The Strange Attractor

by Cory, Desmond

  Dobie had started the engine almost with the same movement. Already the car was rolling forwards. “Yes,” he said. “That’s Agatha.”

  “But he can’t be a he. Surely you couldn’t have taken a man for Jane Corder.”

  Past the police guard and the gawping knot of spectators. Dobie shifting gear on the open road, pressing down on the pedal. “Of course not. I never said it was a man.”

  “But then how—”

  “I realise now,” Dobie said, “that Jenny probably wouldn’t have been very interested in a man.” The speedometer needle already on sixty. And rising. “And anyway, computers can’t tell the difference between a man and a woman. It’s one of their little failings.”

  “Is that what you meant by… ?” Jackson checked himself again. “You’re not going on to tell me that you know now who Agatha is?”

  “Yes,” Dobie said. “Of course I do.” Eighty now. And still rising. “That’s why we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

  That was one way of putting it. Jackson glanced hurriedly towards the solid trunks of the trees that were hurling themselves at the fly-speckled windscreen and closed his eyes.

  Dr Coyle sat at the work-table in Sammy’s room. Very still, trying to keep control. To hold command over the thoughts, the series sequences that were whirling through her brain. Because that was important. It’s important in these situations to keep your head. She told herself that, firmly. Then opened her eyes.

  The letter was still on the table. Her hand was still on top of it. It wasn’t a letter, really. More of a manic outpouring. Very hurriedly and badly typed, barely coherent in fact, and with a minuscule but nasty smear of blood, as she now saw, marking the edge of the sheet. That policeman’s blood. In no way a distinguished piece of writing; Agatha wouldn’t have been proud of it. But then Agatha was up against it this time. Out-computed. Damn you, Dobie. I don’t even know how you did it. Was that how it went?…

  Well damn you Dobie, the police have come so you know how I did it and why and even though I fixed it for the cop it has to be all over, I realise that. Yes, I thought Jenny was beautiful too and I loved her very much in a way that you can’t understand and that bloody cumputer can’t either. I knew I might have to get rid of her in the end but I never wanted to. Of course it wasn’t really for the money even though we were starting to rake it in, Sammy got the stuff for me and Jenny took it over to Paris where she knew the right people and it was going fine so I just don’t know what got into Sammy, he just got cold feet and he was going to blow the whistle so he had to be stopped. That’s where it started and this is where it ends. It’s always easy for a doctor, I mean it won’t even hurt. Jenny didn’t feel a thing, either, it was all so quick but I had to do it, she’d never have gone along with my getting rid of Jane like that, even though Jane knew she was coming here, Jane would have told you and everyone else the bloody old cow. She spoiled everything getting back early everything.

  … Not a long letter. But long enough. The syringe lay on the table beside it. Already loaded. It was true that it wouldn’t hurt. Kate Coyle sat very still, looking at it.

  The telephone rang on Corder’s office desk. Or more exactly, hummed very discreetly, Corder’s being that kind of an office. Alec reached across and switched on the microphone. “Yes?”

  “Bird here. I’m afraid there’s still no sign.”

  “She hasn’t… come? Well, it’s dashed odd.”

  “They told me she left your house, oh… almost an hour ago. So I was wondering—”

  “Who told you?”

  “It was Mr Dobie, actually.”

  “Dobie? What the hell was he doing there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I assumed he—”

  “It doesn’t matter. Could be the damned girl’s met with some kind of accident.”

  “That’s just what I was thinking. In fact I was wondering—”

  “Give her another ten minutes. Then call the police.”

  Corder switched off the mike. He felt concerned. But irrationally concerned, more concerned perhaps than he should be. He sat back in his chair and thought for a few seconds before leaning forward again to dial Susan Strange’s number.

  There was no reply.

  “… If you think I’m going to sign that,” Kate said, “you’re crazy.”

