The Old English Peep Show (20 page)

“A straitjacket,” gasped Pibble. “I'm extremely grateful to you, Mr. Chanceley.”

“Think nothing of it,” said Mr. Chanceley. “I will be asking a favor of you in the immediate future—I'll tell you when I've untrussed you. You know, first I figured your act was a leg-pull but when I'd studied the setup awhile I guessed you wasn't play-acting, neither of you. So I knotted his piece of cord around a nail and waited for him. I reckoned I could shout or discommode him if he tried to pull that lever direct.”

“He's a very dangerous man,” said Pibble.

“And I was All American tackle, Idaho, afore I shifted down to Texas. You have a sore neck, Mr. Pibble.”

“Yes,” whispered Pibble. “He laid me out by throttling me and then he brought me down here to fake a suicide. The rope would have hidden the earlier bruises.”

“I heard you say you were down here on a job,” said Mr. Chanceley, with a shade of query in his flat voice.

“I'm a policeman, and I was investigating a suicide which turned out to be a murder, I think. That's Mr. Harvey Singleton.”

“Yeah,” said Mr. Chanceley. “I spoke with him already.” The voice held a hint of social reproach; as though Pibble had committed a gaffe. He remembered the square, purple-clad figure arguing with Singleton under the fountain while the crowd milled into the coaches; remembered, too, how absurd he had seemed then.

“I hit him with my camera,” said Mr. Chanceley, as if pointing out the poetic justice of the implement. “It is shock-proof, naturally. I reckon he'll live. Now, Mr. Pibble, you may consider you're a mite in my debt, but you can set the record straight before we take him to the cells. I missed the picture of my life to fetch you out of that mess, but we can set it up again, and better, too. I have this experimental film, ultra-fast, nothing like it on sale anywhere in the world, and, like the slogan says, ‘It Takes Movies by Moonlight.' Now, Mr. Pibble, you and your pal were posed, ab-so-lutely posed, for
the
greatest moonlight shot in history, but I couldn't take it, first because I left my silent camera at my hotel, and second because I had to get you out of the fix you were in.”

“I'll gladly put my head into the noose again for you, Mr. Chanceley,” said Pibble, “but I'm afraid we'll have to do without the executioner.”

“Nuts,” said Mr. Chanceley. “I have a timing device for my camera. I'll strip off and be the hangman—I have more the figure for it than your Mr. Singleton, too.”

He had already, while waiting in ambush, divested himself of his festooning gadgetry. Now he threw his blazer on the lawn, whisked his necktie off, and began to pull his shirt over his head, talking as he did so.

“We'll move fast. If I know photography—and I do, Mr. Pibble—that beautiful big moon will fade behind a cloud if we give her one moment's grace. Now, see here: I'll aim my camera to take in the steps and a little bit of lawn this side, as well as the scaffold. You take off your coat and necktie, Mr. Pibble, but leave your shirt open at the neck. You don't say it has a detachable collar? Holy Mother of Jesus, this is my lucky night. Take the collar off and you'll look real antique. That white shirt is fine, and your face is nigh as white as your shirt—you're sure this ain't asking too much of you, Mr. Pibble? Then I'll lead you up the steps with your hands strapped behind you; you'll turn and kneel and say a prayer; I'll jerk you up and put the noose around your neck and make like I'm going to pull the lever. Then you can step off the trap and we'll have it open. I found a crate in there”—he jerked his thumb toward the cloisters—“and we'll put it under the trap for you to stand on. Then you can go down slow, bending at the knees, while I pull the lever again slow. I can splice the pieces I need to make it seem quick when I run the film. We'll have twelve minutes and thirty seconds before the film runs out, so we should do it easy.”

