I gave Rox a quick peck on the cheek and moved off again to mingle.
Some detective. I was beginning to think I couldn’t detect my own ass with both hands and a flashlight, when I saw Stephen across the room, guiding along a tall, slim, gray-haired guy. I’d never met Mr. Grevey, and I didn’t recall seeing his picture on TV or in the papers, but if the fellow with Stephen wasn’t the ambassador, the State Department had missed a bet. I’d never seen anybody who looked so diplomatic.
All I had to do now was catch up with them, a task made easier by the fact that they were headed straight for me. The ambassador had a kind of fixed grin on his face. I had a horrible feeling that Stephen was reciting poetry to him.
I caught up with them in the middle of the floor.
The band had been taking a break. Before that, they had been playing soporific stuff one step up from Muzak. Now they had to show their chops, whipping into a high-volume rendition of the old Blood, Sweat & Tears song “Lucretia MacEvil,” heavy on the brass. We had to yell to be heard over it.
“Cobb!” Stephen yelled, “Come here!”
He didn’t have to ask me twice. I virtually ran, dodging enthusiastic dancers, who had apparently been dying to cut a rug to antique jazz rock for years now.
Now he yelled in Grevey’s ear, “Mr. Ambassador, allow me to present your famous countryman Matt Cobb!”
The ambassador gave me a political grin and shook my hand. “I’ve heard so much about you, Mr. Cobb! It’s a pleasure to meet you!”
I said, “Nice to meet you, too!” then abandoned him, thereby blowing any chance I may have ever had for a political career.
“Stephen! Where’s your stepmother?”
“What? Pamela has a headache! She frequently gets them! She’s gone to lie down!”
“Where’s Phoebe?”
“Cobb, Ambassador Grevey has been eager to meet you!”
“I’ll explain later!”
“What?”
“I’LL EXPLAIN LATER!!!” I screamed, just as the band stopped. “Where’s Phoebe?”
“She went up to give Pamela one of her famous neck rubs. It frequently helps.”
I made Stephen tell me how to get to the room, and I ran.
20
“And there it is!”
Tommy Cooper
The Tommy Cooper Show, Thames TV
I HAD VARIOUS PICTURES in my mind of what I’d find when I made it to the room, depending on when in the proceedings I happened to arrive.
The worst thing to find would be a dead body and nothing else, because nobody was ever going to prove anything in that case. The next worst thing would be to find a dead body and a killer screaming she had just found the body.
The next worst thing, paradoxically enough, would have been to find two completely sound and well women, because then the murderer would draw her horns in and would never be caught.
It would also be awfully embarrassing for me, but I was getting used to that.
The best thing, God help me, was to find a murder attempt in progress. That would provide two witnesses (the intended victim and me) and tie up the killer while Bristow and the boys searched for some evidence.
Meanwhile, I kept running. The damned place was bigger than Buckingham Palace. Second flight of stairs, turn right, right again, fifth door on the left.
There it was. The house was too well made for me to have heard any noises through the door, and I didn’t want to take the time anyway.
I didn’t even try the knob to see if the door was locked. I just backed up against the far wall of the corridor, pushed off as hard as I could, and pistoned my right heel into the door just below the lock.
A cop had shown me how to do that. It doesn’t take a lot of strength if you hit in the right place, and I caught it lucky.
The door popped open to rustling noises and darkness. For one horrible moment I was afraid I had blundered in on a couple making love in Lady Arking’s bedroom, or that Stephen’s directions hadn’t been so hot after all.
When the three bullets flashed out of the darkness at me, though (a worst thing I hadn’t thought of adding to my list), I decided I must be in the right place after all.
I admire the man or woman who can actually think in a situation like that. God knows I can’t. Sure, in retrospect you can say that if you ducked to the side of the doorway, the killer would still have shot you through the wall, and would have gained time to finish the murder, besides, to say nothing of being able to escape through the window at leisure. At the time though, nothing flashes through your mind except “hit the floor!”
So I dived.
Into the room.
It really was a brilliant thing to do; I’ve been congratulating my subconscious ever since. I kicked the door shut behind me as I went down, so now the killer couldn’t see me any more than I could see her.
In fact, rolling sideways and ducking two more shots, I could see better, because as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the top half of her dimly silhouetted against the window, which, curtained as it was, still leaked enough light from the grounds and the park and the zoo to make visible something standing directly in front of it.
I hate guns, and in all the years since I’ve left the army I’ve only fired one once. However, every tool finds its time of use, and, boy! could I have used a gun right then. I could have potted the killer virtually at will and the whole business would have been over.
However, as my dear old dad used to say, wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one gets full first. We would have to do this the hard way.
As soon as I could figure out what that was.
I was on the floor, way over to my left, hugging the dark carpet like a baby chimp clinging to its mother’s shoulder. The only movement I had risked was to turn up the collar of my dinner jacket to hide the white of my shirt. Because if my vision was getting better in the darkness, so was the killer’s.
I didn’t have a lot of time left.
I could see now that between me and my friend with gun was the bed, and on that lay the intended victim, not totally conscious maybe, but, judging from an occasional groan and wiggle, not dead either.
