Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother (9 page)

 
          
Edmund
was strolling toward George. She said, “There’s one other thing we know. The
boy’s name was Christopher Kelly.” She would have liked to grin viciously at
Edmund. “Even the police don’t know that,” she said.

 
          
“He’s
certain to have changed his name,” Edmund said hastily.

 
          
“The
police still ought to know,” George said.

 
          
“We
can follow it up as quickly as they can. We’ve agreed not to tell them until
we’ve finished our enquiries,” Edmund said, glaring toward Clare, who was
hiding in the shadows near the pond and feeling as she might if she’d
distracted the villain in a wrestling match. “I ask you as a gentleman not to
reveal what you’ve heard,” Edmund said.

 
          
“I
can’t promise that. Why should I?”

 
          
“Because you won’t be helping the police at all.
You know
they’re undermanned. If they have to put someone on our line of enquiry,
they’ll be taking him off something else. That’s why we will be genuinely
helping them.” George was hesitating, gazing down the road like a runner
anxious for the start. “At least think it over,” Edmund said. “I can tell you
aren’t an impulsive man.”

 
          
George
said nothing. He wasn’t going to win, Clare thought, disillusioned.

 
          
“Thank
you for being so patient,” Edmund said. “Perhaps I could have a word with you
tomorrow. I’ll be at the inquest. That is, if you don’t mind.”

 
          
“I
can’t stop you.”

 
          
“You
aren’t forbidding me to be there, are you?”

 
          
Wearily
George said, “No, I’m not forbidding you.”

 
          
He
hurried away down the empty gleaming road, beneath the crescent moon. Edmund began
to walk back toward the
Newsham
, to their cars.
Incredibly, he seemed triumphant. “I don’t think he’s the sort who’ll tell,” he
said, and she could hear that he was forgiving her. “I don’t think we’ve
anything to worry about.”

 
          
Friday, September 5

 
          
As
George entered Castle Chambers he saw Edmund Hall on the stairs ahead of him.

 
          
He
halted. He wouldn’t go into the inquest with the man. All right, he had a job
to do. Probably the boy’s name would be more of a hindrance than a help to the
police, a false trail. He wouldn’t prevent Edmund from doing his job. That
didn’t mean he had to like the man.

 
          
As
he entered the cream-
coloured
corridor off the
landing he saw Edmund step through a doorway marked ENQUIRIES. George hurried
past to the glass double doors outside the courtroom, but they were immovable,
like false doors on a stage set. They added to the sense of unreality he was
already beginning to feel. He’d never expected to visit such a place; he’d
shown courtrooms in too many films. He retreated to the ENQUIRIES door.

 
          
At
the end of an inner corridor was a waiting room for witnesses. A few people
stood outside, smoking; inside sat a sobbing woman, rattling a cup of tea.
George’s mother’s friend Ruby was comforting her, gazing at her with eyes that
drowned in
themselves
, slapping her own heart as if to
quicken its emotion. She was an actress, of course. That was how his mother had
known her.

 
          
He
stood outside the glass door. He didn’t feel equal to Ruby’s effusiveness
today. As he stared at the lettering on the door he felt wholly unlike a
witness—as if he’d undertaken the part without preparation. “
All
the
world’s a stage”—yes, yes, all right.

 
          
He
had insisted on being a witness. He had to be there, to make sure nothing wrong
was said about his mother. He only hoped the inquest wouldn’t take long. Bill
Williams had seemed to understand the projection this morning, but George
wanted to be at the
Newsham
this afternoon, in case
the projection went wrong again: he didn’t want the children running riot.

 
          
“Will
the witnesses take their places in court, please,” a man said, very Scottish,
and went to look after the sobbing woman.

 
          
The
ceiling of the court was low. Ranks of benches and long tables stepped down on
three sides of the room. Following the other witnesses to the furthest set of
benches, George glimpsed Edmund leaning from the front bench opposite the
coroner’s dais to greet him. He walked by, unheeding.

 
          
Ruby
pressed close to him on the bench. “Who’s that lumberjack?” she demanded,
nodding at Edmund. “Does he know you?”

 
          
“Just someone who’s writing up the case.”
Half the people in
Edmund’s set of benches must be reporters: a full house. Well, they had their
job to do.

 
          
“He
wants to hear what happened, does he? I’ll tell him.
Your
poor mother.”
She dabbed hastily at her smudged mascara, thick as makeup
in an early film. “I’ll never forget her face as long as I live.
That terrible expression.
Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be
saying all this to you, you poor boy.”

 
          
She
hadn’t disturbed him particularly—too theatrical. Overhead, a chair scraped,
and loud, flat footsteps crossed the ceiling. Fat mushrooms full of light
sprouted from pale splashes on the ceiling. The splashes of light vanished; the
lamps hung dead in sunlight. George watched Edmund glancing rapidly about,
snapping up details like a camera.

