Murther and Walking Spirits

  “Well, try it from the other side. Is there somebody you hate? Somebody you really detest and loathe and spit on in your heart. Somebody who stands in your way?”

  “Ah! Oh well, if you put it like that, I think there is somebody.”

  “Good. Or rather – bad. Now here’s what I’d do if I were an Orthodox priest – which I’m not, of course. I’d tell you to go to that person and bring yourself right down to the very rock bottom of humility, and tell him what you’ve told me tonight.”

  “But – but he’d probably turn me over to the police!”

  “And you knew I wouldn’t! Isn’t that it? You wanted forgiveness. You wanted absolution for your crime – because it is a crime and the first crime God ever put his mark on. You’ve killed a man! You didn’t mean it – murderers often don’t – but nevertheless you robbed a fellow-creature of the life God gave him, and in doing that you’ve frustrated God’s purpose. Think of that! Cain raised! The worst crime in the book! And you wanted me to keep it under the seal of confession! Now Mr. Going, that’s very stupid thinking, and that’s trifling with my sacred office. You just wanted me to get you off the hook. I can’t. Man, you have no sense of the seriousness of your position. You’re just fussing about your reputation, and your freedom, though in these days you don’t have to fuss any longer about your neck. Stop fussing, and think about your immortal soul. It’s your burden, not mine, and I can’t lift it from you.”

  (8)

  “SO IT WAS YOU who killed poor old Gil? All things considered, I’m not surprised. ”

  “You think I look like a murderer?”

  “I think you look like a jackass. I’m not surprised, because people who carry nasty things like that concealed weapon of yours usually end up by using them, and that’s what you’ve done, and that’s why you’re in this mess. Your murder, my wee man, had its beginning the day you laid down good money for that tomfool bit of macho vanity. Oh dear, dear, dear; poor old Gil!”

  It is late. Going has walked back from Father Boyle to the Advocate office, muttering to himself, now and then bumping into people, because more and more frequently he glances behind him. His state is pitiable, but I do not feel that I am quite the person to pity him. If he had not seen the light on in Hugh McWearie’s room, would he ever have found himself in Hugh’s visitor’s chair? Perhaps not, but Hugh was working late, or musing and smoking late, and the Sniffer acted on impulse, just as he acted on impulse when he struck me down. Already he regrets his impulse, but it is too late to retract his confession.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Going to do? I don’t follow you.”

  “Aren’t you going to denounce me? Turn me over to the police?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Well – think about it now!”

  “You’re very hasty, Mr. Going. That’s been your trouble. Haste. You were hasty when you struck poor Gil.”

  “I’ve told you – it was a wholly unpremeditated act, brought on because he called me by an opprobrious name.”

  “Now, now – not wholly unpremeditated. As I’ve tried to explain, it was premeditated, or at least it became a possibility, when you bought that walking-stick with the bludgeon hidden in it. And as for an opprobrious name, what did you expect? Think, man. He found you in bed screwing his wife.”

  “No! We weren’t – . We hadn’t – .”

  “Then you were working up to it, I suppose. What is called the foreplay, if I am not mistaken. But you didn’t need any foreplay to get that cosh of yours into full working order. What the hell were you doing with it in bed – if it’s not indelicate to ask?”

  “It wasn’t in bed. It was beside the bed. With my clothes.”

  “I see. That’s your reputation, of course. Never seen without your fine stick. Not even when you are in an act of adultery – ”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, McWearie, let’s get into the twentieth century!”

  “Just where I’m heading, Mr. Going. Just where I’m heading. Was it irresistible passion, or just whiling away the time? Tell me, now – were you and the beauteous Esme in love?”

  “I’ve never been perfectly sure what people mean by that expression.”

  “I can well believe that. But let’s explore it for a few moments. Had you exchanged words of warm admiration? Had she ever, for instance, told you that she preferred you to Gil?”

  “I don’t know what right you have to ask about that.”

