‘An explosion, Tim!’
‘It was what they call a letter-bomb, although it was a bit bigger than that. There was a lot of rough and ready tidying up to do, not to speak of a very promising young fire to put out. Hat had been blown to shreds and was very messy. And there wasn’t even a patch of garden to bury him in. So I scraped him into a bucket, and prowled around until I found a rubbish bin in the basement and nobody looking. Requiescat in pace Hat.’
Tim had gone very pale during the latter part of this fantastic recital, and his uncle wondered whether he himself had been doing so too. To have a domestic pet stand in for one, as it were, upon so naked a lethal occasion was a very unpleasant circumstance indeed. And it was no longer possible to suspect Tim of being a little wrong in the head. He had told the simple truth of the incident – or at least the simple truth as he saw it.
‘And what did you do then?’ Averell asked. He had to make an effort to steady his voice.
‘I sat down and gave the matter some thought.’ Tim seemed to manage this cool reply without difficulty and with no attempt at bravado. ‘It certainly required it.’
‘But surely you ought to have–’ But Averell checked himself; it was just no good talking to his nephew about the police. The boy wasn’t fanatical about the police; he called them the fuzz and not the pigs; but they were wholly out of court with him, all the same. ‘Surely you ought to have had some idea,’ Averell emended, ‘of why this ghastly thing had happened. And mightn’t it have been aimed at somebody else?’
‘It was addressed to me, wasn’t it?’ Very commendably, Tim was patient before this lapse into futility on his uncle’s part. ‘Of course, it might have got somebody else. The fact that it was badly made or something, and exploded just because it fell on the floor, means that lots of people must have been at risk from the moment it was posted. As it was, it just killed a pampered cat. I suppose if it had got its intended victim people might have said it had just killed a pampered undergraduate. Everything’s falling to bits, isn’t it? With me and my like doing very nicely in the middle of it.’
This hinterland of feeling in Tim, peeping out with such definiteness for the first time, disturbed Averell very much; he had a dim vision of tens of thousands of Tims – female as well as male, no doubt – ridden by such feelings of guilt and powerlessness.
‘But there I was,’ Tim resumed with recovered calm, ‘and with not a clue to whys and wherefores. Fortunately there were practical considerations to get cracking on. There was this commune thing, you see. With it being university vacation and all that, other chaps – perhaps with their girls, even – might turn up and find themselves in the line of fire, so to speak. For it already seemed pretty certain to me that the people who had it in for Tim Barcroft would have another go. They hadn’t just been doing a scaring – off turn. And there was no very easy way of sending out warnings. For nobody much knows where anybody else is nowadays, do they?’
Averell found this a bizarre generalization, again speaking of matters unknown to him. So for the moment he held his peace.
‘I could pin up a notice outside the flat,’ Tim pursued evenly. ‘But somebody might come and take it down the moment I went away. I could leave a big notice just inside the flat. But then they might booby-trap its front door. It’s the kind of thing they do in Northern Ireland.’
‘Well, what about that?’ It seemed to Averell that he had a cogent question to ask at last. ‘Have you been active lately, Tim, in that area of political feeling?’ He felt that he had stumbled upon a pedantic and absurd form of words, but the substance of his question was pertinent enough. ‘One hears of people being chosen out as targets on the most terrifyingly marginal pretexts of that sort.’
‘True enough. But I assure you, Uncle Gilbert, that I’ve been in nothing of the kind. Over there, I happen to feel it’s their own business to sort themselves out. But it’s possible that some misconception may have arisen, all the same. I was once walloped at my prep school when it was another brat that had flung the ink pellet or whatever.’ The memory of this seemed for a moment quite to cheer Tim up.
‘Well, to continue,’ he said. ‘That was attempted assassination number one. Now I come to number two. If you can stand this recital of my woes, that is.’
‘Go on.’
‘I decided I had to begin with Boxes. I had to ring up my mother and tell her I wouldn’t be coming home. That seemed quite obvious.’
‘I suppose it must have.’