  It was quite dark in Sammy’s room, too, because the curtains had been drawn across the windows. Unlike Grimwade, though, she could see quite clearly the blade of the long thin knife that was catching what little light there was, tilted unpleasantly across the lap of the shadowy figure seated on the other side of the table. Naturally Kate had thought of screaming, but she knew that wouldn’t do any good. No one had heard the shot that had finished off Sammy; no one would hear a scream, either. Unless of course she could get a window open. But there was no chance of that, either.

  “It’s all the same to me,” Agatha said. Agatha had a pleasant voice, reasonable, gently persuasive. “It’s typed on your machine, you know. And it’s got your prints on it now. It’s just to make things a little bit easier for both of us.”

  “Dobie won’t believe it,” Kate said.

  “He may do. Let’s hope he does. Because then he won’t have to go, too.”

  The pen was on the table, beside the syringe. Kate looked at it, feeling the pressure of a strange will-power, a strange attractor, urging her to pick the damned thing up and get it over with. Go on. Pick it up. Sign it.

  “… Sign it.”

  “I won’t.”

  Kate pushed her chair back and stood up. The other’s head turned to follow the movement but quite calmly, imperturbably, a loose curl of fine blonde hair falling away from the high smooth forehead. “You’re being very silly.”

  “You’re going to kill me anyway,” Kate said, backing away towards the far wall. The other rose then from the chair to follow her, the knife held now at waist level, the blade a long cold sliver of light pointing outwards, aimed at the undercurve of Kate’s breasts. “Yes, but don’t you see that this way it’s going to hurt? And the other way… that’s so simple. A little jab and you’ll drop off to sleep, just like Dobie.” A soft but still surprisingly pleasant giggle. “I think you’re quite fond of Dobie, aren’t you? Why not? So was Jenny. He’s an interesting man. And there’s no real need for him to die. Not if you behave.”

  Kate had reached the wall now and was backing along it past the shelves, her hands behind her. She wasn’t acting terrified. She was. As anyone else would have been. But it’s important in these situations to keep your head. She told herself that, firmly, as her fingers brushed the metallic surface of the cassette-player directly behind her and pressed the Play switch. She moved then a little more quickly to her right as the spools began to turn and Agatha followed her, a little more quickly but still quite calmly, unhurriedly. Agatha was even smiling. Agatha liked playing games. This was fun. “Hey, Kate,” Sammy said suddenly from just behind her. “This is Sammy…”

  Agatha stopped smiling and turned round and the blade of the knife turned with her and Kate threw herself and all her weight, which wasn’t very much, against her and took her off balance and knocked her to the floor. Unfortunately she couldn’t do this without losing her own balance and joining her there. For a second they stared at each other, as if in amazement, then Kate, spitting in a most unladylike way, grabbed Agatha by the throat and started to throttle her. She knew this was a mistake but she didn’t care. As Jackson would have said, her Irish was up.

  Jackson now had his eyes tightly closed all the time and with what seemed to him to be good reason. That way he didn’t see Dobie crash two red lights in succession at sixty miles an hour in his lunatic progress up the City Road, though he was aware of a confused blare of startled hooters sounding from behind. Immediate resignation from the Force now seemed to him to be the only honourable course of action, provided that he could manage to live so long. He emitted a low moan of sheer terror as Dobie took the Ludlow Road corner with
a bright yellow wail of protesting brakes like Batman in a strip cartoon, centrifugal force all but carrying his passenger out through the side door, and pulled up finally outside the clinic, leaving twenty yards of black scorched-tyre marks on the road in the process. Opening his eyes at last in infinite relief, Jackson saw that the driver, too, was white as a sheet.

  “Go on. Get up there. Quick,” Dobie said. “I’m bushed.”

  “How the bloody hell d’you think I feel?”

  But Jackson none the less jerked the car door open and ran for the clinic entrance, achieving in fact a pretty good turn of speed. The further away he could get from Dobie the better, in his opinion.

