Dolofonos

MURDER didn't mean much to Raven. It was just a new job. You had to be careful. You had to use your brains. It was not a question of hatred. He had only seen the minister once: he had been pointed out to Raven as he walked down the new housing estate between the little lit Christmas trees-an old, rather grubby man without any friends, who was said to love humanity. The cold wind cut his face in the wide continental street. It was a good excuse for turning the collar of his coat well up above his mouth. A harelip was a serious handicap in his profession. It had been badly sewn in infancy, so that now the upperlip was twisted and scarred. When you carried about you so easy an identification you couldn't help becoming ruthless in your methods. lt had always, from the first, been necessary for Raven to eliminate the evidence. He carried an attaché case. He looked like any other youngish man going home after his work: his dark overcoat had a clerical air. He moved steadily up the street like hundreds of his kind. A tram went by, lit up in the early dusk: he didn't take it. An economical young man, you might have thought, saving money for his home. Perhaps even now he was on his way to meet his girl. But Raven had never had a girl. The harelip prevented that He had learnt, when he was very young, how repulsive it was. He turned in to one of the tall grey houses and climbed the stairs, a sour, bitter, screwed-up figure. Outside the top flat he put down his attaché case and put on gloves. He took a pair of clippers out of his pocket and cut through the telephone wire where it ran out from above the door to the lift shaft. Then he rang the bell. He hoped to find the minister alone. This little top-floor flat was the socialist's home. He lived in a poor, bare solitary way, and Raven had been told that his secretary always left him at half-past six-he was very considerate with his employees. But Raven was a minute too early and the minister half an hour too late. A Woman opened the door, an elderly woman with pince-nez and several gold teeth. She had her hat on, and her coat was over her arm. She had been on the point of leaving, and she was furious at being caught. She didn't allow him to speak, but snapped at him in German, "The minister is engaged." He wanted to spare her, not because he minded a killing but because his employers might prefer him not to exceed his instructions. He held the letter of introduction out to her silently: as long as she didn't hear his foreign voice or see his harelip she was safe. She took the letter bitterly and held it up close to her pince-nez. Good, he thought, she's shortsighted. "Stay where you are," she said and walked primly back up the passage. He could hear her disapproving governess' voice, then she was back in the passage, saying, "The minister will see you. Follow me, please." He couldn't understand the foreign speech, but he knew what she meant from her behaviour. His eyes, like little concealed cameras, photographed the room instantaneously: the desk, the easy chair, the map on the wal, the door to the bedroom behind, the wide window above the bright cold Christmas street. A little oilstove was all the heating, and the minister was using it now to boil a saucepan. A kitchen alarm clock on the desk marked seven o'clock. A voice said, "Emma, put another egg in the saucepan. The minister came out from the bedroom. He had tried to tidy himself, but he had forgotten the cigarette ash on his trousers. He was old and small and rather dirty. The secretary took an egg out of one of the drawers in the desk. "And the salt. Don't forget the salt," the minister said. He explained in slow English, "It prevents the shell cracking. Sit down, my friend. Make yourself at home. Emma, you can go." Raven sat down and fixed his eyes on the minister's chest. He thought, Iil give her three minutes by the alarm clock to get well away. He kept his eyes on the minister's chest: Just there Il shoot. He let his coat collar fall and saw with bitter rage how the old man turned away from the sight of his harelip. The minister said, "It's years since I heard from him. But I've never forgotten him, never. I can show you his photograph in the other room. It's good of him to think of an old friend. So rich and powerful too. You must ask him when you go back if he remembers the time" A bell began to ring turiously. Raven thought, The telephone. I cut the wire. It shook his nerve. But it was only the alarm clock drumming on the desk. The minister turned it off. "One egg's boiled," he said and stooped for the saucepan. Raven opened his attaché case: in the lid he had fixed his automatic fitted with a silencer. The minister said, "I'm