Wilt (14 page)

Sally sat on staring at his back venomously. She was frightened. Eva’s reaction had
been so violent that it had destroyed her confidence in herself. Gaskell was right. There
had been something primeval in Eva Wilt’s behaviour. She shuddered at the thought of that
dark shape moving towards her in the cockpit. Sally got up and went into the galley and
found a long sharp knife. Then she went back into the cabin and checked the lock on the door
and lay down on her bunk and tried to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. There were noises
outside. Waves lapped against the side of the boat. The wind blew. God, what a mess it all
was! Sally clutched her knife and thought about Gaskell and what he had said about
divorce.

Peter Braintree sat in the office of Mr Gosdyke, Solicitor, and discussed the
problem. ‘He’s been in there since Monday and it’s Thursday now. Surely they’ve no right to
keep him there so long without his seeing a solicitor.’

If he doesn’t ask for one and if the police want to question him and he is prepared to
answer their questions and refuses to demand his legal rights I don’t really see that
there is anything I can do about it,’ said Mr Gosdyke.

‘But are you sure that that is the situation?’ asked Braintree.

‘As far as I can ascertain that is indeed the situation. Mr Wilt has not asked to see
me. I spoke to the Inspector in charge, you heard me and it seems quite clear that Mr Wilt
appears, for some extraordinary reason, to be prepared to help the police with their
enquiries just as long as they feel his presence at the Police Station is necessary. Now
if a man refuses to assert his own legal rights then he has only himself to blame for his
predicament.’

‘But are you absolutely certain that Henry has refused to see you? I mean the police
could be lying to you.’ Mr Gosdyke shook his head. ‘I have known Inspector Flint for many
years,’ he said, ‘and he is not the sort of man to deny a suspect his rights. No, I’m sorry.
Mr Braintree. I would like to be of more assistance but frankly, in the circumstances, I
can do nothing. Mr Wilt’s predilection for the company of police officers is quite
incomprehensible to me, but it disqualifies me from interfering.’

‘You don’t think they’re giving him third degree or anything of that sort?’

‘My dear fellow, third degree? You’ve been watching too many old movies on the TV. The
police don’t use strong-arm methods in this country.’

‘They’ve been pretty brutal with some of our students who have been on demos,’
Braintree pointed out.

‘Ah, but students are quite another matter and demonstrating students get what they
deserve. Political provocation is one thing but domestic murders of the sort your
friend Mr Wilt seems to have indulged in come into a different category altogether. I
can honestly say that in all my years in the legal profession I have yet to come across a
case in which the police did not treat a domestic murderer with great care and not a
little sympathy. After all, they are nearly all married men themselves, and in any case
Mr Wilt has a degree and that always helps. If you are a professional man, and in spite of
what some people may say lecturers in Technical Colleges are members of a profession
if only marginally, then you can rest assured that the police will do nothing in the least
untoward. Mr Wilt is perfectly safe.’

And Wilt felt safe. He sat in the Interview Room and contemplated Inspector Flint
with interest.

‘Motivation? Now there’s an interesting question,’ he said. ‘If you had asked me why
I married Eva in the first place I’d have same trouble trying to explain, myself. I was
young at the time and…’

‘Wilt,’ said the Inspector, ‘I didn’t ask you why you married your wife. I asked you why
you decided to murder her.’

‘I didn’t decide to murder her.’ said Wilt.

‘It was a spontaneous action? A momentary impulse you couldn’t resist? An act of
madness you now regret?’

‘It was none of those things. In the first place it was not an act. It was mere
fantasy.’

‘But you do admit that the thought crossed your mind?’

‘Inspector,’ said Wilt, ‘if I acted upon every impulse that crossed my mind I would
have been convicted of child rape, buggery, burglary, assault with intent to commit
grievous bodily harm and mass murder long ago.’

‘All those impulses crossed your mind?’

‘At some time or other, yes,’ said Wilt.

‘You’ve got a bloody odd mind.’

‘Which is something I share with the vast majority of mankind. I daresay that even you
in your odd contemplative moments have…’

‘Wilt,’ said the Inspector, ‘I don’t have odd contemplative moments. Not until I met
you anyhow. Now then, you admit you thought of killing your wife…’

‘I said the notion had crossed my mind, particularly when I have to take the dog for a
walk. It is a game I play with myself. No more than that.’