  Grabbing Agatha by the throat had indeed been a mistake. Agatha was tall and lithe and amazingly strong and, despite Kate’s show of dander, had her grip effectively broken in a matter of seconds. If she hadn’t dropped the knife when she fell and lost it temporarily from view, such contest as there was would have ended then and there. As it was, Kate was able to pull herself back and get halfway to her feet before the other’s hands clawed wildly at her legs, ripping her skirt and tugging her down to the floor again. Rolling over and over in a tangled confusion of kicking feet and furiously flailing arms, they cannoned together into the work-table with an impact that almost knocked it flying and left Kate badly winded. All she could do for a moment was gasp wheezily for breath, and that moment was sufficient for her opponent to ram a knee against her midriff and so secure convincingly the upper berth. Kate hadn’t expected her enemy to be so damned strong. Strong enough not to need the knife. Strong enough to knock her out with a clenched fist, if given the opportunity…

  Now she had an opportunity. And that was what she did.

  She stared for no more than a moment at Kate’s flushed and upturned face. Her own expression was still calm, even contemplative and she wasn’t even breathing deeply. Rising easily to her feet, she reached out across the table for the syringe. But the syringe wasn’t there. “Ah shit,” said Agatha Christie.

  And,

  “Oh my God,” said Jackson.

  Even in the semi-darkness he could see that there wasn’t much he, or anyone else, could do for Grimwade. Who sat semi-slumped against the wall, one leg extended and the other drawn up, near enough to the head of the stairs for the blood to have soaked through the carpet on the topmost treads. Jackson didn’t touch the body or look at it for very long; he let out a loud and furious bellow and rushed onwards. Agatha heard that bellow and the echo of tramping feet and said something else, this time inaudible.

  The syringe had rolled off the table and on to the floor and she had found it almost at once. She had it in her hand now and Kate was lying on her back six feet away, one knee lifted, most of her thigh invitingly revealed by the long tear in her skirt, but Kate was moving now, coming to, one hand scrabbling at the nap of the carpet in sudden alarmed recollection, and the running footsteps were thumping nearer and there wasn’t time. The knife lay where it had fallen, over by the bookshelves; Sammy’s voice still droned away, “… I’ll be paying you the rest of my back rent soon as I get back from London…” and Agatha moved, crouched like a wrestler and quietly as a cat, to retrieve it. Still crouching there, she waited as Sammy’s message came to an end and the tape spools spun on silence and the door flew open with a sudden bang to the violent impact of Jackson’s foot. Agatha waited then no longer but face contorted with effort was through the door and striking within the space of a heartbeat, catching Jackson off balance from the recoil of his kick and spinning him back and sideways. It was the sideways movement which partially saved him, causing the knife point to make its entrance not under his ribs but just above one stiffened elbow, a glancing, twisting blow tearing through cloth and skin and flesh and twisting him yet further sideways as the blade slid through and out. “Ow,” Jackson said.

  Agatha went on down the passageway, not clumping along as Jackson had done but running bouncily, flexibly, with long athletic distance-devouring strides. Dobie, plodding ploughman-like up the stairs with an aching weariness slowing his every step, reached the top just in time to see a tall shadowy figure armed with a fearsome carving-knife bearing down on him like the wrath of God. Giving himself about as much chance as the Three Blind Mice, he squeaked appropriately; it looked like no kind of a match and it wasn’t. He saw, peering apprehensively downwards through the misted lenses of his glasses, the knife commence its long curving approach on a trajectory that would inevitably end in the pit of his stomach, whiplash towards him at a nigh-incredible velocity and then flash past his right hip as Agatha in mid-lunge caught her foot on Grimwade’s outstretched leg and lost her balance again, this time to rather more spectacular effect. If you are going to trip over someone’s leg, it’s not a good idea to do so at the top of a long and narrow flight of stairs. Such had been the vehemence of Agatha’s thrust that she went past the top twelve steps without even touching them; she contacted the thirteenth, however, with a hefty thump that was accompanied by a rather sick-making snapping sound, and made subsequent substantial contact with the sixteenth, twentieth and twenty-second before reaching the bottom. Dobie, whose eyes were now tightly closed, plotted her vertiginous progress by ear alone.

