P James: Unnatural Causes

“It was shortly after three o’clock when I was awoken by his scream. At first I thought it was a seabird screeching. Then it came again and again. I fumbled for my crutches and went in to him. He was leaning, half-dazed, against the bedroom window and had the lost, disorientated look of a man who has been sleepwalking. I managed to coax him back into bed. It wasn’t difficult. He took my hand like a child. As I drew the sheets up under his chin he suddenly seized my arm and said, ‘Don’t leave me! Don’t go yet! It’s my nightmare. It’s always the same. I dream I’m being buried alive. Stay with me till I’m asleep.’ So I stayed. I sat there with his hand in mine until my fingers were stiff with cold and my whole body ached. There were a great many things which he told me in the darkness about himself, about his great consuming fear, before his fingers relaxed, the muttering ceased and he dropped into peaceful sleep. His jaw had fallen open so that he looked stupid and ugly and vulnerable. I had never seen him asleep before. I was pleased to see his ugliness, his helplessness and I felt a sense of power which was so pleasurable that it almost frightened me. And, sitting there beside him, listening to that quiet breathing, I pondered how I might use this new knowledge to my advantage. I began to plan how I might kill him.

“He said nothing to me next morning about the events of the night. I was never sure whether he had completely forgotten his nightmare and my visit to his room. But I don’t think so. I believe he remembered well enough but put it out of his thoughts. After all, he didn’t have to apologise or explain to me. One doesn’t need to justify one’s weakness either to a servant or an animal. That’s why it is so satisfying, so convenient to have a tame one in the house.

“There was no hurry over the planning, no time limit in which he had to die, and this in itself added to the interest and allowed me to develop a more complicated and sophisticated murder than would have been possible were I working against the clock. I share Maurice’s view here. No one can do his best work in a hurry. Towards the end, of course, there was some urgency when I found, and destroyed, the carbon of the letter to Max Gurney announcing that Maurice was thinking of changing his will. But, by then, my final plans had been ready for over a month.

“I knew from the beginning that I should need an accomplice and who that accomplice should be. The decision to use Digby Seton to destroy firstly his half-brother and then himself was so magnificent in its boldness that at times I was frightened at my own daring. But it wasn’t as foolhardy as it appears. I knew Digby, I knew precisely his weaknesses and his strengths. He is less stupid and far greedier than people realise, more practical but less imaginative, not particularly brave but obstinate and persistent. Above all, he is fundamentally weak and vain. My plan made use of his abilities as well as his defects. I have made very few mistakes in my handling of him and if I underestimated him in some important respects this has proved less catastrophic than I might have feared. He is becoming a liability as well as a nuisance now, of course, but he won’t be worrying me for long. If he had proved less irritating to me and more reliable I might have considered letting him live for a year or so. I should prefer to have avoided death duties on Maurice’s estate. But I have no intention of letting greed trap me into folly.

“In the beginning I did nothing so crude as to present Digby with a plan for killing Maurice. What I suggested to him was no more than a complicated practical joke. He didn’t, of course, believe this for long but then he wasn’t required to. During all the preliminary planning, neither of us mentioned the word murder. He knew and I knew, but neither of us spoke. We conscientiously kept up the fiction that we were engaged in an experiment, not perhaps without some danger but completely without malice, to prove to Maurice that it was possible to transport a man from London to Monksmere secretly and without his knowledge or co-operation. That was to be our alibi. If the plot failed and we were discovered with the body on our hands our story was ready and no one would be able to disprove it. Mr. Seton had wagered us that we couldn’t kidnap him and take him back to Monksmere without being discovered. He wanted to introduce such a scheme into his new book. There would be plenty of witnesses to testify that Maurice loved to experiment, that he was meticulous about detail. And if he should unexpectedly die of a heart attack during the journey, how could we be blamed? Manslaughter? Possibly. But murder, never.

“I think that Digby almost believed the fiction for a time. I did my best to keep it going. There are few men with the courage or the strength of mind to plan murder in cold blood and Digby certainly isn’t one of them. He likes his unpleasant facts gift-wrapped. He prefers to shut his eyes to reality. He has always shut his eyes to the truth about me.

“Once he had convinced himself that it was all a cosy little game with easy rules, no personal risk and a prize of £200,000, he quite enjoyed planning the details. I gave him nothing to do which wasn’t well within his peculiar capabilities and he wasn’t pressed for time. Firstly, he had to find a second-hand motorcycle and long torpedo-shaped sidecar. He had to buy them separately and for cash in a part of London where he wasn’t known. He had to rent or buy a flat with reasonable privacy and access to a garage, and keep his new address secret from Maurice. All this was relatively simple and I was pleased on the whole with the efficient way in which my creature coped. This was almost the most trying time for me. There was so little I personally could do to control events. Once the body had been brought to Monksmere I should be here to organise and direct. Now I had to rely on Digby to carry out instructions. It was Digby alone who must manage the business at the Cortez Club, and I had never been particularly happy about his plan to lure Maurice to Carrington Mews. It seemed to me unnecessarily complicated and dangerous. I could think of safer and easier ways. But Digby insisted on bringing the Cortez Club into the plot. He had this need to involve and impress Luker. So I let him have his way-after all the plot couldn’t incriminate me-and I admit that it worked admirably. Digby confided to Lily Coombs the fiction about the experiment to kidnap his half-brother and told her that Maurice had wagered a couple of thousand that it couldn’t be done. Lily was paid a hundred in cash for her help. All she had to do was to watch out for Maurice, spin him a yarn about the dope traffic and direct him to Carrington Mews for any further information he wanted. If he didn’t take the bait nothing would be lost. I had other plans for luring him to Carrington Mews and one of those could be used. But, of course, he took the bait. It was in the service of his art and he had to go. Digby had been carefully hinting about Lily Coombs and the Cortez Club on each of his visits and Maurice had typed out the inevitable little white reference card for future use. Once Maurice had arrived in London for his regular autumn visit it was as certain that he would show himself one night at the Cortez as it was that he would stay in his usual room at the Cadaver Club, the room which he could reach without having to use that small claustrophobic lift. Digby would even predict to Lily Coombs the night on which he would appear. Oh yes, Maurice took the bait all right! He would have walked into hell in the service of his writing. And that, of course, was what he did.

“Once Maurice appeared at the door of the Carrington Mews cottage Digby’s part was relatively simple. The swift knockout blow, too slight to leave a mark but heavy enough to be effective, wasn’t difficult for a man who had once been a boxing champion. The adaptations to the sidecar to convert it into a travelling coffin had been an easy matter for one who had built Sheldrake single-handed. The sidecar was ready and waiting and there was access to the garage from the house. The slight body, unconscious and breathing stertorously-for Lily had done her part well and Maurice had drunk far more wine than was good for him-was slid into the sidecar and the top nailed in place. There were, of course, air holes in the sides. It was no part of my plan that he should suffocate. Then Digby drank his half-bottle of whisky and set out to provide himself with his alibi. We couldn’t know precisely when it would be required, of course, and this was a slight worry. It would be a pity if Maurice died too soon. That he would die, and die in torment, was certain. It was merely a question of how long that torment would last and when it would begin. But I instructed Digby to get himself arrested as soon as he was a safe distance from home.