by Lynne Truss
‘You admit that you shot him?’
‘Of course.’ She pulled a face. ‘You knew I did. That’s not what we’re talking about.’
‘Why did you shoot him?’
She waved the question away. ‘We’ll come back to that. You know about his field of interest: he was convinced that people behave according to their deepest desires, even while shopping for clothes pegs. In the con artist’s world, of course, this is hardly a revelation, but still, it was interesting to hear it being given so-called scientific validity. Knowing precisely where people are vulnerable – where to target them – is the key to the con man’s success. I used to meet the professor every evening in the listening booth to hear about his theories. He thought I was his disciple, whereas in fact I was light years ahead of him. I played the part because I knew what he wanted, deep down, you see.’ She made a face. ‘And I know what you want, too.’
Had something happened to Adelaide Vine’s vocabulary? She was using words like ‘discern’ and ‘significant’, and phrases such as ‘scientific validity’. But she had also just accused Twitten of not being as clever as he thought he was, which was jolly hurtful but at the same time (weirdly) made him inclined to trust her. And now she seemed to be waiting for him to respond.
‘Well, I was interested in the professor’s work, too!’ He sounded petulant, and wished he didn’t. ‘I’ve been reading about motivation research for the past few weeks, in fact, and I’ve been trying to explain it to anyone who would listen!’
‘That’s all very commendable. Well done.’ She sounded so patronising! ‘So you will understand how I deduce that what you really want, dear Constable, is not to expose Mrs Groynes.’
‘What? No! No, that’s not right at all. Hold on—’
‘You admit you have done nothing with the photograph. Prevaricate as much as you like, but that’s the truth. Now, tell me what you’ve done about the madman on the loose, threatening the life of the inspector?’
‘I’ve done a few things. I mean, I came here to look at the contents of this bally box!’
‘Pathetic,’ she said, waving her hand.
‘I know that the psychologist who interviewed him used to work for Terence Chambers and that she helped the madman escape.’
‘But what have you actually done?’
‘Look, I really resent this. Everything has happened very quickly and I am pursuing inquiries—’
‘I’m sorry, but you need to hear this. You can see what’s happening here, and you have not acted to prevent it. Therefore, Constable, you want Inspector Steine to be killed.’
‘No!’
‘And why not? He annoys you; he is stupid; by sheer luck he always seems to emerge from the blackest situation completely untarnished – indeed, often with his reputation miraculously enhanced! You are cleverer than him by far. It is preposterous that you are a mere constable, working for such a dolt. And as for the sweet but silly Sergeant Brunswick—’
‘Are you saying I’m ambitious, Miss Vine?’ Twitten thundered, leaping to his feet. ‘Because if so … ’
But there his protest trailed off. Ambitious? She had not even said the word. She sat back, arms folded, saying nothing, while his mind reeled and he sat down again.
Flipping hedgehogs. Ambitious? Mentally, he staggered and flailed. It was as if a thick veil had been slashed, letting the light of truth come flooding through. Because he was ambitious! Why had he never admitted it to himself before? Why had he told himself all this time that he was content to compromise his true worth, deferring to people who not only underappreciated him but actually belittled him? Why had he endured all those ignorant and anti-intellectual pooh-poohs?
‘Now, we come to Mrs Groynes,’ said Adelaide. ‘I can see you’re on the back foot slightly, Constable, but you’ll just have to keep up as best you can. The important matter is Mrs Groynes to whom you do feel loyalty, whether you admit it or not. It’s my job to inform you that you shouldn’t. How she manipulates you is by confiding in you and talking to you as an equal, which flatters your ego while costing her nothing. In fact, she gets pleasure from taunting you with such confidences.’
‘You’re wrong,’ he said feebly. ‘You know nothing about it.’
‘But think about her actual behaviour, Constable Twitten, and ask yourself how loyal she is to you. She makes a fool of you every day, which is profoundly disrespectful. She commits heinous felonies with impunity, making a mockery of your vocation. You accept this situation because you respect her cleverness and because she represents some sort of quasi-maternal figure who doles out sugary bakery products. For these absurd and paltry reasons, you are letting her cynically ruin your potentially stellar career in the police force.’
