Information Received (32 page)

‘“I imagine no one has ever understood the play as well as I did that night. It was my own soul I watched. Sometimes I have heard people talk about Hamlet as if there were some puzzle about him, or as if his character and motives were hard to understand.

‘“That's so silly.

‘“He could do no other, things being what they were.

‘“And he, too, felt he had to make quite, quite sure. That is why he got the strolling players to give their performance before the two he suspected, and then he watched, and then was sure.

‘“Because even his father's ghost might have deceived him just as in the same way my father's ‘Remember' might have deceived me.

‘“So he invented a test, and I did, too. I bought two stalls and sent them to Sir Christopher. I did it again, and another time as well, three nights in succession, and then I was sure.

‘“For all his fears came back to him that he had put aside when he hit on the splendid idea of bribing me with a husband and a fortune!

‘“How wonderful it is how foolish, strong, clever men can be. It was his very attempt to bribe me made me certain and now I was more certain still, certain enough to act.

‘“On the night itself, I was in the drawing-room as usual for the hour before dinner. I knew the time was near, for twice over I had wakened in the night to hear a thin and ghostly ‘Remember' whispering in the corners of my room. I knew, too, Sir Christopher was hurrying on the wedding, and that papers settling all that money on me were nearly ready. So it had to be done quickly, since afterwards, as soon as the money was mine, as soon as I should have seemed to accept his bribe, then I should have had no right to act. Once his money belonged to me, my vengeance would do so no longer.

‘“Therefore I knew the hour had come and I knew it still more certainly when I saw a strange man go creeping past the drawing-room window. I did not turn my head, and he did not know I saw, but there was a mirror that showed him plainly, and that he had his face covered with an old scarf. I realized at once it was a burglar after the contents of the safe in the study, where Sir Christopher often kept valuable papers and diamonds worth much money.

‘“I saw immediately that by doing what had to be done while there was also a burglar in the house, I should make myself much more secure. And I had always felt that my own safety was an essential part of my task. I did not wish that in taking my revenge for his crime, I should give him his for my just deed. It seemed to me essential what I did should go undetected and unpunished. I did not expect then that before long I should be myself writing out exactly how and why it all came about.

‘“But I realized immediately my chance to confuse from the very start the investigation that I had to expect – and baffle. I saw I could put the police on a false track at once. They would spend their time trying to trace a connexion between burglary and murder that did not exist. I thought I was very clever to see all that, but circumstances are more clever still, for how was I to know he was not an ordinary burglar but Mr Marsden, Peter's partner?

‘“I put on the half-obliterated record I had specially prepared and I plunged into my rendering of the same piece. At the exact moment I stopped and the record went on. I don't think anyone could have suspected I was not still at the piano, still playing.

‘“I kicked off my shoes. That was another detail I had long thought out. I always wore heavy shoes and I had trained myself to walk heavily, so that people should get to think I had a heavy step and to suppose subconsciously that they would always hear me when I moved about. In my stockings I ran upstairs and opened the drawer in Sir Christopher's room. I took out his pistol and saw that it was loaded and ready. Of course, I held it in my handkerchief so as to leave no finger marks. I ran downstairs again and went into the billiard-room. Sir Christopher was there. He was knocking the balls about. I said to him:

‘“‘I have come to kill you.'

‘“He went all horrible with terror, all soft and saggy. He did not make a sound. He would have screamed, I think, only he did not dare, for he knew the moment he made a sound, I would fire. But I wanted him to understand. I said: ‘Because you murdered my father.'

‘“I saw he wanted lamentably to deny it, so I said: ‘Because you made my mother murder my father.'

‘“He managed to stammer out:

‘“‘I never knew... I wasn't there... I gave her something once to give him... but we threw it away again... I was in New York when it happened... I knew nothing, I swear I didn't...'

