There is nothing to do. I walk endlessly. Everyone seems to have disappeared: only occasionally another human being pads past in the fog, muffled to the eyes, a stranger. The little restaurant round the corner where I often go for lunch is usually empty, the student waiters have disappeared and only the close-faced husband and wife who own it are there. And the cats. There are always cats in Venice.
I begin to think it may be lucky that I could not keep my room after November the first. Apparently the German woman closes down then and goes for a holiday, to her mother in Munich, she told me. She’s an odd woman. She seems to have no family here, or friends. She has struck up some sort of relationship with the two boys. They order her about in a rather disagreeable manner: they are really awfully arrogant, but she seems to like it. There is something slavish in her attitude as she fetches and carries for them.
They have the room next to mine. Last night I was awake until about five. I had taken my last sleeping pill, and when it didn’t work I began to panic. I walked up and down, tried to read, did exercises. It was no good. All the agony came back. I am so bloody jealous. It is hardly sane. I hate it, but what can I do? Here she is at that party, leaning against the door – how pleased with her own looks – and Jacob walking towards her, unsteadily because he is a bit drunk, and I recognize with a shock that the curve of her cheek and chin is rather like mine – and I am lost in the endless torture of imagining them together, of remembering his love-making and imagining him making love to her. He said, ‘She’s awfully sweet really, you’d like her.’ Unimaginable cruelty.
At some stage in the night I opened my window and leaned out into the fog. The water of the little canal below slopped gently against its walls. Someone laughed, quite close to me. I shut the window quickly and leant against the wall for a moment. The laugh had come from the next room and had sounded so spiteful that I thought for a moment that the two boys must have been watching me and were laughing at my agony. It was half-past three. I had seen them go upstairs at about eleven. I listened, and could just hear a murmur of voices, then a series of bumps. After a moment I opened the window again very slightly, but I could still only hear the voices without being able to make out what they were saying. Evidently it was not me they were interested in. And then I heard someone cry out ‘The King!’ in a harsh high voice. ‘The King! The King!’ Then the laugh again. Then silence. I shut the window.
I don’t know what the explanation was. They didn’t look in the least tired this morning, which is more than could be said for me. They were talking to Frau Engels when I came down, about the famous London murders again. It was not prostitutes apparently, but a respectable family in a respectable suburb who were found dead in their beds one morning, having all been murdered and mutilated during the night. It does seem extraordinary and horrible. They had no enemies. I imagine Jacob’s wife – but no, of course I don’t want her to be murdered – sometimes I could be half in love with her in a sort of way. Today I feel sick and tired. Lack of sleep gives me indigestion, my obsession makes me feel guilty: I must try to distract myself, but my will seems hopelessly weak.
I asked Frau Engels about the boys when they had gone.
‘They are charming,’ I said to start the conversation. ‘Are they on holiday?’
‘Yes.’ She did not seem particularly keen to talk, but I persisted.
‘What part of England do they come from?’ I asked.
‘They are from – what do you call it? – a home,’ she said.
‘What sort of home?’ I asked, startled.
‘They are from very distinguished parentage,’ she said portentously.
‘Oh, yes?’ I did not understand.
‘They have been supported in this home for orphans by their fathers who were both from high up in the English aristocracy, but who were not married with their mothers.’
‘I see. That sort of home. But how have they money? I mean, to buy those clothes and come for holidays in Venice?’
‘From their fathers, who gave them much money when they attained eighteen years.’
‘But do they know their fathers then?’
‘They know, but they cannot tell.’
And then an elderly Italian couple who were staying in the pensione came up to ask whether it was not possible to stay after November 1st: their daughter was joining them and they hoped the weather might have improved by then.
‘It is impossible, I am so very sorry, but on the first I must everything close.’ She gave her remote correct smile, and I walked out into the fog.
