by Paul Sussman
And as if all that weren’t enough, there were a hundred and one other little nuisances to contend with, such as trying to balance my ladder on the uneven cellar floor and the century’s worth of bric-a-brac I had to move around so as to give myself enough room to write in, and the earwigs that kept dropping off the ceiling on to my head (I detest earwigs), and the mouldy atmosphere, and the cold, and the fact that every couple of hours or so the light bulb would, for no reason at all, suddenly flicker off, leaving me cursing and shivering in pitch-darkness for a few moments before, equally suddenly, coming back on again.
Finally, I seem to have used more than double my ration of pens in the cellar (ten, as opposed to the four it normally takes to describe each murder). Given that I had 60 pens to start with – two boxes of 30 each – and have only used 26, I’ve still got plenty left, but I can’t help feeling annoyed. I don’t like the idea of my surroundings getting the better of me.
I started work in the cellar at around seven o’clock last night, and only finally emerged at 5 p.m. this evening. Twenty-two hours, by far the longest it’s taken me to describe any murder. I feel somehow soiled by the delay. And to think that yesterday I reckoned I could complete a room in under ten hours!
Now, however, thank God, I’m out, and the cellar is history. If it had a door I would shut and lock it. Since all the castle’s interior doors have, for some reason, been removed, however, I shall just have to imagine it has a door, and that the latter is firmly closed. I never intend to go down there again. Ever. Dreadful place. Damned earwigs!
The castle stairway, however, where I’m writing now, provides an altogether more cheerful working environment. It’s warm and airy and light, with pale sunbeams streaming through the windows and, if it’s a bit of a bugger balancing my ladder on the narrow stairs, I have, at least, been able to get my note back up to speed. I have now written my way up to the midway landing and turned the corner towards the first floor, which I should reach in a couple of columns’ time. Fingers crossed that henceforth things continue smoothly.
My one slight worry is how I’m going to fill the wall space between here and the first room on the upper floor (the study, as I call it, although why, I’ve no idea, since in 15 years I’ve barely set foot in it, let alone done any studying there). If I wasn’t doing my utmost to keep murders within rooms, of course, it wouldn’t really matter. I could start the next one right here and now. As it is, however, and despite the disaster of the cellar, I’m still determined to keep as closely as possible to my scheme for the note. As a result, Mr Popplethwaite can’t appear for some time yet, leaving me a considerable stretch of whiteness in which to twiddle my literary thumbs. Perhaps I could tell a few jokes, or write some poetry, or even do some drawings. It might be nice to enliven my death with a few illustrations.
First, however, I think I shall pop up to the dome for a glass of wine and a quick snooze. After all that boasting about how young and vigorous I feel I’ve suddenly come over rather tired. All that hassle in the cellar has clearly worn me down. I need to go up top and recharge. Perhaps I’ll have some curried mackerel fillets too. And a bit of Battenberg cake. See you in a while.
I’ve just had a rather disturbing experience. Two rather disturbing experiences, actually. The first of which was the dream.
I’d gone up to the dome with my wine and mackerel fillets and cake, but was so overcome with exhaustion that barely had I plonked myself down on my wickerwork chair than I fell into a deep slumber, head thrown back, arms dangling at my sides, my food and drink forgotten beside me. And as I slept I had a most curious and upsetting vision.
I was standing in a long, carpeted corridor, with doors off it to either side. There was a faint, rather noisome smell of urine and boiled cabbage, and from behind the doors came a sort of sucking, squelching sound, as though the rooms beyond were full of maggots and slugs and other damp, sticky, slimy creatures. I felt sick and scared and disorientated, and cowered against the wall. Then, however, a voice behind me said: ‘Are you all right, Mr Phoenix?’ and when I turned I saw it was Mrs Bunshop, except for some reason she was bald, and the skin on her scalp was all brown and shrivelled and shiny, like the scum on the surface of a cold cup of tea.
