Property of a Lady

The trapdoor is being lifted – someone is coming down the stone steps towards me . . .

A sense of tidiness prompts me to take up Brooke Crutchley’s pen and make a closing entry in what is clearly a journal of many years’ standing. As I write that, I hear my wife jeering at me. ‘Tidiness, William?’ she would have said. ‘You never had an iota of tidiness in your entire body – you strew your belongings everywhere in the house with no consideration for anyone else.’

Perhaps she was right – occasionally she could be, the whoring bitch. But I believe I have a tidiness of mind – a scholar’s mind – and that’s what has compelled me to take the virgin pages from Crutchley’s desk and record what I have just done.

I have killed him. I stole out to his house in the village earlier on and hid in his workshop. I saw him open the trapdoor at the side of the old stove and descend the steps. And I thought – haha! my fine sly gentleman, so you have a bolt-hole, do you? But now I have you cornered.

He could not be allowed to live, you see. I’d like anyone who might ever read this to understand that. And once a man has committed one murder, the second does not seem so very bad. You can only be hanged once. You can only suffer hell for one eternity.

Brooke Crutchley knew I killed Elizabeth. And I believe him to be an honourable man – a man who would think the law should extort its due punishment. Two days ago, in the gardens of Mallow House, I knew I should have to silence him to prevent him talking. And tonight I have done precisely that.

It was remarkably easy. Murder is easy – the books never tell you that. Killing Elizabeth was easy – that blow to the head in the bedroom, then the push down the stairs. Several years of fury and jealousy were behind those two acts, of course. The taunting, the humiliations, the sheer bitter hatred . . . It is not given to all men to have rampant appetites or capabilities, and I was brought up to believe it was not within a lady’s nature to possess those appetites. (Street women are different – they are coarser-fibred, their sensitivities are less delicate. Or so I am led to believe.)

Killing Brooke Crutchley was easy as well. He had been diligently writing away in this room – and who would have thought an ordinary, rather stout clockmaker would have created this remarkable underground room? I have not inspected the books on the shelves in any detail, although I shall do so before I leave. But even a cursory glance by the flickering lamplight suggests he has some rare and curious treasures in his collection.

He was seated behind the desk when I came down the steps, and he stared at me, his mouth in a round O of surprise. I didn’t hesitate. I had brought with me what I believe is called, among street ruffians, a sandbag – a receptacle filled with ordinary garden soil. I had taken a silk bag from my wife’s sewing table (she did have one or two ladylike pursuits) and filled it with the soil from around the old apple tree. There is a drawstring at the top – I pulled this tight and fashioned a loop.

Crutchley started out of his chair when I entered, demanding to know what I was doing there, but I gave him no opportunity to say any more. I swung the bag high above my shoulder and let its own weight carry it straight towards his head. It struck him squarely on the temple, and he went down like a poleaxed bull.

I believe I stood staring down at him for quite a long time and – this is a curious thing – it was as if something stood with me. Something that approved of what I had done, something that nodded a scaly head and patted me with a fleshless hand, and huffed foetid breath into my face as it leaned forward to whisper, ‘Well done . . . Oh, well done . . .’