The Old English Peep Show

by Peter Dickinson

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said. “I expect you know a lot of Lesbians—being a policeman, I mean. Do you think Queen Elizabeth the First was one?”

  “I was always taught she was really a man,” said Pibble. There seemed to be three sorts of whiskey, so he chose the palest.

  “Oh, you mustn’t put water in that!” said Miss Scoplow. “The General will throw a fit. Are you all right, Mr. Pibble?”

  “No,” said Pibble. He poured water into his drink and took two big mouthfuls. Normally he didn’t like whiskey, but this was delicious. Miss Scoplow was watching him with her exaggerated wide-eyed stare.

  “I do think you’d be better off with aspirin,” she said.

  “No, I’m better with this, thank you. What can I get you?”

  “I don’t drink, thank you very much.”

  “I think you should, this time.”

  She looked at him again, a quite different gaze, remote and for once self-concerned.

  “Something sweet, then,” she said.

  Pibble mixed vodka with Italian vermouth and put a lump of ice into it. Miss Scoplow took several small sips.

  “Who’s dead now?” she said, at last.

  “You knew about Sir Richard?”

  “The Admiral? No, for heaven’s sake. He was all right at lunch—luncheon, I mean.”

  “That was the General pretending to be Sir Richard.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Mr. Pibble?”

  “How did what he told you about lions tie up with what you’d been typing?”

  “Well, it was a bit funny, because sometimes he said the exact opposite of his notes. I just thought he wasn’t thinking what he was saying—men are often like that.”

  Bet they are with you around, thought Pibble.

  “I’m afraid they’re both dead now,” he said. “The Admiral was killed four nights ago by the General in a mock duel—I believe you heard the shots. Now the lion in the Tiger Pit, the one they call Bonzo, has caught the General and killed him.”

  “Mr. Pibble,” said Miss Scoplow with great earnestness, “will you promise you aren’t teasing me? This is exactly Sir Ralph’s idea of a joke, and it isn’t fair on people like me who have no sense of humor.”

  “I promise,” said Pibble. “It isn’t my idea of a joke, either. You heard me talking to a doctor in London about it.”

  “Oh, poor Anty!” cried Miss Scoplow, her face puckering like a child’s at the death of a goldfish.

  “I’m all right,” said Mrs. Singleton, from the door. “They were a couple of silly old buffers, and really they’d have liked the idea of going out in a great blaze of nonsense like this. Mr. Pibble, I hope you’ll stay to supper. I don’t know what it’ll be, because Elsa’s in a tantrum about someone pinching one of her buckets and her ball of string.”

  “I’m afraid that was me,” said Pibble.

  “Christ!” said Mrs. Singleton. “Thank God I didn’t know!”

  “And I took a boiled chicken out of the fridge.”

  “A boiled. . .Oh, it doesn’t matter about that.” Mrs. Singleton produced her mellow giggle as easily as if no frost had come to blacken the honeyed hours of autumn. “You must have been hungry. That was Uncle Dick’s lion bait for getting Bonzo back into his cage: he used to marinate it in aniseed. Mr. Pibble, I hope you will accept my apologies for the General’s—my father’s behavior. I can’t think what came over him, trying to kill you like that. He had such extremely strict ideas about the duties of hospitality.”

  Now this was play-acting, from fluttering eyelashes to pleading palms. Pibble looked at the wide cheekbones under the Wedgwood eyes and noticed for the first time the pretty little mounds of muscle, product of much smiling, bunched on them like an elf’s biceps. Callousness did not appear to be a recessive strain in her heredity.

  “Perhaps he didn’t think of me as a guest,” he said sourly. “I came down here to do a job.”

  “Of course,” said Mrs. Singleton. It is a characteristic of noble families that their honor can be satisfied with great facility, when it suits them. She sniffed the inside of the cocktail shaker, ladled ice into it, and added careless splashes from half a dozen bottles, talking while she did so.

  “Judith, I’m afraid you’re going to find this very unsettling. I promise you no one will think any the worse of you whatever you decide to do, but Harvey and I would both like you to stay if you can bear it. In any case we’re going to have to put a bit of overtime on you, getting ready for the bloodsucking scribblers who’re bound to come flocking in tomorrow. Harvey’s making a list of what he wants at the moment.”

