Five Roundabouts to Heaven (18 page)

But he had done right to take them. Better take them and seem thankful, rather than have word go around that “Mr Bartels was looking queer that afternoon. He wouldn’t say anything. Kind of snappish, he was. But ever so queer he looked. I remember now.”

Better anything than that.

At 4.30 his telephone rang. It was Beatrice.

“Why, hello, Barty!” Beatrice said in surprise. “Anything the matter? Mrs Stevenson left a note on the door telling me to ring you.”

“No, nothing. Why should there be?”

“I just wondered. You don’t often ring up during the day, that’s all.”

“I only wanted to ask you how your indigestion was. That’s all. Anything wrong in that?” The relief he felt was showing itself in mild irascibility. “I rang you up earlier, but the phone is out of order. Where are you speaking from?”

Beatrice laughed. She sounded pleased and flattered because he had telephoned. “A callbox, Mrs Stevenson’s gone out herself now.”

“Mrs Stevenson rang the bell, but said you were out.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I heard the bell ring.”

“Why didn’t you answer it? I thought you were out,” he said again. He was angry now, and repetitive in his anger.

“I was washing my hair. I had my head in a basin of water, and by the time I had got to the door, she had gone. I was wondering who it was.”

“Is my cheque book at home?”

“Yes, it’s in the bureau.”

“Good. How is your tummy, anyway?”

“The tummy? Oh, it’s all right, thank you, darling. I’ll take my usual dose tonight, but I don’t think I’ll take any more. Don’t bother to buy any more, Barty.”

“All right, then. I must be off now.”

“To Colchester? I should have thought you would have been on your way by now. You’ll be late.”

“Not if I step on it. Bye-bye, Beatrice.”

“Bye-bye, darling.”

He sat back in his chair. Bye-bye, Beatrice. Bye-bye, darling, she had said. He would never speak to her again. It was a sad little ending.

When he was clearing up before leaving the office, he remembered something which turned him sick with fear.

It was something he had overlooked, not one of the unforeseeables; and the fear he experienced was caused by the thought of what might have happened if he had not remembered it, and by the feeling that there might be something else which he had overlooked.

It was one of the most obvious of all traps, and he had nearly fallen into it: he, who thought he had planned this business so cleverly. He writhed at his own incompetence.

Fingerprints! The thing which the veriest amateur remembers! On the new bottle, the bottle with which he would replace the poison bottle, there would be his own prints. But there would not be a single print from the fingers of the woman who was supposed to have been taking the medicine: plenty of Philip Bartels’ fingerprints, and none of Beatrice’s.

He stared unseeingly through the office window.

He could rectify that, but the thought of what he would have to do increased his sick feeling: the thought of taking the dead hands of Beatrice and pressing her fingers to the bottle, the fingers of the right hand on to the top of the bottle, and the fingers of the left hand around the bottle.

“I can’t do it,” he whispered. “I just can’t do it.”

A voice whispered back inside his head: “Beaten by a little thing like that? No wonder you’re a failure.”

Bartels sighed, and knew he would have to do it after all.

B
artels had no intention of going to Colchester, and no dinner appointment even if he had gone there. But he knew he had to be out of the flat when Beatrice died: he knew some of the limitations of his own character, and faced them.

He knew that, if he stayed, there was that within him which would make him cry out at the last moment: “No! Don’t drink it!” And under some pretext or other snatch the glass from her hand.

He could watch Brutus die. His philosophy, such as it was, had enabled him so far to contemplate the death of Beatrice without undue emotion except in so far as his personal safety was concerned. But there he stopped. The theories and logic broke down. He could justify the act, but he could not watch the results.

Therefore he had to be away from the flat until 11.30 or midnight. He did not wish to be with people to whom he was largely indifferent, but with Lorna, who loved him and who would unknowingly give him the strength to tide over the hour between 10.30 and 11.30.

So he took the road out of London, the Kingston Bypass, and navigated the five traffic roundabouts which led to Thatchley, and recalled how he used to think of them, once, as the Five Roundabouts to Heaven.

He assured himself that he still did, of course, and that the depression which was weighing him down was due to nothing more than the nervous tension which the day, not unnaturally, had produced in him.

He left the office promptly at 5.30. The bitter cold of the previous few days had continued. Occasional flurries of snow were still falling, and the headlights of the continual stream of cars approaching London dazzled him, so that he was compelled to drive slowly and with care.

The whine of the windscreen wiper, an old-fashioned type, added to his depression. The thing squeaked protestingly on the windscreen, and twice the blade faltered and stopped while the mechanism continued to moan ineffectually.

Once, he spoke out loud, above the noise of the engine and of the windscreen wiper and of the wind: “It’s not when you die that matters—it’s how. What are a few years more or less in the infinite, limitless realm of Time?”

