The Collector

 I started thinking how I could do it, how I could go into Lewes as soon as the shops opened and get a lot of aspros and some flowers, chrysanths were her favourite. Then take the aspros and go down with the flowers and lie beside her. Post a letter first to the police. So they would find us down there together. Together in the Great Beyond.

 We would be buried together. Like Romeo and Juliet.

 It would be a real tragedy. Not sordid.

 I would get some proper respect if I did it. If I destroyed the photos, that was all there was, people would see I never did anything nasty to her, it would be truly tragic.

 I thought it out, and then I went and got the photos and the negatives, all ready to burn first thing in the morning.

 It was like I had to have some definite plan. Anything, so long as it was definite.

 There was the money, but I didn't care any more. Aunt Annie and Mabel would get it. Miranda talked about the Save the Children fund, but she was already half off her rocker. All those charities are run by crooks. Save the Trustees, more like.

 I wanted what money couldn't buy. If I really had got a nasty mind I would not have gone to all the trouble I did, I would have just visited the women you read about on the boards in Paddington and Soho and done what I wanted. You can't buy happiness. I must have heard Aunt Annie say that a hundred times. Ha ha, I always thought, just let's have a try first. Well, I had my try.

 Because what it is, it's luck. It's like the pools -- worse, there aren't even good teams and bad teams and likely draws. You can't ever tell how it will turn out. Just A versus B, C versus D, and nobody knows what A and B and C and D are. That's why I never believed in God. I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that's the lot. There's no mercy in things. There's not even a Great Beyond. There's nothing.

 About three o'clock I dozed off, so I went up to get a last sleep, I lay in bed seeing it all, the going into Lewes when I woke up, coming back, having a bonfire, locking up (one last look at my collection) and then going down. She was waiting for me down there. I would say we were in love, in the letter to the police. A suicide pact. It would be "The End."

4

 As it happened, things turned out rather different.

 I didn't wake up till after ten, it was another nice day. I had breakfast and then I went into Lewes and I got the aspros and flowers and came back and went down and then I thought I would just have a last look through her things. It was lucky I did. I found her diary which shows she never loved me, she only thought of herself and the other man all the time.

 As it so happens, anyway, as soon as I woke up I began to have more sensible ideas, it's just like me to see only the dark side last thing at night and to wake up different.

 These ideas came while I was having breakfast, not deliberate, they just came. About how I could get rid of the body. I thought, if I wasn't going to die in a few hours, I could do this and that. I had a lot of ideas. I thought how I would like to prove it could be done. Nobody finding out.

 It was a lovely morning. The country round Lewes is very pretty.

 I also thought that I was acting as if I killed her, but she died, after all. A doctor probably could have done little good, in my opinion. It was too far gone.

 Another thing that morning in Lewes, it was a real coincidence, I was just driving to the flower-shop when a girl in an overall crossed the crossing where I stopped to let people over. For a moment it gave me a turn, I thought I was seeing a ghost, she had the same hair, except it was not so long; I mean she had the same size and the same way of walking as Miranda. I couldn't take my eyes off her, and I just had to park the car and go back the way she was where I had the good fortune to see her go into the Woolworth's. Where I followed and found she works behind the sweet counter.

 Well, I came back with the stuff and went down to see Miranda, to arrange the flowers really; I could see I wasn't in the mood for the other thing and I thought I had better think it over first and then in any case I found the diary.

 The days passed, it is now three weeks since all that.

 Of course I shall never have a guest again, although now Aunt Annie and Mabel have decided to stay Down Under, it would not be difficult.