Embarrassment of Corpses, An (15 page)

“Hello, Effie. Is this official business?” he managed to utter.

“Your Uncle Tim sent me to pick you up. I notice some of the walls are still standing, so I imagine you're not quite finished yet.”

“I'm supposed to be here until twelve” he said.

“Good, I can watch the cricket while I'm waiting,” Effie replied.

A girl who likes cricket
and
Indian food
and
thinks horoscopes are a load of old tosh. There was nothing else for it. The hell with the conflict of interest. Oliver gripped the edge of the table. “Will you have lunch with me?” he croaked.

She laughed, showing small, perfect white teeth. “Sure. When?”

His hands were trembling now. A glass of drinking water on the table started to rattle. “Today?” he ventured.

Effie shook her head. “Tim wants us to join him as soon as possible. Tell you what, let's have dinner on Monday evening.”

“Dinner? Monday?”

“Oh, sorry, perhaps you already have a date—”

“A date?” Oliver repeated with a hysterical laugh. “Oh, no, no, no. Whatever gave you that idea? No, Monday's great.” O frabjous day!

“Look, I'd better let you get back to your adoring public. But I did actually buy one of your books, just to see what the fuss was about. Will you sign it for me? It doesn't mean we're engaged, or anything.”

Oliver gleefully took the book from her, uncapped his pen with a flourish, and was immediately struck with the same writer's block that hit him when handed a blank greetings card. Fortunately, Geoffrey looked up at that moment and noticed who Oliver was speaking to. He leaped to his feet.

“Hello, Effie,” he said heartily, putting on a suave smile that made him look like something drawn by Mervyn Peake.

“Hello, Mr. Angelwine. It's nice to see you up on your feet again,” she said with a grin, remembering their last encounter. She returned her attention to Oliver. “I'll pick you and the book up in about an hour. Write something nice.”

Geoffrey nudged Oliver conspiratorially, as she walked away from the table. “I think I'm in with a chance here,” he whispered. “Watch this. Girls love stuffed animals.”

He picked up the bag of soft toys, oblivious to the stare of disbelief that his friend had turned upon him.

“Effie,” Geoffrey called, fumbling inside the bag. “If you'd like to wait a moment, I have a gift for you. Courtesy of Tadpole Tomes for Tiny Tots.” His fingers closed around an object. “Hello,” he muttered to Oliver, who was already too late to warn him, “there's something furry moving about in here. I must have left one of them switched on.”

***

One of Mallard's mental games on long surveillances—and he had been parked in front of the Magpie and Stump on Old Bailey since six o'clock that morning—was to make a list of all the people who would be his victims if he were personally allowed to “punish the wrongdoer,” words he could presently read on the Central Criminal Court's facade if he leaned far enough out of the car. Because of his general good nature, the list was usually very short. Today, however, his boredom had led him to fill the cerebral equivalent of three foolscap pages, getting to “all half-educated cultural snobs who mindlessly prefer the worst of Mozart to the best of Haydn” and “all self-regarding cretins who makes jokes about your name as if you've been too dim to notice up to that point in your life that you're named after a duck” before Effie's Renault pulled up behind him on the deserted street.

“Did you stop for lunch?” he asked accusingly as they climbed into the back of his Jaguar.

“No, we had to rush Geoffrey Angelwine to the local hospital for stitches and a tetanus shot,” Effie said. “Anything going on here?”

“See for yourself,” said Mallard irritably, indicating the street outside. There was no traffic on Old Bailey, and very few pedestrians. From where they were stationed, where the street fanned out in front of the Court building, they could see cars and an occasional truck rumbling along Newgate Street toward the Holborn Viaduct. Even St Bartholomew's Hospital, across the intersection, was quiet.

“The Courts are closed, although we've got men inside, of course,” the superintendent continued. “There are a couple on the rooftops with binoculars, too. If the Libra location is the Scales of Justice, we'll get him. If not, it's on to Virgo, although I still don't know how you can kill someone with a virgin. But talking of virgins, why did Geoffrey Angelwine need stitches?”

They told him about the ferret and the book signing, which improved his mood somewhat. In fact, he laughed for the first time that day. “What did you do with the animal?” he asked, when they had finished.

