The Lively Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  “Ah, yes?”

  “It was the same name, and he was a minister in the Livonian Government in exile.”

  “Of course, of course—that is how I came to make the mistake. I have since consulted our specialist on the area, and I find that the Lindens are a large clan. Naturally, after the publicity, the man I was telling you about faded into the background. I believe he died in Canada.”

  “I see. Well, thank you for letting me know. I wasn’t going to do anything about it, as a matter of fact.”

  There was a pause. Dickie’s key beeped his call-sign. Mr Diarghi coughed.

  “We have a crossed line, I think,” he said.

  “What? No. No that’s OK. It’s just my son using a Morse key.”

  No wonder he sounded relieved. It’s bad enough having to ring up British citizens and tell them that you’ve been feeding them mistaken propaganda, but the sudden intrusion of a burst of amateur Morse into your conversation must produce a real chill of alarm.

  “Well, there it is,” he said rather abruptly. “I hope my misinformation hasn’t caused you any distress. I’d very much like to meet you again when I have made further progress with my report.”

  A few polite half-promises on both sides, and he rang off.

  The Morse key beeped on. Lydia blessed Paul in her heart. It was a typically male piece of behaviour to devise such a fully-functioning toy, and to explain in total seriousness that a real spy can’t expect to have his messages answered at once, supposing they get through at all. Upstairs the patient tape, triggered by the call sign, would be taking down Lydia’s contribution to the bloody farce of this imaginary war, and quite soon Richard would come home and play the part of the stupid Russian police, angrily searching the basement and shouting threats and commands, but never, somehow, finding the secret hide-out.

  Chapter 20

  “All right,” said Lydia, “I’ll get a taxi. It’s as urgent as that?”

  “Yes,” said Richard’s voice, very strained.

  “OK, I’ll come at once.”

  “Trouble?” asked Lalage as she put down the receiver.

  “Yes, I don’t know what. Can I leave Dickie here? I’ll ring you up when I’ve sorted things out.”

  “Lovely—it doesn’t matter how long. There’s a stack of food and Dad’s longing to read him Greenmantle … Oh, hell! Dad’s got some gen for you about a corpse or something.”

  “Bother. That’ll have to wait. With any luck I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “No hurry. I was going out with Paul, but he’ll be quite happy to stay here and play war-games with the other fellows, God rot their masculine guts. Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

  “No thanks. See you.”

  She was in luck. A taxi was putting down a very shaky old man two doors along the street, so when the fumbling fingers had at last counted out the tiny tip she was able to jump in, sit back on the tatty mock leather, and fret. What the hell could be happening at Devon Crescent that Richard needed her to cope with, and that he couldn’t explain on the telephone? He sounded as though there’d been someone in the room with him, too. Was it some bloodcurdling quarrel between tenants? Had Don Pumice come home half-crazed? Had the joists under the Government’s store room given way? And killed Paul Vaklins? That would account for Richard’s reticence, if he’d known Lalage might be listening. If that floor had collapsed, what about the one below? If Mrs Pumice was in, and baby Trevor, and the Evanses on the floor below that, each fall adding its weight and impact …

  The streets were all sleepy with Sunday, and the taxi buzzed rapidly through like a bluebottle in an empty kitchen. As it swung into Devon Crescent the curve of the buildings hid Number Eleven, but Lydia crouched forward with the fare and tip hot in her palm, straining to see what columns of smoke or dust were streaming from which smashed windows. Then, when her house came into view, she saw the whole façade was as calm as a tomb.

  Nearer, she saw that something was up. A small crowd was gathered round her gate, and several loiterers stood on the opposite pavement, staring. The taxi drew up behind a double-parked car, but she didn’t notice that it was a police car until she’d paid her fare. A uniformed constable stopped her at the front gate.

  “Keep back, if you please,” he said.

  “I live here. This is my house.”

  “If you’ll have a word with the officer at the front door there. Him in the grey hat.”

