To work!
Genius is ninety per cent perspiration… which smells. The world is grim and hard, and stinks. What can a sensitive man do?
He wrote.
32
His landlady, who spoke of him as the nicest gentleman she had ever let rooms to, had put flowers on his dressing-table. The Murderer selected a small yellow chrysanthemum and stuck it in his buttonhole.
Then he went out. He walked slowly. It was not that he did not know where Frame Place was: he wanted to give himself the thrill that came of talking to a policeman.
‘Oh, officer…’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I wonder if you could tell me the best way to get to Frame Place?’
‘Well now, Frame Place, let’s see. Go straight along as you’re going, and when you get to the end of the street turn right, take the first on your left, go straight on and bear right left, and there you are. It’s a kind of crescent, sort of.’
The Murderer went on his way. He was laughing to himself. If that poor fool of a policeman had lifted out a hand and grabbed him by the collar, he would have made himself a sergeant. And there he was, pounding a beat, while he — the Murderer –was at large.
On the next street corner he asked. another policeman for a light.
‘You’re welcome, sir, if I’ve got one.’
The Murderer walked steadily up the long shadowy street. He was thinking, incongruously, of his father, who had died in the War, of his mother, who had come of a good family, of his uncle-by-marriage, who was an ironmonger, of his mother’s sister, who was remotely related to a baronet, and of his brother, who was a corn chandler….
He reached Asta Thundersley’s house in Frame Place by the river.
Another man in a grey suit had just rung the bell. The Murderer said: ‘I’m rather afraid we must be a little early.’
The other man, who seemed also to be of a quiet, reticent disposition, said: ‘Oh yes. I shouldn’t be surprised if you weren’t right. Early, yes; I’m rather afraid we must be.’
They looked at each other. After what he thought was a decent interval the Murderer approached the bell-push with an extended forefinger; whereupon the other man retreated several paces — obviously he did not want the people of the house to think that he had had the temerity to ring twice. The Murderer saw this and paused. They avoided each other’s eyes. But just then a man and a woman came up. The man looked crushed and angry — as if everything had been squeezed out of him except one deep, dark hate. And it was easy to see that the woman was the object and the inspiration of this hate. She was a big. blonde, with little pale eyes set too close to a nose shaped like a potato. Her face appeared flat and powdery as a flounder dusted with flour before it is thrown into a frying-pan; and her mouth protruded like the scalloped edge of a pie. Without hesitation she thrust a hand forward and held her thumb on the button of the bell for a good five seconds. Then The Tiger Fitzpatrick threw the door open and, muttering something that sounded like an apology, uncouthly bowed them in.
But as the door was closing someone pushed it. Another guest had arrived, the whites of whose eyes were yellow and bloodshot, and he carried a curiously carved stick of some brown and yellow tropical wood.
The guests exchanged glances but did not speak to one another. The Tiger Fitzpatrick conducted them to the sittingroom.
This room was divided by tall green folding doors which had been thrown back. At the far end Asta Thundersley’s caterers had laid out an immense table on trestles, covered with a pure white cloth, and upon this table stood three massive fivebranched candlesticks. Between the candlesticks there were two immense punch bowls, each of which contained at least two gallons of a turbid orange-coloured mixture, the pungent smell of which filled the place. To the excited eyes of the Murderer it seemed that there were five hundred glasses in the foreground, five hundred bottles of champagne in the background, and five hundred dishes of rare and complicated canapes on the left and the right. Asta Thundersley came forward, roaring words of welcome and gripping hands.
She was dressed in brocade. Her strong, meaty shoulders were bare. Her square nails were painted light red; she seemed to be a little ashamed of them. From time to time she put her hands behind her and picked off a flake of varnish. Her sister, Tot, on the other hand, looked cool, sweet, calm, and comfortable.
She had placed herself advantageously near the fireplace, with the light behind her, and was dressed in lavender-grey. About her throat she had tied a velvet band, to the front of which was pinned an amethyst — no other jewellery; only an antique watch in a double case with a fern-leaf pattern in amethysts and tiny diamonds. Thea Olivia’s hands were small and exquisite, and she knew exactly what to do with them. Whenever Asta saw her, she shook her head in an involuntary gesture of admiration. That sister of hers was perfect — whatever she did was right — her hands, her feet, her knees, her chin, every hair and everything was in its proper place. Asta was convinced that beside her sister she looked as she felt — a clumsy idiot. Her admiration was not unmixed with resentment. She had spent three hours and three guineas on her appearance that day.
She puffed away uneasy speculation in one great snort and, as the bell rang again, said to The Tiger Fitzpatrick in a whisper which might have been heard three doors away: ‘Keep on your toes, you punch-drunk idiot, or, as God is my judge, I’ll knock your head off.’
Shocket the Bloodsucker arrived with Titch Whitbread, a boy of twenty with a complexion of blood and cream, and thick blond hair. Titch Whitbread would have been conventionally handsome if the bridge of his nose had not been beaten in and his left ear knocked out of shape. But he had a full set of strong, white teeth which he displayed in a tireless grin of spontaneous delight. Everyone took to him immediately. He was engagingly boyish; there was something about him that made women want to look into his round blue eyes and talk baby-talk. Titch Whitbread was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the house and by the accents of the people making conversation. Here was Class.
He grinned over a glass of ginger ale, answered if he was spoken to, and looked so happy that hardened victims of boredom, seeing his radiant face, felt a tenderness for him — a small, sad glow of nostalgia for youth and innocence.
But Shocket the Bloodsucker talked for the two of them. When Shocket opened his mouth, which he did continuously, you were reminded of a piece of steak in which a butcher has made a preliminary cut. Out of this red, glutinous gash came a monotonous, husky voice with the penetrative quality of a cowbell in a mist.
‘… and this is Titch Whitbread. He’s a killer. He’s a murderer. Do you see that left hand? There’s a dose of chloroform in it. And do you see that right hand? I’ll tell you something. One poke with that right hand, and your face is nothing but the place where your teeth used to be. No, no! Don’t give Titch anything to drink. He won’t drink it. He’s a good, clean boy. I don’t mind if I do! I’m a father to ‘em — isn’t that right, Titch? I never let ‘em out of my sight. You ask Scotty Landauer. Who got Scotty into the running for the middle-weight championship? Me — old Shocket. And, by God, Scotty would have taken the championship off of Joey Hands; only Scotty wasn’t a clean boy. Broke training — late nights, beer, women (if you’ll excuse the expression) — that was the ruination of Scotty. Nothing like that about Titch, I swear it on my mother’s grave! No, may I be struck down dead this minute — no, may I never see my daughters alive again! I should be paralysed and may my children be paralysed, and my wife should choke on the next piece of bread she eats, Titch Whitbread is the next champion! I should be knocked down by a taxi and it should squash my guts out the next time I cross the road — may I go blind and beg in the streets — Titch is the next champion! He can hit like Sam Langford, he can take punishment like George Cook, he’s a lion — he’s a tiger — he’s a clean-living boy — he’s got more science than Einstein! And if I tell you that left hand is a dose of chloroform, that left hand is a dose of chloroform! All I want is for somebody, so they should guarantee Titch thirty thousand pounds in the next ten years, and — may I die a lingering death of cancer if what I say isn’t as true as fifty Bibles — they’d make sixty thousand pounds! On my dying oath!’