The Anatomy of Murder. Helen Simpson

the end is clear and palpable, I am sure of it; I never yet failed in my life.

       November 8th.

      Thank God, another day gone. However will a twelvemonth pass? God only knows. My heart grows sick and faint when I look into the future. Oh, God, is this Thy retribution for our sins? Did I flatter myself that the Almighty would let me—a wretch like me—go unpunished; but I tell thee, fate, I defy thee. I feel as though my heart were rent in pieces, and then dark thoughts obtrude themselves before me, fiends rise and mock me; they point to a gate, a portal through which I feel half inclined to go; but not yet.. What would my love do without me? … No matter what thou hast been, my child, I hold thee as a true, virtuous wife to me, for you have been true to me, my dearest love.

      Bertrand went on this day, Wednesday to see one of the directors of the City Bank, Kinder’s employers, who gave him news. A temporary cross was to be put on “poor Harry’s grave” in New Zealand (whence the Kinders had come to New South Wales); “they think that Harry did not intend to kill himself, but only to frighten his wife.” When Bertrand suggested that possibly Mrs. Kinder might come to Sydney to find work, the director was evasive and recommended that “old affairs should blow over”. Next day Mrs. Kinder’s father, Mr. Wood, came to see him, and they walked down together to the ferry wharf, and travelled over to the North Shore to see a mutual friend, De Fries.

      I felt very strange. This is the first time I have been to the Shore since poor Harry’s funeral. I am standing on the deck, my face turned towards the little house with the two chimneys, as I used to do when on wings of love I flew to my beloved.… How horribly jealous I was, I was mad … surely there can be no worse hell than our own conscience.

      Mr. De Fries it was who gave Bertrand the first warning that all was not well, and that Sydney, unlike New Zealand, was beginning to be suspicious of Kinder’s suicide. De Fries spoke reasonably; said that he had watched the affair growing, and that he had a high regard for Jane. He told Bertrand that Mrs. Kinder cared nothing for him, that she was a calculating woman, while Jane was an affectionate and true one. He felt for Bertrand, he told him, like a brother, and exhorted him, if he cared for his happiness in this world and his welfare in the next, not to yield to temptation. The diarist listened attentively, but coming home, broke Jane’s fan in a passion. That he believed, or rather, that he knew De Fries to be speaking the truth, is shown in a paragraph which ends the entry for this day:

       November 12th.

      Be she as wicked as Satan, as vile and wily as the serpent, I, even I, will save her, will raise her from the depth of hell. I, Ellen, even I, thy lover, wicked as I am, will be a Saviour to thee. Dear, sweet, loved Ellen, the more they oppose us the greater will be my power of resistance. Poor fools, to try and thwart my will. Indeed, if thou hast me for an enemy—I who value human life as I value weapons, to be used when required and thrown away or destroyed; some, of course, kept for future use if necessary. Beware! If I have my way in this, if I obtain this sole object of my being I feel that I shall be reclaimed; but if not, no matter from what cause, Heaven help the world, oh! I shall indeed be revenged.

      Next, Mrs. Robertson, a friend to both parties, issued her warning. She advised Bertrand to have no more to do with Mrs. Kinder; and told him frankly that she would not have Ellen in her house, were she to come to Sydney. Again he listened patiently, and again there followed an outburst, a frantic act of faith.

      DEAR, DEAR CHILD,

      I trust that she is truly penitent for what she has done, and that with me she will be in future a truly good and virtuous woman. Why do people try to torture me thus? God knows I have misery and wretchedness enough. I am prepared for the worst and God help the world if this my forlorn hope fails. To hear her [Ellen] spoken of as bad, is sufficient to upset my intellect.…

      Ellen, my dear love, I must be near you. I want to look into those dear wicked eyes and I know they cannot, will not, deceive me. If I have, like others, cause to repent what I have done—I must drop this painful subject or I shall be ill—it will unman me—unfit me for the battle I am fighting. Enough excitement of mind for one day. Adieu, my thoughts. Adieu, my own Ellen.

      Louis.

      It is not quite the last entry, but it is the most revealing of all. The exaltation was fading; the way to happiness, which had seemed so clear and sure, was obscured. Bertrand knew that Mrs. Kinder had been the mistress of at least one of his acquaintances; that there had been other men in New Zealand he conjectured. He was tormented; the journal plainly shows him twisting away from inescapable conclusions, and so towards madness. When Mr. Butler laid down the notebook which gave such an intimate picture of Bertrand’s mind, he had proved to the public’s satisfaction that Bertrand had good reason to wish Kinder out of his way.

      V

      But Kinder met his death by the firing of a pistol close to his ear. Whose finger pulled the trigger of that pistol? Mr. Butler recalled Bertrand’s assistant, Alfred Burne, who, after telling how he delivered letters from Bertrand to Mrs. Kinder, and how she had often stayed in the surgery at night, gave the following account of some remarkable expeditions:

      About six weeks previous to Kinder’s death he [Bertrand] asked me where I could get a boat to hire. I mentioned Buckley’s among others. We went rowing the following night about 12 o’clock, to the North Shore as far as Kinder’s house, opposite to the bedroom window on which the moon was shining. He said: That is his bedroom. He did not then say what was the purpose of his visit. He did not go in. He said the moon was too strong, he had come too early.… We went back again three nights after, taking a boat from the same place, and went up to the house. As we went over he said it was very likely that next morning Kinder would be found dead in his bed, having committed suicide, and that letters from Jackson would be found in his hand.

      They arrived at Kinder’s house about one in the morning. Bertrand took off his boots, gave them to Burne to hold, and climbed into the house by the dining-room window. He came back much later—Burne fell asleep meanwhile—angry because Kinder would not drink his beer, and consequently was awake. “We had drugged it,” said Bertrand.

      Some days, about a week later, Bertrand produced in his surgery a hatchet, and asked Burne to bore a hole in the handle so that he might tie it under his coat by a string. A young man, Ranclaud, who was staying in the house, asked what he meant to do with it. Bertrand answered abruptly, and with no care for probabilities, that he was going fishing, and went out with Burne to their hired boat. On the way, he said that Kinder had insulted him; that he was going to knock Kinder’s brains out first, and then get a divorce from Mrs. Bertrand.

      I remarked what object could he have in putting Mr. Kinder out of the way when Mrs. Kinder was as good as a wife to him. He said he wished to have Mrs. Kinder all to himself.

      On this occasion Bertrand entered the house by the same window, but returned soon, saying that Jackson and Mrs. Kinder’s brother Llewellyn were sleeping in the house, and as the boards creaked he did not think it safe.

      COUNSEL: Safe to do what?

      BURNE: To murder Mr. Kinder, as I understood.

      A week later the expedition was repeated, but in remarkable conditions. Bertrand shaved himself at midnight; then blacked his face, donned a mask and the red Crimean shirt, topped this disguise with a slouch hat, took off his boots, drank some brandy, and set out in the boat at about 1.30 in the morning. Burne went with him. Why he should have done so is inexplicable. True, he was in Bertrand’s employ; true, he may not have taken seriously Bertrand’s boasts and threats against Kinder. But he was sufficiently well aware of danger when his own skin was in question.

      On these occasions I always carried the hatchet myself; I also used to get him to sit in front of me in the boat for fear of accidents. I made him pull the stroke oar, while I pulled the bow oar, fearing that, taking me by surprise while my back was turned, he might throw me into the water.

      That night Bertrand asked Burne to help him when he got inside the house. If Kinder, he said, were to be killed that night, suspicion would inevitably fall on Jackson, who was leaving Sydney next day. The young man answered that it was all too romantic for him, that he