As she let herself into the driving-seat of her Renault coupé–the one extravagance she had allowed herself in the past three years–she began to think of the weekend. Two whole days of Susan to herself. What would they do? Her mind was a blank. She should have planned something, but the paper on monovalent antisera on which she was working and which she was to read at the International Conference in Brussels the following month had taken all her attention. Movies? No, too much like television. Theatre? Susan wanted to see Jesus Christ, Superstar. There would be a matinee on Saturday. That was one thing. Sunday? Lazy day just being together. Lunch out, perhaps, or brunch at the Café Royal. Susan would love that. Then Monday and school again and the weekend would be gone; Monday, bloody Monday. She fumbled in her bag for the car keys and then stopped. Something was happening on Monday. What. . .? She remembered: she would have to remind the Rajah to take that snake back to Loewenthal’s and get the one they had ordered. Incredible making a mistake like that: substituting a harmless black house snake for a mamba. There couldn’t be too many house snakes in Britain. She had never seen one before herself and Fitzsimons’ book had said they were rare even in Africa. It must have been a special order, probably wanted as a pet by someone who knew something about snakes. Well, whoever it was would be frustrated when they went to the shop to– She shivered violently, and it was not caused by the cold. What if? What if? What if? The phrase was repeating itself in her brain like a drumbeat. But it was impossible. It could not happen. Why not? The wrong snake had been sent to the Institute; why couldn’t the error work the other way? Was it not possible that whoever had ordered a black house snake had been given a black mamba by mistake? No, it wasn’t possible. Anyone who knew snakes well enough to have ordered such a species would know or should know a black mamba at a glance; the size alone would tell that it wasn’t a house snake. Unless it was a young mamba. Loewenthal couldn’t make a mistake like that, not with all his years of experience. But the mistake could have been made in Africa. Sometimes the snakes were packed in their travelling cages and labelled by the catcher out in the bush. And in any case, Loewenthal had not been in his shop.
She opened the car door and hurried back into the Institute. As she did so she looked at her watch and made sure there was still time to catch Mrs Loewenthal before the shop closed.
* * *
In the Gerald Road Police Station which lies in the heart of Westminster a long stone’s throw from Belgrave Square, Eaton Square, Victoria Station and the shabby huddle of Pimlico, Inspector Alec Nash was about to go off duty when the telephone on his desk rang. He’d had a bad week. On Tuesday a parcel bomb had exploded in a parked car outside the gates of Parliament, killing a traffic warden and injuring a passing cyclist, and since then there had been very little sleep for anyone in Gerald Road. Nash, a tall man in his early forties with a craggy face and big, raw-boned frame, stood staring at the telephone, tempted to ignore it. He told himself he was off- duty anyway. Then he remembered that Mary, his wife, was going to phone about Jim, and as he remembered his heart gave a lurch. Today was the day for the meeting with Jim’s probation officer; the big day, the one that Nash had been dreading ever since the magistrates’ hearing. In the course of his life in the police Nash had had to deal with dozens of probation officers. Sometimes he had considered them a soft option when one took into account the number of young villains on the streets, and he had tended to treat them with a certain coolness. How ironic that now a probation officer was all that stood between Jim and prison. He dreaded the scene to come: he and Mary on the sofa, his son Jim, tall, gangling, lank of hair, probably half drunk, sitting on one of the upright chairs, and the probation officer–Arkwright, was it?–solemn, earnest, with that look of pity in his eyes which Nash had seen so many times. How did you explain to him how it was that you had a son of seventeen who was already on the way to being an alcoholic and that when he’d had a few he did irresponsible things like taking other people’s cars? How did a police inspector with two commendations for bravery and a spotless record explain that?
He picked up the receiver. Chief Inspector Neill’s voice came through loud and clear. “Alec?”
“Yes.”
“Thought you might have gone.”
“No.”
Neill chuckled. “Don’t take it so hard. I know you’re tired, but don’t you want to be commissioner one day?”
