The Collector

 Still as a matter of interest I have since been looking into the problems there would be with the girl in Woolworth's. She lives in a village the other side of Lewes from here, in a house a quarter mile or so from the bus-stop. You have to go along a country lane to get to it. As I say, it would be possible (if I hadn't learnt my lesson). She isn't as pretty as Miranda, of course, in fact she's only an ordinary common shop-girl, but that was my mistake before, aiming too high, I ought to have seen that I could never get what I wanted from someone like Miranda, with all her la-di-da ideas and clever tricks. I ought to have got someone who would respect me more. Someone ordinary I could teach.

 She is in the box I made, under the appletrees. It took me three days to dig the hole. I thought I would go mad the night I did it (went down and got her in the box I made and outside). I don't think many could have done it. I did it scientific. I planned what had to be done and ignored my natural feelings. I couldn't stand the idea of having to look at her again, I once heard they go green and purple in patches, so I went in with a cheap blanket I bought in front of me and held it out till I was by the bed and then threw it over the deceased. I rolled it up and all the bedclothes into the box and soon had the lid screwed on. I got round the smell with fumigator and the fan.

 The room's cleaned out now and good as new.

 I shall put what she wrote and her hair up in the loft in the deed-box which will not be opened till my death, so I don't expect for forty or fifty years. I have not made up my mind about Marian (another M! I heard the supervisor call her name), this time it won't be love, it would just be for the interest of the thing and to compare them and also the other thing, which as I say I would like to go into in more detail and I could teach her how. And the clothes would fit. Of course I would make it clear from the start who's boss and what I expect.

 But it is still just an idea. I only put the stove down there today because the room needs drying out anyway.