something about Bartels not being supposed to drink too much.
Bartels emptied the tumbler.
I said: “I’ll refill it, in case you need some more later.” I rinsed out the receptacle, twice, added some water, and replaced it on the side table.
“You shouldn’t let him drink all that,” said the detective peevishly.
“No,” I said. “No, perhaps I was wrong.”
Bartels looked up at me from his pillow. He said:
“I think perhaps you had better go, Pete. Thanks for everything. I feel a little tired. I think I’ll sleep.”
I stood up and looked down at him.
“Well, so long, Barty,” I said. “Good luck.”
He said nothing more, but lay with his eyes closed.
“Visits tire him,” said the detective, pulling a cheap, paperbacked edition of some novel from his mackintosh pocket and beginning to read. I doubt if he even saw Bartels die.
First I heard the sound of the Americans’ car on the distant Orleans-Blois highway, then the engine noise died away as it slowed to turn into the poplar drive, then the sound increased as it accelerated up the drive.
I could not see it at first, because the chateau lay between me and the drive, but eventually I saw the light from the headlamps reflected from the trees at the side of the house, and then, once again, there was only the soft moonlight.
I slipped deeper into the wood, and walked softly along the path which led past the chateau, and past the ruined tennis courts. Behind me I heard men talking and a woman laugh. I walked more quickly, and once, as something stirred in the undergrowth by the side of the path, I felt the gooseflesh again run over my skin.
I rounded each bend in the path with a conscious effort, each time afraid lest I should see before me a figure on the path. The sweet, nostalgic melancholy of the sunset hours had departed, and loneliness and apprehension had taken its place.
I wanted no more of the chateau, and knew that I would never visit it again. I had thought that it would hold for me nothing but the tender memories of youthful happiness, that here Bartels and I, and Beatrice, and Ingrid, and all the rest of that cheerful crowd could meet within the compass of my mind, and be reunited for an hour or so, and talk and walk and laugh and love as we had done in the days gone by.
But it didn’t work out that way.
Fear became mixed with the joy, and remorse and self-reproach stretched out their long, strong fingers and smeared the images. I suppose there is always that risk if you revisit a place where you think you can regain for a while your earlier rapture.
Moreover, one small doubt remained unresolved.
I thought of it as I made my way along the side of the drive, and to where my car stood, its sidelights unlit, a menace to all on the highway.
I thought of it as I drove back to Orleans, and again later, when they asked me whether I had enjoyed “my sentimental journey,” as they called it.
I said I had, of course, though the doubt still nagged at me, and they laughed indulgently. Only Lorna, dear Lorna, my wife, did not laugh, did not even smile; for Lorna had advised me not to go.
My doubt is, I suppose, a case of scruples.
It is due to the fact that as I held the tumbler to Bartels’ lips, and watched him drink, a thought flashed through my mind which I tried instantly to repress.
The thought was: He’ll never kiss her with those lips again. She’s safe now, beyond all risk or doubt: she’s mine.
I wish the thought had never occurred to me. But it cannot be helped now. I am, as I have indicated, a worldly type, little prone to introspection. The memory of that thought will grow fainter.
I won Lorna, and what I win I hold, and nothing, not even the shades of Philip Bartels, shall ever come between us: I was always a better man than Bartels, better at everything, including murder.
