Prelude to a Certain Midnight Read online

  “There isn’t anything to work out,” said Turpin, smiling. It was then that Cigarette, looking hostile, spoke of Dicks, or detectives.

  A waiter, observing that her glass was empty, paused with a tray of full glasses. Cigarette took one and put back the glass she had emptied, saying: “There’s more in this stuff than meets the eye, comrade.”

  Then she gulped about a quarter of a pint of Schiff’s Formule, and became angry. She strode over to Detective-Inspector Turpin, knocking down a little three-legged table on her way, and cried:

  “How dare you come here? You copper’s nark, you dirty little bogey! What are you doing in the company of decent human beings! You filthy bloodhound, why aren’t you out? Why aren’t you out hunting; why aren’t you out hunting better men to death, you stinking dirty wolf? You murdered Chicken Eyes Emerald. You murdered him! You dirty coward! You wouldn’t have dared to meet him face to face as man to man – no, no, you had to be mob-handed, you beast, with thousands of coppers behind you, all hunting down one man. You hound! And I suppose you’ve come here to gloat, to show off! You – ”

  “ – Cigarette, shut up,” said Asta.

  “I’m sorry. I know I’m your guest,” said Cigarette. “But I won’t shut up! Christ Almighty, instead of hounding better men to death, why don’t these bastards go out and find out who killed that little girl?”

  “All right,” said Detective-Inspector Turpin, “take it easy, just take it easy.”

  He took a full glass from a passing waiter, handed it to Cigarette, and said: “Let’s have a drink.”

  She drank, and she melted. Looking sideways at Turpin through her eyelashes she said, in a different voice: “I’m sorry. I behaved like a perfect pig. You won’t believe me, but ordinarily I have quite good manners. I don’t know what came over me. Will you forgive me? Do, please, say you forgive me.”

  “Nothing to forgive, I’m sure.”

  “Call me Cigarette. Everybody calls me Cigarette. Do please forget what I said. I didn’t mean a word of it.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Do you know me?”

  Turpin knew her; but he said: “I can’t say I’ve had the privilege.”

  “I was Chicken’s girl. Does that convey anything to you?”

  “Ah-ha?”

  “He was a rat, you know.”

  “So?”

  “But I loved him. I loved him, Turpin!”

  “It’s all over now,” said Turpin. “Be sociable, eh?”

  “I like you, Turpin. Turpin, tell me all about yourself.”

  “You’ve just told me.”

  “What’s your wife like?”

  “What makes you ask, miss?”

  “Do you make love to her often, Turpin?” asked Cigarette.

  “Why don’t you finish that nice drink?”

  “Oh, Turpin, Turpin, I do think you’re pretty terrific! You know, for a little while I hated you. But now I think you’re pretty damned fine. Do you know what? My father used to hunt silly little foxes. But you, you hunt real live men. My God, Turpin, it takes something to hunt down a man like the Chicken – it does! He was a man!… And you’re a better man…” said Cigarette, with certain inward explosions that presaged hysterics. “You’re a – ha-hup, ha-hup – ”

  “You can cut that out,” said Detective-Inspector Turpin, in an undertone like cracked ice made articulate. “I’ve heard it all before. Have another drink and get properly drunk, and go home and sleep; and get up, and get drunk again to-morrow, and go to sleep again. But just for now be quiet. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” said Cigarette, quietly crying.

  Turpin side-stepped like a boxer and disappeared into the thickening crowd.

  “Turp!… Turp!” cried Cigarette, in a gulping voice. “Stand by me, Turp! Let’s play games, Turp – I’ll hide, and you’ve got to find me – ”

  A waiter was passing. She exchanged her half-empty glass for a full one. There was a numbness in her cheeks. None of Asta’s guests was quite sober now.

