So you think I’ll make a good figure in one of your stories, do you? Well, let me tell you straight, I won’t. You’ll never get it across. You could never know what this place feels like and if you did, you’d never be able to write it down. Oh, I know they do their best to make it comfortable, but—think, man, think—only tomorrow morning they’ll wake me early—if I have slept at all.
Yes, they’ll give me my choice for breakfast. Civilized of them, isn’t it? I guess I’ll have kidneys and bacon, and I’ll wash them down with a pint of beer. I always was a great one for my beer. Do you remember Kipling, the old Blimp?
I haven’t read him since I left school, but for days it’s been running in my head. I can’t get it quite right. “He’s drinking bitter beer today, but he’s drinking it alone.” It comes from a poem called “Danny Deever.”
Oh, so that’s the way it goes, does it? Thanks. You’ve helped put that one out of my mind.
There are four paces this way and three that way. Have you ever lived in a room like this? Perhaps, eh? Yes, maybe, but you could go out for a walk when the walls started pressing in your head. I can’t get out. They take me round the yard, but that’s worse than useless.
It’s only a short walk, they tell me, and a short flight of steps. They think this’ll comfort me. But it’ll be the last walk I’ll ever take—forever and ever.
Well, what was it you wanted of me? What did you want to know? Of course, you’re my cousin and that’s why they let you in. Ghoulish, though, I call it, making copy out of my misfortunes. You just wanted to hear me speak, eh? Well, you’ve heard me speak. Why don’t you go away?
I don’t know why I did it myself—so I can’t tell you. Eleven and a half hours from now—oh, don’t go—I don’t mind talking. It’ll take up some of the time and stop me thinking. Have you ever heard time walking past? It goes slowly—there’s all eternity between each footstep—but you count them up and before you know it another hour has gone forever. One hour nearer the end—and I like being alive.
Oh, yes, I know you’ll say she liked being alive, too. But that was different. She hadn’t got my appreciation of life. She really didn’t know what it was to be alive.
Listen, man! Can’t you hear time roaring past? Oh, it’s just my pulse that’s beating in my ears, is it? But that’s time too—that’s one pulse-beat I’ll never hear again. No, I don’t think I’ll crack up. I’ll walk these last few steps just as if I was going to the corner for a packet of cigarettes. But don’t go away—please! Just having you here is something—if not much.
It only goes to show that it’s a mistake to go after a girl beneath you. She lacked the finer sensibilities which I myself have. Of course, she was pretty—if you like that kind of prettiness. I used to think I liked it myself, until I found out there was more to life than a pretty face and a fine figure.
It’s odd, isn’t it, to think I’m going to die because of someone who was so completely trivial. It isn’t what you might call a death in the grand manner. They’ll take me out of this cell and they’ll hang me by the neck until I’m dead—dead—dead! Dead—just like any little vulgarian who had killed his girl. What a waste of all my gifts—gifts that might have been so useful to humanity.
You know I was clever. You see—I’m already talking of myself in the past tense? I am clever. I got through all my exams with flying colors. They said I’d a brilliant future. There was nothing I might not have done. And now this—all because of someone so utterly unimportant.
I was drunk when I met her. I’d gone to the Palais with a lot of chaps from the University. She looked so gay as she danced that I thought it would be fun to take her away from the clod who was her companion. Of course, I can now see that she was in her proper element. You know—water finding its own level and so on.
It wasn’t difficult. I danced with her once or twice, and then suggested we go for a drink. She said the pubs were shut, but I pointed out that I’d got some liquor in my flat. I can still remember the way she looked at me. Her big brown eyes were excited. It was a big adventure for her to go to a man’s flat for a drink. Poor little thing.
To my offer of brandy, she said she’d rather have gin. I should have been warned then. Anyone who would prefer gin to brandy was obviously lacking in these points of sensibility which would make for a happy relationship with a man like me.
Yes, she was pretty, and even through the bad lines of her cheap frock I could see she’d a decent figure. It’s funny how Kipling keeps coming back to me. Somewhere he refers to a woman who “looked like Old Greece and talked like the Old Kent Road.” That just fits René.
Of course, I knew all along that wasn’t her right name. She’d been christened plain Agnes, and her parents, of course, called her Aggie. I don’t blame her for changing it, but she showed her lack of taste in the name she chose, and of education in the way she spelled it.
