Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense

by Simon Brett

  She had to watch the car.

  The phone rang.

  It was a dislocating intrusion. Like someone forgetting their lines in the middle of a good play, a reminder of another reality.

  She lifted the receiver gingerly. “Hello.”

  “It’s Kevin.”

  He sounded business-like. This was the way she had heard him speak into the phone on the rare occasions when she’d gone up to Andersen Small to meet him and had to wait in his office.

  “Oh.” She hadn’t expected ever to hear from him again. He was a part of her life that she no longer thought about. It was strange to be reminded that he was still alive. He had no place in the weightless, transitional world she now inhabited.

  “How are things, Avril?”

  She didn’t answer. She couldn’t cope with the philosophical ramifications of the question.

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking. I want to get things cut and dried.”

  Unaccountably she giggled. “You always did, Kevin.”

  “What I mean is, I want a divorce. I want to marry Davina.”

  “And does she want to marry you?”

  “I haven’t asked her yet, not in so many words. I wanted to get our end sorted out first, to feel free . . .”

  “Free,” she echoed colourlessly.

  He ignored the interruption. “Then I’ll speak to Davina. It’ll be all right. We have an understanding.”

  “I’m sure you have.” Suddenly anger animated Avril’s lethargy. “It’ll be easy enough for her to have an understanding of you. All she has to understand is selfishness and petty-mindedness and social-climbing. And I’m sure, from your point of view, she takes no understanding at all. You can’t understand something when there’s nothing there to understand.”

  “There’s no need to be abusive. Particularly about someone you haven’t met. Davina is in fact a highly intelligent girl.”

  Avril didn’t think this assertion worthy of comment.

  “Anyway, all I’m saying is that I will be starting proceedings for divorce, and it’s going to be easier all round if you don’t create any problems over it. I’ll see that you and the boys are well looked after financially. By the way, how are the boys?”

  “Fine,” she replied. Why bother to tell him otherwise?

  “Anyway, I’ll be round at some point to pick up my things. I hope we’ll be able to meet without too much awkwardness. We’re both grown-up people and I hope we’ll be able to deal with this whole business in a civilized, adult manner.”

  Avril put the phone down.

  A civilized, adult manner. She laughed.

  Pick up my things. She laughed further.

  If, of course, you have any things to pick up.

  She took a bottle out of the wine-rack and threw it against the opposite wall. It shattered satisfyingly.

  She did the same with another bottle. And another and another, until the whole rack was empty.

  It was enjoyable. She looked round for further destruction.

  She opened the cupboard by the window.

  And there it was. Of course. The brand-new shotgun.

  Kevin had a book about shotguns on his desk. Good old Kevin. Never go into anything without buying lots of books to show you how to do it. Do your homework, you don’t want to look a fool.

  The book made it easy to load the gun and showed how to release the safety-catch. Avril slipped a cartridge into each barrel from Kevin’s unopened box.

  Then she opened the window a little and continued watching the silver-grey Volkswagen Golf parked outside.

  It was early Sunday morning. Eight o’clock maybe. She had seen it get light a couple of hours earlier. All night she had watched the car outside. It would be terrible not to be there when they arrived.

  She didn’t know where the boys were. She vaguely recollected their coming back at lunchtime on the Saturday. But they had found there was no lunch prepared and had gone out again. She thought they had said something about spending the night in the park, but she couldn’t be sure. It had been difficult to take in what they said. Her dizziness and the mobility of everything that surrounded her seemed to have grown. It was as if her head had levitated and floated above her body in some transparent viscous pool.

  But she knew she would be all right. Her body would hold up as long as was necessary.

  The phone rang. This time its intrusion didn’t seem so incongruous. It now took on the ambivalence of everything else she saw and heard. It might be real, it might not. It didn’t matter much one way or the other.

  She answered it. As she did so, she thought to herself, “If it’s real, then I’m answering it. If it’s not, then I’m not.” That was very funny, and she giggled into the receiver.

