by John Bingham
My pipe had gone out long since. I did not bother to relight it.
Chapter 17
It was about 8.30, and Bartels and Lorna had finished the soup, and were just finishing the liver and bacon, sitting before the fire, the trolley between them, and George the corgi was looking hopefully from one to the other. Lorna said:
“How’s Beatrice?”
Bartels, picking about with his liver and bacon, looked at her in surprise.
“Why?” he asked in an astonished tone.
“Didn’t she have palpitations, or something, once?” asked Lorna, breaking a promise.
“Oh, that. Yes, she did, once.” He was about to add: “Her heart is sound enough, though,” when he stopped himself.
How much did a layman know about palpitations? he wondered. Did a woman like Lorna know that palpitations due to a few too many aspirins, a purely temporary allergy, had no significance at all? Might it not be as well to prepare her in some way for the news about Beatrice?
He toyed with the idea, then cut off a corner of liver and gave it to the corgi, and watched the dog eat it and look up for more. He put the idea aside. There was no point in trying to be too clever.
Lorna had finished the liver and bacon, and had turned towards the fire. She was peeling an orange, saying nothing, throwing the peel in the fire. Bartels mentally picked up the idea again, turned it round and round, and over. Why not? What harm could it do? One mustn’t overdo it, of course. Just toss the sentence out casually.
“Hearts can be a bit tricky,” he said absently, and left it at that. He was tempted to elaborate, but he resisted the urge, and congratulated himself upon his artistry.
“Yes,” said Lorna, still staring into the fire.
“Cigarette?” Bartels extended his case.
Lorna shook her head silently, began dividing her orange up into segments. The corgi, seeing nothing further was to be gained in the way of liver, walked to the grate and curled up for a nap.
After a while, Bartels said: “What’s the matter? You’re very thoughtful.”
“I’ve good cause to be.” She looked at him and smiled sadly.
“Why? What’s the matter?”
Some premonition of disaster, or the unaccustomed sadness on Lorna Dickson’s face, gave Bartels a curious feeling in the pit of his stomach. He shifted uneasily in his chair.
“What’s the matter?” he asked for the third time. “For heaven’s sake tell me; don’t just sit there.”
“Barty,” she began. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about what I’m going to say-there is no other man who means as much to me as you and never has been since Ronald was killed.”
She paused while Bartels, wide-eyed, still and unblinking, heard the wild tolling of alarm bells above the crash and surge of breakers on a rocky beach, and above that, louder and louder, the roll of drumbeats, in his breast, his head, every part of his body even to his fingertips.
Lorna was looking him straight in the face now. Her lips were slightly parted, her serenity was disturbed, but the inner beauty, glimpsed through the grey-blue eyes, was untarnished.
She rose and came and sat on the arm of Bartels’ chair, and put her arm round his shoulders, and pressed him against her side.
“Barty, I don’t think we can go through with this thing, dearest. I have given it a lot of thought. I don’t think it’s fair to Beatrice, and above all, it might be dangerous for her.” She hesitated, groping for the right phrase. “Above all, I don’t think it’s even fair to you-or me.”
“Why?” whispered Bartels.
The alarm bells had ceased tolling, the breakers had receded, leaving exposed the jagged black rocks of despair. But the drums were still beating louder and faster than ever.
“Why, Lorna? Why? Lorna, darling Lorna, you can’t let me down now. Not at this stage.”
She began to stroke his light brown hair, trying ineffectually to flatten the bits which stood up on the crown of his head.
“Do you wish me to marry you to avoid letting you down? From a sense of duty? Is that what you are suggesting?”
“This is only a passing qualm, Lorna.”
He tried desperately to sound cheerful. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. Come on, let’s have a drink! What’s yours?”
He tried to get out of the chair, but she gently pushed him back. “Not now, my dear. This is not a time for drinks. This is the moment for clear thinking and talking.”
He sat back in the chair, then, very still, his eyes staring at the ceiling, pale and drawn, the firelight reflected in the lenses of his spectacles.
“Don’t you see?” said Lorna miserably. “Don’t you see? If anything happened to her, we should never forgive ourselves. She would always be between us.”
“Would she?” asked Bartels bitterly. “Would she really? So they say in books of fiction. She would always be between us. Her shadow would come between us. Our happiness would turn sour. I know, I know, I’ve read about it. I wonder whether it is true. I doubt it.”
“I, for one, can’t risk it.”
The plans, the precautions, the hesitations, the fears, all were pointless. Beatrice was to die, a sacrificial victim on an altar of failure.
Even if Lorna changed her mind before he left, when she heard that Beatrice was dead she would think that he had taken matters into his own hands, had told her the truth; and that Beatrice had had a heart attack as a result. Lorna would never forgive him or herself.
He heard Lorna say: “I know what this means to you.” He thought how often people said that, and how little they really knew. He heard her add: “Believe me, I would like to have married you more than anything. But not this way.”
“Not this way,” he repeated softly.
That’s what he had said when Beatrice had her little palpitations and was so scared and unhappy.
Not this way. My freedom, yes, he had said, but not this way, not by her death; and later he had modified it, and said, not by her death in fear or pain.
