Murder! - Arnold Bennett (best fiction novels .txt) 📗

read some sentences aloud: “‘I have absolutely decided to leave you, and I won’t hide from you that I know you know who is doing what he can to help me. I can’t live with you any longer. You may be very fond of me, as you say, but I find your way of showing your fondness too humiliating and painful. I’ve said this to you before, and now I’m saying it for the last time.’ And so on and so on.”

Franting tore the letter in two, dropped one half on the floor, twisted the other half into a spill, turned to the fire, and lit his cigarette.

“That’s what I think of her letter,” he proceeded, the cigarette between his teeth. “You’re helping her, are you? Very well. I don’t say you’re in love with her, or she with you. I’ll make no wild statements. But if you aren’t in love with her I wonder why you’re taking all this trouble over her. Do you go about the world helping ladies who say they’re unhappy just for the pure sake of helping? Never mind. Emily isn’t going to leave me. Get that into your head. I shan’t let her leave me. She has money, and I haven’t. I’ve been living on her, and it would be infernally awkward for me if she left me for good. That’s a reason for keeping her, isn’t it? But you may believe me or not — it isn’t my reason. She’s right enough when she says I’m very fond of her. That’s a reason for keeping her too. But it isn’t my reason. My reason is that a wife’s a wife, and she can’t break her word just because everything isn’t lovely in the garden. I’ve heard it said I’m unmoral. I’m not all unmoral. And I feel particularly strongly about what’s called the marriage tie.” He drew the revolver from his overcoat pocket, and held it up to view. “You see this thing. You saw me buy it. Now you needn’t be afraid. I’m not threatening you; and it’s not part of my game to shoot you. I’ve nothing to do with your goings-on. What I have to do with is the goings-on of my wife. If she deserts me — for you or for anybody or for nobody — I shall follow her, whether it’s to Copenhagen or Bangkok or the North Pole and I shall kill her — with just this very revolver you saw me buy. And now you can get out.”

Franting replaced the revolver, and began to consume the cigarette with fierce and larger puffs.

Lomax Harder looked at the grim, set, brutal scowling bitter face, and knew that Franting meant what he had said. Nothing would stop him from carrying out his threat. The fellow was not an argufier, he could not reason; but he had unmistakable grit and would never recoil from the fear of consequences. If Emily left him, Emily was a dead woman; nothing in the end could protect her from the execution of her husband’s menace. On the other hand, nothing would persuade her to remain with her husband. She had decided to go, and she would go. And indeed the mere thought of this lady to whom he, Harder, was utterly devoted, staying with her husband and continuing to suffer the tortures and humiliations which she had been suffering for years — this thought revolted him. He could not think it.

He stepped forward along the side of the billiard-table, and simultaneously Franting stepped forward to meet him. Lomax Harder snatched the revolver which was in his pocket, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

Franting collapsed, with the upper half of his body somehow balanced on the edge of the billiard-table. He was dead. The sound of the report echoed in Harder’s ear like the sound of a violin string loudly twanged by a finger. He saw a little reddish hole in Franting’s bronzed right temple.

“Well,” he thought, “somebody had to die. And it’s better him than Emily.” He felt that he had performed a righteous act. Also he felt a little sorry for Franting.

Then he was afraid. He was afraid for himself, because he wanted not to die, especially on the scaffold; but also for Emily Franting who would be friendless and helpless without him; he could not bear to think of her alone in the world — the central point of a terrific scandal. He must get away instantly… .

Not down the corridor back into the hotel lounge! No! That would be fatal! The window. He glanced at the corpse. It was more odd, curious, than affrighting. He had made the corpse. Strange! He could not unmake it. He had accomplished the irrevocable. Impressive! He saw Franting’s cigarette glowing on the linoleum in the deepening dusk, and picked it up and threw it into the fender.

Lace curtains hung across the whole width of the window. He drew one aside, and looked forth. The light was much stronger in the courtyard than within the room. He put his gloves on. He gave a last look at the corpse, straddled the window-sill, and was on the brick pavement of the courtyard. He saw that the curtain had fallen back into the perpendicular.

He gazed around. Nobody! Not a light in any window! He saw a green wooden gate, pushed it; it yielded; then a sort of entry-passage… . In a moment, after two half-turns, he was on the Marine Parade again. He was a fugitive. Should he fly to the right, to the left? Then he had an inspiration. An idea of genius for baffling pursuers. He would go into the hotel by the main-entrance. He went slowly and deliberately into the portico, where a middle-aged hall-porter was standing in the gloom.

“Good evening, sir.”

“Good evening. Have you got any rooms?”

“I think so, sir. The housekeeper is out, but she’ll be back in a moment — if you’d like a seat. The manager’s away in London.”

