The Breaking Point (7 page)

‘I believe I was.’

‘Did you put the parcel in a litter basket by the Embankment entrance, sir?’

‘I did.’

‘Would you object to telling us what was in the parcel?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘I can put the question another way, sir. Could you tell us where you obtained the parcel?’

Fenton hesitated.What were they driving at? He did not care for their method of interrogation.

‘I don’t see what it has to do with you,’ he said. ‘It’s not an offence to put rubbish in a litter basket, is it?’

‘Not ordinary rubbish,’ said the man in plain clothes.

Fenton looked from one to the other.Their faces were serious.

‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’ he said.

‘No, sir.’

‘Do you know what was in the parcel?’

‘Yes.’

‘You mean the policeman here - I remember passing him on the beat - actually followed me, and took the parcel after I had dropped it in the bin?’

‘That is correct.’

‘What an extraordinary thing to do. I should have thought he would have been better employed doing his regular job.’

‘It happens to be his regular job to keep an eye on people who behave in a suspicious manner.’

Fenton began to get annoyed. ‘There was nothing suspicious in my behaviour whatsoever,’ he declared. ‘It so happens that I had been clearing up odds and ends in my office this afternoon, and it’s rather a fad of mine to throw rubbish in the river on my way home.Very often I feed the gulls too. Today I was about to throw in my usual packet when I noticed the officer here glance in my direction. It occurred to me that perhaps it’s illegal to throw rubbish in the river, so I decided to put it in the litter basket instead.’

The two men continued to stare at him.

‘You’ve just stated,’ said the man in plain clothes, ‘that you didn’t know what was in the parcel, and now you state that it was odds and ends from the office. Which statement is true?’

Fenton began to feel hunted.

‘Both statements are true,’ he snapped. ‘The people at the office wrapped the parcel up for me today, and I didn’t know what they had put in it. Sometimes they put in stale biscuits for the gulls, and then I undo it and throw the crumbs to the birds on my way home, as I told you.’

It wouldn’t do, though. Their set faces said so, and he supposed it sounded a thin enough tale - a middle-aged man collecting rubbish so that he could throw it in the river on his way home from the office, like a small boy throwing twigs from a bridge to see them float out on the other side. But it was the best he could think of on the spur of the moment, and he would have to stick to it now. After all, it couldn’t be a criminal action - the worst they could call him was eccentric.

The plain-clothes policeman said nothing but, ‘Read your notes, Sergeant.’

The man in uniform took out his notebook and read aloud:

‘At five minutes past six today I was walking along the Embankment and I noticed a man on the opposite pavement make as though to throw a parcel in the river. He observed me looking and walked quickly on, and then glanced back over his shoulder to see if I was still watching him. His manner was suspicious. He then crossed to the entrance to Chelsea Hospital gardens and, after looking up and down in a furtive manner, dropped the parcel in the litter bin and hurried away. I went to the bin and retrieved the parcel, and then followed the man to 14 Annersley Square, which he entered. I took the parcel to the station and handed it over to the officer on duty. We examined the parcel together. It contained the body of a premature new-born infant.’

He snapped the notebook to.

Fenton felt all his strength ebb from him. Horror and fear merged together like a dense, overwhelming cloud, and he collapsed on to a chair.

‘Oh, God,’ he said. ‘Oh, God, what’s happened . . . ?’

Through the cloud he saw Edna looking at him from the open door of the dining-room, with the Alhusons behind her. The man in plain clothes was saying, ‘I shall have to ask you to come down to the station and make a statement.’

Fenton sat in the Inspector’s room, with the Inspector of Police behind a desk, and the plain-clothes man, and the policeman in uniform, and someone else, a medical officer. Edna was there too - he had especially asked for Edna to be there. The Alhusons were waiting outside, but the terrible thing was the expression on Edna’s face. It was obvious that she did not believe him. Nor did the policemen.

‘Yes, it’s been going on for six months,’ he repeated. ‘When I say “going on”, I mean my painting has been going on, nothing else, nothing else at all . . . I was seized with the desire to paint . . . I can’t explain it. I never shall. It just came over me. And on impulse I walked in at the gate of No. 8, Boulting Street. The woman came to the door and I asked if she had a room to let, and after a few moments’ discussion she said she had - a room of her own in the basement - nothing to do with the landlord, we agreed to say nothing to the landlord. So I took possession. And I’ve been going there every afternoon for six months. I said nothing about it to my wife . . . I thought she wouldn’t understand . . .’

