One Foot in the Grave Read online

  “You don’t say! You don’t say! I remember hearing about that—knew a feller what was there. I don’t suppose. …”

  He was looking at the ceiling now, sounding as wistful as a child.

  “I’d give a lot to have a word with her,” he said.

  “I doubt if the Chief Superintendent …”

  “And why not? Mary Lou’d remember a pile of things what I’ve forgot. This sort of case, anyway, the more witnesses you get … I’ll have trouble making anyone believe me, all by myself, won’t I? But if Mary Lou’s in that kind of mood, and we could persuade her. … You’re missing something, you know, only seeing her like this. When she’s her proper self she can strike sparks off of a lump of cream cheese.”

  “Well,” said Pibble. “I suppost I could suggest. …”

  Wilson interrupted him by a sudden movement of the hand, slight but imperiously effective. Pibble, who had been standing all this while propped on his stick, turned to see the door opening. For a moment he expected to see Mrs. Isaacs stalk into the room, her proper self, lethal with sparks, but in fact it was only Maisie bringing round the afternoon post—another invariable item in the Flycatchers routine. She had a smallish parcel with the letters.

  “Hello, beautiful,” said Wilson. “Brought something for your uncle, then?”

  Maisie produced her strange vague smile and gave him the parcel.

  “It’s been through the metal detector,” she said, as though the words had no meaning to her at all. Pibble guessed that her whole attention was far away, galloping with Lord Hawkside along the cliff road while the lightning flashed and the smuggler-swarming sea rolled its waves in thunder to the beaches.

  “Has it now? That’s good. Spot of class there, Pibble, don’t you think? They didn’t have to install the doofer special for me, ’cause they’d got one already, case of someone having a go at some of the wogs you get holidaying here. Bring us a knife, miss, so as I can open it. Ta. Now give your uncle a kiss. Ta. And now you can go.”

  Still in her dream, Maisie performed her tasks like an automaton. She gave the impression that if Wilson had told her to do a belly dance or to jump out of the window, she would have done so with the same dazed grace. Wilson licked his upper lip as he watched her go.

  “What couldn’t I have done with a few of that model forty years back,” he said. “Doesn’t know if she’s in this world or the next, does she?”

  As if reminded by the movement of his tongue, he took his roll of peppermints out of his pocket and inspected it, then put it back. His other hand caressed the parcel.

  “You still bent, mate?” he said suddenly. “Like we fixed?”

  “Ur.”

  Pibble’s mutter of assent came from only a pocket of his mind. Doesn’t know if she’s in this world or the next, does she? … I don’t think she ever realized what was happening to her. I hope not. . . . So do I. The image of the Balham poisoner swam into focus. Maisie’s replaced it. Lord Hawkside whipped his foundering mare along the cliff road. Tosca lay face up in the snowstorm, dead romantic. Maisie. I was washing Jenny’s hair. The shock of revelation faded to the wearisomeness of having to rethink all his thoughts.

  “You know what this is, don’t you?” said Wilson.

  There was a throb of ecstasy in his voice. His hand trembled slightly as he sliced the Sellotape exactly down the line where the brown paper joined. The process looked much the same as that with which he unwrapped his peppermints, but its drive was clearly different, not an exercise in power but a heightening of lust by anticipation. He was like a lover stripping his mistress with luxurious ritual to nakedness.

  “Ur,” said Pibble, welcoming the summons back into the here and now.

  The parcel was square-edged, about nine inches by four by two. A white sticker label addressed it to Wilson at Flycatchers. It had been sealed with a practiced precision that suggested an old-fashioned shop. Pibble was not sure whether he could already smell the tobacco, and the fainter odor of the cedar-wood box, or whether that was autosuggestion.

  “Slipped through, I suppose,” said Wilson. “George used to stop the postman and take them off of him, only he missed a couple of times. … Thought it was going to be like that from now on … got a new feller doing them up, by the look of it … ah. …”

  He laid the box in its wax-paper inner wrapping to one side, took a gold lighter from his dressing-gown pocket and lit the brown paper at one corner, holding it expertly so that the flame burnt across it in an even march, blue at the leading edge and yellow, almost white, where the picric smoke trailed upward from the rim. Black flakes wavered to the carpet. Wilson ignored them, as if used to spoiling expensive furnishing, relishing the destruction, even. Power again.

  “Always burn the evidence, my granny told me,” he purred.

  When the final corner was almost scorching his fingers, he let it fall, still flaming, to a point where he could shuffle his slippered heel onto it, then turned to the box again, raising the seal of the wax paper with his knife and folding it back. He slit the seal of the box itself, laid his knife down, cradled the box between his two palms and eased its lid up with his thumbs. For several seconds he stared at the ranked contents.

  “That ain’t right,” he said.

  He picked out one of the cigars and rolled it between thumb and forefinger.

  “What the …”

  With a violent movement he rammed the cigar back, then peered at the whole box.