In order to reach the vaporetto stop I had to cross the small canal which ran beside the pensione, and as I turned across the little humped bridge, the boys materialized out of the fog and crossed with me, one on each side. They did not speak at first, and nor did I. Finally Sig said, in a mild conversational tone, ‘What were you talking to the old bag about?’
‘Frau Engels?’ I said. ‘We were talking about you as a matter of fact.’
‘What did she say?’ asked Sig.
‘She said she believed you were both orphans.’
They laughed. Sig’s is the high, hard laugh, the other is a kind of low giggle, rather sexy: it struck me that neither sounded genuinely amused.
‘She’s just a stupid old bag,’ said Sig. ‘She fancies Poney, that’s all.’
‘She’d like to eat me,’ said Poney, in a bored sort of way.
‘Hardly the verb I’d have chosen,’ said Sig. They talk in a semi-facetious, slangy, private joke sort of way which is often awkward. I suppose that may be how schoolboys talk, I don’t know.
‘Aren’t you orphans then?’ I asked.
‘We come from respectable middle-class backgrounds,’ said Sig. ‘We live in Epping, my dear, that respectable middle-class suburb where you may be chopped into little pieces as you lie a-sleeping.’
‘We were so frightened we ran away from home,’ said Poney in a baby voice. ‘We were afraid of the nasty man with the chopper. We suck our thumbs you see.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Sig as I slowed down.
‘I am going to look at the pictures here,’ I said, turning towards the Accademia. ‘There’s nothing much else to do in the fog is there?’
‘Do you know one of these palaces is for sale?’ said Sig.
‘I had heard it was.’
‘We’re thinking of buying it,’ said Sig casually.
‘But you must be millionaires! ’
‘Oh, we’re all right for money,’ said Sig. ‘Cheery-bye.’ They glided away into the fog.
I can’t make up my mind whether they are ridiculous or offensive. They would be ridiculous but for something peculiar about their partnership. I don’t know whether it is a homosexual relationship or not: it might be that that makes them seem so close, so set apart from the common run of men.
October 15
I cannot sleep. And the fog is still here.
Last night two girls appeared for dinner at the pensione. The boys were out, but everyone else was there, that is to say, the elderly Italian couple, the two moderately attractive French sisters and the daughter of one of them, the solitary Italian who looks like some sort of minor businessman, and myself. That, with the boys, is the sum of the guests at the moment. An Italian brother and sister who live next door do the waiting, and Frau Engels herself cooks.
The girls were nice-looking and well dressed. They spoke with American accents. One was dark and curly-haired, the other wore glasses but had quite good features. They both wore little hats. They immediately drew attention to themselves by being appallingly rude. They complained loudly of the dreary decor before they went in to dinner. At dinner they ordered the waiter about most disagreeably and soon sent for Frau Engels herself in order to complain of the food. It annoyed me intensely to see how she took it from them, padding backwards and forwards with a cringing anxiety to please, quite different from her usual frosty attitude towards her guests.
I finished my meal as qui
ckly as I could and went upstairs. I had not been there long before I heard someone going into the next room, and the sound of voices and laughter. I decided to go and read downstairs. As I passed the boys’ room the door opened. Frau Engels came out laughing and carrying some clothes. Behind her I caught a glimpse of Sig, still half-dressed, in women’s clothes.
As soon as I saw it I wondered why I had not realized before that the American girls were in fact Sig and Poney. All the same the transformation had been alarmingly convincing. I didn’t really like it. I didn’t like the way they had abused her and she had cringed. I didn’t like their pleasure in having deceived us all. There was no question of throwing off the disguise and allowing us to share the joke: there they were in the bedroom laughing at us. I don’t like them. I don’t know why I ever thought they were nice boys. I think there is something unpleasant about them.
