Blood and Water and Other Tales by Patrick McGrath

rambler where he would sit and read on summer days. There would be a pond, he said, in the shade of a weeping willow tree, where goldfish darted among the stems of water lilies, and insects drifted across the glinting and shadow-dappled surface; and set against a dark box hedge nearby, garden figures of nymphs, and sylphs, and goddesses, all in stone... He described in loving detail these stone figures, then paused and gazed at me, his head craning forward and his face glowing, though his hands were, as ever, flat and still upon the table. “The lawn is as smooth as velvet, Miss Kennedy, and the flowers—the flowers!— my garden is ablaze all summer, Miss Kennedy, with sweet William, with irises and peonies, with carnations, wallflowers, and Canterbury bells!...”
    I left Wandsworth emotionally exhausted. Time spent in Arnold’s company allowed for no relaxation, no ease. He engaged one, at every moment. It was extraordinarily stimulating; it was also extraordinarily debilitating. I went back to my hotel and took a hot bath, feeling weak and somewhat queasy. That night I vomited violently for the first time since I was a little girl, and I had bad diarrhea too. Nevertheless, I went into the office the next day and filed my story. I was pale and unsteady, and in no mood for the gibes of the men. I was to see Arnold once more, on the following Tuesday. Two days after that he would hang.
    I did not spend a happy weekend. I read over my notes and prepared for Tuesday. I would, I decided, write one more piece on Arnold Crombeck the man— build it around his country-garden fantasy, maybe— and then I’d reveal the monster. But it seemed that even thinking about such things was enough to make me ill, for I spent most of the next three days with one end of me or the other stuck in the toilet bowl. I presumed it was English cooking—one of their bloody pork pies or something.
    I felt slightly better on Tuesday, but still far from confident. I doubt I’d have felt confident even if I’d been in top form—for in this, the last interview, I planned to ask Arnold about his crimes, about all the women he’d murdered. But as I was once again led down those grim, clanging corridors, I found myself thinking not about his victims, not about all those poor women, but about the man himself. Did death really hold no terrors for him? For now—the chilling thought kept coming back to me—he had less than forty-eight hours to live!
    But Arnold’s composure was, as ever, perfect. The question intrigues me still, whether Arnold Crombeck was truly unconcerned about his imminent death, or simply assuming a mask. Was it all a performance? I still wonder. And I think, in the light of what I’ve learned about the human condition over the course of a long and distinguished journalistic career, that it was a performance. I think Arnold Crombeck was deeply terrified of being hanged—that was why he spoke of it in such obsessive detail. I think that the habit of self-restraint, of formality, was so deeply ingrained in him that he could not express his feelings even in extremis. And he did have feelings; there was a man inside the monster—of that I am certain. In the end one cannot but admire his control; it’s very typically Anglo-Saxon, of course, though I wasn’t mature enough to realize it at the time.
    His composure was, as I say, perfect; but after a moment he said: “Miss Kennedy, you don’t look at all well.”
    It was nothing, I told him; an upset stomach, no more. But he was very concerned, and offered to postpone the interview, although, as he said with a small smile, his schedule was “rather tight” the next day or so, and after that—“how would you put it, Miss Kennedy? I shall be out of town. Indefinitely!”
    But I wouldn’t hear of it, and after further assurances that I was quite well enough to continue, I broached my question. Arnold got the point immediately. “Ah,” he said. “Methodology.”
    He was then