by Tom Sharpe
‘Where’s your nail varnish?’ Gaskell asked when he had finished and twelve contraceptives cluttered the cabin.
‘Drop dead,’ said Sally and went out on deck to think. She stared down at the dark water and thought about rats and death and being poor again and liberated. The rat paradigm. The world was a rotten place. People were objects to be used and discarded. It was Gaskell’s own philosophy and now he was discarding her. And one slip on this oily deck could solve her problems. All that had to happen was for Gaskell to slip and drown and she would be free and rich and no one would ever know. An accident. Natural death. But Gaskell could swim and there had to be no mistakes. Try it once and fail and she wouldn’t be able to try again. He would be on his guard. It had to be certain and it had to be natural.
Gaskell came out on deck with the contraceptives. He had tied them together and painted on each one a single letter with nail varnish so that the whole read HELP SOS HELP. He climbed up on the cabin roof and launched them into the air. They floated up for a moment, were caught in the light breeze and sagged sideways down on to the water. Gaskell pulled them in on the string and tried again. Once again they floated down on to the water.
‘I’ll wait until there’s some more wind,’ he said, and tied the string to the rail where they bobbed gently. Then he went into the cabin and lay on the bunk.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Sally asked.
‘Sleep. Wake me when there’s a wind.’ He took off his glasses and pulled a blanket over him.
Outside Sally sat on a locker and thought about drowning in bed.
‘Mr Gosdyke,’ said Inspector Flint, ‘you and I have had dealings for a good many years now and I’m prepared to be frank with you. I don’t know.’
‘But you’ve charged him with murder.’ said Mr Gosdyke.
‘He’ll come up for remand on Monday. In the meantime I am going on questioning him.’
‘But surely the fact that he admits burying a life-size doll…’
‘Dressed in his wife’s clothes, Gosdyke. In his wife’s clothes. Don’t forget that.’
‘It still seems insufficient to me. Can you be absolutely sure that a murder has been committed?’
‘Three people disappear off the face of the earth without a trace. They leave behind them two cars, a house littered with unwashed glasses and the leftovers of a party…you should see that house…a bathroom and landing covered will blood…’
‘They could have gone in someone else’s car.’
They could have but they didn’t. Dr Pringsheim didn’t like being driven by anyone else. We know that from his colleagues at the Department of Biochemistry. He had a rooted objection to British drivers. Don’t ask me why but be had.’
‘Trains? Buses? Planes?’
‘Checked, rechecked and checked again. No one answering to their description used any form of public or private transport out of town. And if you think they went on a bicycle ride, you’re wrong again. Dr Pringsheim’s bicycle is in the garage. No, you can forget their going anywhere. They died and Mr Smart Alec Wilt knows it.’
‘I still don’t see how you can be so sure.’ said Mr Gosdyke.
Inspector Flint lit a cigarette. ‘Let’s just look at his actions, his admitted actions and see what they add up to,’ he said. ‘He gets a lifesize doll…’
‘Where from?’
‘He says he was given it by his wife. Where he got it from doesn’t matter.’
‘He says he first saw the thing at the Pringsheims’ house.’
‘Perhaps he did. I’m prepared to believe that. Wherever he got it, the fact remains that he dressed it up to look like Mrs Wilt. He puts it down that hole at the Tech, a hole he knows is going to be filled with concrete. He makes certain he is seen by the caretaker when he knows that the Tech is closed. He leaves a bicycle covered with his fingerprints and with a book of his in the basket. He leaves a trail of notes to the hole. He turns up at Mrs Braintree’s house at midnight covered with mud and says he’s had a puncture when he hasn’t. Now you’re not going to tell me that he hadn’t got something in mind.’
‘He says he was merely trying to dispose of that doll.’
‘And he tells me he was rehearsing his wife’s murder. He’s admitted that.’
‘Yes, but only in fantasy. His story to me is that be wanted to get rid of that doll,’ Mr Gosdyke persisted.
