by Muriel Spark
Lise now shrieks for help in four languages, English, French, Italian and Danish. She throws her hand-bag into the hedge; then, ‘He’s taken my purse!’ she cries in four languages. ‘He’s gone off with my hand-bag!’ One of the onlookers tries to creak open the stiff iron gate, but meantime another has started to climb it, and gets over.
‘What’s going on?’ he says to Lise in his own language. ‘We’re Swedes. What’s wrong?’
Bill who has been kneeling to hold her down gets up and says, ‘Go away. Clear off. What do you think’s going on?’
But Lise has jumped to her feet and shouts in English that she never saw him before in her life, and that he is trying to rob her, and rape her. ‘I just got out of my car to look at the Pavilion, and he jumped on me and dragged me here,’ she screams, over and over again in four languages. ‘Get the police!’
The other men have come into the yard. Two of them take hold of Bill who grins, trying hard to convince them that this turmoil is Lise’s joke. One of them says he is going to find a policeman. Lise says, ‘Where’s my bag? He’s got rid of it somewhere. What has he done with it?’ Then, in a burst of spontaneous composure she says, quietly, ‘I’m going to find a policeman, too,’ and walks off to the car. Most of the other parked cars have gone, as have also the young loiterers. One of the Swedes runs after her, advising her to wait till his friend brings a policeman.
‘No, I’m going to the police-station right away,’ she says in a calm voice as she gets in and shuts the door. She has already made off, already thrown the bag of wild rice out of the window, when the police arrive on the scene. They hear the Swedes’ account, they listen to Bill’s protests, they search for Lise’s bag, and find it. Then they ask Bill what the girl’s name was since she was, as he claims, a friend of his. ‘Lise,’ he says. ‘I don’t know her other name. We met on the plane.’
They take Bill into custody anyway, mercifully for him as it turns out, since in the hours logically possible for the murder of Lise on that spot Bill is safely in a police cell, equally beyond suspicion and the exercise of his diet.
SEVEN
It is long past midnight when she arrives at the Hotel Tomson which stands like the only living thing in the shuttered street. Lise parks the little black car in a spot near the entrance, takes her book and her zipper-bag and enters the hall.
At the desk the night-porter is on duty, the top three buttons of his uniform unfastened to reveal his throat and the top of his under-vest, a sign that the deep night has fallen and the tourists have gone to bed. The porter is talking on the desk telephone which links with the bedrooms. Meanwhile the only other person in the hall, a youngish man in a dark suit, stands before the desk with a brief-case and a tartan hold-all by his side.
‘Please don’t wake her. It isn’t at all necessary at this late hour. Just show me my room —’She’s on her way down. She says to tell you to wait, she’s on her way.
‘I could have seen her in the morning. It wasn’t necessary. It’s so late.’ The man’s tone is authoritative and vexed.
‘She’s wide awake, sir,’ says the porter. ‘She was very definite that we were to let her know as soon as you arrived.’
‘Excuse me,’ Lise says to the porter, brushing against the dark-suited man as she comes up to the desk beside him. ‘Would you like a book to read?’ She holds out her paperback. ‘I don’t need it any more.
‘Oh, thanks, Miss,’ says the porter, good-naturedly taking the book and holding it at arm’s length before his eyes the better to see what the book is all about. Meanwhile the new arrival, having been jostled by Lise, turns to look at her. He starts, and bends to pick up his bags.
Lise touches him on the arm. ‘You’re coming with me,’ she says.
‘No,’ he says, trembling. His round face is pink and white, his eyes are wide open with fear. He looks neat in his business suit and white shirt, as he did this morning when Lise first followed and then sat next to him on the plane.
‘Leave everything,’ says Lise. ‘Come on, it’s getting late. ‘She starts propelling him to the door.
‘Sir!’ calls the porter. ‘Your aunt’s on her way —’
Lise, still holding her man, turns at the door and calls back, ‘You can keep his luggage. You can have the book as well; it’s a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn’t leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up.’ She leads her man towards the door.
There, he puts up some resistance: ‘No, I don’t want to come. I want to stay. I came here this morning, and when I saw you here I got away. I want to get away.’ He pulls back from her.
‘I’ve got a car outside,’ says Lise, and pushes open the narrow swing-door. He goes with her as if he is under arrest. She takes him to the car, lets go of his arm, gets into the driver’s seat and waits while he walks round the front of the car and gets in beside her. Then she drives off with him at her side.
He says, ‘I don’t know who you are. I never saw you before in my life.’
‘That’s not the point,’ she says. ‘I’ve been looking for you all day. You’ve wasted my time. What a day! And I was right first time. As soon as I saw you this morning I knew that you were the one. You’re my type.’
He is trembling. She says, ‘You were in a clinic. You’re Richard. I know your name because your aunt told me.’
He says, ‘I’ve had six years’ treatment. I want to start afresh. My family’s waiting to see me.
‘Were the walls of the clinic pale green in all the rooms? Was there a great big tough man in the dormitory at night, patrolling up and down every so often, just in case?’
‘Yes,’ he says.
‘Stop trembling,’ she says. ‘It’s the madhouse tremble. It will soon be over. Before you went to the clinic how long did they keep you in prison?’
‘Two years,’ he said.
‘Did you strangle or stab?’
‘I stabbed her, but she didn’t die. I never killed a woman.’
‘No, but you’d like to. I knew it this morning.’
‘You never saw me before in your life.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Lise says. ‘That’s by the way. You’re a sex maniac.’
‘No, no,’ he says. ‘That’s all over and past. Not any more.
‘Well you won’t have sex with me,’ Lise says. She is driving through the park and turns right towards the Pavilion. Nobody is in sight. The wandering groups are null and void, the cars have gone away.
