He'd known all along that I already knew Greta. Somebody must have sent him this cutting some time, probably with no nefarious intention. Just amused perhaps to recognise Miss Greta Andersen walking along the streets of Hamburg. He had known I knew Greta and I remembered how particularly he had asked me whether I had met or not met Greta Andersen. I had denied it, of course, but he'd known I was lying. It must have begun his suspicion of me.
I was suddenly afraid of Lippincott. He couldn't suspect, of course, that I'd killed Ellie. He suspected something, though. Perhaps he suspected even that.
'Look,' I said to Greta, 'he knew we knew each other. He's known it all along. I've always hated that old fox and he's always hated you,' I said. 'When he knows that we're going to marry, he'll suspect.' But then I knew that Lippincott had certainly suspected that Greta and I were going to marry, he suspected that we knew each other, he suspected perhaps that we were lovers.
'Mike, will you stop being a panic-stricken rabbit. Yes, that's what I said. A panic-stricken rabbit. I admired you. I've always admired you. But now you're falling to pieces. You're afraid of everyone.'
'Don't say that to me.'
'Well, it's true.'
'Endless night.'
I couldn't think of anything else to say. I was still wondering just what it meant. Endless night. It meant blackness. It meant that I wasn't there to be seen. I could see the dead but the dead couldn't see me although I was living. They couldn't see me because I wasn't really there The man who loved Ellie wasn't really there. He'd entered of his own accord into endless night.
I bent my head lower towards the ground.
'Endless night,' I said again.
'Stop saying that,' Greta screamed. 'Stand up! Be a man, Mike. Don't give in to this absurd superstitious fancy.'
'How can I help it?' I said. 'I've sold my soul to Gipsy's Acre, haven't I? Gipsy's Acre's never been safe. It's never been safe for anyone. It wasn't safe for Ellie and it isn't safe for me. Perhaps it isn't safe for you.'
'What do you mean?'
I got up. I went towards her. I loved her. Yes, I loved her still with a last tense sexual desire. But love, hate, desire – aren't they all the same? Three in one and one in three. I could never have hated Ellie, but I hated Greta. I enjoyed hating her. I hated her with all my heart and with a leaping joyous wish – I couldn't wait for the safe ways, I didn't want to wait for them, I came nearer to her.
'You filthy bitch!' I said. 'You hateful, glorious, golden-haired bitch. You're not safe, Greta. You're not safe from me. Do you understand? I've learnt to enjoy – to enjoy killing people. I was excited the day that I knew Ellie had gone out with that horse to her death. I enjoyed myself all the morning because of killing, but I've never got near enough to killing until now. This is different. I want more than just knowing that someone's going to die because of a capsule they swallowed at breakfast time. I want more than pushing an old woman over a quarry. I want to use my hands.'
Greta was afraid now. She, whom I'd belonged to ever since I met her that day in Hamburg, met her and gone on to pretend illness, to throw up my job, to stay there with her. Yes, I'd belonged to her then, body and soul. I didn't belong to her now. I was myself. I was coming into another kind of kingdom to the one I'd dreamed of.
She was afraid. I loved seeing her afraid and I fastened my hands round her neck. Yes, even now when I am sitting here writing down all about myself (which, mind you, is a very happy thing to do) – to write all about yourself and what you've been through and what you felt and thought and how you deceived everyone – yes, it's wonderful to do, yes, I was wonderfully happy when I killed Greta…
Chapter 24
There isn't really very much to say after that. I mean, things came to a climax there. One forgets, I suppose, that there can't be anything better to follow – that you've had it all. I just sat there for a long time. I don't know when They came. I don't know whether They all came at once… They couldn't have been there all along because they wouldn't have let me kill Greta. I noticed that God was there first. I don't mean God, I'm confused, I mean Major Phillpot. I'd liked him always, he'd been very nice to me. He was rather like God in some ways, I think. I mean if God had been a human being and not something super-natural – up in the sky somewhere. He was a very fair man, very fair and kind. He looked after things and people. Tried to do his best for people.
I don't know how much he'd know about me. I remember the curious way he looked at me that morning in the sale room when he said that I was 'fey'. I wonder why he thought I happened to be fey that day.
Then when we were there with that little crumpled heap on the ground that was Ellie in her riding habit… I wonder if he knew then or had some idea that I'd had something to do with it.
After Greta's death, as I say I just sat there in my chair, staring down at my champagne glass. It was empty.
Everything was very empty, very empty indeed. There was just one light that we'd switched on, Greta and I, but it was in the corner. It didn't give much light and the sun – I think the sun must have set a long time ago. I just sat there and wondered what was going to happen next with a sort of dull wonder.
Then, I suppose, the people began coming. Perhaps a lot of people came at once. They came very quietly, if so, or else I wasn't hearing or noticing anybody.
Perhaps if Santonix had been there he would have told me what to do. Santonix was dead. He'd gone a different way to my way, so he wouldn't be any help. Nobody really would be any help.
After a bit I noticed Dr. Shaw. He was so quiet I hardly knew he was there at first. He was sitting quite near me, just waiting for something. After a while I thought he was waiting for me to speak. I said to him, 'I've come home.'
There were one or two other people moving somewhere behind him. They seemed to be waiting, to be waiting for something that he was going to do.
'Greta's dead,' I said. 'I killed her. I expect you'd better take the body away, hadn't you?'
Somebody somewhere let off a flash bulb. It must have been a police photographer photographing the body. Dr. Shaw turned his head and said sharply,
'Not yet.'
He turned his head round back to me again. I leaned towards him and said,
'I saw Ellie tonight.'
'Did you? Where?'
'Outside standing under a fir tree. It was the place I first saw her, you know.' I paused a moment and then said, 'She didn't see me… She couldn't see me because I wasn't there.' And after a while I said, 'That upset me. It upset me very much.'
Dr. Shaw said, 'It was in the capsule, wasn't it? Cyanide in the capsule? That's what you gave Ellie that morning?'
'It was for her hay fever,' I said, 'she always took a capsule as a preventative against her allergy when she went riding. Greta and I fixed up one or two of the capsules with wasp stuff from the garden shed and joined them together again. We did it up in the Folly. Smart, wasn't it?'
And I laughed. It was an odd sort of laugh, I heard it myself. It was more like a queer little giggle. I said,
'You'd examined all the things she took, hadn't you, when you came to see her ankle? Sleeping pills, the allergy capsules, and they were all quite all right, weren't they? No harm in any of them.'
'No harm,' said Dr. Shaw. 'They were quite innocent.'
'That was rather clever really, wasn't it?' I said.
'You've been quite clever, yes, but not clever enough.'
'All the same I don't see how you found out.'
'We found out when there was a second death, the death you didn't mean to happen.'
'Claudia Hardcastle?'
