‘Turp! … Turp!’ cried Cigarette, in a gulping voice. ‘Stand by me, Turp! Let’s play games, Turp — I’ll hide, and you’ve got to find me —’
A waiter was passing. She exchanged her half-empty glass for a full one. There was a numbness in her cheeks. None of Asta’s guests was quite sober now.
34
Oonagh Scripture was leaning upon Sinclair Wensday, who was caressing her shoulder and exchanging glances with a fat, towheaded girl whom nobody knew. His wife Avril was watching him with her right eye and ogling Alan Shakespeare with her left: from time to time they exchanged a look of quiet hate. Muriel, having recognized the Murderer, had rushed across the room to embrace him; but he was deep in conversation with Thea Olivia now, together with Hemmeridge, Graham Strindberg, and Mothmar Acord. Milton Catt intercepted her: they embraced. Tony Mungo clutched her wrist and kissed it; Geezle bowed. Roget, demonstrating a trick with a tray and three glasses, made a clang and a clash; and then Sir Storrington Thirst made noise and mess scraping up glass and drink with a fire-shovel. Ayesha Babbington had interested herself in the trapezius-muscies of Milton Catt, who at the same time was being palpated by Shocket the Bloodsucker, who was saying: ‘Train! Train! May my mother, God rest her dear soul, rot in hell — may my children, God bless them, be given to Narzy Degenerates — I’ll make you light-heavyweight champion. It’s an offer. May I go blind and paralysed if I die! May my wife and children go deaf and dumb and blind and paralysed! Would I say this if I didn’t mean it?’
There was a silence. ‘Titch!’ cried Shocket, looking wildly about the place. ‘Titch, did I done you harm? If so, when?’
‘Never no harm to me, Bloodsucker.’
‘There you are then, you see?’ said Shocket to Milton Catt. ‘You see? I never did no harm, not to nobody. I tell the man I can make him a light-heavyweight champion already, and he looks at me like I done a murder. Gratitude!’
At the sound of the word Murder, conversation clicked back to the topic that had occupied everybody’s time for the past ten days — Sonia Sabbatani. That crime was still interesting in the locality. The corpse was still fresh. In a few more days they would have talked it stale. Then it would begin to bore them, and they’d drop it and forget it.
‘Still no news of that awful business?’ said Ayesha Babbington. ‘God above, what do we keep the Police for?’
‘Just so. Is it for this sort of thing that we ruin ourselves paying taxes?’ said Sir Storrington.
Hemmeridge, in his sibilant, simpering, effeminate voice said: ‘Of course, there’ll be lots more now, you know.’
‘Good lord, what a horrible thought!’ said Tobit Osbert. He was holding Catchy’s hand. Catchy squeezed his wrist.
‘Why, don’t you see, one murder makes many,’ said Hemmeridge.
‘I’ve heard that said about marriage,’ said Mothmar Acord, with a lowering look, compounded of low cunning and secret scorn. This man seemed always to be on the verge of an outburst of mad rage or contemptuous laughter.
‘Well, it’s pretty much the same sort of thing, don’t you see,’ said Hemmeridge, with a titter. ‘Nonetheless, people go to a wedding and it puts ideas in their heads. They think it would be really rather nice to go and have a wedding themselves and some of them do go and have a wedding themselves. Same with christenings. Girl sees pretty little pink ready-made baby, going goo, goo, and thinks that she would rather like to find a delicious little living doll like that under her own cabbage leaf or in her own doctor’s little black bag — according to what her mother has told her, don’t you see, and up goes the birth-rate. And as I think I was saying, it’s much the same thing with this affair. Man kills little girl. Man gets away with it. Lots of people want to kill little girls only they need a little encouragement.’
‘You’re perfectly right,’ said Schiff. ‘It’s perfectly natural. It’s fundamental. Read
‘If you’ll have the goodness to allow me to finish my sentence,’ said Hemmeridge, petulantly, ‘lots of people think it would be really an awfully nice thing to go out and kill somebody. Only most of us, thank goodness, do our killing in our dreams. I mean, we get someone else to do our killing for us. I mean, we go out and buy a nice bloodthirsty detective story, or one of those Americanish tough-guy books in which the hero is a bit of a murderer thinly disguised as a private detective and goes about slapping glamorous female poisoners in the face or tearing their clothes off or something.’ He giggled, swallowed a mouthful of his drink and continued: ‘Thank goodness, what? Look at me. Here I am, in the land of the living, not quite dead of malnutrition, neatly dressed and in clean linen. For this I must thank the general public’s enjoyment of murder. Since, as you may or may not know, I write crime stories myself — when I happen to think of a good bloodthirsty plot. Do you see this grey suit 1 am wearing? It was bought out of the blood of a dismembered heiress in a trunk at Waterloo Station. Do you see this rather nice silk tie? I got it out of a mad surgeon who loved to vivisect people and make them into peculiar shapes. It was all that was left over after I had paid certain arrears of board and lodging. I do like to have something to show for money received on account of my crimes — I always buy myself a little something or other; a tie, a card of bachelor buttons, a pair of sixpenny cuff-links, or even a pair of gloves. But what was I saying? Oh yes. One murder makes many. That, by the by, would be a goodish title for a story, wouldn’t it? The sort of fellow that goes out and kills little Sonia What’s-her-name is, actually, not at all rare. He nearly always gets away with it, don’t you see? It’s like diving into ice-cold water — you only have to make your mind up to it, and once the first shock is over there is a pleasant tingle and glow. It gives you a certain sense of power, don’t you see: something like well-being, having done it once, you’ll do it again, and then again, and yet again. You mark my words, one murder makes many, I repeat. And furthermore, encouraged by the failure of the police — poor things — to find the perpetrator of this much-publicized atrocity, someone else will find his nerve and take his quick, wild plunge through the thin ice into those strangely stimulating dark still waters of death.’
Hemmeridge drained his glass. A waiter gave him a fresh drink. Mr Pink, who had been listening and nodding, said: ‘But look here, sir! This is dreadful! No, this really is dreadful! You know that what you’re doing isn’t nice — I mean, writing that sort of nasty story and putting nasty ideas into people’s heads — you
‘Oh, my dear fellow!’ cried Hemmeridge, laughing, ‘what difference can it possibly make? People