He turned in despair to Edna, and she just sat there, staring at him.

‘I admit I’ve lied,’ he said. ‘I’ve lied to everyone. I lied at home, I lied at the office. I told them at the office I had contacts with another firm, that I went there during the afternoon, and I told my wife - bear me out, Edna - I told my wife I was either kept late at the office or I was playing bridge at the club. The truth was that I went every day to No. 8, Boulting Street. Every day.’

He had not done anything wrong. Why did they have to stare at him? Why did Edna hold on to the arms of the chair?

‘What age is Madame Kaufman? I don’t know. About twenty-seven, I should think . . . or thirty, she could be any age . . . and she has the little boy, Johnnie . . . She is an Austrian, she has led a very sad life and her husband has left her . . . No, I never saw anyone in the house at all, no other men . . . I don’t know, I tell you . . . I don’t know. I went there to paint. I didn’t go for anything else. She’ll tell you so. She’ll tell you the truth. I’m sure she is very attached to me . . . At least, no, I don’t mean that; when I say attached I mean she is grateful for the money I pay her . . . that is, the rent, the five pounds for the room.There was absolutely nothing else between us, there couldn’t have been, it was out of the question . . . Yes, yes, of course I was ignorant of her condition. I’m not very observant . . . it wasn’t the sort of thing I would have noticed. And she did not say a word, not a word.’

He turned again to Edna. ‘Surely you believe me?’

She said,‘You never told me you wanted to paint.You’ve never mentioned painting, or artists, all our married life.’

It was the frozen blue of her eyes that he could not bear.

He said to the Inspector, ‘Can’t we go to Boulting Street now, at once? That poor soul must be in great distress. She should see a doctor, someone should be looking after her. Can’t we all go now, my wife too, so that Madame Kaufman can explain everything?’

And, thank God, he had his way. It was agreed they should go to Boulting Street. A police car was summoned, and he and Edna and two police officers climbed into it, and the Alhusons followed behind in their car. He heard them say something to the Inspector about not wanting Mrs Fenton to be alone, the shock was too great. That was kind, of course, but there need not be any shock when he could quietly and calmly explain the whole story to her, once they got home. It was the atmosphere of the police station that made it so appalling, that made him feel guilty, a criminal.

The car drew up before the familiar house, and they all got out. He led the way through the gate and round to the back door, and opened it. As soon as they entered the passage the smell of gas was unmistakable.

‘It’s leaking again,’ he said. ‘It does, from time to time. She tells the men, but they never come.’

Nobody answered. He walked swiftly to the kitchen. The door was shut, and here the smell of gas was stronger still.

The Inspector murmured something to his subordinates. ‘Mrs Fenton had better stay outside in the car with her friends.’

‘No,’ said Fenton, ‘no, I want my wife to hear the truth.’

But Edna began to walk back along the passage with one of the policemen, and the Alhusons were waiting for her, their faces solemn. Then everybody seemed to go at once into the bedroom, into Madame Kaufman’s bedroom. They jerked up the blind and let in the air, but the smell of gas was overpowering, and they leant over the bed and she was lying there asleep, with Johnnie beside her, both fast asleep. The envelope containing the twenty pounds was lying on the floor.

‘Can’t you wake her?’ said Fenton. ‘Can’t you wake her and tell her that Mr Sims is here? Mr Sims.’

One of the policemen took hold of his arm and led him from the room.

When they told Fenton that Madame Kaufman was dead and Johnnie too, he shook his head and said, ‘It’s terrible . . . terrible . . . if only she’d told me, if only I’d known what to do . . .’ But somehow the first shock of discovery had been so great, with the police coming to the house and the appalling contents of the parcel, that this fulfilment of disaster did not touch him in the same way. It seemed somehow inevitable.

‘Perhaps it’s for the best,’ he said. ‘She was alone in the world. Just the two of them. Alone in the world.’

He was not sure what everyone was waiting for. The ambulance, he supposed, or whatever it was that would take poor Madame Kaufman and Johnnie away. He asked, ‘Can we go home, my wife and I?’