“Fine,” said Pibble, reflecting that Mr. Chanceley and Mr. Singleton made a very near match for rapid and detailed planning. The Texan fetched a small crate from the cloisters and hid it behind the scaffold. Pibble watched him wonderingly: half naked, with the build and musculature of a real Jack Ketch, his trouser ends tucked into his socks to simulate tights, he looked like a natural force which nothing short of annihilation would deter from its ends. How easy it would have seemed to another man to wash his hands of the humane aspects of the scene, perhaps to take a still or two of Singleton pulling the lever and Pibble undergoing the drop when the lens click would be drowned by other noises. How many dedicated photographers get the chance to snap a real murder by hanging? The temptation must have been like a flood tide. Juicy blackmail afterward, too. No question of not being allowed to photograph the Abbey by moonlight, either, and then to milk the publicity for all it was worth.

Mr. Chanceley fiddled and fussed over his tripod. Pibble put his coat back on while he waited; he felt as cold as he had while brooding over Deakin's body—suddenly he remembered Mr. Waugh lying stertorous in the dank shadow under the Private Wing, rheumatism seeping every second into those alcoholic joints. As Mr. Chanceley straightened from his adjustments, Harvey Singleton groaned. Pibble bent to look at the thongs; they seemed firm enough for anything.

“Let him bide,” said Mr. Chanceley. “You ready now, Mr. Pibble?”

Pibble took off his coat, let his wrists be bound behind his back, and followed Mr. Chanceley up to the scaffold. The camera whirred in the dimness. He hung his head disconsolately so that he could see where the knotty muscles bulged on the square slab of his rescuer's back. He knelt at the top of the steps and praised the Assistant Commissioner for his manifold mercies. He was hauled to his feet, stood on the trap, and again felt the harsh caress of the noose. For a crazy moment he was certain that Mr. Chanceley would be carried away by the histrionic art and would pull the lever—hard to make a motive like that stand up in court.

Then there was the juggling with the crate; slowly he did a full knee bend; when the rope was taut, he allowed his head to sag to one side while he tilted his chin upward and forward. It hurt like hell, but he owed Mr. Chanceley that much.

Harvey Singleton, when they came back to him, was threshing on the lawn like a landed salmon.

“Just let me dress,” said Mr. Chanceley, “and we'll put him into that straitjacket.”

Pibble went and fetched the thing, wondering whether it could be made to fit so different-shaped a man, but found that it was most ingeniously designed to suit any size of customer: there were webbing straps at the back which served the dual purpose of adjusting the scope of its embrace and tightening its grip until the victim could not even wriggle. There was a label inside the collar—it said “Army and Navy Stores.”

“I'd best lay him out again,” said Mr. Chanceley. “We'll have one hell of a wrestle getting him into that thing otherwise.”

He swung his camera in a sharp arc, producing the same thud as Pibble had heard before. The long body jerked and lay still.

“Holy Mother of Jesus,” said Mr. Chanceley as he undid the thongs. “You seen anything like that before, Mr. Pibble?” Pibble knelt and looked. The leather had cut into Singleton's wrists so that they were welling with blood and the hands were as puffy as kidneys. Pibble tore up strips of the footpads and bandaged the wounds. Then, while Mr. Chanceley was untying the ankles, he went through Singleton's pockets, finding a big ring of keys, a small automatic pistol, a wallet, and a roll of tape from a tape recorder. He pocketed these and helped roll the unconscious man into the straitjacket and adjust the straps as tight as they dared. He was still terrified of Singleton; the threshing had been a final desperate effort to get a hand to the pistol, and even with his arms strapped behind his back he might have managed to use it—he was that sort of man.

“Where now?” said Mr. Chanceley.

Pibble took the map Singleton had given him out of his pocket and peered at it by the light of the moon.

“I don't fancy going back to the House,” he said. “I don't know how much Mrs. Singleton is involved in all this, and the place is full of guns; they might try anything. But there's a car up in the staff car park—it looks about five hundred yards—if one of us can drive it. It's an E-Type Jaguar.”

“Boy, oh boy!” said Mr. Chanceley. “Is this my lucky night! If you'll carry my equipment, Mr. Pibble, I'll carry the prisoner.”

