The 7th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

ESMERALDA John Keir Cross

Mr Felix Broome lay on his back wide-eyed, unable to sleep. Beside him his wife, Nancy, snored raucously—a long complicated snore, starting with a sigh and ending with a staccato nasal grunt. Mr Broome, with a horrid fascination, followed the sound through all its convolutions, waiting desperately for some variation in the rhythm.

Mr Broome was forty-five. A small man, round-faced, with a little brunette moustache. His mouth was thin and loose. He had false teeth but never wore them—he found them uncomfortable; jam pips constantly lodged behind the plate, irritating him beyond endurance. He was bald; and, since Nancy hated him bald, he wore a toupee, slightly curled.

The room in which he and Nancy were lying was above the little newsagent and tobacconist shop he had. It was in a side street in Notting Hill—not far from the Portobello Road—a bright, neat shop that did good business. Mr Broome loved it dearly. He loved the smell of it—a smell all compact of newly printed paper, cheap sweets in cardboard boxes for the children (liquorice all-sorts, wine gums, dolly mixtures, sen-sen cachous, chocolate macaroons and whipped cream snowballs)—and, above all, tobaccos: thick black plug for chewing, tangled shag for those who liked to roll their own cigarettes, sickly yellow curly-cut, artificially scented flake, and half-a-dozen goodly mixtures in brown earthenware jars with tops that were moulded in the shapes of Negro heads. Many a time, when the shop was empty, Mr Broome would lift the top of one of these jars and sniff lovingly at the richness within. Many a time, when no one was looking, he would slip a dolly mixture or a jelly baby into his little loose mouth and suck at it noisily and enjoyably. Or he would furtively bury himself in one of the serials in Peg’s Companion.

He even, on one occasion, wrote a surreptitious letter to a character calling herself Wise Woman in one of the girl’s papers he sold. He signed himself Worried’ and said:

And next week, under a reproduction of his letter, he read Wise Woman’s reply in small type:

Mr Broome remembered this advice with bitterness, as he lay listening to Nancy’s snoring. ‘Make conversation, plan little surprises.’ As if it were possible to make conversation with Nancy! As if it were possible to plan little surprises for Nancy! He hated Nancy—the truth of the whole matter was simply that: he hated her. He hated everything about her—he hated her voice, he hated the way she dressed, he hated her vast podgy face with its sagging cheeks, he hated the smell of her. He who was so sensitive to smells—to the rich exotic smell of tobacco and the fresh clean smell of printed paper—how could he be expected to stomach the sweaty odour that came from Nancy?—all mingled with Woolworth’s scent and pink gin? He hated every single thing that she said and did. He hated her very name. Nancy! If ever a name was unsuitable it was that. Nancy! Applied to the vast flabby hulk lying beside him it was grotesque. And names, he knew, were important—either directly or indirectly—ironically. There was his own name, for instance, Felix: meaning happy (there was an example of irony if you liked!). Or there was Miss Ickman upstairs—her first name was Cynthia, and Cynthia had been the Goddess of Chastity—could anything be more ironically suitable for that bleak and rigid virgin? Or there was—but here all irony vanished and Mr Broome sighed in the darkness—a little sigh that was swallowed up and lost in the vast nasal sigh of Nancy’s snoring—there was Esmeralda . . .

Nancy stirred and grunted. She heaved the bedclothes more firmly about her, and Mr Broome’s right foot was uncovered. With a patient sigh he wriggled the blankets over it again.

He did not want to think quite yet of Esmeralda—not quite yet. There was a deliciousness in holding back—in savouring the moment when at last he would permit himself to think of her. There were many stages to be gone through before he could sink finally into the dream that began: ‘If only . . .’

There came a creaking of a door from Miss Ickman’s flat above. Lord, Lord—was she going to play the piano—at that time of night! He strained his ears, dreading to hear the familiar sound of the screwing up of the piano stool (Miss Ickman gave lessons, so the stool was never at the right height when she herself wanted to play). It came—and a moment later the sound of a Strauss waltz drifted down through the ceiling to him, the bass grotesquely magnified. Oh hell, oh hell! Now Nancy would waken—and Nancy awake was just one degree worse than Nancy asleep.

