Five Roundabouts to Heaven

by John Bingham

  She would glance at Cook, and give one of her coy little laughs, as if to indicate that she and Cook had a little secret which they shared between them. Possibly Cook saw visions of inheriting large sums of money, and retiring to live in modest comfort. Perhaps she thought she might even get the house. If she did, she was a stupid woman.

  It was not that his aunt was mean, or even ungrateful for services rendered. It was simply that she had an entirely erroneous idea of the current value of money; when it came to tips, she continued to think in terms of Victorian days. Quite often she would describe the details of some journey she had made; how she had caught this or that train; how she had arrived at Paddington and commissioned a porter to carry her bag for her; how they had found a taxi.

  “So I gave the porter tuppence for himself,” she would say in passing, and no doubt she thought she had remunerated him very handsomely indeed.

  Bartels went into the drawing room and glanced at the evening paper for a while, and smoked a cigarette. There was nothing in the paper of particular interest. He tossed it aside and glanced round the room; then got to his feet and strolled over to the glass-fronted bookcase in which aunt Emily still kept the books of her late husband.

  Bartels had only the dimmest recollections of his uncle Robert. He recalled a sombrely dressed figure who came and went with a mysterious black bag, who sometimes, when Bartels was a very small child, had come and gazed at him and made him put his tongue out, or had placed a glass thing in his mouth-“a cigarette,” uncle Robert had called it, with a wink at his mother.

  Then the years passed and he never came again, and Bartels learnt that the physician had been unable to cure himself.

  The bottom two shelves were filled with a collection of novels ranging from bestsellers of pre-1914 vintage to Edgar Wallace and P. G. Wodehouse. The other two shelves held a number of fat medical works of reference, one or two volumes on the history of medicine, and a French and a German dictionary.

  Sandwiched between the dictionaries was a red book called Forensic Medicine and Toxicology.

  Bartels opened the bookcase and took it out.

  The mentality of the poisoner was one which Bartels had never been able to fathom. He and I had frequently argued about capital punishment. Bartels was against it, except in very rare cases, declaring that in most cases the victim of a murder crime did not know that he was about to die, whereas capital punishment involved an almost sadistically long period of waiting and of fear.

  “But poisoners,” Bartels said to me once, “they’re different. I just can’t get inside the mind of a man who poisons his wife, for example. Imagine the mentality of a person who sees his wife waking up in the morning, and hears her say, ‘I think I feel a little better today,’ who sees her looking brighter and more hopeful, and then slips out and puts more of the stuff in her drink.”

  Doubtless it was only morbid fascination that made him take the book out of the case, and sit down with it, and glance through some of the pages.

  He noted some of the more common poisons, and their reactions.

  Hydrochloric Acid, or spirits of salt, is a corrosive. The symptoms resemble, but are not so severe as, those produced by sulphuric acid. The smallest quantity that has proved fatal is one teaspoonful. In two cases, both young girls, this was sufficient to cause death. Recovery has, however, taken place after an ounce and a half of the commercial acid has been taken, calcined magnesia having been administered ten minutes after it was swallowed. Death has occurred in two hours; the usual period is from eighteen to thirty hours…

  Oxalic Acid. When swallowed in poisonous doses, oxalic acid produces local effects which resemble those produced by the mineral acids; but unlike them, it exercises a special influence on the nervous system and upon the action of the heart. The smallest recorded fatal dose is 60 grains, which taken in the solid form caused the death of a boy aged sixteen. Recovery has occurred after an ounce and a quarter. Death has occurred in ten minutes, but it may be delayed for several days…

  Barium Chloride has been taken in mistake for Epsom salts. It has been taken for suicidal purposes in the form of rat poison, into the composition of some varieties of which it enters…

  Acute Arsenical Poisoning…

  Idly, Bartels turned over the pages. It seemed heavy and dull. He replaced it on the shelf. Next to it, he noticed a smaller, blue book, called Toxicology: A Handbook for GPs. He sat down with it.

