Wilt (15 page)

‘I mean, do you do it often?’ interrupted Dr Pittman.

‘Do it?’ said Wilt. ‘I don’t do it at all.’

‘But I understood you to have placed particular emphasis on the fact that this doll
had a vagina?’

‘Emphasis? I didn’t have to emphasize the fact. The beastly thing was plainly
visible.’

‘You find vaginas beastly?’ said Dr Pittman stalking his prey into the more familiar
territory of sexual aberration.

‘Taken out of context, yes,’ said Wilt sidestepping, ‘and with plastic ones you can
leave them in context and I still find them nauseating.’

By the time Dr Pittman had finished the interview he was uncertain what to think. He
got up wearily and made for the door.

‘You’ve forgotten your hat, doctor,’ said Wilt holding it out to him. ‘Pardon my
asking but do you have them specially made for you?’

‘Well?’ said Inspector Flint when Dr Pittman came into his office. ‘What’s the
verdict?’

‘Verdict? That man should be put away for life.’

‘You mean he’s a homicidal maniac?’

‘I mean, that no matter how he killed her Mrs Wilt must have been thankful to go. Twelve
years married to that man…Good God, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Well, that doesn’t get us much forrader,’ said the Inspector, when the psychiatrist
had left having expressed the opinion that while Wilt had the mind of an intellectual
jackrabbit he couldn’t in all honesty say that he was criminally insane. ‘We’ll just have
to see what turns up tomorrow.’

What turned up on Friday was seen not only by Inspector Flint, Sergeant Yates, twelve
other policemen, Barney and half a dozen construction workers, but several hundred
Tech students standing on the steps of the Science block, most of the staff and by all eight
members of the CNAA visitation committee who had a particularly good view from the
windows of the mock hotel lounge used by the Catering Department to train waiters and to
entertain distinguished guests. Dr Mayfield did his best to distract their
attention.

‘We have structured the foundation course to maximize student interest,’ he told
Professor Baxendale, who headed the committee, but the professor was not to be
diverted. His interest was maximized by what was being unstructured from the
foundations of the new Admin block.

‘How absolutely appalling.’ he muttered as Judy protruded from the hole. Contrary to
Wilt’s hopes and expectations she had not burst. The liquid concrete had sealed her in too
well for that and if in life she had resembled in many particulars a real live woman, in
death she had all the attributes of a real dead one. As the corpse of a murdered woman she
was entirely convincing. Her wig was matted and secured to her head at an awful angle
by the concrete. Her clothes clung to her and cement to them while her legs had evidently
been contorted to the point of mutilation and her outstretched arm had, as Barney had
foretold, a desperate appeal about it that was most affecting. It also made it
exceedingly difficult to extricate her from the hole. The legs didn’t help, added to
which the concrete had given her a substance and stature approximate to that of Eva
Wilt.

‘I suppose that’s what they mean by rigor mortice.’ said Dr Board, as Dr Mayfield
desperately tried to steer the conversation back to the joint Honours degree.

‘Dear Lord,’ muttered Professor Baxendale. Judy had eluded the efforts of Barney and
his men and had slumped back down the hole. ‘To think what she must have suffered. Did you see
that damned hand?’

Dr Mayfield had. He shuddered. Behind him Dr Board sniggered. ‘There’s a divinity that
shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,’ he said gaily. ‘At least Wilt has saved
himself the cost of a gravestone. All they’ll have to do is prop her up with Here Stands Eva
Wilt, Born So and So, Murdered last Saturday carved across her chest. In life monumental,
in death a monument.’

‘I must say, Board,’ said Dr Mayfield, ‘I find your sense of humour singularly
ill-timed.’

‘Well they’ll never be able to cremate her, that’s for certain,’ continued Dr Board.
‘And the undertaker who can fit that little lot into a coffin will be nothing short of a
genius. I suppose they could always take a sledgehammer to her.’

In the corner Dr Cox fainted.

‘I think I’ll have another whisky if you don’t mind,’ said Professor Baxendale
weakly. Dr Mayfield poured him a double. When he turned back to the window Judy was
protruding once more from the hole. ‘The thing about embalming,’ said Dr Board, ‘is that it
costs so much. Now I’m not saying that thing out there is a perfect likeness of Eva Wilt as
I remember her…’

‘For heaven’s sake, do you have to go on about it?’ snarled Dr Mayfield, but Dr Board was
not to be stopped. ‘Quite apart from the legs there seems to be something odd about the
breasts. I know Mrs Wilt’s were large but they do seem to have inflated. Probably due to the
gases. They putrefy, you know, which would account for it.’

By the time the committee went onto lunch they had lost all appetite for food and most
of then were drunk.