‘A game? You take the dog for a walk and think of ways and means of killing Mrs Wilt? I
don’t call that a game. I call it premeditation.’

‘Not badly put,’ said Wilt with a smile, ‘the meditation bit. Eva curls up in the lotus
position on the living-room rug and thinks beautiful thoughts. I take the bloody dog for
a walk and think dreadful ones while Clem defecates on the grass verge in Grenville Gardens.
And in each case the end result is just the same. Eva gets up and cooks supper and washes up
and I come home and watch the box or read and go to bed. Nothing has altered one way or
another.’

‘It has now,’ said the Inspector. ‘Your wife has disappeared off the face of the earth
together with a brilliant young scientist and his wife, and you are sitting here waiting
to be charged with their murder.’

‘Which I don’t happen to have committed,’ said Wilt. ‘Ah well, these things happen. The
moving finger writes and having writ…’

‘Fuck the moving finger. Where are they? Where did you put them? You’re going to tell
me.’

Wilt sighed. ‘I wish I could,’ he said, ‘I really do. Now you’ve got that plastic
doll…’

‘No we haven’t. Not by a long chalk. We’re still going down through solid rock. We won’t
get whatever is down there until tomorrow at the earliest.’

‘Something to look forward to,’ said Wilt. ‘Then I suppose you’ll let me go.’

‘Like hell I will. I’ll have you up for remand on Monday.’

‘Without any evidence of murder? Without a body? You can’t do that.’

Inspector Flint smiled. ‘Wilt,’ he said, ‘I’ve got news for you. We don’t need a body. We
can hold you on suspicion, we can bring you up for trial and we can find you guilty without
a body. You may be clever but you don’t know your law.’

‘Well I must say you fellows have an easy job of it. You mean you can go out in the street
and pick up some perfectly innocent passer-by and lug him in here and charge him with
murder without any evidence at all?’

‘Evidence? We’ve got evidence all right. We’ve got a blood spattered bathroom with a
busted-down door. We’ve got an empty house in a filthy mess and we’ve got some bloody thing
or other down that pile hole and you think we haven’t got evidence. You’ve got it wrong.’

‘Makes two of us,’ said Wilt.

‘And I’ll tell you another thing, Wilt. ‘The trouble with bastards like you is that
you’re too clever by half. You overdo things and you give yourselves away. Now if I’d been in
your shoes, I’d have done two things. Know what they are?’

‘No,’ said Wilt, ‘I don’t.’

‘I’d have washed that bathroom down, number one, and number two I’d have stayed away from
that hole. I wouldn’t have tried to lay a false trail with notes and making sure the
caretaker saw you and turning up at Mr Braintree’s house at midnight covered in mud. I’d
have sat tight and said nothing.’

‘But I didn’t know about those bloodstains in the bathroom and if it hadn’t been for that
filthy doll I wouldn’t have dumped the thing down the hole. I’d have gone to bed. Instead of
which I got pissed and acted like an idiot.’

‘Let me tell you something else. Wilt.’ said the Inspector. ‘You are an idiot, a
fucking cunning idiot but an idiot all the same. You need your head read.’

‘It would make a change from this lot,’ said Wilt.

‘What would?’

‘Having my head read instead of sitting here and being insulted.’

Inspector Flint studied him thoughtfully. ‘You mean that?’ asked.

‘Mean what?’

‘About having your head read? Would you be prepared to undergo an examination by a
qualified psychiatrist?’

‘Why not?’ said Wilt. ‘Anything to help pass the time.’

‘Quite voluntarily, you understand. Nobody is forcing you to, but if you want…’

‘Listen, Inspector, if seeing a psychiatrist will help to convince you that I have
not murdered my wife I’ll be only too happy to. You can put me on a lie detector. You can
pump me full of truth drugs. You can…’

‘There’s no need for any of that other stuff,’ said Flint, and stood up. ‘A good shrink
will do very nicely. And if you think you can get away with guilty but insane, forget it.
These blokes know when you’re malingering madness.’ He went to the door and paused. Then he
came back and leant across the table.

