John Bingham - Five Roundabouts to Heaven

“Thank you,” said Bartels humbly. “Thank you.”

He replaced the receiver, and sat staring at the instrument. Then he lifted the receiver again and dialled the number of Mrs Doris Stevenson, who lived in the flat opposite. He heard Doris Stevenson’s thick treacly voice, and said:

“Mrs Stevenson? This is Philip Bartels. I wonder if you would do me a favour? I’ve been trying to ring Beatrice, but the line is out of order. I wonder-”

“I’ll see if she’s in,” interrupted Mrs Stevenson. “Hold on a minute.”

He pictured her bulky form waddling across to his flat door; ringing; waiting.

After a while she came back.

“I think she must be out, Mr Bartels. Can I give her a message?”

“Could you ask her to ring me? The fact is,” he added carefully, “I seem to have lost my cheque book. I want to see if it’s at home by any chance.”

“She can ring from here,” said Mrs Stevenson. “I’ll certainly let her know.”

Bartels thanked her and rang off.

A secretary called Miss Latimer came into his room to collect some pamphlets. She looked at him, picked up the pamphlets, and said:

“Are you feeling all right, Mr Bartels?”

“Of course I’m feeling all right. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“I thought you looked a little pale, that’s all.”

God, did he look as bad as that?

“Oh, nonsense,” he said irritably, and instantly regretted it. This was it, this was one of those unforeseeable things against which you could take no precautions.

He felt the blood flushing into his face. He shouldn’t have shown irritation, he shouldn’t have answered like that. Now she would remember. He had created an incident out of a normal question. Now she would tell the others about it. He felt more blood coming into his face, and put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. All he could think of was the phrase: this is it. Apart from that, his brain seemed to have ceased to work properly.

Miss Latimer said nothing, but he knew that she was standing at the door watching him curiously. Finally, when his face was no longer flushed, he looked up at her and smiled.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you, Miss Latimer. The fact is, I feel all right, that is, I haven’t got a headache or anything, but I think I’m getting a cold. I keep feeling cold and then hot and sticky.”

“That’s a cold all right.”

He smiled again. “I suppose it must be. I’ll take some hot whisky tonight.”

“I’ll give you some of my cold pills, Mr Bartels. I’ve got some in my desk. They’re wonderful. Really, they are.”

“Oh, don’t bother, though it’s very nice of you.”

But she had gone. In three minutes she was back, carrying two tubes of pills. She was a plump, good-natured girl. Full of kindly actions, thought Bartels bitterly.

“You take a red one in the morning, a green one at lunch time, and another red one before you go to bed.”

“I don’t really think I need-”

But she would not let him finish. “My sister had a shocking cold coming on last week, and she took them, and they kind of nipped it in the bud. Went right away, it did. Never came on at all. And Leslie, in the despatch department, he swears by them now. Go on, Mr Bartels, take them.”

He took the pills and thanked her, and offered to pay for them, but she would not let him.

Red pills and green pills. A fine physic for the soul. One in the morning, and one at midday and one at night.

But he had done right to take them. Better take them and seem thankful, rather than have word go around that “Mr Bartels was looking queer that afternoon. He wouldn’t say anything. Kind of snappish, he was. But ever so queer he looked. I remember now.”

Better anything than that.

At 4.30 his telephone rang. It was Beatrice.

“Why, hello, Barty!” Beatrice said in surprise. “Anything the matter? Mrs Stevenson left a note on the door telling me to ring you.”

“No, nothing. Why should there be?”

“I just wondered. You don’t often ring up during the day, that’s all.”

“I only wanted to ask you how your indigestion was. That’s all. Anything wrong in that?” The relief he felt was showing itself in mild irascibility. “I rang you up earlier, but the phone is out of order. Where are you speaking from?”

Beatrice laughed. She sounded pleased and flattered because he had telephoned. “A callbox, Mrs Stevenson’s gone out herself now.”

“Mrs Stevenson rang the bell, but said you were out.”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I heard the bell ring.”

“Why didn’t you answer it? I thought you were out,” he said again. He was angry now, and repetitive in his anger.

“I was washing my hair. I had my head in a basin of water, and by the time I had got to the door, she had gone. I was wondering who it was.”

“Is my cheque book at home?”

“Yes, it’s in the bureau.”

“Good. How is your tummy, anyway?”

“The tummy? Oh, it’s all right, thank you, darling. I’ll take my usual dose tonight, but I don’t think I’ll take any more. Don’t bother to buy any more, Barty.”

“All right, then. I must be off now.”

“To Colchester? I should have thought you would have been on your way by now. You’ll be late.”

“Not if I step on it. Bye-bye, Beatrice.”

“Bye-bye, darling.”

He sat back in his chair. Bye-bye, Beatrice. Bye-bye, darling, she had said. He would never speak to her again. It was a sad little ending.

When he was clearing up before leaving the office, he remembered something which turned him sick with fear.

It was something he had overlooked, not one of the unforeseeables; and the fear he experienced was caused by the thought of what might have happened if he had not remembered it, and by the feeling that there might be something else which he had overlooked.

It was one of the most obvious of all traps, and he had nearly fallen into it: he, who thought he had planned this business so cleverly. He writhed at his own incompetence.

Fingerprints! The thing which the veriest amateur remembers! On the new bottle, the bottle with which he would replace the poison bottle, there would be his own prints. But there would not be a single print from the fingers of the woman who was supposed to have been taking the medicine: plenty of Philip Bartels’ fingerprints, and none of Beatrice’s.

He stared unseeingly through the office window.

He could rectify that, but the thought of what he would have to do increased his sick feeling: the thought of taking the dead hands of Beatrice and pressing her fingers to the bottle, the fingers of the right hand on to the top of the bottle, and the fingers of the left hand around the bottle.

“I can’t do it,” he whispered. “I just can’t do it.”

A voice whispered back inside his head: “Beaten by a little thing like that? No wonder you’re a failure.”

Bartels sighed, and knew he would have to do it after all.

Bartels had no intention of going to Colchester, and no dinner appointment even if he had gone there. But he knew he had to be out of the flat when Beatrice died: he knew some of the limitations of his own character, and faced them.

He knew that, if he stayed, there was that within him which would make him cry out at the last moment: “No! Don’t drink it!” And under some pretext or other snatch the glass from her hand.

He could watch Brutus die. His philosophy, such as it was, had enabled him so far to contemplate the death of Beatrice without undue emotion except in so far as his personal safety was concerned. But there he stopped. The theories and logic broke down. He could justify the act, but he could not watch the results.