The Old English Peep Show

by Peter Dickinson

  “Slower, Jimmy. Sir Ralph told you this?”

  “Yes, sir. I had a hunch something was wrong with Deakin’s suicide, that’s the coxswain I came down to see about, and the lion had something to do with it, so I went to look for evidence in the pit where they keep the lion and Sir Ralph followed me and let the lion out but I managed to climb up to a sort of balcony where Sir Ralph was and he pretended he hadn’t known I was there.” (Pull yourself together. Talk in short sentences, slowly. Drown the squeak of hysteria with deep, manly tones. Try.) “He told me all about the Raid, sir, and then about the duel. It was over a girl. He was trying to catch me off my guard, sir, and he did and near as dammit threw me over again, and then the lion climbed up to the balcony and we ran away and he tripped me up but the lion ran past and got him instead, and—”

  “Dear me. What a comfort I didn’t send Harry down. What next?”

  “Then Mr. Singleton, that’s the son-in-law, killed the lion, and then he asked me not to set the police machine going until tomorrow morning, which would give them time to prepare for an invasion of journalists. Apparently the force down here has a permanent line to William Hickey direct. I said yes, because there’s a couple of things I want to check on before the whole situation sets hard, and—”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “James!”

  “Nothing tangible, sir, I mean. Except for some noises which somebody heard in the middle of the night, that is, and she’s not the world’s best witness. But there’s several things I feel don’t really fit in …”

  A longish silence, and then the tired sigh.

  “I hope I don’t have to tell you, Jimmy, what you’re asking me. I can’t believe that a few oddities of behavior are remotely exceptional in the milieu of Herryngs. Will you please assure me that you are in full possession of your senses, not suffering from shock, not seeing murderers under the bed? You realize that if you put a foot wrong you are liable to release a most unrewarding stink.”

  “I’ve put all my feet wrong already, sir.” The hysterical squeak was back and Pibble tried to modulate into his lower register—it didn’t sound good. “I mean if I’d gone quietly this morning and just sniffed at the evidence that was shown me and said yes, yes, I could have come away by now with nothing but the suicide of a whiskery old coxswain to show for it, but they’d have been getting away with … I mean I felt uneasy this morning and I feel the same again now. First time there was something in it, and there may be again. But I’ll take it very carefully, sir. Only I wish to Christ I hadn’t killed the General.”

  “From what you told me just now, it sounded as though he was entirely responsible for his own demise.”

  “I suppose so, sir.”

  “All right, Jimmy. The position is this: you have found one very gruesome skeleton in the Herryngs cupboard and think there may be another. The family want a lull, so that they can stand by to repel Fleet Street. You are asking me to sanction that lull while you look for your second skeleton. I hereby do so. Presumably you didn’t ring me up at the office because your local bobbies aren’t the only ones with a direct line to Hickey, so if anything more comes up you’d better ring me here. I’m going out to see my first blue opera, but I’ll be back soon after eleven. You can ring me then.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Take it easy, Jimmy. I trust you will forgive my saying so, but you must recognize that if half of what you say is true you have been under a considerable strain. What I said about shock just now was not intended as a joke.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You do understand me, don’t you? I have to trust you, Jimmy, because you’re the only one there, but if I’d the slightest chance I’d take you off and put someone else on—even Harry Brazzil.”

  The voice was deliberate, bloodless, cruel. It was as though the Ass. Com. had taken a bucket of icy water and sloshed it into the receiver, forcing it along the wires so that it should gush chillingly out over poor Pibble, driving him out of his self-pity, back into sanity and responsibility.

  “I quite understand, sir. I’ll play it down the middle.”

  “Good. If anything really urgent comes up, I’ll be at the Cruelty Theatre, Seat D8, but I don’t fancy being paged while Donna Whatnot’s being raped in top C. Try and ring me here at half past eleven, even if nothing’s happened.”

  “Right, sir. I hope you enjoy your evening.”

  “The things I do for Art.”

  Click.