  “Hello, is that Avril?”

  “Yes. Almost definitely.” She giggled again.

  “It’s Mrs Eady.”

  “Ah, Mrs Eady.”

  “It’s about your Mum, Avril. I’m afraid she’s had another stroke. Doctor’s with her now.”

  “Ah.”

  “And I’m afraid this one’s more serious. Doctor says he doesn’t think she’ll last long.”

  “Ah.”

  “Look, Avril, can you come up? I mean, she’s still alive now, but I don’t know how long it’ll be. They’re going to take her into hospital and . . . Avril, are you still there?”

  “Oh yes,” said Avril wisely.

  “Can you come up?”

  “Come up?”

  “To Rochdale.”

  “Oh no, I’m very busy.”

  “But it’s your Mum. I mean, she can still recognize me and—”

  “No, I’m sorry. I can’t do anything till they come.”

  She put the phone down.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when the girl arrived. She came up the road carrying two suitcases.

  It was the suitcases that alerted Avril. Kevin had got a nerve. To send the girl to pick up his things. A bloody nerve.

  The girl walked up the road slowly, giving Avril plenty of time to look at her. No, she wasn’t that pretty. Not even as young as she’d expected. Looked about her age. Very brown, though, very tanned.

  Avril knew she would stop by the car and, sure enough, she did. The two cases were put down, and the girl fumbled in her handbag for car-keys. I see, she’d load up with Kevin’s things and then drive off in the car.

  Avril could see everything very clearly now. The world around her had stabilized, in fact she could see it in sharper detail than usual. She sighted along the barrels of the shotgun.

  The girl had found her key and was bending to open the car door. Avril felt the trigger with her finger. Just one trigger. Kevin wouldn’t approve of waste. Just one cartridge would do it.

  She squeezed the trigger.

  She was totally unprepared for the recoil, which knocked her off her chair. But when she picked herself up and looked out of the window, she saw she had succeeded.

  The girl seemed to be kneeling against the side of the car. Her back was a mass of red. The side windows were holed and frosted and there were small holes in the silver-grey bodywork of the Volkswagen Golf.

  Kevin arrived in his car a moment later and parked behind the Golf. He was in a furious temper.

  Davina had turned down his proposal. Not only that, she had laughed at him when he made it. She had let him know in no uncertain terms that at the moment she had no thoughts of marriage and was only looking for good sex. She had added as riders that, if she had been looking for a husband, she would have looked some way beyond him, and that she was beginning to have grave doubts about the quality of the sex he provided.

  So he was coming home with his tail between his legs. Avril, he knew, would welcome him. She had no alternative.

  As he got out of the car, he couldn’t help noticing the bloody mess beside the Golf. He stared at the body with his back to his house.

  So it was the back of his head that received the main blast of the second barrel of his
new shotgun. Some more holes appeared in the bodywork of the silver-grey Volkswagen Golf.

  The Detective-Inspector watched the police car drive off. “Well, she seemed to go docilely enough, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir. The only thing she seemed worried about was that the Golf would definitely get towed away. Said it was in her parking space. I assured her it would, and she seemed quite happy.”

  “Strange. I mean, not her shooting the husband. Apparently he’d left her and gone off with some other woman, so there’s a motive there. But the other woman she shot . . . completely random.”

  “She’s not hubby’s girlfriend?”

  “Oh, Sergeant, wouldn’t that be nice and neat.” The Detective-Inspector smiled. “No, we’ve identified her from things in her handbag. Passport, airline ticket stubs—very well-documented. Just come back from a fortnight’s package holiday in Sardinia.”

  “No connection with this family at all?”

  The Detective-Inspector shook his head. “Not yet. I personally don’t think we’ll probably ever find one. I think that poor woman’s only offence was to use someone else’s parking space.”