‘Sex is normal,’ he says. ‘I’m cured. Sex is all right.’
‘It’s all right at the time and it’s all right before,’ says Lise, ‘but the problem is afterwards. That is, if you aren’t just an animal. Most of the time, afterwards is pretty sad.’
‘You’re afraid of sex,’ he says, almost joyfully, as if sensing an opportunity to gain control.
‘Only of afterwards,’ she says. ‘But that doesn’t matter any more.’
She pulls up at the Pavilion and looks at him. ‘Why are you shaking?’ she says. ‘It will soon be over.’ She reaches for her zipper-bag and opens it. ‘Now,’ she says, ‘let’s be lucid about this. Here’s a present from your aunt, a pair of slippers. You can pick them up later.’ She throws them on the back seat and pulls out a paper bag. She peers into it. ‘This is Olga’s scarf,’ she says, putting it back in the bag.
‘A lot of women get killed in the park,’ he says, leaning back; he is calmer now.
‘Yes, of course. It’s because they want to be.‘ She is searching in the bag.
‘Don’t go too far,’ he says quietly.
‘I’ll leave that to you,’ she says and brings out another paper bag. She peers in and takes out the orange scarf. ‘This is mine,’ she says. A lovely colour by daylight.’ She drapes the scarf round her neck.
‘I’m getting out,’ he says, opening the door on his side. ‘Come on.
‘Wait a minute,’ she says. ‘Just wait
a minute.’
‘A lot of women get killed,’ he says.
‘Yes, I know, they look for it.’ She brings out the oblong package, tears off the wrapping and opens the box that contains the curved paper-knife in its sheath. ‘Another present for you,’ she says. ‘Your aunt bought it for you.’ She takes the knife from the box which she throws out of the window.
He says, ‘No, they don’t want to be killed. They struggle. I know that. But I’ve never killed a woman. Never.’
Lise opens the door and gets out with the paperknife in her hand. ‘Come on, it’s getting late,’ she says. ‘I know the spot.’
The morning will dawn, and by the evening the police will place in front of him the map marked with an X at the point where the famous Pavilion is located, the little picture.
‘You made this mark.’
‘No I didn’t. She must have made it herself. She knew the way. She took me straight there.’
They will reveal, bit by bit, that they know his record. They will bark, and exchange places at the desk. They will come and go in the little office, already beset by inquietude and fear, even before her identity is traced back to where she came from. They will try soft speaking, they will reason with him in their secret dismay that the evidence already coming in seems to confirm his story.
‘The last time you lost control of yourself didn’t you take the woman for a drive in the country?’
‘But this one took me. She made me go. She was driving. I didn’t want to go. It was only by chance that I met her.’
‘You never saw her before?’
‘The first time was at the airport. She sat beside me on the plane. I moved my seat. I was afraid.’
‘Afraid of what? What frightened you?’
Round and round again will go the interrogators, moving slowly forward, always bearing the same questions like the whorling shell of a snail.
Lise walks up to the great windows of the Pavilion and presses close to look inside, while he follows her. Then she walks round the back and over to the hedge.
She says, ‘I’m going to lie down here. Then you tie my hands with my scarf; I’ll put one wrist over the other, it’s the proper way. Then you’ll tie my ankles together with your necktie. Then you strike.’ She points first to her throat. ‘First here,’ she says. Then, pointing to a place beneath each breast, she says, ‘Then here and here. Then anywhere you like.’
‘I don’t want to do it,’ he says, staring at her. ‘I didn’t mean this to happen. I planned everything to be different. Let me go.’
She takes the paper-knife from its sheath, feels the edge and the point, and says that it isn’t very sharp but it will do. ‘Don’t forget,’ she says, ‘that it’s curved.’ She looks at the engraved sheath in her hand and lets it fall carelessly from her fingers. ‘After you’ve stabbed,’ she says, ‘be sure to twist it upwards or it may not penetrate far enough.’ She demonstrates the movement with her wrist. ‘You’ll get caught, but at least you’ll have the illusion of a chance to get away in the car. So afterwards, don’t waste too much time staring at what you have done, at what you have done.’ Then she lies down on the gravel and he grabs at the knife.
‘Tie my hands first,’ she says, crossing her wrists. ‘Tie them with the scarf.’
He ties her hands, and she tells him in a sharp, quick voice to take off his necktie and bind her ankles.
‘No,’ he says, kneeling over her, ‘not your ankles.’
‘I don’t want any sex,’ she shouts. ‘You can have it afterwards. Tie my feet and kill, that’s all. They will come and sweep it up in the morning.’
All the same, he plunges into her, with the knife poised high.
‘Kill me,’ she says, and repeats it in four languages.
As the knife descends to her throat she screams, evidently perceiving how final is finality. She screams and then her throat gurgles while he stabs with a turn of his wrist exactly as she instructed. Then he stabs wherever he likes and stands up, staring at what he has done. He stands staring for a while and then, having started to turn away, he hesitates as if he had forgotten something of her bidding. Suddenly he wrenches off his necktie and bends to tie her ankles together with it.
He runs to the car, taking his chance and knowing that he will at last be taken, and seeing already as he drives away from the Pavilion and away, the sad little office where the police clank in and out and the typewriter ticks out his unnerving statement: ‘She told me to kill her and I killed her. She spoke in many languages but she was telling me to kill her all the time. She told me precisely what to do. I was hoping to start a new life.’ He sees already the gleaming buttons of the policemen’s uniforms, hears the cold and the confiding, the hot and the barking voices, sees already the holsters and epaulets and all those trappings devised to protect them from the indecent exposure of fear and pity, pity and fear.
