Trial and Error (13 page)

“Did she ask you to be friends with her?” Mr Todhunter interrupted.

“Yes, I believe she did. Why?”

“Did she ask you to be just simple ordinary friends, without any boring complications?” pursued Mr Todhunter with interest. “Did she say she believed you were the person she'd been looking for all her life and thought she'd never find?”

“As a matter of fact she did. Why?”

Mr Todhunter cackled suddenly. Then, remembering the solemnity of the occasion, cut off the cackle in mid-note and apologised instead.

“Nothing, nothing. I beg your pardon. Go on, please.”

Farroway, looking for the moment a little uncertain, continued his saga.

“Well, that's how it began. When I say ‘it' I mean a kind of visual obsession. After that, whatever I was doing, I saw her all the time. It was extraordinary. I just
saw
her. There was no longing nor passion nor anything like that. Certainly no desire.' Farroway paused and slowly stubbed out his cigarette. “But I couldn't shake off my visual memory of Jean. It held on day after day, till I became quite alarmed and began worrying. After a week of worrying I rang her up and called on her. Then I called again and again. Jean didn't seem to mind. I was terrified of boring her, but she always seemed really pleased to see me. After the third call I knew what the matter was: I wanted that woman more than I had wanted anything else in my life. The visual obsession had become a definitely physical one—ordinary, if you like.

“At the risk,” said Farroway slowly, “of appearing a still worse cad, I have to tell you that Jean raised no particular objections. At the positive certainty of seeming to you a cad quite unspeakable, I have to add that she questioned me minutely first about my financial position; and my financial position, at that time, was thoroughly satisfactory. I can't help it. I know what Jean is, and it won't make her any different if I smooth over certain bumps in her spiritual make-up. It amuses me, too, if you like, to voice the precise truth about her just for once.”

“Of course,” said Mr Todhunter uncomfortably. Mr Todhunter, helpless devotee of truth as he was, yet found himself sufficiently human to be discomposed by it on the lips of others.

“And that's how our liaison began,” Farroway continued, taking not the least notice of Mr Todhunter's acquiescence or his discomposure. “ ‘Liaison.' A good, important word, that. It gives me pleasure to apply it to myself. But there's no other. An
affaire
with Jean Norwood deserves the term, or at any rate some Gallic euphemism. ‘Affair' is too banal altogether.

“Well, I had no scruples. I said to myself, it was the best way of ending the matter. It was the only way, I pretended, to end the matter. At the same time I knew I was lying to myself. For if I had been, before, the accolyte of desire, I was now utterly the slave of my own mastership. Yes, it was the possession of her that really enslaved me to her; completely, irrevocably. You find that a psychological contradiction? Believe me, my dear fellow, that is the basis of all genuine feeling of a man for a woman. The pre-possession instinct; that's just animal. But the post-possession . . . love, infatuation, call it what you will, it's what differentiates us from the animals. And I envy the animals. Because it isn't amusing. Not at all.

“Almost before I knew what had happened Jean had become the centre of my existence. That's a cant phrase, but I mean it. She was. Other human beings—my family, everyone—had shifted to the periphery. She wanted money to keep her play on a week or two longer, to break a record. (It was
The Amulet,
if you remember.) I gave it to her. She merely admired a car in a shop window. I bought it for her. Then she found that flat. I took it, in my own name, for her. I knew I was ruining myself. I knew I was despoiling my family. I didn't care. I couldn't work to replace the money I was spending on her. Still I didn't care.”

Farroway lit another cigarette, slowly, as if collecting his thoughts.

“You know the hackneyed dramatic situation. A girl wants to marry a young man. Her mother, with the best intentions, says she'll die rather than allow the girl to marry that particular young man. But she does marry him and everybody sympathises with her, even if the old lady actually dies of a broken heart. And why? Because love—sexual love—is above all other affections. That is an accepted axiom. But for some reason people don't apply it to love that arises after one's married. In that case the reasoning is different. People say then, ‘Ah no, he should have stifled it.' They say that because they haven't gone through it themselves. What if he can't stifle it? They don't take that into account. Whereas if they'd gone through it themselves, they'd know that love—or lust or passion or obsession or infatuation or any damned unimportant name you like—simply can't be stifled when it's strong enough
.
There
is
such a thing as the fatal type. If you're lucky enough not to meet that type, your life goes on quietly, respectably, peacefully. If you do, it goes to pieces. You're done for.”

As Farroway uttered this dictim in a flat, unimpassioned voice, Mr Todhunter could only nod. Having never met his own fatal type, Mr Todhunter could at least sympathise respectfully with the man who had, though the monologue was taking him far out of his own emotional depth.

