Dip in the Pool

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On the morning of the third day, the sea calmed. Even the most delicate passengers – those who had not been seen around the ship since sailing time – emerged from their cabins and crept on to the sun deck where the deck steward gave them chairs and tucked rugs around their legs and left them lying in rows, their faces upturned to the pale, almost heatless January sun.

It had been moderately rough the first two days, and this sudden calm and the sense of comfort that it brought created a more genial atmosphere over the whole ship. By the time evening came, the passengers, with twelve hours of good weather behind them, were beginning to feel confident, and at eight o’clock that night the main dining-room was filled with people eating and drinking with the assured, complacent air of seasoned sailors.

The meal was not half over when the passengers became aware, by the slight friction between their bodies and the seats of their chairs, that the big ship had actually started rolling again. It was very gentle at first, just a slow, lazy leaning to one side, then to the other, but it was enough to cause a subtle, immediate change of mood over the whole room. A few of the passengers glanced up from their food, hesitating, waiting, almost listening for the next roll, smiling nervously, little secret glimmers of apprehension in their eyes. Some were completely unruffled, some were openly smug, a number of the smug ones making jokes about food and weather in order to torture the few who were beginning to suffer. The movement of the ship then became rapidly more and more violent, and only five or six minutes after the first roll had been noticed, she was swinging heavily from side to side, the passengers bracing themselves in their chairs, leaning against the pull as in a car cornering.

At last the really bad roll came, and Mr William Botibol, sitting at the purser’s table, saw his plate of poached turbot with hollandaise sauce sliding suddenly away from under his fork. There was a flutter of excitement, everybody reaching for plates and wineglasses. Mrs Renshaw, seated at the purser’s right, gave a little scream and clutched that gentleman’s arm.

‘Going to be a dirty night,’ the purser said, looking at Mrs Renshaw. ‘I think it’s blowing up for a very dirty night.’ There was just the faintest suggestion of relish in the way he said it.

A steward came hurrying up and sprinkled water on the table cloth between the plates. The excitement subsided. Most of the passengers continued with their meal. A small number, including Mrs Renshaw, got carefully to their feet and threaded their ways with a kind of concealed haste between the tables and through the doorway.

‘Well,’ the purser said, ‘there she goes.’ He glanced around with approval at the remainder of his flock who were sitting quiet, looking complacent, their faces reflecting openly that extraordinary pride that travellers seem to take in being recognized as ‘good sailors’.

When the eating was finished and the coffee had been served, Mr Botibol, who had been unusually grave and thoughtful since the rolling started, suddenly stood up and carried his cup of coffee around to Mrs Renshaw’s vacant place, next to the purser. He seated himself in her chair, then immediately leaned over and began to whisper urgently in the purser’s ear. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but could you tell me something, please?’

The purser, small and fat and red, bent forward to listen. ‘What’s the trouble, Mr Botibol?’

‘What I want to know is this.’ The man’s face was anxious and the purser was watching it. ‘What I want to know is will the captain already have made his estimate on the day’s run – you know, for the auction pool? I mean before it began to get rough like this?’

The purser, who had prepared himself to receive a personal confidence, smiled and leaned back in his seat to relax his full belly. ‘I should say so – yes,’ he answered. He didn’t bother to whisper his reply, although automatically he lowered his voice, as one does when answering a whisper.

‘About how long ago do you think he did it?’

‘Some time this afternoon. He usually does it in the afternoon.’

‘About what time?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Around four o’clock I should guess.’

‘Now tell me another thing. How does the captain decide which number it shall be? Does he take a lot of trouble over that?’

The purser looked at the anxious frowning face of Mr Botibol and he smiled, knowing quite well what the man was driving at. ‘Well, you see, the captain has a little conference with the navigating officer, and they study the weather and a lot of other things, and then they make their estimate.’

Mr Botibol nodded, pondering this answer for a moment. Then he said, ‘Do you think the captain knew there was bad weather coming today?’

‘I couldn’t tell you,’ the purser replied. He was looking into the small black eyes of the other man, seeing the two single little sparks of excitement dancing in their centres. ‘I really couldn’t tell you, Mr Botibol. I wouldn’t know.’

‘If this gets any worse it might be worth buying some of the low numbers. What do you think?’ The whispering was more urgent, more anxious now.

‘Perhaps it will,’ the purser said. ‘I doubt whether the old man allowed for a really rough night. It was pretty calm this afternoon when, he made his estimate.’

The others at the table had become silent and were trying to hear, watching the purser with that intent, half-cocked, listening look that you can see also at the race track when they are trying to overhear a trainer talking about his chance: the slightly open lips, the upstretched eyebrows, the head forward and cocked a little to one side – that desperately straining, half-hypnotized, listening look that comes to all of them when they are hearing something straight from the horse’s mouth.

‘Now suppose you were allowed to buy a number, which one would you choose today?’ Mr Botibol whispered.

‘I don’t know what the range is yet,’ the purser patiently answered. ‘They don’t announce the range till the auction starts after dinner. And I’m really not very good at it anyway. I’m only the purser, you know.

At that point Mr Botibol stood up. ‘Excuse me, all,’ he said, and he walked carefully away over the swaying floor between the other tables, and twice he had to catch hold of the back of a chair to steady himself against the ship’s roll.

‘The sun deck, please,’ he said to the elevator man.

The wind caught him full in the face as he stepped out on to the open deck. He staggered and grabbed hold of the rail and held on tight with both hands, and he stood there looking out over the darkening sea where the great waves were welling up high and white horses were riding against the wind with plumes of spray behind them as they went.

‘Pretty bad out there, wasn’t it, sir?’ the elevator man said on the way down.

Mr Botibol was combing his hair back into place with a small red comb. ‘Do you think we’ve slackened speed at all on account of the weather?’ he asked.

‘Oh my word yes, sir. We slackened off considerable since this started. You got to slacken off speed in weather like this or you’ll be throwing the passengers all over the ship.’

Down in the smoking-room people were already gathering for the auction. They were grouping themselves politely around the various tables, the men a little stiff in their dinner jackets, a little pink and overshaved and stiff beside their cool white-armed women. Mr Botibol took a chair close to the auctioneer’s table. He crossed his legs, folded his arms, and settled himself in his seat with the rather desperate air of a man who has made a tremendous decision and refuses to be frightened.

The pool, he was telling himself, would probable be around seven thousand dollars. That was almost exactly what it had been the last two days with the numbers selling for between three and four hundred apiece. Being a British ship they did it in pounds, but he liked to do his thinking in his own currency. Seven thousand dollars was plenty of money. My goodness, yes! And what he would do he would get them to pay him in hundred-dollar bills and he would take it ashore in the inside pocket of his jacket. No problem there. And right away, yes right away, he would buy a Lincoln convertible. He would pick it up on the way from the ship and drive it home just for the pleasure of seeing Ethel’s face when she came out the front door and looked at it. Wouldn’t that be something, to see Ethel’s face when he glided up to the door in a brand-new pale-green Lincoln convertible! Hello, Ethel, honey, he would say, speaking very casual. I just thought I’d get you a little present. I saw it in the window as I went by, so I thought of you and how you were always wanting one. You like it, honey? he would say. You like the colour? And then he would watch her face.

The auctioneer was standing up behind his table now, ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he shouted. ‘The captain has estimated the day’s run, ending midday tomorrow, at five hundred and fifteen miles. As usual we will take the ten numbers on either side of it to make up the range. That makes it five hundred and five to five hundred and twenty-five. And of course for those who think the true figure will be still father away, there’ll be “low field” and “high field” sold separately as well. Now, we’ll draw the first numbers out of the hat . . . here we are . . . five hundred and twelve?’

The room became quiet. The people sat still in their chairs, all eyes watching the auctioneer. There was a certain tension in the air, and as the bids got higher, the tension grew. This wasn’t a game or a joke; you could be sure of that by the way one man would look across at another who had raised his bid – smiling perhaps, but only the lips smiling, the eyes bright and absolutely cold.

Number five hundred and twelve was knocked down for one hundred and ten pounds. The next three or four numbers fetched roughly the same amount.

The ship was rolling heavily, and each time she went over, the wooden panelling on the walls creaked as if it were going to split. The passengers held on to the arms of their chairs, concentrating upon the auction. ‘Low field!’ the auctioneer called out. ‘The next number is low field.’

Mr Botibol sat up very straight and tense. He would wait, he had decided, until the others had finished bidding, then he would jump in and make the last bid. He had figured that there must be at least five hundred dollars in his account at the bank at home, probably nearer six. That was about two hundred pounds – over two hundred. This ticket wouldn’t fetch more than that.

‘As you all know,’ the auctioneer was saying, ‘low field covers every number below the smallest number in the range, in this case every number below five hundred and five. So, if you think this ship is going to cover less than five hundred and five miles in the twenty-four hours ending at noon tomorrow, you better get in and buy this number. So what am I bid?’

It went clear up to one hundred and thirty pounds. Others besides Mr Botibol seemed to have noticed that the weather was rough. One hundred and forty . . . fifty . . . There it stopped. The auctioneer raised his hammer.

‘Going at one hundred and fifty . . .’

‘Sixty!’ Mr Botibol called, and every face in the room turned and looked at him.

‘Seventy!’

‘Eighty! Mr Botibol called.

‘Ninety!’

‘Two hundred!’ Mr Botibol called. He wasn’t stopping now – not for anyone.

There was a pause.

‘Any advance on two hundred pounds?’

Sit still, he told himself. Sit absolutely still and don’t look up. It’s unlucky to look up. Hold your breath. No one’s going to bid you up so long as you hold your breath.