  Perhaps the fact that he had seen altrapeine among the bottles in the photographic darkroom in my flat caused him to pause and read about it.

  Altrapeine, he read, was a synthetic poison with a cyanide basis…“it is a white powder, odourless and tasteless, and easily soluble in water. It exercises a specially fast and usually fatal influence on the action of the heart. The circumstances of death are to all intents and purposes similar to those associated with coronary thrombosis. There is little or no pain. Death occurs within a matter of seconds, and in the case of a woman of forty it took place after a dose of a quarter of a teaspoonful. This poison is exceptionally difficult to detect.”

  Bartels laid down the book and gazed across the room. He remembered Dr Anderson once saying that coronary thrombosis was the most merciful death of all. That was when Beatrice had had severe pains in the left breast, and had half seriously, half jokingly, suggested that she might have angina pectoris.

  Dr Anderson had told him, in private, that the pain had been caused by Beatrice getting into an emotional condition. He had never discovered the cause of the emotional condition, and had soon forgotten all about it.

  Dr Anderson had said something else, chatting to him in the way doctors do. He had said that coronary thrombosis could cause angina pectoris.

  If, therefore, Beatrice-What? He stopped the train of thought. But it crept back, stealthily, and he followed it to its conclusion. If Beatrice died very suddenly, in circumstances suggesting coronary thrombosis, Dr Anderson would remember the earlier suggestions of angina pectoris…It would confirm a diagnosis of coronary thrombosis.

  He read the paragraphs again, and frowned.

  A few moments later he heard his aunt’s footsteps descending the linoleum-covered stairs leading to the basement. After the deaths of aunt Rose and uncle James, she had redecorated the ground-floor rooms and let them, and now confined herself entirely to the basement.

  Bartels rose quickly out of his chair, crossed the room, and replaced the book between the dictionaries. Perhaps it was this action, this quick, furtive movement, which first brought him face to face with the reality behind his thoughts.

  But as he hastily picked up the evening paper again, and pretended to be reading it, his mind was still protesting against the evidence of his actions.

  Now aunt Emily came into the drawing room and gave one of her glad cries of welcome. She welcomed him in exactly the same way as on all such occasions. She raised her hands in pretended surprise, managed to infuse a delighted look into her eyes and, implanting a wet kiss on both his cheeks, said:

  “My! My! My! If it isn’t Phil? Well! Well! Well!”

  Her good-natured oval face was wreathed in smiles. She gazed at him with every semblance of rapt attention. He knew that in two or three minutes she would be indulging in confidential remarks about the movements up or down of the stock exchange, for she prided herself on being a keen businesswoman, and the shortcomings of whoever at that particular moment happened to be occupying the top parts of the house.

  But this time there was another topic. It was Chan, the Chinaman.

  When Bartels asked her what the strange smell in the house was, she gave one of her mysterious little smiles. He knew those little smiles. They indicated that she was about to impart a confidential titbit of information. She said nothing for the moment, however.

  For a while she sat by the fire, smiling mysteriously, and washing her hands with invisible soap. At length she said:

  “Now if I tell you, you mustn’t laugh. Chan wouldn’t like that.
I know what you are, you naughty boy.”

  “I won’t laugh,” Bartels said, and thought: Why did I get up so quickly and put the book back? Why?

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  She leant forward and gazed into his face.

  “A wonderful thing has happened,” she said. “I am being helped!”

  “Helped? Who by?”

  “By Chan.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Chan is a mandarin. He is a very, very important mandarin who was a high official at the Emperor’s Court in Peking. He tells me that the Emperor did nothing, nothing at all, without his advice. He had to sit all day long at the Emperor’s right hand and advise him on all the legal and financial matters which the Emperor had to decide.”

  Bartels looked at her in surprise. He said:

  “But how old is he? They haven’t had an emperor in China for ages.”

  Aunt Emily smiled tolerantly at him, as though he were naturally too inexperienced to understand these things. She said:

  “Chan has been sent, dear. There is no age where he is.”