“Don’t let’s come to any final decision tonight,” he implored her, but again he thought: What’s the use? If Beatrice dies, Lorna will blame me and herself.
“I think it’s as hard for me as for you,” said Lorna. “And I’ve already come to the decision. I shall feel no different tomorrow.”
Suddenly, she put her arms round him and placed her cheek against his brow, as he had to her earlier in the evening.
“Oh, my dear, I know it’s hard, but try not to take it too badly. Let’s see if we can’t get through to the end of our lives now without causing too much damage.”
After a while he said, quite simply: “All right, if that’s what you want.” He put her from him, firmly but not roughly, and rose to his feet. “Mind if I have that drink now?”
Lorna went over to the drinks table, poured him out a whisky, and handed him the glass.
“Aren’t you drinking?”
She shook her head, and stood by the grate, both hands on the mantelpiece, looking down into the fire. He drank half the whisky without a pause.
“What about us-now?” he asked.
“I think we should break it up,” whispered Lorna. “Half and half is no good, Barty.”
“All right,” he said, and drank off the remainder of the whisky. “As you wish.” He replaced the glass on the table.
“Don’t you think it better?” asked Lorna, still staring into the fire.
“As you wish,” said Bartels again. “I am going now. Thank you for your past kindness. Also for tonight’s supper.”
Lorna swung round quickly from the mantelpiece.
“Don’t let’s part like that, Barty, dearest.”
“Like what?”
“In bitterness.”
She made to put her arms round his neck, but he drew back.
“Don’t let’s part like that, either.”
She let her arms fall to her sides. “You think I’m beastly, I know, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want th
at to happen.”
Bartels sighed and shook his head impatiently.
“I think you might have let me know a little earlier, that’s all.”
He was beginning to feel the panic rising inside him, in recurring waves; rising and subsiding, then rising again. Provided Beatrice adhered to her plans, he had time to get back. But he had to leave at once to be on the safe side. He had to go, now, without delay.
His emotions were confused, the pain caused by Lorna’s decision was anaesthetized by the fear that Beatrice might die for nothing, and the shock of Lorna’s words was deadened by the urgent need to get back to London as fast as he could.
Deep down, he was bitter and hurt, but those feelings were temporarily submerged beneath the turmoil of other emotions. He resented now every minute he had to spend in the house. He glanced at the clock. It was 9.10. An hour and a half. Less, to be safe.
He moved towards the door. He moved slowly, because the position was in one respect as it had been earlier: he could not afford to act unnaturally.
At the door, he turned. Lorna was standing in the middle of the room, looking after him.
“Let’s pretend I’m nipping down to the local to buy a bottle of gin,” he said. “Let’s make it easy, like that.”
His hand was on the door-knob when a thought occurred to him, and he paused, and came back into the room, and stood staring at the carpet, while the blood rushed into his face, as it always did when he was suffering from a sudden shock.
She had a habit of keeping his letters, and he had sent her a great many. He was trying to think quickly, to remember any phrase or phrases he may have written which, if the worst came to the worst, would sound damning in a court of law.
For a few seconds all he could think was: Thompson and Bywaters, Mrs Thompson, Frederick Bywaters, what had she written that had sounded so damning in court? Glass, it was something to do with glass. “I have tried the ground glass in his food, but it didn’t work,” something like that. Dramatizing herself, some said.
Her letters were found in his seachest, or somewhere. Both were hanged. His thoughts raced on. They put a white bag over your head, so that you felt all shut in, suffocating, worse than being in a locked room or a dark tunnel. He’d shout and struggle if they tried to do that to him, and it’d all be sordid and undignified.
A wave of claustrophobia swept over him, so that perspiration broke out on his forehead, and he had to clench his fists and breathe deeply, until, little by little, he could force his thoughts back to the letters he had written to Lorna.
Lorna Dickson stared at him. “Are you feeling all right, Barty?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I’m all right. Just let me think for one moment.”
She said nothing, but moved over to the side table and poured out a small glass of brandy. She brought it over to him, but he only said:
“No, no, thank you. Not that. Just let me think clearly, Lorna. Clearly, just for a minute.”
But there was nothing in his letters. He was sure of that. There was no reason why there should be. What could there be? He hardly ever mentioned Beatrice in his letters.
He sought to concentrate his mind more narrowly upon recent letters-letters from Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, the south coast.
What had he written from Manchester, where he had bought the altrapeine? There was a mention of Beatrice in that letter, a reference to a talk with Lorna about telling Beatrice the truth, asking her to release him. It was before he had made up his mind to act differently. Only he hadn’t made it as clear as that in the letter.
Then he remembered the words he had used, and the significance of them again sent the blood rushing to his face.
“About Beatrice,” he had written, “I shall arrive at the cottage tomorrow evening. We shall be alone this weekend. A good opportunity to do it.”
And now he remembered another, an earlier one, written from Cardiff. Sometime ago now; but that didn’t matter, that didn’t matter at all, that merely tended to show how long a time he had been premeditating it all: “I will spend the first part of the evening with you, my beloved, and from you I will draw the strength to enable me to do that which we both know has to be done sometime.”