‘Going for two hundred pounds . . .’ The auctioneer had a pink bald head and there were little beads of sweat sparkling on top of it. ‘Going . . .’ Mr Botibol held his breath. ‘Going . . . Gone!’ The man banged the hammer on the table. Mr Botibol wrote out a cheque and handed it to the auctioneer’s assistant, then he settled back in his chair to wait for the finish. He did not want to go to bed before he knew how much there was in the pool.

They added it up after the last number had been sold and it came to twenty-one hundred-odd pounds. That was around six thousand dollars. Ninety per cent to go to the winner, ten percent to seamen’s charities. Ninety per cent of six thousand was five thousand four hundred. Well – that was enough. He could buy the Lincoln convertible and there would be something left over, too. With this gratifying thought he went off, happy and excited, to his cabin.

When Mr Botibol awoke the next morning he lay quite still for several minutes with his eyes shut, listening for the sound of the gale, waiting for the roll of the ship. There was no sound of any gale and the ship was not rolling. He jumped up and peered out of the porthole. The sea – Oh Jesus God – was smooth as glass, the great ship was moving through it fast, obviously making up for time lost during the night. Mr Botibol turned away and sat slowly down on the edge of his bunk. A fine electricity of fear was beginning to prickle under the skin of his stomach. He hadn’t a hope now. One of the higher numbers was certain to win it after this.

‘Oh, my God; he said aloud. ‘What shall I do?’

What, for example, would Ethel say? It was simply not possible to tell her that he had spent almost all of their two years’ savings on a ticket in the ship’s pool. Nor was it possible to keep the matter secret. To do that he would have to tell her to stop drawing cheques. And what about the monthly instalments on the television set and the Encyclopaedia Britannic? Already he could see the anger and contempt in the woman’s eyes, the blue becoming grey and the eyes themselves narrowing as they always did when there was anger in them.

‘Oh, my God. What shall I do?’

There was no point in pretending that he had the slightest chance now – not unless the goddam ship started to go backwards. They’d have to put her in reverse and go full speed astern and keep right on going if he was to have any chance of winning it now. Well, maybe he should ask the captain to do just that. Offer him ten per cent of the profits. Offer him more if he wanted it. Mr Botibol started to giggle. Then very suddenly he stopped, his eyes and mouth both opening wide in a kind of shocked surprise. For it was at this moment that the idea came. It hit him hard and quick, and he jumped up from his bed, terribly excited, ran over to the porthole and looked out again.

Well, he thought, why not? Why ever not? The sea was calm and he wouldn’t have any trouble keeping afloat until they picked him up. He had a vague feeling that someone had done this thing before, but that didn’t prevent him from doing it again. The ship would have to stop and lower a boat, and the boat would have to go back maybe half a mile to get him, and then it would have to return to the ship, the whole thing. An hour was about thirty miles. It would knock thirty miles off the day’s run. That would do it. ‘Low field’ would be sure to win it then. Just so long as he made certain someone saw him falling over; but that would be simple to arrange. And he’d better wear light clothes, something easy to swim in. Sports clothes, that was it. He would dress as though he were going up to play some deck tennis – just a shirt and a pair of shorts and tennis-shoes. And leave his watch behind. What was the time? Nine-fifteen. The sooner the better, then. Do it now and get it over with. Have to do it soon, because the time limit was midday.

Mr Botibol was both frightened and excited when he stepped out on to the sun deck in his sports clothes. His small body was wide at the hips, tapering upward to extremely narrow sloping shoulders, so that it resembled, in shape at any rate, a bollard. His white skinny legs were covered with black hairs, and he came cautiously out on deck, treading softly in his tennis-shoes. Nervously he looked around him. There was only one other person in sight, an elderly woman with very thick ankles and immense buttocks who was leaning over the rail staring at the sea. She was wearing a coat of Persian lamb and the collar was turned up so Mr Botibol couldn’t see her face.

He stood still, examining her from a distance. Yes, he told himself, she would probably do. She would probably give the alarm just as quickly as anyone else. But wait one minute, take your time, William Botibol, take your time. Remember what you told yourself a few minutes ago in the cabin when you were changing? You remember that?

The thought of leaping off a ship into the ocean a thousand miles from the nearest land had made Mr Botibol – a cautious man at the best of times – unusually advertent. He was by no means satisfied yet that this woman he saw before him was absolutely certain to give the alarm when he made his jump. In his opinion there were two possible reasons why she might fail him. Firstly, she might be deaf and blind. It was not very probable, but on the other hand it might be so, and why take a chance? All he had to do was check it by talking to her for a moment beforehand. Secondly – and this will demonstrate how suspicious the mind of a man can become when it is working through self-preservation and fear – secondly, it had occurred to him that the woman might herself be the owner of one of the high numbers in the pool and as such would have a sound financial reason for not wishing to stop the ship. Mr Botibol recalled that people had killed their fellows for far less than six thousand dollars. It was happening every day in the newspapers. So why take a chance on that either? Check on it first. Be sure of your facts. Find out about it by a little polite conversation. Then, provided that the woman appeared also to be a pleasant, kindly human being, the thing was a cinch and he could leap overboard with a light heart.

Mr Botibol advanced casually towards the woman and took up a position beside her, leaning on the rail. ‘Hullo,’ he said pleasantly.

She turned and smiled at him, a surprisingly lovely, almost a beautiful smile, although the face itself was very plain. ‘Hullo,’ she answered him.

Check, Mr Botibol told himself, on the first question. She is neither blind nor deaf. ‘Tell me,’ he said, coming straight to the point, ‘what did you think of the auction last night?’

‘Auction?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Auction? What auction?’

‘You know, that silly old thing they have in the lounge after dinner, selling numbers on the ship’s daily run. I just wondered what you thought about it.’

She shook her head, and again she smiled, a sweet and pleasant smile that had in it perhaps the trace of an apology. ‘I’m very lazy,’ she said. ‘I always go to bed early. I have my dinner in bed. It’s so restful to have dinner in bed.’

Mr Botibol smiled back at her and began to edge away. ‘Got to go and get my exercise now,’ he said. ‘Never miss my exercise in the morning. It was nice seeing you. Very nice seeing you . . .’

He retreated about ten paces, and the woman let him go without looking around.

Everything was now in order. The sea was calm, he was lightly dressed for swimming, there were almost certainly no man-eating sharks in this part of the Atlantic, and there was this pleasant kindly old woman to give the alarm. It was a question now only of whether the ship would be delayed long enough to swing the balance in his favour. Almost certainly it would. In any event, he could do a little to help in that direction himself. He could make a few difficulties about getting hauled up into the lifeboat. Swim around a bit, back away from them surreptitiously as they tried to come up close to fish him out. Every minute, every second gained would help him win. He began to move forward again to the rail, but now a new fear assailed him. Would he get caught in the propeller? He had heard about that happening to persons falling off the sides of big ships. But then, he wasn’t going to fall, he was going to jump, and that was a very different thing, provided he jumped out far enough he would be sure to clear the propeller.

Mr Botibol advanced slowly to a position at the rail about twenty yards away from the woman. She wasn’t looking at him now. So much the better. He didn’t want her watching him as he jumped off. So long as no one was watching he would be able to say afterwards that he had slipped and fallen by accident. He peered over the side of the ship. It was a long, long drop. Come to think of it now, he might easily hurt himself badly if he hit the water flat. Wasn’t there someone who once split his stomach open that way, doing a belly flop from a high dive? He must jump straight and land feet first. Go in like a knife. Yes, sir. The water seemed cold and deep and grey and it made him shiver to look at it. But it was now or never. Be a man, William Botibol, be a man. All right then . . . now . . . here goes . . .

He climbed up on to the wide wooden top-rail, stood there poised, balancing for three terrifying seconds, then he leaped – he leaped up and out as far as he could go and at the same time he shouted “Help!

‘Help! Help! he shouted as he fell. Then he hit the water and went under.

When the first shout for help sounded, the woman who was leaning on the rail started up and gave a little jump of surprise. She looked around quickly and saw sailing past her through the air this small man dressed in white shorts and tennis shoes, spreadeagled and shouting as he went. For a moment she looked as though she weren’t quite sure what she ought to do: throw a lifebelt, run away and give the alarm, or simply turn and yell. She drew back a pace from the rail and swung half around facing up to the bridge, and for this brief moment she remained motionless, tense, undecided. Then almost at once she seemed to relax, and she leaned forward far over the rail, staring at the water where it was turbulent in the ship’s wake. Soon a tiny round black head appeared in the foam, an arm was raised above it, once, twice, vigorously waving, and a small faraway voice was heard calling something that was difficult to understand. The woman leaned still farther over the rail, trying to keep the little bobbing black speck in sight, but soon, so very soon, it was such a long way away that she couldn’t even be sure it was there at all.

After a while another woman came out on deck. This one was bony and angular, and she wore horn-rimmed spectacles. She spotted the first woman and walked over to her, treading the deck in the deliberate, military fashion of all spinsters.

‘So there you are,’ she said.

The woman with the fat ankles turned and looked at her, but said nothing.

‘I’ve been searching for you,’ the bony one continued. ‘Searching all over.’

‘It’s very odd,’ the woman with the fat ankles said. ‘A man dived overboard just now, with his clothes on.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Oh yes. He said he wanted to get some exercise and he dived in and didn’t even bother to take his clothes off.’

‘You better come down now,’ the bony woman said. Her mouth had suddenly become firm, her whole face sharp and alert, and she spoke less kindly than before. ‘And don’t you ever go wandering about on deck alone like this again. You know quite well you’re meant to wait for me.’

‘Yes, Maggie,’ the woman with the fat ankles answered, and again she smiled, a tender, trusting smile, and she took the hand of the other one and allowed herself to be led away across the deck.

‘Such a nice man,’ she said. ‘He waved to me.’

My Lady Love, My Dove

My Lady Love, My Dove

It has been my habit for many years to take a nap after lunch. I settle myself in a chair in the living-room with a cushion behind my head and my feet up on a small square leather stool, and I read until I drop off.

