Five Roundabouts to Heaven (22 page)

For a second he had glimpsed the young cat’s eyes, green fire in the light of his headlamps, and then it was in front of him.

Bartels didn’t run it over.

He might have done so, had he had time to think it all out, but he acted instinctively, as he was bound to do, in the only way in which he, Philip Bartels, could have been expected to act.

Bartels braked.

If there had not been any snow, it might have been all right. If the coach, approaching from the right, with its lighted interior, had been a few minutes earlier, or later, it might not have been so bad, either.

As the car swung in a circle, darted sideways, hit the
TURN LEFT
sign, he heard the screaming of the coach brakes, and saw it swerve ineffectually, and crash with its fender into his own car, and felt the stab of pain in his side. It was only then that he felt afraid.

Even then it was only for a second.

He saw it looming over him, and heard the crash, and felt the pain, and hazily noted the strange stillness which followed for a brief moment the noise of the impact.

Before he lost consciousness he heard himself murmur: “Beatrice,” and was faintly surprised.

Extract from a police report prepared by Inspector Macdonald, of the Metropolitan Police Force, and shown to me, Peter Harding, in confidence, at a later date:

Thus far, the police report was accurate. But the rest of it was inaccurate, on one particular, at least, which is why I said, at the beginning of this record of the affair, that one other person thought he knew all about the case, whereas in fact he didn’t. Inspector Macdonald thought he had it all tidied up in his file, in view of Bartels’ statement.

He was wrong.

T
here
was no daylight left now, but beyond the château a round harvest moon hung above the horizon, immense and golden, its rays dappling the path in the wood, the silent wood, where I had walked and laughed and loved in my youth.

I no longer wished to be alone.

I wanted company now, and lights, and talk, and maybe some hard liquor; not wine, with its gentle, mellowing effect, but something that worked fast, that would remove the gooseflesh that races over a man’s skin when he is alone in a wood with thoughts like mine, when the shadows and the trees merge into shapes that are not the shapes of men but of things to which one cannot easily put a name.

The fact is, I did not wish to look again at the end of the affair. I wished that I did not have to amend the end of the Inspector’s report. I would have liked the end of that report to have been the whole truth, instead of only part of the truth.

So far, I could raise arguments to prove that I had acted no worse than Bartels. Bartels had betrayed Beatrice, and I, in my turn, had betrayed Bartels. I had succeeded, and Bartels had failed, as he did all his life.

I could at least argue that, but for me, Lorna would not have changed her mind, Beatrice would have died and Bartels might have been hanged.

H
ad Bartels been a normally strong-looking fellow, I do not think I would have acted as I did, but he looked pathetic in that hospital bed, with the big, healthy detective sitting by the bedside. They had pulled the bed somewhat away from the wall, so that the detective sat discreetly behind the line of Bartels’ vision.

They had put a screen round his bed, too, and he lay there with his head and chest and left arm swathed in bandages.

He had, they told me, a fractured base of the skull, together with two broken ribs and considerable bruising and laceration of the head and right side.

There was a risk of haemorrhage of blood to the brain with fatal results, and he would be in danger for some days.

“He would not normally be allowed visitors,” said the ward sister, in a cool, tinny voice. “However, he seemed to be unable to settle down until he had seen you.” She looked at me disapprovingly and added: “You mustn’t stay more than a few minutes.”

I nodded, and walked down the ward to the bed where he lay.

He opened his eyes when I placed my hand on his, and smiled his wide, thin-lipped smile.

“This is a pretty pickle,” he whispered, and I saw the police officer lean forward, notebook in hand, to catch his words.

“Get better,” I said. “Then we’ll sort things out.”

“It’ll take some sorting out.”

His spectacles had been smashed in the accident, and he gazed up at me short-sightedly. For lack of anything better to say, I repeated: “Get better, first, Barty.”

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and I wondered if he had fallen asleep. But he opened them after a while and said:

“I wonder if Beatrice will ever understand. I don’t suppose so. Poor Beatrice.”

I sought round desperately for something to say to distract his thoughts from Beatrice.

“I’m afraid your car’s a bit of a mess,” I said inanely.

He smiled faintly. “So am I.”

“You’ll be all right,” I said.

He closed his eyes again, and his mind reverted to Beatrice, and when he spoke his voice was so low that I joined the police officer in bending down to catch his words.