  “Possibly I presume too far, but I rather thought that what you have just been telling me gave me certain rights that another person wouldn’t have. Am I mistaken?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because I have a decision to make. The seriousness of your involvement with Mrs. Gilmartin would have a strong bearing on what I do.”

  “We had become lovers.”

  “But you weren’t in love; is that it? The word lover has taken on a rather technical significance in our time.”

  “We were exploring the parameters of our relationship.”

  “Oh, that lovely word! You were measuring and quantifying what you felt for each other before declaring the fact. And that demanded lots of sport in bed, eh?”

  “McWearie, you’re being very nasty and very puritanical and I am convinced that you are very jealous. Esme is a lovely woman.”

  “And an ambitious woman. The buzz around the office is that she thinks her beauty and talent would work very well on television, and that you could give her a leg up – if you’ll pardon the indelicacy of my expression – in that strange world.”

  “So what?”

  “So this: was her complicity with you what could be called a quid pro quo? Or perhaps – pardon me again – a down payment?”

  “McWearie, you – you shit!”

  “No, not at all, my wee man. Not ever so faintly faecal. But if I am to decide what to do with you, I have to know some things, and my method of investigation is the one I grew up with. My father, you know, was a policeman. Not just your ordinary cop, though he began walking a beat in Edinburgh. But he ended his career as a well-respected Chief Constable of a large Scottish county. He was a good detective – the real thing, you know, not like those fellows in novels. And he was a pragmatist, which he said meant that you had to attribute the lowest motives to everybody, hoping you’d be wrong, of course. So you see I must suppose, just to get to the bottom of things, that Esme was using you, and you were muggins enough to fall for it.”

  “Could she be so vile?”

  “Certainly she could, and what’s so vile about it? She’s an ambitious woman, and maybe she counted the cost and decided to pay, in a traditional coin. That’s a pun, if you missed it. You’re not as repulsive as many a ladder an ambitious woman has had to use. Now I understand she has found another ladder, and this one she pays in another kind of coin. An agent, who gets her what she wants and takes his ten per cent.”

  “That clown Hornel?”

  “If she’s changed her Harlequin – you, my lad – for a Clown, I suppose it’s because he can deliver the goods and you can’t. Clowns are very clever fellows.”

  “My God – women!”

  “And men. Ambitious people play the game the same way, regardless of sex, and these are liberated times, as I’ve noticed you say pretty often in your reviews.”

  “One expects better of women.”

  “My father never did. Varium et mutabile semper, he used to say. He’d had a good Scots education, you see. He’d put it in the vernacular –

  A windvane changeable – huff puff

  Always is a wooman.

  I suppose you’ve never been the least bit huff puff yourself, Mr. Going?”

  “She was using me!”

  “Had you no suspicion of that?”

  The Sniffer is looking very down in the mouth. “That’s what we were talking about,” he says, at last.

  “On the fatal night? You had quarrelled?”

  “Not quite,
but a quarrel was coming up fast. That was when Gil burst in.”

  “After you’d been what you call lovers, you were disagreeing?”

  “We hadn’t been lovers – not that time – in the way you mean. She told me she thought the time had come to break it off between us.”

  “And you didn’t want that?”

  “I’d better be frank.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I’d meant to say that myself. In such situations, I’d always been the one who said it. After a lot of – well, tenderness and protestations of this, that and the other.”

  “And you were angry because she got in ahead of you? Liberated times, Mr. Going. Liberated times.”

  “That was when Gil came charging in and laughed at me.”

  “And you conked him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Killed him?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “No, you don’t suppose so. You bloody well know you did. Now look here at my picture, there on the wall. Degrés des ges. Belonged to my father, the Edinburgh policeman; he valued it as a guide in crimes like yours. Mankind, male and female, walking over the great Bridge of Life. Which of those men is Gil, would you say?”

  “Need we go into this?”

  “Yes, or I wouldn’t be doing it. Look at the picture, man. Where’s Gil?”

