instinctively, even though aware that he was not there: “Barty! I feel so queer, Barty!”
Calling to him for help, calling to her murderer, in implicit faith, and staggering to dial 999, and dying in fear and pain after all, like the butterfly in the flames.
His heart throbbed in his throat. He had an absurd urge to ignore the signal, to sweep past the police, and on for a few yards, and then make a wild break across the fields.
But he pulled up behind the police car, and lowered the window by the driving seat, and sat waiting while a wave of nausea swept over him. Two officers got out of the police car and walked towards him. One stood in front of the car, and wrote down his registration number in a book. The other came up to the car, and bent down and put his face through the window.
“Are you aware that you have no rear light, sir?”
“No rear light?” whispered Bartels. “No rear light?”
“No, sir. Perhaps you would care to get out and confirm what I have said?”
They want to see if I’m sober, thought Bartels, they want to see me walk to the rear of the car, and see whether I walk properly. Perhaps he smelt the whisky on my breath. I must be careful not to slip on the icy road as I get out; slip and fall to the ground; I must be careful not to slip as I walk to the rear of the car; I must walk carefully, but not too carefully; I mustn’t hold on to the side of the car, even though I might normally do so on a road like this. That would look bad. If they take me in charge, it is the end. And I must not enunciate my words too carefully when I talk to them. That would be bad, too. Mustn’t speak too carefully, and mustn’t speak thickly. If I’m arrested, Beatrice will die, be consumed in the flames as the butterfly was burned in the grate.
Bartels opened the door and got out. He walked slowly but steadily to the rear of the car.
The police officer pointed. “See, sir? No light.”
Bartels gave the light a bang with his hand, and the bulb lit up.
“That’s better,” said the police officer.
“Bad connection,” said Bartels, and smiled.
“You were, of course, committing an offence, sir; you realize that?”
Bartels nodded. “I suppose so.”
“Have you your driving licence with you, sir?”
“You’re not going to report me for this, surely?”
“Have you your driving licence with you, sir?” the officer said again.
“Yes.”
Bartels felt in his pocket and took out the licence. The officer examined it, slowly and methodically, and entered some particulars in a notebook.
Oh, God, prayed Bartels, make him get a move on, make him hurry up: the minutes are passing. Oh, God, if You exist, make this man hurry.
The police officer handed back the licence. Bartels turned to get into his car again. The police officer said:
“Have you your certificate of insurance with you, sir?”
“I have, I assure you. And it’s in order. Must you see it? I am in rather a hurry.”
In rather a hurry, that was bad. He shouldn’t have said that. That was the sort of thing which is remembered. And on the night in question, members of the jury, he was seen to be in a distressed and agitated condition, both by the bartender of the hotel in Cobham, and by a police patrol who chanced to stop him. Bad, bad.
He heard the officer say: “May I see it, sir?”
He took out his wallet and extracted the certificate of insurance. The man examined it and handed it back.
“Where are you coming from, sir?”
“Near Woking.”
“And your destination?”
“London.”
“That’s all, thank you, sir. Good night.”
But from the other side of the car, the second officer suddenly said:
“Just one moment, sir. You don’t appear to have a roadfund licence, properly displayed on the windscreen.”
“It’s fallen off,” said Bartels.
He pulled open the door of the car and frantically felt for it on the floor by the front passenger seat.
“It’s in a holder which is attached to the windscreen by suction, and it’s an old one, and the rubber has perished, and it falls off now and again.”
He continued to grope in the darkness. “Here it is,” he said at length.
The second officer examined it carefully.
“You know it’s an offence to drive a vehicle without a roadfund licence properly displayed on the windscreen, sir?”
“Yes, but I had it. I had it with me. And it’s in order.”
“It wasn’t displayed, sir.”
“No,” said Bartels. “It wasn’t displayed.” His voice shook a little. How long had they wasted? Five minutes, ten minutes?
“I’ll get it seen to,” added Bartels humbly. “I’ll get it seen to, tomorrow.”
“Better get a new one, sir,” said the second officer. “That’d be the best thing in the long run, sir. Get a new one.”
“I’ll get a new one tomorrow,” said Bartels desperately. “Is that all?”
“That’s all, sir. Good night.”
“Good night,” said Bartels.
He climbed back into the driving seat. The officers walked back to their car. Bartels waited until the police car had started, watched it, as it slid swiftly forward, and saw the tail light grow smaller in the distance.
He switched on his own engine, and drove on. It had begun to snow again, not continuously, but intermittently. Bartels switched on the windscreen wiper, and noted with relief that it was working again.
He drove more slowly for a mile or two, while he sorted things out in his mind. The incident had shaken him. He tried to think whether he had said or done anything he should not have done, apart from showing some impatience.
He didn’t like their questions about where he was coming from, and what was his destination. He had told Beatrice he was going to Colchester. Supposing she had mentioned it to somebody else, and that came out, combined with the fact that he had now been officially noted as being on the road from Woking?
Why had he told her that lie? It was stupid and pointless. He could as well have said his dinner was in Woking.
One after another they cropped up, he thought, the unforeseeable little things which you cannot reasonably cater for. Everything seems simple and straightforward at first, but it isn’t.
Sin is not simple. Virtue is simple but not easy, and sin is easy but not simple. Sin is tortuous and twisted, involving lies, and lies within lies, and the bending and warping of the conscience, and subterfuges and concealments, and the ever-present necessity to be on your guard, to watch your every action, to rein in your tongue, to act normally when you yearn to show emotion; only to discover that in acting, as you thought, in a normal manner, you have in fact acted abnormally.
He was halfway between Cobham and Esher, and saw by the dashboard clock that it was 9.40. He began to calculate.
The Kingston Bypass took thirteen minutes, at night, he knew that one; from the London end of the bypass to his flat took not more than twenty minutes, that totalled thirty-three minutes.
He had to be back by 10.30 at the latest, which meant that he had seventeen minutes to reach Esher, pass through Esher, and reach the bypass which was a couple of minutes’ drive further on.
He had ample time, provided Beatrice adhered to her routine, and at the moment when he came to this conclusion he knew without a shadow of doubt that he would not reach his flat, after all, not by 10.30 or even by 11.30.
Something would stop him.