On this Friday afternoon, I was in my chair and feeling as comfortable as ever with a book in my hands – an old favourite, Doubleday and Westwood’s The Genera of Diurnal Lepidoptera – when my wife, who has never been a silent lady, began to talk to me from the sofa opposite. ‘These two people’ she said, ‘what time are they coming?’

I made no answer, so she repeated the question, louder this time.

I told her politely that I didn’t know.

‘I don’t think I like them very much,’ she said. ‘Especially him.’

‘No dear, all right.’

‘Arthur. I said I don’t think I like them very much.’

I lowered my book and looked across at her lying with her feet up on the sofa, flipping over the pages of some fashion magazine. ‘We’ve only met them once,’ I said.

‘A dreadful man, really. Never stopped telling jokes, or stories, or something.’

‘I’m sure you’ll manage them very well, dear.’

‘And she’s pretty frightful, too. When do you think they’ll arrive?’

Somewhere around six o’clock, I guessed.

‘But don’t you think they’re awful?’ she asked, pointing at me with her finger.

‘Well . . .’

‘They’re too awful, they really are.’

‘We can hardly put them off now, Pamela.’

‘They’re absolutely the end,’ she said.

‘Then why did you ask them?’ The question slipped out before I could stop myself and I regretted it at once, for it is a rule with me never to provoke my wife if I can help it. There was a pause, and I watched her face, waiting for the answer – the big white face that to me was something so strange and fascinating there were occasions when I could hardly bring myself to look away from it. In the evenings sometimes – working on her embroidery, or painting those small intricate flower pictures – the face would tighten and glimmer with a subtle inward strength that was beautiful beyond words, and I would sit and stare at it minute after minute while pretending to read. Even now, at this moment, with that compressed acid look, the frowning forehead, the petulant curl of the nose, I had to admit that there was a majestic quality about this woman, something splendid, almost stately; and so tall she was, far taller than I – although today, in her fifty-first year, I think one would have to call her big rather than tall.

‘You know very well why I asked them,’ she answered sharply. ‘For bridge, that’s all. They play an absolutely first-class game, and for a decent stake.’ She glanced up and saw me watching her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’s about the way you feel too, isn’t it?’

‘Well, of course, I . . .’

‘Don’t be a fool, Arthur.’

‘The only time I met them I must say they did seem quite nice.’

‘So is the butcher.’

‘Now Pamela, dear – please. We don’t want any of that.’

‘Listen,’ she said, slapping down the magazine on her lap, ‘you saw the sort of people they were as well as I did. A pair of stupid climbers who think they can go anywhere just because they play good bridge.’

‘I’m sure you’re right dear, but what I don’t honestly understand is why –’

‘I keep telling you – so that for once we can get a decent game. I’m sick and tired of playing with rabbits. But I really can’t see why I should have these awful people in the house.’

‘Of course not, my dear, but isn’t it a little late now –’

‘Arthur?’

‘Yes?’

‘Why for God’s sake do you always argue with me. You know you disliked them as much as I did.’

‘I really don’t think you need worry, Pamela. After all, they seemed quite a nice well-mannered young couple.’

‘Arthur, don’t be pompous.’ She was looking at me hard with those wide grey eyes of hers, and to avoid them – they sometimes made me quite uncomfortable – I got up and walked over to the french windows that led into the garden.

The big sloping lawn out in front of the house was newly mown, striped with pale and dark ribbons of green. On the far side, the two laburnums were in full flower at last, the long golden chains making a blaze of colour against the darker trees beyond. The roses were out too, and the scarlet begonias, and in the long herbacious border all my lovely hybrid lupins, columbine, delphinium, sweet-william, and the huge, pale, scented iris. One of the gardeners was coming up the drive from his lunch. I could see the roof of his cottage through the trees and beyond it to one side, the place where the drive went out through the iron gates on the Canterbury road.

My wife’s house. Her garden. How beautiful it all was! How peaceful! Now, if only Pamela would try to be a little less solicitous of my welfare, less prone to coax me into doing things for my own good rather than for my own pleasure, then everything would be heaven. Mind you, I don’t want to give the impression that I do not love her – I worship the very air she breathes – or that I can’t manage her, or that I am not the captain of my ship. All I am trying to say is that she can be a trifle irritating at times, the way she carries on. For example, those little mannerisms of hers – I do wish she would drop them all, especially the way she has of pointing a finger at me to emphasize a phrase. You must remember that I am a man who is built rather small, and a gesture like this, when used to excess by a person like my wife, is apt to intimidate. I sometimes find it difficult to convince myself that she is not an overbearing woman.

‘Arthur!’ she called. ‘Come here.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve just had a most marvellous idea. Come here.’

I turned and went over to where she was lying on the sofa.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘do you want to have some fun?’

‘What sort of fun?’

‘With the Snapes?’

‘Who are the Snapes?’

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Wake up. Henry and Sally Snape. Our week-end guests.’

‘Well?’

‘Now listen. I was lying here thinking how awful they really are . . . the way they behave . . . him with his jokes and her like a sort of love-crazed sparrow . . .’ She hesitated, smiling slyly, and for some reason, I got the impression she was about to say a shocking thing. ‘Well – if that’s the way they behave when they’re in front of us, then what on earth must they be like when they’re alone together?’

‘Now wait a minute, Pamela –’

‘Don’t be an ass, Arthur. Let’s have some fun – some real fun for once – tonight.’ She had half raised herself up off the sofa, her face bright with a kind of sudden recklessness, the mouth slightly open, and she was looking at me with two round grey eyes, a spark dancing slowly in each.

‘Why shouldn’t we?’

‘What do you want to do?’

‘Why, it’s obvious. Can’t you see?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘All we’ve got to do is put a microphone in their room.’ I admit I was expecting something pretty bad, but when she said this I was so shocked I didn’t know what to answer.

‘That’s exactly what we’ll do,’ she said.

‘Here!’ I cried. ‘No. Wait a minute. You can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘That’s about the nastiest trick I ever heard of. It’s like – why, it’s like listening at keyholes, or reading letters, only far far worse. You don’t mean this seriously, do you?’

‘Of course I do.’

I knew how much she disliked being contradicted but there were times when I felt it necessary to assert myself, even at considerable risk. ‘Pamela,’ I said, snapping the words out sharply, ‘I forbid you to do it!’

She took her feet down from the sofa and sat up straight. What in God’s name are you trying to pretend to be, Arthur? I simply don’t understand you.’

‘That shouldn’t be too difficult.’

‘Tommyrot! I’ve known you do lots of worse things than this before now.’

‘Never!’

‘Oh yes I have. What makes you suddenly think you’re a so much nicer person than I am?’

‘I’ve never done things like that.’

‘All right, my boy,’ she said, pointing her finger at me like a pistol. ‘What about the time at the Milfords’ last Christmas? Remember? You nearly laughed your head off and I had to put my hand over your mouth to stop them hearing us. What about that for one?’

‘That was different,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t our house. And they weren’t our guests.’

‘It doesn’t make any difference at all.’ She was sitting very upright, staring at me with those round grey eyes, and the chin was beginning to come up high in a peculiarly contemptuous manner. ‘Don’t be such a pompous hypocrite,’ she said. ‘What on earth’s come over you?’

‘I really think it’s a pretty nasty thing, you know, Pamela. I honestly do.’

‘But listen, Arthur. I’m a nasty person. And so are you – in a secret sort of way. That’s why we get along together.’

‘I never heard such nonsense.’

‘Mind you, if you’ve suddenly decided to change your character completely, that’s another story.’

‘You’ve got to stop talking this way, Pamela.’

‘You see,’ she said, ‘if you really have decided to reform, then what on earth am I going to do?’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘Arthur, how could a nice person like you want to associate with a stinker?’

I sat myself down slowly in the chair opposite her, and she was watching me all the time. You understand, she was a big woman, with a big white face, and when she looked at me hard, as she was doing now, I became – how shall I say it – surrounded, almost enveloped by her, as though she were a great tub of cream and I had fallen in.

‘You don’t honestly want to do this microphone thing, do you?’

‘But of course I do. It’s time we had a bit of fun around here. Come on, Arthur. Don’t be so stuffy.’

‘It’s not right, Pamela.’

‘It’s just as right’ – up came the finger again – ‘just as right as when you found those letters of Mary Probert’s in her purse and you read them through from beginning to end.’

‘We should never have done that.’

‘We!’

‘You read them afterwards, Pamela.’

‘It didn’t harm anyone at all. You said so yourself at the time. And this one’s no worse.’

‘How would you like it if someone did it to you?’

‘How could I mind if I didn’t know it was being done? Come on, Arthur. Don’t be so flabby.’

‘I’ll have to think about it.’

‘Maybe the great radio engineer doesn’t know how to connect the mike to the speaker?’

‘That’s the easiest part.’

‘Well, go on then. Go on and do it.’

‘I’ll think about it and let you know later.’

‘There’s no time for that. They might arrive any moment.’

‘Then I won’t do it. I’m not going to be caught red-handed.’

‘If they come before you’re through, I’ll simply keep them down here. No danger. What’s the time, anyway?’

It was nearly three o’clock.

‘They’re driving down from London,’ she said, ‘and they certainly won’t leave till after lunch. That gives you plenty of time.’

‘Which room are you putting them in?’

‘The big yellow room at the end of the corridor. That’s not too far away, is it?’

‘I suppose it could be done.’

‘And by the by’ she said, ‘where are you going to have the speaker?’

‘I haven’t said I’m going to do it yet.’

‘My God!’ she cried, ‘I’d like to see someone try and stop you now. You ought to see your face. It’s all pink and excited at the very prospect. Put the speaker in our bedroom, why not? But go on – and hurry’

I hesitated. It was something I made a point of doing whenever she tried to order me about, instead of asking nicely. ‘I don’t like it, Pamela.’