  Another small whiskey would be excusable. It really tasted like five quid a bottle—probably was, too. However hard Singleton had wrestled with the finances, the General had still talked of himself as rich, a rich old hero. With his glass in his hand Pibble went out to look for Mr. Waugh and, led by the resonance of a woman’s voice, found him in a pretty little sitting room, a bit Voguey with its persimmon walls, two doors down the corridor. Mr. Waugh was cradling an empty glass and looking very somber while Mrs. Singleton, spilt lissomely across the arm of a chaise longue, told him a tale about grooms dead before the war; she did the rustic accents with great accuracy but managed all the time to underpin them with the subliminal presence of her own expensive vowels. She nodded at Pibble as he came in, and carried on to the end of her story. Mr. Waugh smiled gamely, drowned in his own puddle of misery.

  “I’m afraid I’ve made a bloomer, Mr. Pibble,” she said when she’d finished. “I didn’t realize you hadn’t told Mr. Waugh everything that had happened, so I waded right in as if he knew, and then I had to tell him—I hope that’s all right. Since then we’ve been talking small talk.”

  “I should have told him,” said Pibble. “I’m sorry, Mr. Waugh. I’m afraid it’s a very shocking business.”

  “Too right, too right,” muttered Mr. Waugh.

  “Why don’t you have another drink, Mr. Waugh?” said Mrs. Singleton. “It’s ten minutes till supper still. Mr. Waugh’s going to dine with us, Superintendent, supposing there’s anything to eat. Elsa’s in a record tantrum, banging her pans down as if she wanted to crack the Aga. I do wish you could have found a different bucket and a different bail of string.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Pibble. “Would it help if I went and apologized?”

  “Good God, man, she’d eat you,” said Mrs. Singleton. “Oh, hell, isn’t it frightful how one can’t keep off a subject once it’s sensitive, like sitting with someone everybody knows is dying and all the conversation seems to be about shrouds. Mr. Waugh, do go and get yourself another, really.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Waugh, rising. “Perhaps it would be appropriate.”

  He went out slowly, missing the handle of the door at his first attempt.

  “Poor Mr. Waugh,” said Mrs. Singleton. “He’s such a very sentimental man at heart, and just as loyal as if he really were an old family retainer. Old family retainers are the worst, actually. Elsa’s a most frightful pest, even if she does cook like a dream, but we’ll be able to pension her off now. Funny how he uses his butler act as a sort of spiritual truss; you feel he’d melt and run all over the floor without it.”

  “And Deakin?” asked Pibble.

  “Oh, he was an old sweetie, willing to do anything anyone asked—any of us asked, I mean. I’m sorry we had to tell such frightful lies about him. But really he belonged to Uncle Dick. Here’s Harvey back.”

  The euphoria of action had not worn off the tall man; as he held the door for Miss Scoplow and then chivied Mr. Waugh into taking a guest’s precedence, every gawky angle of his body seemed to throb with a subdued pleasure, though his face retained its puppet­like stolidity.

  “All is now satisfactorily arranged,” he said. “Can we do anything for you before supper, Superintendent?”

  “I want to go down and look at the Dueling Ground by moonlight, but that can wait until after supper. While I’m there, I’d like to take
a look at the dueling pistols, if you can tell me how they work. I’ll need Mr. Waugh to come with me.”

  “I would prefer it if Waugh stayed and listened to the briefing I shall be giving to all senior members of the staff.”

  “Would it be possible to brief him separately?” said Pibble.

  “Harvey,” said Mrs. Singleton, “Mr. Pibble has already bent his police conscience for us as far as it will go. It’s our turn now.”

  “Of course, of course,” said Mr. Singleton, in his walking-dead voice. “I apologize, Superintendent—I confess I have much on my mind. Judith, would you be so kind as to fetch one of those duplicated maps out of the third drawer on the left-hand side of my desk, and the big ring of keys from my safe?”

  She looked as miserable as Mr. Waugh, but she nodded and scuttled out.

  “The dueling pistols,” said Mr. Singleton, “are kept in the old icehouse, which I will mark on the map for you. I can assure you that the actual well where they stored the ice has been filled in, so you need have no apprehension of falling down it. All the equipment is there, but there is no electricity, so you will need to take a torch, which I will provide. The pistols will have been cleaned after today’s duels. You will find a small vise screwed to the bench, into which you fit one of the pistols muzzle upward. The powder flask will have been refilled, so all that is necessary is to unscrew the cap, fit the nozzle into the muzzle of the pistol, pull out the flange on the side of the flask’s neck, count three, push it back, and count another three.”

