That was the old man, the old man. He had made her give him up. But for
that, Dorsy would never have left him. She would never have thought of
it herself. And she would never have got away if he had been there to
stop her. It wasn’t Ned. Ned was going to marry Nancy Peacock down at
Morfe. Ned hadn’t done any harm.
It was Mr. Greathead who had come between them. He hated Mr. Greathead.
His hate became a nausea of physical loathing that never ceased. Indoors
he served Mr. Greathead as footman and valet, waiting on him at meals,
bringing the hot water for his bath, helping him to dress and undress.
So that he could never get away from him. When he came to call him in
the morning, Steven’s stomach heaved at the sight of the shrunken body
under the bedclothes, the flushed, pinched face with its peaked,
finicking nose upturned, the thin silver tuft of hair pricked up above
the pillow’s edge. Steven shivered with hate at the sound of the
rattling, old-man’s cough, and the “shoob-shoob” of the feet shuffling
along the flagged passages.
He had once had a feeling of tenderness for Mr. Greathead as the tie
that bound him to Dorsy. He even brushed his coat and hat tenderly, as
if he loved them. Once Mr. Greathead’s small, close smile—the greyish
bud of the lower lip pushed out, the upper lip lifted at the corners—and
his kind, thin “Thank you, my lad,” had made Steven smile back, glad to
serve Dorsy’s master. And Mr. Greathead would smile again and say, “It
does me good to see your bright face, Steven.” Now Steven’s face writhed
in a tight contortion to meet Mr. Greathead’s kindliness, while his
throat ran dry and his heart shook with hate.
At meal-times from his place by the sideboard he would look on at Mr.
Greathead eating, in a long contemplative disgust. He could have
snatched the plate away from under the slow, fumbling hands that hovered
and hesitated. He would catch words coming into his mind: “He ought to
be dead. He ought to be dead.” To think that this thing that ought to be
dead, this old, shrivelled skin-bag of creaking bones should come
between him and Dorsy, should have power to drive Dorsy from him.
[Illustration]
One day when he was brushing Mr. Greathead’s soft felt hat a paroxysm of
hatred gripped him. He hated Mr. Greathead’s hat. He took a stick and
struck at it again and again; he threw it on the flags and stamped on
it, clenching his teeth and drawing in his breath with a sharp hiss. He
picked up the hat, looking round furtively, for fear lest Mr. Greathead
or Dorsy’s successor, Mrs. Blenkiron, should have seen him. He pinched
and pulled it back into shape and brushed it carefully and hung it on
the stand. He was ashamed, not of his violence, but of its futility.
Nobody but a damned fool, he said to himself, would have done that. He
must have been mad.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t know what he was going to do. He had known
ever since the day when Dorsy left him.
“I shan’t be myself again till I’ve done him in,” he thought.
He was only waiting till he had planned it out; till he was sure of
every detail; till he was fit and cool. There must be no hesitation, no
uncertainty at the last minute, above all, no blind, headlong violence.
Nobody but a fool would kill in mad rage, and forget things, and be
caught and swing for it. Yet that was what they all did. There was
always something they hadn’t thought of that gave them away.
Steven had thought of everything, even the date, even the weather.
Mr. Greathead was in the habit of going up to London to attend the
debates of a learned Society he belonged to that held its meetings in
May and November. He always travelled up by the five o’clock train, so
that he might go to bed and rest as soon as he arrived. He always stayed
for a week and gave his housekeeper a week’s holiday. Steven chose a
dark, threatening day in November, when Mr. Greathead was going up to
his meeting and Mrs. Blenkiron had left Eastthwaite for Morfe by the
early morning bus. So that there was nobody in the house but Mr.
Greathead and Steven.
Eastthwaite Lodge stands alone, grey, hidden between the shoulder of the
moor and the ash-trees of its drive. It is approached by a bridle-path
across the moor, a turning off the road that runs from Eastthwaite in
Rathdale to Shawe in Westleydale, about a mile from the village and a
mile from Hardraw Pass. No tradesmen visited it. Mr. Greathead’s letters
and his newspaper were shot into a post-box that hung on the ash-tree at
the turn.
The hot water laid on in the house was not hot enough for Mr.
Greathead’s bath, so that every morning, while Mr. Greathead shaved,
Steven came to him with a can of boiling water.
Mr. Greathead, dressed in a mauve and grey striped sleeping-suit, stood
shaving himself before the looking-glass that hung on the wall beside
the great white bath. Steven waited with his hand on the cold tap,
watching the bright curved rod of water falling with a thud and a
splash.
In the white, stagnant light from the muffed window-pane the knife-blade
flame of a small oil-stove flickered queerly. The oil sputtered and
stank.