  “You mean he is a spook, or something?”

  “He is my guardian spirit, dear. Oh! What a wonderful man he is! He is just the man I wanted, a legal and financial expert; just think of that, dear! I have had the most wonderful help from him. If I told you some of the things he has said, they would surprise you. You would really never believe it all!”

  Bartels nodded. He knew it was no good arguing on this subject. He stared at her through his old-fashioned spectacles, and said:

  “How did he get in touch with you?”

  “It happened in the most wonderful way,” she said in a low voice. “It was little short of a miracle! I was at the greengrocer’s ordering some vegetables when I saw quite an ordinary little woman standing by me looking at me in rather a strange way.”

  Bartels said: “Had you seen her before?”

  “Never. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Well, you know, she was staring at me in such a strange way that at first I thought she was rather rude. Then, just as I was leaving the shop, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned round and there she was again, and she said, ‘Excuse me, I’m afraid you must think me awfully rude, but I believe I can help you.’ I said, ‘Really, in what way?’ ”

  “So she led me to one side and said she had noticed I was carrying the Psychic Weekly. And only the previous evening her Guide had come to her and told her to watch out for me! He had given her, she said, an exact description not only of me but of the very clothes I was wearing! Right down to these long black earrings! Isn’t that wonderful?

  “She said her name was Mrs Brewer, and that if I would care to come that afternoon for a cup of tea she would get in touch with her Guide-a monk who was on earth in the fifteenth century, oh, such a wonderful man! — and she was sure I would be helped.”

  “So you went along?”

  “So I went along. And Chan came through, too, dear. He said that from now onwards it was his work to help and advise me.”

  “And has he?” Bartels asked.

  “Has he indeed!” She clasped her hands together in the way she had when she was enjoying, or had just related, a joke of such richness as to be almost unbearable.

  Bartels gathered that the long-deceased Oriental, while not binding himself to give detailed stock exchange tips, would point out that the market was rising or falling, that it was time for courage or caution, and that although his protegee might have her times of bitter trial, she would always win through in the end; because he would be by her side, talking through his good friend Mrs Brewer.

  Hence the smell in the house, which was caused by joss sticks, and was aunt Emily’s way of showing her appreciation. She said Chan liked them, and she was luckily able to buy them from Mrs Brewer.

  “Does she charge anything when you go there?”

  Aunt Emily looked at him with an expression of joy and wonder on her gentle, placid face.

  “Nothing! Nothing at all! She says that it is her mission in this world to help others to help themselves. She says she feels it would be wrong to accept money for this sort of thing. Mind you, I usually slip a few shillings into her hand when I go, just to help to pay for the tea, and she is more than satisfied. In fact, at first she didn’t want to take it. I had to press it on her.”

  Aunt Emily suddenly clasped her hands together again ecstatically.

  “Oh, how silly I am! I haven’t told you the most wonderful part! Chan says-just fancy! — that I should look carefully into the financial affairs, in boyhood, of poor uncle Basil!

  “He says I must pay particular attention to the will left by his grandfather. He says everything is not all that it seems to be! Fancy! Do you know, dear, I have always had a funny sort of feeling-mind you, I’m not as psychic as poor aunt Rose was-but I have always had a funny sort of feeling that old uncle Basil should have inherited far more money than he did when his mother died.”

  “You don’t mean you are starting a case, too?”

  But she was not to be drawn. She just smiled mysteriously, and said: “Ah-ha! Wait and see! Perhaps you’ll be surprised one day. Your old auntie Emily may surprise everybody yet!”

  Bartels heard her voice droning on, and suddenly and ferociously wondered why he bothered to come to see her.

  There was no emotional contact between the two of them, and never had been since the time when, a lonely and bewildered boy, he had first gone to live in the house.

