Do you know Brenstead?” asked Carolus innocently.

“Yes. Why?”

“It's only that I've got to go on there when I finish here. What's it like?”

“Much the same. I don't know it well. I know a man there called Scotter. A chemist He was at school with me. But that's about all.”

“Scotter,” repeated Carolus. “Seem to know that name.”

“I daresay. It's not uncommon.” Catford obviously wanted to get back to his egomaniac monologue.

“When do you expect to leave Buttsfield?” Carolus asked.

“Very soon now. There's just one more formality to go through. It might be tomorrow or the next day. It won't be much longer.
I'll
see to that. Then you won't see me for dust. Pity you can't tell me where to go, though.”

To hell, thought Carolus, to roast along with all the other Nazi-minded swine. For this was the fascist mentality par excellence. What a gauleiter George Catford would have made. What a chief for a death camp. Yet, like all megalomaniacs he had something pitiful about him.

They went back to Rosehurst and before going up to bed Catford opened the door of his aunt's little sitting-room.

“Been a phone call for me this evening?”

“No, George.”

So that was how it was to come, thought Carolus. His big chance. A phone call. But Carolus locked the door of his room that night.

In the morning he went to make certain preparations for eventualities which he now saw as inevitable. A couple of hundred yards away was a vast municipal car park, for the planners of Buttsfield had shown remarkable foresight when they laid out the town in realising that private motor cars would increase to unheard of numbers in the next few years. Remembering Mr. Flood, he expected to find an attendant with a keen eye to the main chance and was pleasantly impressed with Joe Coke, a merry old character in a peaked cap.

“Is there anything against a car being here all night?” he asked.

Mr. Coke at once put himself on the side of the revolting
angels by talking of ‘They' the almighty, the unidentifiable to whom most of us refer with distaste several times a day.

“They don't like it,” he said, “and sometimes The Law come round taking numbers. But I've no objection.”

Carolus passed a handsome tip.

“It's like this,” he said. “I've got a Bentley at Thompsett's Garage and I want to bring it here. I'm staying at Rosehurst and this would be handy.”

“You're going to lock it up, I hope?”

“Yes. For what that's worth. The point is that I may want it in a hurry.”

“There's no reason why you shouldn't have it in a hurry. We'll pop it in somewhere where no one can get in your way getting out. How would that be?”

“Admirable. It may stay there one night or perhaps more. I can't be certain about that.”

“That'll be all right, sir. You bring it along. I'll keep an eye on it in the mornings. I'm off in the afternoons but I come on again at seven till after the Pictures come out You don't need to worry about it in those times, but I can't answer for the night. You'll have to take the chance of anyone driving off in it then.”

“I understand that. Where would you propose to put it?”

“What about over in that corner? Backed in, so you could get out at once if you wanted to. That car you see has been left here for a month and they're deciding what to do with it, so you won't have to worry about that. I'll see nothing gets stood in front of it”

“Very well. I'll bring it round now.”

So far as he could tell, Carolus was unobserved as he brought the car and backed it into the place indicated.

“There we are,” said Mr. Coke, beaming with satisfaction. “Just right, isn't it? Handy for you to slip out any minute you want.”