‘Tell me, Wilt,’ he said. ‘Tell me just one thing. How come you sit there so coolly? Your
wife is missing, we have evidence of murder, we have a replica of her, if you are to be
believed, under thirty feet of concrete and you don’t turn a hair. How do you do it?’

‘Inspector,’ said Wilt. ‘If you had taught Gasfitters for ten years and been asked as
many damnfool questions in that time as I have, you’d know. Besides you haven’t met Eva.
When you do you’ll see why I’m not worried. Eva is perfectly capable of taking care of
herself. She may not be bright but she’s got a built-in survival kit.’

‘Jesus, Wilt, with you around for twelve years she must have had something.’

‘Oh she has. You’ll like Eva when you meet her. You’ll get along like a house on fire.
You’ve both got literal minds and an obsession with trivia. You can take a wormcast and
turn it into Mount Everest.’

‘Wormcast? Wilt, you sicken me,’ said the Inspector, and left the room.

Wilt got up and walked up and down. He was tired of sitting down. On the other hand he was
well satisfied with his performance. He had surpassed himself and he took pride in the
fact that he was reacting so well to what most people would consider an appalling
predicament. But to Wilt it was something else, a challenge, the first real challenge he
had had to meet for a long time. Gasfitters and Plasterers had challenged him once but he
had learnt to cope with them. You jollied them along. Let them talk, ask questions, divert
them, get them going, accept their red herrings and hand out a few of your own, but above
all you had to refuse to accept their preconceptions. Whenever they asserted something
with absolute conviction as a self-evident truth like all wogs began at Calais, all you
had to do was agree and then point out that half the great men in English history had been
foreigners like Marconi or Lord Beaverbrook and that even Churchill’s mother had been a
Yank or talk about the Welsh being the original Englishmen and the Vikings and the Danes
and from that lead them off through Indian doctors to the National Health Service and
birth control and any other topic under the sun that would keep them quiet and puzzled
and desperately trying to think of some ultimate argument that would prove you
wrong.

Inspector Flint was no different. He was more obsessive but his tactics were just the
same. And besides he had got hold of the wrong end of the stick with a vengeance and it amused
Wilt to watch him trying to pin a crime on him he hadn’t committed. It made him feel almost
important and certainly more of a man than he had done for a long, long time. He was
innocent and there was no question about it. In a world where everything else was
doubtful and uncertain and open to scepticism the fact of his innocence was sure. For
the first time in his adult life Wilt knew himself to be absolutely right, and the
knowledge gave him a strength he had never supposed he possessed. And besides there was no
question in his mind that Eva would turn up eventually, safe and sound, and more than a
little subdued when she realized what her impulsiveness had led to. Serve her right for
giving him that disgusting doll. She’d regret that to the end of her days. Yes, if anybody
was going to come off badly in this affair it was dear old Eva with her bossiness and her
busyness. She’d have a job explaining it to Mavis Mottram and the neighbours. Wilt smiled
to himself at the thought. And even the Tech would have to treat him differently in future
and with a new respect. Wilt knew the liberal conscience too well not to suppose that he
would appear anything less that martyr when he went back. And a hero. They would bend over
backwards to convince themselves that they hadn’t thought him as guilty as hell. He’d get
promotion too, not for being a teacher but because they would need to salve their fragile
consciences. Talk about killing the fatted calf.

At the Tech there was no question of killing the fatted calf, at least not for Henry
Wilt. The imminence of the CNAA visitation on Friday, coinciding as it apparently
would with the resurrection of the late Mrs Wilt, was causing something approaching
panic. The Course Board met in almost continuous session and memoranda circulated so
furiously that it was impossible to read one before the next arrived.

‘Can’t we postpone the visit?’ Dr Cox asked. ‘I can’t have them in my office discussing
bibliographies with bits of Mrs Wilt being dug out of the ground outside the window.’

‘I have asked the police to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible,’ said Dr
Mayfield.

‘With conspicuous lack of success so far,’ said Dr Board.’

‘They couldn’t be more in evidence. There are ten of them peering down that hole at this
very moment.’

The Vice-Principal struck a brighter note. ‘You’ll be glad to hear that we’ve managed to
restore power to the canteen,’ he told the meeting, ’so we should be able to lay on a good
lunch.’