October 18
Sinus trouble back at its very worst. A constant headache that nothing seems to cure. I don’t know why I don’t leave. My will seems to have been weakened by the lowering insinuations of the soggy fog: why doesn’t it go? I wander and wander, waiting for the fog to clear and the sun to come out. I have nothing in my head, no thought, no will, nothing. Except pain. I wander, and lean over bridges, and watch the slack water. Pain pain go away, Come again another day. Immeasurable pain, Last night my dreaming soul was king again.
I hate those boys. They shouted again last night, something about the king. I think they have orgies up there night after night. There’s something suspicious about the way they are always so clean. Only guilty people wash as much as they do.
Also they are morbid. They came in this morning as I was drinking coffee in the dreary little sitting-room, and sat down beside me. They were carrying newspapers.
‘Haven’t caught him yet, I see,’ said Sig.
‘Caught who?’ I asked.
‘This murderer.’
‘Oh.’
‘Aren’t you interested then?’ asked Poney.
‘Not particularly,’ I said.
‘Don’t you think there’s something about it though?’ said Poney encouragingly. ‘I mean these people lying there safe in their snug little beds in their snug little house, and suddenly bash, bash, they’re all in pieces?’ He gave his rather charming boyish smile. ‘Not interesting?’
I smiled feebly, too tired to talk to them.
Sig laughed his nasty laugh and Poney’s smile widened.
‘That’ll teach them, won’t it?’ he said.
‘Teach them what?’ I said.
‘Teach them who’s master,’ said Poney quietly.
‘He who wields the axe,’ said Sig.
‘Ah,’ said Poney. ‘He must have been a great man all right, that killer, don’t you think so?’
‘No,’ I said flatly.
‘Don’t you like us?’ said Sig suddenly.
‘Good Heavens I – I hardly know you,’ I said, embarrassed.
‘At first you seemed to like us,’ Sig went on, watching me intently. ‘Now you don’t seem so friendly. Do we offend you?’
‘No, no, of course not.’
‘But there is something about us you find yourself resenting? Have you ever tried hypnosis? For your headaches I mean?’
‘How did you know I have headaches.’
‘I can see. Have you ever been hypnotized?’ He was staring at me much too hard.
‘No,’ I said.
‘I should think you’d be a bad subject,’ he said, leaning back in his chair.
‘Sig could do it,’ said Poney confidently.
‘I could. But no one else. She’d withstand anyone else. What is it about us that annoys you?’
‘I think you’re talking nonsense. I’m not annoyed by you.’
He was leaning forward again. ‘Is it that you feel the power coming from us?’
‘Power?’
‘That you feel we’re in some way set apart.’
‘You seem to feel that yourselves. I had noticed that.’
‘Do you know what sets us apart?’ said Sig very quietly. His gaze had become unbearably intense by now. ‘Do you know what it is? Our virtue.’
A moment’s peculiar silence. And then they both noticeably relaxed, and laughed briefly, and looked like two prankish schoolboys.
I can’t make them out.
October 21
A horrible day.
It started well. The fog had cleared and the sun was shining. Everything seemed to have changed. My headache was no better, but I felt calmer, convalescent almost. I took the vaporetto to San Marco and sat in the Piazza to have some coffee. The place was quite crowded; everyone seemed to have gathered there to see Venice reborn.
I saw the boys moving in my direction, and sat back behind my paper hoping they would pass: but they had seen me, and paused, though they did not sit down.
‘Got them yet?’ Poney asked, gesturing slightly towards my paper.
‘Got what?’ I said.
‘The murderers.’
I wondered vaguely why he used the plural.
‘It doesn’t say so,’ I said. ‘Lovely morning, isn’t it?’
‘More like it, isn’t it?’ agreed Poney. ‘We’re off to that crooked old house agent again,’ and they walked off through the tables, neat, spruce, untouchable.
Then in the evening there was a question of moving some furniture. Frau Engels was making preparations for shutting up her house and wanted, for some reason, to move several pieces of furniture from downstairs up into one of the empty bedrooms. There were several chairs, three Viennese-looking cabinets, and a big mahogany cupboard. She asked the boys to help her. Seriously they removed their well-cut jackets, rolled up the sleeves of their impeccably clean white shirts, and set to work. They lifted the heavy furniture with no difficulty at all; and I saw the muscles in their arms. The two Frenchwomen and the daughter of one of them were coming in at the time, and were much impressed.
