Paws for Alarm

by Marian Babson

  ‘Arnold –’

  ‘But, whoever it was, he outsmarted himself.’ Arnold smiled grimly. ‘He pushed me between the shoulder blades – hitting me bang on my stitches. That’s what saved me. I tell you, Babe, I broke the world record for the standing broad jump there and then. I was obviously intended to fall forward under the wheels. Instead, I leaped a mile and it was the far side of the bus that caught me. I went down, but not under the wheels. It must have been a great disappointment to somebody.’

  ‘But who, Arnold, who? Who on earth could possibly want to kill you?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself ever since.’ Arnold leaned back and stared at the ceiling, as though the answer might be written up there. ‘As you pointed out, nobody here knows me well enough to want to murder me. It can’t be anything personal.’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ I said soothingly, biding my time to move in and take his temperature. ‘And what do the police say about all this?’

  ‘I didn’t tell them.’ Arnold was indignant. ‘They’d have thought I was crazy.’

  ‘Well, maybe just a little bit overwrought and exhausted.’ I tried to slide my hand across his forehead to see if a fever had developed, but he caught my hand and held it.

  ‘Think about it, Babe,’ he urged. ‘If it isn’t personal, then what is it? I’ve been thinking ever since it happened.’

  ‘And what have you decided?’

  ‘Think, Babe,’ he urged again. ‘Doesn’t anything strike you as peculiar about this whole setup?’

  ‘What setup?’

  ‘The last man in this house dies,’ he said darkly. ‘In an automobile accident. That was the first way they tried to get rid of me. Doesn’t that make you think?’

  ‘Think what? Arnold, I think you’d better go upstairs and lie down. You’ll feel a lot better in the morning.’ I kept my voice calm and reasonable; yet, despite myself, cold chills began travelling up and down my spine.

  ‘Something funny’s going on.’ He struggled to his feet. ‘Somebody doesn’t want a man in this house. Maybe they don’t want anybody here at all – and getting rid of the man is the sure way to get the rest of the family out.’

  ‘But why should anybody want the house empty? I mean, maybe Lania would like to have the whole place to herself – then Piers could have a whole set of showrooms – but she wouldn’t, would she? Even if the place were empty, she still couldn’t move in and take it over. There are laws. Besides, I don’t believe the thought has ever crossed her mind.’

  ‘Maybe not. Maybe the reason is something else entirely, but just think about it. If they’d killed me, you and the kids would have gone straight back to New Hampshire, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ I admitted. ‘We wouldn’t want to stay here without you.’

  ‘You see?’ He began to sway. I rushed forward to prop him up. He clung to me abstractedly. ‘And they killed John Blake so that his family would get out of the house —’

  ‘They couldn’t know that.’

  ‘Couldn’t they?’ He began to crumple. I braced myself and steered him out into the hallway. I had to get him upstairs to the bedroom while he was still on his feet. I could never manage him if he became a dead weight.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ He knew what I was doing and cooperated, as much as he was able, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, matching his steps to mine. He clutched at the stair rail to take some of his weight off me.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I encouraged. ‘We’re doing fine.’

  ‘Are we?’ At the top of the stairs he stopped and glared at me. ‘Your precious Patrick’s wife is Rosemary’s sister. She arranged this house swap. How do you know it wasn’t planned long beforehand? They’d know Rosemary would do whatever her sister suggested – once they’d got John out of the way.’

  Before I could reply, he gave a sudden sigh and crumpled to the floor at my feet.

  Fifteen

  The trouble with children – one of the troubles with children – is that they’re always around. Especially when you don’t want them to be. There are times when it’s almost impossible to hold a private conversation – and those are just the times when you most desperately want and need to hold such a conversation. Like the next morning.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘why don’t you kids run out and play?’

  ‘We don’t want to,’ Donna said.

  ‘Besides, we’re under house arrest,’ Donald added.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’ll lift the restrictions. You’ve been punished enough. Now, get out of here.’

