Read The Beast Must Die for Free Online Page A

She’d made me lose a lot of sleep, so she might have expected me to be a bit irritable. But the sting of her letters must have gone deeper than I’d thought. I felt cold and furious, and I stabbed back very hard. There was a kind of bedraggled, stuffy air about her, like you get in a railway compartment full of women after a long night-journey, which filled me with angry disgust. She said nothing. She stood there blinking, as if she’d just woken up from an unrefreshing sleep. After a bit she began to cry – a thin, hopeless drizzle. You know how that kind of thing unleashes all the bully in oneself – one piles on cruelty on cruelty to bury the struggling reproach and self-disgust. I had no mercy at all. I am not proud of myself. In the end, she turned and crept away, without a word. I shouted after her that, if anything more happened, I’d turn her over to the police. I must have been beside myself. A very, very nasty exhibition. But she shouldn’t have written that about me and Martie. Oh God, I wish I was dead.

9 July
    TOMORROW I PACK up and leave this place. Frank Cairnes will disappear. Felix Lane will move into the furnished flat I’ve taken in Maida Vale. There will be nothing (I hope) to connect the two except Martie’s one-eyed teddybear, which I’m taking with me – a gentle reminder. I think I’ve arranged for everything. Money. Accommodation address for Mrs Teague to send on my letters to. I’ve told her I shall probably be in London for some time, or else travelling. She’ll look after the cottage while I’m away. I wonder, shall I ever come back? I suppose I ought to sell the place, but somehow don’t like to; a place where Martie was happy. But what shall I do – afterwards? What does a murderer do when his occupation’s gone? Does he start writing detective novels again? It sounds rather an anticlimax. Well, sufficient unto the day.
    I feel that things have now been taken out of my hands. It’s the only possible course for a vacillating sensitive like myself – to arrange circumstances in such a way that they compel him into action. That must be the truth behind the good old phrases like ‘burning one’s boats’ and ‘crossing the Rubicon’. I imagine J. Caesar was something of a neurotic too – the Hamlet streak – most of the really great men of action had it – look at T. E. Lawrence.
    I just refuse to envisage the possibility that the Lena–George tie-up is a dead end. I couldn’t face having to start all over again from the beginning. In the meanwhile, there’s plenty to be done. I’ve got to create the character of Felix Lane for myself – his parents, his characteristics, his life history. I must
be
Felix Lane, otherwise Lena or George may smell a rat. By the time Felix Lane is word perfect, my beard should have reached years of discretion. Then I’ll pay my first visit to British Regal Films Inc. No more of this diary till then. I think I’ve worked out the right line to take with Lena. I wonder will she fall for my beard – one of Huxley’s characters advertises the aphrodisiac virtues of beards – I’ll see if he’s correct.

20 July
    WHAT A DAY ! Went down to the film studio for the first time. I’d rather work in hell, or even in an asylum, than in a film studio. The heat, the pandemonium, the fantastic artificiality of it all – everything is like a two-dimensional nightmare – the people no more solid or real than the sets. And one is perpetually tripping over things: if it’s not an electric cable, it’s the legs of one of a horde of extras, who sit about all day twiddling their fingers like the wretched creatures in Dante’s Limbo.
    But I’d better start at the beginning. I was met by Callaghan, the chap Holt gave me an introduction to – very pale, thin, almost emaciated face, and a curiously fanatical glitter in his eyes, horn-rim spectacles, grey roll-collar jumper, flannel bags, all very dirty, untidy and high-tension – just like a stage