  They had treated him kindly enough, with the vague, detached benevolence of people who were eternally preoccupied with their own affairs. But that was all, and the emotions had coiled up tighter and tighter inside him, and even Beatrice had not held the key to the spring.

  But you couldn’t just not come anymore, even though she was old and eccentric; indeed, you had to come just because she was that; so you went on calling once a fortnight, and you listened to her drooling on and on. You had no deep affection for her, and she had none for you, but you were a part of the routine of her life, something real in a world which for her was gradually becoming ever more unreal.

  The aunt Emilys of this world, he thought bitterly, never had any friends. They had at best a few relatives, who tolerated them, or not, as the case might be. They moved, eccentric and untidy, towards the grave, and nobody cared two hoots.

  If you were normal, you shrugged your shoulders and said it was their own fault, and the devil of it was that the normal people were right.

  If you weren’t normal, if you were tortured by compassion and afraid of your own thoughts, you came once a fortnight, and were bored and irritated, because it was easier to pay a visit rather than stay at home and reproach yourself for not visiting her.

  He saw aunt Emily rise and go across and open her writing desk, which stood in a corner of the drawing room, and watched her come back with a pencil sketch about eight inches by six inches.

  “That’s Chan. Madame Clevistki did it,” said aunt Emily.

  “Madame who?”

  “Clevistki. Isn’t it beautiful? What a dignified, wise old face, eh?”

  “Who on earth is Madame Clevistki?”

  “She is a White Russian, dear, a friend of Mrs Brewer’s. She is really a princess, you know, but she does not use her title. Oh, my, she’s so psychic! Directly I shook hands with her it was like an electric shock going right up my arm.”

  “I see.”

  “She lived at the time of Peter the Great. A wonderful, wonderful man!”

  “Do you mean she is dead, like Chan?”

  “No, no, no, dear,” said his aunt Emily chidingly. “I mean that in her former life she was at the Court of Peter the Great. She has a most wonderful studio in the Fulham Road, and all the most famous painters come to her for lessons, says Mrs Brewer. Of course, she drew Chan in a trance.”

  “Oh, of course. What did she charge you?”

  “Nothing dear, only the cost of her taxi to and from Fulham Road; s
even and six, I think it was, in all; and that was only because she had to fit the trance in between painting lessons. She is like Mrs Brewer; she feels she has been put into this world to help others. She doesn’t feel she would be acting right if she made money out of her great psychic powers.”

  He watched his aunt replace the drawing in the bureau and wondered whether Chan, the talented mandarin, would stagger them all at the next seance. Would his voice, constricted within the vocal cords of Mrs Brewer, burst forth in high-pitched tones and cry: “Watch Philip Bartels! He has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”

  Or would the voice, struggling with the unaccustomed syllables, say: “Altrapeine. This poison is exceptionally difficult to detect. Its action is swift and painless and in the case of a fatal dose the circumstances surrounding the death of the subject closely resemble those attendant upon coronary thrombosis.” That, more or less, was what the book had said.

  Bartels didn’t think Chan would be so practical.

  Chapter 7

  It is one thing to murder in a speculative kind of way, but except for those who blunder into the crime, there comes a pause between the impersonal contemplation of the deed, and the realization that there is the remotest possibility of the deed being carried through.

  Again, excepting sudden acts of violence, the mind needs time to become attuned to the idea; the social sense inherent in all of us is instinctively outraged and requires a period of softening-up; the odds for and against success have to be calculated; and courage must be summoned to risk capital punishment.

  For a man of Philip Bartels’ temperament and imagination there comes, later, a curious interlude. The emotions involved in taking the decision have subsided, the greater emotions involved in the crime still lie ahead. Between plan and final action the husband, in the case of a married couple, regards his wife with a strange detachment.

  There is no longer hate, if there ever were hate, for he knows that the cause of the hatred will soon be removed.

  There is no longer gnawing greed, if her money be the motive, for his financial cravings will soon be satiated. And if lust for another woman is the driving force, he is soothed by the thought that shortly his desires will be completely fulfilled.