“Tell her, try to explain to her, that I only acted out of pity. Didn’t want her to suffer, you know.” He sighed and added: “Pity. Bad thing, pity. Much better to be normal, like you, Pete.”

“I’ll tell her,” I answered. “I’ll tell her, Barty. She’ll understand. She’s a very intelligent girl.”

He nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Very intelligent girl, Pete. Tell her what I said.”

He remained quiet for fully half a minute, then sighed again, and added: “But I doubt if she will understand. It’s a bit too much to ask.”

I saw the police officer scribbling in his notebook.

A nurse put her head round the door, and made signs that I would have to leave. I put my hand on his again.

“I must go now, Barty. You’ve got to have plenty of rest.”

He suddenly opened his eyes, then, and stared at me.

To my horror I realized that they were filled with fear, and his pallor had been transformed by a sudden rush of blood to his face. I had seen him look like that before.

There was the same wild look as I had seen when they threw the rug over his head at the picnic at the château; the same terrified look which Mary, the American girl, must have seen the evening when we had locked them both into a bedroom; and the same piteous, frightened expression as I had seen, in those almost forgotten schooldays, when we had pushed him under the vaulting horse in the gymnasium during the singing lessons.

But I didn’t think of all that then. I only saw the terror. I didn’t know what was the matter. I didn’t think he was afraid of dying, and I was right, but I couldn’t guess what was in his mind. I increased my pressure on his hand.

“What’s up, Barty?” I asked, softly.

“Locked doors,” he whispered.

I looked round. There were no locked doors, as far as I could see. There was only a screen round the bed, and even then there was a wide gap between the screen and the wall.

“They won’t understand,” he murmured.

“Who won’t?”

He shook his head, while the fear burned and blazed in his eyes, and I felt his hand grow damp and hot in mine.

“They’ll put me in prison, Pete.”

I saw the police officer begin to scribble again in his notebook. “Locked doors, and pitch darkness at night. I can’t stand it, Pete. I’d rather die than that.”

I saw the police officer bending nearer, anxious not to miss a word. I felt Bartels’ hand beneath my own begin to clench and twist and pull at the bedclothes. I gripped it harder still, and stared at him groping for something to say.

As I searched in my mind for some words of comfort, I heard him murmur to me to bend closer. I put my head down, and he said:

“Put your ear against my lips, Pete.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the police officer draw as close as he could. But Bartels only said five words: “Altrapeine—please, Pete. Please, Pete.”

I raised my head, and caught the police officer’s eye, and saw the question forming on his lips.

“All right,” I said in a normal, loud voice. “All right, I’ll see what I can do.”

The fear slowly seeped from Bartels’ face. Now there was only a mute, sad appeal in his eyes. I got up, and picked up my hat.

“Tomorrow?” murmured Bartels.

“I’ll come and see you tomorrow, if you’re well enough,” I replied in the soothing tones one uses to sick people. “Now get some rest, Barty.”

I went out, round the screen, and had begun to walk down the ward, when I heard footsteps behind me, and felt a hand on my arm. I looked round and saw it was the police officer.

“May I have a word with you outside, sir?”

“If you wish.”

We walked to the door, and stopped in the passage outside the ward.

“I must ask you what he said to you, sir.”

He stood in front of me, tall and solidly built, healthily red in the face. His hair was cut very short above the ears, his brown eyes were alert and restless. They were the eyes of a person who is accustomed to watch the faces of others for reactions, for the telltale flicker of the eyes, the movement of the mouth which indicates dismay; the eyes of a man accustomed to dominate; eyes which did not waver, but nevertheless moved and roamed over the face of the person to whom he was talking. They were not exactly hostile, but neither were they sympathetic or friendly.

I thought, by way of contrast, of Bartels’ eyes, so full of fear, so filled with silent appeal. I had a swift mental vision of a host of other eyes, hard, implacable eyes gazing at Bartels in the years to come. Police officers’ eyes, warders’ eyes, newspapermen’s eyes in court, warders’ eyes again, fellow convicts’ eyes. Gazing at him as he panicked in his cell, gazing at him in the dock, and again, through the years, in his cell.

I think it was at that moment that I decided to do as Bartels wished.