sorry the bell made you jump. You see, I like my egg just four minutes. Feet ran along the passage. The door opened. Raven turned furiously in his seat, his harelip flushed and raw. It was the secretary. He thought, My God, what a household. They won't let a man do things tidily. He forgot his lip, he was angry, he had a grievance. She came in flashing her gold teeth, prim and ingratiating. She said, "I was just going out when I heard the telephone. Then she winced slightly, looked the other way, showed a clumsy delicacy before his deformity which he couldn't help noticing. It condemned her. He snatched the automatic out of the case and shot the minister twice in the back. The minister fell across the oilstove, the saucepan upset, and the two eggs broke on the floor. Raven shot the minister once more in the head, leaning across the desk to make quite certain, driving the bullet hard into the base of the skull, smashing it open like a china doll's. Then he turned on the secretary. She moaned at him; she hadn't any words; the old mouth couldn't hold its saliva. He supposed she was begging him for mercy. He pressed the trigger again, she staggered as if she had been kicked by an animal in the side. But he had miscalculated. Her unfashionable dress, the swathes of useless material in which she hid her body, perhaps confused him. And she was tough, so tough he couldn't believe his eyes: she was through the door before he could fire again, slamming it behind her. But she couldn't lock it: the key was on his side. He twisted the handle and pushed, The elderly woman had amazing strength : it only gave two inches, She began to scream some Word at the top of her voice. There was no time to waste, He stood away from the door and shot twice through the woodwork. He could hear the pince-nez fall on the loor and break. The voice screamed again and stopped: there was a sound outside as if she were sobbing. It was her breath going out through her wounds. Raven was satisfied. He turned back to the minister. There was a clue he had been ordered to leave; a clue he had to remove. The letter of introduction was on the desk. He put it in his pocket, and between the minister's stiffened fingers he inserted a scrap of paper. Raven had little curiosity: he had only glanced at the introduction, and the nickname at its foot conveyed nothing to him: he was a man who could be depended on. Now he looked round the small bare room to see whether there was any clue he had overlooked. The suitcase and the automatic he was to leave behind. It was all very simple. He opened the bedroom door. His eyes again photographed the scene: the single bed, the wooden chair, the dusty chest of drawers, a photograph of a young Jew with a small scar on his chin as if he had been struck there with a club, a pair of brown wooden hairbrushes initialed J. K., everywhere cigarette ash-the home of a lonely untidy old man; the home of a minister for war. A low voice whispered an appeal quite distinctly through the door. Raven picked up the automatic again. Who would have imagined an old woman could be so tough? It touched his nerve a little just in the same way as the bell had done, as if a ghost were interfering with a man's job. He opened the study door he had to push it against the weight of her body. She looked dead enough, but he made quite sure with his automatic almost touching her eyes. It was time to be gone. He took the automatic with him. 2 They sat and shivered side by side as the dusk came down. They were borne in their bright small smoky cage above the streets. The bus rocked down to Hammersmith. The shop windows sparkled like ice and: "Look," she said, "it's snowing." A few large flakes Went drilting by as they crossed the bridge, falling like paper scraps into the dark Thames. He said, "Im happy as long as this ride goes on." "We're seeing each other tomorrow-Jinmmy." She always hesitated before his name. t was a silly name for anyone of Such bulk and gravity, He said, "It's the nights that bother me, Anne." She laughed. "Its going to be wearing. But immediately she became serious. "I'm happy too." About happiness she was always serious; shee preferred to laugh when she was miserable. She couldn't avoid being serious about things she cared for, and happiness made her grave at the thought of all the things which might destroy it. She said, "It would be dreadful now if there was a war. There won't be a war." "The last one started with a murder." "That was an archduke. This is just an old politician." She said, "Be careful. You'll break the record-Jimmy." Damn the record." She began to hum the tune she'd bought it for: "It's only Kew to You, and the large flakes fell past the window, melted