‘“I did not wait for any more excuses. I knew very well what had happened. He had talked about it to her. The opportunity came. Easy enough to pour the medicine away. Yes, he was in America, but his spirit, his will, was there, at her side, urging her, pressing her on, compelling her though absent. I knew all that so well and I did not want to hear it said again. Besides, he looked so disgusting in his terror that I was afraid, if I was not quick, I would never do it at all. I fired twice. He fell down, right down, and lay there, and I looked at him and saw that he was dead, and the thought came strangely into my mind that I had avenged, not my father, but my mother.

‘“I took one of the cues standing in the rack and threw it on the table and I moved the pointers on the scoring-board. I wanted it to look as if a game had been in progress.

‘“Then I put the pistol down by his side and went back to the piano in the drawing-room.”'

‘“My first sensation was that of an enormous, an overpowering relief.

‘“I was as one who has at last found peace after long days of grief and trouble, I felt as Christian in the
Pilgrim's Progress
felt when at last the burden fell from his shoulders, like the traveller who after weary journeying reaches his destination at last. I experienced a content that was too calm and tranquil to be called joy and yet was greater than joy, it was so perfect and so all pervading.

‘“ I suppose a result of this was the complete change that seemed to come over me. I do not know if others noticed it but I felt almost like an entirely new person. Everything around appeared in an absolutely new light, like a new world.

‘“I saw things, so to say, as they really were. Now the world around me existed in its own right, not merely to subserve my mission. Things had become ends in themselves, not merely means to one narrow purpose. I stepped into a new life and I found it wonderful, like an enchanted kingdom.

‘“To the past I never gave a thought, I had done my job and it was over and finished, so I thought. As for remorse or regret, such ideas never entered my mind. Why should they? A task had been laid upon me and I had been its slave. Now it was accomplished and I was free, gloriously free.

‘“I remember that night I said to a young policeman, a good-looking boy, who was at the house:

‘“‘If it was murder, it will be punished, for murder is always punished.'

‘“What I meant was that now at last due punishment had been exacted for the murder of my father so long ago – and of my mother, too, for she had been murdered, just like my father, body and soul together, by what she had been made to do. Now at last a righteous punishment had been inflicted. That was what I meant, but I meant also what I said as a challenge to the Unknown Powers. I felt as if I said to them:

‘“‘Well, there it is. If it's murder, punish me. You know why I did it.'

‘“That was my challenge. I made it with supreme confidence. It was heard, accepted. Now it has been answered. That is why I am writing this.

‘“But at the time I was quite easy in my mind, content and satisfied. Besides, I knew I had laid all my plans so well I was in no danger of discovery. In case anyone else had seen the burglar pass the drawing-room window and wondered why I had not, I explained I had seen someone but had taken him for Mark. I thought that would confuse them still more, and I knew Mark was at home, because he had said he would have to stay in to prepare a lecture he was giving.

‘“But now almost the first thing I was conscious of in the rush and glow of my released feelings was a new understanding of what Mark meant when he said he loved me.

‘“It was very bewildering.

‘“Before, when he said he loved me, I thought that only meant he wanted to marry me, and that people only wanted to marry because it was the sort of thing one did, and one had to, and the world couldn't go on very well without it. Of course, obviously people wouldn't marry each other if they disliked each other. Naturally they wouldn't. But I didn't imagine that there was any real difference between saying you loved a man and saying you loved music or dancing or your pekingese dog. I thought it was all a question of degree; and if you loved a man more than your Pekingese, that was only because the man was more important and counted for more, just as it was more important and counted for more to love music than to love cream buns.

‘“What I mean is that I thought it was all the same thing, only graded in value and degree.

‘“But now I knew the difference; and then the second thing I became conscious of was that I loved Mark.

‘“The emotion that had controlled me before in carrying out my mission had been like the dull smouldering of half- extinguished embers, but this was a great rushing fire that altogether burnt me up.

