“All right, General?”
The old hero answered with his wild giggle, more exaggerated than before—tension, or the strain of suppressing it for a couple of hours?
“Far from it, m’dear, far from it. You were right about Treacle—he even looks like him now. Down a rabbit hole, you remember?”
Pibble could imagine so, for he was on his knees collecting clippings of the famous eyebrows; he was aware that the seat of his trousers was shiny. From the room it must have looked as if he’d have been wagging his tail, if he’d had one. In fact he was both dismayed and miserable. How the hell could they have thought they’d get away with it?
“Oh, my aunt!” said Mrs. Singleton. “What on earth shall we do now? I thought he was such an agreeable little man.”
2:00 A.M.
A false note, thought Pibble as he straightened up; a degree too Noel Cowardly, not quite right for her—or perhaps she’s been acting, family-charade-playing, all morning and this is the real Miss Anty, the formic-acid one. More to avoid facing them than anything he started prying into the neighboring cupboards. The Admiral seemed to own few clothes but a formidable amount of shoes, each pair in its own special Deakin-built niche, and all the niches full. He nerved himself to turn and face the Claverings.
“I have to assume that there is some reason for this impersonation, Sir Ralph,” he said. “Otherwise you would hardly have gone to the lengths of shaving off your mustache.”
“Right,” said the General. “Wish I hadn’t now. Bloody fidgety it makes me feel—kept wanting to touch it all through luncheon—only thing stopped me was it would look as if I wanted to pick me nose. Bloody good stew, didn’t you think? Wanted to say so at the time; only I couldn’t express my appreciation with Dick’s prim bloody vocabulary.”
“Oh, General!” said Mrs. Singleton. “This is serious, and Carl Spruheim’s waiting.”
“Quite right, m’dear, but you might tell Elsa—wouldn’t want her to think I didn’t like it, eh? She spotted me right away, Superintendent. All your fault, Anty—you must learn to keep your voice down—it used to give your poor mother headaches, y’know.”
Mrs. Singleton’s face twitched for an instant into the haggard dimension of tragedy; then she recovered her smiling mask.
“How did you guess, Mr. Pibble?” she said.
“Sir Ralph’s ears are not the same shape as the ones on the Epstein bust; besides, there were a lot of little things which made it look as if you were putting on a play for my benefit.”
“My dear fellow,” said the General with a sudden ferocity, “we’ve been putting on a bloody play for the last twenty years.”
“I take it the Admiral is not in the house,” said Pibble.
“Right,” said the General.
“Can you tell me where he is?”
“No. He’s gone missing. Disappeared completely. Bloody inconvenient.”
“Since when?”
“Went the morning Deakin was found. Just walked away and hasn’t come back. Done it before a couple of times, you know. First time when my wife died, ’smatter of fact.”
“We’re not frightfully worried about him,” said Mrs. Singleton. “But you can just imagine what a hullabaloo there’d be if the papers got hold of it. That’s why we couldn’t have let the local police in; they’d have spotted the trick at once, and if we hadn’t tried it they’d have raised a terrible hue and cry after Uncle Dick.”
“Whose actual idea was it to get someone down from London?” said Pibble, inquisitive about the tiny discrepancy that had been worrying him.
“Harvey’s,” said the General.
“The General’s,” said Mrs. Singleton in the same breath, then glanced sharply at the old man.
“… as much as it was anyone’s,” he carried on, as though there had been no full stop after Harvey’s name, “but we all more or less hammered it out together. Anty’s quite right, it’d be bloody chaos if this got out, but I won’t blame you if you don’t see it that way. Not that it affects Deakin’s death, you realize. All that happened before.”
“Do you mind if I go over it again?” said Pibble. “Everything was smooth and normal, except for Deakin’s love life, and then he committed suicide. Sir Richard left next morning—yesterday morning. You decided he might be gone for a longish period, agreed between yourselves to get a policeman down from London, and rang up by lunchtime.”
“I know it sounds terribly quick,” said Mrs. Singleton, “but we do know Uncle Dick very well, and it was only just in case. If he’d come back, then everything would have been straightforward.”