  ∨ Prelude to a Certain Midnight ∧

  Thirty-Four

  Oonagh Scripture was leaning upon Sinclair Wensday, who was caressing her shoulder and exchanging glances with a fat, tow-headed girl whom nobody knew. His wife Avril was watching him with her right eye and ogling Alan Shakespeare with her left: from time to time they exchanged a look of quiet hate. Muriel, having recognized the Murderer, had rushed across the room to embrace him; but he was deep in conversation with Thea Olivia now, together with Hemmeridge, Graham Strind-berg, and Mothmar Acord. Milton Catt intercepted her: they embraced. Tony Mungo clutched her wrist and kissed it; Geezle bowed. Roget, demonstrating a trick with a tray and three glasses, made a clang and a clash; and then Sir Storrington Thirst made noise and mess scraping up glass and drink with a fire-shovel. Ayesha Babbington had interested herself in the trapezius-muscles of Milton Catt, who at the same time was being palpated by Shocket the Bloodsucker, who was saying: “Train! Train! May my mother, God rest her dear soul, rot in hell – may my children, God bless them, be given to Narzy Degenerates – I’ll make you light-heavyweight champion. It’s an offer. May I go blind and paralysed if I die! May my wife and children go deaf and dumb and blind and paralysed!… Would I say this if I didn’t mean it?”

  There was a silence. “Titch!” cried Shocket, looking wildly about the place. “Titch, did I done you harm? If so, when?”

  “Never no harm to me, Bloodsucker.”

  “There you are then, you see?” said Shocket to Milton Catt. “You see? I never did no harm, not to nobody. I tell the man I can make him a light-heavyweight champion already, and he looks at me like I done a murder, Gratitude!”

  At the sound of the word Murder, conversation clicked back to the topic that had occupied everybody’s time for the past ten days – Sonia Sabbatani. That crime was still interesting in the locality. The corpse was still fresh. In a few more days they would have talked it stale. Then it would begin to bore them, and they’d drop it and forget it.

  “Still no news of that awful business?” said Ayesha Babbington. “God above, what do we keep the Police for?”

  “Just so. Is it for this sort of thing that we ruin ourselves paying taxes?” said Sir Storrington.

  Hemmeridge, in his sibilant, simpering, effeminate voice said: “Of course, there’ll be lots more now, you know.”

  “Good lord, what a horrible thought!” said Tobit Osbert. He was holding Catchy’s hand. Catchy squeezed his wrist.

  “Why, don’t you see, one murder makes many,” said Hemmeridge.

  “I’ve heard that said about marriage,” said Mothmar Acord, with a lowering look, compounded of low cunning and secret scorn. This man seemed always to be on the verge of an outburst of mad rage or contemptuous laughter.

  “Well, it’s pretty much the same sort of thing, don’t you see,” said Hemmeridge, with a titter. “Nonetheless, people go to a wedding and it puts ideas in their heads. They think it would be really rather nice to go and have a wedding themselves and some of them do go and have a wedding themselves. Same with christenings. Girl sees pretty little pink ready-made baby, going goo, goo, and thinks that she would rather like to find a delicious little living doll like that under her own cabbage leaf or in her own doctor’s little black bag – according to what her mother has told her, don’t you see, and up goes the birth-rate. And as I think I was saying, it’s much the same thing with this affair. Man kills little girl. Man gets away with it. Lots of people want to kill little girls only they need a little encouragement.”

  “You’re perfectly right,” said Schiff. “It’s perfectly natural. It’s fundamental. Read Das Buch von Es.”