  Drugs? Stan Pelletier back from university with pockets full of pot? Or Mrs Pumice—she’d come very suddenly into a windfall. Or the Government in some crooked deal, as Lalage had hinted? Again that might account for Richard …

  The policeman at the door gave her no clue. He simply nodded and led her into Mrs Pelletier’s back room, dark with the enormous pieces of mahogany furniture that had come with the house. Richard was there, very grey and twitchy, sitting on the edge of the big bed. Lydia ran across to him.

  “Are you all right, darling? What’s up?”

  He looked up, made an effort and knew her. He smiled.

  “Ah, you made it. That was quick.”

  “What’s going on darling? Please!”

  He shook his head. Somebody coughed. Lydia swung round and saw a tall, glossily tanned young man with curly hair and long side-burns.

  “Gentleman’s a bit shook up, I’m afraid, ma’am. The Superintendent won’t be long now, I expect.”

  “I must know what’s going on. Where is he?”

  “Now, ma’am …”

  “Are you seriously going to try to stop me going where I like in my own house? You haven’t any authority to do so. In fact, as far as I’m concerned you haven’t any authority to be here at all. Now, where is this Superintendent?”

  The man’s tan didn’t actually pale, but it lost some of its lustre. He was hesitating about standing out of her way when Lydia heard voices and footsteps coming up the back stairs from the basement or the garden door. The policeman coughed again, reclothed himself in authority with the surreptitious speed of a man tucking his shirt-tail into his trousers in a public place, and opened the door.

  A slim, dreary-looking man entered, grey haired, grey-lipped, solemn as a verger. Behind him came a much bigger man with a round, red, shiny face; he looked like a bather in a Donald McGill postcard.

  “Are you the Superintendent?” said Lydia.

  “Superintendent Austen, CID,” said the grey man. “This is Sergeant Eissmann. You are, er, Lady Timms?”

  “That’s right. Now, could you please tell me what’s going on?” He didn’t answer but crossed to the window.

  “If you’d come here a moment, Lady Timms,” he said.

  Lydia hesitated, then joined him. The garden had changed. When Lydia had left it after lunch it had been a stodgy rectangle of raked earth, crossed in one place by the paved path and in another by the planks the spy had put down so that Mrs Pelletier could reach her washing-line. Now there were a lot more planks, a huge mound of earth, and four or five men standing about. One of them was kneeling down just beyond the mound and another was taking photographs of something there. Further away two more seemed to be laying out a sort of tent.

  “What the hell’s going on?” said Lydia.

  “Now, madam,” said Superintendent Austen in the voice of a shop-walker trying to soothe a fierce customer, “can you tell me exactly when that patch of earth out there was last dug over? It appears to be quite recently.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “We’ll come to that later. I asked you …”

  “We’ll come to it now. What’s happening? Why are you here?”

  “If you please, madam …”

  “Unless you give me a reasonable explanation of your presence I shall ask you to leave my house.”

  Richard groaned. Lydia went and sat beside him and g
ripped his limp hand.

  “It’s all right, darling,” she said gently. “There’s no reason why I should tell him anything until he’s satisfied me that he’s got some sort of right to know.”

  Sergeant Eissmann sucked in his breath.

  “Sir Richard asked us to come,” said Superintendent Austen. His tone of voice hadn’t altered, but two little bunches of muscle had appeared just below his cheek-bones.

  “That’s all right,” said Lydia, taking care not to snap at him because she didn’t want to upset Richard any more. “But as you can see my husband is in a state of shock, and I need to know why. In fact the garden was thoroughly dug over the Monday before last, a fortnight ago. Now will you tell me what’s happening?”

  “A fortnight ago,” said the Superintendent in a musing voice. Sergeant Eissmann had a notebook out and wrote a few words. Lydia discovered that she was squeezing Richard’s hand so hard that she must be hurting him. She willed herself calm.

