The Lively Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  “No, thanks.”

  Lydia felt that there was no reason why she should recount the whole history of Mrs Newbury’s long campaign to persuade her to have a few brothers and sisters for Dickie. He stared at her, glanced at Sergeant Eissmann’s notebook and shrugged.

  “Well then, can you let me know the name and address of the undertakers responsible for the funeral at Kensal Green?”

  “I’m afraid not. I don’t know. The Government arranged all that.”

  “The Government!”

  “I’m sorry. The top two floors of this house are let to the Livonian Consulate. Livonia used to be the smallest of the Baltic republics before the Russians took over, and this is really the Livonian Government in Exile. We call them the Government. Mrs Newbury was their cleaner and they arranged rather a grand funeral for her … they’ll be very put out about this. Oh, dear. Sunday. Mr Obb has a flat up there, and he was the one who fixed it. He might …”

  “By the way, they’ve got diplomatic immunity,” said Richard in a perfectly normal voice. Lydia almost laughed aloud with pleasure and relief to hear him talking like that, and making such a typically Richardy point, too. It had the effect of tilting Lydia’s world back onto its proper axis; what had happened ceased to be nightmare and became a real event, sudden and horrible but copable-with. Priorities emerged.

  “When can you move the body?” she said. “I don’t want to bring our son home till it’s gone.”

  The Superintendent ignored her. Back out of the nightmare Lydia perceived now that he was a man who had reached that crucial level in the hierarchy where he could cope with his own job, but only just. Faced with immune diplomats and twice-buried but unmurdered bodies of the mothers of famous harlots and small boys needing to come home, his mind slid away to areas he understood.

  “Just go and see whether we’ve got any reporters, Dave,” he said.

  “OK, OK,” said Sergeant Eissmann.

  “Would you like me to take you up and introduce you to Mr Obb, if he’s there?” said Richard. “I’ve been a diplomat, so I know the ropes.”

  Typically, Superintendent Austen accepted the suggestion almost with eagerness, because it came from a man. While they were out of the room Lydia telephoned Lalage, told her what had happened, and asked her to bring Dickie round in an hour. As soon as she put the receiver down the phone rang again. It was a reporter from the Sun, asking her to confirm the news. She cut him off without answering. The machine rang again, and this time she simply left the receiver off. Within five minutes somebody had persuaded the engineers to start the howler. Lydia unscrewed the earpiece and slid the diaphragm clear—she reckoned that it would need a lot of influence to get an engineer out to Devon Crescent on a Sunday evening, and at least the police could deal with any reporters who came to the door.

  A bit later Superintendent Austen came down again, to ask for the key to what was now Paul Vaklin’s room. Lydia refused to let him have it without Paul’s permission. That meant reassembling the phone and ringing up Lalage again. Paul was there and said he’d come straight round. That in turn meant another fight with Austen about whether the body could now be taken away, so that Paul could bring Dickie with him. Austen was still refusing when Sergeant Eissmann came in to say that the job had already been done, and did the Superintendent want to be present at the autopsy. Without waiting for permission, Lydia fixed up with Paul and dismantled the phone again. By the time she’d done that the policemen were going out of the door.

  “By the way,” she called, “Mr Roberts—the gardener—will be here to-morrow morning. Do you want to see him?”

  “Instructions will be left with the officer on duty at the door,” snapped the Superintendent, and stalked away, the model of petty dignity.

  Lydia smiled to herself as she poured water into the kettle.

  “I think you might give him a bit more rope, darling,” said Richard. His voice sounded tired but normal.

  “Are you all right, darling?” she said.

  “I’m fine. It was a shock, and I thought I was cracking up again, but then you turned up, and that was better, and as soon as you said it was Mrs Newbury that was all right.”

  “Why on earth …”

  “Not knowing was what hit me.”

  “But we buried her!”

  “You buried somebody else. The Government had the coffin brought home, and all that rigmarole, because they’d got somebody else to bury. Or possibly something else—documents, gold—no, that would be too heavy—oh, it doesn’t matter. Now it’s their look-out.”