Yet, as the music went on, he found himself, in a way, welcoming it and enjoying it. The gay dancing rhythm brought into his mind a clear and exciting vision. Never mind if the vision was borrowed from a part of the dream that strictly speaking should come later. Esmeralda . . .

The snoring stopped suddenly in a long succession of short staccato grunts. Mr Broome held his breath. Nancy heaved herself over on her back.

‘Felix,’ she grunted. ‘My God, is that bitch at it again! Stop her, Felix—knock on the ceiling.’

‘It’s only eleven o’clock, my love,’ said Mr Broome quietly.

‘It must be later than that. Besides, it’s after half-past ten that you’re not allowed to make a noise. Knock up, Felix—go on.’

He sighed. But he knew the routine too well. He got out of bed and, shivering, went over to the corner behind the door and picked up a long broom that lay against the wall there. Then he mounted on a chair and thumped with the end of it oh the ceiling.

‘Louder, Felix—louder,’ hissed Nancy.

He thumped again, rhythmically. The playing stopped. The lid of the piano slammed shut angrily. Mr Broome stepped down, wearily returned the knocker to its place, and crawled into bed again.

‘Thoughtless old bitch,’ grunted Nancy.

‘Go to sleep, my love,’ said Mr Broome absently. ‘Go to sleep . . .’

She snorted and turned over on her side. He had a sudden whiff of her loathsome smell. It made him feel sick. But with a curious meekness he lay still, waiting. Her breathing grew slower and heavier. Once more the snoring began.

Fifteen years of it, he thought—fifteen years of it! Why had he ever married her at all? (Yet he did know the answer to that—it belonged to the later part of the dream.) In any case, at the beginning she had been different. She had not been bulky, the way she was now. She was kinder in disposition, her voice was softer, she dressed quite passably well. On the honeymoon he had even been quite proud of her. He remembered once, as they came in from a bathe, he had overheard two men saying, as they looked at her wet figure up and down: ‘A fine buxom body, that’—and he had thought: ‘Yes, and it’s mine—all mine . . .’ He had thought that too, before, looking sideways at her as they knelt before the priest in the little Catholic Church in Notting Hill: ‘A fine buxom body, and it’s all mine . . . What if I do have to sign a paper and say that our children are to be brought up in the Catholic Faith? It doesn’t really matter. The main thing is that we should have children—and with that fine buxom body belonging to me, that should be the easiest thing in the world . . .!’

And now for fifteen years the buxom body had belonged to him. It had steadily grown less attractive—he had wanted it less and less. But conversely, by an irony, he had wanted the fruits of it more and more. And now he knew, finally, that there never would be any fruits from it, he hated the vast bulk with all the vehemence he had. His letter to Wise Woman was the only outward expression his hatred had ever had—and heaven knows that timid effusion was a poor enough index to his feeling.

Mr Broome stretched out an arm and took a sip of water from the glass he kept beside his bed. A mouse stirred and scuttled in the quiet room. Outside he heard a late bus go slowly along the street. Nearer at hand a drunk man was singing mournfully, and a policeman’s slow footsteps went clop-clop on the pavement. He closed his eyes. The moment had come at last—he had gone through all the preliminaries. If only . . .

If only, if only . . .

. . . She was exquisitely pretty. She was dressed in a diaphanous white frock. Her hair was fair—there was a little ribbon of pink silk in it. She was only thirteen, but not one member of the gigantic audience but was captivated and enchanted by her. She danced on and on, a small delicious figure in the glare of the footlights. A man in one of the boxes threw her a posy of flowers and she acknowledged it prettily, with a little curtsey woven into the dance. Some women behind Mr Broome in the dress circle put their heads together and began whispering. By straining his ears he could just make out an occasional word of what they said:

‘Exquisite . . . Enchanting . . . Like a little fairy . . .’

