The Man Who Killed Himself

by Julian Symons

  Later he went on to the Palace Pier and rode on the little electric cars. All the other cars seemed to be occupied by couples, the boys driving, the girls beside them shrieking with laughter. He steered his own car deliberately at others. After the crashes the girls laughed louder than ever. One pretty doll-like girl wore a paper hat in red, white and blue, and a badge pinned over one breast which read I AM A VIRGIN. Beneath these capitals was a small longer word – what was it? He peered to see, without success. When the ride ended and he walked off the shiny floor the couple came up to him.

  ‘What’s up, Jack?’ the boy said. He was a head taller than Arthur, and he wore long sideboards.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ He could see the word now. It was Islander.

  ‘You do, eh? I said, what’s up?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You don’t? You wouldn’t. He’s a creep, Marilyn, I told you.’

  ‘He’s creepy,’ the girl agreed, and burst into fresh peals of laughter.

  He walked away down the boards of the pier. Unintelligible threats and obscenities followed him.

  Seven-fifteen. He was sitting in a bar in a road parallel with the sea front sipping gin and tonic. Brighton had solved nothing, the doctor had failed. It was time to drive away again. The barman said, ‘You want to see some action?’ He slipped a card across the bar’s shiny leatherette surface.

  He nodded without knowing what was meant.

  ‘Members only, but this’ll get you in. Say Carlo sent you.’

  He nodded again. The card said simply Robin Hood, with an address in Kemp Town. The place, when he found it, looked like a restaurant, but the door was closed. On the right hand side of it a painted and tipped arrow pointed to a bell, and he pushed this. A slit in the door opened, an eye looked at him.

  ‘Carlo sent me.’ The door opened. He confronted a girl dressed in a short jerkin and tights of Lincoln green. A green forage cap with a feather in it was set on her head, and a quiver containing arrows was slung over her shoulder.

  The door closed again. The light was dim. What looked like real trees were growing on either side of him. Straight ahead he saw an oak door with the legend above it: ‘Robin Hood’s Cave.’ To the left stood a realistic gibbet with a noose hanging from it. A voice shrieked in his ear: ‘Eat ye and drink ye, my merry men.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Jock.’ The girl indicated a parrot which glared from foliage. He touched one of the trees. It was made of plastic.

  ‘I didn’t know they had parrots in Sherwood Forest.’

  ‘Don’t touch him, he’ll have your finger.’ Without taking breath she went on: ‘A guinea, please.’

  ‘Carlo said this would get me in.’

  ‘So you’re in. You still pay a guinea if you want the action.’

  ‘What action?’

  She stared. The oak door opened and he saw beyond it bright light, glimpsed a roulette wheel, heard the murmur of voices. A fat man with a cigar in his mouth passed, took the coat the girl offered, and went out without speaking. ‘Make up your mind,’ the girl said. He paid his guinea and went towards the oak door. A figure stepped from beside the gibbet and said, ‘Not carrying anything?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He was a large man with a broken nose, wearing jerkin and tights that seemed too small for him. His face, pitted with scars and with the eyes tiny in their folds of flesh, peered.

  ‘That’s all right, sir, you’re okay.’ His voice came out like water through a choked pipe.

  ‘Why do you stand by that thing?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be the hangman, see? They had me dressed up right, in a black mask and all, but it was too hot.’ He gestured towards doors which said: ‘Ye Olde Taverne of Sherwood’ and ‘Ye Banqueting Hall,’ but Arthur went into Robin Hood’s Cave.

  It was a large room with panels let into the wall, depicting scenes among which he noticed Robin Hood embracing Maid Marian, giving money to the poor, defying the Sheriff, and with hands tied behind his back staring up at a gallows. Trophies of the hunt were hung about, including rather surprisingly a bear and a tiger. The brightness he had seen from outside was deceptive. Most of the room was dim. Concealed lights illuminated the wall panels and pools of light flooded down upon the tables where people were playing roulette and several card games, among which he recognised baccarat and vingt-et-un. The faces round the roulette table were reverent. They were not particularly rich faces, nor of any special class. Few were very young or very old. They were middle-aged middle-class humanity.