  “It works just like one of those gin-dispenser doofers in a pub,” said Mrs. Singleton.

  “Exactly,” said Mr. Singleton. “It is a measure. Next you insert a wad with the ramrod. Provided you get it in level, it will go down level. Finally you take a ball from the box on the shelf above the bench and insert that. The ball is an oblate spheroid—”

  “Not quite round, on purpose, he means,” said Mrs. Singleton.

  “Precisely,” said Mr. Singleton. “That is to say, it will only fit into the barrel along one axis. You push it down with the ramrod, which you then rap smartly on the end with the mallet provided. This has the effect of reshaping the ball into a round, and at the same time forcing it against the sides of the barrel, so that it cannot fall out if the pistol is held pointing below the horizontal.”

  “I’ve always wondered how they did that,” said Pibble.

  “Why do you want to know all this?” said Mrs. Singleton.

  “I’d like to see the place by moonlight,” said Pibble. “The General told me it was a night very like this. And if I can see how difficult it is to load the pistols it will help me to estimate how drunk they were, which may well be important.”

  “Nobody told me they were drunk!” said Miss Scoplow, in a sobbing wail behind him.

  “Of course they were, darling,” said Mrs. Singleton. “If you think about it you’ll see it makes it much better. Come and sit here and we’ll talk about something else; I’ve just been telling Mr. Waugh about the terrible old rustic who taught me to ride.”

  “Thank you, Judith,” said Mr. Singleton, taking a sheet of paper and a great bangle of keys out of her wavering hand. “Perhaps it would be best if you were to sit down and Waugh fetched you a drink. Now, Pibble, in my opinion the optimum way for a stranger is to walk down the railway line—here—where you will discover a pair of gates, to which this is the key. Immediately beyond the gates, you must strike left along a small path through the yew grove, which will lead you down to the Bowling Green. This is the icehouse, which I will mark with an ‘X,’ and this key must be turned twice in the lock. Do you wish me to repeat that?”

  “No, thanks,” said Pibble. “That’s fine. I think I’ve got it.”

  “Harvey,” said Mrs. Singleton, “you’ve forgotten to tell him how to prime the pistol.”

  “You interrupted me, darling,” said Mr. Singleton, an irritable grate in his voice which seemed out of keeping with so small an annoyance. “When you have inserted the ball and rammed it home, you rotate the pistol in the vise until the barrel is horizontal. On the right-hand side you will observe the steel against which the flint strikes when firing. You push this forward, and the action opens the priming pan, which you fill with a pinch of black powder from the flask. Close the pan. To fire the pistol, you cock the flint and pull the trigger. I think you will find it very simple.”

  “Dinner is served, Madam!” screamed a furious voice in the passage. All conversation died, and in the silence they could hear Elsa’s booted feet stumping back to her kitchen. A fresh agony of hysteria started to well up inside Pibble, like seasickness; the extra load of guilt—the bucket and the string, on top of the hero’s dreadful dying—was more than he could bear. His mouth was open to make a noise, any noise, a high mad laughter, when he felt the flesh above his elbow gripped in that curious hold that salesmen use when they wish to demonstrate that you can trust them. The laughter stifled into a gawp and Harvey Singleton led him out after the ladies. Mr. Waugh came last of all.

  Mrs. Singleton was smiling inside the small dining room.

  “It’s all right,” she said, “she’s done us proud. She’s like Beethoven, sort of—all temper and beastliness, and then producing this marvelous thing. Help yourself, Judith; it’s pâté, and then roast mutton. Harvey, she seems to have decanted some claret.”