She didn’t say any more after that; she just sat there, absolutely still, watching me, a resigned, waiting expression on her face, as though she were in a long queue. This, I knew from experience, was a danger signal. She was like one of those bomb things with’ the pin pulled out, and it was only a matter of time before – bang! and she would explode. In the silence that followed, I could almost hear her ticking.

So I got up quietly and went out to the workshop and collected a mike and a hundred and fifty feet of wire. Now that I was away from her, I am ashamed to admit that I began to feel a bit of excitement myself, a tiny warm prickling sensation under the skin, near the tips of my fingers. It was nothing much, mind you – really nothing at all. Good heavens, I experience the same thing every morning of my life when I open the paper to check the closing prices on two or three of my wife’s larger stockholdings. So I wasn’t going to get carried away by a silly joke like this. At the same time, I couldn’t help being amused.

I took the stairs two at a time and entered the yellow room at the end of the passage. It had the clean, unlived-in appearance of all guest rooms, with its twin beds, yellow satin bedspreads, pale-yellow walls, and golden-coloured curtains. I began to look around for a good place to hide the mike. This was the most important part of all, for whatever happened, it must not be discovered. I thought first of the basket of logs by the fireplace. Put it under the logs. No – not safe enough. Behind the radiator? Or on top of the wardrobe? Under the desk? None of these seemed very professional to me. All might be subject to chance inspection because of a dropped collar stud or something like that. Finally, with considerable cunning, I decided to put it inside the springing of the sofa. The sofa was against the wall, near the edge of the carpet, and my lead wire could go straight under the carpet over to the door.

I tipped up the sofa and slit the material underneath. Then I tied the microphone securely up among the springs, making sure that it faced the room. After that, I led the wire under the carpet to the door. I was calm and cautious in everything I did. Where the wire had to emerge from under the carpet and pass out of the door, I made a little groove in the wood so that it was almost invisible.

All this, of course, took time, and when I suddenly heard the crunch of wheels on the gravel of the drive outside, and then the slamming of car doors and the voices of our guests, I was still only half-way down the corridor, tacking the wire along the skirting. I stopped and straightened up, hammer in hand, and I must confess that I felt afraid. You have no idea how unnerving that noise was to me. I experienced the same sudden stomachy feeling of fright as when a bomb once dropped the other side of the village during the war, one afternoon, while I was working quietly in the library with my butterflies.

Don’t worry, I told myself. Pamela will take care of these people. She won’t let them come up here.

Rather frantically, I set about finishing the job, and soon I had the wire tacked all along the corridor and through into our bedroom. Here, concealment was not so important, although I still did not permit myself to get careless because of the servants. So I laid the wire under the carpet and brought it up unobtrusively into the back of the radio. Making the final connections was an elementary technical matter and took me no time at all.

Well – I had done it. I stepped back and glanced at the little radio. Somehow, now, it looked different – no longer a silly box for making noises but an evil little creature that crouched on the table top with a part of its own body reaching out secretly into a forbidden place far away. I switched it on. It hummed faintly but made no other sound. I took my bedside clock, which had a loud tick, and carried it along to the yellow room and placed it on the floor by the sofa. When I returned, sure enough the radio creature was ticking away as loudly as if the clock were in the room – even louder.

I fetched back the clock. Then I tidied myself up in the bathroom, returned my tools to the workshop, and prepared to meet the guests. But first, to compose myself, and so that I would not have to appear in front of them with the blood, as it were, still wet on my hands, I spent five minutes in the library with my collection. I concentrated on a tray of the lovely Vanessa cardui – the ‘painted lady’ – and made a few notes for a paper I was preparing entitled ‘The Relation between Colour Pattern and Framework of Wings’, which I intended to read at the next meeting of our society in Canterbury. In this way I soon regained my normal grave, attentive manner.

When I entered the living-room, our two guests, whose names I could never remember, were seated on the sofa. My wife was mixing drinks.

‘Oh, there you are, Arthur,’ she said. ‘Where have you been?’

I thought this was an unnecessary remark. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to the guests as we shook hands. ‘I was busy and forgot the time.’

‘We all know what you’ve been doing’ the girl said, smiling wisely. ‘But we’ll forgive him, won’t we, dearest?’

‘I think we should,’ the husband answered.

I had a frightful, fantastic vision of my wife telling them, amidst roars of laughter, precisely what I had been doing upstairs. She couldn’t – she couldn’t have done that! I looked round at her and she too was smiling as she measured out the gin.

‘I’m sorry we disturbed you,’ the girl said.

I decided that if this was going to be a joke then I’d better join in quickly, so I forced myself to smile with her.

‘You must let us see it,’ the girl continued.

‘See what?’

‘Your collection. Your wife says that they are absolutely beautiful.’

I lowered myself slowly into a chair and relaxed. It was ridiculous to be so nervous and jumpy. ‘Are you interested in butterflies?’ I asked her.

‘I’d love to see yours, Mr Beauchamp.’

The Martinis were distributed and we settled down to a couple of hours of talk and drink before dinner. It was from then on that I began to form the impression that our guests were a charming couple. My wife, coming from a titled family, is apt to be conscious of her class and breeding, and is often hasty in her judgement of strangers who are friendly towards her – particularly tall men. She is frequently right, but in this case I felt that she might be making a mistake. As a rule, I myself do not like tall men either; they are apt to be supercilious and omniscient. But Henry Snape – my wife had whispered his name – struck me as being an amiable simple young man with good manners whose main preoccupation, very properly, was Mrs Snape. He was handsome in a long-faced, horsy sort of way, with dark-brown eyes that seemed to be gentle and sympathetic. I envied him his fine mop of black hair, and caught myself wondering what lotion he used to keep it looking so healthy. He did tell us one or two jokes, but they were on a high level and no one could have objected.

‘At school’ he said, ‘they used to call me Scervix. Do you know why?’

‘I haven’t the least idea,’ my wife answered.

‘Because cervix is Latin for nape.’

This was rather deep and it took me a while to work out.

‘What school was that, Mr Snape?’ my wife asked.

‘Eton’ he said, and my wife gave a quick little nod of approval. Now she will talk to him, I thought, so I turned my attention to the other one, Sally Snape. She was an attractive girl with a bosom. Had I met her fifteen years earlier I might well have got myself into some sort of trouble. As it was, I had a pleasant enough time telling her all about my beautiful butterflies. I was observing her closely as I talked, and after a while I began to get the impression that she was not, in fact, quite so merry and smiling a girl as I had been led to believe at first. She seemed to be coiled in herself, as though with a secret she was jealously guarding. The deep-blue eyes moved too quickly about the room, never settling or resting on one thing for more than a moment; and over all her face, though so faint that they might not even have been there, those small downward lines of sorrow.

‘I’m so looking forward to our game of bridge,’ I said, finally changing the subject.

‘Us too,’ she answered. ‘You know we play almost every night, we love it so.’

‘You are extremely expert, both of you. How did you get to be so good?’

‘It’s practice,’ she said. ‘That’s all. Practice, practice, practice.’

‘Have you played in any championships?’

‘Not yet, but Henry wants very much for us to do that. It’s hard work, you know, to reach that standard. Terribly hard work.’ Was there not here, I wondered, a hint of resignation in her voice? Yes, that was probably it; he was pushing her too hard, making her take it too seriously, and the poor girl was tired of it all.

At eight o’clock, without changing, we moved in to dinner. The meal went well, with Henry Snape telling us some very droll stories. He also praised my Richebourg ‘34 in a most knowledgeable fashion, which pleased me greatly. By the time coffee came, I realized that I had grown to like these two youngsters immensely, and as a result I began to feel uncomfortable about this microphone business. It would have been all right if they had been horrid people, but to play this trick on two such charming young persons as these filled me with a strong sense of guilt. Don’t misunderstand me. I was not getting cold feet. It didn’t seem necessary to stop the operation. But I refused to relish the prospect openly as my wife seemed now to be doing, with covert smiles and winks and secret little noddings of the head.

Around nine-thirty, feeling comfortable and well fed, we returned to the large living-room to start our bridge. We were playing for a fair stake – ten shillings a hundred – so we decided not to split families, and I partnered my wife the whole time. We all four of us took the game seriously, which is the only way to take it, and we played silently, intently, hardly speaking at all except to bid. It was not the money we played for. Heaven knows, my wife had enough of that, and so apparently did the Snapes. But among experts it is almost traditional that they play for a reasonable stake.

That night the cards were evenly divided, but for once my wife played badly, so we got the worst of it. I could see that she wasn’t concentrating fully, and as we came along towards midnight she began not even to care. She kept glancing up at me with those large grey eyes of hers, the eyebrows raised, the nostrils curiously open, a little gloating smile around the corner of her mouth.

Our opponents played a fine game. Their bidding was masterly, and all through the evening they made only one mistake. That was when the girl badly overestimated her partner’s hand and bid six spades. I doubled and they went three down, vulnerable, which cost them eight hundred points. It was just a momentary lapse, but I remember that Sally Snape was very put out by it, even though her husband forgave her at once, kissing her hand across the table and telling her not to worry.

Around twelve-thirty my wife announced that she wanted to go to bed.

‘Just one more rubber?’ Henry Snape said.

‘No, Mr Snape. I’m tired tonight. Arthur’s tired, too. I can see it. Let’s all go to bed.’

She herded us out of the room and we went upstairs, the four of us together. On the way up, there was the usual talk about breakfast and what they wanted and how they were to call the maid. ‘I think you’ll like your room,’ my wife said. ‘It has a view right across the valley, and the sun comes to you in the morning around ten o’clock.’

We were in the passage now, standing outside our own bedroom door, and I could see the wire I had put down that afternoon and how it ran along the top of the skirting down to their room. Although it was nearly the same colour as the paint, it looked very conspicuous to me. ‘Sleep well,’ my wife said. ‘Sleep well, Mrs Snape. Good night, Mr Snape.’ I followed her into our room and shut the door.