“I see,” said Pibble. He hated it. It all sounded quite reasonable, according to their crazy, highhanded version of reason—very much the General’s style of practical joke, in fact—and only sottish Mr. Waugh’s sullen grumblings to set against it. And, by God, the caption to the funeral photograph among the press cuttings!
“How long was Sir Richard away the first time he disappeared?” he asked.
“About ten days,” said Mrs. Singleton.
“Near enough,” said the General, but there was a brooding flash of doubt below the shorn eyebrows, as though he sensed a pitfall; for the second time in five minutes Pibble was conscious of the lionlike past, the muscled majesty, moving wary through the ambushed scrub, who now lived moodily eccentric, the prime specimen behind the bars of Harvey Singleton’s zoo. He liked the setup less than ever.
“All right,” he said. “I don’t see that there’s any real need to tell the Coroner about Sir Richard’s disappearance. The only snag I can see is that one of you would normally give evidence at the inquest, but now you’ve shaved I don’t think that’s possible, unless Sir Richard comes back in time. Either you or your husband could do the identification, Mrs. Singleton—he’ll have to be there in any case, as he found the body. How deaf is Sir Richard, by the way?”
“Middling,” said the General. “He’s worst when he’s bored. I found it bloody hard to hit it off right—you may have noticed.”
“In any case,” said Mrs. Singleton, “Uncle Dick took sleeping tablets.”
“Neither of us used to need much sleep,” said the General. “Now we’re old we need it but can’t get it. Most nights we sit up till about two, grunting at each other about this and that. Then we toddle upstairs and dope ourselves into dreamland.”
“Well,” said Pibble. “shall we go and settle the Coroner’s worries? And Mr. Singleton’s, too, I suppose.”
The General allowed himself another of his happy cackles.
“You needn’t fret about Harvey,” he said. “Always makes his plans three layers deep—learnt it from me. D’you want this room locked up?”
Trap question. Pibble looked around the room slowly, the nape of his neck prickling. The little door through which the Claverings had come seemed to be at the top of a spiral stair in the thickness of the wall. They must have rummaged through the room already, but hadn’t had time to clear up the detritus of the General’s quick change act.
“No,” he said, “unless you feel it is possible that something has happened to Sir Richard in his absence. In that case it might just be worth while making the room proof against interference. If it didn’t mess up household arrangements, cleaning and so on, I’d advise you to lock both doors and keep the keys.”
“You lock up, General,” said Mrs. Singleton, “and I’ll take Mr. Pibble to see Carl. You’d better keep out of the way, I suppose.”
The General grunted.
Down the stairs Pibble lagged, worried sick with syntax and shoes. Uncle Dick took sleeping tablets. There should have been an empty niche in the shoe cupboard. Took, took, took. Mrs. Singleton, two steps below him and to his right, moved down the gradient with the creamy suppleness of a skier in a slow-motion film. Took. Could she use the past tense, in that particular sentence, when everyone else wa
s so painstakingly in the present? Yes, she could, but there hadn’t been a gap for the shoes the Admiral ought to have been wearing when he walked away. Took. She was beautiful, sugary, irresistible, like a box of homemade fudge. But took was wrong, and the General had switched the tense back to the present very smoothly, and then had spoiled things by asking a question which demonstrated that he wanted to know how suspicious Pibble was. Took. Put it with Mr. Waugh’s tirade and the shoes and the funeral photograph, and then there was a decent chance that the old hero was dead, the quiet one who had handled his boats so brilliantly. If he’d just disappeared, and had done so before, what cause was there for Deakin to hang himself? And it must have been that way round—three or four days, Waugh had said. But if he was dead, and they were trying to keep that from Fleet Street, then. . .Pibble remembered the photograph in Deakin’s room, and Harvey Singleton’s impatience with the coxswain’s yen to be curator of a museum commemorating the Raid: perhaps the idea of missing the Admiral’s funeral was enough to make life not worth living for such a man. Took. In that case, what the hell had they done with the body? Buried it under Capability Brown’s smooth-flowing turf? Not their style.