  “I wonder if you’re right. How did you get on with them?”

  “It was Obb—very polite, very concerned, very stiff. Not saying anything. Oh, yes, we got the undertaker’s name out of him, that’s all. Poor old Austen, with Obb giving him the brush-off upstairs and you kicking him in the teeth down here. Do go a bit easy on him, darling.”

  “But …”

  “What’s the point? He’ll get what he wants in the end, and you only make an enemy of him.”

  “OK, I’ll try to be polite, but … I mean, Paul’s key! He simply wasn’t entitled to it. I couldn’t have given it to him!”

  “I suppose so. What’s for supper? Shall I peel the spuds?”

  Ten minutes later Lalage brought Dickie down to the basement. He was in a state of frenzied thrill at the presence of so many policemen, and though Lydia had drawn the curtains he somehow managed to spot the tent that now covered the hole in the garden. Richard told him firmly that it was all a secret, and he spent the hour till his bed-time sending a long message about it up to Paul. No answer came.

  Chapter 21

  She told Dickie next morning, as she was walking with him to his play-group—it was holidays now, but half-a-dozen mums worked a rota system with their kids. There had still been a policeman on the door, and one or two loiterers, and a depressed man taking photographs of anybody who went in or out.

  “Why’s he doing that?” asked Dickie. “Are we famous?”

  “Not yet, thank heavens,” said Lydia. “Do you remember Mrs Newbury?”

  “She’s dead.”

  “That’s right. Well, there seems to have been a mistake about her funeral. I don’t know how it happened, but she got buried in our garden, instead of in the cemetery, and the police want to find out why. That’s all.”

  “But the man took a picture of us.”

  “Well, you see, this sort of mistake doesn’t happen very often—in fact it’s very rare—so I suppose some people might think it’s interesting enough to put in a newspaper.”

  “Will there be a picture of us?”

  “I don’t think so. They always take far more pictures than they can possibly use, just in case.”

  “Like at football. Derek’s father does that. He takes hundreds of pictures, and only sometimes it’s a goal.”

  “Yes, just like that.”

  And that was that. All over. No fuss, no spores to float through the darkness inside his little skull, settle in some recess and grow slowly into nightmare. Children have a marvellous ability to treat everything that happens as if it were normal. On her way back to Devon Crescent Lydia determined to do the same herself. To-day would be an ordinary day. She had planned to wallpaper the back room and she’d do just that. Great. April began to sparkle along the roof-tops, to glisten in the gutters, to twinkle from passing cars. Her own sudden cheerfulness seemed to bounce like the sunlight off people and objects. The policeman at the door grinned at her as she passed.

  “Have you seen Mr Roberts, that’s the gardener?” she said.

  “No, ma’am. The super’s been asking for him too.”

  “Bother. Perhaps he’s decided to do a turn at one of the other houses. If anyone wants me I’ll be downstairs, in the back room.”

  “Very good.”

  She mixed Polycell,
got the trestle out, fetched the steps and her big scissors and measured and cut the first strip. She was slithering paste onto it when she heard men’s voices, and feet on the bare stairs. To-day is an ordinary day, she told herself. I’ll be patient with the bastards.

  “Good morning, Superintendent,” she said, still slapping away with the brush. “Do you want me?”

  “If you can spare the time, madam.”

  “That’s all right, provided you don’t mind if I go on working. You’ll find a couple of chairs in the kitchen, Sergeant, if you’d like to sit down. I’m afraid Mr Roberts hasn’t turned up.”

  “So I am told,” said Austen, in a dry voice.

  “He’s a bit of a hermit. Perhaps he was frightened off by the people at the gate. It might be worth seeing whether he’s gone to any of the other gardens instead.”

  She rattled off the numbers of the relevant houses. Sergeant Eissmann left to instruct some underling and Austen himself fetched the chairs. Lydia folded the bottom third of her paper up on itself, picked up the two top corners and climbed the steps by the wall. Her plumb-line hung tremorless against the mottled plaster. The sergeant came back as she was easing the top eighteen inches smooth.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I can talk while I’m doing this.”