‘Quick!’ she cried. ‘Turn it on!’ My wife was always like that, frightened that she was going to miss something. She had a reputation, when she went hunting – I never go myself – of always being right up with the hounds whatever the cost to herself or her horse for fear that she might miss a kill. I could see she had no intention of missing this one.

The little radio warmed up just in time to catch the noise of their door opening and closing again.

‘There!’ my wife said. ‘They’ve gone in.’ She was standing in the centre of the room in her blue dress, her hands clasped before her, her head craned forward, intently listening, and the whole of the big white face seemed somehow to have gathered itself together, tight like a wineskin.

Almost at once the voice of Henry Snape came out of the radio, strong and clear. ‘You’re just a goddam little fool,’ he was saying, and this voice was so different from the one I remembered, so harsh and unpleasant, it made me jump. ‘The whole bloody evening wasted! Eight hundred points – that’s eight pounds between us!’

‘I got mixed up,’ the girl answered. ‘I won’t do it again, I promise.’

‘What’s this!’ my wife said. ‘What’s going on?’ Her mouth was wide open now, the eyebrows stretched up high, and she came quickly over to the radio and leaned forward, ear to the speaker. I must say I felt rather excited myself.

‘I promise, I promise I won’t do it again,’ the girl was saying.

‘We’re not taking any chances,’ the man answered grimly. ‘We’re going to have another practice right now.’

‘Oh no, please! I couldn’t stand it!’

‘Look,’ the man said, ‘all the way out here to take money off this rich bitch and you have to go and mess it up.’

My wife’s turn to jump.

‘The second time this week,’ he went on.

‘I promise I won’t do it again.’

‘Sit down. I’ll sing them out and you answer.’

‘No, Henry, please! Not all five hundred of them. It’ll take three hours.’

‘All right, then. We’ll leave out the finger positions. I think you’re sure of those. We’ll just do the basic bids showing honour tricks.’

‘Oh, Henry, must we? I’m so tired.’

‘It’s absolutely essential you get them perfect,’ he said. ‘We have a game every day next week, you know that. And we’ve got to eat’

‘What is this?’ my wife whispered. ‘What on earth is it?’

‘Shhh!’ I said. ‘Listen!’

‘All right,’ the man’s voice was saying. ‘Now we’ll start from the beginning. Ready?’

‘Oh Henry, please!’ She sounded very near to tears.

‘Come on, Sally. Pull yourself together.’

Then, in a quite different voice, the one we had been used to hearing in the living-room, Henry Snape said, ‘One club.’ I noticed that there was a curious, lilting emphasis on the word ‘one’, the first part of the word drawn out long.

‘Ace queen of clubs,’ the girl replied wearily. ‘King jack of spades. No hearts, and ace jack of diamonds.’

‘And how many cards to each suit? Watch my finger positions carefully.’

‘You said we could miss those.’

‘Well – if you’re quite sure you know them?’

‘Yes, I know them.’

A pause, then ‘A club.’

‘King jack of clubs,’ the girl recited. ‘Ace of spades. Queen jack of hearts, and ace queen of diamonds.’

Another pause, then ‘I’ll say one club.’

‘Ace king of clubs . . .’

‘My heavens alive!’ I cried. ‘It’s a bidding code! They show every card in the hand!’

‘Arthur, it couldn’t be!’

‘It’s like those men who go into the audience and borrow something from you and there’s a girl blindfolded on the stage and from the way he phrases the question she can tell him exactly what it is – even a railway ticket, and what station it’s from.’

‘It’s impossible!’

‘Not at all. But it’s tremendous hard work to learn. Listen to them.’

‘I’II go one heart,’ the man’s voice was saying.

‘King queen ten of hearts. Ace jack of spades. No diamonds. Queen jack of clubs . . .’

‘And you see,’ I said, ‘he tells her the number of cards he has in each suit by the position of his fingers.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know. You heard him saying about it’

‘My God, Arthur! Are you sure that’s what they’re doing?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ I watched her as she walked quickly over to the side of the bed to fetch a cigarette. She lit it with her back to me and then swung round, blowing the smoke up at the ceiling in a thin stream. I knew we were going to have to do something about this, but I wasn’t quite sure what because we couldn’t possibly accuse them without revealing the source of our information. I waited for my wife’s decision.

‘Why, Arthur,’ she said slowly, blowing out clouds of smoke. ‘Why, this is a mar-vellous idea. D’you think we could learn to do it?’

‘What!’

‘Of course. Why not?’

‘Here! No! Wait a minute, Pamela . . .’ but she came swiftly across the room, right up close to me where I was standing, and she dropped her head and looked down at me – the old look of a smile that wasn’t a smile, at the corners of the mouth, and the curl of the nose, and the big full grey eyes staring at me with their bright black centres, and then they were grey, and all the rest was white flecked with hundreds of tiny red veins – and when she looked at me like this, hard and close, I swear to you it made me feel as though I were drowning.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not?’

‘But Pamela . . . Good heavens . . . No . . . After all . . .’

‘Arthur, I do wish you wouldn’t argue with me all the time. That’s exactly what we’ll do. Now, go fetch a deck of cards; we’ll start right away.’

Man from the South

Man from the South

It was getting on towards six o’clock so I thought I’d buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deckchair by the swimming pool and have a little evening sun.

I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden towards the pool.

It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees, making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.

There were plenty of deck-chairs around the swimming pool and there were white tables and huge brightly coloured umbrellas and sunburned men and women sitting around in bathing suits. In the pool itself there were three or four girls and about a dozen boys, all splashing about and making a lot of noise and throwing a large rubber ball at one another.

I stood watching them. The girls were English girls from the hotel, “he boys I didn’t know about, but they sounded American, and I thought they were probably naval cadets who’d come ashore from the U.S. naval training vessel which had arrived in harbour that morning.

I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four empty seats, and I poured my beer and settled back comfortably with a cigarette.

It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine with beer and cigarette. It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water.

The American sailors were getting on nicely with the English girls. They’d reached the stage where they were diving under the water and tipping them up by their legs.

Just then I noticed a small, oldish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up on to his toes with each step. He had on a large creamy Panama hat, and he came bouncing along the side of the pool, looking at the people and the chairs.

He stopped beside me and smiled, showing two rows of very small, uneven teeth, slightly tarnished. I smiled back.

‘Excuse pleess, but may I sit here?’

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’

He bobbed around to the back of the chair and inspected it for safety, then he sat down and crossed his legs. His white buckskin shoes had little holes punched all over them for ventilation.

‘A fine evening,’ he said. ‘They are all evenings fine here in Jamaica.’ I couldn’t tell if the accent were Italian or Spanish, but I felt fairly sure he was some sort of a South American. And old too, when you saw him close. Probably around sixty-eight or seventy.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is wonderful here, isn’t it.’

‘And who, might I ask, are all dese? Dese is no hotel people.’ He was pointing at the bathers in the pool.

‘I think they’re American sailors,’ I told him. ‘They’re Americans who are learning to be sailors.’

‘Of course dey are Americans. Who else in de world is going to make as much noise as dat? You are not American no?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I am not.’

Suddenly one of the American cadets was standing in front of us. He was dripping wet from the pool and one of the English girls was standing there with him.

‘Are these chairs taken?’ he said.

‘No,’ I answered.

‘Mind if I sit down?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. He had a towel in his hand and when he sat down he unrolled it and produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He offered the cigarettes to the girl and she refused; then he offered them to me and I took one. The little man said, ‘Tank you, no, but I tink I have a cigar.’ He pulled out a crocodile case and got himself a cigar, then he produced a knife which had a small scissors in it and he snipped the end off the cigar.

‘Here, let me give you a light.’ The American boy held up his lighter.

‘Dat will not work in dis wind.’

‘Sure it’ll work. It always works.’

The little man removed his unlighted cigar from his mouth, cocked his head on one side and looked at the boy.

‘All-ways?’ he said slowly.

‘Sure, it never fails. Not with me anyway.’

The little man’s head was still cocked over on one side and he was still watching the boy. ‘Well, well. So you say dis famous lighter it never fails. Iss dat you say?’

‘Sure,’ the boy said. ‘That’s right.’ He was about nineteen or twenty with a long freckled face and a rather sharp birdlike nose. His chest was not very sunburned and there were freckles there too, and a few wisps of pale-reddish hair. He was holding the lighter in his right hand, ready to flip the wheel. ‘It never fails,’ he said, smiling now because he was purposely exaggerating his little boast. ‘I promise you it never fails.’

‘One momint, pleess.’ The hand that held the cigar came up high, palm outward, as though it were stopping traffic. ‘Now juss one momint.’ He had a curious soft, toneless voice and he kept looking at the boy all the time.

‘Shall we not perhaps make a little bet on dat?’ He smiled at the boy. ‘Shall we not make a little bet on whether your lighter lights?’

‘Sure, I’ll bet,’ the boy said. ‘Why not?’

‘You like to bet?’

‘Sure, I’ll always bet.’

The man paused and examined his cigar, and I must say I didn’t much like the way he was behaving. It seemed he was already trying to make something out of this, and to embarrass the boy, and at the same time I had the feeling he was relishing a private little secret all his own.

He looked up again at the boy and said slowly, ‘I like to bet, too. Why we don’t have a good bet on dis ting? A good big bet.’

‘Now wait a minute,’ the boy said. ‘I can’t do that. But I’ll bet you a quarter. I’ll even bet you a dollar, or whatever it is over here – some shillings, I guess.’

The little man waved his hand again. ‘Listen to me. Now we have some fun. We make a bet. Den we got up to my room here in de hotel where iss no wind and I bet you you cannot light dis famous lighter of yours ten times running without missing once.’

