The Third Policeman. Flann O’Brien
sometimes lay down on the floor or on the roadway outside in a great stupor. Some of them complained afterwards that they had been robbed while in this state and talked angrily in the shop the next night about stolen money and gold watches which had disappeared off their strong chains. John Divney did not say much on this subject to them and did not mention it to me at all. He printed the words – BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS – in large letters on a card and hung it on the back of shelves beside another notice that death with cheques. Nevertheless a week rarely passed without some customer complaining after an evening with The Wrastler’. It was not a satisfactory thing.
As time went on Divney became more and more despondent about what he called ‘the bar’. He said that he would be satisfied if it paid its way but he doubted seriously if it ever would. The Government were partly responsible for the situation owing to the high taxes. He did not think that he could continue to bear the burden of the loss without some assistance. I said that my father had some old-fashioned way of management which made possible a profit but that the shop should be closed if now continuing to lose money. Divney only said that it was a very serious thing to surrender a licence.
It was about this time, when I was nearly thirty, that Divney and I began to get the name of being great friends. For years before that I had rarely gone out at all. This was because I was so busy with my work that I hardly ever had the time; also my wooden leg was not very good for walking with. Then something very unusual happened to change all this and after it had happened, Divney and I never parted company for more than one minute either night or day. All day I was out with him on the farm and at night I sat on my father’s old seat under the lamp in a corner of the public house doing what work I could with my papers in the middle of the blare and the crush and the hot noises which went always with The Wrastler’. If Divney went for a walk on Sunday to a neighbour’s house I went with him and came home with him again, never before or after him. If he went away to a town on his bicycle to order porter or seed potatoes or even ‘to see a certain party’, I went on my own bicycle beside him. I brought my bed into his room and took the trouble to sleep only after he was sleeping and to be wideawake a good hour before he stirred. Once I nearly failed in my watchfulness. I remember waking up with a start in the small hours of a black night and finding him quietly dressing himself in the dark. I asked him where he was going and he said he could not sleep and that he thought a walk would do him good. I said I was in the same condition myself and the two of us went for a walk together into the coldest and wettest night I ever experienced. When we returned drenched I said it was foolish for us to sleep in different beds in such bitter weather and got into his bed beside him. He did not say much, then or at any other time. I slept with him always after that. We were friendly and smiled at each other but the situation was a queer one and neither of us liked it. The neighbours were not long noticing how inseparable we were. We had been in that condition of being always together for nearly three years and they said that we were the best two Christians in all Ireland. They said that human friendship was a beautiful thing and that Divney and I were the noblest example of it in the history of the world. If other people fell out or fought or disagreed, they were asked why they could not be like me and Divney. It would have been a great shock for everybody if Divney had appeared in any place at any time without myself beside him. And it is not strange that two people never came to dislike each other as bitterly as did I and Divney. And two people were never so polite to each other, so friendly in the face.
I must go back several years to explain what happened to bring about this peculiar situation. The ‘certain party’ whom Divney went to visit once a month was a girl called Pegeen Meers. For my part I had completed my definitive ‘De Selby Index’ wherein the views of all known commentators on every aspect of the savant and his work had been collated. Each of us therefore had a large thing on the mind. One day Divney said to me:
‘That is a powerful book you have written I don’t doubt.’
‘It is useful,’ I admitted, ‘and badly wanted.’ In fact it contained much that was entirely new and proof that many opinions widely held about de Selby and his theories were misconceptions based on misreadings of his works.
‘It might make your name in the world and your golden fortune in copyrights?’
‘It might.’
Then why do you not put it out?’
I explained that money is required to ‘put out’ a book of this kind unless the writer already has a reputation. He gave me a look of sympathy that was not usual with him and sighed.
‘Money is hard to come by these days,’ he said, ‘with the drink trade on its last legs and the land starved away to nothing for the want of artificial manures that can’t be got for love or money owing to the trickery of the Jewmen and the Freemasons.’
I knew that it was not true about the manures. He had already pretended to me that they could not be got because he did not want the trouble of them. After a pause he said:
‘We will have to see what we can do about getting money for your book and indeed I am in need of some myself because you can’t expect a girl to wait until she is too old to wait any longer.’
I did not know whether he meant to bring a wife, if he got one, into the house. If he did and I could not stop him, then I would have to leave. On the other hand if marriage meant that he himself would leave I think I would be very glad of it.
It was some days before he talked on this subject of money again. Then he said:
‘What about old Mathers?’
‘What about him?’
I had never seen the old man but knew all about him. He had spent a long life of fifty years in the cattle trade and now lived in retirement in a big house three miles away. He still did large business through agents and the people said that he carried no less than three thousand pounds with him every time he hobbled to the village to lodge his money. Little as I knew of social proprieties at the time, I would not dream of asking him for assistance.
‘He is worth a packet of potato-meal,’ Divney said.
‘I do not think we should look for charity,’ I answered.
‘I do not think so either,’ he said. He was a proud man in his own way, I thought, and no more was said just then. But after that he took to the habit of putting occasionally into conversations on other subjects some irrelevant remark about our need for money and the amount of it which Mathers carried in his black cash-box; sometimes he would revile the old man, accusing him of being in ‘the artificial manure ring’ or of being dishonest in his business dealings. Once he said something about ‘social justice’ but it was plain to me that he did not properly understand the term.
I do not know exactly how or when it become clear to me that Divney, far from seeking charity, intended to rob Mathers; and I cannot recollect how long it took me to realize that he meant to kill him as well in order to avoid the possibility of being identified as the robber afterwards. I only know that within six months I had come to accept this grim plan as a commonplace of our conversation. Three further months passed before I could bring myself to agree to the proposal and three months more before I openly admitted to Divney that my misgivings were at an end. I cannot recount the tricks and wiles he used to win me to his side. It is sufficient to say that he read portions of my ‘De Selby Index’ (or pretended to) and discussed with me afterwards the serious responsibility of any person who declined by mere reason of personal whim to give the ‘Index’ to the world.
Old Mathers lived alone. Divney knew on what evening and at what deserted stretch of road near his house we would meet him with his box of money. The evening when it came was in the depth of winter; the light was already waning as we sat at our dinner discussing the business we had in hand. Divney said that we should bring our spades tied on the crossbars of our bicycles because this would make us look like men out after rabbits; he would bring his own iron pump in case we should get a slow puncture.
There is little to tell about the murder. The lowering skies seemed to conspire with us, coming down in a shroud of dreary mist to within a few yards of the wet road where we were waiting. Everything was very still with no sound in our ears except the dripping of the