“How do you do?” he found himself saying.
“Spruheim,” said the blond man, holding out a robotic arm and hand for him to shake.
“I’ll leave you to it,” said Mrs. Singleton, and shut the door of the chintzy little room on the ground floor.
He was a caricature of a Prussian, with his yellow hair, pale eyes, and angular jaw just shaped for the dueling scar which, mysteriously, did not adorn it.
“Don’t tell me you were in the Raid, too?” said Pibble.
The Coroner made a noise which might have been a laugh or a clearing of the throat.
“Prisoner of war?” he said. “No, Superintendent, I left Germany in 1937. I used to practice law in Hamburg, but I am a Jew and by 1936 all my clients had found it wiser to consult an Aryan lawyer, so I came to England and found work as a baggage clerk. Fortunately your government interned me during the period of hostilities, which gave me time to explore the bizarre confusion which passes for law in these islands. So here I am, a respected solicitor in Southampton, trusted in great houses to deal adequately with the demise of servants. There is something fishy about this one, ha! or you would not be here.”
Crippen, thought Pibble, here’s another reason why they wanted me; they couldn’t afford to have this unbluffable intelligence taking charge.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They’re not the sort of people who need reasons for doing whatever they fancy. There are one or two little things which worry me, but I can’t say how far they aren’t just a reflection of the oddity of the whole setup. You find yourself hypnotized, you know.”
“Who better? There is no doubt that Deakin hanged himself, Kirtle says.”
“None, I think. I’d just like to clear up some aspects of the motive and leave the whole thing tidy. I’ve one witness who says he was crossed in love, and I hope to talk to another this afternoon, and that should leave everything shipshape. There will be some straightforward medical evidence, with no holes in it, and that ought to be that, with luck.”
“The Claverings have always enjoyed excellent luck,” said Mr. Spruheim. “Tuesday afternoon?”
“Fine.”
“And there are no elements in the, ha! setup which you might wish to hint to me should be glossed over?”
“Not that I know of. Mrs. Singleton will give evidence of identity and Mr. Singleton will give evidence of finding the body. Sergeant Maxwell will give technical evidence. Dr. Kirtle will give medical evidence. Sergeant Maxwell, and perhaps a Miss Maureen Finnick, whom I haven’t yet interviewed, will give evidence about the motive. That should be the lot.”
“And neither Sir Ralph nor Sir Richard will attend,” said Mr. Spruheim. “I suppose they are wise—at least it will mean fewer journalists cluttering up my little court. Good. That seems easy enough. You will let me know if there are any aspects which you feel require, ha! delicate handling, will you not, Superintendent?”
“Of course,” said Pibble.
The Coroner scratched at the corner of his jaw with long, irritable strokes, like a cat clawing at a sofa leg. He was fixed, poor chap. He’d given Pibble every opportunity to voice the merest soupçon of a doubt and Pibble had refused, but still he knew that something was being kept back.
“So be it,” he said, at last. “The last thing that any of us desires is a fuss—see how English I have become! Now I have business to conduct with Mr. Singleton—he does the conducting and I simply follow the baton to the best of my poor abilities—so I will wish you luck with your Miss Finnick. I believe I have had some dealing with her before, in some equally trivial matter. She has achieved a certain, ha! notoriety in this district, I understand.”
He bowed like a doll hinged at the waist, but the expected click of heels did not follow.
“Superintendent, I am truly sorry that I have not been able to help you in your difficulties.”
“Not at all,” said Pibble, wondering whether there was something extra this odd man knew. No way of asking him, though—no natural way. Both men tried to open the door for each other, both to bow each other out first; Spruheim, with his longer reach and stronger formality, won each time. Harvey Singleton was in the hall, managing to look as if he had been on his way from X to Y when interrupted by this polite jostling.
“You’ve finished, then,” he said heavily. “Carl, I have left a lot of notes which I have made about the planning application in the blue folder on the left-hand side of my desk. You’ll find our new secretary, Judith Scoplow, in there.”