Twitten sat back, blinking. His father had told him about breakthroughs in psychoanalysis, and he’d never quite understood until now. He felt as if there were no floor beneath his feet.
‘Oh, my God, Miss Vine,’ he gasped. ‘You’re right.’
‘Thank you.’
‘You have completely overturned my idea of myself vis-à-vis my responsibilities to my gifts as a clever policeman.’
‘I know.’ She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘But I should get back to work now, and I believe you have a driving lesson.’
‘Golly.’ It was all he could do not to plead weakly, ‘Don’t go.’ On top of everything else, Adelaide looked devastatingly attractive to him all of a sudden.
She gave him an encouraging look. ‘I know,’ she said quite kindly. ‘This has all been a bit of a shock, hasn’t it? Take your time, I’ll let myself out.’
‘Did you know I was going to be here this morning?’
‘Of course. A little bird told me. It worked out perfectly.’
‘What have you done with Barrow-Boy Cecil?’
‘You don’t want to know. But in any case, this isn’t about Cecil, Constable. Or about the devious Mrs Groynes. It’s about you.’ She stood up. ‘But in case you’re still in doubt, it really wasn’t me destroying those files earlier. Someone else must be protecting the madman; trying to prevent your finding him. Someone else must want him to kill Inspector Steine. But who? Can’t you smell something in the air? I mean, apart from the lighter fuel and the charred paper? It’s quite strong, actually.’
He sniffed. She waited. He sniffed again. Oh, surely not?
‘It’s Brasso,’ she said. And then, as he whimpered ‘Oh, no!’ she let herself out, leaving all his certainties shattered.
As she opened the front door, she smiled to herself. In the history of ‘womanly wiles’, surely no one had ever deployed them more skilfully than that.
Ten
It is Friday morning, and Denise Perks makes her way briskly downhill, through the smaller residential streets east of the railway station, towards the wide and busy carriageway of the London Road, where noiselessly efficient trolley-buses whisk passengers into the centre of town, and where the mighty Gosling’s will be open for business in a quarter of an hour’s time. Autumn is in the air and after the short dry spell yesterday it is raining again, forming puddles and rivulets. Denise misses Shorty. Until recently they made this morning walk together. But she mustn’t get maudlin. The boy is safe, and Mrs Groynes has assured her that normality will very soon be resumed, once Barrow-Boy Cecil is avenged.
‘Could it be the Vine woman behind all this?’ Denise asked Mrs Groynes last night, at the beginning of a specially convened meeting of the Gosling’s Gang.
‘No, dear,’ Mrs G replied, with a touch of impatience. ‘It’s not bleeding Adelaide Vine. Pardon my language, but I’m a bit sick of hearing it.’
Denise shrugged. ‘I’m just saying. Ronnie reminded me that you killed her mum.’
‘My money’s on that Adelaide skirt, too,’ said Stanley-Knife Stanley, looking up from the September issue of Window Dressing Monthly (to which he had just subscribed).
‘Stanley, put the book down, please, dear.’
‘Oh.’ He was tak
en aback. ‘Right, boss. A-course.’ He folded down the corner of the page he was reading and placed the magazine on the floor.
As Denise now trots downhill towards the London Road, Sid the Doorman emerges from his usual doorway and falls into step. He reaches for her umbrella (‘Allow me, Miss Perks?’) and holds it over both of them.
‘How’s Shorty?’ he asks, out of the side of his mouth.
‘All right, ta, Sid,’ she says. ‘Vince has got him stowed, but they won’t tell me where.’
‘Jimmy the Gimp’s first day today. Working the blooming lift.’
‘I know.’