on the pavement: a snowtlower a man brought from Greenland." He said, "It's a silly song." She said, "It's a lovely song-Jimmy. I simply can't call you Jimmy. You arent Jimmy. You re outsiz Mather. You're the reason why people make jokes about policemen's boots." "What's wrong with dear, anyway?" "Dear, dear." She tried it out on the tip of her tongue, between lips as vividly stained as a winter berry. "Oh no," she decided, "it's cold. I'Il call you that when we've been married ten years." "Well-darling?" "Darling, darling. I don't like it. It sounds as if I'd known you a long, long time." The bus went up the hill past the fish and-chip shops. A brazier glowed, and they could smell the roasting chestnuts. The ride was nearly over; there were only two more streets and a turn to the lett by the church, which was already visible, the spire lifted like a long icicle above the houses, The nearer they got to home the more miserable she became, the nearer they got to home the more lightly she talked. She was keeping things off and out of mind: the peeling wallpaper, the long lights to her room, cold supper With Mrs. Brewer and next day the Walk to the agent's, perhaps a job again in the provinces away from him. Mather said heavily, "You don't care for me like I care for you. It's nearly twenty-tour hours before I see you again." "It'll be more than that it l get a job." "You don't care. You simply don't care." She clutched his arm. "Look. Look at that poster." But it was gone berore he couid see through the steamy pane : "Europe Mobilizing" lay like a weight on her neart. "What was it?" "Oh, just the same old murder again." "You ve got that murder on your mind. It's a week old now. It's got nothing to do with us." "No, it hasn't, has it?" "If it had happened here, we'd have caught him by now." "I wonder why he did it." "Politics. Patriotism." "Well. Here we are. It might be a good thing to get off. Don't look so miserable. I thought you said you were happy?" "That was five minutes ago." "Oh," she said out of her light and heavy heart, "one lives quickly these days." They kissed under the lamp; she had to stretch to reach him. He was comforting like a large dog, even when he was sullen and stupid, but one didn't have to send away a dog alone in the cold dark night. "Anne," he said, "we'll be married, wont we, after Christmas?" "We haven't a penny," she said, "you know. Not a penny-Jimmy." "I'll get a rise." "You'll be late for duty." "Damn it, you don't care." She jeered at him, "Not a scrap dear," and walked away from him up the street to number 54, praying, Let me get some money quick; let this go on this time. She hadn't any faith in herself. A man passed her going up the road. He looked cold and strung-up as he passed in his black overcoat. He had a harelip. Poor devil, she thought, and forgot him, opening the door of 54, climbing the long flights to the top fioor (the carpet stopped on the first). Putting on the new records, hugging to her heart the silly, senseless words, the slow, sleepy tune: It's only Kew To you, But to me If's Paradise. They are only blue Petunias to you, But to me They are your eyes. The man with the harelip came back down the street. Fast walking hadn't made him warm; like Kay in The Snow Queen he bore the cold within him as he walked. The flakes went on falling, melting into slush on the pavement: the words of a song dropped from the lit room on the third floor, the scrape of a used needle. They say that's a snowflower A man brought from Greenland. I say it's the lightness, the coolness, the whiteness Of your hand. The man hardly paused. He went on down the street, walking fast. He felt no pain from the chip of ice in his breast. Raven sat at an empty table in the Corner House near a marble pillar. He stared with distaste at the long list of sweet iced drinks, of parfaits and sundaes and coupes and splits. Somebody at the next little table was eating brown bread and butter and drinking Horlick's. He Wilted under Raven's gaze and put up his newspaper. One word, "Ultimatum, ran across the top line. Mr. Cholmondeley picked his way between the tables. He was fat and wore an emerald ring. His wide square face fell in folds over his collar. He looked like a real-estate man or perhaps a man more than usually successful in selling Women's belts. He sat down at Raven's table and said, "Good evening" Raven said, "I thought you were never coming, Mr. Cholmon-deley, pronouncing every syllable. "Chumley, my dear man, Chumley, Mr. Cholmondeley corrected him. "It doesn't matter how it's pronounced. I don't suppose it's your own name. "After all, I chose it," Mr. Cholmondeley said. His ring flashed under the great inverted bowls ot