  ‘I want to stay with Daddy.’ Donna leaned against him lovingly and he winced. As I had already ascertained, there was scarcely an inch of him that wasn’t badly bruised and aching.

  Nevertheless, was determined to have a fight with him over what he had insinuated about my Cousin Patrick last night. I had lain awake half the night marshalling my arguments – and I could do without a juvenile audience.

  ‘Why don’t you put Dad under house arrest, instead?’ Donald asked. ‘We’re okay – but every time he goes up to London alone something happens.’

  ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ I said.

  ‘You see?’ Arnold muttered. ‘Even the kids have noticed it.’

  ‘You must admit, it’s been pretty noticeable. We’re the only people on this street who have the cops at the door so regularly it’s getting monotonous. God knows what the neighbours must think.’

  ‘Perry says –’ Donald began, and broke off as Donna nudged him warningly. Evidently, dear little Peregrine’s remarks were something it would be safer not to repeat. Not with me in my present mood. He’d probably picked them up from his mother – and I could just imagine what Lania must be saying.

  ‘Look –’ Arnold pulled out his wallet, resorting to bribery. ‘Here’s five pounds. Suppose you two go downtown and buy yourselves some ice cream or something.’

  ‘And walk slowly –’ I called out as they snatched the money and raced for the door before Arnold could change his mind.

  ‘Whew!’ Arnold closed his eyes as the door slammed shut behind them.

  ‘Now that they’ve gone, Arnold,’ I squared off. ‘I’d like you to explain your ridiculous insinuations about Patrick last night.’ His eyes were still closed and I looked at him suspiciously. Do you remember what you said?’

  ‘I remember,’ he said tonelessly. ‘I’m sorry about that, honey. I was pretty upset.’

  ‘So am I. How could you have imagined – even if you were delirious — that Patrick could have had anything to do with John Blake’s death? And if he’d wanted the house empty, why would Celia have arranged this house swap? Why should anybody want to kill you so that the rest of us would go back to New Hampshire? It would have been easier never to have arranged for us to come over here in the first place. It was a crazy idea, Arnold, absolutely crazy.’

  ‘Okay, I admit it,’ he sighed. ‘It was crazy – and I was delirious.’

  ‘You sure were! In fact, I’m not sure about you now. You’ve got a funny look in your eye.’

  ‘Okay, I was out of line taking a cheap shot at Patrick. But, you know, the way you two close together and shut everybody else out gets me. It’s like the twins, sometimes.’

  ‘Patrick and me?’

  ‘Yes, Patrick and you. You think other people don’t notice it? Sometimes, Celia and I feel as though we ought to just go away and drop dead and leave you two to get on with it.’

  ‘Now, wait just a minute! There’s never been anything like that between Patrick and me. We’re too close. We’re more like brother and sister instead of cousins.’

  ‘You see? That’s just what I mean. Like the twins. With a private world you’re not going to let anyone else into – whether you’ve married them or not.’

  ‘You’re jealous! I always knew Celia was, but I never realized you felt like that.’

  ‘Why not? Because I’m Good Old Arnold, your schmuck of a husband?’

  ‘Arnold!’

&nbs
p; ‘Good Old Arnold –’ he ranted. ‘Lost in the nineteenth century – and the best place for him! Do you think I don’t know what you say about me? You and Patrick, sniggering together –’

  That was when I threw the sugar bowl at him.

  He dodged, like the sneak he is, and it shattered against the wall behind him. That was when I remembered that it wasn’t mine to throw.

  ‘Now look what you’ve made me do!’

  Esmond had been sitting nervously in a corner, twitching his ears as our voices rose. Now thoroughly demoralized, he dashed through the cat flap and disappeared. I hoped he was going to come back again. It was bad enough to break the sugar bowl – which was probably part of a discontinued line and irreplaceable, but Esmond would be even more irreplaceable.

  Arnold pushed back his chair and loomed over me. For a split second, I thought he might be going to hit me, but he just stood there shaking his head.