“No.”
“Look, there’s a woman on my other line. Says she’s doctor someone or other. Talking about snakes. She’s been through to Central and they’ve pushed her on to us. Probably nothing in it, but I’ve got a meeting in two minutes with Benson of the Bomb Squad. See what she wants, will you?”
“I’ve got an appointment in thirty minutes.”
“Now look, Alec, I’m . . .”
“An important one.”
There was a pause. “Jim?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Well, just see what she wants. If there’s anything to it, pass it on to Harris. He’s due back from Acton in a few minutes.”
There was a double click on the line, then a woman’s voice saying, “Hello . . .”
“Inspector Nash here.” He drew a pad towards him. “Could I have your name, please.”
“Stowe. Dr Marion Stowe. I work at the Institute of Toxicology in Hampstead.”
He wrote down the word “toxicology”, and then the word “Jim” and stared at it for a moment until he realized what he had done and blacked out both words. “Poisons,” he said.
“That’s right.”
“How can I help you?”
She talked quickly and fluently. She had a pleasant voice, he thought. Soft and low, just the sort he liked. He began to form a picture of her at the other end of the line. Soft, yielding, warm, competent. Was there humour in her tone? Did she have a child? Had she gone wrong somewhere, too? Why was there no one to tell you? Abruptly she stopped and there was silence on the line. “Are you there?” she said.
“Yes, I’m here.” He had been half listening and now he said, “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You say you work with snake poisons?”
“Yes. It’s one of our fields. We work on new strains of anti-venenes.”
“Anti-venenes . . . those are–?”
“You give them like injections,” she said impatiently. “To people who are bitten by venomous snakes. I explained it.”
“Yes, I’ve got it. So you work with snakes in your Institute?”
“Yes.”
“And you say you got . . .” he looked at his notes, “a house snake instead of a . . . mamba.”
“Yes.” Her tone was sharpening with irritation.
“The one being harmless, the other not.”
“That’s an understatement. A black mamba is one of the three or four most venomous snakes in the world. It’s also aggressive.”
“I see. And you think a mistake was made.”
“I don’t think. I know.”
“Bear with me, doctor. Snakes aren’t really my field.”
“Well, they’re mine, and I’m telling you.”
Nash lit a cigarette and immediately regretted it. “You say the mistake was made by Loewenthal’s in Camden Town.” “No, I didn’t say that. I said a mistake had been made. I don’t know who made it. Don’t you understand, there’s no time for a discussion. Anything could happen–”
“I assure you that a few more minutes now will mean a lot of time saved in the long–”
“It’s already taken me ages to track down Mrs Loewenthal.”
“He is ill, is that right? The owner of the shop?”
“That’s right. They’ve taken him to hospital. A heart attack. But that’s not what I’m talking about. She gave the snake to a boy. She doesn’t know if it was the mamba or not. They had a shipment of more than a dozen snakes. Half of them were harmless small constrictors for zoos. But she might have!” Her voice had risen.
“All right, Doctor. She might have. Let’s hope
she didn’t. Can you give me the boy’s name?”
“That’s just it. I can’t. Mrs Loewenthal doesn’t remember. Except that it was French. She does remember the address was Eaton Square or Eaton Place because it’s a posh address and it stuck.”
“Can’t we get her down to the shop? Or can’t she get someone she knows? You say there’s a lad who cleans the cages and feeds the animals.”
“Look, she’s almost hysterical, she thinks her husband is dying, and he may be for all I know. He weighs nearly twenty stone. It took me half an hour to get hold of her and get some sense out of her.”
Nash’s mind began to work more quickly. A French name, he thought. There couldn’t be too many in Eaton Square and Eaton Place. The Voters’ Register would have all the names.
“Right,” he said. “Leave it with me, Doctor.”
“But hurry,” she said. “You’ve got to hurry.”
