Crackpot - Philip Loraine

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… there was evidently no immediate cause for me to be afraid. I was afraid of course, I’m not superhuman, but now that the crisis had come, after eight years, after my having killed ten women, it didn’t as yet seem totally disastrous. More later implied that I had a little time to think, and perhaps to take steps. What steps? At the moment, of course, none, but I could feel the impetus of action deep inside me. And yes, however you looked at it More later implied some sort of blackmail. It can take an infinity of forms.

      Until this moment, standing stock-still beside my bookcase with a steaming cup in my hand, I don’t think I’d ever realized how truly psychotic I am; because, you see, the idea of this other person, bound to me, threatening me, filled me with a perverse and unexpected sense of excitement. When you come to think of it, why not? I’d long ago realized that it was the danger of killing which turned me on: the thrill of challenging the pretences and evasions of a society I despise; and to an extent this other person was behaving in an identical manner, if on a lower plane, since what he’s doing is negative and what I’ve done is nothing if not positive. His not going to the police puts us both in that other world where rules don’t apply and the Law to be ignored only exists.

      Naturally I couldn’t rely on his not changing his mind; to that degree I was indeed threatened; yet, I saw you in London last night. Wickedness! More later was not immediately threatening, which meant that discreet inquiries could be made and, if necessary, discreet action taken.

      So somebody else at Crestcote got a kick out of playing with danger, for whoever-it-was could not possibly doubt that I was dangerous. In some senses this was almost a worthy opponent. But who? They presented themselves to me one by one, and though in a sense they were all as alike as so many boiled potatoes, all of them had running in their blood that maverick, that dangerous element which I too shared: we were all creative, all in a way superhuman, endowed with what strengths, and what weaknesses, unknown to ordinary mortals?

      It also struck me that although he was very far from being an artist I couldn’t rule out the Lord of the Manor as a possible suspect. He’d returned some time ago—I’d heard the Land-Rover—and he could very easily have slipped the message into my letter-box. Oliver Langdale considered himself to be a cut—two cuts, five, ten—above other people. Handsome, arrogant, king of all he surveyed … No, there was nothing to preclude his having composed just such a note, he had that kind of humour and was sure, as sure as I am, of his own superiority. Oddly enough, it was thinking of Oliver which brought the lurking idea of action to the front of my mind. I have no idea why I decided to act as I now did, but once the idea was formed I couldn’t resist it. Stirring the pot, creating trouble out of my own trouble, not only gave me a perverse satisfaction, it was also eminently sensible from a purely practical point of view. I had received a message which marked me out from all the others; if by any chance the Law was suddenly to appear, this fact alone would make me exceptional; but supposing they all of them, including whoever had composed the thing, were to receive an identical note … ? Useful, perhaps redemptive, confusion.

      But then I was struck by the impossibility of recreating the note eight times—I never keep newspapers or magazines—and I was just about to abandon the idea, much as it appealed to me, when I thought of Oliver Langdale’s office, in the corner of which stood a small photocopier, occasionally used by all of us. On Saturdays, Mrs Westerby his part-time secretary, was never in attendance, and if Oliver himself were there I’d be very surprised indeed; he disliked all forms of paperwork and visited the office as seldom as possible. In any case, no one would question my right to use the machine—I would merely be copying a letter to my accountant.

      I took the message out of Heart of Darkness, tucked it among some accounts, just in case, picked up my invaluable nylon gloves, and set out. I reached the empty office and, wearing the gloves, made nine copies (one for myself, why should I be left with the original?) and returned to my quarters, all within fifteen minutes. Again wearing the gloves, I opened a new packet of cheap envelopes, put a folded photocopy into each of them and sealed them up.

      Delivery was no more difficult. One of the great advantages of our community at Crestcote is that, as artists, we’re all far too egotistical to give a second thought to what anyone else is doing: with the result that you can walk anywhere you like at any time of the day or night without attracting the slightest attention; everybody is utterly concerned with their own problems: the quality of a canvas, the fact that those royalties still haven’t been paid, or that their agent has gone to New York without telling them.

      Having completed this entire manoeuvre with no clear idea as to why I was carrying it out, merely a hunch that it might prove useful (useful—it was an unconsidered act of genius!), I wasn’t sure what to do next, and so decided to absent myself from Crackpot Castle, leaving its inhabitants, and particularly the one who’d sent the anonymous message, to stew in their own juice for a while. I drove over to a tiny and remote pub, the Bell at Roke, and sat in the garden, enjoying the sunshine of late October, while I ate a ploughman’s lunch and drank a bottle of German Pils. For some reason I felt oddly relaxed: another manifestation of psychosis? Soon there would be a second message or even a personal contact; if it was overtly, or even obliquely, threatening … Ah, but did he dare? He had seen what I could do, and must know that I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again, particularly in self-defence.

      I wondered idly just which of us had been in London the day before, but such knowledge was not really of any importance. One identity was all that mattered, and no doubt it would be revealed to me before very long. In any case I was pleased that Sarah Langdale had chosen this evening for one of our periodical gatherings in her great-great-great-uncle’s preposterous dining-room. I look forward to these dinners at any time; the food and wine are always excellent, and we’re such a motley company that they can hardly fail to be entertaining. However, tonight would be quite exceptional, for me at least, because one of the men (possibly a woman) eating and drinking and chattering at that huge table, perhaps even at my own elbow, would be the author of the message.

      But it would be a good six hours before we all met for pre-dinner drinks in Hector Drummond-Fitch’s Victorian baronial hall, and in the present situation six hours seemed an eternity. I almost prayed I might discover another unaddressed envelope in my letter-box when I returned to Crestcote. Nothing.

      So I lay down on my bed, hoping that perhaps I might fall asleep, but of course I only began to consider, one after the other and in meticulous detail, the possible motives of every inhabitant of the place. There’s no more useless occupation; only a fool thinks he can begin to guess what lies in the inner recesses of another person’s mind. Who, looking at me, would imagine that I had killed all those women? No one. Or do I deceive myself? Perhaps I do, and this is certainly not the moment for self-deception.

      At forty-five, Laurence Otterey was the oldest of Crackpot Castle’s resident luminaries, thin, even distinguished now that his hair was grey at the sides. His writer’s block was sitting on him like a ton weight, made all the worse because he knew damn well there was a cure to hand: he ought to start again at Page 1 (and he’d reached Page 180!) cutting the bloody brother right out. The fact was, he’d written himself into a corner where Marcus—wrong name too—could only be revealed as a homosexual or in love with his own sister, both of them remedies too corny for consideration.

      Lying in bed at midday—he refused to get up when there was nothing to get up for, hence the ’flu story—he wondered whether this was the end of his writing career. And even if it was, what did that career mean when it came down to brass tacks? Good reviews and not much else. ‘Laurence Otterey writes a beautiful spare prose and tells a spare, even classical story … etcetera.’ Sunday Telegraph. ‘Sometimes Otterey seems to stand out, monolithic, as the one and only original voice in today’s mindless literary babel.’ The Times Lit. Supp. He often wished he hadn’t been so bloody well educated.

      Laurence had earned his austere literary reputation at twenty-seven, which meant that he’d been supporting it, in and out of marriage, for seventeen years. At the beginning,

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