Ratman's Notebooks Read online

  It’s not all fun being Managing Director. This evening the Senior Traveller knocked on my office door about half an hour before locking-up time. I knew who it was almost before he was in the door and looked up with a kindly, but tired expression. ‘What can I do for you?’ I enquired, pleasantly condescending.

  ‘It’s about this business of being a director,’ he said. ‘What do I get out of it?’

  I hadn’t intended him to get anything out of it. The girl and the Solicitor had both advised me to make these two directors, but I hadn’t been a bit keen. I know quite a lot about directors. Once a man becomes director of a firm he gets ideas of grandeur and needs more salary to keep up his new position. It was different for me. In taking over Jones’s position I naturally took over his salary, but all that was wanted of the Senior Traveller and Book-keeper was that they should just carry on. However the Senior Traveller is very popular with the customers and I didn’t wish to fall out with him in any way.

  ‘Do sit down,’ I said, oozing cordiality, but really just to gain time.

  He sat down. ‘I just want to know what’s in this for me.’

  I had a frivolous temptation to answer, ‘Nothing, I hope,’ but I fought it back. ‘It will improve your position,’ I told him, ‘make you more secure.’ I tried to think how the girl would advise me to deal with this situation.

  ‘I’m not worrying about security,’ he said. ‘How much more money am I going to get?’ He stuck out his chin and stared at me across the desk. I’d often heard him say that he had determined not to leave such an’ such a customer without an order. I felt just as if I was one of these customers. I didn’t like it a bit.

  His eyes were still boring into me. I suddenly remembered. Play for time. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ I replied.

  ‘How long do you need to think?’

  ‘Oh! Well I suppose about a week.’

  ‘All right. I’ll expect an answer this day week.’ He got up and went out.

  It’s not much good being ‘The Boss’, if you get treated like that. I’ll get back on him some day.

  The house is coming on very well. The only really big changes are a second bathroom, with W.C., and a door from the kitchen straight into the dining room. What is making such a difference to the house is the modernisation, new bath and basin in the old bathroom, new sink in the scullery, and then everything re-papered and painted in light colours. You’d hardly know the house. It looks so bright and cheerful.

  We’ve spent a lot on furniture, but what we got for the old stuff has gone a long way towards paying for the new. After all I’m not going to be out of pocket more than about £1,400, which is much better than I’d begun to expect. The girl has a real money sense.

  She says she might want to put in a third bathroom later if there are children, but that can wait. We both want children, but we feel it would be tempting Providence, to put in a bathroom for them until we know that the first child is at least on the way.

  I had another dream about Jones last night. He said the business was still his. Even when I awoke I couldn’t get him out of my mind.

  I’ve had to give the Senior Traveller an extra hundred a year and the Book-keeper an extra fifty, with the promise of a bonus if we have a good year. If the whole staff start asking for rises my profit is going to be cut. I don’t see why they can’t be satisfied with what they got when Jones was boss.

  I’m moving back home on Saturday. The wedding is this day four weeks. As soon as I get a bit of time to myself I really must burn that mask.

  Back home. Such comfort! We’ve got an immersion heater as well as everything else. Hot water any hour of the day or night. I’m so busy with one thing and another that I’ve no time to write in my notebook. I never seem to be alone. I mean it’s after my usual bedtime when I say ‘Goodnight,’ to the girl. By the time I get home myself I’m too tired to do anything but just fall into bed. She’s going away next week and I’m really quite looking forward to it. She’s to stay with a friend in London, starting on Monday afternoon, and coming back the following Monday. She finishes at the Office on Friday. She gave in her notice to the Book-keeper about ten days ago. Of course I pretended to be surprised when he told me. ‘I thought she was very happy here,’ I remarked.

  ‘I think she’s going to get married,’ he said.

  ‘Is that so?’ I replied, smiling benevolently.

  Since I have become Managing Director I have naturally had to alter my manner with the staff, the girl included. No more soup at lunch-time. I go out to quite a good restaurant. I have to consider my position. Once we are married I shall go home. A restaurant is really too expensive for every day, though going home in the car will cost quite a lot too.

  Still these horrible dreams. Every night I have them. Sometimes Jones. Sometimes the rats. Sometimes both together.

  Tonight I’m alone at home. So restful just to sit at the fireside by myself and write my notes. I don’t mean I’m not looking forward to the time when the girl is sitting opposite, maybe doing her knitting, all nice and cosy, just the two of us. . . . Or maybe she’ll be out in the kitchen, bustling about, washing-up perhaps, though she should be finished by this time.