“It's in a cat carrier in Effie's car,” Oliver said.

“You kept it?”

Oliver nodded. “Those animal rights people didn't seem to care much for it, so I'll take it to the RSPCA tomorrow. It's quite a personable beast—very well domesticated.”

“When it's not savaging the Angelwine digits,” said his uncle with a chuckle.

“Geoffrey frightened it. He tried to switch it off.”

Mallard laughed again, turning in his seat to look out of the open car window, but he stopped abruptly when he found himself looking at Detective Sergeant Moldwarp's sorrowful features. Moldwarp was used to the reaction.

“Chief, I just got a call from the Yard,” Moldwarp keened. “We think our man may have struck again.”

“Where?” Mallard was immediately serious.

“St. James's Square. Outside the London Library.”

“How long ago?”

“At about three o'clock this morning.”

“And we're only just hearing about it!” exclaimed Mallard. “Are we certain it's the zodiac murderer?”

“It's him,” said Effie emphatically.

“How can you be so sure?” Mallard asked. “What's the London Library got to do with scales and balances? Does it have a collection, maybe?”

“No, it's simpler than that,” she said, with a regretful smile. “It's so simple we just didn't think of it. Chief, Oliver—what are the first five letters of ‘Library'?”

The two men spoke the word together.

***

“Archibald Brock,” Mallard announced. “Retired railway guard from Isleworth. Moved to Folkestone, Kent a year or so ago. Summoned to London by a telephone call yesterday. Took a room at the St. James's Hotel, a letter was dropped off at the concierge's desk at about nine o'clock last night. The letter was the same style as the others, this time arranging a meeting in front of the hotel at ten. A porter saw him go out, after which his whereabouts were unknown until he fetched up dead in front of the London Library at three o'clock this morning, suspended from a lamppost. His body weight was balanced by a large sandbag, which gives us the other Libra connection. Found by a Library patron who'd been trapped in the building.” Mallard ruffled the pages of his notebook. “Sorry,” he remarked to Oliver, “I didn't make a note of this individual's name. Anyway, the discoverer of the body also picked up the zodiac murderer's calling card, which is why it didn't get reported to us sooner.”

Mallard tossed the notebook onto the coffee table, lay back in the armchair, and stretched his long limbs. “So our man's getting more punctual. What can we expect tomorrow? A death at 12.01 a.m. precisely?” He checked his watch with a yawn. “If so, we've got one hour.”

A fish-faced waiter in elaborate, eighteenth century livery drifted into their corner of the members' lounge, the largest public room in the Sanders Club. He put their two empty brandy glasses on a salver.

“For the member, an invitation from the club to refill his glass,” he intoned solemnly. Oliver smiled.

“From the club, an invitation for the member to refill his glass,” he replied, knowing the drill. “No thanks.”

The fish-waiter bowed deeply and swiveled toward Mallard.

“For the member's guest, an invitation from the club to refill his glass,” he announced. Mallard looked at Oliver with mild panic in his eyes.

“He won't either,” Oliver said. The waiter bowed again.

“Cocoa and tarts will be available at midnight,” he gurgled and began to turn away. Then he seemed to think of something.

“Would the member's other guest like some warm milk?” he asked. Oliver looked down into the clear-lidded cat carrier beside his chair. The ferret was asleep.

“No thank you. And please don't feel you have to stay up for us.”

The waiter smiled in a piscine manner. “Kind of you, sir. But I shall sit here till tomorrow.” He oozed away.

“This place is weird,” muttered Mallard, with a haunted glance around the room, but the oak-paneled walls, Chinese rugs, and comfortable leather chairs were standard for the clubs in the area. Only the framed drawings—Shepherd, Rackham, Millar, Van Beek, Charles Robinson, all original—hinted at the purpose of the club.