  ‘It’s no good, Babe,’ he said. ‘We’ve blown up a first-class fight about something totally irrelevant – although it’s probably just as well to clear the air about it. But we’re doing it because we can’t bear to face the real problem: I’ve nearly been killed three times now. I’ve stopped believing in accidents. I’m not that accident-prone. It has to have been deliberate. Why? And who?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I whispered. ‘Oh, Arnold, I can’t believe it. And – and I’m frightened.’

  ‘So am I, Babe.’ He put his arms around me and rested his head on my shoulder.

  ‘Arnold, it can’t be true!’

  ‘You’d rather believe they were all accidents?’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense, either. Oh, Arnold, what can we do?’

  ‘I wish to hell I knew.’ He released me and stepped back.

  ‘The police -?’

  ‘You think they’d believe me? They’ve already got me figured for a nut. The original absent-minded professor, who doesn’t look where he’s going and always gets into some kind of trouble. Even if I’d died, it would have been no more than they expected.’

  ‘But, Arnold, it’s so completely senseless. Who would want to kill you? Did you see anybody, notice anything, when you had those ... accidents?’ I couldn’t quite bring myself to say ‘murder attempts’ and yet, belief was forcing itself on me. Even Arnold wasn’t that clumsy.

  ‘Who was there to see? That’s what I keep asking myself. That first time – somebody must have tampered with the brakes while the car was parked in the station parking lot. It was there all day. Anybody could have done it.’

  ‘Somebody might have noticed something. There were the porters, the stationmaster, the girls working in the news-stand –’

  ‘Too late to go asking questions about it now. Who’d remember at this late date? Anyway, the second time, when the soccer hooligans attacked me, there were plenty of witnesses – for all the good they were.’

  ‘Those soccer hooligans!’ I shuddered. ‘I suppose there weren’t any of them around when you got pushed?’

  ‘Believe me, I’d have noticed. I’ve been keeping a sharp eye out for anyone like that – I’m not getting into their way again. No, I was standing in a queue full of nice sober respectable citizens – I thought. Then, one of those pillars of society deliberately tried to push me under that bus.’

  ‘All those attempts were made at railroad stations,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Do you think that might have had something to do with it?’

  ‘Not really. A railroad station is just an ideal place for that sort of thing, if you analyse it. Lots of people coming and going, worrying about catching their trains or getting to the office on time, paying no attention to anything going on around them. If they see anything wrong, they won’t want to get involved, for fear of being delayed and missing their connections. Anyway, the bus queue was nowhere near a station. I was on my way from the London Library to the British Museum. I was right in the middle of the city.’

  ‘But the same principle holds true,’ I said. ‘They were all travellers, waiting for their buses, not wanting to get involved and delayed. If they noticed anything at all, if they weren’t too preoccupied with their own concerns –’

  ‘They are crammed and jammed in buses,’ Arnold quoted suddenly. ‘And they’re each of them alone – Besides, there wasn’t much to see. A quick hard push isn’t very noticeable when people are standing close together.’

  In the land where the dead dreams go ... Dead dreams ... dead husband. It had been so close for Arnold and me; it had been a grim reality for Rosemary Blake. Maybe this was an unlucky house. Maybe some evil cloud hovered over it and menaced the people beneath its roof, wherever they went.

  That was stupid. I pulled myself together. Besides, we were only in one half of the house. The roof stretched over Lania and Richard, too, and they were perfectly all right.

  ‘John Blake died in a car crash.’ Arnold returned to the point he had made last night just before he passed out. ‘It was a pretty certain bet that, at some time after the funeral, the family would go away for a couple of weeks at least. People usually do. What couldn’t be foreseen was us. Celia was the unknown quantity in the equation, arranging a house swap for her sister, so that the Blake house wouldn’t stand empty at all. We moved in almost as soon as she left – giving somebody no time to carry out a thorough search of it.’

  ‘Searching for what?’

  ‘How do I know? Blake was some kind of lawyer, wasn’t he? Maybe he was keeping evidence about a case here.’

  ‘What evidence? What case?’