‘I just hope I feel up to eating.’ said Dr Cox. ‘The shocks of the last few days have done
nothing to improve my appetite and when I think of poor Mrs Wilt…’

‘Try not to think of her,’ said the Vice-Principal, but Dr Cox shook his head.

‘You try not to think of her with a damned great boring machine grinding away outside
your office window all day.’

‘Talking about shocks,’ said Dr Board, ‘I still can’t understand how the driver of that
mechanical corkscrew managed to escape electrocution when they cut through the power
cable.’

‘Considering the problems we are faced with, I hardly think that’s a relevant point
just at present,’ said Dr Mayfield. ‘What we have got to stress to the members of the CNAA
committee is that this degree is an integrated course with a fundamental
substructure grounded thematically on a concomitance of cultural and sociological
factors in no way unsuperficially disparate and with a solid quota of academic
content to give students an intellectual and cerebral..

‘Haemorrhage?’ suggested Dr Board.

Dr Mayfield regarded him balefully. ‘I really do think this is no time for
flippancy,’ he said angrily. ‘Either we are committed to the Joint Honours degree or
we are not. Furthermore we have only until tomorrow to structure our tactical
approach to the visitation committee. Now, which is it to be?’

‘Which is what to be?’ asked Dr Board. ‘What has our commitment or lack of it to do with
structuring, for want of several far better words, our so-called tactical approach to
a committee which, since it is coming all the way from London to us and not vice versa, is
presumably approaching us?’

‘Vice-Principal,’ said Dr Mayfield, I really must protest. Dr Board’s attitude at
this late stage in the game is quite incomprehensible. If Dr Board…’

‘Could even begin to understand one tenth of the jargon Dr Mayfield seems to suppose
is English he might be in a better position to express his opinion,’ interrupted Dr
Board. ‘As it is “incomprehensible” applies to Dr Mayfield’s syntax, not to my
attitude. I have always maintained…’

‘Gentlemen,’ said the Vice-Principal. ‘I think it would be best if we avoided
inter-departmental wrangles at this point in time and got down to business.’

There was a silence broken finally by Dr Cox. ‘Do you think the police could he
persuaded to erect a screen round that hole?’ he asked.

‘I shall certainly suggest that to them,’ said Dr Mayfield. They passed on to the
matter of entertainment.

‘I have arranged for there to be plenty of drinks before lunch,’ said the
Vice-Principal, ‘and in any case lunch will be judiciously delayed to allow them to get
into the right mood so the afternoon sessions should be cut short and proceed,
hopefully, more smoothly.’

‘Just so long as the Catering Department doesn’t serve Toad in the Hole,’ said Dr
Board.

The meeting broke up acrimoniously.

So did Mr Morris’s encounter with the Crime Reporter of the Sunday Post.

‘Of course I didn’t tell the police that I employed homicidal maniacs as a matter of
policy,’ he shouted at the reporter. ‘And in any case what I said was, as I understood it,
to be treated in the strictest confidence.’

‘But you did say you thought Wilt was insane and that quite a number of Liberal Studies
lecturers were off their heads?’

Mr Morris looked at the man with loathing. ‘To put the record straight, what I said was
that some of them were…’

‘Off their rockers?’ suggested the reporter.

‘No, not off, their rockers,’ shouted Mr Morris. ‘Merely, well, shall we say, slightly
unbalanced.’

‘That’s not what the police say you said. They say quote…’

‘I don’t care what the police say I said. I know what I said and what I didn’t and if
you’re implying…’

‘I’m not implying anything. You made a statement that half your staff are nuts and I’m
trying to verify it.’

‘Verify it?’ snarled Mr Morris. ‘You put words into my mouth I never said and you call
that verifying it?’

‘Did you say it or not? That’s all I’m asking. I mean if you express an opinion about
your staff…’

‘Mr MacArthur, what I think about my staff is my own affair. It has absolutely nothing
to do with you or the rag you represent’

‘Three million people will be interested to read your opinion on Sunday morning,’
said Mr MacArthur, ‘and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this Wilt character didn’t sue you
if he ever gets out of the copshop.’