  “The bitch!” he shouted. “The sodding. …”

  He flung the box into the corner of the room. A heave, a spasm, and he was standing, turning to face Pibble. His lips were purple, his cheeks yellow and scarlet. He stood there, his mouth dragging down and sideways in wrenched jerks. His right hand rose, griped like a bird’s foot at his chest, twice. He fell. There was the slow thump of his falling and then he was lying face down, still except that his hand continued to gripe at the carpet and his breath gargled painfully in his throat.

  Pibble almost fell himself, getting his stick tangled in his legs as he scurried to the door. He heaved it open.

  “Heart attack!” he gasped.

  The sentry sprang from his half-lounge against the door, drew a pistol from his pocket and rushed past Pibble into the room, holding the gun in the position he had been taught, as though he hoped to tame the rebellious organ by threatening to shoot it. At a flapping shuffle which was almost a run, Pibble went to fetch Jenny.

  “Sorry about that,” said Mike. “You can’t really blame Shanklin.”

  “Course not.”

  Pibble lay with his eyes half-closed, feeling that all the bright essences had been drained from him, leaving him a papery shell which needed the bedclothes to hold it from crumbling into mummy dust.

  “Makes a change, getting arrested yourself. … What’s up? Jimmy!”

  “All right. Only … last thing Dickie said to me.”

  The rictus smile, the jaunty nod, the almost insane sparkle in the eyeballs.

  “Foyle? Rum how he keeps cropping up, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize, Jimmy. I know how you feel—at least I half know. There are one or two people in everybody’s life, I expect … totems, if you see what I mean. As a matter of fact, you’re one of mine.”

  “Uh!”

  “That’s right. I’ve never really thought about it till now, but I suppose I’ve always tended to use you as a sort of standard … and suppose when we were working together I’d discovered you weren’t the totally straight copper I’d taken you for …”

  “Mike!”

  “All right. Take it easy. I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Let’s change the subject. … Where were we … Shanklin …”

  “Did the right thing,” Pibble managed to mutter.

  “Glad you think so. He says that nurse of yours aske
d him to handcuff you to the bed.”

  “Wilson?”

  “Dead. On his way to the surgery. Took eighteen months’ hard work with him, not to mention the taxpayers’ money this place cost us. Joke cigars! The sort that blow up in your face! Jesus! Who’d have imagined …”

  “But the box …”

  “Oh, that was pukka—we’ve talked to the shop. Wilson had left an order with them and they’d been sending him a box once a week. The people here intercepted the first two or three and told him they’d done so on medical grounds, and after that they stopped coming. We assume he’d canceled the order, and the shop assumed he was getting them, and as he’d paid for a year’s supply in advance, they went on sending them. Somebody must have been nicking them somewhere in the pipeline and having a regular luxury smoke.”

  “No. Tosca. Intercepted parcel. Took Wilson for drives. Smoked in car.”

  “It makes me sick! So that’s how she knew what brand of box—Tosca’d told her. All she’d got to do was buy the right cigars, plus enough of the joke ones, take the seals off carefully, transfer the bands, seal the whole thing up and send it off. Yes, and she’d know they were being intercepted, too, so she came down to see if she couldn’t get round the system. Mrs. Fowles, who’s not as scatty as she looks by any means, had actually spotted it and put it aside, but somebody must have nipped in and put it back with the mail for distribution. Jesus, she’s got a nerve. But she’s gone too far this time.”

  “Not Mary Lou.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Talking to her. Just before. Not her idea.”

  “Sure?”

  “No … listen. Wilson. Wanted you to get her to turn Queen’s evidence.”

  Through the daze of weariness he saw Mike’s face change as the glare of simple rejection knotted itself to a frown. Pibble fumbled up another scraping of energy.

  “Think she might,” he whispered. “Power over men. Ever since Vernon Smith. Always been her drive. Told me.”

  “You don’t say! Jimmy, you must have made a hit with her, and far as I know she’s never fancied anybody except a line of rather bum black boxers before. I wonder if you’re right. … The Blue Bear lot are a handful at any time, and if she’s been as ill as she looks … I wouldn’t have known her, honest. Which reminds me, that old gas bag of yours …”

  “Ur?”

  “It’s all a bit iffy … Ted Cass—he’s good, going to be very good—but he hasn’t liked having me around with my line on the case. Tell you the truth, there was quite a bit of resentment because we’d never told them down here what we were up to at Fly­catchers. He really didn’t want to know anything about my side. … But now Mary Lou’s turned up, he’s rather got to … except he’s found an out. In fact he’s taking the line that if your friend Lady Treadgold is as on the spot as all that, then she might be right about the other guff she’s been feeding you. He’ll have to tread bloody careful, won’t he?”

  “Ur. Talked to Maisie?”

  “Who? Oh, that crazy nurse. Nothing there. She picked up the post as usual and took it round. The parcel was with the rest of it, except that Mrs. Fowles says it wasn’t. Answer, Mary Lou. What makes you think it wasn’t her, Jimmy? Admittedly it’s not her style—much more like her to send a hit man round—but she might try it as a once off. Not a bad idea—bloke with a dicey heart having a relaxing smoke and the thing blows up in his face. It really might make him drop dead, and even if it didn’t, it’d very likely scare him out of giving us the help we want. Uh?”

  “She’d know about cigars. Know he’d spot it. Never get as far as lighting one. Couldn’t know he’d … anger more than shock, anyway.”

