‘Do you think so?’
‘I do. You can see I do. I want you to tell me something.’
‘What would you like me to tell you?’
‘Are you a masochist, by any chance?’
‘Why do you ask?’ said Catchy in an uncertain voice.
Mothmar Acord replied: ‘There’s something about you that invites violence.’
At this, a pleasurable tremor passed from the base of Catchy’s skull to the base of her spine and she felt her heart beating and her toes curling inwards. They exchanged glances. Asta Thundersley, whci had approached with a couple of full glasses, heard the end of the conversation and observed the interchange of looks.
She remembered this later.
36
It seemed to Asta that her foolish, futile party had been limping on since the beginning of last week. She began to jeer — not to laugh, but to jeer at herself for having organized it. Sir Storrington approached her and said: ‘My God, Asta, what the devil have you given us? My dear good lady, these are knock-out-drops. I’d give a good deal to know what you put in it.’
Instantly Schiff, who appeared to be listening to everything in a dozen places at the same time, popped out with a dishevelled head and said: ‘This is my Form ule. It is I who have invented this. What do you mean by a good deal? I’m always ready, Baronet, to make a deal.’
At this Sir Storrington Thirst gave him the look that he kept for his creditors; but then, stung by an idea, he took Schiff aside and said that his estate was somewhat embarrassed but the name of Sir Storrington Thirst was a good name — at least it sounded remarkably good — and was available for a consideration, as a name to print on a label. Schiff made a note of this in a note-book with a transparent cover bound with wire. When Sir Storrington said: ‘That’s a clever sort of idea, that little book of yours,’ Schiff told him that he could get them wholesale at 72/- a gross.
‘There’s a lady who has found herself a friend,’ he concluded with a wink, pointing in the direction of Cigarette.
Shocket the Bloodsucker was sitting, half asleep, in a spidery. legged little chair. Near-by, Cigarette and Titch Whitbread were gazing into each other’s eyes.
Although the Murderer had been involving himself with almost feverish gaiety in conversations to the left and the right of him, he had not let Detective-Inspector Turpin slip out of his range of vision. He was a punctilious man. He liked everything in his life to be carefully timed. He agreed with the preacher — to everything there was a season and a time for every purpose under the heaven. There was a time to save, and a time to cast away. He was on the look-out for an effective moment. Detective-Inspector Turpin was now making distant yet friendly conversation with Cigarette and Muriel. Asta Thundersley was pressing a drink into his hand, and Turpin was refusing. The Murderer watched the detective-inspector’s face. He saw the twinkle of the watchful eyes and the little, quick smile of the pallid, disciplined lips. Turpin was refusing. Asta was insisting. Then, with a brusque gesture, Turpin surrendered. He took the glass. This pleased Asta Thundersley, who drank his health. Turpin raised his glass to his lips, tilted his head backwards, and made his Adam’s apple move up and down. One would have sworn that he was drinking; but the Murderer could see that the level of the orange-coloured liquid in the glass had not sunk. Asta had taken a great gulp; Muriel and Cigarette had emptied their glasses. But Turpin was keeping his wits about him, and that was exactly what the Murderer wanted.
He rose. There was a queer sensation, reminiscent of warm cotton-wool, under the soles of his feet, and his head felt like a gum into which a dentist, before a difficult drilling, has injected an anaesthetic. He pinched himself under the left eye. His thumb and forefinger might have come together a yard away; he felt nothing; only well-being.
This was going to be good. This was going to be sensational. Given the right moment — one of those little chasms of silence that inevitably crack open any uproar — he would tell the world in general, and Detective-Inspector Turpin in particular, the whole truth of the matter.
Muriel was saying: ‘Oh, Mr Turpin! Cigarette just told me you’re a detective. Are there any women detectives?’
Turpin said: ‘I suppose so,’ and looked at his watch.
‘How do you get that sort of job, Mr Turpin?’ asked Muriel. ‘I think I’d be good at that sort of job — don’t you, darling?’ she said to the Murderer, who had come, swaying, to join them.
‘I should make enquiries if I were you,’ said Turpin.
At this the Murderer, taken by a fit of laughter in the middle of a gulp of drink, was seized with a fit of coughing. It was merely a matter of a mouthful going the wrong way, yet it sounded so awful that two or three people came to bang him on the back, and for two or three seconds conversation stopped while everyone looked towards him.
He looked around and saw himself as the centre of a little crowd. Thea Olivia was offering him a tumblerful of soda water, and this, somehow, was irresistibly funny. In five seconds this dear little old lady, smelling of lavender and dressed in lavender, would recoil from him as from a decaying corpse in a cellar… in a cellar soiled with coal dust under the basement of a condemned house … a condemned house in a fog…
Now was the time to say it. Now was the time to say: ‘Look here, Detective-Inspector Turpin, has it never occurred to you that I — who don’t eat sweets — went to Geogharty’s sweet shop three days before the murder and bought three Pierrot Gourmand lollipops? Has it ever occurred to you, copper, to wonder exactly why I bought those? Did it ever occur to you, my good fool, to wonder why there was one of these in Sonia Sabbatani’s pocket? Do you realize that the other two of the three I bought are in my room? Are you aware, Turpin, that I am offering you a rope with which to hang me? Let us make this perfectly clear: I killed Sonia Sabbatani.’
He drew a deep breath, moistened his lips, and began: ‘Listen to me just for a moment! I want to tell you something.’
‘Well?’ said Turpin.
‘I want you all to listen,’ said the Murderer. ‘I have something important — most important —’
Then there was a disturbance.
Shocket the Bloodsucker and Mr Schiff came to blows. They had been discussing the relative merits of the Austrians and the English. Schiff had said:
‘The Austrians have, if you will allow me to say so, vivacity.’
‘Listen, I agree with you — or may L be struck down dead this minute,’ said Shocket.
‘Yet the English have a certain something, a confidence, a solidness.’
‘I should live so sure, you’ve hit the nail on the head.’
‘Yet, allow me to say so, your Viennese has more life in him than your Londoner.’
‘More life? You should live so sure! What’s the matter with England?’
‘I swear to you, most solemnly, that I was saying not a word against England. Your Englishman, indeed, is a better man than your Viennese.’
‘You should live so sure! What’s the matter with the Viennese? My father, God rest his soul, came from Vienna. What’s the matter with that?’
‘I beg you to be reasonable.’
‘He begs me to be reasonable,’ said Shocket, looking at the ceiling with one anguished eye and keeping the other on Schiff. ‘That’s as much as to say that I’m unreasonable.’
Then Shocket struck Schiff on the shoulder, and Schiff pushed Shocket away. Titch Whitbread bounded forward and separated them, saying: ‘Break it up, break it up, Bloodsucker. Ladies present! Break it up.’
Then Asta, throwing an arm about Titch’s shoulders, and calling him a good boy, told Shocket to behave himself. Everybody laughed. The silence was broken.
Looking again at his watch, Turpin said: ‘Well, it’s been a very pleasant evening, but —,
‘Please don’t go yet. There’s something very important I want to say to you,’ said the Murderer. Turpin looked at him. He saw a man of indeterminate age and colour, whose average body was wrapped in the kind of clothes to which no witness could satisfactorily swear in a court of law. The man was a little drunk, somewhat exalted. His face had gone loose.