‘Are you all right, Mr Phoenix?’ she repeated.
‘Yes,’ I said, although my voice felt thick and muffled, as though I had cotton wool in my mouth. ‘Yes, thank you. Quite all right.’
‘You look pale. Perhaps you should sit down.’
‘No,’ I mumbled. And then with greater vehemence: ‘No!’
I started off down the corridor away from her. I tried to run, but I couldn’t get my legs to move properly and only went forward at a shuffle.
‘Shall I get the nurse, Mr Phoenix?’
‘No!’ I said. ‘No! Leave me alone.’
I continued down the corridor, past the doors with the sucking, squelching sounds behind them, Mrs Bunshop following in my wake, urine and cabbage in the air, until eventually I turned a corner and found myself in a large open area with bright windows down one side and row of armchairs lined up in front of the bright windows. There were people sitting in the armchairs, some of them familiar. Lord Slaggsby was there, and Walter, and the albino twins, and several other of my victims.
‘Hello, Mr Phoenix,’ they said. ‘How are you feeling today?’
‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘Stop it. You’re dead.’
By this point Mrs Bunshop had come up beside me.
‘I think you should call the nurse,’ she said.
‘I don’t need the nurse,’ I said, my voice rising. ‘I don’t need the fucking nurse.’
‘Get the nurse,’ said Mrs Bunshop.
‘I don’t fucking need the nurse. Fuck the nurse.’ By now I was screaming. ‘Stop this! Stop it! You’re dead! You’re all dead! This is some sort of fucking dream! I’ve killed you all! This is a nightmare!’
I felt hands taking my arms. I struggled, hitting out feebly, but more hands took me round the waist and the legs and the neck. There were hands everywhere and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breathe and everywhere stank of piss and boiled cabbage and this horrible slurping sucking squelching sound, and there were faces all around, and I started to cry and call out for Emily.
‘I want Emily!’ I whimpered. ‘I want Emily.’
‘Now, now, Mr Phoenix,’ said a voice. ‘Now, now.’
And that’s when I woke up, my pyjamas drenched in sweat, even though it was quite cold up on the roof.
‘Christ,’ I mumbled. ‘Christ.’
I fumbled for my cigarettes, lit one and took a deep drag, shaken. My hands were trembling, and although it was a clear moonlit night there were still deep inky shadows in the corners of the roof which seemed to me full of menace. I swigged from my bottle of wine.
‘Christ,’ I repeated. ‘Jesus Christ.’
Never before have my victims appeared in my dreams. I have committed the most appalling crimes, yet always slept untroubled. Now, however, a whole group of them had popped up, unbidden, to torment me in my slumber. I was being harassed by ghouls. Terrorized by stiffs. And I didn’t like it. Dreams, after all, can’t be regulated. Not like memory, where you have a degree of control over the images in your head. In dreams, the images have the upper hand. You’re at their mercy. They can do what they want to you. Exact their revenge. I shuddered, envisaging a succession of visitations over the final few days of my life, each more disturbing than the last, culminating in something truly gut-wrenching like a sex scene with Mrs Bunshop, or a sodomy tableau with the Brain brothers, their giant albino dream dicks pounding into my aged backside whilst I dream-screamed for mercy. I extinguished my cigarette half smoked and immediately lit up another one.
‘God help me,’ I muttered. ‘I’m going mad.’
I smoked and drank and muttered for almost two hours, telling myself over and over again it was just a dream and nothing to worry about whilst all the while making damned sure I didn’t go back to sleep in
case Mrs Bunshop and the others were waiting back there to hijack my slumber. Eventually, after I’d emptied the bottle and raised a small hillock of fag butts at my feet, I managed to calm myself to the point where I’d actually started to see the amusing side. Then, however, the knocking started.
After the peace and quiet of yesterday, I’d assumed, hoped, that whoever it was who had been banging on my door and throwing stones at me – if, indeed, it was one and the same person – had decided to abandon their tricks and leave me alone. Now, however, the knocker was crashing against the front door like a hammer on an anvil, the whole castle shivering at the force of the blows. Boom! Boom! Boom! I could feel the vibrations purring up through my feet.