“Are you sure you can manage?” said Pibble. “I don't think he'd get out if we left him here.”

“I'll be happier if I know he's with us,” said Mr. Chanceley. He hoicked Singleton up by the shoulders, tilting him onto his feet like a man tipping a log end over end, bent, and caught him neatly at the point of balance on his broad shoulder.

“My cameras are under the archway there,” he said. “Bring what you can carry, and maybe I'll have time to come back for the rest. I'll start off—you reckon it's this track, Mr. Pibble?” He trudged into the dark with his lethal burden. Pibble picked up the bloody straps and carried them into the cloister, where he found an untidy ziggurat of leather, glass, and chrome. It took him several minutes to thread the straps into the right buckles and to load himself up. Not a dressy man, he was still concerned lest the providential Mr. Chanceley should feel he was carrying the gear in an inappropriate manner.

He found him propping his burden up at a point where the path forked.

“You made it,” said Mr. Chanceley. “Where now?”

“Left,” said Pibble, glad that he'd taken an extra half minute to learn the route off. Mr. Chanceley slung Singleton up onto his shoulder without a grunt.

“Be careful how you handle him,” said Pibble. “I managed to bite his ear when he was lifting me.”

“He tries that on me,” said Mr. Chanceley, “and I have his eye out. I was a Minuteman, back home, before they went soft, and I learned unarmed combat.”

The load of photographic equipment suddenly seemed heavier as Pibble came to terms with the knowledge that his rescuer was not merely a semi-literate American figure of fun, but a supporter of the extreme right wing to boot. But an honest man, he thought. An honest man. An honest man. The load became no lighter, but at least he could carry it.

The gate was locked and none of the keys fitted. Mr. Chanceley slid his load to the ground and propped it against a tree with a casualness that suggested he would have put it down head first if it had happened to lie that way.

“I saw you took his pistol,” he said. “We can maybe shoot the lock out.”

“I don't think it's worth it,” said Pibble. “If I take those three screws out, we can take the handle off and pull the whole lock sideways.”

In the event, it was Mr. Chanceley who had to turn the screws with the gadget on Pibble's penknife. Pibble was feeling weaker every stride, and when they reached the car park he was ready to buckle under the weight of a new problem.

“We'll never fit him into a two-seater,” he said.

“We'll lower the top and lay him longways,” said Mr. Chanceley. “You'll have to find somewhere to squat, and you'd best look for a scarf for your sore throat, Mr. Pibble—it'll be a mite cold.”

“Let's hope there's a map in the car,” said Pibble. “I'm a stranger in these parts.”

“Me, too,” said Mr. Chanceley.

There was a map. The key was in the car. The top came down without trouble. Singleton fitted neatly in on the passenger seat with his feet in the long cavern under the dash and his head protruding over the folded top. Pibble, remembering how his own head had jogged on the journey down to the Abbey, insisted on using the two rugs in the car to wedge him into position, tying them to the straitjacket with one of Mr. Chanceley's straps. He found a Shetland scarf for his own throat; Mr. Chanceley tried on the General's deerstalker and rejected it; they settled themselves, Pibble perched on the top with his knees wedged behind the driving seat; the engine boomed its creamy note; three seconds later they were away, actually outside the purlieus of Herryngs House.

11:40 P.M.