I don’t like rushing things, so I didn’t try anything that night. She told me afterward she found this attractive in me. When I think of the clumsy pawing of clods, I shudder. And yet, that was what she’d been brought up to, and what she’d expected. She called me a gentleman and, though I’m no snob, I can’t but say she was right. For me a gentleman is one who realizes that there’s a time and a place for everything. I knew that evening was not the time.
Looking back on it now—God, how the time goes by—I can see that her little efforts at gentility fascinated me. I liked the silly way she lengthened her “a” and sometimes gave it a flavor of “e.” Living at Davidson’s Mains, I’d never met any girl but those in my own walk of life. You know the kind? Friendly, and honest, and terribly good at tennis or hockey. About as exciting as boiled puddings.
René was exciting. She walked as if she was alive, and not as if she was worrying about the respectability of her figure. There was none of that feeling of armor-plating I got when I danced with these honest burghers’ daughters. You know what I mean? Your fingers counting the vertical ridges of whalebone or whatnot, or silk-sheathed rubber, instead of the nice hard knobs of the spine.
These girls were so afraid of the fact that they’d got figures that they hid them behind walls. You might almost say that the corset and the girdle were the modem chastity-belts, eh?
I’m glad you came, old man. You see I’ve just made a joke, and I haven’t felt like doing that in a long time. Not a very good joke, perhaps, but still a joke.
René was plump where she was meant to be plump, and slim too in the right places. She didn’t need a girdle to give her a hard, flat little belly.
Before she left that night, I’d found out where she lived and what she did. She worked in a shop at Tollcross, and lived with her people near Haymarket.
I made a date to meet her the next night. Even then I had the feeling she didn’t quite belong, because, instead of asking her to meet me at the Café Royal or the Three Tuns, where the rest of the fellows went, I suggested Hughie’s, in Rose Street—tough, you know, and free from my own crowd.
Of course, she was late. I drank a couple of pints waiting for her. I even looked at my watch several times. That wasn’t like me. I’m usually capable of controlling my feelings. I don’t believe in displaying my emotions. I told myself that she’d thought of her inferiority, and had decided she was not the sort of person for a chap like me.
All the same, I must give myself some credit. Thinking it over, I’m sure I chose Hughie’s because it was the sort of place where she’d feel at home. Perhaps I’m doing myself less than justice when I talk to you? All the same, old man, it is good to have someone to speak to—it passes the time.
When she came into the bar, perky as a bird, turning her head this way and that, my heart bumped inside me. Of course, physiologically that’s a misstatement, but you know what I mean? There was that feeling of a lump in my throat which I felt again when the judge put on that silly little square of silk. I’m sure I don’t know why they call it a black cap. It’s just a scrap of black silk.
I was flattered to notice she’d had her hair done. I suppose she’d felt her inferiority beside me, and felt that her dress from the Guinea Shop didn’t quite go with my suit from Anderson & Sheppard. She’d felt she had to make an effort. So, as she couldn’t afford more, she’d gone to one of those cheap hairdressers near Tollcross and had spent her few shillings on having her hair fluffed up.
When I rose to greet her, I got the impression that she wasn’t used to having chaps rise for her. It seemed that, just by accident of my breeding, I was going the right way about impressing her. It’s funny the way things work out, isn’t it? Here I was, more or less slumming, just for the fun of it, and look where it’s landed me!
All along I knew there was no future in it. I did my best to teach her to pronounce her words correctly, but when she got excited that dreadful Morningside accent crept out and grated on my ear.
I could, though, forgive her a lot for the sake of her face and her body. These were perfect. God! if she’d only had the mind to go with them, it might have worked!
But her mind was as empty as a blown eggshell. She’d filled it with bits from the movies and pieces from her favorite papers—Pug’s Paper, Red Letter, and so on. Her conversation was of “boys”—I, just imagine it, was her “boy”! And, when she forgot, she called me a “gent”—just as if I had to do with the natural functions of the body.
Yes, I suppose she did love me, in her shallow way. But what do we know of the feelings of those impulses and actions that are motivated by pure instinct? I flattered her pretty, petty little ego. I was a capture beyond her dreams. Soon I’d be a qualified doctor, and she’d be my wife. It was a true story from her pitiful reading—mill-girl to duchess, eh?