  “That one, I suppose.”

  “Stop your silly supposing. Of course it’s Gil. L’ge de maturité. And it was just when he’d reached his maturity that you killed him. What did you kill? What possibilities? Gil was an able fellow, let me tell you. He might have done some very good things, as a journalist or whatever. But you put a stop to that, didn’t you? Not really meaning it, which is a fool’s excuse, when the fool’s bloody well gone and done it. Poor Gil! To be murdered is bad enough, but to be murdered by a posturing ninny – ! He’d have laughed, I expect. May be laughing now, for whatever I know. He had a powerful sense of irony. So – ?”

  “So what?”

  “So what comes next? I know what my father would have done, of course. He’d have booked you.”

  “You’d better get on with it and book me yourself. Phone the police. I’m ready.”

  “Oh, but I’m not. Not yet. You’re not alone in this. There’s Esme, isn’t there?”

  “You seem to know a lot about Esme. Have you been talking to her?”

  “I’d say she’s been talking to me. Came to see me earlier this evening. Sat right where you’re sitting now.”

  “She told you about the whole thing?”

  “No. She wanted to ask me about Gil’s interest in the occult, as she called it.”

  “The occult?”

  “A foolish term. Gil used to come to talk with me about metaphysics. He tried to play the hard-headed newspaper man, but he had quite a turn for metaphysics.”

  “Religion, you mean?”

  “Don’t try to tell me what I mean, Mr. Going. When I say metaphysics, I mean metaphysics. The Queen of Pastimes, the sport of the intellect, the high romance of speculative thought; infinite in scope, relying on the treacherous subtlety and learning of the player; and yet, in its daring and refusal to heed mundane considerations, capable of splendid flights into the darkness that surrounds our visible world. Metaphysics, the mother of psychology and the laughing father of psychoanalysis. A wondrous game, Mr. Going, in which the players cannot decide what the relative values of the pieces are, or how big a board they are playing on. A wondrous, wondrous diversion for a really adventurous mind.”

  “Gil was into that?”

  “He’s into it now. You put him there yourself. With your pretty magic wand, that you are playing with. I wish you’d put it down.”

  “Listen – don’t imagine I put any belief in this moonshine you are talking about – but just tell me where you, as a metaphysician, might suppose that Gil was now?”

  “That’s a very big question and, as a metaphysician, I can’t give you a straight reply. But suppose, for instance, that those kundalini fellows have the right of it. At the moment, Gil may be having a bad rime with the Lord of Death. He’s a very bad character, you know. He would put a rope around Gil’s neck and drag him about, and cut off his head, tear out his heart, pull out his guts, lick up his brains, eat his flesh and gnaw on his bones – and yet Gil wouldn’t be able to die; he’d feel every outrage, and revive again, and go through the same anguish, until the Furious Lord of Death thought he needed a wee respite, to get ready to be reborn.”

  “Reborn?”

  “Yes. And who might it be? Esme is going to have a child, she tells me, with a maternal satisfaction that surprised me in her. Maybe it’ll be a wee Gil. More likely not. But there’s always the outside chance. Metaphysics is a world of chances.”

  “How absolutely frightful! This is preposterous!”

  “I’m teasing you, Mr. Going. It’s irresistible.”

  “Why not just say Gil’s gone, and done with, and nowhere?”

  “That’s what you’d like me to say, is it?”

  “It’s the general opinion.”

  “You’re a drama critic. Surely you remember Ibsen? ‘The solid majority is always wrong.’ ”

  “Oh God – my nerves are absolutely shot to hell. Listen, McWearie, I’m sorry I called you a shit.”

  “Not the first and won’t be the last, I’m sure.”

  “This whole thing is killing me. Esme – I trusted her. Of course I knew we were coming to the end, but I trusted her. And – I can hardly tell you – but I’m beginning to have delusions. Would you believe it? This evening, as I walked through the streets, I’d swear I had two shadows!”