“It was nothing to do with your investigation,” I answered, and made as if to pass him; but he stood solidly in my way.

“I see, sir.” He tapped his teeth with the chewed end of a pencil.

He made no move. “Well?” I said.

“I take it that in that case you would have no objection to telling me what he said, sir.”

Again I was conscious of his eyes, unbelieving and unyielding, roaming over my face. I react rather brusquely to that sort of thing.

“Actually, I would,” I said abruptly.

“May I ask why, sir?” Police officers always seem to call you “sir” a great deal. It doesn’t mean a thing.

“For personal reasons.” I saw his hard mouth tighten.

“There is an offence known as obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty.”

I laughed, then, at this bluff, and saw his eyes flinch.

“Who is obstructing whom at this moment?” He ignored the question.

“I take it, sir, that you decline to say what he told you, sir?”

We looked at each other for a full ten seconds, eye to eye, in silence. I sighed.

“All right, if you really insist. Do you?”

“It would be helpful, sir.”

The expression on his face relaxed. I could read his thoughts as though he had spoken them aloud: firmness, he was thinking, firmness—that’s what counts. They always come clean.

“He asked me to pray for him,” I said. “He asked me to go into a church and pray for him.”

I went into my darkroom, and stared at the row of bottles, and in particular at the altrapeine bottle. I knew, of course, little about the case, except that it was known that something of a poisonous nature had been placed in Beatrice’s medicine bottle, and that Bartels had apparently put it there. So much the Inspector had told me, edging round the subject in the way the police do when they are not certain of the reliability of the person they are questioning.

Now I could guess what the poison was. Later, when I had become very friendly with the Inspector, and read Bartels’ statement, I learnt where and how he bought it.

It was eight o’clock in the morning when the Inspector had called. He had taken his statement from Beatrice Bartels and he had then come to me. He had asked for the names of any of Bartels’ friends, and mine had headed the list.

I told him a great deal about Bartels, but nothing about Lorna Dickson. I guessed Bartels would not have mentioned her. I saw no reason why I should. Beatrice had not died. There was no call for society to revenge itself for a murder which never took place, or for Lorna to be involved.

Maybe, I was wrong, but that is the way I thought.

I saw the Inspector inching nearer to the subject of a mistress as a motive, and mentally stood back and admired his technique.

First, he asked what particular friends might help to throw any light on the affair. I told him that I did not think any of Bartels’ friends could.

Then he said that doubtless there would be one or two broken hearts in the province if Bartels died, and when I looked at him and pretended to seem puzzled, he said slyly: “Well, you know what they say about commercial travellers, sir. Not that I’d be one to frown on a little innocent larking now and again.”

When that failed, he asked point blank if Bartels had any liaison outside the bonds of marriage. But I was ready for him by then.

“None, as far as I know,” I said, looking him full in the face. “None at all. I always considered him to be devoted to his wife.”

So after my visit to the hospital I stood gazing at the altrapeine bottle in the darkroom, pondering that which Bartels had planned. Although some time had elapsed, I still felt numbed by the shock of events. As yet they made little sense, because I had not yet understood the fatal weakness which was his downfall.

I saw a gentle, kindly little man who had plotted a ruthless, diabolical murder, and the apparent and appalling contradiction bewildered me.

Only later was I able to realize that, in fact, there was no contradiction at all; that it was pity, kindness, and humanity which drove Bartels to his doom. Without those three virtues, without their unbalancing effect upon a sensitive and delicate mind, there would have been no attempted murder.

At that time, however, it all seemed so unnecessary.

I could see no reason why he could not just leave Beatrice; those of us who are in the hotel business are inclined to regard such actions as unfortunate, perhaps, but commonplace enough.

I had not had time, either, to look back over the years and see how the lack of love in his youth had made him so crave it in later years that he was prepared to kill to win it.

After a while, I went out of the darkroom, but I did not take the poison bottle with me. I went out of my flat, and along to the reference room of the public library, and there made certain researches among the medical books.

In the end, I came to the same conclusion about altrapeine as that at which Bartels had arrived. I went back to the flat, and heated up some of the coffee left over from breakfast, and took it into the drawing room.

I drank three cups of coffee, black and very sweet, one after the other, sipping them slowly, and trying to erase certain pictures from my mind, but at the end of the third cup, I knew that I would not succeed.