The dance ended. She swept one long and beautiful curtsey and the curtain slowly fell. The applause was enormous, terrifying. The curtain went up again and she was standing there, radiant in the light, blowing kisses to the audience. People were on their feet, cheering and clapping. The stage was covered with flowers. He felt like crying he was so moved.

And as he mingled with the crowd leaving the theatre, he heard again the two women talking behind him.

‘Yes, dear—her name really is Esmeralda. Esmeralda Broome—the daughter of a little man who keeps a tobacconist’s shop in Notting Hill somewhere. She’s adorable, isn’t she?’

Oh God, thought Mr Broome. Oh God! If only . . .

The snoring went on remorselessly. Mr Broome was almost weeping. If he turned he could see, in the light that came in from the street, the dark shape of Nancy’s head on the pillow. She lay on her back again, with her mouth wide open. Fifteen years!

He suddenly drew in his breath in a quick gasp. He lay perfectly still, staring with dilated eyes at the ceiling. Then he quietly raised himself to his knees. Still staring, he picked up the pillow he had been lying on. For a moment he stayed poised, holding it in his hands—then, with a small animal grunt, he lunged forward and crammed it on to Nancy’s face.

The snoring stopped. He lay on the pillow, grunting and moaning, pressing it down with all his strength. She began to struggle—little inarticulate sounds came from beneath him. She heaved her enormous bulk on the bed—his nostrils were filled with the smell of the sweat and cheap scent. Still lying on her face, and grunting in little ecstatic gasps, he pushed his hands down under the pillow and fumbled for her throat. He felt the muscles of it twitching convulsively beneath his fingers. He squeezed with all his strength, and his fingers went deep into the flaccid flesh.

He lay like that for a long time. There was a mounting, rushing noise in his ears, like wind, or tumultuous applause. Outside he heard the clop of the feet again, as the policeman repassed the house. And he realised suddenly that all was quiet—there was no movement at all beneath him.

He rolled himself back into his own place in the bed. He listened to the silence. Then, exhausted, but with, somewhere inside him, the applause going on, he fell into a deep stupid sleep.

He opened his eyes at a quarter-past six. For a moment he lay looking at the creeping dawn light that came through the window. Then, quite quietly and detachedly, he remembered all that had happened the night before.

He turned and looked at Nancy. The pillow lay over her head. Curiously he lifted a corner of it—then replaced it with a shudder: the face beneath was swollen and ugly—the veins stood out in purple ridges, the teeth showed right through the upper lip, so great had been the pressure.

Mr Broome got out of bed. He went over to the window and stood there thoughtfully, scratching his backside. His striped flannel pyjamas hung from him loosely—he was a small and grotesque figure in the sick light.

A few people were astir in the street. A man with a bonnet and muffler passed briskly, a blue enamelled tea-bottle sticking out of his pocket. A little hawker’s cart went by, the pony nodding dejectedly in the shafts, the driver half-asleep. A lean dog sniffed round the dustbins.

Mr Broome was surprised that he did not seem to have any feelings. According to the magazines in the shop downstairs, what he had done was spectacular—people wrote stories about murderers. And here was he, in real life, a murderer—and he felt nothing—nothing at all. He had even, he remembered, fallen asleep after killing Nancy. Fallen asleep! There was no end to mystery—things never worked out in life the way they did in books.

He dressed slowly and carefully, spending a long time in settling his tie at the mirror. Before him, on the dressing-table, was Nancy’s array of scent bottles. He smiled wryly as he uncorked one of them and held it to his nose. But there was work to be done, he suddenly recollected, and he set the bottle down again and went briskly out of the room.

Underneath the shop there was a deep earth-floored cellar where Mr Broome kept old boxes and papers. Here he worked furiously for about an hour. At the end of that time there was a hole some three feet deep in a corner of the room. Mr Broome surveyed it with satisfaction, then he went upstairs to the bedroom again.

Nancy still lay quietly on the bed. This almost surprised him—he had half-expected to find her sitting at the dressing-table making herself up. But the enormous bulk was quite motionless—the pillow was still in position.

He stood surveying her for a little time. Then, bracing himself to the effort, he put his hands under her armpits and dragged her from the bed.