  She shook the shaker with great dash and poured out two tumblers of milky fluid.

  “So we’re all going to have a working evening,” she said. “Superintendent, Harvey said something about your wanting Mr. Waugh to help you.”

  “If possible,” said Pibble.

  “Can you arrange that, Judith?” said Mrs. Singleton. “Get him up here at once—he’ll be at the Spotted Lion, not the Clavering Arms. Talk to the landlord—his name’s Mr. Looby—and ask him to get one of his customers to drive Mr. Waugh up here. Say it’s for me, and it’s urgent, but don’t say what it’s about. Can you manage that?”

  “I think so,” said Miss Scoplow, in a shaky whisper. Pibble could see a line of white-and-purple markings just below her lip, where her upper teeth had been biting. She walked out with desperate steadiness. Mrs. Singleton relaxed.

  “Poor little squit,” she said. “She cheered up the old boys’ lives a lot, you know—and Harvey’s very struck with her. But we ruin everything we touch sooner or later, everything. My mother … Never mind. Work is the only cure. I believe you want to do some telephoning; you can use this one as soon as Judith’s off the line. You’re being very gentle with us, Superintendent, considering. Thank you very much. Supper will be at eight, with luck. Elsa’s rages don’t last long.”

  She smiled a we-understand-each-other smile, picked up her tumblers, and swayed out. Am I mad? thought Pibble. Nobody can really behave like that. What’s done is done: no hint yet of what’s done cannot be undone. Even supposing she was putting on a show to help Miss Scoplow feel less weepy, could she have produced that laugh? Of course no one has to like and admire her own dad—what had the General said about sacrificing his wife and daughter?—or her own uncle. But there was something about the quick rattle of command, the sure grip on the scepter, which seemed to accord ill with a deep dynastic wound. And Mr. Singleton: Pibble had been fretted by his manner even when they were walking down to the car park—an odd charged confidence, like a cricketer batting on a horrible wicket but dead on form—was it only the residual euphoria of action? Certainly the photograph in the lavatory implied that violence, aimed explosions of destruction, had once been a necessary part of his nature; perhaps he could switch it on but not switch it off again without a few flashes of shorting blueness and charred electrodes. At least that would account for the double shooting of the lion.

  Pibble picked up the telephone; a hoarse voice was saying, “I’m sure someone will be glad to bring him up, Miss Cyril! Be a gent and run Mr. Waugh up to the House—it’s for Miss Anty. Yes, that’s all right, Miss, he’ll be with you in five minutes.” Click.

  Mrs. Pibble had a comedy show on, to judge by the surflike ebb and return of laughter.

  “Hello, pigeon, I’ve got bad news, I’m afraid … No, not really, but I shan’t get home tonight. I’m stuck down at Herryngs … No … Yes, but not quite like that—there are excitements and excitements … No, it’s just more complicated than anyone had thought, but I ought to get it sorted out tomorrow. I’ll tell you all about it then … Can’t you put them off? … Oh, all right, at least it’ll move you up a couple of rungs in your coffee circle … No, of course I didn’t mean that, and anyway I’m a snob. Forget it. D’you want me to b
ring you a toy gallows? … Yes, really, apparently they sell like hot cakes … No, in the House … I’m sorry, I am a bit tired, darling, that’s why. What about you? … Oh Crippen, but I told them in my letter … Well, they’ll just have to take it back and try again. I’m sorry—how infuriating for you … Good. Go to bed early … Yes, I’ll try to. Bye, pigeon. I love you … Bye.”

  Extraordinary the emollient aura of great names—she’d even sounded rather pleased that he’d been cornered into spending a night under that myth-reverberating roof; odds were if he rang up again the line would be engaged. Twenty to eight: the Ass. Com. should be back in his flat in five minutes. Wonder who she’d tell first?

  Pibble turned at a stagy throat-clearing from the doorway; Mr. Waugh was there, still in his overcoat and heavy fawn muffler. “I understand you required my services, sir,” he said.

  “Yes, please,” said Pibble. “Take off your coat and sit down and I’ll tell you what I want. Drink? Whiskey?”

