“I met Mr. Costain this morning,” he said. “He was photographing the mausoleum in the wood. He was very enthusiastic about its brickwork.”
“I don’t think I’ve met the gentleman,” said Lady Sospice.
“He’s secretary of the South London Preservation Society. He’s been helping the local preservation people—the ones who you said could look through the Sospice papers.”
“Ah, those little people. I meant to tell you, Dorothy darling, that I do not wish to see them any more. They are becoming a nuisance.”
She gnawed at a green cake with some emphasis, but Doll leaned forward in her chair and plucked it from the old hand and held it just out of her reach. It was a game Pibble watched with fascination over the rim of his piping cup. Lady Sospice was a wicked troublemaker—trouble being excitement, the last sea wall against the rising boredoms of great age—and Doll was expert at playing her around so that she did no harm. The relationship was strangely like marriage; in fact Pibble wondered whether the one had been, or the other would be, so happily mated ever.
“You’re stuck with them now, darling,” said Doll, “and you know it. You brought them in to tease poor Posey, and …”
“I cannot understand why they refused to make you secretary,” said Lady Sospice, driving suddenly crosscourt.
“Because I was eight when the job was last vacant.”
“They ought to have kept it for you.”
Doll handed the cake back.
“No, thanks,” she said. “I have more to do with my life than becoming obsessed with dormice.”
“Your grandfather wouldn’t have liked to hear you call them that, darling.”
“It suits them so well—don’t you think so, Uncle Pibble?”
“In a way. But it’s a symbol for not having to think of them as people, individuals. I’d have thought that might be dangerous.”
“Just what my husband used to say,” said Lady Sospice. “‘They are not pets,’ he was always saying. But then he was always much too clever for me, and much, much too good.”
She lifted a tiny lace handkerchief as if to wipe away a tear that had quivered into her eye at the memory of the dead baron’s brains and virtue, but used it to brush a large blob of green icing from the corner of her chin. The blob fell to the carpet, and Pibble bent for it.
“Don’t bother,” said Doll. She bounced up and opened the door through which they had first come, and the terriers streamed in. The blob vanished on a thin pink tongue, and Lady Sospice began to cut three more cakes into smaller cubes, her old, blotched, mauve-veined hand quivering wildly before each stroke and then forcing the knife down with sudden precision. Pibble was surprised to find, when the dogs had lined up for their sugary orgy, that there were only three of them. Lady Sospice fed them in turn, brusquely, as if she were giving them medicine.
It was a soothing scene, a break from the scurryings of the day. Pibble sipped carefully at his sherry-coloured smoke-and-hay brew and thought how elusive even the immediate past could be. It had been a day like a battle scene in a low-budget film whose director has tried to conceal the smallness of his armies and the paperiness of his stockades behind billowing cannon smoke and close-ups of horses’ hoofs. Gorton was no more than a loom of darkness in the mist, if he was there at all. Mr. Thanatos was a huge figure, certainly, but if you could see him from the side perhaps you would find that he was an inch thick, flat, propped by rough balks. And the most impressive experience of all, the bush telegraph between the children’s minds, was also the most airy-fairy. Again, he found, he was half sure that he must have kidded himself into showing Marilyn coin and knife, button and nut, before she had made her choice. And if Thanassi was insubstantial, Ram Silver was more so. The real ones were the ones like Mrs.Dixon-Jones, and Rue Kelly, and this titled harridan. You couldn’t imagine a flicker of thought passing between mind and mind in this room, not though Gorton himself stalked in.
“Tell us about something nasty,” said Doll. “Not you-know-who, but something that happened ages ago, with all the characters dead.”
“High life or low life?” said Pibble.
“Gran?”
“High life, please,” said Lady Sospice primly, as if she were asking for another plate of cakes. “And I hope you will speak charitably of anybody I might know. I remember the dear archdeacon once …”
She launched into an uncappable story about the dear archdeacon’s sister and the precentor, which, she claimed, had caused a considerable rearrangement of the promotion ladder to the see of Canterbury “because, of course, that’s why he went out to Sumatra and that other man became archbishop. And I believe that he would have been considerably more understanding of that poor weak boy’s difficulties than Archbishop Thing was, and then there would have been no abdication and this tiresome war would not have happened at all.”
“The war’s over now, darling.”
“Nonsense, darling. You know quite well that none of the butchers has started delivering again, so that you have to traipse all over the town to buy my doggies’ offal. That’s what I mean by war.”
“Isn’t she marvellous?” said Doll. “You ought to be in a museum, darling.”
“Yes, I should. There’s no such thing as civilized values left in the world today.”
“What happened to the precentor?” said Pibble.
“He shot himself. He had some decent instincts.”
The telephone rang. The dogs yelled at it and went on yelling as Doll ran into the hall.
“You lost your job, they tell me,” shouted Lady Sospice.
“Yes, there was a reorganization, and I was almost due for retirement anyway.”
She sniffed and gagged herself with another cake. Pibble, left hanging in his defensive posture, drank the last chill dregs of tea. Doll rushed into the room, stumbling among terriers.
“The house is on fire!” she said.
“Then summon the fire brigade, darling.”
