silence, read a bit of If Winter Comes, the only book in the place, and chain-smoked in bed with it.
Life crept by, Ivy got older, he felt now older, now younger, and wondered what on earth the whole thing was about. Why be born a gentleman if you weren’t allowed to live like one? It was the most frightful punishment in the world.
He felt this most when he had to visit the office. He always sensed that it was resented. When he finally got on the salary list up at the office, he felt his particular department resented that too. Apart from the manager, who was usually too important to be talked to, there were only two blokes who concerned his little affairs at all, Mr Nash and Mr Rosin. They were two beauties. They both had hilariously witty things to say about his old school tie, and about Lord Baldwin and Mr Chamberlain. The things they had to say somehow seemed to appear to be Mr Bowling’s fault. Mr Nash was thin and sour, and Mr Rosin had a flat, stupid face like an uncut cheese. The really common man, Mr Bowling decided, was a nice chap, but these two belonged to the half-and-half species; they were really sprung from the common man but they thought they were old school tie whilst resenting that sorry class. They loved it when a public school man got sent to gaol, and took care to cut the bits of news out of their paper for when he next came in. ‘There you are, Mr Bowling,’ they pushed it forward, winking at each other, ‘there’s your old school tie for you. H’r! H’r!’ too stupid to realise that at any moment he could cut out a bit of news about Winston Churchill and say, ‘And there you are, Mr Rosin, and Mr Nash, there’s another of your old school ties for you! H’r H’r?’ But a chap wouldn’t stoop to it.
Coming in to collect the thousand quid, Messrs Rosin and Nash had appeared very different, almost admiring.
Such was the pitiful power of filthy lucre.
‘Money, money,’ he sighed time and again. You just could not ignore that miserable subject.
It was tough if a chap was bad at it.
He liked to ponder upon the illogical, in respect of money. You got paid for doing what was called ‘a job,’ but which was often and often nothing but sitting around. But for real hard work, like thinking out and writing something, more often than not you got Sweet Fanny Adams.
And they said when you had got money, you thought about it even more—in case you should lose it.
It was true of Mr Watson, at any rate.
The day he murdered Mr Watson, he got up early. Thinking about it had deprived him of a good deal of sleep, yet he felt a kind of exhilaration. He’d pasted the policy carefully on top of the other one, and it didn’t look too bad. There was the ridge at the bottom, of course, which old Watson would at once spot, but he’d explain to him: ‘Paper economy, old chap, if you don’t mind?’ and Mr Watson wouldn’t mind, because he liked to try and give the impression that he was doing something for the war effort, it was so obvious he was doing nothing. ‘All right,’ he’d say. If he didn’t, the deal was off. Something else would have to be thought out.
At breakfast, Mr Bowling felt a bit restive. He was a man of leisure, these days. He’d eaten into his thousand quid a bit, nothing much, but a bit, it was so nice being able to give old Queenie bits and pieces, after all her kindnesses when he was down. He gave her a nice bit of cat, thirty quid it cost, and she was so pleased. She kissed him and he laughed: ‘Just a bit of cat!’
‘And you be careful who you marry next time, my dear,’ she told him. ‘Come and see me first!’
And he’d thrown a bit of a party, here at Number Forty, yes, with the bombs still whistling down, you only died once, didn’t you. There was a din, and he played the piano and they sang, and the chap came down from upstairs to complain. He played about with chemistry or something of the kind, he’d been to Oxford and he was interested in Mr Bowling. He was a bit of a bore, that first day stopping him in the hall downstairs.
‘My name’s Winthrop. Alexandra Winthrop. I hear you’re joining us.’
‘Yes. Bowling’s the name.’
‘Miss Brown was telling me, Mr Bowling. I hear you were blitzed. Bad luck! Yes, she told me about it. I’m very sorry.’
‘Oh, well.’
‘You mustn’t be lonely. I’ll pop in, may I? And you must pop up.’ He frowned. ‘Usually busy. Eton?’ he guessed.
‘No.’
‘Ah. H’m. Well, I shall hope to see you. Bath water’s always hot,’ Mr Winthrop informed, and went out with a friendly nod.
Mr Bowling went up to his room. He didn’t want to know any of these people. Winthrop already seemed to know about Ivy having been killed.
He frowned and shut the door, wondering who else lived in the place.
With the plans forming in his mind, he preferred solitude.
On the day of Watson’s murder, Winthrop knocked at the door and came in without waiting. He smoked his pipe and wore a Norfolk jacket.
‘Ah. H’m. ’Morning, Bowling?’
Mr Winthrop was just a lonely and middle-aged man. And he was a bit inquisitive.
He chattered and peered about. He was already insured, so he was sheer waste of time. He gave peeping looks all over the shop. He chattered about the furnishings here being better than most places of the kind, said Miss Brown was a dear, ‘she’s a lady, you know,’ and remarked that Mr Bowling seemed to have made a lot of purchases, suits and shirts, and said he believed there would very shortly be coupons for clothes. He said it must be awful to lose your things, and he said the various things he thought about the Ambulance Service, the Home Guard, the Fire Service, and the F.A.P. He swayed to and fro on little brown shoes, but looking overweighted with fat. His face was round and his mouth disgruntled. He was a flabby man. He said all about the people who came to live in the house, they changed weekly sometimes, but that Miss Brown preferred people to stay, providing they were, ‘gentlemen like ourselves’. He dragged Mr Bowling up to his ‘den’, which appeared to be a square room with a wide view of blitzed London, and crammed with wires and cables and acid bottles and chemistry books. When he got out at last, it was eleven o’clock, and the strain of being civil to Mr Winthrop had made him nervy. With his policies, he went along by bus to Fulham, for his interview with Mr Watson. On the bus, he thought: ‘Is this I who am doing this? Am I really going to do this?’ It was certainly quite a nice bright morning for a murder.
He no longer thought he was going to do it at all.
He’d just go along.
‘Good morning, old man?’ he hailed Mr Watson as he went up the little tiled path. Old Watson was in his doorway looking up at the sky. He was looking singularly well and alive. His grey moustache was very neat and trim, as if he was back from the barber’s.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘good! How are you, Mr Bowling? Haven’t seen you for some time. Sorry to hear about your little affair.’
‘Oh, well …’
Mr Watson had a habit of chewing some real or imaginary morsel, as if the last meal had been singularly pleasant and recent. His eyes gleamed, while he did it.
He kept his caller in the little porch for a time, talking about various things, how he didn’t like the Welsh, and how he didn’t really like the English much either,