I’II bet I can,’ the boy said.

‘All right. Good. We make a bet, yes?

‘Sure, I’II bet you a buck.’

‘No, no. I make you a very good bet. I am rich man and I am sporting man also. Listen to me. Outside de hotel iss my car. Iss very fine car. American car from your country. Cadillac –’

‘Hey, now. Wait a minute.’ The boy leaned back in his deckchair and he laughed. ‘I can’t put up that sort of property. This is crazy.’

‘Not crazy at all. You strike lighter successfully ten times running and Cadillac is yours. You like to have dis Cadillac, yes?’

‘Sure, I’d like to have a Cadillac.’ The boy was grinning.

‘All right. Fine. We make a bet and I put up my Cadillac’

‘And what do I put up?’

The little man carefully removed the red band from his still unlighted cigar. ‘I never ask you, my friend, to bet something you cannot afford. You understand?’

‘Then what do I bet?’

‘I make it very easy for you, yes?’

‘Okay. You make it easy.’

‘Some small ting you can afford to give away, and if you did happen to lose it you would not feel too bad. Right?’

‘Such as what?’

‘Such as, perhaps, de little finger on your left hand.’

‘My what?’ The boy stopped grinning.

‘Yes. Why not? You win, you take de car. You looss, I take de finger.’

‘I don’t get it. How d’you mean, you take the finger?’

‘I chop it off.’

‘Jumping jeepers! That’s a crazy bet. I think I’ll just make it a dollar.’

The little man leaned back, spread out his hands palms upwards and gave a tiny contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘I do not understand. You say it lights but you will not bet. Den we forget it, yes?’

The boy sat quite still; staring at the bathers in the pool. Then he remembered suddenly he hadn’t lighted his cigarette. He put it between his lips, cupped his hands around the lighter and flipped the wheel. The wick lighted and burned with a small, steady, yellow flame and the way he held his hands the wind didn’t get to it at all.

‘Could I have a light, too?’ I said.

‘God, I’m sorry, I forgot you didn’t have one.’

I held out my hand for the lighter, but he stood up and came over to do it for me.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and he returned to his seat.

‘You having a good time?’ I asked.

‘Fine,’ he answered. ‘It’s pretty nice here.’

There was a silence then, and I could see that the little man had succeeded in disturbing the boy with his absurd proposal. He was sitting there very still, and it was obvious that a small tension was beginning to build up inside him. Then he started shifting about in his seat, and rubbing his chest, and stroking the back of his neck, and finally he placed both hands on his knees and began tap-tapping with his fingers against the kneecaps. Soon he was tapping with one of his feet as well.

‘Now just let me check up on this bet of yours,’ he said at last. ‘You say we go up to your room and if I make this lighter light ten times running I win a Cadillac. If it misses just once then I forfeit the little finger of my left hand. Is that right?’

‘Certainly. Dat is de bet. But I tink you are afraid.’

‘What do we do if I lose? Do I have to hold my finger out while you chop it off?’

‘Oh, no! Dat would be no good. And you might be tempted to refuse to hold it out. What I should do I should tie one of your hands to de table before we started and I should stand dere with a knife ready to go chop de momint your lighter missed.’

‘What year is the Cadillac?’ the boy asked.

‘Excuse. I not understand.’

‘What year – how old is the Cadillac?’

‘Ah! How old? Yes. It is last year. Quite new car. But I see you are not betting man. Americans never are.’

The boy paused for just a moment and he glanced first at the English girl, then at me. ‘Yes,’ he said sharply. I’II bet you.’

‘Good!’ The little man clapped his hands together quietly, once. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘We do it now. And you, sir,’ he turned to me, ‘you would perhaps be good enough to, what you call it, to – to referee.’ He had pale, almost colourless eyes with tiny bright black pupils.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I think it’s a crazy bet. I don’t think I like it very much.’

‘Nor do I,’ said the English girl. It was the first time she’d spoken. ‘I think it’s a stupid, ridiculous bet.’

‘Are you serious about cutting off this boy’s finger if he loses?’ I said.

‘Certainly I am. Also about giving him Cadillac if he win. Come now. We go to my room.’

He stood up.’ You like to put on some clothes first?’ he said.

‘No,’ the boy answered. ‘I’ll come like this.’ Then he turned to me. Td consider it a favour if you’d come along and referee.’

‘All right,’ I said. I’II come along, but I don’t like the bet.’

‘You come too,’ he said to the girl.’ You come and watch.’

The little man led the way back through the garden to the hotel. He was animated now, and excited, and that seemed to make him bounce up higher than ever on his toes as he walked along.

‘I live in annexe,’ he said. ‘You like to see car first? Iss just here.’

He took us to where we could see the front driveway of the hotel and he stopped and pointed to a sleek pale-green Cadillac parked close by.

‘Dere she iss. De green one. You like?’

‘Say, that’s a nice car,’ the boy said.

‘All right. Now we go up and see if you can win her.’

We followed him into the annexe and up one flight of stairs.

He unlocked his door and we all trooped into what was a large pleasant double bedroom. There was a woman’s dressing-gown lying across the bottom of one of the beds.

‘First,’ he said, ‘we ‘ave a little Martini.’

The drinks were on a small table in the far corner, all ready to be mixed, and there was a shaker and ice and plenty of glasses. He began to make the Martini, but meanwhile he’d rung the bell and now there was a knock on the door and a coloured maid came in.

‘Ah!’ he said, putting down the bottle of gin, taking a wallet from his pocket and pulling out a pound note. ‘You will do something for me now, pleess.’ He gave the maid the pound.

‘You keep dat,’ he said. ‘And now we are going to play a little game in here and I want you to go off and find for me two – no tree tings. I want some nails, I want a hammer, and I want a chopping knife, a butcher’s chopping knife which you can borrow from de kitchen. You can get, yes?’

‘A chopping knife? The maid opened her eyes wide and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘You mean a real chopping knife?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. Come on now, pleess. You can find dose tings surely for me.’

‘Yes, sir, I’ll try, sir. Surely I’ll try to get them.’ And she went.

The little man handed round the Martinis. We stood there and sipped them, the boy with the long freckled face and the pointed nose, bare-bodied except for a pair of faded brown bathing shorts; the English girl, a large-boned fair-haired girl wearing a pale blue bathing suit, who watched the boy over the top of her glass all the time; the little man with the colourless eyes standing there in his immaculate white suit drinking his Martini and looking at the girl in her pale blue bathing dress. I didn’t know what to make of it all. The man seemed serious about the bet and he seemed serious about the business of cutting off the finger. But hell, what if the boy lost? Then we’d have to rush him to the hospital in the Cadillac that he hadn’t won. That would be a fine thing. Now wouldn’t that be a really fine thing? It would be a damn silly unnecessary thing so far as I could see.

‘Don’t you think this is rather a silly bet?’ I said.

‘I think it’s a fine bet,’ the boy answered. He had already downed one large Martini.

‘I think it’s a stupid, ridiculous bet,’ the girl said. ‘What’ll happen if you lose?’

‘It won’t matter. Come to think of it, I can’t remember ever in my life having had any use for the little finger on my left hand. Here he is.’ The boy took hold of the finger. ‘Here he is and he hasn’t ever done a thing for me yet. So why shouldn’t I bet him? I think it’s a fine bet.’

The little man smiled and picked up the shaker and refilled our glasses.

‘Before we begin,’ he said, ‘I will present to de – to de referee de key of de car.’ He produced a car key from his pocket and gave it to me. ‘De papers,’ he said, ‘de owning papers and insurance are in de pocket of de car.’

Then the coloured maid came in again. In one hand she carried a small chopper, the kind used by butchers for chopping meat bones, and in the other a hammer and a bag of nails.

‘Good! You get dem all. Tank you, tank you. Now you can go.’ He waited until the maid had closed the door, then he put the implements on one of the beds and said, ‘Now we prepare ourselves, yes?’ And to the boy, ‘Help me, pleess, with dis table. We carry it out a little.’

It was the usual kind of hotel writing desk, just a plain rectangular table about four feet by three with a blotting pad, ink, pens and paper. They carried it out into the room away from the wall, and removed the writing things.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘a chair.’ He picked up a chair and placed it beside the table. He was very brisk and very animated, like a person organizing games at a children’s party. ‘And now de nails. I must put in de nails.’ He fetched the nails and he began to hammer them into the top of the table.

We stood there, the boy, the girl, and I, holding Martinis in our hands, watching the little man at work. We watched him hammer two nails into the table, about six inches apart. He didn’t hammer them right home; he allowed a small part of each one to stick up. Then he tested them for firmness with his fingers.

Anyone would think the son of a bitch had done this before, I told myself. He never hesitates. Table, nails, hammer, kitchen chopper. He knows exactly what he needs and how to arrange it.

‘And now,’ he said, ‘all we want is some string.’ He found some string. ‘All right, at last we are ready. Will you pleess to sit here at de table?’ he said to the boy.

The boy put his glass away and sat down.

‘Now place de left hand between dese two nails. De nails are only so I can tie your hand in place. All right, good. Now I tie your hand secure to de table – so.’

He wound the string around the boy’s wrist, then several times around the wide part of the hand, then he fastened it tight to the nails. He made a good job of it and when he’d finished there wasn’t any question about the boy being able to draw his hand away. But he could move his fingers.

‘Now pleess, clench de fist, all except for de little finger. You must leave de little finger sticking out, lying on de table.’

‘Ex-cellent ! Ex-cellent! Now we are ready. Wid your right hand you manipulate de lighter. But one momint, pleess.’

He skipped over to the bed and picked up the chopper. He came back and stood beside the table with the chopper in his hand.

‘We are all ready?’ he said. ‘Mister referee, you must say to begin.’