  A hand touched his arm, a voice murmured ‘This way, sir.’ A young man in Lincoln green led him to a corner of the room. ‘Just to get it straight, minimum stake half a crown, maximum fifty quid, fair enough?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘What d’you want chips for?’

  A Lincoln green girl behind a counter smiled at him invitingly. Different coloured counters were arranged in front of her. He had just over twenty pounds on him. ‘Five pounds’ worth, please.’

  The young man raised his eyebrows, said something inaudible to the girl and drifted away. He took his counters to the roulette table and put a pound on black, ten shillings on the first twelve numbers. The number that came up was red, nineteen. This was another aspect of Doctor Brighton’s treatment. Did he feel any emotion when the black and green counters were swept away, would he feel anything if he won? He could only find out by playing. In less than ten minutes he had lost his five pounds and had cashed five more. He decided to stop playing when he had lost fifteen.

  His luck turned when he had three pounds left of the allotted fifteen. Numbers in the first twelve, which pays two to one, came up six times running, and when he changed to groups of four numbers, paying nine to one, he had three successive wins. He was now fifteen pounds up, and put a couple of black counters, worth a pound each, on numbers eleven and thirty-three. Number eleven turned up, a win of thirty-four pounds. He had set himself no winning limit, but it seemed a good time to stop. As his counters were translated into five-pound notes he examined his feelings, and discovered in himself no more than a mild pleasure at having beaten the table.

  In Ye Olde Taverne of Sherwood, where crisps, olives and lumps of cheddar cheese came free, he ordered a large whisky. A voice behind him said, ‘I saw you, you lucky man.’

  The lady of the antique shop was smiling at him. She was dressed now in a black and white op art dress, the effect of which was spoiled by a conventional thick cluster of what must surely be artificial pearls. She readily accepted his offer of a drink.

  ‘A little drinky would be very nice. It’s not my lucky night.’

  What could one say to that? He considered several conversational returns and rejected them all. They sat down at a table which had on it an ashtray shaped as a boar’s head, with a hole in the mouth for the ash. She smoked a cigarette through a long holder. ‘Are you a real true gambler? I am you know, or I would be if I had what my sainted aunt used to call the wherewithal. This is a fun place, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose so. It’s just a gambling club, really, isn’t it?’

  ‘But don’t you think the décor’s brilliant? A friend of mine did it as a matter of fact, Seamus Macpherson. Of course he’s really an artist, he did it to oblige Robin.’

  ‘Robin?’

  She pointed to a swarthy man wearing a dinner jacket and called, ‘Yoo hoo.’ The swarthy man came over. ‘Robin Hood,’ she said. ‘Meet a new member, I don’t know his name.’

  ‘Arthur Brownjohn.’

  ‘Welcome to Sherwood Forest. Enjoying yourself, Mr Brownjohn?’ Robin Hood had a pencil line moustache, and looked like a Hollywood romantic actor of the nineteen thirties. His foreign accent was strong.

  ‘He’s been winning, Robin darling, of course he’s enjoying himself.’

  ‘Splendid. I hope you haven’t taken us to the cleaner’s.’

  ‘What? Oh no, I only won a few pounds. I’m
not a gambler.’

  A bottle of champagne appeared in an ice bucket. ‘To the victors the spoils,’ Robin Hood said. ‘That is a quotation. Don’t be worried, Mr Brownjohn, this is on the house.’ Glasses were filled. ‘Have you finished for the evening, or are you playing again?’

  ‘I’m retiring while I’m a winner.’ He laughed inanely, and they laughed with him.

  ‘A wise man. But come back and see us again. Just one question.’ His mouth approached Arthur’s ear. ‘You like the way we’ve fitted it out?’

  ‘Most original.’

  ‘A friend of Hester’s. A genius. You’ll forgive me.’ He seized Hester’s red-tipped hand, kissed it, uncoiled from his chair, and moved across the room.