  “If you’ll have the goodness to allow me to finish my sentence,” said Hemmeridge, petulantly, “lots of people think it would be really an awfully nice thing to go out and kill somebody. Only most of us, thank goodness, do our killing in our dreams. I mean, we get someone else to do our killing for us. I mean, we go out
and buy a nice bloodthirsty detective story, or one of those Americanish tough-guy books in which the hero is a bit of a murderer thinly disguised as a private detective and goes about slapping glamorous female poisoners in the face or tearing their clothes off or something.” He giggled, swallowed a mouthful of his drink and continued: “Thank goodness, what? Look at me. Here I am, in the land of the living, not quite dead of malnutrition, neatly dressed and in clean linen. For this I must thank the general public’s enjoyment of murder. Since, as you may or may not know, I write crime stories myself – when I happen to think of a good bloodthirsty plot. Do you see this grey suit I am wearing? It was bought out of the blood of a dismembered heiress in a trunk at Waterloo Station. Do you see this rather nice silk tie? I got it out of a mad surgeon who loved to vivisect people and make them into peculiar shapes. It was all that was left over after I had paid certain arrears of board and lodging. I do like to have something to show for money received on account of my crimes – I always buy myself a little something or other; a tie, a card of bachelor buttons, a pair of sixpenny cuff-links, or even a pair of gloves. But what was I saying? Oh yes. One murder makes many. That, by the by, would be a goodish title for a story, wouldn’t it? The sort of fellow that goes out and kills little Sonia What’s-her-name is, actually, not at all rare. He nearly always gets away with it, don’t you see? It’s like diving into ice-cold water – you only have to make your mind up to it, and once the first shock is over there is a pleasant tingle and glow. It gives you a certain sense of power, don’t you see: something like well-being, having done it once, you’ll do it again, and then again, and yet again. You mark my words, one murder makes many, I repeat. And furthermore, encouraged by the failure of the police – poor things – to find the perpetrator of this much-publicized atrocity, someone else will find his nerve and take his quick, wild plunge through the thin ice into those strangely stimulating dark still waters of death.”

  Hemmeridge drained his glass. A waiter gave him a fresh drink. Mr Pink, who had been listening and nodding, said: “But look here, sir! This is dreadful! No, this really is dreadful! You know that what you’re doing isn’t nice – I mean, writing that sort of nasty story and putting nasty ideas into people’s heads – you know what you’re doing and still you go on doing it. Why? You ought to stop doing it at once, as soon as you realize that what you’re doing is wrong. Oughtn’t you now? Be honest! eh?”

  “Oh, my dear fellow!” cried Hemmeridge, laughing, “what difference can it possibly make? People like that sort of nonsense. If there had been no murder, we should have had to invent it. Besides, if – te-he! if I may coin a phrase, a man must live, and please don’t say ‘Je ne vois pas la nécessité’.”

  “Oh, but I know that a man must live,” said Pink. “I do, I do indeed, I honestly and solemnly assure you, but a man can live in all sorts of ways.”

  “Ah, yes, Mr Pink. But I happen to be in my little way a writer.”

  “But, Mr Hemmeridge, so was Thackeray, so was Tolstoy. So is the great Ernest Hemingway.”

  “And so are you, Mr Pink.”

  Mr Pink blushed like a fourteen-year-old girl, and said: “No, no,-really not. Not a writer, only an interpreter and, by the way, Mr Hemmeridge, you are a literary man, and may perhaps advise me. Last night I had an idea.”

  “A revelation surely?” murmured Tobit Osbert.

  Hemmeridge giggled into his glass, but Mr Pink went on very seriously: “You know, I believe, that I have been trying to put the eternal truths into everyday language. Well, last night it occurred to me that it might be possible to translate some of the writings of St John of The Cross into popular songs. Take this for instance: ‘As to my affairs, daughter, let them not trouble you, for none of them troubles me… These things are not done by men, but by God, Who knows what is meet for us and ordains things for our good. Think only that God ordains all. And where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.’ Now what do you say to that as a kind of dance-music song? Title: ‘You’ve got to put what you want where you want it.’ Or again, take this passage: ‘For, in order to pass from the all to the All, Thou hast to deny thyself wholly in all.’ Now that is, if I may say so, a little elusive to the modern mind. Might one not transcribe it as – ‘Go chase yourself and catch yourself’? What do you think?”

  Before Hemmeridge could reply, Mothmar Acord said: “I don’t really see what all the kafuffle is about. What is there so extraordinary in a kid being killed? One of these days I dare say there will be a war, and then we’ll knock over millions of ‘em, and congratulate ourselves.”

  Thea Olivia, with a little cry of horror, said: “You mustn’t say such things!”

  Looking down at his freckled hands Mothmar Acord lifted a shoulder and a corner of his mouth and sauntered away to talk to Avril Wensday.

