“How do you manage to remember him so well?”
“I remember thinking that he had a very wide mouth for his size, sir. And wore specs with gold side-pieces. Rather old-fashioned specs, I thought. Spectacles, I should say.”
“Remember anything else about him?”
“He looked pale, sir.”
“He looked pale, did he? Anything else?”
“Well, kind of hot and bothered.”
“What exactly do you mean by ‘kind of hot and bothered’? Try to be a little more precise for the jury, will you?”
“Well, kind of upset. As though he was afraid.”
“Agitated and distressed, would you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What made you think that, apart from him looking pale?”
“Well sir, he ordered a double whisky, and drank it very fast, kind of gulped it down. And then he ordered another, and gulped that down, too, and went straight out. I could understand him gulping the first one, sir, owing to the weather and so on. But I remember thinking it a bit odd about the second. ’That’s queer,’ I said, ‘two doubles like that, quick as a flash.’ That’s why I remember him, really. Whisky costing what it does, most gentlemen like to linger over it a bit.”
“So you would definitely say that he looked agitated and distressed?”
“Yes, sir, I would.”
“Thank you.”
Then Counsel for the defence, of course. Twisting and turning and wriggling. Trying to make out it was quite normal for a man to look pale on a cold night and gulp down two large, expensive, double whiskies, in about three minutes, and go out into the cold again. All that sort of nonsense.
Quibbling and quibbling about identification. Haven’t you seen lots of men with large mouths? Is it so rare that you see a man with spectacles like that? You admit you have seen his picture in the papers? So you didn’t have much trouble about picking him out in court, did you? You admit that?
You admit this, you admit that, you admit the other.
Yes, sir. No, sir. Three bags full, sir.
And on and on and on.
So he must drink it slowly. Very slowly, when all the time he wanted to be with Lorna. To find strength in her steady blue-grey eyes, tranquillity in gazing at her brow and at her calm, rather squarely cut jaw.
But he must be careful. First, Miss Latimer: he had snapped at Miss Latimer. Now, he had nearly attracted attention by drinking too much too quickly. Miss Latimer in court, plump and bewildered, the perkiness knocked out of her, awed by her surroundings:
“Well, sir, he seemed a little upset about something.”
“And why do you think that, Miss Latimer?”
“He kind of snapped at me.”
“And that was unusual?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How unusual?”
“Well, very unusual. He was such a good-tempered man. I’ve never known him get cross before. Not like that. Snappish, so to speak.”
“Was there anything which made you think he was-not quite himself, shall we say?”
“Well, he looked a bit pale one moment, and hot and red the next. And he put his head in his hands.”
“And how did he explain that away?”
“He said he thought he might have a cold coming. So I gave him some red and green pills.”
“And did the cold develop?”
“No, sir.”
“But that might have been due to the remarkable efficacy of your-ah-little red and green pills?”
Laughter in court, of course. Ha-ha-ha, very funny. Swiftly silenced by the officials.
Bartels moved over to a chair by the wall. He took out the tube of pills, extracted a few, threw them in the fire. You couldn’t be too careful. Miss Latimer, and the barman, one mistake and one near-mistake, in a couple of hours. And the fingerprints. So much to think of, so many of the foreseeables and the unforeseeables.
He took ten minutes to drink his second whisky, and then, while the barman was serving somebody, he went quietly out.
He arrived at Lorna’s house in the lane near Thatchley at about seven o’clock. The light was switched on in the porch, offering warmth and shelter from the snow, and from the darkness of the night, and from the black shafts of his thoughts.
Lorna heard the car arrive, and before he could reach the door she had opened it and stood in the porch light to welcome him.
“You must be frozen, Barty.” She smiled affectionately at him, and he took her eagerly in his arms, in the doorway, and kissed her.
“I’m not exactly perspiring in every pore.”
“Come in, I’ve got a fine blaze of a fire in the sitting room.”
He took off his coat and hat, and put them on a chair in the hall, and followed her into the sitting room.
“A drink to warm you up, Barty?” She moved over to the table by the side of the wall.
“Gin and mixed?”
“I’d rather have a whisky and soda, if you can spare it.”
“Of course I can spare it. It’s yours, anyway. You bought it.”
Bartels, standing in front of the fire fondling the corgi’s ear, said: “Don’t keep telling me that such few little things as I give you are mine really. They aren’t. They’re yours, or at the most ours, darling.”
She mixed a gin and Italian for herself and a whisky and soda for Bartels, and brought them over to the fireplace. She gave him his glass and raised her own, and said:
“Well, cheers. God bless us, my dear.”
One cried “God bless us” and “Amen” the other. I could not say “Amen” when they did cry “God bless us.” Wherefore could I not pronounce “Amen”? I had most need of blessing. Wherefore must I always think of the guards in
Ten million light-years for the light of a star to cross the empty spaces of the night. Ten million more for the light of some star beyond the star to reach that star. The fault, dear Brutus, lies in ourselves not in our stars. The dog, Brutus, he was dead, too. Beatrice would be all right, but would he, Philip Bartels?
Beatrice, barefooted, twanging a harp? Not likely!
Beatrice the competent, her red hair aflame in the light of a thousand suns, armed with Delegated Authority, sorting out the Milky Way! That was more like it. Could it be that the slayer was more affected than the slain, the murderer than his victim?
“Are you feeling all right, Barty?”
He wanted to snap back that he was certainly feeling all right, why shouldn’t he be feeling all right, what made her think he wasn’t feeling all right? But he had learnt his lesson.
“I feel all right thank you,” he replied gently. “Why?”
“You look a bit pale, that’s all.”
“I think I may have caught a little chill. It’s nothing.”
He put his arm around her shoulders, and tilted her face up and kissed her.
“You shouldn’t have come, if you have got a chill,” said Lorna. “Not on a night like this.”
“What should I have done?”
“Stayed at home.”
“And not be with you? No, thank you.”
“Well, you’d better take a couple of aspirins before you go to bed.”