  ‘Isn’t he darling? And I’ll tell you something, everything he does turns to money.’ She contemplated the kissed fingers as if in the hope that a Midas touch might convert them to gold. ‘Of course he’s not really Robin Hood. His name’s Constantin Dimitrop-something-or-other. You know those Dimitrop names. But would you believe it, I knew him when he was a waiter in a little Greek café. I don’t know, do you?’ He shook his head. More champagne was poured. ‘D’you live around here, Arthur?’

  ‘Just a few miles.’

  ‘You often get in, then?’

  ‘Sometimes.’ The bottle was empty. He waved a hand, another bottle appeared, the cork popped.

  ‘You’re a bit of a dark horse,’ Hester said as she drank her first glass from the new bottle. Her lips left a red smear on it. ‘When you came in the shop I said to myself, “Well, you may sell him something, but be careful not to scare him off, he’s the sort who scares easily.” Now here you are, cool as a duke, going home with a nice little profit. How wrong can you be?’

  He felt an impulse to confide. ‘I do get scared, as much as anybody. But I do things, even though they scare me.’

  ‘That’s psychology. I’ll tell you something. I’ve had that bloody shop for a year, and I’ve found something out. It just isn’t me.’

  ‘I thought not,’ he said vaguely, although he had not thought about it.

  ‘Oh, you’re clever. You’re a real dark horse.’ She stubbed out her second cigarette, put away the holder, leaned over the table towards him.

  ‘What would you say I was, really?’

  The black and white of the dress dazzled him. Above it, above the diagonals that fled to infinity, was the choker. Stretch a hand, pull and the little white blobs would fly all over the room. A prize for the first man to pop an artificial pearl into the boar’s head. And above the pearl choker the neck, full and unwrinkled, above the neck smooth cheeks, an inquiring nose, the red mouth a cavern. None of it excited him, he felt no stir of lust. ‘An actress.’

  She leaned back. ‘Oh, you’re so right. You really are a dark horse. Lavinia Skelton.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My stage name. Do you like it?’

  ‘Not very much.’

  ‘Exactly what I said. I told that bloody agent, I told him, “Lavinia, that’s Victorian, and Skelton, do you know what people will think, they’ll think of a skeleton.” But he was supposed to know, he said it was contemporary. Then he thought he’d done marvels when he fixed me up in a crumby little rep.’ Her face approached his. ‘Darling, you’re cute. Why don’t we have another little drinky round in my flat?’

  The temptation was too great. He bent forward so that their faces were near to each other. His hand moved, pulled, the choker came away. The string broke and the pearls rolled about, just as he had foreseen, most of them on the floor but a dozen meandering across the table. He picked one of them up and put it into the boar’s mouth. ‘Pearls in the mouth of swine,’ he cried. ‘First prize to me.’ Laughing helplessly, he raised his champagne glass.

  She clutched her neck. ‘My God,’ she cried. ‘You bloody little barbarian.’

  Things happened quickly. It seemed that everybody in the preposterous room converged on him, and that they were all angry. Without fully understanding what was happening, or why, he felt himself jerked to his feet. The glass dropped from his grasp to the floor and crunched under a foot. A hand was clasped inside his shirt collar so that he almost choked, another hand dived into his breast pocket and found his wallet. He tried to protest that they were stealing his money. Robin Hood’s face appeared before him in close up, the lips bent back to reveal pale gums. ‘The champagne,’ he heard. ‘You pay for the champagne.’ Helpless, he saw a five-pound note extracted from the wallet, which was then pushed back into his jacket. The grip on his shirt did not relax. Twisting to see his captor, he found that it was the man with the broken nose who had been standing beside the gibbet. In turning he tightened the grip on his neck and gasped for air.

  Hester was weeping. ‘My pearls. Make him pay for my pearls.’

  Robin Hood’s hand patted her shoulder.

  ‘I’ll buy you some more, honey. Don’t worry about him, he’s not worth worrying about.’

  He felt himself being marched, almost carried, out of the bar. The girl who had let him in surveyed him critically. ‘He got an ’at?’ Broken Nose asked, and when she said no, his grip relaxed. ‘Don’t let ’im in again. Trouble maker.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think it to look at him. What did he do?’