‘There’s no telephone in the flat – nor anything much else, either. It’s not exactly an apartment in the luxury class, as you can guess. So I decided to go to the nearest telephone booth, which is at the end of the street. I can’t pretend it was a very carefree stroll. They’d be waiting to see if I’d been killed, quite probably. One of the simpler logical inferences, that. Even an Oxford philosopher couldn’t much sophisticate it.’
‘I suppose not.’ Tim’s youth came home to Averell as he was presented with this not altogether relevant remark. He was still a boy who sat in lecture-rooms listening to whatever learned nonsense was around. ‘So then?’
‘So then I set out. Most of our street is taken up by a thing that I think is a bottle factory. You’d imagine bottles must be manufactured in darkness, since there’s nothing but a long high blank wall. Funnily enough, I’ve sometimes thought of it as a good place for a scene in some sort of hunted man affair on the flicks. And that was what happened. Nerve yourself, Uncle Gilbert.’
‘Don’t be a fool, Tim.’ Averell was conscious of a strong start of affection for his nephew, and of a sudden reassuring perception that he wouldn’t readily give in. ‘Do you mean that they came at you again straight away?’
‘Just that. It’s a very quiet street, and it was deserted, so far as I could see. I made along it, and I wasn’t addle-pated enough not to be feeling a shade grim. That’s why, when I heard a car behind me, I looked over my shoulder. And there it was, coming at me pretty fast. Not precisely like a thunderbolt, of course, since the fellow had to calculate rather delicately. He’d no intention of killing himself as well. Just a glancing squashing blow, I imagine, like you might make at a fly on a windowpane, and he’d either remain mobile himself for a getaway, or be able to jump out uninjured and make off. It was what you might call a long moment. For there was absolutely nothing I could do.’
‘Obviously not. A fly would have had a resource that was denied you.’
‘And so would a flea.’ Tim grinned at his uncle, aware that he had attempted a coolness of response he didn’t feel. ‘But, as it happened, it was all perfectly all right. The chap miscalculated shockingly, and went bang into the wall a clear three yards in front of me. He’d crumpled the whole front of the bloody thing, but he managed to scramble out. I stood and looked at him. Nothing else to do.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
‘Then he came at me, feeling for something inside his jacket. The curtain was about to fall, you might say, on an impromptu effect. And then I saw, quite suddenly, that there was something else to do. The kind of desperate flying tackle you have to make when things are happening far inside your own twenty-five. I always hated rugger. But that was it. I hurled myself – which is the correct dramatic word – at his knees, and brought him down. And at the same moment there was a terrible noise. It was like the clangour of the angel’s trumpet and the horror of the ringing bell. John Donne. Actually, it was nothing but an ambulance in a hurry in the next street. I was still quite alone in a punch-up with this undesirable gent. But panic ensued – with him, I mean, since mine had somehow abated. He broke free, scrambled to his feet, and bolted. I was simply left with no other company than that smashed-up car.’
‘And then?’ Dear old Uncle Gilbert was conscious of having drawn a long breath.
‘And then? Oh, I went on to the telephone kiosk and did my stuff. Not quite an alpha perfo
rmance, I’m afraid, since my mother seemed to pick up that there was something mildly amiss. But I’d done my best.’
‘So you had, Tim. But I’m worried about your feeling that it has all been something to keep under your hat.’
‘Or Hat’s hat. Well, yes – but there it is. And I’m worried too. Chiefly, I just felt I had to find out what it was all in aid of. I needed a bit of time to think. So I sent a telegram to the only chap whose address I knew – wrapping the thing up a bit, but saying the flat was over to him. Then I went into hiding for a time: a kind of one-man think-tank, you might say. That was probably a mistake. For I got the silly notion about kidnapped Barcrofts into my head, and came home after all. It wasn’t clear thinking in the least. And there was a fat slice of funk to it. But I did have from the first, you know, the idea of getting my mother out of the country as well as the girls. And at least we’ve cleared the decks. And there’s a bonus in that “we”, Uncle Gilbert. Your turning up has been a bit of luck.’