“At first,” pursued Farroway in the same rather dreary voice, “I struggled with myself. One does, you know. I called myself a weakling. I told myself it was ridiculous that this thing should be happening to me, of all people. I blamed myself for being more feeble than all the others whom I had despised for becoming infatuated with a woman. Then I saw that the ideas of strength and weakness were inapplicable; they had no relation to the state I was in. How can I illustrate it? Well, suppose you decide when bathing to stay under water for ten minutes. Are you a weakling if you give up after the first minute because you have no oxygen left in you? No. You can't help it. The ideas of strength or weakness don't apply. And that was my case.

“Of course I knew only too well what all this meant to my family. And I'm not a wicked man. I did feel for them. But what could I do? To give Jean up was impossible—just as impossible as for the finest swimmer in the world to stay under water for more than a few minutes. Of course I was making them miserable. I knew that and hated it. But I was miserable too. Partly because I felt for them and partly through jealousy. I never knew I was jealous by nature—I never have been before—but with Jean I became an Othello. I knew it was stupid and sordid, but there again I couldn't help myself. I was almost afraid that someone or something would deprive me of the very oxygen I was breathing.

“And with Jean I had good reason for being jealous. For if she hasn't been unfaithful to me so far, she will be. She can't help it, poor girl. She can't help wanting men, not for themselves exactly, but for exercising her power over them. And she can't help wanting money. Oh, I've no illusions. Has she—how shall I put it?—offered you any encouragement yet?”

“Yes,” said Mr Todhunter.

Farroway nodded. “She knows I'm about squeezed dry. Poor Jean. She's just amoral, however much she wraps it up to herself and talks highfalutin nonsense about her art. There's no question of love. Jean simply never could love any man, because she loves only herself. She adores herself. It's an obsession with her. I don't suppose it's ever entered her mind to do anything for the sake of somebody else, because she can hardly conceive the existence of anybody else apart from her.

“You've heard of Sir James Bohum, the psychiatrist? Besides knowing his job, he's an extremely intelligent man. I met him once, at some dinner. Afterwards I got him to talk a little. I remember him saying that sex is the region least accessible to examination. We're beginning to know quite a lot about the hidden motives for our actions; but when it comes to sex we know less than paleolithic man did. The sexual choice in particular seems to have no reason and no explanation. Why does A lose his head and his reason over B? No one can say. It's merely a fact that has to be accepted without analysis or criticism. His love for C had a softening and ennobling effect on him; his love for B makes a madman of him.

“I told him my own theory of the fatal type, and he jumped at it. He said it looked like a chemical reaction. Taken by themselves, the two ingredients may be as harmless as you like, and they remain harmless in combination with all other substances. But mix the two together, and you get an explosion. With plenty of smoke and smell naturally. I asked him if it was possible to fight obsession, and he thought that the only way out was its sublimation into some other form—religion or something like that; but this can't be done deliberately; it must come of itself.

“And I know now that he's right. I can't do anything except wait. Perhaps a harebrained motorist will kill me. Perhaps Jean will have no more use for me and send me away. But as long as she still summons me, I shall go. On the telephone this morning I was really longing to say ‘No!' But I couldn't. I was powerless. Or, of course, the Other Man will come along. That's bound to happen soon, and I'm dreading it. Because it will mean drama. If only Jean would die . . . that would be the best thing. But no such luck. She isn't obliging enough to do that.

“I've often thought of killing her of course. Oh, you needn't look so startled, Todhunter,” said Farroway with a mirthless little laugh. “I suppose every man in violent love has meditated killing his beloved at one time or another. Usually over a trifle. But it wouldn't be a trifle in Jean's case. If ever there was a woman worth killing, it's she. Mind you, she's not wicked, in the sense that she doesn't actively wish to cause pain to others. But she's worse than wicked because she doesn't even notice the existence of those others. It's women of that kind—women and men—who are responsible for nine tenths of human suffering. Evil is rare. I'm inclined to think it's a pathological phenomenon. Indifference, that's what is terrible. . ..”

Mr Todhunter waited, but Farroway seemed to have finished.

“I beg your pardon,” he ventured, “but you said something about the telephone this morning. Do I understand that Miss Norwood rang you up and asked you to go round and see her?”

Farroway looked at him dully. “Yes. Why she always does if I stay away more than a day or two. Wants to know if I've forgotten all about her, and don't I love her any more, and all that sort of thing. The dog has to be kept on the lead, you see.”