I
t must, Pibble considered, be a peculiarly painful dilemma for the Night Sergeant at a provincial police station when a couple of obvious desperadoes carry in a perfect specimen of the local gentry and claim he is three times a murderer. The gentleman swears from his straitjacket that he is in the hands of madmen, in a chilly rational voice which demands obedience. One desperado—the more disreputable—produces documents which purport to show that he is a Detective Superintendent at Scotland Yard. The other desperado stands in the background uttering corroborative statements in a gangster's accent. You, naturally, incline to believe the devil you know. The British delinquent, now clearly round the bend, produces a small pistol and says he will shoot you if you don't ring up a London number which he claims to be that of the Assistant Commissioner of Police. You ask how you are to know that it is not the number of an accomplice, but offer to ring Scotland Yard and verify. Scotland Yard refuses to tell you the private number of the Assistant Commissioner of Police. The British desperado snatches the telephone from you and says, “Who's that? Hilda? Oh, Mavis, I'm sorry. Pibble here, Superintendent Pibble. For God's sake, give this chap the Ass. Com.'s number so that he can ring him up and check who I am.” She does so. You ring the new number, and a dry voice answers which does not sound like that of a desperado's­ accomplice. It tells you that the tattered desperado is a senior officer of the force you are proud to serve in, and asks to speak to him. During­ the long conversation, you start trying to believe that the gentleman in the straitjacket, to whose every whim you have hitherto­ kowtowed, is an exceedingly dangerous criminal. The three of you lug him off to a cell, unstrap him while the American desperado­ points the pistol steadily at him, and lock him in. You then, on this Superintendent's advice, get poor Fred Bulling out of bed, send him round to Mr. Roberts to have a bit of paper signed permitting you to arm him, and set him to watch the criminal gentleman's cell. The desperadoes then depart in the General's red E-type, as you've often winked an eye at doing eighty-five down the bypass.

Pibble did not consider all this, of course, until later, while the deepmouthed engine surged them back toward Herryngs. The conversation with the Ass. Com. had gone reasonably well, though Pibble's voice had given out halfway through his tale. There had been a longish pause when he finished.

“No chance of playing the whole mess down?” the sour-lemon accents had said, at last. “It sounds as if you've done very well, Jimmy, but the trouble is people won't like it at all. The Home Secretary, if I know him, will take it as a personal insult. You know the ground—is there a way of separating the Claverings' deaths from this Singleton affair? Can we make theirs accidental?”

Pibble had outlined his fairy tale in which the General died trying to rescue the Admiral from Bonzo.

“Possible. What about Singleton? Think you can nail him for killing this manservant? Pathologists ought to be able to find traces of previous semi-strangulation, but could you make it stick to Singleton­?”

Pibble had pointed to his own experience, and the mild evidence of the half-painted landing craft, but had added that he wasn't even sure himself that Singleton had strangled Deakin.

“I don't feel greatly attracted to all this.” The voice had sounded petulant. “The journalists are sure to get wind of something if we try to hang on until we've had a report on the manservant, and then, as you say, how do we prove it was Singleton? I am dubious about simply nailing him for trying to hang you, though I imagine we could get him for that, at least, thanks to your providential witness. Police would come badly out of it, though. Ah, well, it looks as if we'll have to go through with the whole caboosh—even then, a lot will depend on finding that bullet.”

Pibble had observed that evidently the Claverings hadn't found it, or there would have been no need to fill the lion so full of lead.

“Right. Interesting point there—what would Singleton have done if Sir Ralph had picked up a Colt bullet in this pit of yours? Never mind about that now, though. I'll get on to your local Chief Constable and get him to send some reinforcements out. I'll get on to the Old Man, too, and tell him what we're up to. My inclination is to turn the whole damn shooting match into a circus, give the news hounds their money's worth and more, get the lovable British public too eager for gory details to feel the shock to our national pride. But I'll have to talk it over with our masters. You realize that this means taking you off, Jimmy? You're too involved now to be anything except a witness. I daresay you'll be glad of that.”

Pibble had agreed that he would. The voice became drier than ever.

“Besides, we'll need you as a scapegoat if things go wrong. You'll see how we've decided to play it when you see who I send to take over. Meanwhile you'd best go back to Herryngs and stop anyone who's left from killing each other. Go careful, Jimmy.”

So here they were, turning for the second time that night through the magniloquent gateway. Mr. Chanceley, in boyish mood, made the car bellow down the half mile of avenue and took the curve by the fountain in a controlled skid which sent the gravel spattering across the pool. Pibble directed him around to the far side of the Private Wing.