‘Then why the clothes, why blow the thing up and why leave it in such a position it was bound to be spotted when the concrete was poured down? Why didn’t he cover it with earth if he didn’t want it to be found? Why didn’t he just burn the bloody thing or leave it by the roadside? It just doesn’t make sense unless you see it as a deliberate plan to draw our attention away from the real crime.’ The Inspector paused. ‘Well now, the way I see it is that something happened at that party we don’t know anything about. Perhaps Wilt found his wife in bed with Dr Pringsheim. He killed them both. Mrs Pringsheim puts in an appearance and he kills her too.’
‘How?’ said Mr Gosdyke. ‘You didn’t find that much blood.’
‘He strangled her. He strangled his own wife. He battered Pringsheim to death. Then he hides the bodies somewhere, goes home and lays the doll trail. On Sunday he disposes of the real bodies…’
‘Where?’
‘God alone knows, but I’m going to find out. All I know is that a man who can think up a scheme like this one is bound to have thought of somewhere diabolical to put the real victims. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he spent Sunday making illegal use of the crematorium. Whatever he did can be sure he did it thoroughly.’
But Mr Gosdyke remained unconvinced. ‘I wish I knew how you could be so certain,’ he said.
‘Mr Gosdyke,’ said the Inspector wearily. ‘you have spent two hours with your client. I have spent the best part of the week and if I’ve learnt one thing from the experience it is this, that sod in there knows what he is doing. Any normal man in his position would have been worried and alarmed and down right frightened. Any innocent man faced with a missing wife and the evidence we’ve got of murder would have had a nervous breakdown. Not Wilt. Oh no, he sits in there as bold as you please and tells me how to conduct the investigation. Now if anything convinces me that that bastard is as guilty as hell that does. He did it and I know it. And what is more, I’m going to prove it.’
‘He seems a bit worried now,’ said Mr Gosdyke.
‘He’s got reason to be,’ said the Inspector, ‘because by Monday morning I’m going to get the truth out of him even if it kills him and me both.’
‘Inspector,’ said Mr Gosdyke getting to his feet, ‘I must warn you that I have advised my client not to say another word and if he appears in Court with a mark on him…’
‘Mr Gosdyke, you should know me better than that. I’m not a complete fool and if your client has any marks on him on Monday morning they will not have been made by me or any of my men. You have my assurance on that.’
Mr Gosdyke left the Police Station a puzzled man. He had to admit that Wilt’s story hadn’t been a very convincing one. Mr Gosdyke’s experience of murderers was not extensive but he had a shrewd suspicion that men who confessed openly that they had entertained fantasies of murdering their wives ended by admitting that they had done so in fact. Besides his attempt to get Wilt to agree that he’d put the doll down the hole as a practical joke on his colleagues at the Tech had failed hopelessly. Wilt had refused to lie and Mr Gosdyke was not used to clients who insisted on telling the truth.
Inspector Flint went back into the interview Room and looked at Wilt. Then he pulled up a chair and sat down.
‘Henry,’ he said with an affability he didn’t feel, ‘you and I are going to have a little chat.’
‘What, another one?’ said Wilt. ‘Mr Gosdyke has advised me to say nothing.’
‘He always does,’ said the Inspector sweetly, ‘to clients he knows are guilty. Now are you going to talk?’
‘I can’t see why not. I’m not gu
ilty and it helps to pass the time.’
Chapter 17
It was Friday and as on every other day in the week the little church at Waterswick was empty. And as on every other day of the week the Vicar, the Reverend St John Froude was drunk. The two things went together, the lack of a congregation and the Vicar’s insobriety. It was an old tradition dating back to the days of smuggling, when Brandy for the Parson had been about the only reason the isolated hamlet had a vicar at all. And like so many English traditions it died hard. The Church authorities saw to it that Waterswick got idiosyncratic parsons whose awkward enthusiasms tended to make them unsuitable for more respectable parishes and they, to console themselves for its remoteness and lack of interest in things spiritual, got alcoholic. The Rev St John Froude maintained tradition. He attended to his duties with the same Anglo-Catholic Fundamentalist fervour that had made him so popular in Esher and turned an alcoholic eye on the activities of his few parishioners who, now that brandy was not so much in demand, contented themselves with the occasional boatload of illegal Indian immigrants.
