Blood and Water and Other Tales by Patrick McGrath Page A

silent for a moment, apparently gathering his thoughts. All was as usual—the guard at the door, the flies, the heat. It was a very hot summer, 1954, by British standards. Then he spoke.
    “I have always been a neat man,” he said slowly. “I was taught the importance of good tailoring early in life.... Do you know Max Beerbohm, Miss Kennedy? A fine stylist; you would do well to study his constructions. Max says: ‘The first aim of modern dandyism is the production of the supreme effect through means the least extravagant.’ The same, I think, is true of murder.”
    Like a preacher, Arnold proceeded to develop his text. I was not feeling at all well, and the content of Arnold’s “sermon” did little to improve matters. Nevertheless, I scribbled dutifully, mindlessly, as he spoke of his distaste for certain “techniques.”
    “Who can take pleasure in an ax murder, after all?” he said. “Can you imagine the mess , Miss Kennedy?”
    “Some murders are better than others, then?”
    “Oh, good Lord, of course they are.”
    “Such as?”
    “Well, I have more respect for a drowner,” he said. “Have you heard of G. J. Smith?”
    I had not.
    “Brides-in-the-bath man. True monster. Grew careless toward the end of his career; hanged at Maidstone in the summer of 1915. He didn’t die well.” Arnold shook his head. “Have to die well,” he murmured, drumming his fingers on the table—the first and only manifestation of anxiety I ever saw in the man. “I’ve drowned,” he went on. “Never from choice, always out of necessity. There’s an art to it; there’s a right way and a wrong way, as in everything else... But you know my method, don’t you, Miss Kennedy?” The eyes gleamed behind the spectacles; the hands were flat on the table once more.
    “You’re a poisoner.”
    “Precisely. And it’s as a poisoner that I hope to be remembered.” He became very matter-of-fact at this point, very formal. “I only poisoned women, Miss Kennedy, and I poisoned them three at a time.” He waited till I’d got that down. He seemed concerned that this segment of the interview be accurately recorded. “Do you know what I would do with them then?”
    “Tell me,” I said. I had read the papers, of course, but I wanted to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were.
    “I posed them.”
    “You posed them.”
    “That’s right. Have a cigarette, Miss Kennedy. I grouped them and draped them. I arranged them. I derived genuine aesthetic pleasure from it.”
    “This was after—?”
    “After they’d died, yes. I came to think of them as tableaux morts .”
    He had to spell that one out for me.
    “And it always seemed such a pity to have to dismantle them when the sun went down. But one day it occurred to me that I didn’t have to.”
    “Didn’t have to what, Mr. Crombeck?” My mouth was dry as a bone, and my head was spinning. I could barely see the pad in front of me.
    “Didn’t have to dismantle them, Miss Kennedy. Not immediately, at any rate. I could keep them around for a few days, cohabit with them. And you know what I found?”
    “No.”
    “I found I could sleep like a baby with dead women in the house. You obviously don’t suffer from insomnia, Miss Kennedy, so you won’t understand what this means.”
    “And then?” I was close to blacking out.
    “Oh,” he said, “then I planted them. Put them in the garden.”
    “I see.”
    “Got all that, Miss Kennedy?”
    I had.
    “Strange bird, the mind, eh?”
    Well, that was the heart of darkness as far as Arnold Crombeck was concerned. He was willing, he told me, to go into greater detail if I wished; but that was quite enough for me. He seemed pleased. He terminated the interview shortly afterward. He shook my hand warmly and said he hoped I’d be feeling better soon. Then he nodded to the guard, and left the room. And that was the end of our relationship—or so I thought.

    When I got back to the hotel I went straight to bed—and