Sir Frederick looked a question at me when he read of the death of Clotilde. I had to expand my story to show that I had not intended it. But was I to allow her to re-set the timing of the bomb? He only remarked:
‘God forgive the girl! There was so much splendour in her.’
I could have said Amen to that if I were able to forget the fair hair with no head beneath it and remember her as she was.
We have some food, but both of us could do with a stiff drink. We must not show ourselves. I wish I had not let Mick go.
September 16th
This is the last entry. How curious that they should think of Julian Despard as a hardened killer and yet on his record how right – for I have committed still another murder, to them the coolest and most inexplicable of all.
They are trying to talk me into surrender. They even have a psychiatrist to help. I’d love to engage the fool in argument but I haven’t the leisure for that. I’m busy. Every time that he and the police interrupt me, trying to discover what makes me tick, I lay down my pencil and put a shot through the top of the door to silence them.
What does make me tick? If I don’t know, he can’t. So let them go on believing that I am a paranoiac with an itch to shoot policemen. They have such patience. It would be simple to open up with a sub-machine gun from across the road so that I was pinned to the floor, but they won’t. We are still a long way from that police state which Magma and I hoped to create, and yet we were right to foretell the fury of the people when crazed by fear and revenge. Brutes! Have they any other standard of civilisation than the lust for more and more possessions and the hope of Twopence Off?
I should know them. I myself, safely in the background, have employed a handful of rent-a-crowd agitators to fan a minor grievance into flaming resentment.
But I must get on with my record of the facts. The end came quickly this morning. I suspect that some responsible citizen, forced by misfortune to join himself to our band of street-invading rats, noticed the departure of the dubious clergyman and his uncollared return and went to the police with his report. When he added that, so far as he knew, the only inhabitants of the ruin were a long-haired derelict of uncertain age and an old man it was worth a reconnaissance in force.
As soon as I saw the cars draw up outside I hurried Sir Frederick to the top of the house together with the arms and this diary which could for him have been the best protection of all. The basement was impossible to defend, so I allowed the police to come up as far as the next landing below us. There I stopped them, warning that I would shoot to kill. Gammel was well aware that I did not mean it and was playing for time. He thought I had a plan. I didn’t. There was no hope.
They tried toughness at first.
‘Come out, Despard! We’ve got you.’
My answer to that was to smash the light fitting over their heads with Clotilde’s automatic. The shot impressed them. They settled down to the siege and began their technique of talking us out. From the window I saw television cameras arrive. The ends of the street became dark with people. A truck drove up and extended into the sky a steel skeleton like a fire ladder but with no ladder. I had a box on top, evidently designed to inconvenience me in some unknown way, so I put a couple of rifle bullets through it.
That was pointless and had its effect on Sir Frederick. He was seeing a side of me which was unfamiliar. What did poor Clotilde call it? Battle-happy. But there was no longer anything to battle for.
He demanded that I should trust the police, sending him out to explain to them all I had done. I replied that they were not likely to pay much attention. On the evidence of the papers all England appeared to believe that what he and Shallope had made was infinitely more criminal than the supposed quarrels and killings between anarchists which had helped to destroy their handiwork.
He continued to insist and I could only make surrender easy for him. So I threw out a note saying that he wished to give himself up and would come out unarmed and with his hands behind his head. It’s beyond imagination to think of him armed. But at times surrender can panic the opponent as much as attack.
‘The truth will prevail, Julian,’ he said boldly.
Like Pilate I asked what is truth, took his hand between both of mine and covered his quick exit through the door.
Well, what is it? For perfect justice to be done I should receive the George Cross and a life sentence simultaneously – a little beyond the imagination of our apparatchiks. One would need a Haroun al Rashid for that.
Through the window I watched him appear from the basement between two plain-clothes police with the regulation blanket over his head. They put him in the Black Maria, got in themselves and closed the doors. The police at the bottom of the street – a mere three or four of them holding back the crowd for the sake of safety – cleared a way for the van as casually as if directing traffic. There was no cordon. In fact the departure of Sir Frederick was a perfect example of how a regrettable incident should be quietly tidied up in a civilised country. And then I had to watch that fulfilment of Magma’s prophecy when the people would take justice into their own hands.
