When you finish reading this entry, you want to forget it at once and forever. But instead you read it again. And again. That’s what hell means, perhaps, being compelled not just to live but to relive.
Rory might have ignored the smell for another day if it hadn’t been for the letter, which was from the editor of a small-circulation trade magazine specializing in hosiery. Through the medium of his secretary, the editor regretted to inform Rory that the post of junior feature writer had just been filled by another candidate so his, Rory’s, presence at an interview that afternoon would not after all be required. The editor regretted any inconvenience caused and wished Rory every success in his career.
Rory flung the letter in the waste-paper basket. Thursday now stretched in front of him, unattractively empty. He hadn’t had much hope of being offered the job, but at least going for an interview for it would have given him something to do other than combing the Situations Vacant in the library.
Since he had nothing better to do, he decided to investigate the smell. This had been puzzling him for the last thirty-six hours, during which time it had been growing steadily stronger and more unpleasant. It did not take him long to trace it to a tin of Argentinian corned beef, opened at the weekend, half-eaten and subsequently forgotten in the cupboard of the chiffonier under the window. He wrapped the tin in yesterday’s newspaper and stuffed it in the enamelled bucket used for kitchen rubbish. Leaving his windows wide open, he carried the bucket downstairs and into the little yard at the back of the house.
The sun never shone on this small rectangle of cracked and blackened flagstones, and probably never would. The yard smelled, and so did the contents of the dustbins that lined the walls. Tall buildings reared up on every side, and the inhabitants of all of them left their rubbish here. A narrow passageway running between number seven and the house next door provided shared access to the square.
Rory opened the nearest of the bins. It was three-quarters full-plenty of room for the contents of the bucket. He was about to upend the pail into the dustbin when a name caught his eye.
He looked into the bin. Narton. The name was on a newspaper wrapped around some rubbish. At least a third of the bundle was saturated with moisture, and the paper was dark and disintegrating, revealing wet tea leaves, fragments of tobacco, a cigar butt. When he tried to pick up the newspaper, the bundle fell apart completely. Fragments of newspaper came away in his hand. Rubbish spilled out. He glimpsed something underneath that made him cry out, something white and nightmarish.
Sanity took hold again. Yes, it was a skull, with the rakish horns of a goat. Rory lifted it gingerly from the bin. The horns were bleached and fissured like driftwood. Between them was a V-shaped ridge of bone, bisected vertically with an indentation like a frown. Much of the nose had collapsed, leaving a prow of sharp white spikes sheltering rolls of finer bone, perforated like lace. The eye sockets were vacant, seeing nothing, wanting nothing. He let the skull drop from his hand and back onto its bed of rubbish.
He pulled the remains of the newspaper from the dustbin. Narton’s name had caught his eye in a stop-press item at the bottom of a page.
RAWLING MAN DIES On Monday evening, police were called to a house in Rawling following an unexpected fatality. The dead man is believed to be Herbert Narton, the house’s owner.
Rory unfolded what was left of the newspaper on the flagstones. The masthead was still intact: The Mavering Advertiser & Weekly Herald. Serridge must have brought it back after his last visit to Rawling.
He sat back on his heels and whistled. Narton dead? It didn’t seem possible. The poor devil had seemed well enough on Saturday in that tea shop near the British Museum. He tore out the stop-press item and dumped the rest of the newspaper in the bin.