Inspector Flint was less fortunate. He didn’t like being present at exhumations at
the best of times and particularly when the corpse on whose behalf he was acting showed
such a marked inclination to go back where she came from. Besides he was in two minds
whether it was a corpse or not. It looked like a corpse and it certainly behaved like a
corpse, albeit a very heavy one, but there was something about the knees that suggested
that all was not anatomically as it should have been with whatever it was they had dug up.
There was a double jointedness and a certain lack of substance where the legs stuck
forwards at right angles that seemed to indicate that Mrs Wilt had lost not only her life
but both kneecaps as well. It was this mangled quality that made Barney’s job so difficult
and exceedingly distasteful. After the body had dropped down the hole for the fourth time
Barney went down himself to assist from below.

‘If you sods drop her,’ he shouted from the depths, ‘you’ll have two dead bodies down here
so hang on to that rope whatever happens. I’m going to tie it round her neck.’

Inspector Flint peered down the shaft. ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he shouted, ‘we don’t
want her decapitated. We need her all in one piece.’

‘She is all in one bloody piece,’ came Barney’s muffled reply, ‘that’s one thing you
don’t have to worry about.’

‘Can’t you tie the rope around something else?’

‘Well I could,’ Barney conceded, ‘but I’m not going to. A leg is more likely to come
off than her head and I’m not going to be underneath her when it goes.’

‘All right.’ said the Inspector, ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing, that’s
all.’

‘I’ll tell you one thing. The sod who put her down here knew what he was doing and no
mistake.’

But this fifth attempt failed, like the previous four, and Judy was lowered into the
depths where she rested heavily on Barney’s foot.

‘Go and get that bloody crane,’ he shouted, ‘I can’t stand much more of this.’

‘Nor can I,’ muttered the Inspector, who still couldn’t make up his mind what it was he
was supposed to be disinterring; a doll dressed up to look like Mrs Wilt or Mrs Wilt
dressed up to look like something some demented sculptor forgot to finish. What few
doubts he had had about Wilt’s sanity had been entirely dispelled by what he was presently
witnessing. Any man who could go to the awful lengths Wilt had gone to render, and the word
was entirely apposite whichever way you took it, either his wife or a plastic doll with
a vagina, both inaccessible and horribly mutilated, must be insane.

Sergeant Yates put his thoughts into words. ‘You’re not going to tell me now that the
bastard isn’t off his rocker,’ he said, as the crane was moved into position and the rope
lowered and attached to Judy’s neck.

‘All right, now take her away,’ shouted Barney.

In the dining-room only Dr Board was enjoying his lunch. The eight members of the CNAA
committee weren’t. Their eyes were glued to the scene below.

‘I suppose it could be said she was in statue pupillari,’ said Dr Board, helping
himself to some more Lemon Meringue, ‘in which case we stand in loco parentis. Not a
pleasant thought, gentlemen. Not that she was ever a very bright student. I once had her
for an Evening Class in French literature. I don’t know what she got out of Fleurs du Mal but
I do remember thinking that Baudelaire…’

‘Dr Board,’ said Dr Mayfield drunkenly, ‘for a so-called cultured man you are
entirely without feeling.’

‘Something I share with the late Mrs Wilt, by the look of things.’ said Dr Board, glancing
out of the window, ‘and while we are still on the subject, things seem to be coming to a
head. They do indeed.’ Even Dr Cox, recently revived and coaxed into having some mutton,
looked out of the window. As the crane slowly winched Judy into view the Course Board and
the Committee rose and went to watch. It was an unedifying sight. Near the top of the shaft
Judy’s left leg caught in a crevice while her outstretched arm embedded itself in the
clay.

‘Hold it,’ shouted Barney indistinctly, but it was too late. Unnerved by the nature
of his load or in the mistaken belief that be had been told to lift harder, the crane
driver hoisted away. There was a ghastly cracking sound as the noose tightened and the
next moment Judy’s concrete head, capped by Eva Wilt’s wig, looked as if it was about to
fulfil Inspector Flint’s prediction that she would be decapitated. In the event he need
not have worried. Judy was made of sterner stuff than might have been expected. As the head
continued to rise and the body to remain firmly embedded in the shaft Judy’s neck rose to
the occasion. It stretched.

‘Dear God,’ said Professor Baxendale frantically, ‘Will it never end?’

Dr Board studied the phenomenon with increasing interest ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ he
said. ‘Mind you we do make a point of stretching our students, eh Mayfield?’

But Dr Mayfield made no response. As Judy took on the configuration of an ostrich that
had absentmindedly buried its head in a pail of cement he knew that the joint Honours
degree was doomed.