 
          
Last
night, walking home, George had remembered whom Edmund reminded him of: the man
from the London cinema chain
who
had come to see him
six years ago. The man had been staying with friends; he’d admired George’s
efficiency in running the
Newsham
with so little
help, he’d said. George was the man they needed to run their new London cinema.
But Olivia was happy in her first year at school, and Mark wanted to go to that
school; George’s wife, Alice, hated big cities, except for her birthplace,
Liverpool; most important, the
Newsham
was the only
cinema his mother now owned. The man had understood none of this. Leaving, he’d
glared back as if George had wronged him deliberately. Beneath all Edmund’s
protestations of sympathy, George suspected, lay the same lack of feeling.

 
          
“Stand
up, please,” the Scotsman ordered.

 
          
George
jumped up, startled. The rest followed him. After a pause the coroner strode in
behind the jury and onto his dais: a good dramatic entrance. The Scotsman began
to read from a card: “All manner of persons having anything to do at this
court, before the Queen’s Coroner for the county of Merseyside, touching the
deaths of Lilian Pugh and Thomas Eric Hardy, draw near and give your attendance.”
Surely he’d rehearsed it often enough not to need the script, George
thought—but the thought didn’t dam the flood of shock he’d felt at the sound of
his mother’s name.

 
          
Everyone
else was sitting down; George joined them. The Scotsman was leading the jury in
the oath. “I swear by Almighty God—”

 
          
“I
swur
by Almighty God—” Only the front row of four men
was responding, translating his Scottish accent into
Liverpudlian
.
When he’d finished he began again with the back row. George almost expected all
eight to go through a final rehearsal. But the coroner was speaking.

 
          
“We
have first to consider the death of Mrs. Lilian Pugh, nee Stanley, of 20
Princes Avenue. This is a very sad and tragic case, of a kind I have never met
before. The police are investigating the circumstances. We are concerned only
to determine the cause of the lady’s death. At about four o’clock on the
morning of seventh August, it appears that Mrs. Pugh surprised an intruder in
an act of extreme cruelty to her dog.”

 
          
His
quiet voice continued. It was like the synopsis at the beginning of a serial
episode. George was bewildered when he said, “I call George Bernard Pugh.”
Surely he’d covered George’s part of the story in his synopsis. But the
Scotsman was standing beside the witness box, waiting for him. “Take the book
in your right hand,” he said.

 
          
“Your
name is George Bernard Pugh and you’re the manager of the
Newsham
Cinema,” the coroner said.

 
          
“Yes.”
He could swear to that.

 
          
“And
Mrs. Lilian Pugh was your mother.”

 
          
“Yes,
she was,” George said proudly, almost challengingly.

 
          
“She
owned the
Newsham
, didn’t she? Did she own any
others?”

 
          
The
coroner was putting him at his ease by chatting. “She used to own the Granby
and the
Picton
, she and my father,” he said. “But
they closed in the sixties. The Granby closed last. That was just by where she
was living. There were two cinemas there, and not enough audience for either.”
He was babbling; he wished the coroner would stop him with a question.

 
          
“Your
father isn’t alive now, is he?”

 
          
“No,
he died seven years ago. The strain of knowing the cinemas would have to close
killed him. That made my mother determined to keep the
Newsham
open. She was the business side of the marriage, you see.”

 
          
“Quite
right,” the coroner said approvingly.
“Quite right.
Did your mother always live in Princes Avenue?”

 
          
“No,
she moved there after my father’s death.” She’d said she had sold the house
because she couldn’t cope with it, but he had known she wanted the money to put
into the
Newsham
, though he’d never let her realize.

 
          
“And
did you often visit her there? Did you visit her on the night of sixth August?”

 
          
“Yes,
I did.” The jurymen were beginning to look away from him, dreading naked grief.
But he felt that the coroner would lead him skillfully around that. He would be
able to get back to the
Newsham
soon.

 
          
“I
visited my mother, Mrs. Lilian Pugh, on the night of sixth August,” the coroner
said. That’s odd, George thought: I didn’t see you there. It took him a moment
to notice the tape recorder to which the coroner was confiding information.

 
          
“At
about what time did you leave?
Midnight.
Did you
happen to notice whether the front window of the flat was open?”

 
          
“Yes.
She often left it open a little in summer. Rex guarded it during the night.”

 
          
“Rex
was your mother’s dog. When I left at midnight the front window was open a
little, comma.” By now George felt wholly detached from the proceedings. “Your
mother wasn’t afraid of intruders?”

 
          
“She
said not.” But he had been, on her behalf. Alice and he had had no room for his
mother, but that hadn’t made it easier to think of her on Princes Avenue, among
the gangs and burglaries and racial confrontations.

 
          
The
questions continued, and the echoes. Yes, his mother had had a couple of heart
attacks—nothing serious, the doctor had said, provided she took it easy. No,
she hadn’t seemed unwell that night. Silently he remembered her saying, “Good
night now, dear,” turning carefully back toward the lighted hall, supporting
herself with a hand on the doorknob, glancing back to make sure he was safe on
his bicycle. He felt Edmund gazing intently at him—as if, he thought angrily,
he had written the script.

 
          
“Do
you know of anyone who might have had a grudge against your mother’s dog?”