Suddenly the wind hissed in the water-pipes and cut off the glittering
rod. To Steven it seemed the suspension of all movement. He would have
to wait there till the water flowed again before he could begin. He
tried not to look at Mr. Greathead and the lean wattles of his lifted
throat. He fixed his eyes on the long crack in the soiled green
distemper of the wall. His nerves were on edge with waiting for the
water to flow again. The fumes of the oil-stove worked on them like a
rank intoxicant. The soiled green wall gave him a sensation of physical
sickness.
He picked up a towel and hung it over the back of a chair. Thus he
caught sight of his own face in the glass above Mr. Greathead’s; it was
livid against the soiled green wall. Steven stepped aside to avoid it.
“Don’t you feel well, Steven?”
“No, sir.” Steven picked up a small sponge and looked at it.
Mr. Greathead had laid down his razor and was wiping the lather from his
chin. At that instant, with a gurgling, spluttering haste, the water
leaped from the tap.
It was then that Steven made his sudden, quiet rush. He first gagged Mr.
Greathead with the sponge, then pushed him back and back against the
wall and pinned him there with both hands round his neck, as he had
pinned Ned Oldishaw. He pressed in on Mr. Greathead’s throat, strangling
him.
Mr. Greathead’s hands flapped in the air, trying feebly to beat Steven
off; then his arms, pushed back by the heave and thrust of Steven’s
shoulders, dropped. Then Mr. Greathead’s body sank, sliding along the
wall, and fell to the floor, Steven still keeping his hold, mounting it,
gripping it with his knees. His fingers tightened, pressing back the
blood. Mr. Greathead’s face swelled up; it changed horribly. There was a
groaning and rattling sound in his throat. Steven pressed in till it had
ceased.
Then he stripped himself to the waist. He stripped Mr. Greathead of his
sleeping-suit and hung his naked body face downwards in the bath. He
took the razor and cut the great arteries and veins in the neck. He
pulled up the plug of the waste-pipe, and left the body to drain in the
running water.
He left it all day and all night.
He had noticed that murderers swung just for want of attention to little
things like that; messing up themselves and the whole place with blood;
always forgetting something essential. He had no time to think of
horrors. From the moment he had murdered Mr. Greathead his own neck was
in danger; he was simply using all his brain and nerve to save his neck.
He worked with the stern, cool hardness of a man going through with an
unpleasant, necessary job. He had thought of everything.
He had even thought of the dairy.
[Illustration: Steven waited with his hand on the tap ...]
It was built on to the back of the house under the shelter of the high
moor. You entered it through the scullery, which cut it off from the
yard. The window-panes had been removed and replaced by sheets of
perforated zinc. A large corrugated glass sky-light lit it from the
roof. Impossible either to see in or to approach it from the outside. It
was fitted up with a long, black slate shelf, placed, for the
convenience of butter-makers, at the height of an ordinary work-bench.
Steven had his tools, a razor, a carving-knife, a chopper and a
meat-saw, laid there ready, beside a great pile of cotton waste.
Early the next day he took Mr. Greathead’s body out of the bath, wrapped
a thick towel round the neck and head, carried it down to the dairy and
stretched it out on the slab. And there he cut it up into seventeen
pieces.
These he wrapped in several layers of newspaper, covering the face and
the hands first, because, at the last moment, they frightened him. He
sewed them up in two sacks and hid them in the cellar.
He burnt the towel and the cotton waste in the kitchen fire; he cleaned
his tools thoroughly and put them back in their places; and he washed
down the marble slab. There wasn’t a spot on the floor except for one
flagstone where the pink rinsing of the slab had splashed over. He
scrubbed it for half an hour, still seeing the rusty edges of the splash
long after he had scoured it out.
He then washed and dressed himself with care.
As it was war-time Steven could only work by day, for a light in the
dairy roof would have attracted the attention of the police. He had
murdered Mr. Greathead on a Tuesday; it was now three o’clock on
Thursday afternoon. Exactly at ten minutes past four he had brought out
the car, shut in close with its black hood and side curtains. He had
packed Mr. Greathead’s suit-case and placed it in the car with his
umbrella, railway rug, and travelling cap. Also, in a bundle, the
clothes that his victim would have gone to London in.
He stowed the body in the two sacks beside him on the front.
By Hardraw Pass, half-way between Eastthwaite and Shawe, there are three
round pits, known as the Churns, hollowed out of the grey rock and said
to be bottomless. Steven had thrown stones, big as a man’s chest, down
the largest pit, to see whether they would be caught on any ledge or
boulder. They had dropped clean, without a sound.
It poured with rain, the rain that Steven had reckoned on. The Pass was
dark under the clouds and deserted. Steven turned his car so that the
headlights glared on the pit’s mouth. Then he ripped open the sacks and
threw down, one by one, the seventeen pieces of Mr. Greathead’s body,
and the sacks after them, and the clothes.
It was not enough to dispose of Mr. Greathead’s dead body; he had to
behave as though Mr. Greathead were alive. Mr. Greathead had disappeared
and he had to account for his disappearance. He drove on to Shawe
station to the five o’clock train, taking care to arrive close on its
starting. A troop-train was due to depart a minute earlier. Steven, who
had reckoned on the darkness and the rain, reckoned also on the hurry
and confusion on the platform.