She was enormously heavy. He thought with irony, as he looked down along the bulging figure, swathed in a nightgown of pink chiffon, of the remark the two men had made on the beach: ‘A fine buxom body, that . . .’ Well, it was buxom no longer—mere clay and no more. Nancy could no longer demand his services for her body, when she had been drinking too much pink gin. There would be no more weeping agonies of resentment—no more vows of ‘I won’t give in to her, I won’t, I won’t’—and then giving in to her, and regretting it, and feeling ashamed and weak next morning. It was all over now. He had beaten her at last, after fifteen long years.

Somehow he got the huge sagging lump down the stairs to the cellar. He dragged it heavily, walking backwards at an angle—Nancy resting on her heels, her huge yellow toes pointing to the ceiling. With a final heave he toppled it into the damp hole he had prepared, then stood back panting.

He went up into the shop to look at the time. It was a quarter to eight—in a quarter of an hour’s time the shop should be open, if all was to seem normal. With a feverishness in his movements now, he rushed downstairs and shovelled the earth over the body. Then he replaced the boxes and papers he had cleared from the corner when he was digging the hole. A last look round to see that all was normal and he went upstairs, smoothing his jacket and straightening his tie as he climbed. By two minutes past eight the shutters were down and the shop was open.

‘Good morning, Mr Broome,’ said the van boy who delivered his bundle of papers. ‘All right?’

‘Couldn’t be better, Bert,’ said Mr Broome.

‘And Mrs Broome OK?’

‘Oh, yes,’ and he smiled his little loose toothless smile. ‘She’s in the pink, Bert—in the pink . . .’

Now all that day, as Mr Broome worked on in his shop, he was thinking. He began in the morning by thinking how strange it was that he was so calm. He, Felix Broome, forty-five, a man of no importance, had committed a murder. He who had never been able to make up his mind to do anything had at last done one supreme and dramatic thing. He had killed his wife and buried her in the cellar—yet behold, he was calmly going about his business as if nothing had happened.

Where was the sense of guilt that was supposed to overwhelm murderers?—where were the agonies of remorse that were said to assail them? If he felt anything at all it was a sense of relief—and occasionally, mingling with it, a sense of power and achievement. Later on in the day this feeling increased. Sometimes, as he handed a paper or some tobacco to a customer, he felt like leaning over the counter and saying:

‘Excuse me, sir, but I thought I would just like to let you know that I have murdered my wife. We had been married for fifteen years and I hated her, sir—she stank. So I murdered her, sir—she’s downstairs in the cellar now, under three feet of earth. Anything else, sir—some pipe-cleaners, matches?’

He pictured the sensation—the startled customer scuttling from the shop and calling a policeman. And, later on, the headlines in the papers—papers that would be sold over the very counter on which he leaned. Wise Woman would get a shock if she knew that Worried, to whom she had given such excellent advice, had finished actually by murdering his partner; ‘Plan little surprises’ indeed! He had planned one of the biggest surprises in history—he, Felix Broome—a man of no account and a dreamer.

At this point, as he leaned on his counter, Mr Broome sighed deeply. It need never have happened. The fifteen years of misery need never have happened. If only—if only . . .

And there came into his mind a sudden image of a white whirling skirt. Esmeralda—she would have solved it.

At lunchtime he went to the little room at the back of the shop and cut himself some bread and cheese and boiled some tea on the gas-ring. And as he chewed his meal slowly (having put in his false teeth for the purpose), he began to think over a plan of campaign. One thing was clear—he had to get out of London. And in some way he had to disguise himself. If he left off his toupee and wore his false teeth continuously, that would make a considerable difference to his appearance. Then he could shave off his moustache. Fortunately, no photographs of him existed—he had always had a horror of cameras. And he had no relatives—at least, only one: a cousin in Canada—and she had not seen him for twenty years.

He would go, he decided, to the North of England—to Bradford, say, or Burnley: one of the vague black cities, on the top of the map, he had often heard of but never visited. Upstairs, in a hole in the mattress (the very mattress on which Nancy had died), he had almost three hundred pounds—his savings. With this sum it should be possible to start a little tobacconist’s shop.