  “Oh? That’s because you’re beside yourself.”

  The Sniffer leaps up and grabs his stick, but Hugh is too quick for him, and snatches it out of his hand. “You’re better off without that thing. I’ll just put it up here on top of the bookcase, along with my skull – I call him Poor Yorick, and that’s a joke a drama critic ought to understand – and I’ll give you a drink. Rye? You’d better like it because it’s all I have. Now look here. It’s not at all unusual for a man in your situation to think he has two shadows. I’ll give you a metaphysical tip; there are a lot of mischievous things that are likely to happen when we step a little aside from the straight path of life. Nobody really knows who is talking, or why, or casting the shadow, or making the racket in the cupboard, or breaking the bread knife or getting up to all sorts of pranks. Even Freud was at a loss to explain them, and he was a ready man with an explanation, as you know. Maybe it’s the Devil. He’s a very handy explanation for anything we can’t figure out. Drink your drink and get a grip on yourself.”

  “Yes. Let’s get it over.”

  “Get what over?”

  “Phoning the police.”

  “I haven’t the slightest intention of phoning the police.”

  “You’re not going to turn me in?”

  “Why should I do your dirty work?”

  “My dirty work?”

  “Yes. You wanted Father Boyle to wipe your soul clean for you, and he wouldn’t. Now you want me to turn you in, and I won’t. Vengeance? I don’t want vengeance. Turn yourself in, man.”

  “Yes, but that would be doing the dirty on Esme. She’d be dragged in.”

  “And her fine book on bereavement would have to take a different tack. There isn’t a huge public for books about how to deal with life after your lover has murdered your husband, and it would be hard for that baby, when he – or she, we must say – was twelve or so. Ah, you’re very gallant, Mr. Going. But you wouldn’t mind if I did the dirty on Esme. You’d rather be dragged away to prison than just walk there on your own two feet.”

  “You’re not going to say anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “Never?”

  “I never say Never, but in so far as in me lies – and that’s a lot farther than you probably suppose – Never.”

  “I suppose I have to thank you.”

&n
bsp; “You won’t when you’ve given it a little thought. Suppose I turn you in: you’d probably be charged with manslaughter, because your act was not premeditated; you’d get something like three years, and you’d be out long before that, because these days the dice are heavily loaded in favour of the murderer. It’s a hot dinner for the wrongdoer, and cold potatoes for the wronged person. And after prison I suppose you’d think of yourself as a man who’d paid his debt. So I’m not doing you a great favour in letting you walk out of this room a free man, because a free man is precisely what you’ll never be. You must carry that stick, or who will know you’re the celebrated Mr. Going. You must live with Gil’s ghost – ”

  “Rubbish!”

  “Just hold on a minute. Do you know what a ghost is? Trace it back far enough into the old languages where it began, and it means fury, or anger. You must make peace with Gil’s ghost as best you can. And now, Mr. Going, I’m sure you won’t want to thank me, so I suppose that is all we have to say to one another. Don’t forget your stick. Don’t ever forget your stick. A good-night to you.”

  (9)

  – WHAT A MESS of mixed motives!

  – Were yours simpler?

  – I see it differently now.

  – Of course.

  – All those people in the films – how confused they were.

  – One feels for them.

  – Pity?

  – No. Pity implies a kind of superiority.

  – Compassion, then?

  – Compassion is still a thing of high-to-low.

  – What, then?

  – Love, perhaps?

  – I think I’m coming to that, but I’ve always shied off from that sort of love. So often it means something limp and greasy, like an old dollar bill.

  – People do shy off from strong feeling. It’s one of the dangers of civilized life.

  – I’d never thought about those earlier ones. Didn’t know them, for the most part.

  – You know them now.

  – Sad. Funny. Often trivial.

  – I don’t think you should say trivial.

  – Sorry. No. They fought the hero-fight with whatever they had. That can’t be trivial.

  – Nor when you look at the whole life.