‘I’d say this for Mrs Wilt,’ said Dr Board, ’she do hold on. No one could call her
stiff-necked. Attenuated possibly. One begins to see what Modigliani was getting
at.’

‘For God’s sake stop,’ yelled Dr Cox hysterically, ‘I think I’m going off my head.’

‘Which is more than can be said for Mrs Wilt.’ said Dr Board callously.

He was interrupted by another awful crack as Judy’s body finally gave up the
struggle with the shaft. With a shower of clay it careered upwards to resume a closer
relationship with the head and hung naked, pink and, now that the clothes and the concrete
had been removed, remarkably lifelike at the end of the rope some twenty feet above the
ground.

‘I must say,’ said Dr Board studying the vulva with relish, ‘I’ve never had much
sympathy with necrophilia before but I do begin to see its attractions now. Of course
it’s only of historical interest but in Elizabethan times it was one of the perks of an
executioner…’

‘Board,’ screamed Dr Mayfield, ‘I’ve known some fucking swine in my time…’

Dr Board helped himself to some more coffee. ‘I believe the slang term for it is liking
your meat cold.’

Underneath the crane Inspector Flint wiped the mud from his face and peered up at the
awful abject swinging above him. He could see now that it was only a doll. He could also
see why Wilt had wanted to bury the beastly thing.

‘Get it down. For God’s sake get it down,’ he bawled, as the press photographers circled
round him. But the crane driver had lost his nerve. He shut his eyes, pulled the wrong lever
and Judy began a further ascent.

‘Stop it, stop it, that’s fucking evidence,’ screamed the Inspector, but it was already
too late. As the rope wound through the final pulley Judy followed. The concrete cap
disintegrated, her head slid between the rollers and her body began to swell. Her legs
were the first to be affected.

‘I’ve often wondered what elephantiasis looked like,’ said Dr Board. ‘Shelley had a
phobia about it, I believe.’

Dr Cox certainly had. He was gibbering in a corner and the Vice-Principal was
urging him to pull himself together.

‘An apt expression,’ observed Dr Board, above the gasps of horror as Judy, now clearly
twelve months pregnant, continued her transformation. ‘Early Minoan, wouldn’t you say,
Mayfield?’

But Dr Mayfield was past speech. He was staring dementedly at a rapidly expanding
vagina some fourteen inches long and eight wide. There was a pop and the thing became a
penis, an enormous penis that swelled and swelled. He was going mad. He knew he was.

‘Now that,’ said Dr Board, ‘takes some beating. I’ve heard about sex-change operations
for men but…’

‘Beatings’ screamed Dr Mayfield, ‘Beating? You can stand there cold-bloodedly and talk
about…’

There was a loud bang. Judy had come to the end of her tether. So had Dr Mayfield. The
penis was the first thing to go. Dr Mayfield the second. As Judy deflated he hurled
himself at Dr Board only to sink to the ground gibbering.

Dr Board ignored his colleague. ‘Who would have thought the old bag had so much wind in
her?’ be murmured, and finished his coffee. As Dr Mayfield was led out by the Vice
Principal, Dr Board turned to Professor Baxendale.

‘I must apologize for Mayfield,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid this Joint Honours degree has been
too much for him and to tell the truth I have always found him to be fundamentally
unsound. A case of dementia post Cox I daresay.’

Inspector Flint drove back to the Police Station in a state bordering on lunacy.

‘We’ve been made to look idiots,’ he snarled at Sergeant Yates. ‘You saw them laughing.
You heard the bastards.’ He was particularly incensed by the press photographers who he
asked him to pose with the limp remnants of the plastic doll. ‘We’ve been held up to public
ridicule. Well, my God, somebody’s going to pay.’

He hurled himself out of the car and lunged down the passage to the Interview Room.
‘Right, Wilt,’ he shouted, ‘you’ve had your little joke and a bloody nasty one it was too. So
now, we’re going to forget the niceties and get to the bottom of this business.’

Wilt studied the torn piece of plastic. ‘Looks better like that if you ask me,’ he said.
‘More natural if you know what I mean.’

‘You’ll look bloody natural if you don’t answer my questions,’ yelled the Inspector.
‘Where is she?’

‘Where is who?’ said Wilt.

‘Mrs Fucking Wilt. Where did you put her?’

‘I’ve told you. I didn’t put her anywhere.’

‘And I’m telling you you did. Now either you’re going to tell me where she is or I’m
going to beat it out of you.’

‘You can beat me up if you like,’ said Wilt, ‘but it won’t do you any good.’

‘Oh yes it will,’ said the Inspector and took off his coat.

‘I demand to see a solicitor,’ said Wilt hastily.

Inspector Flint put his jacket on again. ‘I’ve been waiting to hear you say that. Henry
Wilt, I hereby charge you with…’