Now as he finished a breakfast of eggnog and Irish coffee and considered the iniquities of his more egregious colleagues as related in the previous Sunday’s paper he was startled see something wobbling above the reeds on Eel Stretch. It looked like balloons, white sausage-shaped balloons that rose briefly and then disappeared. The Rev St John Froude shuddered, shut his eyes, opened them again and thought about the virtues of abstinence. If he was right and he didn’t know whether he wanted to be or not, the morning was being profaned by a cluster of contraceptives, inflated contraceptives wobbling erratically where by the nature of things no contraceptive had ever wobbled before. At least he hoped it was cluster. He was so used to seeing things in twos when they were in fact ones that he couldn’t be sure if what looked like a cluster of inflated contraceptives wasn’t just one or better still none at all.
He reeled off to his study to get his binoculars and stepped out onto the terrace to focus them. By that time the manifestation had disappeared. The Rev St John Froude shook his head mournfully. Things and in particular his liver had reached a pretty pickle for him to have hallucinations so early in the morning. He went back into the house and tried to concentrate his attention on a case involving an Archdeacon in Ongar who had undergone a sex-change operation before eloping with his verger. There was matter there for a sermon if only he could think of a suitable text.
At the bottom of the garden Eva Wilt watched his retreat and wondered what to do. She had no intention of going up to the house and introducing herself in her present condition. She needed clothes, or at least some sort of covering. She looked around for something temporary and finally decided on some ivy climbing up the graveyard fence. With one eye on the Vicarage she emerged from the willow tree and scampered across to the fence and through the gate into the churchyard. There she ripped some ivy off the trunk of a tree and, carrying it in front of her rather awkwardly, made her way surreptitiously up the overgrown path towards the church. For the most part her progress was masked from the house by the trees but once or twice she had to crouch low and scamper from tombstone to tombstone in full view of the Vicarage. By the time she reached the church porch she was panting and her sense of impropriety had been increased tenfold. If the prospect of presenting herself at the house in the nude offended her on grounds of social decorum, going into a church in the raw was positively sacrilegious. She stood in the porch and tried frantically to steel herself to go in. There were bound to be surplices for the choir in the vestry and dressed in a surplice she could go up to the house. Or could she? Eva wasn’t sure about the significance of surplices and the Vicar might be angry. Oh dear it was all so awkward. In the end she opened the church door and went inside. It was cold and damp and empty. Clutching the ivy to her she crossed to the vestry door and tried it. It was locked. Eva stood shivering and tried to think. Finally she went outside and stood in the sunshine trying to get warm.
In the Staff room at the Tech, Dr Board was holding court. ‘All things considered I think we came out of the whole business rather creditably,’ he said. ‘The Principal has always said he wanted to put the college on the map and with the help of friend Wilt it must be said he has succeeded. The newspaper coverage has been positively prodigious. I shouldn’t be surprised if our student intake jumped astonishingly.’
‘The committee didn’t approve our facilities,’ said Mr Morris, ’so you can hardly claim their visit was an unqualified success.’
‘Personally I think they got their money’s worth,’ said Dr Board. ‘It’s not every day you get the chance to see an exhumation and an execution at the same time. The one usually precedes the other and certainly the experience of seeing what to all intents and purposes was a woman turn in a matter of seconds into a man, an instantaneous sex change, was to use a modern idiom, a mind-blowing one.’
‘Talking of poor Mayfield,’ said the Head of Geography, ‘I understand he’s still at the Mental Hospital.’
‘Committed?’ asked Dr Board hopefully.
‘Depressed. And suffering from exhaustion.’
‘Hardly surprising. Anyone who can use language…abuse language like that is asking for trouble. Structure as a verb, for example.’