There were not more than half a dozen ringleaders. I could spot them from my window as police on the ground could not.
‘Get him! He made it. That’s the bloke who made it!’
The crowd surged forward on to the van, upsetting it. The few traffic police were overrun. Then someone – can you pick out in a pack of wolves the one who takes the first bite? – threw a match into the leaking petrol. Prisoner and escort escaped the flames by leaping out at the back, and the crowd closed over them. One of the C.I.D. men was hurled out like a ball from a rugger scrum. The police covering the front of my house abandoned their watch to race to the aid of their colleagues. Some high officer, brave enough to defy the law and the consequences, gave the order to fire over the heads of the mob. That dispersed them and left an empty space in which was a lonely, crumpled, flattened bundle of old clothes. Near Sir Frederick was one man of his escort who could crawl and another who lay still.
The police made some arrests at random, unlikely to be the active rioters. They, more experienced, had managed to tunnel through to the back of the crowd in time. A little beyond the burning van a well-dressed man was disdainfully walking away along the pavement, his whole appearance expressing disgust for the hysteria of the mob in which he had accidentally been caught up. That prowling gait was familiar to me. When he stopped for a moment to say something to an Inspector – no doubt offering his name and address as a witness – I saw his face and beard. He would of course be nearby. It was essential for him to know that both Sir Frederick and I were safely dead or, if we were not, to prepare his plans accordingly.
Mallant did not forget much but he had forgotten the rifle. I reckoned that in all the excitement the watchers would not yet be back at their posts, so I took the risk of kneeling at the window and resting the Lee Enfield on the sill. The range was about a hundred and fifty yards and the rifle not dead accurate. I hit him in the body with the first shot and had no way of telling if the wound was mortal. The Inspector at once leaned over him but his head was exposed. I tried again and this time there was no doubt.
They will wonder why such a crack shot chose a harmless bystander and left without a mark the uniform above him. That may be clearer when they read this diary unless I am prejudged to be a homicidal lunatic and Mallant above suspicion. As for Rex, the full resources of the police should be enough to establish his identity. When I was a Group Commander under him I was content not to know it. Afterwards it did not matter to me who he was.
I have removed the miniature incendiary from the cover of my diary. I started it as an aide-memoire in an intricate, ever-changing position. I went on as if it were a headquarters war diary, recording events and plans for action which needed to be discussed within a conference of myself. And recently I have seen it as the only witness able to exonerate that revered companion who trusted and comforted me. My evidence in cour
t would be tainted. The evidence of my diary after my own death will ring true.
What a record of futility! The preservation of the future herd led me to Magma; the preservation of the present herd led me to oppose rather than destroy. Can one be called intellect and the other conscience? If so, there is such irreconcilable conflict between them that the only winner can be the Unknown Purpose.
To that I appeal in the only way left to me. The sentence I give myself is death. I am the killer who slit up Vladimir, who would not even give Clotilde time to come down from the ladder. And Jim Ridge down there, waiting to be found? Well, we had no hope if he had lived so that can be justified. Mallant? Perhaps I might have left him to the dubious condemnation of this diary. But that is hypocrisy. I wanted revenge for Sir Frederick, and by God I had it!
‘Come out, Despard!’ they repeat. ‘We’ve got you.’
You haven’t. Either you have got something which has no existence or you are about to release it to a more perfect knowledge of that Paxos evening three and a half months ago.
I told them to wait till I had finished writing. Now I have. I must come out firing or they will not kill me. Never mind, you who reaches for me first! You will be shot through the shoulder with the last round in poor Clotilde’s automatic and you’ll get a medal for it. All I ask of you, unknown friend, or of you next to him, unknown friend of a friend, is to be angry and to shoot mercifully to kill.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1977 by Geoffrey Household
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
978-1-4532-9375-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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