I sat still for a moment, frozen, and then jumped from the dome, ran to the westward battlements – damn nearly tripping over one of the dome rails in my hurry to get there – and looked down into the shadows beneath. It was too dark to make out anything clearly, but I could definitely see a vague figure standing below on the doorstep, arm raised to the knocker, swinging it furiously up and down against the woodwork. Boom! Boom! Boom!
‘What do you want?’ I cried. ‘Who are you?’
The knocking stopped abruptly and the figure stood still.
‘I can see you,’ I shouted. ‘I can see exactly where you are! Why are you knocking on my door? And throwing stones at me? I’m an old man!’
The figure did nothing, just stayed exactly where he (or she) was, hidden in the shadows. We remained thus for what seemed like several minutes, silent, my enemy not daring to move lest I should see him, me not daring to move lest in averting my gaze I gave him a chance to escape. The stalemate was only broken when the moon passed behind a small cloud and, in the brief moment of deeper darkness that followed, the person beneath gave one more loud bang on the door and scampered off into the night.
‘Leave me alone!’ I screamed after him, my voice echoing over hills like the cry of a madman. ‘Leave me alone to die, why can’t you!’
There was only silence, however. I can’t be certain, but I think my tormentor might be a child.
So that’s what’s been happening this evening. And very upsetting it’s all been too. I feel raw and exposed, like a tortoise that’s been ripped out of its shell. I need to get back into my note. I need to hide in the forest of words.
The one good thing to come out of it all is that it’s furnished me with sufficient material to fill the remaining space between the top of the stairwell and the doorway to the study. You may recall that earlier I was agonizing over what to do with these walls. Now, thanks to the disturbing events of the last couple of hours, it’s no longer a problem. I have arrived at my destination with words to spare, and am at this very moment writing down the left-hand side of the doorframe that at one point I thought I’d never reach. My writing is, admittedly, the largest it’s yet been (each letter the size of a ripe plum), and the gaps between the lines somewhat wider than usual (about an inch as opposed to a centimetre). I have, nonetheless, got where I need to be, and it now only remains to draw an arrow from the bottom of this column round the door and up into the room beyond, and then I can get started on my next murder.
Which, after another glass of wine and a fag, is precisely what I intend to do.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MY LAST VICTIM prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, and the second of the three employers I’ve murdered (Luther being the first, Lord Slaggsby the third), was Mr M. Popplethwaite, manager of the high-street bank at which I worked throughout the Thirties.
My entry into the world of high-street banking, and subsequent murder of one of its most respected citizens, would most likely never have happened had I not become separated from Emily as we disembarked from the Scythia. I had gone down the gangplank ahead of her, legs rather wobbly after nine days pitching about on the Atlantic, intending to meet her on the quayside. As more and more people came off the ship, however, and more and more people pressed forward to meet them, I found myself irresistibly sucked away from the waterfront and backwards into the multitude. I thought I caught a glimpse of her disembarking, gold hair gleaming in the mellow autumn light, but she didn’t hear my shouts and by the time I’d pushed my way to the front of the crowd once more she was gone.
‘Emily!’ I cried. ‘Emily! Where are you?’
There was no reply, however, and after a fruitless hour of searching I was forced to admit defeat. Emily had disappeared once again and, not for the first time in my life, I was left entirely to my own devices. I had The Photo, 15 dollars cash and, of course, The Pill, the latter set into the face of a rather ostentatious gold ring which I’d purchased at the height of my Hollywood extravagances. These, together with a faded carpet bag and the clothes I was standing up in, comprised the sum total of my worldly possessions. It was 1931 (August) and I was on the dock fronts of Liverpool. I heaved a deep sigh. Back to the old drawing board.