“Yes. One thing more, have you got any anti-whatever it is?”
“Anti-venene.”
“Anti-venene. Have you got any to counteract a mamba bite?”
“I’ve got some polyvalent anti-serum. It’s not specific against mamba venom but against several neuro-toxic snake poisons.”
“Oh.” Nash found himself groping. “Doctor, where can we reach you?” She gave him her home telephone number. “You’ll be there all evening?”
“Yes. But get in touch with Mr Beale of the London Zoo. They have set procedures for this sort of case. He’ll organize the hospital. Probably St George’s. Just hurry, for God’s sake. Mamba venom is terribly fast. Depending on where he was bitten a child could be dead in a matter of minutes and no amount of anti-venene would save him.”
* * *
Dick Howard sat in the first floor cocktail bar of the Carlton Tower Hotel and stared out over the dark area of lawns and trees that made up Cadogan Square, then he looked at his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. Philip would be getting home now. Must be, it was just after half-past five. Unless he had been caught up in traffic. He swirled the last of the ice that was all that was left of his Scotch on the rocks and considered ordering a second drink. Barbot’s message had said he would be fifteen minutes late; he was already more than twenty. One more? Or leave now? For the past few minutes he had been feeling uneasy. It was the sort of sensation he had sometimes had in the bush, not often, three or four times in all. A feeling of slight fear, not even fear, more like anxiety, a kind of free-floating apprehension that all was not as it should be. Once, up on the Luangwa in what was then Northern Rhodesia he had been hunting a leopard wounded by a poacher’s muzzle-loader. It had taken to a heavy patch of scrub and the dogs from the African village near by would not go in and bay it. So he went in alone. It was a stupid thing to do with a leopard. But he had gone. There was a lot of thorn, scrub thorn and acacia trees, and he had not been in there more than a minute or two when the same feeling had swept over him, he had felt unsettled, uneasy. He’d been following a blood spoor but as the feeling grew stronger he had stopped and looked carefully into the bush ahead. He had not been able to see anything. Then a compelling urge had caused him to turn round. The leopard was about twenty yards behind him, standing quite still in the dappled shade, regarding him with yellow eyes. Instinctively, he had brought up the gun and shot it and only afterwards, an hour or more later, he had begun to shiver violently with the reaction.
Now he had that same feeling that something was wrong. He paid for his drink and shrugged on his coat as he went down the stairs. There was a queue for taxis at the door and he turned right and made for Sloane Street. It was the middle of the rush-hour and the street was filled with home-going traffic. He saw a taxi and waved at it, then realized that the light was off. There were no others in sight and he turned back, walking as fast as he could, to take a short cut to Eaton Square.
* * *
As he was walking, Philip’s taxi was coming along Grosvenor Gardens making for Belgrave Square. Philip was preoccupied by the movements which were coming from the box with greater regularity. The scratch-scratch was quite audible. The interior of the taxi was warm and he wished he could open a window. But he might catch cold, and it wasn’t far to Eaton Square now; so he sat back trying to enjoy the last of his ride. He was feeling rather pleased with himself. It had been a long ride, there had been the unforeseen circumstances at the shop, yet everything had gone off smoothly.
“Right you are, then,” the taxi-driver said, leaning back and opening the door. Philip paid him and took the heavy box in his arms. “You manage all right?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He had not reached the bottom of the steps leading up to their front door before Louise was out of the house and running down to him. She was trying to arrange her face in a smile of welcome.
“Quickly,” she said. “It is cold for you. I help you.” She reached out to take the box but Philip shook his head.
“No.”
She held the door open and he saw Dave on the upstairs landing.
“Come, chéri,” she said. “There is something I must tell you.”
Philip stopped outside Howard’s door. “Dick!” he called. “Dick!”
“He has gone out,” Louise said.
“Where?”
She shrugged. “I cannot say.”
Philip frowned. “He said he would be here. He said he’d wait.”