It was indeed curious, he reflected again, how calm he felt. He was quite confident that he would not be found out. As soon as it grew dark he would close the shop, gather together his few more precious belongings, and simply disappear. It would be some days before anyone got suspicious because the shop was closed—there was no one likely to call. If he put a card on the door—‘Closed till further notice’—that would satisfy Bert the van boy and Miss Ickman upstairs. Eventually, no doubt, there would be a search—an advertisement about the missing Mr and Mrs Broome would appear in the Sunday papers. Perhaps one day the police would discover Nancy’s remains in the cellar—but what would it matter? By that time he would have started his new business in Blackburn or wherever it was—he would be comfortably established under a new name and with a different appearance. What could he call himself? Black? Thomson? Clarke? There was, he remembered, a significance in names. What about Nancy’s maiden-name—Gilbert? Too obvious, perhaps—a clue that might give him away. Yet he could always use it as a first name. A sudden curious allusion came into his mind. A few days before, he had been reading an article in one of the cheaper and more spectacular weeklies—The Real Bluebeard, it had been called. And he remembered that the name of the famous wife-murderer had been Gilles de Rais. Why not call himself Gilbert Ray? A good name—and a significant one. Gilbert Ray, Tobacconist and Newsagent . . .

Chuckling to himself quietly, he took out his false teeth and went back into the shop. He popped a jelly baby into his mouth to suck by way of dessert. Then he sniffed lovingly at one of the earthenware tobacco jars. It was a pity, he thought, that he would have to leave his carefully-collected stock. But still—it was only for a little while. It would not take him long to gather more—when he started up again as Gilbert Ray.

There was little doing in the way of business during the afternoon. Mr Broome found himself looking forward to six o’clock, when he could put up the shutters and start disguising himself. He had a lot to do. He had checked in a timetable that there was a train to Blackburn at 10.15—everything had to be ready by then.

He started putting up the shutters at ten to six. Then he went into the back shop again and fried himself an egg. He was just on the point of going upstairs to the bedroom to start on his disguise, when he had a sudden uneasy thought. Had he bolted the shop door?

As he went through to examine the lock a sudden whiff of Nancy’s perfume filled his nostrils. He paused—then shrugged and moved on to the door.

Surely enough, by an oversight, he had forgotten to fix the snib. With a little grunt of annoyance he stooped to remedy the mistake. And suddenly he had an overwhelming sense that someone was standing just outside. The feeling was powerful—ridiculous but powerful. A little ashamed of himself, he swung the door open—and then his little eyes grew round and his loose mouth sagged open stupidly.

A little girl in a white dress was standing facing him—a little girl whose long hair was tied charmingly in a bow of pink ribbon. And as he stared, she swept him a low and graceful curtsey.

‘Esmeralda!’ he gasped.

‘How do you do, dear Father,’ she said, with a smile. ‘May I come in?’

Still smiling at him sweetly, she walked past him into the shop. He shivered—and again in his nostrils he felt a distant whiff of Nancy’s Woolworth’s perfume. He closed the door with a slam, locking it with trembling fingers. Then he turned and followed the little girl up the stairs in a daze.

And now they were sitting in the bedroom facing each other. She was exactly as he had pictured her so often—petite, exquisitely pretty, with small, quick gestures. She sat primly on the edge of a chair, her feet barely touching the ground—and all the time she smiled.

As for him, he did not know what to say or to do. He felt dazed—unable to comprehend what had happened—unwilling even to try to comprehend it. Was it a dream? Had he stupidly fallen asleep—at the very moment when he ought to be packing feverishly for his flight to Blackburn? He remembered how he had fallen asleep just after he had murdered Nancy—a curious, stupid thing to do. Was he perhaps a little bit mad? After all, there must, he thought, be something unusual in a man who suddenly murders his wife—who sets about covering up his tracks with the care and calmness he had given to the task that day. He did not know—he did not know anything: except that Esmeralda, about whom he had thought and dreamed so often, was now sitting in some unaccountable way before him, smiling at him. And she was lovely—she was only thirteen, but she was lovely. He almost felt like weeping.