  Elsa and Mrs. Singleton rescued that meal, Elsa by her miraculous ability to persuade you that anything she cooked, even a boiled potato, had been treated in such a way that the very essence of its nature was made manifest. Pibble remembered a journalist, a music critic who doubled in crime, telling him about an interview with an aging diva who was making a comeback in her home town, Vienna: the journalist had found the lady sitting on her bed in her hotel beside an old 78-rpm gramophone, which was tilted off the level by the folds of the eiderdown; she was playing records of her own arias, shoving the pickup arm across to where she knew the good bits were; every time the music came to a high note she would grin, lift a minatory finger as the true young voice winged out, and shout “Geschlossen!” Elsa’s cooking was like that, bang on the note, so that you had to enjoy it however miserable you felt.

  Mrs. Singleton’s performance was different, full of false notes but carrying everybody along by the almost rumbustious quality of her animal attractiveness and high spirits. In that mood she could have wished gaiety on a convocation of decimal coinists. Mr. Waugh was caught up and began bandying Creeveyish anecdotes about theatrical knights. Miss Scoplow, though she relapsed occasionally into crumpled despair, laughed a little and talked a little and did her eye-opening trick several times. Pibble, too, felt the clamminess of shock seeping away from him. Only Mr. Singleton­ seemed detached, holding his wine up to the light, tilting his glass to look at the color of the meniscus, sloshing the liquid around inside the glass so that it would release its secreted odors, and then taking a great gulp and, rattling it to and fro between his molars like a man rinsing his teeth at the dentist’s. It was a hulking, muscular wine, tasting of old cavalry boots, but Mr. Singleton seemed determined to show it who was master.

  “Is it all right, Harvey?” said Mrs. Singleton suddenly.

  “Too young still, a trifle too young.”

  Pibble shivered, clammy again. He realized all at once what echo Mrs. Singleton’s behavior had been rousing: Lady Macbeth. What’s done is done. First at the discovery of the murder, and now at the banquet. While Harvey had been lost in his trance, she had kept the chatter moving, and now she was cajoling him to do his duty by his guests, for all the world as if the blood-boltered General—no, it would have to be the blood-boltered Admiral, unless it was just the blood-boltered Bonzo—haunting him around the inside of his glass. Like Macbeth, his response to the cajoling was fitful. Mrs. Singleton rapidly rethawed the frozen conversation and forced it to tinkle on down the long slope of the evening.

  9:00 P.M.
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  Mr. Waugh, swathed to the great white gills in borrowed mufflers, waited in the shadow of the Private Wing. Pibble plodded away from him across the moon-blanched lawn, lowered himself clumsily into the ha-ha, and began the tedious walk along sleepers which were spaced exactly wrong for any comfortable stride. Three shots, Miss Scoplow had said. Couldn’t hear it because of the echoes, the General had said. Two old soaks, drunk enough to fall twice on their way down, drunk enough to make a hash of loading the pistols, but not too drunk For A to hit B and feel B’s ball fanning past his cheek. Good shooting for drunks—and Pibble had heard no echoes in the morning, just the two shots of the Americans burning powder. Nothing in it, probably; sounds are always different at night; best wait and see what Waugh heard.

  Well, then, what about the worst actress in Who’s Who in the Theatre (worst supporting actors, Sergeant Maxwell and loyal Dr. Kirtle)? A rum trio to pick, except in the hope of betrayal. What about the double shooting of the lion? And what about that gray blob, gray and spreading, like a cell under a microscope, off key, wrong? What the hell had it been? How big? Pibble could see it on his inner retina, as large as a baby’s head and pulsing slightly, changing color now—ah, Crippen, it hadn’t been like that. No use trying to force it up: that never works, the summoning of apparitions from the Endor inside the skull. They come when it suits them.

  Anyway suppose, if only for the sake of the Macbeth fantasy, that Harvey Singleton had hidden behind the General and shot the Admiral. That would account for both the death and the General’s feeling a bullet pass, but what other machinery would be needed? He’d been a brilliant shot, Dr. Kirtle had said. He went to bed late, he’d said himself, and had very good hearing, so he might have listened to the quarrel. Could he have relied on the General tipping the body over for Bonzo? Probably—the Admiral had often asked to go that way—or he could have appeared as if wakened by the shots and suggested it. That would be one old hero out of the way, and a fair chance of having the other one locked up for murder.