“Not this house. Our house. The McNair. The telephone was out of order, but they found a police car in Montagu Norman Close, and sent a message over the radio. That was Mr. Costain from the phone box by the pond. He said you ought to know. He said it’s burning like a torch. There was an explosion. He’s just seen two fire engines go past.”
“What about the children?” said Pibble.
“He didn’t say.”
“Fetch my chair, darling,” said Lady Sospice. “I would prefer to see it go.”
“I’ll run ahead and see if there’s anything I can do,” said Pibble.
“Fiddle-de-dee!” said Lady Sospice. “They’ve two fire engines there, and I need you to push my chair. It’s far too heavy for a slip of a girl. Help me up.”
She held out two loose-skinned hands; their touch was as cold as the cathypnics’.
“Now pull,” she said. “Not too hard. I’m very light. That’s right. Now my sticks. Good. Now I can get myself out into the hall.”
“I’m doing a hottie for you, darling,” called Doll from the kitchen, Lady Sospice grunted. She needed all her energy and concentration for inching herself over the carpet. When a terrier tried to fawn on her she stopped and thwacked it with one of the sticks, then inched on again. For the first time Pibble realised that she must live in continual pain, like many of the old. Doll was already in the hail with a wheelchair; neat and quick with practice, she eased her grandmother into a shapeless squirrel overcoat, lowered her into the chair, settled a hot water bottle into her lap, swathed her in shawls and scarves, and finally skewered a black straw hat, such as charladies wore in the George Belcher cartoons of the thirties, to her spindly hair. Pibble took the bar at the back of the chair and wheeled her out, over the doorstep, with a bump into the night.
The sky to the west was an unnatural orange. The villa gardens were full of people, watching and pointing. Some we
re already drifting along the road to where a fire engine brayed up the hill.
“Quick,” said Lady Sospice. “We don’t want to miss anything.”
“Move over,” said Doll.
Together they shoved their senile cargo up the slight slope at a good five miles an hour.
“Come on, Uncle,” said Doll. “I don’t want to miss anything either. I adore fireworks. We’ll go up the road. The paths in the melon ground are a bit bumpy for Gran.”
The pavement in the main road already looked as though a procession of major royalty was expected next morning, with loyal citizens already staking out their cheering points, but there was room to push the chair up the steeper slope behind the rows of gawpers. A small crowd was bothering the uniformed constable at the main gate, but Doll ruthlessly nudged the backs of their knees till they let her through.
“Can’t come in, ma’am,” said the constable. “Move along, please.”
“Nonsense, my man,” snapped Lady Sospice. “This is my house.”
“Is Superintendent Callow still here?” asked Pibble.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Pibble, isn’t it?” said the man. “You don’t know me, sir, but I know you—I’m local, I daresay that’s all right, sir.”
“Has anything been seen of your chappie?”
“No, sir. P’raps he started this fire as a diversion, though.”
“Where are the children?”
“The little ones were all outside when it started. They’re swaying the big ones out through a window—there’s hoists and scaffolding there. Lucky break, sir.”
Another fire engine was clanging up the road. Pibble whisked the chair into a nook of rhododendron and let the thing through—it was an old-fashioned one, gleaming like a regiment. They followed it down the gravel to the front of the house.
Doll had been right about fireworks. An oily cloud hung over the roof, its underside lit orange, and into this huge sparks curved and whirled from what seemed a roaring chimney of flame at roughly the back of the hail—yes, those inner stairs, all covered with paint rags and paint and containers of pint. That would go up like a bomb, if a cigarette end had been left smouldering there when the workmen knocked off. Pibble remembered an arson case out Acton way in which two brothers had so soaked their cousin’s house in gasoline that they were blown clean into the street when they lit it. Two fire engines were ranged at the near corners of the house, and the latest arrival was already jolting up onto the lawn and disappearing round the far wing. A conference of firemen was taking place in the middle of the gravel, their chin straps seeming absurdly thick and heavy compared to those on police helmets, and their holstered hatchets wagging at their buttocks like docked tails. The whole front of the house was lit, as if for son et lumiere, by the searchlights iii the engines; the house itself supplied part of the son—loud crackles and a steady, windy roaring—but most of it came from the deep, intolerable drumming of the diesels that drove the pumps.
“The fire hasn’t got very far, has it?” shouted Doll.
“They’ll try to get at the base of it,” shouted Pibble. “From either side. But remember all that wood, and how dry the heating must have made it. And the smoke will heat it more.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
“I’ve taken a course.”
He looked round the gravel sweep to where the cathypnics stood all together, their moon faces faintly reflecting the orange glare. Higher up was a group of men, among whom he recognized the parade-ground stance of Ned Callow. He didn’t feel like another encounter now, so he walked over to the children. Ivan was in charge.
“Won’t they get cold?” said Pibble.
“I’m just waiting till Doctor Kelly’s finished wheeling his lot into the greenhouses, and then I’ll take them down. It’s heated there.”
“Has he got them all out?”
“Like magic. I ran up to give him a hand as soon as I’d counted the dormice, and he’d got a window out of the ward already—he had some tools up there, see. And we slung them out onto the scaffolding and down on a couple of hoists. We’d done half of them before the firemen came. And he even had a key to the greenhouses. Trust him!”