The English girl was standing there in her pale blue bathing costume right behind the boy’s chair. She was just standing there, not saying anything. The boy was sitting quite still, holding the lighter in his right hand, looking at the chopper. The little man was looking at me.

‘Are you ready?’ I asked the boy.

‘I’m ready.’

‘And you?’ to the little man.

‘Quite ready,’ he said and he lifted the chopper up in the air and held it there about two feet above the boy’s finger, ready to chop. The boy watched it, but he didn’t flinch and his mouth didn’t move at all. He merely raised his eyebrows and frowned.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Go ahead.’

The boy said, ‘Will you please count aloud the number of times I light it.’

‘Yes’ I said. I’ll do that.’

With his thumb he raised the top of the lighter, and again with the thumb he gave the wheel a sharp flick. The flint sparked and the wick caught fire and burned with a small yellow flame.

‘One!’ I called.

He didn’t blow the flame out; he closed the top of the lighter on it and he waited for perhaps five seconds before opening it again.

He flicked the wheel very strongly and once more there was a small flame burning on the wick.

‘Two!’

No one else said anything. The boy kept his eyes on the lighter. The little man held the chopper up in the air and he too was watching the lighter.

‘Three!’

‘Four!’

‘Five!’

‘Six!’

‘Seven!’ Obviously it was one of those lighters that worked. The flint gave a big spark and the wick was the right length. I watched the thumb snapping the top down on to the flame. Then a pause. Then the thumb raising the top once more. This was an all-thumb operation. The thumb did everything. I took a breath, ready to say eight. The thumb flicked the wheel. The flint sparked. The little flame appeared.

‘Eight!’ I said, and as I said it the door opened. We all turned and we saw a woman standing in the doorway, a small, black-haired woman, rather old, who stood there for about two seconds then rushed forward, shouting, ‘Carlos! Carlos!’ She grabbed his wrist, took the chopper from him, threw it on the bed, took hold of the little man by the lapels of his white suit and began shaking him very vigorously, talking to him fast and loud and fiercely all the time in some Spanish-sounding language. She shook him so fast you couldn’t see him any more. He became a faint, misty, quickly moving outline, like the spokes of a turning wheel.

Then she slowed down and the little man came into view again and she hauled him across the room and pushed him backwards on to one of the beds. He sat on the edge of it blinking his eyes and testing his head to see if it would still turn on his neck.

‘I am sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I am so terribly sorry that this should happen’ She spoke almost perfect English.

‘It is too bad,’ she went on. ‘I suppose it is really my fault. For ten minutes I leave him alone to go and have my hair washed and I come back and he is at it again.’ She looked sorry and deeply concerned.

The boy was untying his hand from the table. The English girl and I stood there and said nothing.

‘He is a menace,’ the woman said. ‘Down where we live at home he has taken altogether forty-seven fingers from different people, and he has lost eleven cars. In the end they threatened to have him put away somewhere. That’s why I brought him up here.’

‘We were only having a little bet,’ mumbled the little man from the bed.

‘I suppose he bet you a car,’ the woman said.

‘Yes,’ the boy answered. ‘A Cadillac.’

‘He has no car. It’s mine. And that makes it worse,’ she said, ‘that he should bet you when he has nothing to bet with. I am ashamed and very sorry about it all.’ She seemed an awfully nice woman.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘then here’s the key of your car’ I put it on the table.

‘We were only having a little bet,’ mumbled the little man.

‘He hasn’t anything left to bet with,’ the woman said. ‘He hasn’t a thing in the world. Not a thing. As a matter of fact I myself won it all from him a long while ago. It took time, a lot of time, and it was hard work, but I won it all in the end.’ She looked up at the boy and she smiled, a slow sad smile, and she came over and put out a hand to take the key from the table.

I can see it now, that hand of hers; it had only one finger on it, and a thumb.

Lamb to the Slaughter

Lamb to the Slaughter

The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight – hers and the one by the empty chair opposite. On the sideboard behind her, two tall glasses, soda water, whisky. Fresh ice cubes in the Thermos bucket.

Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work.

Now and again she would glance up at the clock, but without anxiety, merely to please herself with the thought that each minute gone by made it nearer the time when he would come. There was a slow smiling air about her, and about everything she did. The drop of the head as she bent over her sewing was curiously tranquil. Her skin – for this was her sixth month with child – had acquired a wonderful translucent quality, the mouth was soft, and the eyes, with their new placid look, seemed larger, darker than before.

When the clock said ten minutes to five, she began to listen, and a few moments later, punctually as always she heard the tyres on the gravel outside, and the car door slamming, the footsteps passing the window, the key turning in the lock. She laid aside her sewing, stood up, and went forward to kiss him as he came in.

‘Hullo, darling,’ she said.

‘Hullo,’ he answered.

She took his coat and hung it in the closet. Then she walked over and made the drinks, a strongish one for him, a weak one for herself; and soon she was back again in her chair with the sewing, and he in the other, opposite, holding the tall glass with both his hands, rocking it so the ice cubes tinkled against the side.

For her, this was always a blissful time of day. She knew he didn’t want to speak much until the first drink was finished, and she, on her side, was content to sit quietly, enjoying his company after the long hours alone in the house. She loved to luxuriate in the presence of this man, and to feel – almost as a sunbather feels the sun – that warm male glow that came out of him to her when they were alone together. She loved him for the way he sat loosely in a chair, for the way he came in a door, or moved slowly across the room with long strides. She loved the intent, far look in his eyes when they rested on her, the funny shape of the mouth, and especially the way he remained silent about his tiredness, sitting still with himself until the whisky had taken some of it away.

‘Tired, darling?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m tired.’ And as he spoke, he did an unusual thing. He lifted his glass and drained it in one swallow although there was still half of it, at least half of it, left. She wasn’t really watching him but she knew what he had done because she heard the ice cubes falling back against the bottom of the empty glass when he lowered his arm. He paused a moment, leaning forward in the chair, then he got up and went slowly over to fetch himself another.

‘I’ll get it!’ she cried, jumping up.

‘Sit down,’ he said.

When he came back, she noticed that the new drink was dark amber with the quantity of whisky in it.

‘Darling, shall I get your slippers?’

‘No.’

She watched him as he began to sip the dark yellow drink, and she could see little oily swirls in the liquid because it was so strong.

‘I think it’s a shame,’ she said, ‘that when a policeman gets to be as senior as you, they keep him walking about on his feet all day long.’

He didn’t answer, so she bent her head again and went on with her sewing; but each time he lifted the drink to his lips, she heard the ice cubes clinking against the side of the glass.

‘Darling,’ she said. ‘Would you like me to get you some cheese? I haven’t made any supper because it’s Thursday.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘If you’re too tired to eat out,’ she went on, ‘it’s still not too late. There’s plenty of meat and stuff in the freezer, and you can have it right here and not even move out of the chair.’

Her eyes waited on him for an answer, a smile, a little nod, but he made no sign.

‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I’ll get you some cheese and crackers first.’

‘I don’t want it,’ he said.

She moved uneasily in her chair, the large eyes still watching his face. ‘But you must have supper. I can easily do it here. I’d like to do it. We can have lamb chops. Or pork. Anything you want. Everything’s in the freezer.’

‘Forget it,’ he said.

‘But, darling, you must eat! I’ll fix it anyway, and then you can have it or not, as you like.’

She stood up and placed her sewing on the table by the lamp.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Just for a minute, sit down.’

It wasn’t till then that she began to get frightened.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

She lowered herself back slowly into the chair, watching him all the time with those large, bewildered eyes. He had finished the second drink and was staring down into the glass, frowning.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

‘What is it, darling? What’s the matter?’

He had become absolutely motionless, and he kept his head down so that the light from the lamp beside him fell across the upper part of his face, leaving the chin and mouth in shadow. She noticed there was a little muscle moving near the corner of his left eye.

‘This is going to be a bit of a shock to you, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘But I’ve thought about it a good deal and I’ve decided the only thing to do is tell you right away. I hope you won’t blame me too much.’

And he told her. It didn’t take long, four or five minutes at most, and she sat very still through it all, watching him with a kind of dazed horror as he went further and further away from her with each word.

‘So there it is,’ he added. ‘And I know it’s kind of a bad time to be telling you, but there simply wasn’t any other way. Of course I’II give you money and see you’re looked after. But there needn’t really be any fuss. I hope not anyway. It wouldn’t be very good for my job.’

Her first instinct was not to believe any of it, to reject it all. It occurred to her that perhaps he hadn’t even spoken, that she herself had imagined the whole thing. Maybe, if she went about her business and acted as though she hadn’t been listening, then later, when she sort of woke up again, she might find none of it had ever happened.

‘I’II get the supper,’ she managed to whisper, and this time he didn’t stop her.

When she walked across the room she couldn’t feel her feet touching the floor. She couldn’t feel anything at all – except a slight nausea and a desire to vomit. Everything was automatic now – down the stairs to the cellar, the light switch, the deep freeze, the hand inside the cabinet taking hold of the first object it met. She lifted it out, and looked at it. It was wrapped in paper, so she took off the paper and looked at it again.

A leg of lamb.

All right then, they would have lamb for supper. She carried it upstairs, holding the thin bone-end of it with both her hands, and as she went through the living-room, she saw him standing over by the window with his back to her, and she stopped.

‘For God’s sake,’ he said, hearing her, but not turning round. ‘Don’t make supper for me. I’m going out.’

At that point, Mary Maloney simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head.

She might just as well have hit him with a steel club.

She stepped back a pace, waiting, and the funny thing was that he remained standing there for at least four or five seconds, gently swaying. Then he crashed to the carpet.

The violence of the crash, the noise, the small table overturning, helped bring her out of the shock. She came out slowly, feeling cold and surprised, and she stood for a while blinking at the body, still holding the ridiculous piece of meat tight with both hands.

All right, she told herself. So I’ve killed him.