The hall-porter suddenly illuminated the lounge, and Lomax Harder, blinking, entered and sat down.

“I might have a cocktail while I’m waiting,” the murderer suggested with a bright and friendly smile. “A Bronx.”

“Certainly, sir. The page is off duty. He sees to orders in the lounge, but I’ll attend to you myself.”

“What a hotel!” thought the murderer, solitary in the chilly lounge, and gave a glance down the long passage. “Is the whole place run by the hall-porter? But of course it’s the dead season.”

Was it conceivable that nobody had heard the sound of the shot?

Harder had a strong impulse to run away. But no! To do so would be highly dangerous. He restrained himself.

“How much?” he asked of the hall-porter, who had arrived with a surprising quickness, tray in hand and glass on tray.

“A shilling, sir.”

The murderer gave him eighteenpence, and drank off the cocktail.

“Thank you very much, sir.” The hall-porter took the glass.

“See here!” said the murderer. “I’ll look in again. I’ve got one or two little errands to do.”

And he went, slowly, into the obscurity of the Marine Parade.

IV

Lomax Harder leant over the left arm of the sea-wall of the manmade port of Quangate. Not another soul was there. Night had fallen. The lighthouse at the extremity of the right arm was occulting. The lights — some red, some green, many white — of ships at sea passed in both directions in endless processions. Waves plashed gently against the vast masonry of the wall. The wind, blowing steadily from the north-west, was not cold. Harder, looking about — though he knew he was absolutely alone, took his revolver from his overcoat pocket and stealthily dropped it into the sea. Then he turned round and gazed across the small harbour at the mysterious amphitheatre of the lighted town, and heard public clocks and religious clocks striking the hour.

He was a murderer, but why should he not successfully escape detection? Other murderers had done so. He had all his wits. He was not excited. He was not morbid. His perspective of things was not askew. The hall-porter had not seen his first entrance into the hotel, nor his exit after the crime. Nobody had seen them. He had left nothing behind in the billiard-room. No finger marks on the window-sill. (The putting-on of his gloves was in itself a clear demonstration that he had fully kept his presence of mind.) No footmarks on the hard, dry pavement of the courtyard.

Of course there was the possibility that some person unseen had seen him getting out of the window. Slight: but still a possibility! And there was also the possibility that someone who knew Franting by sight had noted him waking by Franting’s side in the streets. If such a person informed the police and gave a description of him, inquiries might be made… . No! Nothing in it. His appearance offered nothing remarkable to the eye of a casual observer — except his forehead, of which he was rather proud, but which was hidden by his hat.

It was generally believed that criminals always did something silly. But so far he had done nothing silly, and he was convinced that, in regard to the crime, he never would do anything silly. He had none of the desire, supposed to be common among murderers, to revisit the scene of the crime or to look upon the corpse once more. Although he regretted the necessity for his act, he felt no slightest twinge of conscience. Somebody had to die, and surely it was better that a brute should die than the heavenly, enchanting, martyrized creature whom his act had rescued for ever from the brute! He was aware within himself of an ecstasy of devotion to Emily Franting — now a widow and free. She was a unique woman. Strange that a woman of such gifts should have come under the sway of so obvious a scoundrel as Franting. But she was very young at the time, and such freaks of sex had happened before and would happen again, they were a widespread phenomenon in the history of the relations of men and women. He would have killed a hundred men if a hundred men had threatened her felicity. His heart was pure; he wanted nothing from Emily in exchange for what he had done in her defence. He was passionate in her defence. When he reflected upon the coarseness and cruelty of the gesture by which Franting had used Emily’s letter to light his cigarette, Harder’s cheeks grew hot with burning resentment.

A clock struck the quarter. Harder walked quickly to the harbour front, where was a taxi-rank, and drove to the station… . A sudden apprehension! The crime might have been discovered! Police might already be watching for suspicious-looking travellers! Absurd! Still, the apprehension remained despite its absurdity. The taxi-driver looked at him queerly. No! Imagination! He hesitated on the threshold of the station, then walked boldly in, and showed his return ticket to the ticket-inspector. No sign of a policeman. He got into the Pullman car, where five other passengers were sitting. The train started.

V

He nearly missed the boat-train at Liverpool Street because according to its custom the Quangate flyer arrived twenty minutes late at Victoria. And at Victoria the foolish part of him, as distinguished from the common-sense part, suffered another spasm of fear. Would detectives, instructed by telegraph, be waiting for the train? No! An absurd idea! The boat-train from Liverpool Street was crowded with travellers, and the platform crowded with senders-off. He gathered from scraps of talk overhead that an international conference was about to take place at Copenhagen. And he had known nothing of it — not seen a word of it in the papers! Excusable perhaps; graver matters had held his attention.

Useless to look for Emily