“Yes, I see,” said Mr Todhunter. He did not add that what he saw was Miss Norwood's prudent intention to keep the one dog on its lead until the new one was safely leashed, in spite of all her promises to send it away for painless extermination.

He rubbed his bald head in some bewilderment. What he had just heard seemed to him the most complete expression of defeatism he had ever encountered. But it had been genuine. Whether one could struggle successfully against an infatuation or not, Mr Todhunter was cautiously not prepared to say, though he had an idea that it had been done. But Farroway obviously was a defeatist, and there was no struggle in him—except the physical struggle which might follow the advent of the Other Man. And what, in his present demented state of mind, he might do then, nobody could say.

3

Mr Todhunter drove back to Richmond in a bitter temper.

He had thought all that foolishness was behind him; he had never really liked the idea; now he positively detested and dreaded it. But conscience was too strong; now that the way had been so clearly shown him by which he might do a little good in the world before leaving it in a month or two's time, conscience would not allow him to shirk it. Cursing and swearing and exceedingly unhappy, Mr Todhunter faced the necessity of killing Miss Norwood just as soon as convenient.

CHAPTER VIII

Although he felt himself impelled to commit murder, Mr Todhunter saw no reason to advertise the fact. He thought of all those cousins and how distressed they would be to learn that there was a murderer in the family. Without being in the least ashamed of his intentions, Mr Todhunter yet felt that he owed it to the family to keep his deed as quiet as possible.

Somewhat at sea, therefore, Mr Todhunter expended a sum of money on the cheap editions of a great many detective stories in order to try to learn what was the best method of procedure in a case such as his. From these he gathered that so long as nobody saw you at the scene of the crime or near it and you left neither incriminating evidence of any sort nor fingerprints and had no possible motive for eliminating the victim you were absolutely certain to be caught in fiction but not so probably in real life.

Not altogether satisfied with this conclusion, Mr Todhunter expended a further sum on a number of works of popular criminology and, swallowing his horror of the semiliterate style in which the greater number seemed to be written, studied them diligently. From these it appeared that the most successful practitioners of the art of murder (that is to say, those who have blundered far enough as to allow themselves to be suspected in the end but had yet two or three previous and perfectly safe killings to their credit) were those who followed the method of disposing of the body, preferably through fire. This, however, Mr Todhunter had no intention of doing. To kill, as mercifully as possible, and then to get away with all speed was his hope. Certainly he was going to have nothing to do with the corpse once it was dead. It was therefore to the accounts of swift, silent killings, with subsequent lack of all means of identification, that he paid the closest attention.

And by degrees, almost to his regret and certainly to his fascinated horror, there began to form in Mr Todhunter's mind as the summer drew on the first glimmerings of a plan.

The first essential of this plan was that Mr Todhunter should make himself familiar not only with Miss Norwood's Richmond home, but also with her habits when staying there; and this without rousing suspicion or allowing any third person to remember later that such enquiries had been made. After duly considering this problem Mr Todhunter decided that his best informant would be Miss Norwood herself. On the other hand, he did not wish to have anything more to do with Miss Norwood officially, so that the connection between them should appear afterwards of the slightest. It seemed to him therefore that his best plan would be somehow to waylay Miss Norwood in the open, if possible when she was out walking, stroll beside her for a few minutes and ask his question and then depart with no witness to the encounter.

Feeling rather like the villian in a transpontine melodrama, Mr Todhunter duly lurked in the neighbourhood of Miss Norwood's flat at a time when she might be expected to have recovered from her rest and be on her way to the theatre for the evening performance. For two days he did not see her at all. On the third she emerged with Farroway and instantly entered a taxi with him, while Mr Todhunter turned hurriedly away; though not before he had been able to observe that Farroway's face was positively besotted with pleasure and that he looked like anything but a man who has just received his congé. On the fourth day Mr Todhunter's persistence was rewarded. Miss Norwood emerged alone and looked up and down the street as if for a taxi. At some risk to his aneurism, Mr Todhunter hurried towards her.

He was greeted by a brilliant smile and an eagerly outstretched hand.

“Mr Todhunter! I was beginning to believe you'd quite deserted me. You've been very naughty—very naughty indeed. Why haven't you rung me up about that box I promised you?” Miss Norwood, still holding Mr Todhunter's hand, pressed it in gentle reproach.

Mr Todhunter, finding this archness a little hard-to bear, tried to withdraw his hand, without success.

“Oh well, I thought you were going to ring me,” he mumbled.