And once he said: “It’s better this way. It’s better for her to avoid the suffering and the loneliness. It’s a form of mercy murder, that’s all. Mercy killing is almost condoned by society for physical suffering, why not for mental? Why not for the suffering of the mind and spirit?” It was his old argument, brought out to comfort him on his way.

But were they Five Roundabouts to Heaven? Or did they lead to Hell? They did, if the Scriptures were right. But the Scriptures, the Ten Commandments, the thou-shalt-not-kills and thou-shalt-not-

covets, were a mere set of simple rules to maintain order among a wandering desert tribe. Moses was an old fraud who had gone up into a mountain and come down again claiming Divine inspiration for some rule-of-thumb laws which he had thought up in his goatskin tent.

Did God exist? If He did, what was He thinking now of him, of Philip Bartels, scurrying through the snow and the traffic because he, Philip Bartels, needed the company of a woman to prevent him thinking too much about a deed so logical, a deed so humane?

If the deed were so humane, did he need distractions for his thoughts? A deed, a deed, distractions from a deed. And this foul deed shall smell above the earth, that’s what he had recited at school. Smell above the earth. With carrion men groaning for burial. Cassius, he had been. Not Royal Caesar. But yesterday the word of Caesar might have stood against the world.

But yesterday the word of Philip Bartels might have stood against nothing. Nor tomorrow. Nor the day after. Did he expect Lorna to make a man out of him? Could he expect that? And one laughed in his sleep, and one cried “Murder”; but that was in
Macbeth,
a play about another murderer.

Another? Wherefore
another?
One cried “God bless us,” and “Amen” the other. Duncan’s guards. I could not say “Amen” when they did say “God bless us.” Wherefore could I not pronounce “Amen”? I had most need of blessing. Wherefore said I
another
murderer? Macbeth and Caesar. The killer, the victim.

He had been Cassius, the killer, but that was at school. Cassius at school; and would Beatrice’s spirit, ranging for revenge, come hot from—heaven, if there were a heaven? And with Ate by her side cry, “Havoc, and let loose the dogs of war”? The windscreen wiper stuck again, but the blade turned upon its axis, saying: “Havoc-havoc-havoc.”

Bartels drew the car in to the side of the road until the shivering in his limbs had died away. Perhaps he was, in fact, getting a cold. Perhaps, all unknowingly, he had told Miss Latimer the truth. If he had caught a chill, if he were confined to his bed, how would that affect things?

Not at all, except that he would have to nurse himself. Alone. In some cheap hotel bedroom. He was in Cobham now, and caught sight of a hotel, and eased the car along to it, and went in and had a large whisky and soda.

He felt so much better that he ordered another. He had time for it, if he drank it quickly, as he had done the first one.

He raised the glass and was about to do so, when he paused.

He must not drink it quickly. He must drink it slowly, unconcernedly. He had already acted unwisely in ordering a second large one, in drinking the first so hurriedly.

He must linger over this one, as though he had all the time in the world, and not a care in the world, because if things, somehow, went wrong, and if his photograph were to be published in the papers, and if the barman saw it—what then? He imagined how it would go in court.

“And you were on duty at the bar of your hotel on 26 February, is that right?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“How do you manage to recall the date so accurately?”

“Because it was so bitter cold that night, sir.”

“And I believe that while you were on duty, somebody came in and ordered a whisky and soda, a large one. Do you see that person anywhere in court?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, point him out to the jury, please.”

“It was him. In the dock.”

“How do you manage to remember him so well?”

“I remember thinking that he had a very wide mouth for his size, sir. And wore specs with gold side-pieces. Rather old-fashioned specs, I thought. Spectacles, I should say.”

“Remember anything else about him?”

“He looked pale, sir.”

“He looked pale, did he? Anything else?”

“Well, kind of hot and bothered.”

“What exactly do you mean by ‘kind of hot and bothered’? Try to be a little more precise for the jury, will you?”

“Well, kind of upset. As though he was afraid.”

“Agitated and distressed, would you say?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What made you think that, apart from him looking pale?”

“Well sir, he ordered a double whisky, and drank it very fast, kind of gulped it down. And then he ordered another, and gulped that down, too, and went straight out. I could understand him gulping the first one, sir, owing to the weather and so on. But I remember thinking it a bit odd about the second. ’That’s queer,’ I said, ‘two doubles like that, quick as a flash.’ That’s why I remember him, really. Whisky costing what it does, most gentlemen like to linger over it a bit.”

“So you would definitely say that he looked agitated and distressed?”

“Yes, sir, I would.”

“Thank you.”

Then Counsel for the defence, of course. Twisting and turning and wriggling. Trying to make out it was quite normal for a man to look pale on a cold night and gulp down two large, expensive, double whiskies, in about three minutes, and go out into the cold again. All that sort of nonsense.