Mr. Waugh still lay in the shadow beneath the lit study windows, but someone had been out, rolled him onto a tarpaulin and covered him with rugs. His breathing was fast and shallow. As Pibble knelt to feel his pulse, the study window was thrown up.

“Who's that?” called Mrs. Singleton.

“Me. Pibble.”

“Thank heavens! I can't think where everyone has got to. Mr. Waugh ought to go to hospital—he looks awful.”

“Where is the hospital?”

“In the town. I could drive him there if you could help get him into the car. I couldn't manage it alone.”

“No, you stay there—I want to talk to you. But would you please ring up the hospital and tell them what to expect, and then book a room for Mr. Chanceley at a good hotel, if there is one?”

“God, they'll never take anyone at this time of night!”

“They'll do it for you, won't they?

“I suppose so. Bring him round to the colonnade door and I'll tell your friend where to go.”

The window banged shut. The art of carrying inert butlers has not been adequately studied; it is difficult to achieve a proper grip on the unresisting steppes of flesh—even the omni­competent Mr. Chanceley let the shoulders slip twice before he changed tactics, backed the Jaguar across the blasphemed turf, and heaved the butler in in one swift movement. The big head lolled sideways, the mouth dangling open and emitting retching noises, but Pibble decided the man would have a better chance if he were shielded from the rush of midnight air, so they took time to put the top up, managing it far less neatly and surely than Singleton had earlier.

Mrs. Singleton had finished her telephoning and was ready with unflurried directions for finding the hospital. Pibble bent to the car window to thank Mr. Chanceley, inadequately, for having saved his life.

“My pleasure,” said the Texan flatly, and roared off.

The fire in the study was freshly made up; the ashtrays were clean; as soon as they had sat down, Elsa stumped in with a tray of tea laid for two.

“Please tell me what has happened,” said Mrs. Singleton, with about the concern shown by a parent at a P.T.A. meeting inquiring about a child's poor reports. Pibble told her. She sighed as she poured out the tea.

“Perhaps you'd prefer me to taste yours first,” she said.

“Please,” said Pibble.

She looked at him out of the side of her eyes, nodded, and took a good gulp.

“Damn,” she said. “Burnt my throat. No arsenic, though. Now what?”

“There must be a recorder somewhere on which I can play this tape,” said Pibble. She went out and came back with a green gadget which seemed to have more terminals protruding from it than was normal; it held only one spool, empty, so she threaded the new tape swiftly through and switched the machine on. Pibble rose to check that she had not set it to “Record,” which would have obliterated the previous signals, and returned to his chair toen to the faint hum. After two minutes he rose again.

“Wait,” said Mrs. Singleton. “It fits onto the telephone.”

More hum, and then suddenly the clatter of dialing. Then a voice saying, “Mr. Lanning's residence,” and another—high-pitched, hysterical—saying, “I've got to speak to him.” Brief pause, then, “Mr. Lanning is in his bath, sir.” “Get him out,” said the second voice, clearly on the edge of a breakdown. “Tell him it's Pibble.” A click, a faint sound of feet padding away, the whiffle of feverish breathing, and then a tired voice saying, “You in trouble, Jimmy?”

The whole conversation was on the tape. It was as good as a suicide note. The Ass. Com. would have had a grisly time at the inquest if he'd tried to maintain that Pibble sounded his normal self. Unstable, remorseful, broken Pibble. And, Crippen, how much he'd told Singleton! He listened, numb at his own weakness and stupidity, until the green box settled back into its dead hum. Mrs. Singleton was looking at him with smiling concern.

“You've had a bad day, Mr. Pibble,” she said. “And you haven't finished yet, I suppose—you want to know how much I knew.”

“Please,” said Pibble.

“I knew that Uncle Dick was dead and that the General had shot him—or, rather, that's what I thought. It didn't seem to be any concern of anyone's but us. The General was going over to Chichester after luncheon to set things up for a fake sailing accident for Uncle Dick, but you rumbled him. And then I knew Harvey was dangerous; I was going to try and warn you but I didn't realize everything would happen so fast, and I didn't know what he was up to, or why. But I did know he was up to something, the way he purred over his claret at supper—I just didn't know what.”