As they reach the London Road, they spot identical twins Joan and Dorothy arriving at Gosling’s from the other direction, trotting through puddles towards the staff side door. Nobody waves, but they are all reassured to see one another. Denise notes that Stanley-Knife Stanley is already at work in one of the windows, arranging dummies of children and toddlers in thermal underwear into an attractive and colourful tableau. A very different side to Stanley is manifesting itself, it must be said. You would expect his windows to be full of shock-faced mannequins staggering back while clutching their crimson-slashed throats. But Stanley has embraced a sunnier aesthetic, and when Mrs Groynes told him to put down his magazine last night, the reason he did so with such reluctance was that he was halfway through an article headlined ‘Make a Seasonal Cascade of Autumn Leaves’.
‘The site’s ready,’ remarks Denise, subtly indicating (with a tilt of her head) some official-looking hubbub twenty yards to their right. Sid the Doorman, less subtly, takes a good look, nods his head, and says, ‘We’re on, then.’ The beacons are already flashing on their striped poles, but the crossing itself is out of sight, covered by a loose grey tarpaulin designed to protect its pristine black-and-white paintwork from mud. Council workmen ensure that the traffic drives slowly across the muddy groundsheet; meanwhile other workers are sheltering in doorways nearby, waiting to implement the noonday road closure.
Under a makeshift marquee on the pavement opposite the shop, rain-dampened boxes of little chequered flags have arrived and are being unpacked on a trestle table by unenthusiastic council employees. A similar but smaller marquee is being erected on the Gosling’s side, for the ‘entertainers’. And from a window on the second floor of Gosling’s, directly above this second marquee, Adelaide Vine surveys the whole rainy industrious scene with a beam of satisfaction. For someone who is not a devious mastermind, she is giving a very good impression of one.
Twitten’s own walk downhill to work this morning is of an unusual nature, not just because it’s raining again, but because Pandora Holden is with him; also Blakeney the dog, who hampers progress considerably by constantly stopping to cock his leg. This is adorable the first time, but the gleam soon wears off. It’s not the urination per se that’s annoying: it’s the stopping.
‘Does he have to do that quite so often?’ Twitten asks impatiently, as the whole party pauses for the fifth time in twenty yards on Dyke Road.
‘I think he does, yes. If I try to pull him along, he sits down in protest, so we get on even more slowly.’
‘Couldn’t you remove the string from his collar? Other dogs aren’t on leads.’
‘Yes, but other dogs aren’t Blakeney. The moment I let him go free, he’ll run off and jump onto an excursion coach to Bognor.’
‘I need to get to work, Miss Holden!’ Under Twitten’s arm is an old brown briefcase containing the ‘Doris Fuller’ file, which he has now read with alarm, and which he needs to discuss with colleagues at the earliest possible juncture. In particular, he must warn Inspector Steine (and he can already hear the chorus of pooh-poohs!) that until Geoffrey Chaucer is caught, he must watch out for, and strenuously avoid, anything with a conspicuous black-and-white pattern on it.
‘Of course. I’m sorry.’ Pandora isn’t really sorry, though. She adjusts her umbrella, looks down at Blakeney and sighs. The more the dog’s drawn-out micturition routine holds them up, the more time she can spend with the man she has chosen to marry.
‘Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call to explain to you about the photograph,’ he says. ‘I really didn’t mean for you to bring it back.’ He would like to add, Why on earth would you think I wanted you to bring it back? – but he dare not, because Pandora always reacts very badly to being told off.
‘I wish you would tell me what’s happening, Peregrine. You’re so buttoned up!’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘What’s in the briefcase?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You see? And you were very off-hand at dinner last night. Mrs Thorpe had gone to a lot of trouble with that horrible pink parfait.’
‘Yes, well … ’ With Sergeant Brunswick failing to make an appearance at Mrs Thorpe’s house last night, the specially made blancmange was best forgotten about. ‘Look, I don’t even like puddings very much, and besides I wanted to be on my own to think about things, and instead it was like a bally dinner party!’
Pandora nods understandingly, but she is thinking, This is like a tiff between married people! It thrills her to think that one day she and Peregrine will have bitter arguments just like this in their own North Oxford detached villa, when she has persuaded him to become an academic, and she is a professional artist with a growing international reputation, and they have two adorably brainy and bespectacled children called Sappho and Caligula (the names are a work in progress.)