I knew what I was going to do. It might not have been the smartest thing that could have been done in the circumstances, but it was all I could think of, aside from waiting for the gentlemen of the Yard to arrive.
But even that I’d ruined with impatience, turning myself into an instant hostage.
No. I had to get myself and the victim-to-be out of the line of fire, separate the killer from the victim and capture her. That’s called strategy.
Tactics were simple. I inched forward—millimetered, actually—on the carpet, trying to make no noise until I was about nine feet, a body length and a half, from the edge of the bed.
Now the idea was to slowly gather my legs under me until I was ready to spring.
No time.
The killer’s voice came out of the darkness, more gleeful than I’d ever heard it.
“I see you,” she said.
So much for slowly. I jerked like a man with his tongue in a light socket, then scrambled forward under another bullet.
I was leading a charmed life; I didn’t want to take any more chances. I crabbed rapidly to the bed, grabbed the bottom of the box spring with both hands, and heaved.
Most English beds are strange by American standards—their box springs are strange, massive, bolted-together affairs that come down to within an inch or so of the floor. There wasn’t a lot of room, but I jammed my fingers under as far as they would go, tearing a nail and barking some knuckles in the process. After that, it was just a matter of summoning all my strength. I literally threw the bed with the potential victim on it, in the killer’s face.
It worked. Another bullet went into the ceiling as the edge of the bed knocked the killer’s arm up. I just stood behind the bed and pushed.
The idea was to get her wedged up against a wall and trapped, but it
didn’t work. She squirted free and out the French window to the balcony.
I didn’t know where she could get to from there, but I’d seen from the drive up that there were stairs down to ground level.
The first thing I had to do was check out the victim. I threw the bed aside and excavated her from tumbled bedclothes.
It was a good thing I did, because a silk scarf was still tight around her throat. If I’d left her, she might just have gone on strangling. I pulled the scarf loose where the ends had been neatly tucked in.
Air sliced into her throat, and she moaned but didn’t say anything. A quick feel of the skull showed me the lump. My fingers came away sticky.
Something occurred to me. People being strangled don’t moan. Those sounds had to have come from the killer’s throat, the killer’s twisted emotions. I felt a chill go through me.
“Matt?”
It was Roxanne, along with Stephen Arking and Sandy and Bernard Levering.
I spoke to Stephen. “You got any doctors on the guest list?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts. Get the doctor. Lady Arking has been hit in the head and choked. She’s still alive but she needs medical help. Go.”
“But what about Phoebe?” he protested.
“Phoebe’s fine for the time being,” I told him. “Go get the doctor.”
He went.
I turned to Roxanne. “Phoebe’s it. Tell Bristow.”
Sandy had been right about her husband. He looked like a man with a headache; he looked like man who’d walked in halfway through the movie; but he was not drunk.
“Phoebe?” he squeaked. “Little Phoebe?”
“Yeah,” I said, “little Phoebe. Sometime when you get the chance count the bullet holes in this room. Not now, though. She’s loose, and she’s got a gun. I don’t care how you do it, but make sure nobody leaves the house. Recruit the servants.
“Also, she may try to get back in. It’s a mean night, and I recall she was only wearing this flimsy chiffon thing.”
“Organdy,” Rox said.
“Thank you,” I said. “It was vital that we get that right.”
“Ha-ha,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go catch her, if I can.” I kissed her quickly and plunged out onto the balcony into the fog.
21
“Safari? So goody!”
Christopher Biggins
Biggins’ On Safari, Thames TV
THE FOG WASN’T QUITE as bad as it had been when we’d first driven up. The night had grown colder; low temperatures were on their way toward turning the fog into a misty rain and precipitating it out of the air.
But that was hours from now.
At the moment, visibility was still limited to a few dozen yards, and the lights shone in a white limbo.
Because of the way the land sloped up away from the canal, it was only one flight of stairs from the balcony to the ground on this side of the house.
At the bottom of the stairs was a small terrace, the gate of which was standing open. Fine, O Mighty Hunter, I thought. Through the gate and after the quarry. Then what?
Then listen. That was what I had going for me in the fog. Most of the world fell silent, and the sounds that did occur seemed to travel farther and more clearly.
So I’d rely on sound.
I knew that’s what Phoebe would be doing—I had her glasses in my pocket. I had found them just inside the French window. They must have been knocked off when I’d thrown the bed at her. A quick glance through them had shown me that they were very strong glasses, and she probably couldn’t see worth a damn without them.
That would probably have made a difference if it weren’t for the damned fog.
I closed my eyes, held my breath, and listened hard.
Light, rhythmic clicks. High heels on a paved path. If there were any casual strollers here tonight, I doubted they were wearing heels. I knew there was a gate not far from where I stood that lead out into Regent’s Park, through which the canal ran. I stepped to the side of the path—no sense letting her hear me coming—and followed the clicks.
When I got to the gate, it was ajar. Not only that, but a wisp of orange chiffon was snagged on a piece of wire. Organdy.