He realised that she was speaking to him.

‘Dear Father,’ she was saying, ‘don’t be surprised that I have come to you at last. After all, there was only one thing ever that kept me away.’

He looked up at her. Her smile was rigid—in a way it was a little frightening. He almost wished that she would relax it—yet he realised that in his dreams she always had been smiling. He had never seen her with any other expression.

‘You mean—?’ he said dazedly: and she nodded.

‘Yes. Mother. But she’s safely out of the way, isn’t she? Oh I always hoped you’d do that to her someday, Father. She was such an ugly bitch!’

There was something hideous in the way she spoke—it alarmed him. She was only thirteen. His brain was in a whirl—things were growing wild and grotesque and somehow beyond his control. If only she wouldn’t smile!

‘You see, Father,’ she went on, leaning forwards a little, ‘I would only have been the same as her. You signed a paper, you know—do you remember? Fifteen years ago! . . . You said that any children you and Nancy had would be brought up to be like her. It might have been all right at the very beginning—she was quite presentable then, wasn’t she? And she didn’t stink.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he gasped.

‘Oh you do—of course you do! Do you think I don’t know you, after all these years? You liked her body a lot at the beginning. Do you remember the first time you saw her without her clothes on? That time when you went to Brighton for a day and missed the last train home?—and you went to a hotel and registered as Mr and Mrs Broome? It was before you were married, Father.’

Her tone was arch and horrible. He felt himself sweating slightly under the collar.

‘I hated her body,’ he said, in a muffled little whisper.

‘Not at first, Father,’ she said. ‘You can’t pretend that you hated it at first. It was only later, when she began to—well, Father,’ (and she sank her voice to a low salacious whisper) ‘when you began to grow old!’

There was a long silence. Mr Broome felt a curious nightmare listlessness in all his limbs—he was weak and helpless. Things had suddenly turned inside out—it was not what he had ever meant—not it at all.

‘Who are you?’ he gasped at length. ‘Are you a dream?’

‘Father, dear!’ she remonstrated. ‘I’m your own dear daughter! Don’t you recognise me? You’ve seen me a hundred times in your dreams—you’ve heard people talking about me. I’m Esmeralda, Father dear.’

‘You’re not,’ he said, speaking thickly, with an effort. ‘You aren’t Esmeralda. Esmeralda is a little girl—I mean, I’ve always thought of her as a little girl—if I could have—I mean, if Nancy could have . . .’

She laughed—a shrill, stagey, impersonal laugh.

‘Oh Father, Father! You haven’t known in the least bit what it’s all been about, have you! You’ve thought it was all something else. You’ve sat in your shop and you’ve read the stories in the magazines, and you’ve thought it was all something else altogether! Poor old Father! Shall I tell you something, Father? Shall I tell you the story of your life?—the real story of your life?’

He stared at her, unable to speak. She went on smiling. And she got down from her chair and walked over towards him till she was only a yard away from him. Then she knelt down on the floor and leaned back on her heels—still smiling.

‘Do you remember, Father, thirty years ago? You were fifteen—you had just left school. You were apprenticed to a draper in the Harrow Road—Carradine’s. You were very shy. You used to blush if anyone spoke to you. And the girls called you baby-face, Father—do you remember that? Do you remember Miss Dobie, Father?’

‘Stop it—stop it,’ he groaned.

‘Oh, Father—I’m only beginning! You can’t stop me now—there’s such a lot to say. Don’t you remember—the ladies’ combinations?’

She laughed again—her eyes bright and hard and glistening. He stared at her helplessly, in horror.

‘Miss Dobie was twenty-eight, Father, and you were sixteen. She was a bitch, wasn’t she?—all the men said so. The way she used to torture you—made you go into the underwear window and dress the dummies in Carradine’s Special Line in Ladies’ Combinations!—in full view of the public, too! Beastly, wasn’t it. You hated her, Father. But you couldn’t help yourself, could you?—she was far too powerful for you. That night when she had you to her room—smuggled you into the ladies’ hostel she lived in at Earl’s Court—do you remember it, Father? You were trembling all the time—it was all so new—you were only sixteen . . .’