  TICKLED TO DEATH

  IF A DEAD body could ever be funny, this one was. Only intimations of his own mortality prevented Inspector Walsh from smiling at the sight.

  The corpse in the greenhouse was dressed in a clown’s costume. Bald plastic cranium with side-tufts of ropey orange hair. Red jacket, too long. Black and white check trousers suspended from elastic braces to a hooped waistband. Shoes three foot long pointing upwards in strange semaphore.

  “Boy, he’s really turned his toes up,” said Sergeant Trooper, who was prone to such witticisms even when the corpse was less obviously humorous.

  The clown’s face could not be seen. The back of a plate supplied a moonlike substitute which fitted well with the overall image.

  “Going to look good on the report,” Sergeant Trooper continued. “Cause of death—suffocation. Murder weapon—a custard pie.”

  “I suppose that was the cause . . . Let the photographers and fingerprint boys do their bit and we’ll have a look.”

  These formalities concluded, Inspector Walsh donned rubber gloves and cautiously prised the plate away. Over its make-up, the face was covered with pink goo. It was clogged in the nostrils and in the slack, painted mouth.

  “Yes, Sergeant Trooper, it looks like suffocation.”

  “Course it does. What’s your alternative? Poisoned custard in the pie?”

  “Well, it’s certainly not custard.” The Inspector poked at the congealed mess. It was hard and crumbly. “Even school custard wasn’t this bad. No, it’s plaster of Paris or something. They don’t usually use that for slapstick, do they?”

  Sergeant Trooper shook his head. “Nope. Foam, flour and water, dough . . . not plaster of Paris.”

  “Hmm. Which probably means the crime was premeditated.”

  The Sergeant thought this too obvious to merit a response. Inspector Walsh bent down and felt in the capacious pockets of the red jacket.

  “What are you looking for? I don’t think clowns carry credit cards or passports.”

  “No,” Inspector Walsh agreed, producing a string of cloth sausages and a jointless rubber fish.

  “Wonder if there’s anything else.” He felt again in the pockets. His rubber-gloved hand closed round a soft oval object. He squeezed it gently.

  “Bloody hell,” said Sergeant Trooper.

  Thin jets of water found their way through the caked white beneath the clown’s eyes. Inspector Walsh drew out a rubber bulb attached to a plastic tube.

  “Old clown’s prop—squirting eyes.”

  He reached into the other pocket and found what felt like a switch. He pressed it.

  The two tufts of orange hair shot out at right angles from the clown’s bald head. As they did so, the noise of a klaxon escaped from somewhere inside the jacket.

  Inspector Walsh stood up. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a funny business.”

  “The fact is,” objected the Teapot, “it’s damnably inconvenient. These people are our guests. We can’t just keep them here against their will.”

  “No, we can’t,” the Pillar-box agreed shrilly. “What will they think of our hospitality?”

  The Yorkshire terrier, scampering around the study, barked its endorsement of their anger.

  “I’m sorry.” Inspector Walsh leant coolly back against the leather-topped desk. “But a murder has been committed and we cannot allow anyone to leave the building until we have taken their statements.”

  “Well, I may be forced to speak to your superior,” snapped the Teapot. “I am not without influence in this area.”

  “I’m sure you’re not,” the Inspector soothed. “Now why don’t you take your lid off and sit down?”

  The Teapot flounced angrily, but did remove its hatlike lid and, hitching up its wired body, perched on a low stool.

  “You may as well sit down too, madam.” The Inspector pointed to a second stool and the Pillar-box, with equally bad grace, folded on to it. Pale blue eyes flashed resentment through the posting slit.

  “And can we get rid of that bloody dog?” A uniformed policeman ushered the reluctant Yorkshire terrier out of the study. “Oh, and get us some tea while you’re at it, could you, Constable?” The Inspector smiled perfunctorily. “Now let’s just get a few facts straight. You are Mr and Mrs Alcott?”

  The two heads nodded curt agreement.

  “And this is your house?”