‘“It was ecstasy. It ran through me in every nerve and fibre of my being. I touched, I think, real life then, not mere everyday existence, but life itself glowing and real. My love was my self, as fierce as it was steady, a great, fierce, leaping, roaring flame that never changed. My every thought was quickened, every emotion heightened, I lived altogether on a higher plane. Whether in the body or out of the body I hardly knew, but I was caught up into another sphere.

‘“For the Unknown Powers had heard my challenge and accepted it; and so that they might utterly cast me down, first they had to lift me up to a great height.

‘“How else could my fall have been so great?

‘“But at least I have known great and wonderful things, I have lived hours more great and wonderful than any others can have known. Or is that wrong and have others also known such ecstasy as mine? Have the ordinary, everyday people around me also known such heights? The man who drives your taxi, who brings the milk to the door, who goes to the City all the week and plays golf all the week-end, the girl who sells you your stockings, or the one who spends her time rushing about from cocktail to cocktail; have all of them, or some of them at least, issued for a while from the narrow confines of their everyday existence to know what I knew then?

‘“But the challenge I had offered the Unknown Powers they heard and accepted, and I knew that first when Mark declared he would find out who was guilty. He swore an oath that he would, he said it came to him as a thing that he had to do, and I knew well it was the Unknown Powers that had laid it on him – and I knew he would succeed.

‘“Also there was a little man who was their instrument. I do not even know his name, I only saw him once, I hardly remember him at all. He had some grudge or grievance against my stepfather and he hung about the house trying to see him, so he came to know me by sight. Also he had something to do with the box office at the Regency and he knew I bought tickets for the stalls three nights running and to whom I sent them. He thought it strange. I think he suspected something. I think he hated also and his hate gave him insight and imagination. At any rate he watched, and he was watching the house the night I did what I did. He was convinced it was someone in the house had fired the shots. He knew something of my story and guessed more. But he did not say anything for what I had done he had talked of doing himself. So he remained silent, but one day, I don't know how, Mark found him and talked to him and he told Mark all he knew, all he suspected.

‘“Mark knew at once it was the truth. I am not sure if he had suspected before. I don't think so, but anyhow he knew at once quite certainly that he had been told the truth.

‘“I suppose it was a great shock to him. Somehow he got rid of his informant, making him promise to keep silent, and then he came straight to me. I did not know why. I had no idea. I only knew that now his love, that mine in its sudden growth had outstripped, had flowered suddenly to be its equal. He told me we were to be married as soon as possible. It was not very long we were together. I mean not long in time, but all the same for us it was like a thousand years – like the tiniest fraction of a second, too. For we measured that moment by what we knew and felt and were, not by the ticking of a clock, and then in the twinkling of an eye it was past and gone.

‘“ But he knew, he knew, and when the knowledge grew too much for him, he shot himself.

‘“I knew why. I knew the Unknown Powers had heard my challenge and accepted it. I knew they had decreed it was murder I had done, and that Mark should pay.

‘“For the life that I had taken he had offered his own that was mine as well.

‘“He had understood, and now I knew it also, that our love had no right to life, because it was born of death, and death lay between us, and death must separate us.

‘“So he paid my penalty and died, for he could not live knowing what he knew.

‘“I was left.

‘“But now that penalty was paid, the Unknown Powers, placated, showed me great mercy.

‘“In this way.

‘“Jennie told me everything that Peter told her. What she said made me realize for the first time that the burglar I had seen, of whom the sight had told me that the moment had come, was really Peter's partner, Mr Marsden. From Jennie, too, I learnt of the struggle going on between Mr Marsden and Peter, and that Peter was determined to find out the truth about the practice and how the money of their firm's clients had been used. Mr Marsden made an opportunity to see me and talk – at least, he thought he made it, really I made it for him. There were things I wanted to know. He tried to pump me as it is called. He really fully believed that Peter was guilty, and he thought if he could get some evidence to that effect from me, then he could have Peter arrested, and tried; and, whatever the outcome, that would put an end to Peter's endeavour to find out the real state of affairs at the office.