You know how it is? A person of my sensitivity can always sense the dreams and motives of those he comes across. She was already seeing herself as “the doctor’s wife,” sitting in a drawing-room with etchings by D. Y. Cameron and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers from the Medici Society, pouring out tea, drinking it with the little finger nicely crooked, and speaking in refined accents of her husband—“The Doctor.”
Oh, yes, I knew her dreams. But I was brilliant, and I could not see her as my wife, or as the lady to my knighthood. She would never have learned all the common decencies of life. She would never have shed all those little tricks which grated. Can you blame me?
In my mind, I can still dwell on the one visit I paid her parents. The only one—thank God! A four-roomed cottage, tumble-down and cramped, with a never-used parlor. You know the kind of place? I was given tea in the parlor, among the photographs of old football teams and the dusty castor-oil plants. You might say they were honest and simple working people. I could not envisage them as my parents-in-law. I’ll admit, however, that I preferred their Edinburgh accents to Rent’s version of Murrayfield or Morningside.
Still, I was the victim of her fascination, of her simple pride in her body and face. It lasted a long time, but I always knew it couldn’t go on forever. These things don’t.
Yes, she was generous with herself, and in her naiveté, she thought I was equally generous and meant everything I said to her. I daresay that, in the heat of the bed, I did promise her marriage. God! It’s strange to think of it now, with the time running out like this.
Oh, if she’d been a little more sensitive and a little more receptive, I might even have risked it. But the way things were, I couldn’t gum up my career at the very start by marrying René. She’d have been a burden which even I couldn’t have carried.
It was then I met Caroline. Yes, she’s everything that I’ve always disliked about the Edinburgh girl. But her father’s a brilliant surgeon. It wouldn’t have been at all bad to be a rising young man with Sir John Bowditch as my father-in-law. I saw it all so clearly. I may flatter myself that I have a gift for seeing things clearly.
Besides, though I may be harsh about Caroline now, there was always the point that she was my own kind. She knew the people I knew, and she spoke the same kind of language. Oh, God, yes, I’d have gotten tired of her in a month or two, but the marriage would have gone on. I’d have established myself as one of the most brilliant of the younger men. Also, if I was careful, I was sure I would be able to find compensations for my family life. I don’t think Caroline would ever have been suspicious of me. She’d have taken my exemplary behavior for granted—or, at least, would have expected me to be discreet.
I saw quite clearly, too, that I’d have to drop René. That was the trouble. She wouldn’t be dropped. I suppose she saw her dreams fading, and was fighting for them. I tried to avoid seeing her, but she took to accosting me in the street. It really was too embarrassing.
I realized that the continued importunities might endanger my future, and I knew there’d have to be a showdown.
I want you to understand that I’d no thoughts of killing her. When I asked her to come round to my flat that Saturday afternoon, I merely wanted to tell her that it was all over between us. Of course, I’ll admit I was a moral coward. I should’ve done it before. But you know how things are? I saw I’d have to get it over, whether I liked it or not.
There was something about the way she looked at me. So trusting. It made me feel crueler than I was. I told myself I was doing her a kindness. She’d never have fitted into my circle. Her shallow little mind could never have grasped the complexities of mine. Oh, I don’t suppose Caroline would have got them either, but she’d have been content to be my wife without trying to intrude on my ideas.
I began gently. I was prepared for tears and, perhaps, even for some hysteria. I wasn’t prepared for the transformation of the gentle René into a virago. She stormed at me and as she did so, I was interested to notice that she shed the affectations of her speech and lapsed into her native Scots. Listening to her rage, I told myself I was well out of it.
I let her finish and got up to pour myself a drink. I measured a good four fingers of whiskey into the glass and took up the soda-siphon.
Then she spoke, quite softly, “David, you’ll have to marry me. I’m going to have a baby.”
I saw it. I was trapped. My brilliance would count for nothing tied to this vulgar little baggage. And I’d be tied for life. I knew it would be no use suggesting that anything could be done about it. She’d never have agreed. Although René wasn’t a Catholic herself, her parents were, and she’d imbibed enough of the doctrine to make that impossible.
Oh, yes, she’d got me neatly by the short hairs. I don’t know why I did it, but in a sudden flush of rage—like a beast cornered—I swung the siphon at her. I don’t think I meant to hit her with it, but she moved toward me just at that moment. Her lips were parted as though in readiness for a kiss, as though what she had said had made everything all right between us once more.