  “Wish I had a wife or two like you,” said Sergeant Eissmann.

  “Now, madam,” said Austen, “first I want to check a detail about the funeral. The undertaker tells me that when he brought the coffin back here on the night of the fifth of February the room was prepared for some kind of wake. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. It wasn’t exactly a wake. I told you that Mrs Newbury did the cleaning for the Livonian Consulate. She’d done it for a long time. Mr Obb told me that they wanted to bury her properly—rather grandly, in fact—to show their appreciation. One of their national customs is that they sit up with the body all night before the funeral.”

  “I see. Did you go into the room while the coffin was there?”

  Satisfied with the hang of her paper Lydia peeled the bottom section down and began to ease the wrinkles out to the sides.

  “I showed the men where to put it when they came,” she said. “But after that … I don’t even know whether the Livs did watch all night—it’s just that Mr Obb said they would.”

  “I see. Now, madam, the body was buried approximately three feet down. If your husband had not started to dig a hole for the tree there it wouldn’t have been found, being below the normal level of cultivation. The question is, who knew that he would plant the tree just there? Have you mentioned this to anyone?”

  “No,” said Lydia, easing the top of her strip clear so that she could cut it true to the ceiling. “Nobody knew. We hadn’t actually decided. I rather thought I’d like it in the middle, where the rose-bed had been, but he thought that would darken this window too much. I left it to him when I went out.”

  “Was that what you were referring to when you said ‘Why did you plant it there?’”

  “Did I? When did I say that?”

  She had the top of the paper fitted now and began to come down the steps, feeling curiously shivery.

  “When you were by the hole, madam. Apparently you said, or rather shouted, ‘Why did you plant it there?’ Also something about coming out of a box.”

  “It’s Mrs Newbury,” said Sergeant Eissmann, reading from his notebook in a drab, heavy voice. “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 (twice).”

  It seemed lucky that she had reached the bottom of the steps, and there they were, to sit on, carefully, feeling for them in case she collapsed in the suddenly darkened room. She put her head in her hands.

  “Did I say that? I don’t remember. Sorry.”

  “Take it easy,” said Sergeant Eissmann.

  “I’m sorry, I really don’t remember anything that happened out there, except that I recognised Mrs Newbury and then I had hysterics. Read it again.”

  “Have a smoke first?” suggested the sergeant.

  As she reached gratefully for the packet she saw Austen’s eyes gazing at her with intense, withdrawn interest. Eissmann was smiling, but his eyes had the same look. Eissmann, nice man, she thought as she lit up. Austen, nasty man. The usual team. Bastards. Anger steadied her, so that she could listen without emotion to the words she was supposed to have spoken.

  “Yes, I see,” she said. “The bit about where my husband planted the tree is obvious. The other part is all to do with a conversation we had the day they brought the body back. You’re supposed to let small children acquire some experience of death, and I discussed with my husband whether I shouldn’t take Dickie into the room where the coffin was. He quite rightly told me it was a bad idea, as Dickie used to be rather afraid of Mrs Newbury, so he might have nightmares about her getting out of the box and coming for him.”

  She looked up. Eissmann was still smiling his trained smile, but there was a new expression on Austen’s face.

  “You seriously mean to tell me,” he said, “that you were proposing to take a kiddie into a room with a coffin in it, to let him look?”

  Voice and feature were those one might to see on the face of a respectable Borough Councillor who has just been told that some blue film is a superlative expression of artistic freedom.

  “We only talked about it,” said Lydia. “Whether I would have done it is my own affair. It only concerns you because it explains what you say I said in the garden.”

  Austen resumed his clinical mask with a speed that reminded Lydia of her father. He paused to let Eissmann finish taking a note of what she’d said. Lydia found herself irritated by this process, an irrational disgust caused partly by Austen’s own persona and partly by dislike at having her words taken down and filed away—particularly words screamed involuntarily by that other Lydia who usually slept the days away in secret and only stirred about once a month to drift and then scramble through a nightmare. To ease her tension she got off the steps and marked and trimmed the lower end of her strip. She was smoothing it back when Austen coughed for her attention.