‘Sue me? What the hell could he sue me for?’

‘Calling him a homicidal maniac for a start. Banner headlines HEAD OF LIBERAL
STUDIES CALLS LECTURER HOMICIDAL MANIAC should be good for fifty thousand. I’d be
surprised if he got less.’

Mr Morris contemplated destitution. ‘Even your paper would never print that,’ he
muttered. ‘I mean Wilt would sue you too.’

‘Oh we’re used to libel actions. They’re run-of-the-mill for us. We pay for them out of
petty cash. Now if you’d be a bit more cooperative…’ He left the suggestion in mid-air
for Mr Morris to digest.

‘What do you want to know?’ he asked miserably.

‘Got any juicy drug scene stories for us?’ asked Mr MacArthur. ‘You know the sort of thing.
LOVE ORGIES IN LECTURES. That always gets the public. Teenyboppers having it off and all
that. Give us a good one and we’ll let you off the hook about Wilt.’

‘Get out of my office!’ yelled Mr Morris.

Mr MacArthur got up. ‘You’re going to regret this.’ he said and went downstairs to the
students’ canteen to dig up some dirt on Mr Morris.

‘Not tests,’ said Wilt adamantly. ‘They’re deceptive.’

‘You think so?’ said Dr Pittman, consultant psychiatrist at the Fenland Hospital and
professor of Criminal Psychology at the University. Being plagiocephalic didn’t
help either.

‘I should have thought it was obvious.’ said Wilt. ‘You show me an ink-blot and I think
it looks like my grandmother lying in a pool of blood, do you honestly think I’m going to
be fool enough to say so? I’d be daft to do that. So I say a butterfly sitting on a
geranium. And every time it’s the same. I think what it does look like and then say
something completely different. Where does that get you?’

‘It is still possible to infer something from that,’ said Dr Pittman.

‘Well, you don’t need a bloody ink-blot to infer, do you?’ said Wilt. Dr Pittman made a
note of Wilt’s interest in blood. ‘You can infer things from just looking at the shape of
people’s heads.’

Dr Pittman polished his glasses grimly. Heads were not things he liked inferences to be
drawn from. ‘Mr Wilt,’ he said, ‘I am here at your request to ascertain your sanity and in
particular to give an opinion as to whether or not I consider you capable of murdering
your wife and disposing of her body in a singularly revolting and callous fashion. I
shall not allow anything you may say to influence my ultimate and objective
findings.’

Wilt looked perplexed. ‘I must say you’re not giving yourself much room for manoeuvre.
Since we’ve dispensed with mechanical aids like tests I should have thought what I had to
say would be the only thing you could go on. Unless of course you’re going to read the bumps
on my head. Isn’t that a bit old-fashioned?’

‘Mr Wilt,’ said Dr Pittman, ‘the fact that you clearly have a sadistic streak and take
pleasure in drawing attention to other people’s physical infirmities in no way
dispose me to conclude you are capable of murder…’

‘Very decent of you,’ said Wilt, ‘though frankly I’d have thought anyone was capable of
murder given the right, or to be precise the wrong, circumstances.’

Dr Pittman stifled the impulse to say how right he was. Instead he smiled
prognathously. ‘Would you say you are a rational man, Henry?’ he asked.

Wilt frowned. ‘Just stick to Mr Wilt if you don’t mind. This may not be a paid
consultation but I prefer a little formality’

Dr Pittman’s smile vanished. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘No, I wouldn’t say I was a rational man,’ said Wilt.

‘An irrational one perhaps?’

‘Neither the one wholly nor the other wholly. Just a man’

‘And a man is neither one thing nor the other?’

‘Dr Pittman, this is your province not mine but in my opinion man is capable of
reasoning but not of acting within wholly rational limits. Man is an animal, a
developed animal, though come to think of it all animals are developed if we are to
believe Darwin. Let’s just say man is a domesticated animal with elements of wildness
about him…’

‘And what sort of animal are you, Mr Wilt?’ said Dr Pittman. ‘A domesticated animal or
a wild one?’

‘Here we go again. These splendidly simple dual categories that seem to obsess the
modern mind. Either/Or Kierkegaard as that bitch Sally Pringsheim would say. No. I am not
wholly domesticated. Ask my wife. She’ll express an opinion on the matter.’