  “Daren’t touch it, sir. A couple of glasses lay me clean out.” Mr. Waugh suddenly decided to discard the obsequious style. “Fact is I’ve overdone the booze all my life and now my bleeding system won’t stand it. Saw me this morning, din’cher? Know what got me to that state? Three half pints of bitter and a couple of piddling little ports. I’ll have a dry vermouth with a lump of ice in it. What’s up?”

  “Sir Ralph’s had an accident,” said Pibble. “It’s vaguely connected with Deakin’s death, and also with what you were telling me this morning.”

  He found that he’d dropped his voice and was trying to watch the crack at the hinges of the door out of his peripheral vision.

  “I read a lot of spy stories,” said Mr. Waugh. “They usually put ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ on.”

  He shoved his bulk out of his armchair and shut the door. Then he came to sit beside Pibble on the over-welcoming sofa.

  “I played Watson for eight months on a northern tour,” he said, “but I don’t recall Holmes mentioning Wagner.”

  “Perhaps he just scraped away at his violin when he wanted to hold private conversations,” said Pibble. “The problem is this, Mr. Waugh: I’ve reached a stage where normally I’d get another policeman to help, but the Singletons have suggested that I ask you to stand in, so that we don’t have Fleet Street crawling all over the place before they’re ready for them. If you don’t mind—”

  “Dead, is he?” interrupted Mr. Waugh. “What about the Admiral?”

  “He’s dead, too, I’m afraid.”

  “Jesus Ker-riced!” said Mr. Waugh with great solemnity. “What the hell are you playing at, telling me? You know I’ve only got to give one of my pals on the Street a tinkle—and I still send Christmas cards to half a dozen of ’em—and I’d earn meself a juicy five hundred quid. More maybe. And I’m under notice here, good as. My fanny, but you’re a bleeding innocent if ever I met one.”

  Pibble felt his face go chill and sweat start from his palms. Of course an old heavy like Mr. Waugh would know a nasty clutch of gossip columnists. What now? Offer him, vicariously, a three-year contract? Threaten him with continuous police chivying here­after? (It had been done.) Get Mr. Singleton …

  “You’re all right, as it happens,” Mr. Waugh went on. “I owe you nothing, and I owe Mr. Harvey Singleton less than nothing. Anty’s a nice enough lass, but not five hundred nicker nice. But I’m not the one to set a pack of news hounds scratching away at the Claverings’ graves like dogs on a rubbish dump—I know I couldn’t live with myself afterward. I was playing an Air-Raid Warden in The Morning Star, Emlyn Williams, when the news of the Raid came through. Not in the West End—Cardiff, as a matter of fact—but it was on the wireless that morning. Never seen an audience like it. They cheered every line, almost, despite they were a lot of bleeding Welshmen. Made me proud to be in uniform. Sorry, better not have any more of this. I’m a bit pissed already. What do you want me to do?”

  “The first thing might be a little tricky,” said Pibble. “I want to ring up my boss and I don’t want anyone listening on extensions—that means the Singletons or Miss Scoplow. I’m not trying to keep any nasty secrets from them, but I want to be able to say what I feel like without worrying whether I’m upsetting somebody. I’ve had one call overheard already today, and that made a considerable mess of things.”

  “Mate,” said Mr. Waugh, “I feel for you. The whole of the Main Block is bugged so that Mr. Harvey Singleton can listen to the visitors saying ‘Ooh’ and ‘Aah’ and check on whether his staff are doing what he tells ’em without moving his bleeding arse from his desk chair. Right little electronic genius, he is. How do I set about that, then? I’ve played my share of police sergeants, but I haven’t the authority here, if you see what I mean.”

  “Yes, you have,” said Pibble. “I say so. All you need do is nose around; if they aren’t all in one room, ask where the other one is. If they are, ask how often Bonzo was fed and who fed him. Take as much time about it as you can. Write it all down, slowly.”

  “Bonzo?”

  “The big lion in the Tiger Pit.”

  “Christ! Did he get one of them?”

  “Both.”

  “Christ!”

  “Think you can manage that? All you have to do is make it impossible for them to use the extension continuously. If they keep picking it up and putting it down, I shall hear them. Let’s see if it’s free.”