The Inspector exchanged a glance with the man in plain clothes, and then he said, ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Fenton. We shall want you to return with us to the station.’

‘But I’ve told you the truth,’ said Fenton wearily. ‘There’s no more to say. I have nothing to do with this tragedy. Nothing at all.’ Then he remembered his paintings. ‘You haven’t seen my work,’ he said. ‘It’s all here, in the room next door. Please ask my wife to come back, and my friends too. I want them to see my work. Besides, now that this has happened I wish to remove my belongings.’

‘We will take care of that,’ said the Inspector.

The tone was noncommittal, yet firm. Ungracious, Fenton thought. The officious attitude of the law.

‘That’s all very well,’ said Fenton, ‘but they are my possessions, and valuable at that. I don’t see what right you have to touch them.’

He looked from the Inspector to his colleague in plain clothes - the medical officer and the other policeman were still in the bedroom - and he could tell from their set expressions that they were not really interested in his work. They thought it was just an excuse, an alibi, and all they wanted to do was to take him back to the police station and question him still further about the sordid, pitiful deaths in the bedroom, about the body of the little, prematurely born child.

‘I’m quite ready to go with you, Inspector,’ he said quietly, ‘but I make this one request - that you will allow me to show my work to my wife and my friends.’

The Inspector nodded at his subordinate, who went out of the kitchen, and then the little group moved to the studio, Fenton himself opening the door and showing them in.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I’ve been working under wretched conditions. Bad light, as you see. No proper amenities at all. I don’t know how I stuck it. As a matter of fact, I intended to move out when I returned from my holiday. I told the poor girl so, and it probably depressed her.’

He switched on the light, and as they stood there, glancing about them, noting the dismantled easel, the canvases stacked neatly against the wall, it struck him that of course these preparations for departure must seem odd to them, suspicious, as though he had in truth known what had happened in the bedroom behind the kitchen and had intended a getaway.

‘It was a makeshift, naturally,’ he said, continuing to apologize for the small room that looked so unlike a studio,‘but it happened to suit me. There was nobody else in the house, nobody to ask questions. I never saw anyone but Madame Kaufman and the boy.’

He noticed that Edna had come into the room, and the Alhusons too, and the other policeman, and they were all watching him with the same set expressions.Why Edna? Why the Alhusons? Surely they must be impressed by the canvases stacked against the wall? They must realize that his total output for the past five and a half months was here, in this room, only awaiting exhibition? He strode across the floor, seized the nearest canvas to hand, and held it up for them to see. It was the portrait of Madame Kaufman that he liked best, the one which - poor soul - she had told him looked like a fish.

‘They’re unconventional, I know that,’ he said, ‘not picture-book stuff. But they’re strong. They’ve got originality.’ He seized another. Madame Kaufman again, this time with Johnnie on her lap. ‘Mother and child,’ he said, half-smiling, ‘a true primitive. Back to our origins. The first woman, the first child.’

He cocked his head, trying to see the canvas as they would see it, for the first time. Looking up for Edna’s approval, for her gasp of wonder, he was met by that same stony frozen stare of misunderstanding. Then her face seemed to crumple, and she turned to the Alhusons and said, ‘They’re not proper paintings. They’re daubs, done anyhow.’ Blinded by tears, she looked up at the Inspector. ‘I told you he couldn’t paint,’ she said. ‘He’s never painted in his life. It was just an alibi, to get into the house with this woman.’

Fenton watched the Alhusons lead her away. He heard them go out of the back door and through the garden to the front of the house. ‘They’re not proper paintings, they’re daubs,’ he repeated. He put the canvas down on the ground with its face to the wall, and said to the Inspector, ‘I’m ready to go with you now.’

They got into the police car. Fenton sat between the Inspector and the man in plain clothes. The car turned out of Boulting Street. It crossed two other streets, and came into Oakley Street and on towards the Embankment. The traffic lights changed from amber to red. Fenton murmured to himself, ‘She doesn’t believe in me - she’ll never believe in me.’ Then, as the lights changed and the car shot forward, he shouted, ‘All right, I’ll confess everything. I was her lover, of course, and the child was mine. I turned on the gas this evening before I left the house. I killed them all. I was going to kill my wife too when we got to Scotland. I want to confess that I did it . . . I did it . . . I did it . . .’