Everything was exactly the same. There was her card in a tiny
brass frame screwed to the panel of the door. There was the long
scratch on the paint-work which I had made when slightly drunk with
the latchkey. There was the thick wool mat before the door. I found
my heart was beating a shade quicker, and my hands were a little
damp. It seemed to me all of a sudden that Netta had become
important to me: I’d been away too long.
I punched the bell, waited, heard nothing, punched the bell again.
No one answered the door. I continued to wait, wondering if Netta
was in her bath. I gave her a few more seconds, punched the bell
again.
“There’s no one there,” a voice said from behind me.
I turned, looked down the short flight of stairs. A man was
standing in the doorway of the lower flat, looking up at me. He was a
big strapping fellow around thirty, broad and well-built but far from
muscular. With a frame like a hammer-thrower, he was yet soft, just
this side of fat. He stood looking up at me with a half-smile on his
face, and the impression he gave me was that of an enormous sleepy
tom-cat, indifferent, self-sufficient, pleased with himself. The waning
sunlight coming through the grimy window caught the gold in his
mouth, making his teeth come alive.
“Hello, baby,” he said. “You one of her boy friends?” He had a
faint lisp, and his corn-coloured hair was cut close. He was wearing a
yellow and black silk dressing-gown, fastened at his throat; his pyjama
legs were electric blue, his sandals scarlet. He was quite a picture.
“Go jump into a lake,” I said. “Jump into two if one won’t hold
you,” and I turned back to Netta’s door.
The man giggled. It was an unpleasant hissing sound and for no
reason at all it set my nerves jumping.
“There’s no one there, baby,” he repeated, then added in an
undertone, “she’s dead.”
I stopped ringing the bell, turned, looked at him. He raised his
eyebrows, and his head waggled from side to side ever so slightly.
“Did you hear?” he asked, and smiled as if he were privately amused
at some secret joke of his own.
“Dead?” I repeated, moving away from the door.
“That’s right, baby,” he said, leaning against the door-post, giving
me an arch look. “She died yesterday. You can still smell the gas if you
sniff hard enough.” He touched his throat, flinched. “I had a bad day
with it yesterday.”
I walked down the stairs, stood in front of him. He was an inch
taller than I and a lot broader, but I knew he hadn’t any iron in his
bones.
“Calm down, Fatso,” I said, “and give it to me straight. What gas?
What are you raving about?”
“Come inside, baby,” he said, smirking. “I’ll tell you about it.”
Before I could refuse, he had sauntered into a large room which
stank of stale scent and was full of old, dusty furniture.
He dropped into a big easy chair. As his great body dented the
cushions a fine cloud of dust arose.
“Excuse the hovel,” he said, looking around the room with an
expression of disgust on his face. “Mrs. Crockett’s a slut. She never
cleans the place and I can’t be expected to do it, can I, baby? Life’s too
short to waste time cleaning when one has my abilities.”
“Never mind the Oscar Wilde act,” I said impatiently. “Are you
telling me Netta Scott’s dead?”
He nodded, smiled up at me. “Sad, isn’t it? Such a delightful girl;
beautiful, lovely little body; so ful of vigour — now, just meal for the
worms.” He sighed. “Death is a great level er, isn’t it?”
“How did it happen?” I asked, wanting to take him by his fat
throat and shake the daylights out of him.
“By her own hand,” he said mournfully. “Shocking business. Police
rushing up and down stairs . . . the ambulance . . . doctors . . . Mrs.
Crockett screaming . . . that fat bitch in the lower flat gloating . . . a
crowd in the street, hoping to see the remains quite, quite ghastly.
Then the smell of gas — couldn’t get it out of the house all day.
Shocking business, baby, really most, most shocking.”
“You mean she gassed herself?” I asked, going cold.
“That’s right, the poor lamb. The room was sealed with adhesive
tape . . . roll upon roll of adhesive tape, and the gas oven going full
blast. I’ll never be able to buy adhesive tape again without thinking of
her.” The words were a vibrationless hum, intimate and secret-
sounding. The perpetual smile bothered me too.
“I see,” I said, turning away.
Well, that was that. I felt suddenly deflated, a little sick, infinitely
sad.
I thought: If you had only waited twenty-four hours, Netta, we’d
have faced whatever it was together, and we’d have licked it.
“Thank you,” I said at the door.
“Don’t thank me, baby,” he said, heaving himself out of the chair
and following me on to the landing. “It’s nice to know I’ve rendered a
little service, although a sad one. I can see you’re suffering from
shock, but you’ll get over it. Plenty of hard work is the best healer.
Doesn’t Byron say,
admire Byron. Some people don’t.”
I stared at him, not seeing him, not listening to him. From out of
the past, I heard Netta’s voice saying: “So the fool killed himself. He
hadn’t the guts to take what was coming to him. Well, whatever I do,
I’d be ready to pay for it. I wouldn’t take that way out-ever.”
She had said that one night when we had read of a millionaire
who had bulled when he should have beared and had blown out his
brains. I remembered how Netta had looked when she had said that,
and I felt a little cold breath of wind against my cheek.
There was something wrong here. I knew Netta would never have
killed herself.
I pulled my hat farther down on my nose, felt in my pocket for a
cigarette, offered the carton.
“Why did she do it?” I asked.
“I’m Julius Cole,” the pixy said, drawing out a cigarette from the