  “Now,” he said in a back-to-business voice, “may I ask you to look at a few photographs for us? We want to see whether you can identify a man.”

  “Of course.”

  “I must warn you that the man is dead.”

  “’Tisn’t that horrible,” said Eissmann. “A bit peculiar, only, but not bloody or anything.”

  “OK. Will this take long? I do want to get the papering done before my son comes back. He’s an absolute devil with glue.”

  “If you’ll look at the pictures I don’t think we’ll need to bother you again for a while.”

  “OK.” Lydia took an uncomforting suck at her fag and stubbed it out.

  The prints were large and shiny. At first Lydia thought that she was looking at a bit of mildly experimental portrait sculpture, then she saw that the thing was not puddled plaster but flesh. It was a sunken-cheeked, bald old man. His eyes were shut. His ears were large, thin and very protruding, his mouth wide and sharply turned down at the corners. You could imagine him sitting on a park bench, wearing a shabby overcoat and leaning forward over his walking-stick, trying to suck the sunlight into his veins to enrich the thin, sad blood. Only if you had seen him sitting like that you would have immediately looked away, rather than stare at the strange ailment that affected all his skin, innumerable seams and puckering which did not follow the natural crease-lines that one sometimes sees on old men’s faces, but wandered and crossed at random.

  “It’s the same as Mrs Newbury!” she said.

  “Only he’d been in it longer,” said Sergeant Eissmann.

  “In what?”

  The Superintendent managed to look as though he alone knew. The Sergeant simply shrugged.

  “S
ome kind of alcohol” he said. “The lab say he’s never going to rot now, he’s been soaking in it that long.”

  Lydia looked at the other photographs. Some were in profile and two showed the whole body, naked and unwounded, but all pocked and puddled with the same patterning as the face.

  “How tall was he?” she asked.

  “Little fellow,” said the Sergeant. “They’d put in a couple of polythene bags, full of sand, to bring it up to the weight when the old lady was in it.”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never seen him before,” said Lydia. “You mean they buried him instead of Mrs Newbury?”

  “Seems so,” said the Sergeant.

  Lydia gazed steadily at the long-imagined, but (now she saw it) totally strange face. What had brought him to this end?

  “Was he … I mean, did he die naturally?” she asked.

  “Cancer of the liver,” said the Sergeant. “Rather him than me.”

  “Now, let’s get this straight,” said the Superintendent. “You say you have no idea who this man was, nor how he came to be buried instead of Mrs Newbury?”

  Lydia hated lying, but her antipathy to him let her do so now almost with pleasure.

  “No,” she said, briskly. “Is that all?”

  “That’s all … for the moment,” he answered. He managed to load the pause with reservations, but Sergeant Eissmann winked as they left. At last their footsteps faded.

  Lydia measured and hung a second strip of paper before she allowed herself to think about the interview, and then the image on the top of her mind turned out to be that of the strangely wrinkled corpse of a little old man, buried in secret so far from home. Aaku Aakisen, leader of the Livonian Resistance. Little Aaku with his sticky-out ears. We had an old man, a servant, who made excellent varosh, very skilled, very careful. But then he died … What do you do, when all the time he’s supposed to be attracting propaganda values to your cause by living on in the icy, licy hell of Siberia? Obviously, you preserve his body by popping it into a barrel of strong alcohol. There it stays … how long? Years. Then (for the random mercy of God sends an occasional blessing even to the forgotten Livs) Mrs Newbury dies, and the opportunity arises to give the national hero a grand burial, if under an assumed name and sex, but better than lying soaking in varosh. Mrs Newbury takes up that sinister duty. Yes, they’d needed to pack the coffin with a couple of sandbags to make up the extra weight, which meant, presumably, that there had been extra volume also. Mrs Newbury had displaced more varosh than old Aaku, so the liquor had overflowed, run down between the floorboards and made a strange sticky patch on the ceiling below. Lydia had actually stretched out her hand towards the very bin …