“Dear me! And did you think I had nothing to do but bother you on the telephone all day? If you only knew how busy I am. All day long and every day. That's just like you great financiers, isn't it?”

“What is?” asked the great financier.

“Why, thinking that no one is ever busy but yourselves. Still,” relented Miss Norwood, “as you were coming to call on me at last, I suppose I must forgive you. But isn't it too bad I'm going straight to the theatre. If you wanted me to dine, I'm afraid it's out of the question.”

With a manful effort Mr Todhunter snatched away his hand. Anxiety that someone might see them lingering thus on Miss Norwood's doorstep caused him to lose his head a little.

“No,” he blurted out. “I'm dining at home. I just happened to be passing.”

For a moment Miss Norwood looked disconcerted. Then she burst into a peal of laughter, which may or may not have sounded a little forced.

“Oh, you are refreshing. That's what I like about you. You're different. Most men would have jumped at the chance of saying they were coming to call on me, you know.”

“Would they?” said Mr Todhunter obtusely. “Why?”

Miss Norwood's huge eyes narrowed slightly. “Why, because . . . oh, never mind why, if you can't see. Well, I mustn't keep you, then, Mr Todhunter. Though perhaps if you aren't in a
very
great hurry, you could spare just a few seconds to call me a taxi?”

“I'm not in a hurry at all,” responded Mr Todhunter, more gallantly. “And I should be much honoured if you would allow me to escort you to the theatre.”

“I'm afraid,” said the lady coldly, “that would be a great bore for you?”

Mr Todhunter, suppressing a strong wish to shake her, summoned up a hypocritical smile. “I thought we were to be friends, Jean?” he asked, looking as fatuous as he could.

Miss Norwood melted instantly. “You still want to be? I was beginning to think . . . You know, Mr Todhunter, you
puzzle
me.”

“Do I?” Mr Todhunter, in a fever to be gone, began to edge nervously along the pavement. Miss Norwood was compelled to follow him. “Er—how is that?”

“Well, I can't quite make you out. The other day, after lunch, I thought we understood each other so well. But today ... you're
different.”

“Am I?” said Mr Todhunter, quickening his pace. “I don't feel different. That is to say—er—my admiration for you has not decreased in any way.”

Miss Norwood uttered another peal of laughter, causing Mr Todhunter to look round anxiously in case the attention of any passerby might have been attracted.

“No, no,” laughed Miss Norwood. “You mustn't try to pay compliments. That isn't your line at all. Your line is blunt, brutal candour. That's what sweeps us poor weak women off our feet, you know.”

“Is it?” Mr Todhunter removed his dreadful hat and surrepitiously passed a handkerchief over his pate. “Um . . . I didn't know. Er—you have a house in Richmond, haven't you?”

“Yes,” replied Miss Norwood, a little surprised. “Why?”

“I live in Richmond too. I thought,” said Mr Todhunter desperately, “as we lived in the same district, we might perhaps meet sometime.”

“I should adore to. Why don't you come to lunch with me on Sunday? Or supper, if you like?”

“On Sunday?” This did not suit Mr Todhunter's book at all, and he hurriedly sought for an excuse. “Er—no, I'm afraid I can't on
Sunday,
but . . . that is, where exactly is your house?”

“It's on the river. Too sweet. The garden runs right along the bank. People climb out of punts and picnic on the lawn. Everyone tells me I ought to have it fenced off, but I think one should be generous, don't you? I mean, if it gives people pleasure to come and picnic on my lawn, I feel I ought to let them; so long as they don't do any actual
damage.
I ought to warn you, I'm quite a Communist. Are you terribly shocked?”

“Not at all. I'm a bit of a Communist myself,” replied Mr Todhunter, disconcertingly but quite unintentionally so. To tell the truth, Mr Todhunter was unaccustomed to escorting lovely and extremely smartly dressed women on foot about the West End of London, and the glances which every single passerby threw at his companion were upsetting him. To his nervousness it seemed that everyone must recognise her and that the contrast between her exquisiteness and his own uncouthness must be so marked as to remain in each person's memory, with subsequent identification in the witness box. And yet, as Mr Todhunter well knew from his reading, taxicab rides are as easily traced as footprints in the snow.

He tried to concentrate on his purpose.

“Er—so your house is on the river? Mine isn't. But I often go on the river. I expect I've passed it frequently. Where exactly is it?”

Miss Norwood described its precise location, and Mr Todhunter, who knew the river fairly well, was able to recognise it without difficulty. He said as much.

“You often go on the river?” commented Miss Norwood. “Why don't you pick me up one day? I adore being punted.”