  “Superintendent,” she said, “whatever you’re doing you’re doing it in a very stupid way, exactly calculated to get minimum help from me.”

  “I am conducting an investigation into what looks like a case of murder,” said the Superintendent.

  “Murder! Who?”

  “I dug up a hand,” whispered Richard. “It came out of the clay. It was like a fungus.”

  (That wasn’t so bad, if he could talk about it. For the first time since she’d come into the room Lydia felt that she could relax her protection slightly. But … a hand!)

  “We do not yet know who,” said the Superintendent. “An elderly woman. My men have only just finished clearing the earth from the body.”

  “Do you want me to see if I know her?” said Lydia. “Is she … recognisable?”

  “Not so bad,” said Sergeant Eissmann, beaming. “I’ve seen much worse.”

  “I was planting the tree,” whispered Richard. Lydia squeezed his hand again and stood up.

  “I won’t be long, darling,” she said.

  “An identification would certainly be of value,” said Superintendent Austen, “but I would prefer …”

  “Let’s get it over,” said Lydia. “Can somebody please stay with my husband?”

  “You take her down, Dave,” said the Superintendent.

  Sergeant Eissmann hummed a dreary hymn-tune as he followed her down the stairs to the basement. As she was opening the garden door he said, “If I was you ma’am, I’d ease up on the super a bit. You won’t get much change out of him, whatever you say.”

  Lydia smiled tightly at him. She realised now that it was her antipathy to the Superintendent that had trapped her into marching off like this to peer into the eyes of death. She began to feel very withdrawn into herself, very screwed-up. Outside she discovered that, although there was plenty of daylight left, the air seemed drab, as if it were already dusk. A chill came out of the darkening sky, a chill rose from the raw earth. Sergeant Eissmann’s hand steadied her across the boards and round the neat-piled mound. Lalage’s tree, its roots still wrapped in sacking, lay to one side.

  Just beyond the mound was a rectangular hole. The photographer had fixed a floodlight to shine on its lip, and his assistant was adjusting a white cardboard arrow to point at something under its glare.

  “Borrow your light a mo so that the lady can see what’s what?” said Sergeant Eissmann.

  “Jesus Christ, how d’you expect me …” muttered the photographer, but he swung the lamp over and made it glare down into the hole. Lydia stepped forward on the greasy plank.

  The woman lay there, wrapped in a curious tube of coarse raw cotton or cheap canvas; it was torn on one side where Richard’s spade had sliced down; a bony hand showed. Somebody had cut the top end of the tube with greater care and folded the flaps back to make a sort of high-winged collar through which the head poked out. The cheeks and forehead were streaked with yellow clay and the sparse hair was full of the stuff. Between the streaks the flesh seemed bruised and wrinkled, like a fungus as Richard had said, or like the hand of a child who has stayed too long in the bath. The eyes, mercifully, were closed, but the mouth below the bony little nose hung open in an everlasting snore. The woman looked diseased, leprous under the fierce light, but there was no mistaking her.

  “It’s Mrs Newbury!” Lydia gasped. “But we buried her! Weeks ago! Why did you plant it there? She got out of her box! You said she would! Getting out and coming for him! Getting out and coming for him!”

  Her voice was no longer her own but an animal shriek. The laughter followed it, rising up her throat like vomit. Each hooting gasp seemed to end in a muscular contraction which could only be released by another series of shrieks. Inside this ghastly, melodramatic creature the real Lydia waited, appalled, unable to interfere. She was quite conscious of how Sergeant Eissmann took the creature by the elbow and led it away across the planks and into a dark place, and there was Richard coming down the stairs to hold her close while the shrieking creature appeased itself and the fit died out in shudders and whimpers.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I don’t know why I did that. I’m all right now.”

  “That bloody man,” said Richard. “He shouldn’t have let you.”

  Her lungs sucked in breath for a new bout of hysteria, but she clenched her teeth and hands and willed her body into decency.

