Читать книгу The Killer and the Slain - Hugh Walpole - Страница 4

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I, John Ozias Talbot, aged thirty-six years and three months, being in my perfectly sane mind, wish to write down this statement.

I do so entirely and solely for my own benefit and profit--in fact, for the quietening of my disturbed mind. It is most improbable that anyone other than myself will read this document, but should anything happen to me and I die without destroying this writing, I wish the reader, whoever he or she may be, to realize fully that no one could conceivably be of a more complete mental sanity and honest matter-of-fact common sense than I am at this moment.

It is because I wish to show this self-evident fact to myself and, if need be, to the whole world (after my death) that I write this down. There will be many minute and apparently insignificant facts and details in this record because circumstantial facts are in this matter the thing! I have suffered during these preceding months certain experiences so unbelievable that were I not sane, and were many of the facts not so commonplace, my sanity might be doubted. It is not to be doubted. I am as sane as any man in the United Kingdom.

Because in the course of this narrative I confess to a crime this document will be kept in the greatest possible secrecy. I have no desire to suffer at the hand of the common hangman before I need. That I do not myself feel it to be a crime matters nothing, I am afraid, to the Law. One day, when the important elements in such matters are taken into account rather than the unimportant, justice will be better served. But that time is not yet.

I was born in the little seaside town of Seaborne in Glebeshire on January 3rd, 1903. I am married and have one son aged ten. I inherited my father's business of Antique and Picture Dealer. I am the author of four books, a Guide to Glebeshire and three novels--The Sandy Tree (1924), The Gridiron (1930) and The Gossip-monger (1936). The last of these had some success. I was born in a bedroom above the shop, which is in the High Street and has, from its upper windows, a fine view of the sea and the now neglected and tumbledown little harbour.

I was the only child of my parents and adored by them. Some have said that they spoiled me. It may be so. I worshipped my mother but had always a curious disaffection to my father. This was partly, I can see now, physical. He was an obese and sweaty man and would cover my face with wet slobbery kisses when I was small, and this I very greatly disliked. My mother, on the other hand, was slight and dapper in appearance, and the possessor of the most beautiful little hands I have ever seen on any woman. Her voice was soft and musical, marked with a slight Glebeshire accent. She had something of the gipsy in her appearance, and liked to wear gay colours. I remember especially a dress made of some foreign material--silk of many brilliant shades--that I used to love, and I would beg her to show it me as it hung in the cupboard in the bedroom. My father, when they woke in the morning, would always go downstairs to get breakfast ready (he worshipped my mother), and then my mother would take me into her bed and I would lie in her arms. Never, until I married, did I know such happiness.

My father was successful in his little business--successful, that is to say, for those easier, more comfortable days--and we lived very pleasantly. His great passion was for the buying of old and apparently worthless pictures. He would clean them with the hope that something by a Master might be discovered. He did, indeed, make one or two discoveries--a Romney portrait and an Italian Pietà by Piombo were two of his successes. But his main business was with visitors and tourists. He visited all the local sales and sometimes went quite far afield.

We lived quietly and knew few people. My mother was fastidious about people and I have inherited that from her.

At this point I must say something about my own personality and character because so much of what afterwards happened depends on that. I will try to be honest, although honesty is never easy when we write about ourselves. We naturally incline to our own favour. But I have always trained myself to consider myself objectively and am possibly given overmuch to self-criticism.

I have been always of a reserved nature, careful to say no more than I truly feel and to confide only in those I trust and thoroughly know. My father's sentimentality affected me unpleasantly, and the love that I felt for my mother did not need expression.

From my very early years I have been considered cold and undemonstrative, but in reality I have always longed for affection although I have found it difficult to believe that anyone could in real fact be fond of me--this not because I do not know that there are many things in me worthy of affection, but because I have seen, during my life, so many false emotions, so many bitter betrayals of people by one another, and have realized that most men and women express more than they feel and mean less than they say. I have tried very earnestly to avoid this fault in myself.

I suppose that I must confess myself a prude, and this same prudery has lost me many contacts that I might otherwise have made. The sexual life of man has always seemed to me ugly and dangerous, and only to be redeemed by real and abiding love. The conventional life of man with man regarding the physical side of things has been, and is, repellent to me.

And yet God knows I have longed again and again for friendship and companionship, and have blamed myself bitterly for not obtaining it more easily. Another reason for my reserve is that I have had one ceaseless ambition--namely, to be generally recognized as a good writer. Not a great one--that I long ago realized I should never be. But I have wanted to be one of the writers of my time whose work is generally known. It is good work, better by far than the writings of many who have been generally acclaimed, but it has had a quality of rareness and peculiarity that has hindered its general popularity. And then I must regretfully admit that my sense of humour is small. Life seems to me to be altogether too serious, especially during the last anxious twenty years, to admit of much humour!

I have always shrunk from boisterousness, violence and noise. I love soft voices (such as that possessed by my dear mother), courteous ways, good manners in argument, consideration of others. The cheerful, hail-fellow, slap-on-the-back sort of man I have never been able to abide.

I can be exceedingly obstinate and tenacious of purpose. When an idea is deeply rooted in my mind I find it impossible to reject. I like to be allowed to go my own way without interference and I detest enquiries into my personal affairs.

God knows this is not a pleasant self-portrait and I can blame no one for wishing to see the last of me, and yet I have, I think, qualities of honesty, courage, affection and fidelity that are valuable.

I had better here say something about my personal appearance, as that is of the utmost importance in these peculiar circumstances. I will not describe myself as I am at this moment, for reasons to be seen later, but rather as I was two years ago.

I was, and am, five foot eleven inches in height. I was slender and yet not meagre. My hair was plentiful, dark brown in colour and apt to be untidy owing to my dislike of filthy things like brilliantine: my eyes grey, and my eyebrows faint, my nose neither large nor small, my lips thin and nervous if I am agitated or worried, and my chin rather indeterminate. My hands free of hair (my body, apart from my head, has little hair). Although when clothed I appear slim, without my clothes I had, two years ago, the evidences of a slight tendency to stoutness. And here I must mention a possible over-delicacy as to my being seen by anyone unclothed. I attribute this to my having been a day boy and, since my school time, I have mixed very little with men.

I shall never forget my horror when, one morning entering my room without knocking, an aunt, a noisy careless creature, saw me nude in my bedroom. I was at that time a boy of about fifteen.

I might have made a good thing of my business had I been able to put my whole heart into it. My father had trained me well and I have a natural love for rare and beautiful things. But my mind was for ever on my writing, and had it not been for my wife, I should, I fear, have lost everything. I owe her a great deal for this and many other things.

I am not a religious man although recent fearful events have led me to reconsider many of my earlier views. If there is a God, I pray Him to forgive my many years of disobedience and to lift, if it may be so, this dreadful present burden from my shoulders.