‘For Christ’s sake, stop it!’ he cried. ‘It’s filthy—it’s filthy! Stop it!’

‘It’s the story of your life, Father. It’s why you killed Mother. And Father—’ (and she lowered her voice to a whisper again) ‘—it’s why you created me!’

Mr Broome held his breath. He was aware of footsteps outside—they came to him as from an enormous distance. It was the policeman beginning his evening beat—walking slowly and comfortably in a sane quiet world.

‘Poor Father, poor Father,’ went on the crouching figure at his feet. ‘You hardly knew all this, did you? You didn’t ever have a real chance. After Miss Dobie it was Alice. Do you remember Alice? You and she at the Dance Palais, just after your twenty-first birthday? Learning the Charleston. Do you remember that long spangly dress that she wore—cut square at the neck and with a low waist? And when you danced the last waltz, when the lights were low, and you were very close to her—so close that your face was buried in her hair . . . and it filled your nostrils, Father—it was like a brown shag tobacco, all stringy, but fragrant—you couldn’t get enough of the scent of her . . .’

‘You devil, you devil!’ said Broome, in a low sobbing voice.

‘I’m only telling you, Father,’ she said gently, and ironically. ‘I’m letting you know, that’s all. It isn’t what people imagine it to be, is it, Father? Nothing is—not quite. People never do things for the reasons they think they do—do they? It’s always something else—something nagging on in the background . . . Oh, it was glorious last night—wasn’t it, Father? That magnificent moment!’

‘What do you mean?’ he gasped.

‘You know what I mean—when you lay on the pillow and put your hands round her throat. She was in your power, Father—at last it was that way round: someone was in your power—instead of it being the other way—you in someone else’s power. That’s what made it, wasn’t it, Father?’

Mr Broome raised his trembling hands to clasp his temples. Something terrible and unutterably beastly had happened to him—out of the blue. He had been so calm—so infinitely superior to things. He had worked quietly in his shop all day, he had made his plans, he had been so sure of himself. And now, from nowhere, came this foul and raging insanity. He grew aware of the thin ironic voice going on and on.

‘Yes—Miss Dobie, and Alice: and the strange girl you met when you were on holiday that time at Weston-super-Mare—Margie her name was—and Enid, that you met at your cousin’s farewell party, when she went to Canada, and finally Nancy. It was always the same, wasn’t it, Father? Life is always the same thing, happening over and over again. That’s what none of them understands, isn’t it? Wise Woman has no suspicion that that’s the real truth about things, has she? Or she could never write such rubbish about Romance being supplanted by Boredom and Indifference, and the Tiny Hands of Children Reuniting Parted Hearts—now could she? It’s all the same thing. I bet if you met Wise Woman herself, she’d stink of scent too—and she’d be like Nancy was when she had had too many pink gins. They wouldn’t leave you alone, Father—not one of them. They’re all the same.’

A terrible dry sob came out of the little man on the chair.

‘Esmeralda!’ he cried, ‘for God’s sake don’t say any more—don’t say it! Go away—leave me. You’re different—it isn’t you that has been saying these things. Something has happened to my brain—I’m imagining this—it’s the strain—it’s been too much. I’ll go away—just let me get away from this bloody room. It’ll be all right then. But don’t go on about these things—for Christ’s sake, don’t say any more.’

He remained for a long time with his eyes closed. There was a rushing noise in his head. From infinitely far away he heard the footsteps of the policeman as they passed the house again. He did not dare to look up. Above all things in the world he did not dare to encounter the beastly rigid smile of the creature on the floor.

And then he realised that she was speaking again.

‘Poor Father, poor Father,’ she said: and it seemed that her tone was different—was quieter and less ironical. ‘One illusion must be left—it’s always the way, isn’t it. The strongest man must always preserve at least one illusion—and you aren’t a strong man, Father, are you—you’re the weakest man in the world . . . Ah, you don’t remember, do you? You can’t see far enough down, can you? And even if you could, you couldn’t piece things together, could you? They wouldn’t make sense, even if you did—things never make sense, not real things. It’s all a jumble—it doesn’t connect. Yet sometimes, if you look at it all quickly, there suddenly seems to be a sort of thread . . .’