  Thunk…

  Thunk…

  Thunk…

  Thunk…

  Wallop…

  Even that way, it had sounded pretty ominous.

  Dobie, after a moment’s consideration, decided that he had better adopt a more conventional method of descending the stairs. He did so, slowly and painfully. Then sat down on the bottom tread, mournfully regarding the body which lay, one foot cocked up against the banisters, contortedly at his feet. Through now sightless baby-blue eyes, Jane Corder stared back at him. It was all very sad, Dobie thought. All very sad and unnecessary.

  And hard cheese on Alec.

  Heavy footsteps were coming down the stairs behind him. Jackson was clutching his right arm; blood had soaked his coat sleeve and dripped from his dangling hand down to the floor. He had left a trail of nasty wet splashes all the way down the staircase. “You’d better get that seen to,” Dobie said.

  “Wow, she was fast.” Jackson didn’t say it altogether unadmiringly. Halted beside Dobie and leaking like a tap, he too was staring down at the silent upturned face. The over-heavy make-up on the lips and around the eyes had smeared rather badly and there was blood, too, trickling thickly through the dishevelled blonde hair. It wouldn’t trickle for long, though. She was dead all right.

  “Who the hell is she?”

  “You don’t know her?”

  “Never seen her before,” Jackson said.

  “Yes, you have. She just looks different. That’s all.”

  Dobie reached down and with some reluctance pushed his fingers into the tangled mass of blood-spattered hair. He lifted it away and the hair beneath was dark and short and sleek. “Amazing what a difference a wig makes,” Dobie said, “when the face and the figure are pretty much alike. You know, I saw a photograph of Wendy with a bathing-cap on and I thought it was a photograph of Jane. Wendy looked much younger, of course, but with a bit of heavy make-up like Jane used to wear…”

  “Younger?” Jackson seemed still to be partly stupefied. “Of course she would be. She’s the daughter. Of course I know her.”

  “Daughters often do look like their mothers. As Susan Strange reminded me. And when it comes to an impersonation… they know them so well. No wonder she was confident. And by the way, where’s Kate?”

  “Kate?”

  Dobie and Jackson looked at each other. Then Dobie went up the stairs almost as fast as Wendy Corder had gone down them. He found Kate standing by the table in Sammy’s room, holding a syringe in her hand and looking at it in a bemused sort of way.

  “Kate, are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right. Let go of me, you idiot.”

  About a minute later Dobie said, “Oh, I forgot.”

  “What?”

  “Inspector
Jackson. He needs some medical attention.”

  “Okay,” Kate said. “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “All the same,” Jackson said severely, “you didn’t ought to have done it, Mr Dobie. We’d’ve caught her all right. That’s what the police are here for, the appreciation of criminals.”

  “Apprehension.”

  “We nab the buggers anyway.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Dobie said. “If anyone did, it was Grimwade. He tripped her up.”

  “There you are, then,” Jackson said contentedly. “Once a copper, always a copper. I only hope—”

  “Keep still, then,” Kate said, making with the bandages.

  Policemen, whatever they are here for, aren’t nearly so impressive when stripped down to their undervests. But then college pundits, Dobie thought, probably aren’t either. Wendy had been more than a match for him in every sense. With that lean pliant body and all that dynamic… well… virility. He hadn’t known much about strange attractors and he still didn’t but he thought he could now understand Jenny a little better and that, as he now knew, had been the whole object of the exercise. Once you’ve understood a theorem you can wipe the blackboard clean. But not before.

  Jenny, he thought, had probably wanted some excitement. Chiefly that. And so, in a different way, had he.

  Twenty years of college punditry is enough for anyone. He’d wanted some excitement but he hadn’t known it. Well, he’d got it. Thanks to her.

  “What I want to know,” Jackson said, disturbing him when on the point of merging his musings with the comfortable inchoateness of sleep, “is what I’m going to tell the Superintendent. Just because she can’t very well be taken to court don’t mean I won’t have reports to write and I’ve got to have some idea of what it was she was up to. Right now I haven’t. Not exact, like.”