‘I hope it has, Tim.’ As Gilbert Averell said this there came into his head the grotesque circumstances that the person to have turned up at Boxes was carrying the passport of an aristocratic Frenchman. It was a freakish thing virtually without significance in the light of what he was now faced with. But Tim ought to be told about it, all the same.
‘As a matter of fact –’ he began. And then any speech he might have made was interrupted by a fresh turn in the affair.
10
There had come a knock at the front door of Boxes. It was the common method by which visitors declared themselves, since a bell of antique type, operated by yanking at a dangling wire, had long since passed out of commission. But this knock had been a double knock, vigorously delivered, and Averell’s first thought was that it signalled the arrival of the police. Perhaps they were after Tim or perhaps they were after the Prince de Silistrie. Averell was aware that the latter conjecture, at least, was implausible. He was thrown into considerable confusion, all the same.
Tim’s mind moved differently, as was evident from his making an immediate grab at his gun. He knew nothing about Georges (now happily in Gubbio or some such Umbrian retreat) and it was hardly probable that he was going to point the thing at PC Capper, whom he had once been obliged so to embarrass as a young gentleman mysteriously on bail. Tim clearly thought that here were the assassins once more. Banging on the door was just a new technique on their part. It wouldn’t be called a particularly novel one. Quite regularly nowadays one heard of some unfortunate victim of political enthusiasm opening his door to strangers and being shot dead on the spot.
‘Tim,’ Averell said urgently, ‘I know what’s in your mind, and conceivably you’re right. So I’ll open the door – being somebody they’re not interested in – while you stand to the side and hold me covered with that thing. Right?’
This speech, which had taken them both into the hall, was astonishing in itself, since it revealed in a mild and elderly scholar what could only be called a lurking Bulldog Drummond mentality. Automatically you do the courageous and completely bone-headed thing, and all is well. But it was also astonishing in its result. Tim simply nodded, and took up an appropriate stance. This made of him a kind of well-trained Bulldog Drummond puppy, instant in obeying a command. Gilbert Averell possessed, it seemed, a good whack of authority, after all.
He unlocked and unbolted the door, and pulled it open. His first, and utterly confused, impression was that Kate and Gillian had returned to Boxes. Then he saw that the two young women on the doorstep were not in the least like his nieces. It was possible that they belonged to the same effete social class; but, if so, they had adopted a different style of life. Their attire vaguely suggested to him the sort of teenage females who squat outside little tents at pop festivals in commandeered parks. Yet they bore what might be called a businesslike appearance as well. They wore heavy walking boots, and each carried an enormous rucksack on her back. And now one of them stared first at Averell, and then over his shoulder, and then with a practised movement slid her burden to the ground.
‘Hullo, Tim,’ she said.
‘Hullo, Anne.’ It was in a noticeably sheepish manner that Tim returned this greeting, and as he did so he dropped the shotgun in an absurdly furtive manner into an umbrella stand.
‘This is Lou,’ Anne said.
‘Hiyah, Tim,’ Lou said.
‘Hiyah, Lou,’ Tim returned obediently. He added, ‘This is Gilbert.’
‘Hiyah, Gilbert.’
‘Hullo, Gilbert.’
‘I mean,’ Tim said, like a man in desperation, ‘that this is my uncle, Mr Averell.’
‘How do you do?’ Averell said – and almost added, ‘I mean, hiyah.’ Oddly enough, these muddled salutations rather pleased him. He was conscious in himself of a desire to appear by no means ‘square’ if he could manage it.
‘Come along in,’ Tim said. ‘There’s just Uncle Gilbert and me. My mother and sisters have gone abroad. I’ll get you some Nescafe or something.’
‘We could do with a cuppa,’ Lou said cheerfully. ‘We had one good hitch with a commercial character, but did a fair deal of walking as well.’
The augmented company went into the drawing-room, and Tim made off hospitably to the kitchen. Anne, who appeared more at home in these surroundings than Lou, gave Averell a further appraising glance, and then wasted no time.
‘Has Tim told you about recent events?’ she asked crisply.
‘Yes.’
