Five Roundabouts to Heaven

had no deep affection for her, and she had none for you, but you were a part of the routine of her life, something real in a world which for her was gradually becoming ever more unreal.

The aunt Emilys of this world, he thought bitterly, never had any friends. They had at best a few relatives, who tolerated them, or not, as the case might be. They moved, eccentric and untidy, towards the grave, and nobody cared two hoots.

If you were normal, you shrugged your shoulders and said it was their own fault, and the devil of it was that the normal people were right.

If you weren’t normal, if you were tortured by compassion and afraid of your own thoughts, you came once a fortnight, and were bored and irritated, because it was easier to pay a visit rather than stay at home and reproach yourself for not visiting her.

He saw aunt Emily rise and go across and open her writing desk, which stood in a corner of the drawing room, and watched her come back with a pencil sketch about eight inches by six inches.

“That’s Chan. Madame Clevistki did it,” said aunt Emily.

“Madame who?”

“Clevistki. Isn’t it beautiful? What a dignified, wise old face, eh?”

“Who on earth is Madame Clevistki?”

“She is a White Russian, dear, a friend of Mrs Brewer’s. She is really a princess, you know, but she does not use her title. Oh, my, she’s so psychic! Directly I shook hands with her it was like an electric shock going right up my arm.”

“I see.”

“She lived at the time of Peter the Great. A wonderful, wonderful man!”

“Do you mean she is dead, like Chan?”

“No, no, no, dear,” said his aunt Emily chidingly. “I mean that in her former life she was at the Court of Peter the Great. She has a most wonderful studio in the Fulham Road, and all the most famous painters come to her for lessons, says Mrs Brewer. Of course, she drew Chan in a trance.”

“Oh, of course. What did she charge you?”

“Nothing dear, only the cost of her taxi to and from Fulham Road; seven and six, I think it was, in all; and that was only because she had to fit the trance in between painting lessons. She is like Mrs Brewer; she feels she has been put into this world to help others. She doesn’t feel she would be acting right if she made money out of her great psychic powers.”

He watched his aunt replace the drawing in the bureau and wondered whether Chan, the talented mandarin, would stagger them all at the next seance. Would his voice, constricted within the vocal cords of Mrs Brewer, burst forth in high-pitched tones and cry: “Watch Philip Bartels! He has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.”

Or would the voice, struggling with the unaccustomed syllables, say: “Altrapeine. This poison is exceptionally difficult to detect. Its action is swift and painless and in the case of a fatal dose the circumstances surrounding the death of the subject closely resemble those attendant upon coronary thrombosis.” That, more or less, was what the book had said.

Bartels didn’t think Chan would be so practical.

Chapter 7

It is one thing to murder in a speculative kind of way, but except for those who blunder into the crime, there comes a pause between the impersonal contemplation of the deed, and the realization that there is the remotest possibility of the deed being carried through.

Again, excepting sudden acts of violence, the mind needs time to become attuned to the idea; the social sense inherent in all of us is instinctively outraged and requires a period of softening-up; the odds for and against success have to be calculated; and courage must be summoned to risk capital punishment.

For a man of Philip Bartels’ temperament and imagination there comes, later, a curious interlude. The emotions involved in taking the decision have subsided, the greater emotions involved in the crime still lie ahead. Between plan and final action the husband, in the case of a married couple, regards his wife with a strange detachment.

There is no longer hate, if there ever were hate, for he knows that the cause of the hatred will soon be removed.

There is no longer gnawing greed, if her money be the motive, for his financial cravings will soon be satiated. And if lust for another woman is the driving force, he is soothed by the thought that shortly his desires will be completely fulfilled.

He watches her, therefore, in a detached way; sees her going about her household chores, cleaning, making the beds; observes her quietly reading in the evening, or sewing and listening to the radio; hears her, too, making plans; what dress she will buy, whom she proposes to invite to tea, what film she intends to go and see.

All the while he is thinking: You won’t be doing that work much longer; neither sewing, nor reading, nor carrying out your other plans; that mechanism which you call your body will soon be stilled.

You will be dead and in your grave. Finished. You think you have your own little future, like other people, and you are filled with your own hopes and modest ambitions.

You think that I am fond of you; you think you can trust me, or you would not remain under my roof; you think I would even protect you from danger.

But you’re wrong. I’m going to kill you.

The mind of the normal wife-murderer must therefore be almost animal-like in its lack of sensitivity, or it must be twisted, perverted with a kind of cat-and-mouse sadism raging within it.

But Bartels was an exception.

So far from lacking sensitivity, he had too much; and so far from being sadistic, he was too kind.

I brooded over these contradictions that evening when I returned to the chateau. I could not as yet entirely resolve the problem. I could not see how a man of Bartels’ temperament could fill the role of one who was either cloddishly insensitive or gloatingly feline.

But I was continually conscious of a sensation of discovery, for I felt instinctively that as the next part of the story unfolded in my mind, I should be groping still nearer to the solution of at least one part of the mystery. I had already sensed that pity, the inability to inflict pain, had played a part in Bartels’ action. What I had not hitherto realized was the devastating effect which this had had on him.

Now I was beginning to get a clearer picture and, collating all that I knew, I suddenly saw that, queerly enough, it was Beatrice herself who made up Bartels’ mind for him, not by any conscious deed, or quarrel, or hurtful words, but by a small instinctive action in the early hours of the morning, while she lay in bed more than three parts asleep.

Chapter 8

Bartels had driven down to Thatchley, and dined with Lorna. She had been very sweet to him that evening, because she knew his kindly nature, and knew also, therefore, that a struggle was going on in his mind, though she obviously had no idea of its exact nature.

He left her at about 11.30 p.m. and set out on the road home, and Beatrice’s chances of life increased as he felt the car answering to his touch and listened to the hum of the engine.

Driving, the feeling of controlling a car, always increased his self-confidence, helped to smooth out his