He still did not look up, and she went on quickly:

‘The little girl, Father—the kernel of it all . . . You were thirteen—it was at school. And do you remember you were made to sit beside her, as punishment? And she smiled at you when the teacher wasn’t looking. And she had a little string of cheap glass beads round her throat—and they were green—and she told you they were emeralds. Do you remember that, Father, and mark it—emeralds? And you were reading a book in school that year—dreadfully dull, you thought, but they made you read it. Notre-Dame de Paris. It was about a hunchback. And it seemed to you that there was something infinitely pitiable about that hunchback—there was something wrong with him, he was despised by everyone. He was just like you, Father.’

There was a long silence. Broome held his breath. The small voice went on.

‘Yes, Father—they all despised him. Except . . . there was the girl. Do you remember the girl in that book? She was all different. She was poetry, she was romance, she was all the warm and lovely things, she was beautiful—oh, beautiful! Do you remember her name, Father?’

He did not reply.

‘Oh come, Father! You’re bound to remember her name. It was—?’

‘Desdemona,’ he said, in an almost inaudible whisper.

‘Father! You always got those two mixed up! No—Desdemona was the other time. Don’t you remember?—the other time you sat beside the little girl. It was when they took you all to the theatre that afternoon—and you were so tremendously excited. You had never been to a theatre at all before—though you had heard about them. You thought you were going to see dancing girls, didn’t you, Father—but it wasn’t anything like that at all. It was educational—it would be, since the school arranged it!—and it was a play—by Shakespeare. It was Desdemona who was the girl in that, Father. Her husband smothered her. You always got her mixed up with the other girl—the girl in the book—their names were so alike. Don’t you remember? She was called—?’

‘Esmeralda!’ gasped Broome.

‘Yes—Esmeralda! Clever Father! And the little girl sat beside you, Father—and she was dressed in white that day—and she had a little bag of sticky sweets, and she gave you some. And do you remember she wriggled in her seat, and her dress slipped up over her knees, and you sat there beside her, Father, and you looked at her, and you thought—’

She broke off. In the silence Broome heard, above him, in Miss Ickman’s flat, the sound of the piano stool being screwed up. The girl spoke again, and this time all the terrible archness was back in her voice.

‘Father—look at me. Look at me, Father.’

He slowly raised his head. His eyes were staring. She was regarding him with the hideous fixed smile still on her face. And as she knelt on the floor she was pulling her skirt lasciviously over her knees.

‘Oh Christ!’ cried Broome. ‘No—no! It’s abominable—it’s hellish!’

He covered his eyes with his hands. There came an echo of the terrible impersonal laughter. And simultaneously, from above, there floated to his ears the strains of the Strauss waltz he had heard the night before.

An immense shudder shook him. He opened his eyes and rose wildly to his feet. The room was empty. But all about him—suffocating him—was the smell of Nancy.

The policeman, entering the little side-street near the Portobello Road, found Broome gibbering at the door of his shop. He went inside with him—Broome seized him and made him go inside. He looked on with stolid interest while the small sobbing figure tore at the loose earth on the floor of the cellar.

And he whistled through his teeth when he saw what the little man, with an expression of mixed terror and relief on his face, disclosed.

Later, when Broome had been taken away, the policeman and his sergeant made a search of the house.

‘Blimey,’ said the sergeant, as they opened the door of the bedroom—‘what a stink!’

‘Someone’s been mucking about with scent,’ said the policeman.

They found that every bottle on the dressing-table had been smashed. The contents had been splashed over the room—the carpet, the walls, the bed—and then the bottles had been smashed.

‘The little chap’s hands were bleeding,’ said the policeman. ‘I thought it was the digging in the cellar—he went at it like a maniac. But it must have been this. Poor little devil—I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him somehow . . .’