“I do not know about that. A telephone call and then he tell me he is going out.”
“He said he’d be here.”
“Perhaps he will not be long.”
Disappointment washed over Philip. He had been expecting Dick to help him unpack the crate; expecting them to talk about a name; expecting them to be drawn close by the revelation of the shared secret. Now he wasn’t there. He stood by Dick’s door for a few moments longer and then began to climb the stairs. The box was very heavy and he could feel a series of jerky movements inside it.
“What you got there, Phil?” Dave said. “Bengal tiger?” Philip hated Dave calling him Phil. Dick called him Phil. “That’s right,” he said.
“Present from Gandhi, was it?”
Philip reached the top of the stairs and turned into his own room. “That’s right.”
“You’re a cheeky little sod, y’know that?”
“Leave him alone,” Louise said.
“Well, he bloody is.”
She followed Philip into the Great Ngorongoro Crater Menagerie. “When you were gone I had a telephone call,” she said. “My sister is sick.”
Philip put the box down on the floor. “Oh.”
“The doctor is worried.”
“Where? In France?”
“No, chéri, here in London.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Oh, yes. I must go to see her. No . . . do not take your coat off. You must come with me. I cannot leave you here.”
“Dick said he’d be here. He can’t be long.”
“We must go quickly. Just for ten minutes. Dave will take us. It is impossible to get a taxi now.”
“You go.”
“But I cannot leave you. What would your mother say?”
Philip touched the box with his foot and felt an answering jerk. He was very warm in his coat and began to struggle out of it.
“Please, chéri, don’t make trouble.”
“There was a taxi outside. The one I came in. Why didn’t you take that?”
She looked confused for a moment. “I didn’t think. I was glad to see you; that was all I felt. Now please. She could be serious. Wouldn’t you like another ride?”
“You didn’t want me to go before.”
“That was by yourself.” Anger was seeping into her tone. “Would you not like an ice-cream?”
He thought of that. He would not mind another drive. He’d like an ice-cream. And when Dick came in it would show him that he, Philip, could break arrangements too. But then he looked down at the box and the longing came over him to see the n
ew member of his menagerie. And for that he would have to wait for Dick. He had been told several times not to open the box himself.
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ll wait for Dick. I’ll be all right.”
“Is it because of this?” she said, touching the box with her foot.
“He told me not to open it by myself. He said I was to wait for him.”
“I will open it.”
“He said he would.”
“He is not a god, Philippe! Anyone can open this.” She knelt on the floor. “What is it, a mice? Un lapin–another rabbit?” She began to tear at the cardboard covering. Philip watched her.
“Another of your little furry animals? Stupid things. Dirty.” She pulled angrily at the cardboard, stripping it away from the wooden crate. Philip should have been annoyed at what she’d said, instead he watched her, a slight smile crossing his face.
At that moment the telephone shrilled in the hall. He heard Dave pick up the receiver and say, “Hello.” Then he heard the receiver drop on to the hall table. Dave stood in the doorway, his face white. “It’s the police,” he said. “It’s the bloody coppers!”
Louise wrenched away the wooden lid and stood up. “The police! C’est impossible!” She turned back to Philip and said in a hard voice, “What have you been saying?”
As she did so a bar of shadow seemed to cross her, as though a cloud had raced across the sun; only there wasn’t any sun. And then Philip saw that the drawstring of the travelling bag inside the crate had been loosened, probably when she had pulled off the lid, and that the shadow seemed to be coming from the bag. The three of them saw it at the same time, as it drew back its head to strike. Louise screamed.
Dick Howard was letting himself in the front door when he heard the scream. He thought, God, it’s Phil! and ran up the stairs two at a time, oblivious of the tearing pain at his gut. He burst into Philip’s room. The three of them were still in the middle of the menagerie. Louise was holding her arm and blood was seeping from two holes on the inner side of her left forearm.
“She’s been bitten by a bloody snake,” Dave yelled.
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