light as he turned the pages ot the menu. Have a parfait." "It's odd wanting to eat ice in this weatheer. You've only got to stay outside if you're hot. I don't want to waste any time, Mr. Chol-mon-deley, Have you brought the money? I'm broke." Mr. Cholmondeley said, "They do a very good Maidens Dream. Not to speak of Alpine Glow. Or the Knickerbockol Glory." "I haven't had a thing since Calais." "Give me the letter," Mr. Cholmondeley said. "Thank you." He told the waitress, "I'll have an Alpine Glow with a glass of kümmel over it." "The money," Raven said. "Here in this case." "They are all fivers." "You can't expect to be paid two hundred in small change. And it's nothing to do with me," Mr. Cholmondeley said; "I'm merely the agent. His eyes softened as they rested on a Raspberry Split at the next table. He confessed wistfully to Raven, "I've got a sweet tooth." "Don't you want to hear about it?" Raven said. "The old woman–" "Please, please," Mr. Cholmondeley said, "I want to hear nothing. I'm just an agent. I take no responsibility. My clients–" Raven twisted his harelip at him with sour contempt. "That's a ine name for them. "How long the waitress is with my parfait," Mr. Cholmondeley complained. "My clients are really quite the best people. These acts of violence -they regard them as war." "And I and the old man . . . " Raven said. "Are in the front trench." He began to laugh softly at his Own humour. His great white open face was like a curtain on which you can throw grotesque images: a rabbit, a man with horns. His small eyes twinkled with pleasure at the mass ot iced cream which was borne towards him in a tall glass. He said, You did your work very well, very neatly. They are quite satisfied with you. You'll be able to take a long holiday now. He was fat, he was Vulgar, he was false, but he gave an impression of great power as he sat there with the cream dripping from his mouth. He was prosperity, he was one of those who possessed things; but Raven possessed nothing but the contents of the wallet, the clothes he stood up in, the harelip, the automatic he should have left behind. He said, "I'll be moving." "Good-bye, my man, good-bye," Mr. Cholmondeley said, sucking through a straw. Raven rose and went. Dark and thin and made for destruction, he wasn't at ease among the little tables, among thne bright iruit drinks. He went out into the Circus and up Shartesbury Avenue. The shop windows were full of tinsel and hard red Christmas berries. It maddened him, the sentiment ot It. His hands clenched in his pockets. He leant his face against a modiste's Window and jeered silently through the glass. A Jewish girl with a neat curved figure bent over a dummy. He fed his eyes contemptuously on her legs and hips; So much flesh, he thought, on sale in the Christmas Window. A kind of subdued cruelty drove him into the shop. He let his harelip loose on the girl when she came towards him with the same pleasure that he might have turned a machine gun on a picture gallery. He said, "That dress in the window. How much?" She said, "Five guineas." She wouldn't "sir" him. His lip was like a badge of class. It revealed the poverty of parents who couldn't afford a clever surgeon. He said, "it's pretty, isn't it?" She lisped at hinm genteelly, "It's been vewwy much admired." "Soft. Thin. You'd have to take care of a dress like that, eh? Do for someone pretty and well off?" She lied without interest, "its a model." She Was a woman; she knew all about it; she knew how cheap and vulgar the little shop really was. "It's got class, eh?" "Oh yes," she said, catching the eye of a Dago in a purple Suit through the pane, "it's got class." "All right," he said. "I'll give you five pounds for it." He took a note from Mr. Cholmondeley's wallet. "Shall I pick it up?" "No," he said. "The girl'll fetch it." He grinned at her with his raw lip. "You see, she's class. This the best dress you have?" And when she nodded and took the note away he said, "It'll just suit Alice then." And so out into the avenue with a little of his scorn expressed, out into Frith SStreet and round the corner into the German cafe where he kept a room. A shock awaited him there, a little fir tree in a tub hung with coloured glass, a crib. He said to the old man who owned the cafe, "You believe in this? This junk?" "Is there going to be war again? the old man said. "It's terrible what you read." "All this business of no room in the inn. They used to give us plum pudding. A decree from Caesar Augustus. You see I know the stuff, I'm educated, We used to have it read us once a year." "I have seen one war. "I hate the sentiment." "Well," the old man said, "it's good for business." Raven picked up the bambino. The