‘In what respect are you undomesticated?’

‘I fart in bed, Dr Pittman. I like to fart in bed. It is the trumpet call of the
anthropoid ape in me asserting its territorial imperative in the only way
possible.’

‘In the only way possible?’

‘You haven’t met Eva,’ said Wilt. ‘When you do you’ll see that assertion is her forte not
mine.’

‘You feel dominated by Mrs Wilt?’

‘I am dominated by Mrs Wilt.’

‘She bullies you? She assumes the dominant role?’

‘Eva is, Dr Pittman. She doesn’t have to assume anything. She just is.’

‘Is what?’

‘Now there’s the rub.’ said Wilt, ‘What’s today? You lose track of time in this place.’

‘Thursday.’

‘Well, today being Thursday, Eva is Bernard Leach.’

‘Bernard Leach?’

‘The potter, Dr Pittman, the famous potter,’ said Wilt. ‘Now tomorrow she’ll be Margot
Fonteyn and on Saturday we play bridge with the Mottrams so she’ll be Omar Sharif. On
Sunday she’s Elisabeth Taylor or Edna O’Brien depending on what the Colour Supplements
have in store for me and in the afternoon we go for a drive and she’s Eva Wilt. It’s about
the only time in the week I meet her and that’s because I’m driving and she’s got nothing
to do but sit still and nag the pants off me.’

‘I begin to see the pattern.’ said Dr Pittman. ‘Mrs Wilt was…is given to role-playing.
This made for an unstable relationship in which you couldn’t establish a distinctive
and assertive role as a husband’

‘Dr Pittman,’ said Wilt, ‘a gyroscope may, indeed must, spin but in doing so it achieves
a stability that is virtually unequalled. Now if you understand the principle of the
gyroscope you may begin to understand that our marriage does not lack stability. It may
be damned uncomfortable coming home to a centrifugal force but it bloody well isn’t
unstable.’

‘But just now you told me that Mrs Wilt did not assume a dominant role. Now you tell me
she is a forceful character.’

‘Eva is not forceful. She is a force. There’s a difference. And as for character, she
has so many and they’re so varied it’s difficult to keep up with them all. Let’s just say
she throws herself into whoever she is with an urgency and compulsiveness that is not
always appropriate. You remember that series of Garbo pictures they showed on TV some
years back? Well, Eva was La Dame Aux Camélias for three days after that and she made dying
of TB look like St Vitus’ dance. Talk about galloping consumption’

‘I begin to get the picture,’ said Dr Pittman making a note that Wilt was a
pathological liar with sado-masochistic tendencies.

‘I’m glad somebody does,’ said Wilt. ‘Inspector Flint thinks I murdered her and the
Pringsheims in some sort of bloodlust and disposed of their bodies in some extraordinary
fashion. He mentioned acid. I mean it’s crazy. Where on earth does one get nitric acid in
the quantities necessary to dissolve three dead bodies, and one of them overweight at
that? I mean it doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘It certainly doesn’t,’ said Dr Pittman.

‘In any case do I look like a murderer?’ continued Wilt cheerfully. ‘Of course I
don’t. Now if he’d said Eva had slaughtered the brutes, and in my opinion someone should’ve
done years ago, I’d have taken him seriously. God help the poor sods who happen to be
around when Eva takes it into her head she’s Lizzie Borden.’

Dr Pittman studied him predaciously.

‘Are you suggesting that Dr and Mrs Pringsheim were murdered by your wife?’ be asked.
‘Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No,’ said Wilt, ‘I am not. All I’m saying is that when Eva does things she does them
wholeheartedly. When she cleans the house she cleans it. Let me tell you about the Harpic.
She’s got this thing about germs…’

‘Mr Wilt,’ said Dr Pittman hastily. ‘I am not interested in what Mrs Wilt does with the
Harpic. I have come here to understand you. Now then, do you make a habit of copulating
with a plastic doll? Is this a regular occurrence?’

‘Regular?’ said Wilt. ‘Do you mean a normal occurrence or a recurring one? Now your
notion of what constitutes a normal occurrence may differ from mine…’