“What would you have done if you'd realized he'd killed your uncle?”

“I don't know. Nothing, probably.”

“Who took the whiskey out to Mr. Waugh?”

“I wasn't in the room, but I met Judith coming back. Harvey'd asked her to take it. I gave her a sleeping pill and sent her up to bed. It's rather sad, you know, but she wouldn't have let any of them touch her, not even Harvey. She's desperately in love in a very old-fashioned way with a rather wet young man who sells software for computers. Poor Harvey, he's so conscious of his abilities, so frustrated by Uncle Dick's refusal to let him build this place up into something really big …”

“I thought it belonged to your father,” said Pibble.

“The General gave it to him when my mother agreed to marry him—it didn't belong to either of them then, of course, not until Grandfather died, but they'd had some sort of bet about who'd get her—you know their style. Anyway legally Herryngs belonged to the General, but he always behaved as though it belonged to Uncle Dick, who really hated Old England. And poor Harvey could feel the years dribbling away all the time. He should never have come here, never have married me, but the Raid trapped him, ruined him. It ruined us all.”

“You, too?” said Pibble.

“Of course. If you think I'm being very callous and bloody-minded about all this, you're quite right. Everything that mattered happened so long ago, and then it was all lies. You won't have noticed it, but there isn't a picture of my mother anywhere in the place, except one Uncle Dick kept in a drawer, though he never told the General. I've never found out what happened in the end—they wouldn't talk about her. All she wanted was to live on a farm with a few horses, but first, while Grandfather was alive, she had to go bucketing round the world living in horrible­ quarters and taking part in Army wives' chitchat, which she was terrible­ at, so nobody liked her. Then she came to live here during­ the war. The General was away, mostly, soldiering and quarreling­, but after the Raid he came back forever. I don't know what happened—I was being finished at a posh nunnery—but she died. She killed herself, I believe, but there was nothing in the papers. It may even have been something worse: I can't find out. But I know why—the General wasn't human any more, after the Raid. He had sold his soul, and my mother couldn't understand. She was the most loving person who ever walked, and the General­ couldn't love or be loved any more. Anyway, she tried love, and it killed her. That's why I chose callousness­, and it's eaten me up. I'm the last of the Claverings, you know—there aren't any heirs, not even some ghastly Australian. I shall close Old England. I shall let the roof beams rot. I shall mumble about through leaky rooms for fifty years, living on cat food. Oh, Christ!”

She stared at her face in the mirror over the fireplace, pushing her cheeks upward with the inside of her fingers so that the little crow's-feet became the deep-etched furrows of old age.

“I'm going to bed,” she said, “unless there's anything else you want to ask. I wouldn't have let him try to kill you if I'd known, Mr. Pibble. You don't belong here, so we've no right. Good night.”

She swayed out, supple as a child. Pibble gloomed at the fire, trying to make his brain riffle through the day's events to see whether a card lay there which would betray her. He was sure in his own mind that she had known at dinnertime roughly what her husband was meditating, and that would mean that she knew he had killed the Admiral. But Lady Macbeth is not admissible evidence. When they'd come back from the Tiger Pit, she'd greeted them as though they'd been the General and Singleton back from some exploit, and only noticed halfway through her sentence that the little one was Pibble. But why? How could she have detached herself so from her father, her husband, her uncle, and just let them slaughter each other? With a pricking at his nape Pibble saw a possible answer: if she was the
Admiral's
daughter, then … then … it might have come out in some weeping row when the General­ came home for good, and so Lady Clavering died, and the old men had killed her between them—not literally, but morally, at least to a doting daughter. And so poor Harvey became just part of the machinery of revenge, his own tremendous financial schemes being nothing beside the high purpose of wiping the blood of the Claverings­ off the face of the earth.