  “Um.”

  “She didn’t say anything else?”

  “She’s not even telling us the time till she’s got her lawyers standing round her. … Still, you could be half right; one of her lads might have set the thing up without telling her, and when she got back she decided she’d better come down and see if she could make it all work. Show them she’s still in charge, spite of having half her guts missing. What d’you think of that, Jimmy?”

  “Ur.”

  The mist of weariness closed in, blanking all perceptions. Before it became impenetrable, the shapes of the landscape loomed and changed. She didn’t say anything else? Old fool, how do you expect them to listen to your mumbles? They’ll go on talking about what they want to talk about, as if you’d never tried to show them, tell them. …

  “Bye now, Jimmy. Sorry if I’ve worn you out. You’ve been a great help.”

  “Ur.”

  He woke from fathomless sleep and knew at once that Jenny was in the room. The awareness was enough to prevent him dolphining back at once beneath the surface, but even so it seemed an effort (very like that of a swimmer dragging his body into the weightfulness of air) to force himself fully awake. He spoke with closed eyes.

  “Jenny?”

  “You old monster! Sleuthing around, giving my patients heart attacks, getting yourself arrested!”

  Her voice, low with conspiracy and chuckling faintly with the fun of it, came from somewhere near the window. Wilson’s death seemed not to have perturbed her at all. Was it that Flycatchers was a place of death and she was calloused against it? Or that her energies were all so natural that she simply accepted death as natural too? Or …

  “Sorry,” he whispered. “Want you to help me. Got to talk to Maisie.”

  A long pause.

  “Why?” she said, wary now.

  “Got to stop all this.”

  “All what?”

  “Murders.”

  Another pause.

  “I don’t think it’ll do any good, Jimmy. You’re a clever old thing, but honestly I don’t think you’ll get anywhere. I’ve tried to ask her a couple of times, but she goes into a sort of trance. All she can say is she was helping me wash my hair.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “No. But that’s what she remembers. She only gets normal again if I talk as if I remembered it too.”

  “Normal?”

  “She’s perfectly normal—most of the time.”

  “Always been like that?”

  “No. I mean, she’s had these sort of fits—they’re a bit like epilepsy with the physical symptoms left out—oh, for a year or two now. About once a fortnight, I suppose. Usually I just yell at her, or slap her face, and she blinks and doesn’t remember anything. Only, since that night …”

  “Ur.”

  “But listen, Jimmy. This other thing—Mr. X—that’s nothing to do with her. She was just taking the post round. She always does.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean? You aren’t suggesting Maisie went out and bought a box of best cigars and …”

  “No.”

  “And joke cigars, too. Do you know what that reminds me of?”

  “Foster-Banks.”

  “Oh, you’re impossible! Do you always know what people are thinking? In that case why aren’t you better at bridge? Lady Treadgold says you … no, that’s not fair.”

  “I want to talk to her.”

  He heard her footsteps whisper across the carpet. He opened his eyes and saw her leaning above him, very serious.

  “Listen,” she said. “If you shop Maisie, then that’s the end. You understand.”

  “Yes.”

  “You understand I actually mean it? It’ll make me think different about you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’d still do it?”

  “Don’t know till I’ve talked to her.”

  “You would, though. You know, I believe you’d shop me if you thought I killed George.”

  “Did for a bit.”

  She stared at him, astounded. The possibility had evidently never entered her mind. He watched her beginning to think i
t out, tracing his footsteps through the maze, so he was ready for the sudden ugly flush that mottled her clear skin, and the look of appalled hurt and anger which meant that she was confronting the phallic herm in the cul-de-sac of dark yew.

  “Knew it was impossible,” he said, deliberately clear but leaving the it unspecified.

  “Am I mad, Jimmy?” she whispered.

  “No. Crippen no.”

  “Only I sometimes think … everybody else …”

  “Not everybody.”

  “It’s all right if you’re queer,” she said. “It’s all right if you sleep around. It’s all right, even, sort of, if you molest kids—I mean, they’ll try to stop you, of course, but somehow … the only thing that isn’t right is not wanting any of it, not wanting to talk about it or think about it, even. That’s what’s unnatural.”

  “Stupid word.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Too many different meanings. My dear, nothing you do, or don’t do, is unnatural.”

  He hadn’t intended the emphasis on the pronoun, had meant it to be a mere generality, but the phrase came out as particular to her.

  “My last job,” she said. “I thought I was enjoying it. I shared a room with a girl called Penny. I was going off duty one morning and I was passing one of the linen cupboards and I heard a noise, so I opened the door. It was Penny and one of the porters. He’d got his trousers round his ankles. She … when the door opened, they sort of froze and then they saw who it was and laughed and went on. I don’t think they’d have minded if I’d stayed and watched them.”

  “That’s why you came here?”

  “Sort of. I tried to explain to Penny later. I wanted to change my room, you see. I wanted her to understand that I liked her, but … and the porter—they weren’t in love or anything, it was just like having a cup of coffee with someone—he started grinning at me. And he told some of the other men, and they … I was the freak, you see. I am a freak, aren’t I?”