  Two more nods.

  “And, Mr Alcott, you have no doubt that the dead man is your business partner, Mr Cruikshank?”

  Alcott’s head, rising tortoise-like from the top of the Teapot, twitched from side to side. “No doubt at all.”

  “He had been wearing the clown costume all evening?”

  “Yes. It’s one of our most popular lines. As partners, we always try to demonstrate both the traditional and the new. Mr Cruikshank was wearing one of Festifunn’s oldest designs, while I—” Unconsciously, he smoothed down the Teapot frame with his spout. “—chose one of the most recent.” He gestured proudly to the Pillar-box. “My wife’s is also a new design.”

  Some response seemed to be required. The Inspector murmured, “Very nice too”, which he hoped was appropriate.

  “And your guests?”

  “They’re all dressed in our lines too.”

  “Yes. That wasn’t actually what I was going to ask. I wished to enquire about your guest list. Are all the people here personal friends?”

  “Not so much friends as professional associates,” replied the Teapot tartly.

  “So they would all have known Mr Cruikshank?”

  “Oh, certainly. Mr Cruikshank always made a point of getting to know our staff and clients personally.” The Teapot’s tone implied disapproval of this familiarity.

  “So I would be correct in assuming that this Fancy Dress Party is a business function?”

  The Teapot was vehement in its agreement with this statement. The party was very definitely part of Festifunn’s promotional campaign, and as such (though this was implied rather than stated) tax-deductible.

  “You don’t think we do this for fun, do you?” asked the crumpled Pillar-box.

  “No, of course we don’t.” The Teapot assumed an accent of self-denying righteousness. “It’s just an opportunity to demonstrate the full range of our stock to potential customers. And also it’s a kind of thank-you to the staff. Something that I wouldn’t do voluntarily, I hasten to add, but something they demand these days as a right. And one daren’t cross them. Even the novelty industry,” he concluded darkly, “is not immune to the destructive influence of the trade unions.”

  “But presumably everyone has a good time?”

  Mr Alcott winced at the Inspector’s suggestion. “The Fancy Dress Party was not originally my idea,” he said in further self-justification.

  “Mr Cruikshank’s,” Walsh deduced smoo
thly.

  “Yes.”

  “Then why is it held in your house?”

  “Have you recently examined the cost of hiring outside premises?”

  “I meant why not in Mr Cruikshank’s house?”

  The Pillar-box tutted at the idea. “Mr Cruikshank’s house would be totally unsuitable for a function of this nature. It’s a terrible mess, full of odd machinery and designs he’s working on . . . most unsalubrious. I’m afraid his style of living, too, is—was—most irregular. He drank, you know.”

  The Inspector let that go for the moment. “Mr Alcott, would you say Mr Cruickshank had any enemies?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I mean, did he tend to annoy people?”

  “Certainly.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, I have no wish to speak ill of the dead . . .”

  “But?”

  “But Mr Cruikshank was . . .” The Teapot formed the words with distaste. “. . . a practical joker.”

  “Ah.” The Inspector smiled. “Good thing to be in your line of business.”

  “By no means,” the Teapot contradicted. “Most unsuitable.”

  Again Walsh didn’t pursue it. Time enough for that. “Right now, I would like from you a list of your guests before I start interviewing them.” He took a notebook from his pocket, then turned round to the desk and picked up a pencil that lay beside an old-fashioned biscuit-barrel.

  “Well, there’s Mr Brickett, our Sales Manager . . .”

  Inspector Walsh bent to write the name down. The pencil squashed softly against the paper. It was made of rubber.

  “I’m sorry. That’s one of our BJ153s. Joke Pencil—Many Minutes of Mirth.”

  “Ah.”

  At that moment the uniformed constable arrived with the tea-tray. The three helped themselves and then, when the Inspector again looked round for something to write with, the Teapot said, “There’s a ball-point pen just the other side of the biscuit-barrel.”