‘Tim sent a telegram to a man called Dave, and we had a get-together and think-it-out. Lou and I haven’t seen the flat, but Dave and two other of the men have had a look at it. It’s all a bit obscure, isn’t it? We decided I’d hunt Tim down and get better genned-up. And Lou was to come too, because she’d be objective. Lou hasn’t ever met Tim before.’
‘Of course, I’ve heard about him,’ Lou said. ‘But only just as everybody has.’
‘I see.’ Averell was impressed at thus finding himself the uncle of a youth apparently credited with universal fame. ‘I think it unfortunate,’ he added firmly, ‘that Tim has a thing about the police.’
‘You have to respect convictions,’ Lou said with an equal firmness. ‘Even if it’s a hung-up sort of attitude. And is it? I don’t know. I’m open minded. I believe you can run up against a tolerably straight copper every now and then.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Averell didn’t find this handsome admission encouraging. ‘But you must not think I am lacking in respect for my nephew. That is far from being the case.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ Anne said. ‘But let’s stick to the point. We have to find a background to this. What has Tim been doing that could result in anybody having it in for him in a murderous way? We get nowhere without discovering that.’
Tim now returned with mugs of his instant coffee, and Anne got to work on him at once.
‘About the bomb first,’ she said. ‘Did it injure you?’
‘I didn’t get a scratch. It killed the cat.’
‘What about material damage?’
‘Well, it’s not beyond what one can clear up and make good, I suppose, so far as the landlord is concerned. But there was a fair amount of our own stuff damaged. Mostly mine, as it happens. My typewriter was on the table where the bomb was, and my camera and other photographic bits and pieces. All that’s in smithereens. It’s really rather annoying.’ Tim paused on this surprisingly mild expression of feeling. ‘And a lot of my lecture notes and essays pretty well soaked in poor Hat’s blood.’
‘Can you read them still?’ Lou asked sharply. She appeared to be a girl of practical mind.
‘Oh yes – I suppose so. But it’s rather revolting.’
‘I’d have them photocopied, if you feel that way. The copies wouldn’t look so gruesome. You might think the stuff had just fallen into your bath or something while you were worki
ng on them.’
‘I don’t work in my bath,’ Tim said. ‘Do you?’
‘Never tried it. Just stick to my bath toys, Tim.’
It seemed to Averell that, during this exchange of pointless quips, Tim was stirred to more interest in Lou, who was a stranger to him, than in Anne, whom he seemed to know well. Libidinous impulses, Averell seemed to remember, were natural and frequent in young men. But there is a time for everything, and he hoped that, in the present exigency, Tim wasn’t going to be so frivolous as to take time off for amatory episodes. It was something that regularly happened in sensational fiction, particularly of a transatlantic sort. But he had a strong feeling, possibly irrational, that at Boxes it wouldn’t be at all the thing. And was Lou particularly attractive as a sexual object? Was she more attractive than, say, Anne? Finding himself pondering this totally irrelevant question surprised Averell. So did the disturbing discovery that he could himself arrive at no opinion on the matter. Senescence, he gloomily felt, must lie dead ahead of him.
‘But your camera, Tim!’ Ann was exclaiming in dismay. ‘It was an enormously expensive one, wasn’t it?’
‘Well, yes – it was.’ Tim said this a little awkwardly, perhaps because the camera had been a present from Uncle Gilbert on his twenty-first birthday. ‘It’s insured, though.’
‘Do you always make people laugh?’ Lou asked, with every appearance of candid surprise. ‘If you want to keep this bomb to yourself, I expect people will say you must have your way, since it was you who was intended to be at the receiving end of the affair. But an insurance company will want to see the camera before they stump up. And when you hand it to them looking like a present from Hiroshima they’ll ask the reason why. You must be joking.’
This cogent speech upset Tim a good deal – and (Averell felt) further heightened the boy’s interest in the speaker. It would be a secure guess that the modest son-of-the-house at Boxes enjoyed the devotion of numerous young women in the circle in which he moved. The girl called Anne was one of them. Lou had not yet signed on. And that was why some higher command in the commune, or whatever it was, had sent Lou – the objective Lou – along. She’d take a dispassionate look inside Tim’s head and report on what was cooking there.
Going It Alone Page 7