  The only thing is I won’t be able to sit like this writing my notes. Sure as fate she’d be leaning over me. ‘What’s that you’re writing, Darling?’

  ‘And you’ve been keeping notes all this time and never told me?’

  ‘Oh that was very naughty of you! You’ll have to show me them all, right from the very beginning.’

  And she’d make me. She’s very strong willed. The only way to oppose her is by subterfuge. What she’d be looking for, of course would be me writing down how beautiful she was. ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’ and all that sort of guff. It’s not just that she wouldn’t find what she was looking for. It’s what she would find. I wonder what she’d do. It’s funny. I haven’t an idea. So I won’t take any chances. I’ll buy a special deed-box, of which I’ll keep the key myself, and leave it in the safe-deposit in the Bank with all my old notebooks inside. I don’t care what anyone finds out about me after I’m dead. I expect that if I do have children they’ll burn the lot. Save a scandal. ‘To think that Father was that awful Ratman!’ ‘Don’t tell poor Mother. I’m sure she never had any idea.’ And of course she won’t have. Not if I can help it.

  Of course if I’d just a little more sense I’d burn the lot myself, but there’s something about something you’ve written. I mean it’s yourself, isn’t it? And then suppose even your children found it, and didn’t destroy it. They might think it was too interesting to destroy. They’d lock it up again and say, ‘Oh well it would be no harm in letting this be known in a hundred years’ time, when we’re all dead. By that time it’s not going to matter to anyone.’ Then in a hundred years’ time it would come out and go to a museum as an historical document. Parts of it might even be published.

  ‘great twentieth century mystery solved at last

  The story of Ratman, who terrorised . . .’

  Something like that. Perhaps with my photograph. I must get my photograph taken and put it in the box. You never know. My family mightn’t bother to keep my photograph. I remember after Father died Mother threw out a lot of old photographs of his relations.

  I’ll buy the deed-box tomorrow.

  The most awful thing has happened. Ben is alive. Not only is he alive. He’s here, now, in this room watching me. He’s not alone either. The cellar’s full of rats again. Not all the rats I set out with when I went to kill Jones. But some of them, and a lot of others I never saw before. Not furry-tails at all, just a gather-up, miscellaneous rats Ben has fallen in with on the way here. He’s lost his sense of racial discrimination, or class consciousness. ‘A rat’s a rat for a’ that,’ he says to himself, and doesn’t care any more whether tails are worn scaly o
r furry.

  It’s no sense joking all the same. I’m in a hole, and I don’t quite know how to get out of it. The girl will be home on Monday.

  I came back from the office today, gay as a lark. I put the car in the garage, picked up the deed-box all wrapped in paper and string, and proceeded towards the front door. I looked in the sitting room window as I passed and there was Ben on the back of the sofa. I stopped dead. He saw me. For a bit we just looked at each other through the glass. He’s as thin as a rake, and all the others are as thin as he is. At that point I didn’t know about the others. I thought it was just Ben. There’s no doubt what they’ve come for. Food. Ben and his lot look as if they haven’t had a good meal since they finished up Jones. And the gather-up they’ve brought with them probably haven’t had a good meal ever.

  I thought of a lot of things as I stood there. I’ve got so accustomed to not having the rats that it was almost as if I’d never had them. I was like any ordinary citizen arriving home and finding a rat in the parlour. The ordinary citizen has his instructions staring at him from every hoarding in the city. ‘At first sign of rats, telephone the police and ask for Rat Destruction. Don’t try to deal with them yourself. Even if you only see one, there may be more which you can’t see. Remember! Rats Kill!’

  But if I ’phoned Rat Destruction they’d be out like a swarm of bees. They’d be over the whole place, looking for rats. And they might find my rat-head mask, and they might find my notebooks.

  Suddenly I had a flash. Why not poison him? You can get poison. It’s free as a matter of fact. They give it to you at the Centre. People put it down who haven’t rats at all, just in case. It’s the public-spirited thing to do. Major Robinson has bait down all over his garden, though he says he’s never seen a rat within a mile of it. They’ve passed a law making it an offence if you have rats not to report them. This is because, in spite of all the danger, a lot of people don’t like to report they have rats. They’re afraid of getting a bad name among the neighbours for being dirty or something.

  I thought to myself, ‘Surely I can put up with Ben for one night. I’ve put up with him plenty of nights before.’ So I unlocked the door and went inside.

