Pause.
“He stayed in the room about half an hour after he’d killed her. He says he experienced ‘marvellous mystical moments.’ Then he decided to go and ‘tell the fog about it.’ He took off his gloves. Why not? The doors were ajar—he could open them with his foot—he wouldn’t have to touch anything. He went into the hall, bumped into a chair, then saw Carol’s bag. Without thinking, he picked it up, opened it carelessly—and out fell her identity card case. Then he discovered the drawing.”
“Go on!”
“He says he stared at the drawing for several minutes. Then he ransacked the bag in the hope of finding another. And then he made the stupidest mistake imaginable. He went—and did not take the bag with him. His explanation is that he’d forgotten about the murder—and was thinking how he could find you.”
Suddenly Haimes exclaimed:
“You’d better finish the brandy. You don’t look too good.”
“I don’t feel too good.”
“Let’s call it off. I can tell you the rest another time.”
“No, I’d rather hear it now. . . . Eaves knows, of course, that I’m responsible for his arrest?”
“He knows that all right.”
“Then he can’t be exactly enthusiastic about me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. He’s very enthusiastic about you. There are pages and pages about you in the notebooks. Eaves thinks you’re a genius—and he’s certain he’s one—so he regards you as a younger brother. He told Duncan that, spiritually, you and he are handcuffed together. I don’t know what the hell that means, but that’s what he said. Anyhow, he keeps asking to see you.”
“What?”
“Mad-keen on seeing you! But I don’t think you’ll want to see him when you’ve heard all I have to tell you.”
After a silence, Haimes went on:
“According to Duncan, there is some remarkable stuff in those notebooks. A lot of what Eaves has written is sheer insanity, but a lot—isn’t. So Duncan says, and he’s not a bit of a fool. All the same, he read me one page which seemed quite mad—by my bourgeois standards.”
“What was it about?”
“It was about—fogs! Eaves says humanity is lost in a Great Fog. Every day, the Great Fog gets thicker and thicker. No one knows where he is. No one can find the family to which he belongs. You hear a voice—the voice—you grope towards it—and find no one. Everyone is alone. Everyone is as lonely as God. . . . Well, you may make something of that, but it seems haywire to me.”
After a silence, I asked:
“Will they hang him?”
“No. He’ll be detained during His Majesty’s pleasure—and will probably spend the rest of his life in a criminal lunatic asylum, writing more and more of those damned notebooks! Incidentally, he never seems to sleep. So you were right in thinking that he’s physically exhausted.”
He glanced at me, then said:
“Here’s the finale, Arnold. And I’m afraid it’s going to be a hell of a shock for you. I’ve told you that Eaves bought Enigma, but I haven’t told you where it is. It’s in the basement of his Fulham house. It’s the only thing in a small, windowless, filthy room. But the point is—he’s altered it.”
“Altered it?”
“Yes. You wouldn’t recognise it. It isn’t a nude any longer. He’s painted in stockings, and all sorts of fripperies.”
“But—damn it!—it’s impossible!”
Eaves says you’ll understand.”
“That’s pretty rich! Did he say why I’d understand?”
“He says he’s done to the picture what you did to Carol.”
“He may be mad, but he isn’t a fool.”
“Well, that’s the whole story. And I’ve never run into a queerer one. And Duncan says he certainly never has and, as I’ve told you, he’s not exactly innocent. He’s met some pretty strange people, so, when he says he’s never run into any one quite like Eaves, it means something. And, I say again, if Duncan thinks some of the stuff in those notebooks is remarkable, it probably is. My opinion about that wouldn’t be worth a damn, because I’m a very matter-of-fact person—thank the Lord!”
He looked at his watch.
“I’ll have to be going.”
“There may be some things I’ll want to ask you when I’ve thought all this over.”
“Right! And here’s a question for you: How did you know about that electric fire?”
“That’s quite a story too. In fact, it’s such a story that you’d better dine with me here one night next week.”
“Good enough! Tuesday? Eight o’clock?”
“I’ll be here.”
Chapter Six
FREEDOM
Haimes’s account of the murder caused such a chaos of conflicting emotions that, on leaving him, I wandered down street after street, as unaware of surroundings as a punch-drunk boxer.
Eventually, however—like a theme emerging from many confused motifs—one thought became dominant. I was free. Torturing uncertainty had ended. The dream had been only a dream.
This intoxicating knowledge transfigured everything: mean streets were no longer mean, but mysterious; passers-by ceased to be drab anonymous figures and became fellow human beings; even the discordant roar of the traffic had a triumphant note.
I wandered on. . . .
Sometimes you discover the nature of your thoughts with the impact of a blow and I experienced this sensation when I discovered that I was thinking—not of Eric Eaves—but of sentences flung at me by Antony during our last meeting. Now that Carol’s murderer was known, those sentences affected me more vitally than anything else. I cared nothing for the motive which had prompted him to utter them with such frenzied emphasis. Truth travels by unsuspected routes, and in strange company, so his motive could be discounted. A man does not necessarily lie because he speaks in anger.
Antony had said that I did not love Carol—that all I had ever cared about were my creative periods, my Fredrika moments—and that I deliberately deluded myself about loving Carol because this “love” was a stimulant a new sensation; an irritant to imagination; a device to rescue my emotions from “cold storage.” And, when I was leaving, he had shouted that Harcourt might have killed Carol, but it was I who had destroyed her.
If you are eager to believe that something is false, it is imperative to face the possibility that it may be true. Otherwise, eagerness triumphs—and a lie takes root. I had to be certain that Antony’s indictment was only anger articulate. If it were true, I should be confronted by the first death which claims many artists, and by the far more terrible fact that I was a greater murderer than Eric Eaves.
As I wandered on through a network of streets, now lit by pallid sunshine, it seemed grotesque even to imagine that everything which had happened since Carol’s death had been deliberately willed by me. How could I consciously have contrived the long series of discoveries which had culminated in a total reversal of my feelings for her? Since her death, every aspect of our meetings had been mysteriously revealed in a different dimension. I had not willed this. I had watched it. How, then, had I deliberately deluded myself that I loved her?
Antony had said that it is easy to love the dead. It is neither easy nor difficult to love either the dead or the living. Love happens—or it does not happen. You cannot evoke it—or evade it.