“And she will not bite my head off?” said Mr. Spruheim.
“Far from it,” said Mr. Singleton with an unexpected nuance of warmth. “While you look through the notes, I will conduct the Superintendent to wherever he wants to go next.”
Ah, Crippen, thought Pibble, everywhere that Mary went, is it? I’ll fix him. He tried to make a noise like an embarrassed cough.
“I really must disappear for a bit,” he said, “if you’ll show me where the toilet is—I’m sorry. And please don’t wait. I ought to talk to someone called Maureen Finnick, but I’m sure I can find her myself if you’ll just tell me which way to go.”
Mr. Singleton studied his large, many-paneled wrist-watch.
“Two-forty-three,” he said. “You’ve just about got time if you aren’t too long in the bog. The first of the afternoon coachloads is due to reach her stall at three-thirty-seven. But I’m afraid I have to insist that you must be accompanied on your way there because you will have to pass through the Lion Ground, and our insurers are—quite properly—very strict. I’ll tell Anty to meet you here in ten minutes.”
“Fine,” lied Pibble, irritated at his failure to fix anything or anyone.
“The bog’s the second on the left up there,” said Mr. Singleton. “Maureen Finnick, eh?”
Mr. Spruheim glanced at him with a flicker of his pale eyes. A telephone rang on the hall table, and Mr. Singleton picked it up.
“Of course not,” Pibble heard him saying as he moved up the passage. “I don’t care if he owns half Texas—let me talk to him. Hello, hello … Now, sir, I understand you wish to photograph our haunted Abbey by moonlight. Yes. I’m afraid, sir, that we have an absolute …”
The heavy mahogany of the cloakroom door cut him off. Pibble, having taken advantage of his immurement among the gray and peacock tiles, mooned about looking at brown photographs of groups of officers outside messes, others of polo teams posed under palm trees, and others which were barely more than enlarged snaps of nondescript scenes of military and naval activity. One large frame held nearly a dozen photographs with donnish captions and a label at the bottom saying that they were taken by the Signals officer at the St. Quentin Raid, who had nothing to do after his wirelesses ha
d been temporarily put out of commission by friendly action. (Pibble remembered about that: the General had personally removed a selection of vital valves so that he was unable to receive what looked like becoming a series of pusillanimous messages from London.) “Audis quo strepitu janua?” said one caption: “Major Singleton in Horatian mood.” It was difficult to make out what was actually going on in the doorway, and the central figure had his back to the camera, but once you realized that the figure was Singleton, the seemingly contextless flurry of action (there was another uniformed figure crouched at the far doorpost, apparently throwing something through a broken panel, as well as a corpse on the threshold) locked itself into a pattern of violence all centered on the muscled buttocks which were propelling the tall body—automatic weapon dangling low in the right hand, left shoulder hunched forward as a single-purpose projectile at the crack where the arched doors met.
Curious, thought Pibble. He ought to have a stammer or something, with all that aggression locked away under the computer casing—or perhaps the sheer drabness of his speech style is an equivalent. And another thing: he’s brainy, quick, self-confident but he keeps making elementary mistakes, such as not being surprised about Maureen Finnick, and then bringing her up with such belated emphasis that even the Coroner was bound to notice there was something a bit off. Or look at it another way: allow fantasy full rein and suppose they’d done away with the old Admiral (Lord knows why), then who’s responsible for this loopy charade? Who’d agreed it would work? The General, probably, more out of pleasure in the absurdity of the melodrama than for down-to-earth practical reasons; Mrs. Singleton, perhaps, out of the inbred habit of getting away with the unforgivable; but sane, business-efficiency Harvey Singleton? He must have known what the odds against it were.
Or … ah, hell, leave it for the moment. Don’t flush lav, because that’s the signal Mrs. Singleton will be waiting for—sneak out and look for Elsa. He did so, conscious of the technical impossibility of tiptoeing around a house like this while trying to create the impression (if anyone should pop out of a door) that he’d lost his bearings.
The Old English Peep Show Page 7