  Tobit Osbert said: “It seems to me that Mr Acord isn’t quite right in what he said. Dropping a bomb is one thing. Getting hold of someone by the throat and choking them and – excuse me, madam – raping them, is another thing. Look down from a very high building. Look down from the Monument in the City, and even from that little height people don’t look like people any more. You know how it is when you live in a high building. The higher you live, the more you get into the habit of throwing things out of the window. It seems to me that a man in an aeroplane thousands of feet above the ground can throw down bombs, or germs, or anything horrible that you can think of, and still be quite a nice young man.”

  “Until he comes to think of it,” said Hemmeridge.

  “He knows not what he does,” said Mr Pink, laying one of his nervous hands upon Osbert’s left shoulder.

  “Yes, Mr Pink, that is more or less what I mean to say. He should be, as it were, forgiven because he sort of does not know what he does. He presses a button or pulls a lever and he’s a mile away from the scene of the crime even before the crime is committed – I mean, before the bomb goes off and kills men, women, and children. But a man who stands about on street corners in the dark and waits for a little girl to pass and takes advantage of the fact that she knows him and trusts him in order to do what that man did who killed Sonia Sabbatani – he is a murderer.”

  “Yes,” said Mr Pink, biting his nails, “but having learned of the effect of a bomb, is your brother…? I wonder…”

  He paused and Graham Strindberg said: “Yet why should such things be? Why should Evil be? If Evil exists, and is powerful, is God all-powerful? Since there is evil, if God is all-powerful how can he be all-good? If God is all-good how can he be all-powerful?”

  With something like irritation, Mr Pink replied:

  “I don’t know, Mr Strindberg.” He was by this time quietly drunk and his eyes were like stars reflected in the rippling surface of a puddle. “I really don’t know, my dear sir! Plow can I know? God doesn’t tell me his business, does he? Who the deuce are you that you must know everything? Do your toe-nails insist on knowing what your head is doing? Does the body of the martyr understand the soul that tells it to burn at the stake? In Macaulay there is an account of an old Puritan after Sedge-moor: he had had his arm smashed and was cutting it off himself with his own knife, sternly repeating the Lord’s Prayer, with a face of iron and no expression of pain. What was that arm to question the will of that man? It was hurt? It was crushed? Its nerves cried out, yes? Yet I tell you that because of the unyielding spirit of that old man to whom God gave that arm, the misery of his poor flesh brought forth something good and beautiful. You must do what you know is good. Ask no questions. Expect no answers. Have faith. Believe me – do please believe me – God is good. He is! He is!”

  “If He is good, is God all-powerful, then?” asked Graham Strindberg.

  “Yes!” shouted Mr Pink.

  Tom Beano appeared from nowhere in particular and roared: “Don’t make a fool of yourself, Pink!… Is Pink at his old games again? Godding and Christing? Gooding and evilling? Everything-is-for-the-best-in-this-best-of-all-possible-worlding?… Cut i
t out, Pink. This is a sociable party. Face facts. Who burned Giordano Bruno?”

  Beano flourished a half-empty glass. He was red in the face, and his eyes were narrowed.

  “I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Thea Olivia.

  Tobit Osbert started to say: “We were talking about – ”

  “ – I know, I know, I know,” said Beano. “And there you are again, Pink. Where’s the good in that business?”

  “Beano, you know as well as I do that there isn’t any good in it.”

  “Is there bad in it, Pink?”

  “I should jolly well think so!”

  “Why, then? Come on, Pink. Why? Tell us why!”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know why anything!” cried Mr Pink, with tears in the corners of his eyes. “I know what. I don’t know why. And so do you, Tom Beano, so do you!”

  “So do I what, Pink?”

  “Beano, you know right from wrong.”

  “Aha?” said Beano, closing one eye. “And what if I do?”

  “Oh dear me, dear me!” said Mr Pink. “All this is vanity, Tom Beano, and you know it. How dare you talk the way you talk? How dare you do it? How dare you ask me ‘Where was God’? Where were you, Tom Beano? Where were you when that deed was done?”

  “All right, then, and where were you?” asked Beano.

  “I was spoiling sheets of foolscap paper,” said Mr Pink, slowly.