  “It must have been worse for you, darling,” she said.

  “I’m getting over it, I think. Can you tackle the stairs?”

  They were still holding hands like lovers in a tulip garden when they reached the Pelletiers’ back room. Superintendent Austen looked no different, as uninterested in what had happened as if Lydia had merely left the room to put on a kettle for coffee. But Sergeant Eissmann fetched her a chair.

  “Now,” said the Superintendent, “I believe that you can clear up the identification.”

  “It’s Mrs Newbury,” said Lydia.

  “No!” said Richard.

  “Please, sir,” said the Superintendent. “Yes, madam?”

  “She was one of my tenants. She died of a fall in her room at the end of January. I went to the inquest and then to the funeral, at Kensal Green. We buried her. I tell you, we buried her!”

  “Take it easy, madam. We will go into that later. You are quite certain of this identification?”

  “Yes. In fact Mrs Pumice has got a photograph of her. She lives on the second floor, left-hand side as you come up the stairs.”

  “Dave,” said the Superintendent. Sergeant Eissmann rose and left.

  “Now, I’d like to return to the question of when the garden was dug, and why, and by whom. A fortnight ago, you say?”

  “That’s right. I and several of my neighbours employ a casual labourer called Mr Roberts to do our gardens. It was a complete mess, with only a few scrubby old roses, so I asked him to dig it right through.”

  “What do you mean when you say it was a mess?”

  “Oh, I’ve been doing a lot of repairs to the house, and throwing out timber and things, and burning everything I could. But in fact it hadn’t been a garden for several years.”

  “So you mightn’t have noticed if somebody had buried the body in there earlier?”

  Lydia rose and walked to the window. The photographer and his helpers were still mopping and mowing around the grave like students of the black arts.

  “Oh yes, I think I would,” she said. “That bit was usually fairly clear. But surely you can tell by the state of the soil whether the grave was dug before or after Mr Roberts worked it over.”

  “That’s as may be,” said the Superintendent. Lydia felt her antipathy rising again—he seemed to be just the sort of official she most detested, giving nothing, secretive for secrecy’s sake, a servant of the system, indifferent to the individual people whom the system chumbled about. Sergeant Eissmann came back looking
cheerier than ever and gave him the newspaper cutting. The Superintendent gazed at it, rubbing his chin.

  “Take a dekko at the caption,” said Sergeant Eissmann.

  At once the Superintendent’s eyebrows rose and his lips pursed into a soundless, prurient whistle.

  “Do you know if the deceased was the mother of a woman called Procne Newbury?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” said Lydia, grudgingly.

  “We’ve got one reporter here already,” said Sergeant Eissmann. “I guess we’ll have the lot along in half an hour.”

  “Can’t be helped,” said the Superintendent, looking not at all displeased. “Now, madam, refresh my memory. You say this Mrs Newbury died longer ago than the Monday before last.”

  Carefully, picking her words so that she herself gave nothing away either, Lydia went through the story from the discovery of Mrs Newbury dead in her room until her funeral.

  “So you identified her for the coroner’s court?” said the Superintendent at one point.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, now, I don’t want to distress you, but can you remember whether her skin was then in a normal condition?”

  “Normal?”

  “You must have seen that the skin is now in a very peculiar state, wrinkled and …”

  “Don’t go on! No, it was quite normal. A bit pale. She always had rather a flushed complexion when she was alive, but that may have been because she was usually het up about something. There was a bit of blood and a bruise on her temple. I thought that … out there … that was just being in the ground …”

  The Superintendent shook his head, keeping to himself yet another secret not to be revealed to the common herd. Lydia went on.

  “I see,” he said when she’d finished. “Now is there any possibility of Mrs Newbury having had a twin sister?”

  “Not that I know of. In fact she once told me that she was an only child.”

  “Can you tell me the circumstances of that conversation?”

  “It isn’t relevant.”

  “Allow me to judge that.”