cradle came with it all of a piece: cheap painted plaster. "They put him on the spot, eh? You see I know the whole story. I'm educated." He went upstairs to his room. It hadn't been seen to: there was still dirty water in the basin, and the ewer was empty. He remembered the fat man saying, "Chumley, my man, Chumley. It's pronounced Chumley," flashing his emerald ring. He called furiously, "Alice," over the banisters. She came out of the next room, a slattern, one shoulder too high, with wisps of fair bleached hair over her face. She said, "You needn't shout" He said, "It's a pigsty in there. You can't treat me like that. Go in and clean it." He hit her on the side of the head, and she cringed away from him, not daring to say anything but, "Who do you think you are?" "Get on," he said, "you humpbacked bitch." He began to laugh at her when she crouched over the bed. "Ive bought you a Christmas dress, Alice. Here's the receipt. Go fetch it. It's a lovely dress. It'll suit you." "You think you're funny," she said. "I've paid a fiver or this, joke. Hurry, Alice, or the shop'll be shut. But she go ier own back calling up the stairs, "I won't look worse than what you do with that split lip." Everyone in the house could hear her: the old man in the café, his wife in the parlour, the customers at the counter. He imagined heir smiles. "Go it, Alice, what an ugly pair you are." He didn't really sufter: he had been red the poison trom boyhood drop by drop; he hardly noticed its bitterness now. He went to the windoW and opened it and scratched on the sill. The kitten came to him, making lite rushes along the drainpipe, Ieinting at his hand, You little b***h," he said, "you little bitch." He took a small two-penny carton of creanm out ot his overCOat pocket and spilt it in his dish. She stopped playing and rUsned at him with a tiny cry. He picked bher up by the scrur and put ner on top of his chest of drawers with the cream. Sne wggled from his hand; she was no larger than the rat he'd trained in the home, but softer. He scratched her behind the ear, and she struck back at him in a preoccupied way. Her tongue quivered on the surface of the milk. Dinnertime, he told himself. With all that money he could go anywhere. He could have a slap-up meal at Simpson's with the businessmen-cut off the joint and any number of vegs. When he got by the public call box in the dark corner below the stairs he caught his name, "Raven." The old man said, "He always has a room here. He's been away." You, a strange voice said "what's your name-Alice show me his room. Keep an eye on the door, Saunders." Raven went on his knees inside the telephone box. He left the door ajar because he never liked to be shut in. He couldn't see out, but he had no need to see the owner of the voice to recognize police, plain clothes, the Yard accent, The man was so near that the floor of the box vibrated to his tread. Then he came down again. "There's no one tbere. He's taken his hat and coat. He must have gone out." "He might have," the old man said. "He's a soft-walking sort of fellow." The stranger began to question them: "What's he like?" The old man and the girl both said in a breath, "A harelip." That's useful," the detective said. "Don't touch his room. I'Il be senaing a man around to take his fingerprints. What sort of a fellow is he?" Raven could hear every word. He couldn't imagine what they were after. He knew he'd left no clues: he wasn't a man who imagined things, he knew. He carried the picture of that room and flat in his brain as clearly as if he had the photographs. They had nothing against him. It had been against bis orders to keep the automatic, but he could feel it now safe under his armpit. Besides, it they had picked up any clue they'd have stoPped him at Dover. He istened to the voices with a dull anger: he wanted his dinner; he hadn't had a square meal for twenty-tour hours, and now with two hundred pounds in his pocket he could buy anything, anything. "I can believe it," the old man said, "Why tonight he even made tun ot my poor Wife's crib." "A bloody bully," the girl said. "I shan't be sorry when you've locked him up." He told himself with surprise, They hate me. She said, "He's ugly through and through. That lip of his. It gives you the creeps." "An ugly customer all right." "I wouldn't have him in the house," the old man said. But he pays. You can't turn away someone who pays. Not in these days." "Has he friends?" "You make me laugh," Alice said. "Him friends. What would he do with friends?" He began to laugh quietly to himself on the floor of the little dark box: That's me they're talking about, me. He stared up at the pane of glass with his hand on his automatic.