  ‘’Aving a go at Hester. Trying to tear her dress off. Listen.’ He pushed a big fist under Arthur’s nose. ‘Get out and don’t come back.’ The door was open. A push sent him reeling into the street. It was empty except for a man walking along the other side, whistling.

  For a few moments he could do nothing except gasp. When he had got his breath he felt his neck in a gingerly way and straightened his collar. The whistling man crossed the street and walked towards him. He took out his wallet and examined the contents. They were intact except for the five-pound note, which he supposed was fair enough. He became aware that something had happened, and then realised what it was. The whistling had stopped.

  The man had reached the entrance of the club but had apparently changed his mind about going in. His face was half-turned away. There was something familiar about him. ‘Just a minute,’ Arthur said. The man quickened his step. Arthur caught up with him, put a hand on his arm, swung him round. He was looking at the sandy hair and greasy beard, the exophthalmic eyes, the twitching features, of Clennery Tubbs.

  Chapter Seven

  End of a Journey

  He was so surprised that he let go of Tubbs’ arm, but as the other accelerated, moving away from him in a walk that never quite became a trot, Arthur felt indignation move in him. But for the crookedness of this man none of his troubles would have occurred, or at least this was what he felt. ‘Here,’ he cried. ‘Come here.’

  He put a hand on Tubbs’ jacket, getting a grip which was a parody of Broken Nose’s hold on his shirt. The jacket began to slip away from Tubbs’ shoulders, and it seemed that he might leave it. Then he stopped, turned, and said, ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’ The look of outrage was succeeded by one of astonishment which merged unconvincingly into pleasure. ‘Mr Brownjohn,’ he said, as though the name were the answer to a prayer. His gaze looked beyond Arthur who half-turned with him to see that the door of the club was open and that Hester stood there. She stared at them both for a moment and then retreated. The door closed again.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ Arthur said, which was hardly the truth.

  ‘Thought you were one of the Granger Boys. Nasty lot, have to be damn’ careful down here. That place.’ Tubbs jerked a thumb towards the Robin Hood. ‘Some hard types in there, I can tell you.’

  ‘You were going in.’

  ‘Not me. I wouldn’t trust myself there, not in a million years.’

  ‘I’ve just come out. I won fifty pounds.’

  ‘You did? There you are.’ He spoke triumphantly, as if Arthur had proved the truth of his words. ‘You can buy me a drink.’

  The suggestion incensed him so much that if he had been a violent man he would have stru
ck the other. ‘You cheated me.’ Unable to compass the enormity of Tubbs’ offences he took refuge in a single phrase. ‘You used an accommodation address.’

  ‘I’ve been on the move.’ Tubbs leaned against the wall under a street lamp. ‘Haven’t been well.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Beneath the cloth he felt the thin bone of the arm. ‘You’re a scoundrel.’

  ‘Mean it. My heart. Give me a minute.’ His colour looked bad, but perhaps this was the street lighting. ‘Buy you a drink.’

  He continued to pull Tubbs along. He had little confidence in his power to pin the man down. Tubbs would go to the pub lavatory and never come back, or he would see some barfly acquaintance and slip away with him. ‘Come home,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ll give you a drink there.’

  ‘Home? Live in Brighton now, do you?’

  ‘Just outside it. I’ve got my car here.’

  Tubbs gave him a quick glance. ‘All right then. Call at the bus station. I’ve left my case.’

  They walked to the bus station in silence. Arthur went in and stood near while Tubbs handed over a ticket and came back with a battered fibre suitcase. ‘Not sure where I’d stay,’ he muttered. ‘Been on the road.’ When they reached the car he got in without a word.

  For five minutes Arthur drove in silence. Then Tubbs spoke. ‘Sorry I dropped out of circulation but I can explain, you know. Explain the whole thing.’ He paused. His voice was thick, throaty. ‘Something else I must say. Sympathies.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Read about it. Very sorry.’ He had linked Clare’s death up with the man he swindled. ‘Got the bastard who did it, have they?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Very very sorry, old man.’ His hand snaked out and gave Arthur’s a pat. ‘They’ve got no line on this chap yet then?’