The Old English Peep Show
Page 20
When he woke, it was light; his neck was locked as stiff as rigor mortis. Miss Scoplow was already in the office, happy (for the moment) in a torrent of efficiency as she tried to persuade sleepy young men in Southampton that there were other things for ten coachloads of newly landed tourists to do than visit Herryngs. She bit her Biro, made accurate notes about money refunds, cooed, and cajoled. The sergeant who had made no progress in the night, having been wrongly told by Pibble to try London, gawped at her in sleepy adoration. Elsa evolved a vast breakfast and stalked furiously around the house with salvers of grilled kidneys while coppers cringed and mumbled. Mrs. Singleton stayed in bed.
Pibble mooned unhappily about, hankering for pity, dimly trying to think of an excuse to interview Miss Finnick again. Mr. Chanceley was out, the hotel said, doing the rounds of local photographic shops. The day was clear and chill, spendthrift with the last gold of summer. The hospital was cagey about Mr. Waugh’s chances.
He found the control switch for the fountain in a little mahogany box just inside the main entrance, and moodily began to spell out his own name in wet, twenty-foot-high, ultra-slow Morse. He’d got as far as the second “B” when there was a hooting and a puff of dust down at the far end of the drive, where the enormous perspective of limes almost met in a point. Rapidly a cavalcade of cars, four of them, rushed toward him, swooped around the pool, and braked at the bottom of the steps. No door opened until the fourth car was still, and then all eight doors of the hinder two cars flapped forward, like the wing carapaces of beetles, and a squad of men, bearded and corduroyed and draped with the glistening gadgets of their profession, poured out and knelt or squatted or lay around the base of the steps. Only when they were ready did one door of the front car open and a man step nonchalantly out. Immediately all the cameras started to click and buzz. Head bowed, the man walked somberly up the first three steps; then, as if he’d remembered something important, he turned and barked an order to the police cars, holding his head at just the right angle for the cameras to catch the iron jaw and eagle profile.
Pibble remembered reading about an odd phenomenon of the desert; you never see more than one vulture at a time patrolling its patch of sky, an almost invisible scratch on the blueness; but when it begins to spiral down toward a dying beast, the vultures patrolling leagues away observe its change of movement and flock to see what it has found. So now.
“Hello, Jimmy,” said the man when he reached the top of the steps. “Everything under control?”
“I think so,” said Pibble. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you, Harry.”
With a noncommittal grunt (risky to be affable with a potential scapegoat) Harry Brazzil slouched into Herryngs.
About the Author
Peter Dickinson was born in Africa but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of Punch, and since then has earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for children and adults. His books have been published in several languages throughout the world.
The recipient of many awards, Dickinson has been shortlisted nine times for the prestigious Carnegie Medal for children’s literature and was the first author to win it twice. The author of twenty-one crime and mystery novels for adults, Dickinson was also the first to win the Gold Dagger Award of the Crime Writers’ Association for two books running: Skin Deep (1968) and A Pride of Heroes (1969).
A collection of Dickinson’s poetry, The Weir, was published in 2007. His latest book, In the Palace of the Khans, was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal.
Dickinson has served as chairman of the Society of Authors and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2009 for services to literature.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1969 by Peter Dickinson
Cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-5040-0366-7
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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