Quibbling and quibbling about identification. Haven’t you seen lots of men with large mouths? Is it so rare that you see a man with spectacles like that? You admit you have seen his picture in the papers? So you didn’t have much trouble about picking him out in court, did you? You admit that?

You admit this, you admit that, you admit the other.

Yes, sir. No, sir. Three bags full, sir.

And on and on and on.

So he must drink it slowly. Very slowly, when all the time he wanted to be with Lorna. To find strength in her steady blue-grey eyes, tranquillity in gazing at her brow and at her calm, rather squarely cut jaw.

But he must be careful. First, Miss Latimer: he had snapped at Miss Latimer. Now, he had nearly attracted attention by drinking too much too quickly. Miss Latimer in court, plump and bewildered, the perkiness knocked out of her, awed by her surroundings:

“Well, sir, he seemed a little upset about something.”

“And why do you think that, Miss Latimer?”

“He kind of snapped at me.”

“And that was unusual?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How unusual?”

“Well, very unusual. He was such a good-tempered man. I’ve never known him get cross before. Not like that. Snappish, so to speak.”

“Was there anything which made you think he was—not quite himself, shall we say?”

“Well, he looked a bit pale one moment, and hot and red the next. And he put his head in his hands.”

“And how did he explain that away?”

“He said he thought he might have a cold coming. So I gave him some red and green pills.”

“And did the cold develop?”

“No, sir.”

“But that might have been due to the remarkable efficacy of your—ah—little red and green pills?”

Laughter in court, of course. Ha-ha-ha, very funny. Swiftly silenced by the officials.

Bartels moved over to a chair by the wall. He took out the tube of pills, extracted a few, threw them in the fire. You couldn’t be too careful. Miss Latimer, and the barman, one mistake and one near-mistake, in a couple of hours. And the fingerprints. So much to think of, so many of the foreseeables and the unforeseeables.

He took ten minutes to drink his second whisky, and then, while the barman was serving somebody, he went quietly out.

He arrived at Lorna’s house in the lane near Thatchley at about seven o’clock. The light was switched on in the porch, offering warmth and shelter from the snow, and from the darkness of the night, and from the black shafts of his thoughts.

Lorna heard the car arrive, and before he could reach the door she had opened it and stood in the porch light to welcome him.

“You must be frozen, Barty.” She smiled affectionately at him, and he took her eagerly in his arms, in the doorway, and kissed her.

“I’m not exactly perspiring in every pore.”

“Come in, I’ve got a fine blaze of a fire in the sitting room.”

He took off his coat and hat, and put them on a chair in the hall, and followed her into the sitting room.

“A drink to warm you up, Barty?” She moved over to the table by the side of the wall.

“Gin and mixed?”

“I’d rather have a whisky and soda, if you can spare it.”

“Of course I can spare it. It’s yours, anyway. You bought it.”

Bartels, standing in front of the fire fondling the corgi’s ear, said: “Don’t keep telling me that such few little things as I give you are mine really. They aren’t. They’re yours, or at the most ours, darling.”

She mixed a gin and Italian for herself and a whisky and soda for Bartels, and brought them over to the fireplace. She gave him his glass and raised her own, and said:

“Well, cheers. God bless us, my dear.”

One cried “God bless us” and “Amen” the other. I could not say “Amen” when they did cry “God bless us.” Wherefore could I not pronounce “Amen”? I had most need of blessing. Wherefore must I always think of the guards in
Macbeth
thought Bartels. Murdered in their sleep, like Duncan. Beatrice would be murdered just before she would have gone to sleep. He glanced at his watch. 7.15.8.15. 9.15. 10.15. 11.15. Four hours. Hours and days and years, and what are a few years more or less?

Ten million light-years for the light of a star to cross the empty spaces of the night. Ten million more for the light of some star beyond the star to reach that star. The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves not in our stars. The dog, Brutus, he was dead, too. Beatrice would be all right, but would he, Philip Bartels?

Beatrice, barefooted, twanging a harp? Not likely!

Beatrice the competent, her red hair aflame in the light of a thousand suns, armed with Delegated Authority, sorting out the Milky Way! That was more like it. Could it be that the slayer was more affected than the slain, the murderer than his victim?

“Are you feeling all right, Barty?”

He wanted to snap back that he was certainly feeling all right, why shouldn’t he be feeling all right, what made her think he wasn’t feeling all right? But he had learnt his lesson.

“I feel all right thank you,” he replied gently. “Why?”

“You look a bit pale, that’s all.”

“I think I may have caught a little chill. It’s nothing.”

He put his arm around her shoulders, and tilted her face up and kissed her.