He sat down on the arm of an easy chair and covered his face with his hands. Lorna came to his side and put her arm once more round his shoulders.
“What is it, Barty?”
He put his hands down, and got up and moved to the mantelpiece, and stood there irresolutely, still trying to think of other references, still trying to decide what to do.
There was at least one other reference, but he couldn’t exactly recall it, except to remember that he had thanked her for reassuring him that he would be justified in doing what he contemplated.
All were references to the talk which at one time he thought he would have with Beatrice; each and every one, taken in conjunction with other factors, was enough to sway the minds of a jury; enough to implicate Lorna as well as himself.
They hanged Mrs Thompson. What of Lorna? What chance does “the other woman” have in cases like this?
Counsel in court. Bewigged, hard, implacable Counsel. Hitching up his gown, smiling, self-confident.
“You have, then, members of the jury, ample evidence that the death of Mrs Bartels was calculated to further the sordid plans of both the accused.
“You have evidence that Mrs Bartels died from the effects of a poison which it is extremely difficult to detect, the symptoms of which, but for the praiseworthy vigilance of the local practitioner, might easily have been confused with those indicating coronary thrombosis.
“You have the evidence of the Manchester chemist that a man, whom he has identified as the prisoner Bartels, bought altrapeine in his shop, that he had removed his glasses to make himself less readily identified, and that he signed the poisons book using the name and address of a perfectly respectable Leeds businessman who bore no resemblance to the prisoner, and has never bought altrapeine in his life.
“And you have those highly significant remarks in his letters to the woman Lorna Dickson: ‘We shall be alone this weekend. A good opportunity to do it.’ And again: ‘from you I will draw the strength to enable me to do that which we both know has to be done sometime.’ Note the words, please: that which we both know has to be done. Ample evidence, I submit, that the woman Dickson knew that this horrible crime was going to take place.”
The witness Miss Latimer. The hotel bartender. Agitated and distressed.
And on and on and on.
Nobody would put anything but the most sordid constructions on his love for Lorna. Nobody would believe that it was love and not sensual lust which had prompted the crime.
Bartels swung round from the fire. It was 9.20 now. He said abruptly:
“Lorna, my dear, may I have back the letters I wrote to you-now?”
Lorna said: “Of course you can have them back. But you don’t want them tonight, surely?”
“Wouldn’t it be better?”
“What do you want to do with them? Burn them, I suppose?”
“It is better for both of us to have them out of the way.”
Lorna smiled faintly. “You are being very practical, Barty.” She thought for a moment and added: “Won’t you trust me to burn them for you? Or post them to you at your office, if you wish?”
“It’s the sort of thing one can forget,” said Bartels, trying to keep his voice steady. “It might be better if you gave them to me now, Lorna. If you don’t mind, that is.”
“My dear, they are all over the place. Some in the bureau, some in the drawer of my dressing table, all over the place.”
Bartels thought: Ten minutes to collect them, or fifteen minutes, or perhaps more. And then no guarantee that he had them all, that he had the important ones. What was the good of it? Better to go now, and drive fast. Already ten minutes had gone by.
“You don’t think I’m going to blackmail you with them, do you, Barty?” Lorna spoke jestingly, tr
ying to lift the tension which had settled in the room.
But he answered her seriously. “No.” He shook his head. “No, I know you wouldn’t do that. No, it’s not that at all.”
He couldn’t press the matter any further. Apart from the time factor, it would look peculiar. He felt that already he had gone further than he should have done.
He looked at her helplessly, his brown eyes worried behind the old-fashioned spectacles, his hair standing up slightly on the crown of his head. His face, with the wide mouth and thin straight nose, normally sallow, was flushed by the whisky he had drunk, and the heat of the room, and his state of excitement.
“Never mind,” he said slowly. “Don’t let’s bother about them tonight.”
“I’ll post them to you tomorrow, Barty-to your office, by registered post, marked private and personal, shall I?” She tried to seem brisk and normal.
“No,” said Bartels quickly. “Don’t bother to do that. Burn them, Lorna, tomorrow morning. The whole lot, without fail.”
Lorna nodded. “As you wish.”
Bartels looked once round the room, and then at Lorna Dickson. She stood under the chandelier, and returned his gaze. For fully a minute they stared at each other, sad-eyed, uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what to say now that the moment had come to part.
Bartels felt little bitterness now. Numbly, through the pain and the eddies of fear in the back of his mind, he realized that this was the end of his search. Whatever happened, there would be no love in his life of the kind of which he had dreamed as a boy, because there never would be and never could be another Lorna.
Watching Lorna, he began to doubt for the first time whether in fact she was, or ever had been, truly in love with him. Else why had she shown comparatively little emotion this evening?
Surely, if one were in love, as he was, you forged ahead irrespective of other people’s feelings, ruthlessly, driven on by a fire which nothing could withstand. You cared nothing for anybody, you were prepared to strike, and even to destroy as he had planned to destroy.
That was it, that was the test: you were prepared to destroy. Lorna wouldn’t go even halfway with him on that score.