“Where’s—” started Pibble.
“Hi! What’s that sod up to again?” said Ivan.
Pibble followed his glance. A pinioned figure was struggling in front of Callow, screened from them by the detective’s ominous bulk. Excited stirrings tickled the edges of the group. Pibble looked quickly away. It is difficult to judge the force necessary to arrest and restrain a homicidal maniac; it is also foolish to be a witness of the amount Callow and his team might judge necessary. Suddenly the fire seemed to have lost its drama; it was like some tedious diseuse trying to recapture her audience after the real star’s face has shown itself tactlessly in the wings. The night was cold, the fire hot but not enough to account for the way in which it now felt colder behind him than in front. His neck muscles ached with the strain of not looking round. Ivan had copied him and was also staring purposefully at the orange gouts from the roof and the thickening smoke. Two firemen in breathing apparatus climbed out of the downstairs window at the bottom right-hand corner, and began to report to a superior. He could see from their attitudes that they had been driven out—the fire was still winning.
“Mr. Pibble, sir?”
His taut muscles tried to jump and cringe at the same moment. Callow’s sergeant blinked at the convulsion. “You all right, sir?”
“Yes, thanks—I swallowed a sneeze. Courcy, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve collared a character up there—not our villain, but sneaking in the bushes. He says you can vouch for him.”
“All right.”
It was Vivian Costain, undamaged. Some instinct must have restrained Callow from hitting a citizen who had the necessary skill and persistence to make trouble for him afterward. Costain had been refused re-entry at the gate after his telephoning, so had climbed the wall by the wood and come down through the shrubbery. Pibble explained who he was, ,and Callow looked disgusted, as if it were intolerable for a military man to have to meet an aesthete without ordering his hair to be forcibly cut and giving him a good kick in the pants.
“I’d prefer to have him officially OK’d,” he rapped. “No offense, Jimmy. Where’s that Jones woman?”
“She goes home in the evening,” said Pibble. “I’ll ask Ivan.”
Ivan hadn’t seen her.
“But I told the firemen she’d gone home,” he said. “They wanted to know whether to search the building. The dormice say she’s gone, and they’d know, because she always says good night to them last thing. She was just going off to do her rounds when I last saw her; that’s what she always does, too. Posey’s gone, hasn’t she, Dickie?”
“Posey gone,” whined a child.
“Poor Posey,” said another.
The fire changed its note, and Pibble looked round. Upward-streaming beards of flame rose now from three windows of the upper floor, to the right of the porch.
“’ot.” said a child.
“They’re not themselves, you know,” said Ivan. “They haven’t been all afternoon. I suppose it’s only natch. One thing—it’s the first time anyone’s seen them all awake together.”
Pibble went back to Callow. Mr. Costain was running a finger round inside his collar as if trying to preen out the creases made by the arresting fists. Callow snarled at the news.
“There’s that Indian gentleman I talked to this morning,” suggested Mr. Costain. “He has status here, I think.”
Pibble searched again. More orange flared from the rooms leading toward Kelly’s Kingdom.
“They won’t save that wing,” said Callow judiciously. “Not against the wind.”
By the sudden light Pibble saw Silver’s white hair shine against the rhododendrons; he had taken off his dustcoat
and his dark skin made him otherwise invisible against that background. Pibble crossed to him.
“Could you come with me, Doctor Silver? Just for a moment.”
“A pleasure. This is sad, sad, eh? That beautiful house.”
“You’ve been very lucky about casualties.”
“Yes indeed. I have seen hospital fires where … Aha! It is Mr. Costard!”
“This is Doctor Silver, Ned,” said Pibble. “Doctor, Superintendent Callow wants to know—”
“One moment,” said Dr. Silver. He turned casually but firmly away, like a monarch who has dispatches to read before returning to gossip with his courtiers; he strolled down across the gravel toward the still unburned east wing, and disappeared behind the thudding fire engine. The group round Callow had watched him, astonished but unstirring. His back was as authoritative as his front. Pibble somehow still felt that the uncompleted introduction was his responsibility and had drifted a few dithering steps toward the building, but when Silver disappeared he began to run. Someone else was moving quickly in the same direction from farther over to his left. He rounded the bellowing pump, whose hoses snaked in to the window of the corridor, and made for the corner of the building. A hand gripped his shoulder.
“He went in there,” shouted a voice. It was Alfred, pointing at the open window of Mrs. Dixon-Jones’s room; the top enter pane of the bottom sash was smashed, but no one would have noticed that slight tinkle amid the uproar.
“Shall I go first, sir?” yelled Alfred. It was an order. Pibble followed him clumsily over the sill. The room was tangy with smoke but not intolerable, and ghastlily illuminated by the searchlight outside. Alfred slipped a pencil flashlight from his pocket and without looking round nipped through the door;
Pibble was half across the room when he stopped. Something caught his consciousness as being different—yes, he had seen without noticing as he was climbing in that the door into the tower staircase was now open. Odds were that Silver had taken the key from the board over the mantelpiece and gone up.
Sleep and His Brother Page 16