It was extraordinary, now, how clear her mind became all of a sudden. She began thinking very fast. As the wife of a detective, she knew quite well what the penalty would be. That was fine. It made no difference to her. In fact, it would be a relief. On the other hand, what about the child? What were the laws about murderers with unborn children? Did they kill them both – mother and child? Or did they wait until the tenth month? What did they do?

Mary Maloney didn’t know. And she certainly wasn’t to take a chance.

She carried the meat into the kitchen, placed it in a pan, turned the oven on high, and shoved it inside. Then she washed her hands and ran upstairs to the bedroom. She sat down before the mirror, tidied her face, touched up her lips and face. She tried a smile. It came out rather peculiar. She tried again.

‘Hullo Sam,’ she said brightly, aloud.

The voice sounded peculiar too.

‘I want some potatoes please, Sam. Yes, and I think a can of peas.’

That was better. Both the smile and the voice were coming out better now. She rehearsed it several times more. Then she ran downstairs, took her coat, went out the back door, down the garden, into the street.

It wasn’t six o’clock yet and the lights were still on in the grocery shop.

‘Hullo Sam,’ she said brightly, smiling at the man behind the counter.

‘Why, good evening, Mrs Maloney. How’re you?’

‘I want some potatoes please, Sam. Yes, and I think a can of peas.’

The man turned and reached up behind him on the shelf for the peas.

‘Patrick’s decided he’s tired and doesn’t want to eat out tonight,’ she told him. ‘We usually go out Thursdays, you know, and now he’s caught me without any vegetables in the house.’

‘Then how about meat, Mrs Maloney?’

‘No, I’ve got meat, thanks. I got a nice leg of lamb, from the freezer.’

‘Oh.’

‘I don’t much like cooking it frozen, Sam, but I’m taking a chance on it this time. You think it’ll be all right?’

‘Personally,’ the grocer said, ‘I don’t believe it makes any difference. You want these Idaho potatoes?’

‘Oh yes, that’ll be fine. Two of those.’

‘Anything else?’ The grocer cocked his head on one side, looking at her pleasantly. ‘How about afterwards? What you going to give him for afterwards?’

‘Well – what would you suggest, Sam?’

The man glanced around his shop. ‘How about a nice big slice of cheesecake? I know he likes that.’

‘Perfect,’ she said. ‘He loves it.’

And when it was all wrapped and she had paid, she put on her brightest smile and said, ‘Thank you, Sam. Good night.’

‘Good night, Mrs Maloney. And thank you’

And now, she told herself as she hurried back, all she was doing now, she was returning home to her husband and he was waiting for his supper; and she must cook it good, and make it as tasty as possible because the poor man was tired; and if, when she entered the house, she happened to find anything unusual, or tragic, or terrible, then naturally it would be a shock and she’d become frantic with grief and horror. Mind you, she wasn’t expecting to find anything. She was just going home with the vegetables. Mrs Patrick Maloney going home with the vegetables on Thursday evening to cook supper for her husband.

That’s the way, she told herself. Do everything right and natural. Keep things absolutely natural and there’ll be no need for any acting at all.

Therefore, when she entered the kitchen by the back door, she was humming a little tune to herself and smiling.

‘Patrick!’ she called. ‘How are you, darling?’

She put the parcel down on the table and went through into the living-room; and when she saw him lying there on the floor with his legs doubled up and one arm twisted back underneath his body, it really was rather a shock. All the old love and longing for him welled up inside her, and she ran over to him, knelt down beside him, and began to cry her heart out. It was easy. No acting was necessary.

A few minutes later she got up and went to the phone. She knew the number of the police station, and when the man at the other end answered, she cried to him, ‘Quick! Come quick! Patrick’s dead!’

‘Who’s speaking?’

‘Mrs Maloney. Mrs Patrick Maloney.’

‘You mean Patrick Maloney’s dead?’

‘I think so,’ she sobbed. ‘He’s lying on the floor and I think he’s dead.’

‘Be right over,’ the man said.

The car came very quickly, and when she opened the front door, two policemen walked in. She knew them both – she knew nearly all the men at that precinct – and she fell right into Jack Noonan’s arms, weeping hysterically. He put her gently into a chair, then went over to join the other one, who was called O’Malley, kneeling by the body.

‘Is he dead?’ she cried.

‘I’m afraid he is. What happened?’

Briefly, she told her story about going out to the grocer and coming back to find him on the floor. While she was talking, crying and talking, Noonan discovered a small patch of congealed blood on the dead man’s head. He showed it to O’Malley who got up at once and hurried to the phone.

Soon, other men began to come into the house. First a doctor, then two detectives, one of whom she knew by name. Later, a police photographer arrived and took pictures, and a man who knew about fingerprints. There was a great deal of whispering and muttering beside the corpse, and the detectives kept asking her a lot of questions. But they always treated her kindly. She told her story again, this time right from the beginning, when Patrick had come in, and she was sewing, and he was tired, so tired he hadn’t wanted to go out for supper. She told how she’d put the meat in the oven – ‘it’s there now, cooking’ – and how she’d slipped out to the grocer for vegetables, and come back to find him lying on the floor.

‘Which grocer?’ one of the detectives asked.

She told him, and he turned and whispered something to the other detective who immediately went outside into the street.

In fifteen minutes he was back with a page of notes and there was more whispering, and through her sobbing she heard a few of the whispered phrases – ‘… acted quite normal … very cheerful... wanted to give him a good supper … peas … cheesecake … impossible that she …’

After a while, the photographer and the doctor departed and two other men came in and took the corpse away on a stretcher. Then the fingerprint man went away. The two detectives remained, and so did the two policemen. They were exceptionally nice to her, and Jack Noonan asked if she wouldn’t rather go somewhere else, to her sister’s house perhaps, or to his own wife who would take care of her and put her up for the night.

No, she said. She didn’t feel she could move even a yard at the moment. Would they mind awfully if she stayed just where she was until she felt better? She didn’t feel too good at the moment, she really didn’t.

Then hadn’t she better lie down on the bed? Jack Noonan asked.

No, she said, she’d like to stay right where she was, in this chair. A little later perhaps, when she felt better, she would move.

So they left her there while they went about their business, searching the house. Occasionally one of the detectives asked her another question. Sometimes Jack Noonan spoke to her gently as he passed by. Her husband, he told her, had been killed by a blow on the back of the head administered with a heavy blunt instrument, almost certainly a large piece of metal. They were looking for the weapon. The murderer may have taken it with him, but on the other hand he may’ve thrown it away or hidden it somewhere on the premises.

‘It’s the old story,’ he said. ‘Get the weapon, and you’ve got the man.’

Later, one of the detectives came up and sat beside her. Did she know, he asked, of anything in the house that could’ve been used as the weapon? Would she mind having a look around to see if anything was missing – a very big spanner, for example, or a heavy metal vase.

They didn’t have any heavy metal vases, she said.

‘Or a big spanner?’

She didn’t think they had a big spanner. But there might be some things like that in the garage.

The search went on. She knew that there were other policemen in the garden all around the house. She could hear their footsteps on the gravel outside, and sometimes she saw the flash of a torch through a chink in the curtains. It began to get late, nearly nine she noticed by the clock on the mantel. The four men searching the rooms seemed to be growing weary, a trifle exasperated.

‘Jack,’ she said, the next time Sergeant Noonan went by. ‘Would you mind giving me a drink?’

‘Sure I’ll give you a drink. You mean this whisky?’

‘Yes, please. But just a small one. It might make me feel better.’

He handed her the glass.

‘Why don’t you have one yourself,’ she said. ‘You must be awfully tired. Please do. You’ve been very good to me.’

‘Well,’ he answered. ‘It’s not strictly allowed, but I might take just a drop to keep me going.’

One by one the others came in and were persuaded to take a little nip of whisky. They stood around rather awkwardly with the drinks in their hands, uncomfortable in her presence, trying to say consoling things to her. Sergeant Noonan wandered into the kitchen, came out quickly and said, ‘Look, Mrs Maloney. You know that oven of yours is still on, and the meat still inside.’

‘Oh dear me!’ she cried. ‘So it is!’

‘I better turn it off for you, hadn’t I?’

‘Will you do that, Jack. Thank you so much.’

When the sergeant returned the second time, she looked at him with her large, dark, tearful eyes. ‘Jack Noonan,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘Would you do me a small favour – you and these others?’

‘We can try, Mrs Maloney.’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Here you all are, and good friends of dear Patrick’s too, and helping to catch the man who killed him. You must be terribly hungry by now because it’s long past your supper time, and I know Patrick would never forgive me, God bless his soul, if I allowed you to remain in his house without offering you decent hospitality. Why don’t you eat up that lamb that’s in the oven? It’ll be cooked just right by now.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Sergeant Noonan said.

‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please eat it. Personally I couldn’t touch a thing, certainly not what’s been in the house when he was here. But it’s all right for you. It’d be a favour to me if you’d eat it up. Then you can go on with your work again afterwards.’

There was a good deal of hesitating among the four policemen, but they were clearly hungry, and in the end they were persuaded to go into the kitchen and help themselves. The woman stayed where she was, listening to them through the open door, and she could hear them speaking among themselves, their voices thick and sloppy because their mouths were full of meat.

‘Have some more, Charlie?’

‘No. Better not finish it.’

‘She wants us to finish it. She said so. Be doing her a favour.’

‘Okay then. Give me some more.’

‘That’s the hell of a big club the guy must’ve used to hit poor Patrick,’ one of them was saying. ‘The doc says his skull was smashed all to pieces just like from a sledge-hammer.’

‘That’s why it ought to be easy to find.’

‘Exactly what I say.’

‘Whoever done it, they’re not going to be carrying a thing like that around with them longer than they need.’

One of them belched.

‘Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises.’

‘Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack?’

And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.