have any money ever again, she announced, sheâd better get used to their new style of life. The gesture was characteristic, particularly in its totally inappropriate timing.
As if this werenât enough, Emma, about to leave for school, said she felt funny, and turned out, on examination by Merrily, to have started, at the tender age of eleven, her first period.
Henry, uninformed by his father â or indeed anyone else â about such matters, did not understand and made some inapposite remark, which sent the two women (as they both now were) into floods of tears.
At this moment the doorbell rang. Graham would almost have welcomed a policeman come to arrest him, but it turned out to be the electrician.
Tight-lipped, Graham showed him round the house. The electrician fingered the odd wire that all too easily came out of the wall, tapped a few plugs and tutted over junction boxes. Then, with the understanding gravity of a cancer surgeon, he said the house was a deathtrap, and it would need complete rewiring, at a cost of one thousand four hundred pounds. Excluding V.A.T.
What about switching the power back on â would it be safe? The electrician shook his head dubiously. Well, he wouldnât like to be responsible. Still, have to take the risk till it was all properly done. What? No, he couldnât think about doing it for three weeks. Up to here he was. Oh yes, but no question it was urgent. Very urgent.
Graham Marshall thought of Stella with her little flat and no more weighty decision than which cinema to go to that evening.
He thought of Robert Benham, with his potential Head of Personnelâs salary and his weekend trip to Miami.
He thought of himself, who, on top of everything else, was a murderer.
And he thought that at least, when youâre in prison for life, you donât have any responsibilities.
CHAPTER SIX
Time continued to pass and for Graham Marshall the balance between peace and fear slowly changed. The panics still came, terrors could still clutch at him when least expected, but they did not come so often and they did not stay so long.
Murder, he began to think in moments of detachment, was like any other new experience. Like sex, maybe. The first time it seemed all-important, as if it would dominate the rest of oneâs life, but gradually it came to be accepted, even taken for granted. How many married men, he wondered, questioned on their way to work, could remember whether or not theyâd made love to their wives the night before.
Sex only became an obsession when the impulse was unnaturally strong or when it was infected with guilt.
Continuing his analogy, he found that his impulse to murder was not unnaturally strong. Nor did he feel any guilt about the one that he had committed.
He sometimes wondered idly whether heâd feel any different if the victim were someone he knew.
Of course, the big distinction between sex and murder was that one wanted to make a habit of the first, and probably not of the second.
Graham Marshall certainly didnât. Three weeks after the event he still found the shock was sufficient to last him for a lifetime. And he would do anything to avoid the paralysing fear of discovery.
But that fear was receding. Increasingly logic told him he was going to get away with it.
Committing the murder had been a stroke of bad luck; getting arrested for it would be really appalling luck.
And, as the fear left him, his attitude to the crime changed. Previously he had not dared to examine his feelings, but now he found he kept coming back to the incident with something approaching relish.
It was not everyone who had committed a murder.
He began to feel a certain exclusivity. The crime gave his life an unpredictable dimension. It filled the void the loss of George Brewerâs job had left in him.
The feeling was comparable to that he had felt in the old days at work when talking about Lilianâs show-business friends or when
As if this werenât enough, Emma, about to leave for school, said she felt funny, and turned out, on examination by Merrily, to have started, at the tender age of eleven, her first period.
Henry, uninformed by his father â or indeed anyone else â about such matters, did not understand and made some inapposite remark, which sent the two women (as they both now were) into floods of tears.
At this moment the doorbell rang. Graham would almost have welcomed a policeman come to arrest him, but it turned out to be the electrician.
Tight-lipped, Graham showed him round the house. The electrician fingered the odd wire that all too easily came out of the wall, tapped a few plugs and tutted over junction boxes. Then, with the understanding gravity of a cancer surgeon, he said the house was a deathtrap, and it would need complete rewiring, at a cost of one thousand four hundred pounds. Excluding V.A.T.
What about switching the power back on â would it be safe? The electrician shook his head dubiously. Well, he wouldnât like to be responsible. Still, have to take the risk till it was all properly done. What? No, he couldnât think about doing it for three weeks. Up to here he was. Oh yes, but no question it was urgent. Very urgent.
Graham Marshall thought of Stella with her little flat and no more weighty decision than which cinema to go to that evening.
He thought of Robert Benham, with his potential Head of Personnelâs salary and his weekend trip to Miami.
He thought of himself, who, on top of everything else, was a murderer.
And he thought that at least, when youâre in prison for life, you donât have any responsibilities.
CHAPTER SIX
Time continued to pass and for Graham Marshall the balance between peace and fear slowly changed. The panics still came, terrors could still clutch at him when least expected, but they did not come so often and they did not stay so long.
Murder, he began to think in moments of detachment, was like any other new experience. Like sex, maybe. The first time it seemed all-important, as if it would dominate the rest of oneâs life, but gradually it came to be accepted, even taken for granted. How many married men, he wondered, questioned on their way to work, could remember whether or not theyâd made love to their wives the night before.
Sex only became an obsession when the impulse was unnaturally strong or when it was infected with guilt.
Continuing his analogy, he found that his impulse to murder was not unnaturally strong. Nor did he feel any guilt about the one that he had committed.
He sometimes wondered idly whether heâd feel any different if the victim were someone he knew.
Of course, the big distinction between sex and murder was that one wanted to make a habit of the first, and probably not of the second.
Graham Marshall certainly didnât. Three weeks after the event he still found the shock was sufficient to last him for a lifetime. And he would do anything to avoid the paralysing fear of discovery.
But that fear was receding. Increasingly logic told him he was going to get away with it.
Committing the murder had been a stroke of bad luck; getting arrested for it would be really appalling luck.
And, as the fear left him, his attitude to the crime changed. Previously he had not dared to examine his feelings, but now he found he kept coming back to the incident with something approaching relish.
It was not everyone who had committed a murder.
He began to feel a certain exclusivity. The crime gave his life an unpredictable dimension. It filled the void the loss of George Brewerâs job had left in him.
The feeling was comparable to that he had felt in the old days at work when talking about Lilianâs show-business friends or when
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