I felt rather than saw the heavy glass crash against the side of her head.
Then I was suddenly cool again. She lay crumpled on the floor. I bent down over her and realized she was dead. There was nothing I could do about it.
For about half an hour I walked up and down the room—just as these last weeks I’ve been walking up and down this cell. I thought I might explain it as an accident—for, damn it all, it was that and nothing more. I hadn’t meant to kill her. I might have got away with that. She could have hit her head on the cast-iron fender.
But then I realized how that would involve me. I’d need to think of a way out which wouldn’t blacken me in the eyes of Caroline’s people. Sir John is an awful old stuffed shirt. You’d never dream he’d ever been young himself. No, it was clear I couldn’t call the police and say there’d been an accident.
There was only one way out for me. That was to cut her up and dispose of the body. It was fortunate, I told myself, that I was such a brilliant hand at dissection. I took a piece of oilcloth and laid it on the table in the kitchen. I bent to pick her up. She wasn’t heavy.
The siphon hadn’t damaged her looks at all. She was still lovely. I laid a handkerchief over her face. I don’t know what it was, but I couldn’t bear to look at her. Do you remember from school—“Cover her face, mine eyes dazzle, she died young”? Yes? Well, I suppose it was something like that.
I don’t suppose you want to hear about the next hours? I don’t much like remembering them myself. The knife exploring where the loving hands had been. I was steady, though, and I made an excellent job of it.
There was, however, one point where I nearly lost control of myself. That was when I discovered she’d lied to me about her condition. But even that didn’t make me wish to mar her face. Somehow I couldn’t do it.
You know—everyone knows—how I strewed the minute particles of flesh and bone about The Meadows. It might have seemed a stupid move, but I’d often watched the dogs rioting about there, and I knew that, cut sufficiently small, these fragments would soon disappear. The trouble was her head.
When I’d finished my work, I think I was pretty drunk. At any rate the whiskey bottle was empty, and I was more than halfway through the brandy. I took them neat, for somehow I just couldn’t use the soda-siphon.
You know the way things go? I was not alarmed when a policeman came to my flat one evening to ask if I’d seen her. I avoided the common error of saying I thought she’d gone off with another man. I don’t say I didn’t think of that, but I realized it might involve me. It might suggest that I’d been intimate with her. I managed to get it across that, while I’d certainly been friendly with the girl, I knew nothing of her love-life. That policeman went away satisfied.
What I hadn’t counted on was her girlfriend in the shop where she’d worked. If I’d had any sense I’d have realized she couldn’t keep a romance, as she’d have called it, like hers a secret. It was too like the stories in her pathetic papers. I’d represented her possibility of escape from trivial drudgery and her rise in the social scale.
The next time they came there were two of them. A constable and a fellow in plainclothes. They were polite, I will say that for them. But the man in plainclothes said, “I don’t suppose you mind if we take a look round?” And, of course, I couldn’t refuse.
All the time I was in Sauchiehall Prison, waiting for the trial, Caroline never came near me once. I felt annoyed by this. It showed a lack of trust in me. I never anticipated any trouble. Of course, I knew I shouldn’t have cut up her body and disposed of it the way I’d done. But, then, a chap in my position couldn’t afford to be mixed up in a thing like that. Of course, too, it was different now. The whole story would have to come out. I supposed that having a trial was just a formality.
It was so patently absurd to suppose that a man of my attainments would actually have murdered a shop-girl. To my surprise, I found that my lawyer didn’t think it was as simple as I did. That’s one of the troubles about living in a place like Edinburgh. All these old family lawyers are more dead than alive. Of course, they’re all right on matters of property and so on—but they know nothing of the real facts of life.
The court was crowded. Looking along the public benches I saw many of my friends. You were there, too, weren’t you? I thought I saw you. I also saw René’s parents. They looked old and shrunken. It was absurd that they should’ve been so upset over the death of such an unimportant person.
I realized quickly that I was the only person in court who had any real philosophical grasp of the meaning of civilization. Here I was, a potential benefactor of humanity, suffering the indignity of being tried for my life—for my life, mind you—all because of the death of one who had nothing to give to the people among whom she lived.