This was so perfect, I waited a few seconds and thought it over. Suppose, I thought, the hero walks blindly through the fence and catches a couple of bullets out of the fog on the other side. Three of them. Remembering Winston, and her marksmanship through the doorway at me, I knew Phoebe liked to set them off in groups of three.
I let the clicking convince me it was just luck. I went through. Nothing happened. I still kept to the side of the path on the wet grass. The leather soles of my evening shoes slipped occasionally, but that was a small price to pay for stealth. All I had to do was remember not to swear every time it happened.
I wondered why Phoebe hadn’t done the same. I knew she couldn’t walk on soft ground in spike heels, but she could take them off and walk barefoot on the path. It might not be comfortable, and she did run a risk—London, in my assessment is the dog-poo capital of the world, worse even than New York—but we were playing a high-stakes game here.
And Phoebe had already shown she was a woman who was not averse to taking risks.
Tonight for instance, with the attempt on Lady Arking.
So simple, so opportunistic. Phoebe was good at taking her opportunities where she found them. In this case, it was the well-known fact that Lady Arking got tension headaches, and that Phoebe could give neck rubs that relieved them. So when Lady Arking happened to mention to her stepdaughter-in-law that she could feel one of the damnably inconvenient ones coming on in the middle of her party for the American ambassador (which would never do), all Phoebe had to do was tell her to go lie down in her room for a few minutes until Phoebe had a chance to join her.
That was all she needed by way of an alibi, really. A conk on the head—because after all, Pamela was such a large woman—then one of Lady Arking’s own scarves around the neck. A minute or two, to be sure no first aid would be effective, then “discover” the body and scream murder, à la Lady Macbeth. Just make sure the gun (she loved guns, did our little Phoebe) was out of your possession and innocent of fingerprints.
Simple. The only real danger is that somebody would blunder in, and that was unlikely. Who could imagine that some wise guy from New York would figure out what the most likely fringe benefit was, put a few things together, and realize what you were up to?
I was making some progress. Either that, or Phoebe was pressing. Either way, the clicks were getting louder.
So were the animal noises. A tree loomed out of the fog—I dodged it just as some bird that was definitely not the nightingale that sang in Berkeley Square let out an unearthly shriek that started a whole jungle cacophony. We were approaching London Zoo.
I’ve got her, I thought. There was a great big fence around the zoo, all the way around, and the canal ran through the middle of it. Phoebe was going to have to make a huge detour before she got to the main road, and I could sprint along and catch up with her.
Then I heard the gunshot.
I was halfway to the ground before I realized I was being silly. If I couldn’t see her through the fog, she sure as hell couldn’t see me through the same fog without her glasses.
There was another shot, and the peeng of a bullet screaming off metal.
The animals in the zoo went insane.
My God, I thought as I picked myself up from the wet earth, she’s picking them off through the fence. I also thought, as I felt the damp seep into my skin, that this tux had about had it.
Then I realized what was really happening. She wasn’t going to go around the zoo. She’d shot the lock off the side gate so she could go through.
Again, simple; again, very dangerous. There were guards at the zoo, and a store (as at all zoos) of high-powered rifles to be used in case a dangerous animal got loose.
Then there were the
animals. It was a cold night, most of the animals would be safely locked away against the cold night. But not all—witness the sounds. Some animals liked cold. Polar bears for instance.
Only they didn’t have polar bears anymore at this zoo. In recent years, they’d devoted themselves exclusively to endangered species and captive breeding programs.
But there was something here, something I’d seen on one of my visits here with Roxanne ...
I reached the fence. The lock was mangled, and the gate again was ajar. No organdy this time. The path led on through the fog.
I supposed Phoebe’s plan was to make her way through the zoo, then shoot the lock off at the other end, hop a cab or a 274 bus to Baker Street Station, and be off. One problem she might have with the plan was that, by my count, she had already fired eight bullets. Unless she had a store of ammunition and was reloading, the little automatic she was toting around couldn’t have more than one bullet left in it, maximum.
I followed her into the zoo.
It was a Twilight Zone episode, paths curving off into the fog, empty cages and a few full ones. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like chasing her alone.
Then it occurred to me I didn’t really have to. The gunshots probably had attracted some attention. I’d do my best to attract more, even to inspire some action.
“Phoebe!” I yelled.
My voice echoed through the fog.
“Phoebe! I know you’re in here. It’s no good. The police are surrounding the zoo! You can’t get out!”
“Liar!”
The voice came from so nearby, I jumped. My guess that she probably had no bullets left became a fierce hope.
“I’ve never lied to you yet,” I lied. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me.” It wasn’t necessary to yell now, and we both knew it.
“If the police were here,” she said, “they wouldn’t have let you in here.”
“Sure they would. You’re out of bullets, so you’re no real danger to me. And they think the fact that we’re sort of friends might make it possible to bring you in without anybody being hurt.
“Besides, you’re a lousy shot. You must have been right next to Winston when you blasted him. You paid him off, right? Then he got a big grin on his face and came to collect another installment of his fringe benefit—namely, your small but perfectly formed self.
Killed in the Fog Page 18