As he had foreseen, there were no porters in the station entry; nobody
to notice whether Mr. Greathead was or was not in the car. He carried
his things through on to the platform and gave the suit-case to an old
man to label. He dashed into the booking-office and took Mr. Greathead’s
ticket, and then rushed along the platform as if he were following his
master. He heard himself shouting to the guard, “Have you seen Mr.
Greathead?” And the guard’s answer, “Naw!” And his own inspired
statement, “He must have taken his seat in the front, then.” He ran to
the front of the train, shouldering his way among the troops. The drawn
blinds of the carriages favoured him.
Steven thrust the umbrella, the rug, and the travelling cap into an
empty compartment, and slammed the door to. He tried to shout something
through the open window; but his tongue was harsh and dry against the
roof of his mouth, and no sound came. He stood, blocking the window,
till the guard whistled. When the train moved he ran alongside with his
hand on the window ledge, as though he were taking the last instructions
of his master. A porter pulled him back.
“Quick work, that,” said Steven.
Before he left the station he wired to Mr. Greathead’s London hotel,
announcing the time of his arrival.
He felt nothing, nothing but the intense relief of a man who has saved
himself by his own wits from a most horrible death. There were even
moments, in the week that followed, when, so powerful was the illusion
of his innocence, he could have believed that he had really seen Mr.
Greathead off by the five o’clock train. Moments when he literally stood
still in amazement before his own incredible impunity. Other moments
when a sort of vanity uplifted him. He had committed a murder that for
sheer audacity and cool brain work surpassed all murders celebrated in
the history of crime. Unfortunately the very perfection of his
achievement doomed it to oblivion. He had left not a trace.
Not a trace.
Only when he woke in the night a doubt sickened him. There was the
rusted ring of that splash on the dairy floor. He wondered, had he
really washed it out clean. And he would get up and light a candle and
go down to the dairy to make sure. He knew the exact place; bending over
it with the candle, he could imagine that he still saw a faint outline.
Daylight reassured him. _He_ knew the exact place, but nobody else knew.
There was nothing to distinguish it from the natural stains in the
flagstone. Nobody would guess. But he was glad when Mrs. Blenkiron came
back again.
On the day that Mr. Greathead was to have come home by the four o’clock
train Steven drove into Shawe and bought a chicken for the master’s
dinner. He met the four o’clock train and expressed surprise that Mr.
Greathead had not come by it. He said he would be sure to come by the
seven. He ordered dinner for eight; Mrs. Blenkiron roasted the chicken,
and Steven met the seven o’clock train. This time he showed uneasiness.
The next day he met all the trains and wired to Mr. Greathead’s hotel
for information. When the manager wired back that Mr. Greathead had not
arrived, he wrote to his relatives and gave notice to the police.
Three weeks passed. The police and Mr. Greathead’s relatives accepted
Steven’s statements, backed as they were by the evidence of the booking
office clerk, the telegraph clerk, the guard, the porter who had
labelled Mr. Greathead’s luggage and the hotel manager who had received
his telegram. Mr. Greathead’s portrait was published in the illustrated
papers with requests for any information which might lead to his
discovery. Nothing happened, and presently he and his disappearance were
forgotten. The nephew who came down to Eastthwaite to look into his
affairs was satisfied. His balance at his bank was low owing to the
non-payment of various dividends, but the accounts and the contents of
Mr. Greathead’s cash-box and bureau were in order and Steven had put
down every penny he had spent. The nephew paid Mrs. Blenkiron’s wages
and dismissed her and arranged with the chauffeur to stay on and take
care of the house. And as Steven saw that this was the best way to
escape suspicion, he stayed on.
Only in Westleydale and Rathdale excitement lingered. People wondered
and speculated. Mr. Greathead had been robbed and murdered in the train
(Steven said he had had money on him). He had lost his memory and
wandered goodness knew where. He had thrown himself out of the railway
carriage. Steven said Mr. Greathead wouldn’t do _that_, but he shouldn’t
be surprised if he had lost his memory. He knew a man who forgot who he
was and where he lived. Didn’t know his own wife and children.
Shell-shock. And lately Mr. Greathead’s memory hadn’t been what it was.
Soon as he got it back he’d turn up again. Steven wouldn’t be surprised
to see him walking in any day.
But on the whole people noticed that he didn’t care to talk much about
Mr. Greathead. They thought this showed very proper feeling. They were
sorry for Steven. He had lost his master and he had lost Dorsy Oldishaw.
And if he _did_ half kill Ned Oldishaw, well, young Ned had no business
to go meddling with his sweetheart. Even Mrs. Oldishaw was sorry for
him. And when Steven came into the bar of the King’s Arms everybody said
“Good-evening, Steve,” and made room for him by the fire.