My immediate concern – before I started worrying about accommodation, or work, or when I was next to see Emily – was to get a stiff whisky. And since to get a stiff whisky I needed money, and since, having been in America for the last 12 years, all my money was in dollars, and since dollars were useless now I was back in England, I decided my first task should be to exchange my American currency for some good old English pounds sterling. To this end I therefore inquired of a cloth-capped docker where I might find the nearest bank, and was duly directed by the latter up towards the centre of town.
It took me almost an hour of searching to track down the bank, and when I did finally run it to ground it was almost certainly not the one to which the docker had directed me in the first place. It sat plum in the middle of a broad thoroughfare of tall, soot-darkened sandstone buildings, hemmed in on one side by a large hotel and on the other by the head offices of a transatlantic shipping company.
There was little about Simsby’s of Castle Street (‘Excellence and Security since 1781!’) to suggest that it was actually a bank, and I most probably wouldn’t have noticed the fact had I not happened to stop right in front of it to take my bearings. It had an unobtrusive, four-storey façade peppered with unobtrusive windows. An unobtrusive sign announced the institution’s name and pedigree as unobtrusively as possible, whilst unobtrusive-looking people went in and out in a manner that could best be described as . . . unobtrusive. Everything about the place spoke of modesty, diffidence, reserve and sobriety, a fact that doubtless assured its customers of the absolute security of their finances, since no company of so evidently conservative a character would be likely to do anything outlandish, risky, rakish or charismatic with its clients’ investments. In only one respect did Simsby’s display a hint of idiosyncracy – it had a large revolving front door; the first such door, apparently, to be installed on commercial premises anywhere in Britain.
I duly passed through the latter, the revolving plates of glass creaking as I pushed them, and found myself in a large vestibule with a highly polished wooden floor and row of tills on the far side. To my right a wooden stairway led upwards to a first-floor landing, whilst to my left was arranged a series of wooden tables at which customers could sit whilst filling out the complex documentation of which modern banking appeared increasingly to consist. Above my head was suspended a gently rotating fan, large as an aeroplane propeller, whilst along the walls were hung sepia-tinged photographs of various ocean liners, the owners of which, I later discovered, were amongst the bank’s most important customers. The place smelt, if such a smell exists, of complete financial security.
It was by now just short of midday, and there was a considerable press of people waiting to be served. Since my legs were aching somewhat, and noticing a couple of comfortable-looking chairs placed against the wall just to the right of the stairway, I decided to rest for a moment before joining one of the queues before the tills. Barely had I plonked myself down, however, when a door beside me flew open and a young, rather dejected-looking man in an oversized, double-breasted suit walked
out past me and exited the bank.
‘Next!’ came a loud voice from beyond the door.
I looked around the vestibule, but no one seemed to have noticed the command and, thinking that maybe this was an opportunity to jump the queue and transact my business that bit quicker, I got to my feet and walked into the room from which the young man had just emerged. The door had the largest, shiniest brass handle I have ever seen, and carried the inscription ‘M. Popplethwaite, Manager’ upon it in tall gold lettering.
‘Close the door and sit down then,’ commanded Mr M. Popplethwaite – for such I took him to be – a brilliantined, near-spherical figure wedged behind a tennis-court-sized desk at the far end of the room. He had plump, roseate cheeks, a waxed moustache and a chin that segued into his chest with no evident join between the two. He wore a dark suit, a bow tie and had small round spectacles behind which his eyes darted to and fro like goldfish in a bowl. Behind him was a large bookcase in which were arranged rows of bound copies of the Bankers’ Journal and Lloyds Weekly Shipping Index.
‘Sit down, young man,’ he repeated, indicating a chair before his desk. ‘Come, come, let’s not dawdle. Dawdling wastes time, time is money and money’s what makes the world go around. Speed and organization, that’s what we like at Simsby’s. We’ve been speedy and organized since 1781, and will continue to be so as long as I have anything to do with it. Sit down, I say.’