  There were voices in the receiver. Miss Scoplow was saying, “So if you could be here at nine o’clock, Harvey will be telling everyone about the special arrangements for tomorrow. He’ll explain what it’s all about then.” “Sure and easy,” said Miss Finnick’s voice, “I’m just about trustworthy to be there betimes. And please, Miss Judith, if ’ee have any tidings of that funny liddle Lunnon gentleman as was quizzing me this afternoon, I’d be grateful of hearing ’em.”

  “Oh, he’s all right,” said Miss Scoplow. “Is that all, Maureen? I’ve a lot of telephoning to do.” “Aye, that be all. God be with ’ee.” Click.

  Pibble put his receiver down, counted five, and picked it up again. The earpiece was full of the rhythmic chicker of dialing.

  “Wait a moment, Miss Scoplow,” he said.

  The chicker stopped.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Pibble. May I have the phone for five minutes? My boss should be in his flat now, but he might go out again later. I’ve taken quite a bit more responsibility than I’m entitled to, and I’ll be in a real mess if I don’t get him to O.K. what I’m doing.”

  A brief deadness—her hand must be over the speaker. So Single­ton was with her. Then she said, “Of course that’s all right. Harvey and I can go over to the Kitchen Wing—there’s another line there.”

  “Oh, in that case I could just as easily go over.”

  The deadness again, rather longer, then a rustling and Mr. Singleton’s voice.

  “Pibble? Best if we go over, as a matter of fact. I have someone I must see over there, so you may stay where you are.”

  “OK, fine.” Click.

  But who? The Kitchen Wing had looked as black as a slab of slate in a Welsh churchyard when they were talking in the drive.

  “That makes life easier, Mr. Waugh,” said Pibble. “If you could just check that Mr. Singleton and Miss Scoplow do go over to the other wing. . .D’you happen to know if the telephone over there is on a different line?”

  “That is correct, sir.”

  “Then all you’ve got to do is go and make small talk to Mrs. Singleton.”

  “Will she be in the mood for small talk, sir?”

  Interesting point. Pibble looked at him. The big oval face seemed uncommon white.

  “Yes,” he said, “I think she will. She was very matter-of-fact about her father’s death when I talked to her ten minutes back. But in any case you don’t have to say anything; just see she’s not list
ening in. There they go, by the sound of it.”

  Mr. Waugh crossed to the door as the voices outside lost their volume. The erect butlerine stance seemed to have wilted, but he edged the door quietly open and peeked through the cranny. Then he nodded and went out.

  The Ass. Cam. was in his bath, his man said.

  “Get him out,” barked Pibble edgily. “Tell him it’s Pibble.”

  Clunk, and then silence.

  At the prospect of saddling someone else with his load of guilt and doubt, Pibble began to breathe like a man in a fever, quick and shallow. In effect he had killed—he, Pibble, personally—the last English hero. Now he was busy grubbing up trifles to show how far the legend had sickened, how much the whole of Herryngs smelt of the sweetish odor of decaying timber. He needed horribly to be told that he had done, was doing, right. And there was the way he’d completely shoveled aside all standard police procedure: it’d been his original brief, but not in any words he could use to justify himself, just hints and …

  “You in trouble, Jimmy?” said the thin, tired voice. “It’s damn cold out here in the hall.”

  “Sorry, sir, but it really couldn’t wait till tomorrow, you’ll agree when I tell you.” Pibble realized he was gabbling but couldn’t stop. “The whole thing has turned out the most horrible mess, they’re both dead and he tried to kill me three times, and—”

  “James! Pull yourself together, man. Who’s dead beside the servant who committed suicide?”

  “Sorry, sir. Both the Claverings are dead. A lion ate them.”

  “Jimmy, are you sure you’re all right? If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you’d been on the bottle.”

  “I’ve had one whiskey, sir.”

  “Carry on, then. A lion has eaten both Sir Ralph and Sir Richard Clavering. Not at one sitting, I take it.”

  “No, sir. Sir Ralph killed Sir Richard in a duel four days ago and fed him to the man-eating lion they keep here because that was his last wish, he told me they were both drunk at the time—”