  ‘Hello, Ben,’ I said. ‘You’ve been away a long time.’ I put out my hand to stroke him, but he snapped at me.

  I went back to the hall and hung up my coat and hat in the cloakroom. Things didn’t seem just too bad. I could surely deal with Ben by himself. But something made me open the cellar-door and go down there. It was full of rats. They looked at me, all this starved lot of them, just as if it might have been a lot of cannibals looking at their next meal. I couldn’t get up the steps and the door shut quick enough. One thing was very clear. I’d have to get it into their heads that I was the meal-provider, not the meal.

  I shot straight out, not going back to Ben in the sitting room. Outside the front door I stopped to think again. Would I not be better after all to phone Rat Destruction? It was going to be a risk going back in there. Then I thought again of the mask, and the notebooks.

  I got out the car and started on a round of shops that stay open after the usual shop-hours. I bought two loaves in the first. But I thought they looked at me rather. So in the next I just bought one, and in the next and the next, and the next. . . . When I thought I’d enough I went home. I’d got a bit of cold boiled ham for Ben. He’d always been fond of cold ham, but usually I hadn’t let him have any—just if I’d some over and it looked like going a bit mouldy. However the thing just now was to appease him. I needn’t have bothered. He’d appeased himself in the larder without considering his friends and relations. What’s more he’s lost his manners. There was rat dirt over everything. Perhaps he’s just showing me he doesn’t care any more. The result was I kept the bit of ham and part of one of the loaves for myself as there was nothing in the larder I cared to touch. I flung the remaining loaves down into the cellar and the rats were on them like a pack of wolves.

  So here I am watching Ben, and Ben watching me. He could kill me during the night, but I don’t think he will. He wants to keep me for the sake of a comfortable home. He knows that without me the food won’t come rolling in, and by the look of him I should think he’s had enough of foraging for himself. I’ll buy grain tomorrow and I’ll mix poison with it. By the next day they should all be dead. If there are any half dead I should be able to finish them off with a spade or something. It’s wonderful how desperation gets rid of squeamishness.

  Tomorrow in the office I think I’d better tell them I won’t be in the following day. If all goes well I’ll be conducting a mass funeral and I don’t want anyone coming out to see what’s happened to me.

  Now I’m in the attic—putting in time

  Till what?

  Well they’re doing nothing yet

  I wish to heavens I hadn’t told the office I wouldn’t be in tomorrow. I wish I’d told them instead to come and look for me if I wasn’t in at the usual time. Even that mightn’t have been any good. I wish I’d never come home tonight. But I did. I brought the grain and the poison.

  When I got in I went straight to the sitting room. I don’t know why. Ben was on the table this time, my notebook open in front of him. He cocked his head sideways so that one eye was fixed on what I had written and the other was half-watching me. Then he gave a kind of shake to his head as if to say, ‘I’ve read it all. I know what you’re up to.’

  I made a grab and got the notebook. Ben jumped off the table and on to a chair. From that on to the floor and under the sofa. I came up here. Meant to get the mask and the deed-box with all the notebooks. Then clear out.

  Not quick enough. The rats had come up after me. A solid mass of them crossing the landing. Just got the door shut in time.

  I can’t reach the skylight. Too high. Have to sit out and hope.

  Leave that door alone, damn you.

  They’d gnaw the door down if I didn’t keep yelling. Maybe somebody will hear me

  That is all. Not even a full stop. The remaining pages in the last notebook are blank. Among them however I did find a loose sheet of paper. On it was written in a different hand from the rest, the following:

  ‘There can’t be much doubt as to what happened. Ratman stopped writing. Either he expected an immediate assault from the rats, or else for the time being he had no more to say. He put the notebook into the deed-box with the other notebooks, and locked the box. Whether he then made an attempt to break out, or whether the rats broke into the room we have no means of knowing. But I think his fate was the same as the fate of Jones: only this time the rats had more time and were more thorough. There was no skull to put in a coffin, no hair, no drops of blood on the floor, just the empty room with the locked metal box and the notebooks inside.

  ‘That was what the police found.

  ‘I had the utmost difficulty in getting them to part with the notebooks—but after all, I am the next-of-kin.

  ‘Now I don’t know what to do. As a family we are not anxious to advertise our relationship to Ratman—though the connection is very distant. At the same time I think the notebooks must have a certain scientific importance and for that reason deserve publication, in part at least.’