  ‘God knows. But there are all sorts of cases reported in the media here every day. Look at all those supercrooks and supergrasses they’re always on about. There are millions of pounds missing sometimes. And how about all the spies around? Every time somebody in MI5 sneezes, it turns out he’s been working for Russia and sneezing in code for years. Maybe Blake was involved in one of those cases. He could have papers, or tapes –’

  ‘Or microdots! Arnold, we’ve been living in this house for weeks. If there was anything obvious, we’d have stumbled over it ages ago. And, if it isn’t obvious, how would we know it’s what anybody would want?’

  ‘Stop and think a minute, Babe.’ Arnold was getting portentous. ‘We haven’t been living all over the house. There’s one room we’ve never looked inside. Who knows what might be in there?’

  ‘The storeroom? Where Rosemary left all their private effects? Oh, now look, Arnold, there wouldn’t be anything there. We did that ourselves at home – it’s standard operating procedure. I wouldn’t like to think that Rosemary was going to walk into our storeroom on some trumped-up excuse and through our personal belongings.’

  ‘There’s something else about that room,’ Arnold said. ‘It’s the one Blake built on to the house – all by himself.’

  ‘And you’ve just been aching for a reason to get in there and have a good nose-around. I might have known it!’

  ‘Where’s the key?’

  ‘You’ve just been dying to get in there –’

  ‘On the contrary, Babe,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m trying to keep from dying.’

  I was right behind him as he swung open the door and stepped into the room. It was lined with built-in bookcases. That was the outstanding feature of the house: bookcases everywhere. From the shelves in the kitchen holding Rosemary’s collection of cookbooks, to the small freestanding bookcase against the wall of our bedroom containing light literature.

  But these bookshelves were only half full. I felt a lump forming in my throat. This room had been built by a man with an eye to the future, a library to be an adjunct to his study, to expand into and fill with books as his life expanded and his library kept pace with his interests. He had never suspected that he had no future.

  The next thing I noticed was that the shelves that didn’t contain books displayed porcelain. Thank heavens Rosemary hadn’t left those fragile breakables outside where the twins could get at them. On second thoughts they probably resided in her
e permanently, safe from her own children as well. It was a room for the whole family to grow into, in time – time that had been snatched away from them.

  It wasn’t going to be snatched away from us! I felt a sense of cold purpose. Forewarned was forearmed – and we were now warned, as the Blake family had never been.

  ‘Okay, Arnold,’ I said briskly. ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘Something out of place?’ Arnold hazarded, stirring a heap of potpourri in a silver rose bowl. A scent of faded roses curled through the room.

  There was a pile of suitcases and boxes in one corner, probably containing clothing and personal items. We had done that, too. If Arnold’s theory was correct, there was no point in looking into those, because they had been packed and put away after John Blake’s death. What we were looking for was something that had been placed – perhaps hidden – in the room while he was still alive.

  But what? How can you look around someone else’s house and decide what should or shouldn’t be there? Especially when you have never met the people.

  ‘Arnold,’ I said, ‘maybe we’re going about this in the wrong way.’

  ‘Okay, so what’s the right way?’ Arnold tapped the frame of an oil painting hanging in the narrow space between two windows. He lifted it off the hook and turned it over: there was no back covering, no place where anything could be concealed, just bare canvas. He sighed and replaced it.

  ‘We should be thinking about the people concerned, asking questions ... Arnold, are you listening?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, honey.’ He was stroking the windowsill lovingly and I knew I had lost him. ‘Just look at the way this joint is dovetailed –’

  ‘Arnold!’

  ‘Asking questions,’ he echoed guiltily. ‘Yeah, you may be right.’ He looked around in defeat. ‘I sure can’t see anything here that might explain the problem. But who should we ask – and how? We can’t go up to people and say, “By the way, you don’t happen to know of any reason why John Blake should have been murdered, do you?” It was written off as an accident.’

  ‘No, but maybe we can sort of lead up to it. Start them talking about him and reminiscing. Do you realize, people have barely mentioned him to us?’