‘He had set great score by the joint Honours degree and the fact that it has been turned down…’
‘Quite right too,’ said Dr Board. ‘The educative value of stuffing second-rate students with fifth-rate ideas on subjects as diverse as Medieval Poetry and Urban Studies escapes me. Far better that they should spend their time watching the police dig up the supposed body of a woman coated in concrete, stretch her neck, rip all her clothes off her, hang her and finally blow her up until she explodes. Now that is what I call a truly educational experience. It combines archaeology with criminology, zoology with physics, anatomy with economic theory, while maintaining the students’ undivided attention all the time. If we must have joint Honours degrees let them be of that vitality. Practical too. I’m thinking of sending away for one of those dolls.’
‘It still leaves unresolved the question of Mrs Wilt’s disappearance,’ said Mr Morris.
‘Ah, dear Eva,’ said Dr Board wistfully. ‘Having seen so much of what I imagined to be her I shall, if I ever have the pleasure of meeting her again treat her with the utmost courtesy. An amazingly versatile woman and interestingly proportioned. I think I shall christen my doll Eva.’
‘But the police still seem to think she is dead.’
‘A woman like that can never die.’ said Dr Board. ‘She may explode but her memory lingers on indelibly.’
In his study the Rev St John Froude shared Dr Board’s opinion. The memory of the large and apparently naked lady he had glimpsed emerging from the willow tree at the bottom of his garden like some disgustingly oversized nymph and scuttling through the churchyard was not something he was ever likely to forget. Coming so shortly after the apparition of the inflated contraceptives it lent weight to the suspicion that he had been overdoing things on the alcohol side. Abandoning the sermon he had been preparing on the apostate Archdeacon of Ongar–he had had ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ in mind as a text–he got up and peered out of the window in the direction of the church and was wondering if he shouldn’t go down and see if there wasn’t a large fat naked lady there when his attention was drawn to the reeds across the water. They were there again, those infernal things. This time there could be no doubt about it. He grabbed his binoculars and stared furiously through them. He could see them much more clearly than the first time and much more ominously. The sun was high in the sky and a mist rose over Eel Stretch so that the contraceptives had a luminescent sheen about them, an insubstantiality that was almost spiritual in its implications. Worse still, there appeared to be something written on them. The message was clear if incomprehensible. It read PEESOP. The Rev St John Froude lowered his binoculars and reached for the whisky bottle and considered the significance of PEESOP etched ec
toplasmically against the sky. By the time he had finished his third hurried glass and had decided that spiritualism might after all have something to be said for it though why you almost always found yourself in touch with a Red Indian who was acting by proxy for an aunt which might account for the misspelling of Peasoup while removing some of the less attractive ingredients from the stuff, the wind had changed the letters round. This time when he looked the message read EELPOPS. The Vicar shuddered. What eel was popping and how?
‘The sins of the spirit,’ he said reproachfully to his fourth glass of whisky before consulting the oracle once more. POSHELLS was followed by HEPOLP to be succeeded by SHHLPSPO which was even worse. The Rev St John Froude thrust his binoculars and the bottle of whisky aside and went down on his knees to pray for deliverance or at least for some guidance in interpreting the message. But every time he got up to see if his wish had been granted the combination of letters was as meaningless as ever or downright threatening. What, for instance, did HELLSPO signify? Or SLOSHHEEL? Finally, determined to discover for himself the true nature of the occurrence, he put on his cassock and wove off down the garden path to the boathouse.
‘They shall rue the day,’ he muttered as he climbed into the rowing boat and took the oars. The Rev St John Froude held firm views on contraception. It was one of the tenets of his Anglo-Catholicism.
In the cabin cruiser Gaskell slept soundly. Around him Sally made her preparations. She undressed and changed into the plastic bikini. She took a silk square from her bag and put it on the table and she fetched a jug from the kitchen and leaning over the side filled it with water. Finally she went into the toilet and made her face up in the mirror. When she emerged she was wearing false eyelashes, her lips were heavily red and pancake make-up obscured her pale complexion. She was carrying a bathing-cap. She crossed the door of the galley and put an arm up and stuck her hip out.
