The Beast Must Die Read Free Page A

melodramatic than childbirth, arthritis and influenza. I kept on wondering what he’d say if he knew there was a prospective murderer sitting in the room with him, drinking his White Label. The compulsion to blurt it out became almost overwhelming at one point. I really will have to be very careful indeed. This isn’t a game. Not that he’d have believed me; but I don’t want him sending me back to that nursing home – or worse – for ‘observation’.
    Was glad to hear from Peters, when I’d screwed myself up to ask him, that nothing was said at the inquest about my being responsible for Martie’s death. It still rankles in my mind a little, though. I look into the faces of the village people, and wonder what they’re really thinking about me. Mrs Anderson, for instance, our late organist’s widow – why did she deliberately cross the street to avoid me this morning? She always used to be so fond of Martie. Spoilt him, in fact, with her strawberries and cream and those queer gelatine lozenges and her furtive huggings of him when she thought I wasn’t looking – he disliked the latter as much as I did. Oh well, the poor thing never had a kid herself, and Anderson’s death broke her up for good. I’d much rather she cut me dead than came slobbering over me with sympathy.
    Like many people who lead a rather isolated life – spiritually isolated, I mean – I’m abnormally sensitive to other people’s opinion of me. I hate the idea of being the popular, hail-fellow-well-met type, yet the idea of unpopularity gives me a feeling of deep uneasiness. Not a very sympathetic trait – wanting to eat one’s cake and have it, to be liked by my neighbours yet to remain essentially aloof from them. But then, as I said before, I don’t set up to be a very nice person.
    I’ll go straight away to the Saddler’s Arms, and beard public opinion in its den. I might get a lead there, too, though I suppose Elder interviewed all the chaps.
    Later
    I’ve drunk about ten pints in the last two hours, but am still cold sober. There are some wounds too deep for local anaesthetics, it seems. Everyone very friendly. I’m not the villain of the piece, anyway.
    ‘A cruel shame,’ they said. ‘Hanging’s too good for the like of them sort.’
    ‘Us do miss the little lad – a regular peart ’un, he were’ – this from old Barnett, the shepherd. ‘These yurr automobiles are the curse of the countryside. If I’d my way, I’d pass a law against ’em.’
    Bert Cozzens – the village wiseacre – said, ‘The toll of the roads. That’s what it is, see, the toll of the roads . Ar. Natural selection, if you take my meaning. The survival of the fittest – meaning no disrespect to you sir, who has all our sympathy in this shocking fatality.’ ‘Survival of the fittest?’ young Joe piped up. ‘What’re you doing here, then, Bert? Survival of the fattest, more like.’ This was considered a bit near the knuckle, and young Joe was suppressed.
    They’re grand chaps – neither smug nor cynical nor sentimental about death; they’ve got the proper realist attitude towards it. Their own children have to sink or swim – they can’t afford nurses and vita-glass and fancy foods for them, so it would never occur to them to blame me for letting Martie live the independent, natural life their own children live. I might have known that. But they were no use to me otherwise, I’m afraid. As Ted Barnett summed it up, ‘Us’d give the fingers off our right hands to find the B— who done it. Us seen a car or two come through village after the accident, but us had no call to notice ’em special, see, not knowing anything’d happened; and they headlights maze ’ee so, ’ee can’t see number plates nor nothing. Reckon ’tes the job of the bloody police, only that Elder spends ’is time –’ here followed slanderous speculations about the spare-time activities, mainly erotic, it would appear, of our worthy sergeant.
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