Nonsense, old boy, nonsense. That’s rubbish. Beauty is an accident, and the world could get along nicely without beautiful women. “Beauty is but a flower which wrinkles will devour.” It couldn’t get along without doctors.
My lawyer didn’t want me to go into the witness box. I had to insist. His account of what had happened was so garbled I felt I had to get it straight, in justice—that’s a funny word—to myself. After all, I’d been there myself and I alone knew just what had happened.
I pointed out, rightly, that René was a person of no importance. It only goes to show that crass sentimentality is not quite dead. When I spoke, some people on the public-benches hissed. I’m glad to say the judge made short work of them. He told them, more or less, to shut up or get out. I suffered no further interruptions. One of the advantages of a training like mine is that you learn to tell a story briefly, without inessentials.
Of course, the other side did their best to blacken my character. They said I’d been trifling with the girl’s affections, and that I’d seen a personal advantage in a marriage with Caroline. This was nonsense. I was going to marry Caroline because she was the same kind of person as myself, with the same background. I’d sufficient faith in my own abilities to know that I didn’t need to be helped to success. Then, too, they tried to make capital out of the way in which I’d disposed of the body. A set of sentimental slobs, they could not realize that my actions had been entirely logical.
The judge was a little man with a little dried-up face. He shuffled his notes slowly before he spoke to the jury. He reminded them that there were three verdicts in Scotland—Guilty, Not Guilty, and Not Proven. He made some remarks about the jury’s not being influenced by any personal distaste for the prisoner. I supposed he meant well, but I couldn’t for the life of me see why he said it, unless he was trying to protect a man of his own level of intelligence against the malignancy of the unlettered mob.
I had little doubt about the verdict. They might not go all the way to saying I wasn’t guilty, but I blessed my lucky stars that the trial was in Scotland, with that providential third verdict. Of course, I myself knew I wasn’t guilty, but I couldn’t vouch for what was going on in the minds of a lot of small tradesmen.
I may say that when the jury came back after only ten minutes and said I was guilty I nearly laughed. I thought the judge would send them back to reconsider the verdict, but he just nodded his little bird-like head.
I scarcely heard what he said to me. He said something about agreeing with the jury, which showed me I’d been wrong in my estimate of him. He was a man utterly lacking in the finer points of sensibility. You might have expected a man in his position to realize that an educated man like myself could not set about murdering a shop-girl, for that was all she was. He asked me if I’d anything to say before he pronounced sentence.
I certainly had. I pointed out that the trial had been badly mismanaged and that it was ridiculous to think of punishing a man of my gifts—gifts of incomparable value to humanity—just because he had failed to make the true story acceptable to a bunch of clods. I indicated the jury. Further, I thought it was my duty to point out that the world was no poorer for René’s death, whereas it would be a great deal poorer for mine. I thought I made the position clear.
Then he put on that silly little bit of black silk and, playing with a little nosegay of herbs, told me I would be hanged by the neck until I was dead. It was so farcical I could scarcely believe it myself.
However, I had little doubt that a higher court would see there’d been a gross miscarriage of justice, so I didn’t worry. It’s all so obviously absurd. The law is corrupt. My appeal was rejected, and they tell me now there’s no hope of a reprieve.
In a little more than ten hours the chaplain will come in and ask me to say my prayers. Why should I pray? It won’t do me any good. Then they’ll tie my hands behind my back and I’ll go for that short walk. I don’t think I’ll break down. I still can’t quite believe it’s me in this cell. No—I mustn’t think of it.
Thanks for coming, old fellow. You can make what use you like of what I’ve told you. You will make it clear that I’m suffering unjustly, won’t you? It’s destroyed all my faith in the infallibility of British justice. It’s a travesty, that’s what it is!
The whole situation is too ridiculous for words. If I’d been a little less sensitive than I am, I wouldn’t be here now. They could never have proved it against me. It was all circumstantial evidence but for that one thing. I just couldn’t bring myself to cut it up, so there it was in the kitchen cupboard—René’s head in a jar of formalin.
EDITOR’S POSTSCRIPT: At lock-up time or bedtime, however it is called, I have had no word from Ruthven on what set him off on this tale. He is reading poetry somewhere on the West Coast, his own and other people’s. By which I mean he is giving poetry readings, presumably for love and money. But I thought about the story and decided that if it’s anyone we know in there, we don’t want to look anyway, do we?