“I should be charmed. Perhaps,” said Mr Todhunter slowly, for an idea had just occurred to him, “if I happened to see you sitting in the garden one evening. . . ?”

“I'm at the theatre every evening.”

“Oh yes, of course. I meant, one Sunday evening. . .”

“There's usually such a crowd on Sundays,” sighed Miss Norwood. She glanced at her escort, and the crestfallen expression on his face made her take a sudden decision. The man looked hot. It was a pity for Miss Norwood that she could not read behind the expression to the cause of it, or she would certainly not have altered certain arrangements of her own to fit in with her new admirer's obvious wish.

“But as a matter of fact,” she went on, “just as it happens, next Sunday evening I shall be quite alone. And when I'm alone in the evening, I always sit in my own special nook that I had made just to be alone in. It's a little corner with a few roses and lovely perfumed flowers, quite hidden from everywhere except a tiny view out over the river and backed by a long pergola that I had made out of the ruins of an old barn. It's just too, too perfect. So perhaps,” continued Miss Norwood archly, “if you
were
to find yourself at a loose end next Sunday evening, Mr Todhunter, and
happened
to be on the river and thought you
might
like to see me and have a talk in the moonlight . . . well, all you'd have to do would be to land on my lawn and walk up through the garden, keeping just a little left, till you came to my corner—that's all.”

“I hope very much,” said Mr Todhunter, masking his jubilation with an excessive solemnity, “that I shall be able to be there.”

Miss Norwood looked as if she would have liked something a little more definite than this, and for a moment a hard, calculating look came into her face. The next instant it had gone; but not before Mr Todhunter, who had happened to glance round at just that second, had had time to catch it.

“It would be nice,” said Miss Norwood wistfully, “to be alone for once, just with a friend—a real friend . . . to talk . . . to open one's heart for once. . .''

“Yes,” said Mr Todhunter, who privately thought that Miss Norwood was overdoing it a bit.

They were getting near the theatre now, and Mr Todhunter was becoming alarmed at the frequent admiring glances, and even salutes, to which his companion was becoming subjected. Indeed their walk was becoming something of a distinguished progress, and though Miss Norwood was evidently accustomed to this, Mr Todhunter was not. To all the glances she responded with a charming little bow, containing just the right mixture of friendliness and condescension, and for the salutes she added an exquisite smile.

Mr Todhunter gave way to panic.

“I'm sorry,” he said abruptly. “I—er—just forgotten, most important appointment. Er—deal involving millions—that is, thousands. Must apologise, Er—next Sunday, I hope. Goodbye.” And, turning suddenly on his heel, he left the most surprised lady in London on the pavement staring after his shambling retreat.

As he went Mr Todhunter became aware of a difference in the air around him. It was some moments before he realised that this was due to its freedom from the cloud of perfume in which Miss Norwood was apparently accustomed to envelope herself.

“Phew!” thought Mr Todhunter in high disgust. “The woman stinks.”

2

Mr Todhunter had never been given very much to the habit of self-analysis, but in the next few days he did scrutinise quite closely the state of his feelings, firstly towards Miss Norwood and secondly towards the idea of killing her.

Rather to his surprise, he found that he seemed to have no natural objection to this course. His objection, when it appeared, was a civilised one and concerned murder in general. The application of reason at once showed him that the elimination of Miss Norwood from a world in which she was such an infernal nuisance to so many people was an act for which there could be, philosophically, nothing but approval. Of course this elimination must be painless. It would have been very much against Mr Todhunter's principles to inflict pain on any living creature, even Miss Norwood. But death was not pain. Mr Todhunter had no views on the afterlife, contenting himself only with the hope that there might be one and that it might prove less unpleasant than this one so often seemed to one afflicted with bad health; and he therefore was unable to pronounce any opinion as to whether he might be despatching Miss Norwood to a plane on which she might have to expiate her sins committed on this one or just into blank nothingness. Nor, in fact, did he care.

His meditations showed him, however, that much though he might commend the removal of Miss Norwood as an academically admirable deed, he would certainly never have undertaken it himself, absolutely never, had not he felt that to stand aside would be so dangerous as to be quite unjustified, Indeed Mr Todhunter resented not a little the ill fortune which had caught him up into this net of circumstance so that this time he could hardly help himself. For it seemed to him more than likely that, if he did not get in and murder Miss Norwood first, either Farroway or Mrs Farroway would do it instead; and though Mrs Farroway seemed no fool, Farroway undoubtedly was and would give himself away as sure as fate, thus bringing further sorrow on his unhappy family.