‘Well, I can tell you’re excited about what’s in that file, Peregrine. Mrs Thorpe could sense it too at breakfast. But when she asked you, you were quite rude. I really like her, by the way. She manages to be both refined and blowsy at the same time, and she was very kind to take me in for the night, and my little room was lovely. I hope you give Sergeant Brunswick a telling-off today for not coming to dinner and upsetting her. He didn’t even telephone to make an excuse! But I suppose some people are just like that. Hurtful to women. I mean, look at you and me. I came all this way for your sake; all the way from Norfolk, and you’ve hardly spoken to me.’
They make a few yards’ headway, then stop again for Blakeney. Fed up with all this, Twitten bends down and picks up the dog. The manoeuvre entails passing the briefcase to Pandora for a moment, and as she hands it back, she pouts.
‘All right,’ he relents. ‘I’m sorry. If you want to know, I’ll tell you why the file in this case is so bally important, if you promise not to tell anyone. There is a madman on the loose – a madman who attacks policemen.’
‘I know that. And I hate it. Why did you have to join the police at all, Peregrine? I begged you not to, and I still don’t understand it. And now you might get your head cut off instead of being safe and sound in the Bodleian.’
Finally, they are able to walk downhill at a sensible pace, the little dog quite contentedly surveying the world from his unaccustomed (and bouncy) elevation. Pandora is happy to think of the attractive picture they make – almost like a family group.
Twitten refuses to be drawn into old arguments about why he joined the police in the first place.
‘What this file makes clear, Miss Holden,’ he continues, ‘is that on every occasion Geoffrey Chaucer has killed, there have been three triggers, all coincidentally occurring at the same time; all reminding him of a specific traumatic event in his childhood when police broke in and shot his father.’
‘Oh, that’s awful. The poor man. The police are like animals sometimes, and I can’t imagine why you would—’
Twitten cut her off. ‘Well, interestingly, Miss Holden, I looked up the case and the context rather exonerates the police. It seems that the father was a desperate and unstable man, cornered at a London hotel where he was armed and holding his own wife and child as hostages. Several times he stated that he was prepared to kill them. So when the police stormed in they did so, effectively, to save little Geoffrey’s life. But either no one has ever explained that to him, or he just doesn’t want to hear it. Either way, he thinks of
the police as murderers, and sometimes he goes berserk and kills a policeman – but only when three very specific triggers occur simultaneously.’
‘What three triggers?’
‘Well, this is what Miss Sibert worked out. First, obviously, there has to be a policeman present. But the three triggers are: a woman has to say to this policeman, “Stop touching me! Leave me alone!” Then a clock with Westminster chimes has to start striking the hour. And on top of those two things, the whole scene has to take place in an environment of black-and-white patterns – like a black-and-white floor, or black-and-white striped walls.’
Pandora tips back her head and laughs.
‘What’s funny?’ he asks.
‘It’s so unlikely, Peregrine! It’s so unlikely that all those things could happen at once by chance!’
‘Well, they did happen all at once right in front of this poor young woman Doris,’ he says, indicating the briefcase. ‘And now I really must get to the office and warn the inspector, because it’s my guess that wicked people have sprung Chaucer from prison precisely to set him up to kill again – and Inspector Steine is the target!’
At the Clock Tower, Twitten places Blakeney on the ground and realises, with a pang, that Mrs Groynes had a point: this place does seem sad and dismal without Barrow-Boy Cecil and his jumping bunnies. He can’t help looking round, expecting to see the street pedlar after all.
But it is time for them to part – Pandora to return to the railway station; he to proceed downhill. The short walk has been hard for both of them: Pandora has been hoping the whole time that he will compliment her on her appearance (she’s wearing a lovely periwinkle blue skirt). Now she hopes he will kiss her goodbye, which is absurd since he has never done that in his life. He shakes her hand firmly instead and wishes her a pleasant journey.
‘I’m sure no one could be trying to put all those elements together, Peregrine,’ she says, in parting. ‘It’s just too complicated! If anyone wanted the inspector dead, why wouldn’t they just shoot him?’