‘But how is it you do this?’ one of the Frenchwomen asked them. ‘You are weight-lifters?’
‘It’s nothing really,’ said Poney.
‘It’s a matter of training,’ said Sig, remotely.
‘But you do this training for what?’ she asked. ‘You are athletes?’
‘We just keep in training,’ said Sig.
‘You never know when it may come in useful,’ said Poney.
They went on with their work. The Frenchwomen passed them admiringly and went upstairs. The boys began showing off, to each other more than to anyone else.
Poney flexed his muscles and lifted a small chair, pretending it was a great weight.
‘The strong man,’ said Sig. ‘Nothing he can’t do.’
‘You’re not bad yourself,’ said Poney. ‘Come on, let’s see those muscles now.’
Sig lifted one of the little cabinets which really did look heavy. Poney put down his chair and lifted the pair of cabinets. They stood side by side swaying slightly, then gently lowered the weights without faltering in their control.
‘Not bad, not bad,’ said Poney again.
‘You’re the best,’ said Sig, who was breathing rather heavily. ‘You’re the king of the weight-lifters.’
‘You could lift a heavy man.’
‘You could hold one down.’
‘You know your judo.’
‘You could lift a heavy axe.’
‘You could have gone into that house in Woodbridge Road. You could have dealt with that fat family.’
‘You could have wielded that axe.’
‘You could have taken it in turns with me.’
‘You could have smothered the parents.’
‘You could have despatched the two girls, wham, wham, all gone.’
‘You could have swung that axe.’
‘You could have swopped their heads . . .’ Here Poney became lost in his low giggle. Sig joined in. They bent over the furniture, laughing. Then each taking one side of one of the cabinets, they began to carry it t
owards the stairs.
‘Ah, we could have swung it,’ said Sig, calm after his laughter.
‘We could have swung it,’ echoed Poney in his deeper voice.
And suddenly I knew that they had.
They were murderers.
With absolute certainty and terror, I knew that they were murderers.
‘You are not well?’ Frau Engels was looking at me strangely.
‘Oh, yes, I – I have a bit of a headache.’ I did not dare to say more because I felt certain that she would think me mad. Besides, she was so strangely fascinated by the boys. Unless she knew already, and this was the secret of their relationship? Or perhaps she merely sensed in them a depth of evil which appealed to some perverted leaning of her own? She offered me aspirin. I refused, but asked if she had any back numbers of English papers. She led me to a cupboard and left me to look for what I wanted.
I soon found it. I read everything I could see about the Epping murders. A family of four, father, mother, and two daughters had been found dead and mutilated. The crime was described as being of appalling brutality. No one had seen or heard a thing. They had lived in a detached house in its own garden in a high-class suburban street. They had had no enemies. The father had worked in a City office, the two girls had been to a local school, were popular at the tennis club, and looked quite pretty from the photographs. There were interviews with the various young friends – no, Jean and Pam had no special boy-friends, everybody had liked them, Jean was on the committee of the tennis club, Pam was keener on riding, they were the most popular girls in the neighbourhood. The parents went to Church, the mother was a member of the local Women’s Institute. Here was something. And yet I was hardly surprised to read it. ‘Mrs Bray, Chairman of the local branch, said at her home in nearby Forest Avenue, that Mrs Anderson had been a regular attender at W.I. Meetings. “It hardly bears thinking of,” she said.’ Poney’s name was Bray. I had seen him writing it in the Register when they first arrived.
Before dinner I found them sitting in the tiny bar next to the dining-room drinking fruit juice (they never touch alcohol). It was an effort to go and sit beside them, but I made it.
The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Two Page 16