When the Sanders Club was founded, there had been plans to decorate the rooms in ways that celebrated children's literature, but it had been impossible to reconcile the members' desires. The austere public school look of the Jennings and Greyfriars enthusiasts couldn't be squared with the lush foliage demanded by fans of
The Secret Garden
. And the nautical accents of Hornblower and
Swallows and Amazons
couldn't accommodate the chocolate and peach color scheme suggested by Roald Dahl enthusiasts. Instead of decor, therefore, the club chose to celebrate its members' calling through rituals and celebrations, such as the annual Snark Hunt and the Easter weekend Pooh-sticks tournament between Tower Bridge and the Thames Barrier. And there were theme nights. Tonight, being the first Saturday in the month, it was Alice night, which Oliver always relished. But he avoided the bimonthly
Tom Brown's Schooldays
evenings—some of the staff, equipped with canes, took their roles a little too seriously.

His inability to stop the litany of murders was taking its toll on Mallard. It wouldn't have surprised Oliver to learn that as well as dealing with the death of Archie Brock, his uncle had also been defending his handling of the case to his superiors. And yet, after sending Effie home for a good night's sleep, Mallard still chose to join Oliver for a drink at the club before heading home to Theydon Bois and Phoebe, in search of one more insight that could put an end to the zodiac murderer's run.

“The computer turned up absolutely nothing,” Mallard reported wearily. “The victims never worked together, didn't go the same schools, didn't belong to the same clubs, didn't correspond with each other…”

“Four of the victims lived in London,” Oliver suggested.

“The murders took place in London!” Mallard cried disparagingly. “That means four times out of six, the murderer chose victims who were only a bus ride from their place of execution. Big fornicating deal! And even that can't account for Gordon Paper, who lived all his life in Yorkshire, or Archie Brock, who was summoned up from Kent.”

“But like Nettie Clapper, Archie Brock
used
to live in west London,” Oliver persisted. He sensed Mallard's despondency and he knew the only way to combat it was to pepper him with fresh ideas. “If you go back a couple of years, you had the Pisces living in Barnes, the Aquarius in Brentford, the Capricorn in Richmond, the Scorpio in Kingston, and the Libra in Isleworth. Five out of the six victims were living within a few miles of each other, all close to the Thames.”

“And so what?” Mallard sighed. He took off his spectacles and twirled them around his hand. “Suppose the murderer's motivation is to bump off anyone who rubbed him up the wrong way—Vanessa Parmenter bungled his travel arrangements, Mark Sandys-Penza failed to sell his maisonette, Harry refused to buy a poppy from him on Remembrance Day. Or he may have chosen them for convenience. You want a Pisces to come alone to Trafalgar Square at six in the morning and not put up too much of a fight? Who better than an aging writer who's been up half the night drinking at a club round the corner? A needy, working-class lady from the suburbs is exactly the Aquarius who'd want to be met at the tube station, because she's unsure of her way around the unfamiliar streets of Belgravia. A shady Capricorn estate agent from Richmond won't think twice before meeting his mythical client in the anonymous surroundings of Kew Gardens, a mile or two down the road. I need something more predictive.”

Oliver glanced down again. The ferret was awake and was nuzzling the inside of the box. He lifted the animal into his lap and gently scratched the back of its head. It seemed to like the attention and settled itself comfortably.

“How does your convenience theory account for Gordon Paper?” he asked.

“It takes some bottle to entice a rural Yorkshire recluse with travel sickness into Piccadilly Circus at lunchtime,” Mallard replied with a shrug. “Maybe the killer wanted to show us how manipulative he can be.”

“But was that worth losing a thread of his pattern, the birth signs of his victims?” Oliver persisted.

Mallard smiled bitterly. “I have a surprise for you, Ollie. You asked the right question yesterday. Vanessa Parmenter
was
a Scorpio. And Archie Brock
was
a Libra. Gordon Paper was an odd man out. That means tomorrow's victim will probably be a Virgo, after all. Unfortunately, the restoration of the complete pattern doesn't bring us any closer to stopping these murders.” He broke off, remembering uncomfortably that he had heard the same words from the lips of the Assistant Commissioner only two hours earlier.

Oliver was silent.

“I'm sorry, Ollie,” Mallard continued. “I know a connection between the victims would help us pinpoint the Virgo. But the computer confirms it: The victims had nothing in common. We have to fall back on the evidence we've already collected.”