Wilt (16 page)

In the reeds Eva greeted the dawn of another day by blowing up the airbed for the tenth
time. It had either sprung a leak or developed a fault in the valve. Whichever it was it
had made her progress exceedingly slow and had finally forced her to take refuge in the
reeds away from the channel. Here, wedged between the stems, she had spent a muddy night
getting off the airbed to blow it up and getting back on to try and wash off the sludge and
weeds that had adhered to her when she got off. In the process she had lost the bottom half
of her lemon loungers and had torn the top half so that by dawn she resembled less the
obsessive housewife of 34 Parkview Avenue than a finalist in the heavyweight division
of the Ladies Mudwrestling Championship. In addition she was exceedingly cold and was
glad when the sun came up bringing with it the promise of a hot summer day. All she had to do
now was to find her way to land or open water and get someone to…At this point Eva became
aware that her appearance was likely to cause some embarrassment. The lemon loungers had
been sufficiently outré to make her avoid walking down the street when she had had them
on; with them largely off, she certainly didn’t want to be seen in public. On the other
hand she couldn’t stay in the reeds all day. She plunged on, dragging the airbed behind her,
half swimming but for the most part trudging through mud and water. At last she came out of
the reeds into open water and found herself looking across a stretch to a house, a garden
that sloped down to the water’s edge, and a church. It seemed a long way across but there was
no boat in sight. She would have to swim across and just hope that the woman who lived there
was sympathetic and better still large enough to lend her some clothes until she got home.
It was at this point that Eva discovered that she had left her handbag somewhere in the
reeds. She remembered having it during the night but it must have fallen off the airbed
when she was blowing it up. Well she couldn’t go back and look for it now. She would just have
to go on without it and ring Henry up and tell him to come out in the car and get her. He
could bring some clothes too. Yes, that was it. Eva Wilt climbed on to the airbed and began to
paddle across. Halfway over the airbed went down for the eleventh time. Eva abandoned it and
struggled on in the lifejacket. But that too impeded her progress and she finally
decided to take it off. She trod water and tried to undo it and after a struggle managed
to get it off. In the process the rest of the lemon loungers disintegrated so that by the
time she reached the bank Eva Wilt was exhausted and quite naked. She crawled into the
cover of a willow tree and lay panting on the ground. When she had recovered she stood up
and looked around. She was at the bottom of the garden and the house was a hundred yards
away up the hill. It was a very large house by Eva’s standards, and not the sort she would
feel at home in at the best of times. For one thing it appeared to have a courtyard with
stables at the back and to Eva, whose knowledge of large country houses was confined to
what she had seen on TV, there was the suggestion of servants, gentility and a social
formality that would make her arrival in the nude rather heavy going. On the other hand
the whole place looked decidedly run down. The garden was overgrown and unkempt,
ornamental bushes which might, once have been trimmed to look like birds and animals had
reverted to strange and vaguely monstrous shapes, rusted hoops leant half-hidden in the
grass of an untended croquet lawn; a tennis net sagged between posts and an abandoned
greenhouse boasted a few panes of lichened glass. Finally there was a dilapidated
boathouse and a rowing boat. All in all the domain had a sinister and imposing air to it
which wasn’t helped by the presence of a small church hidden among trees to the left and a
neglected graveyard beyond an aid iron fence. Eva peered out from the weeping willow and
was about to leave its cover when the French windows opened and a man came out on to the
terrace with a pair of binoculars and peered through them in the direction of Eel Stretch.
He was wearing a black cassock and a dog collar. Eva went back behind the tree and
considered the awkwardness off her situation and lack of attire. It was all extremely
embarrassing. Nothing on earth would make her go up to the house, the Vicarage with
nothing on. Parkview Avenue hadn’t prepared her for situations of this sort.

Rossiter Grove hadn’t prepared Gaskell for the situation he found when Sally woke him
with ‘Noah baby, it’s drywise topside, Time to fly the coop.’

He opened the cabin door and stepped outside to discover that Eva had already flown and
had taken the airbed and the lifejackets with her.

‘You mean you left her outside all night?’ he said. ‘Now we’re really up Shit Creek. No
paddle, no airbed, no goddam lifejackets, no nothing.’

‘I didn’t know she’d do something crazy like take off with everything,’ said Sally.

‘You leave her outside in the pouring rain all night she’s got to do something. She’s
probably frozen to death by now or drowned.’

‘She tried to kill me. You think I was going to let her in when she’s tried to do that.
Anyhow it’s all your fault for shooting your mouth off about that doll.’

‘You tell that to the law when they find her body floating downstream. You just explain
how come she goes off in the middle of a storm.’

‘You’re just trying to scare me,’ said Sally. ‘I didn’t make her go or anything.’

‘It’s going to look peculiar if something has happened to her is all I’m saying. And
you tell me how we’re going to get off here now. You think I’m going swimming without a
lifejacket you’re mistaken. I’m no Spitz.’

‘My hero,’ said Sally.

Gaskell went into the cabin and looked in the cupboard by the stove. ‘And another
thing. We’ve got a food problem. And water. There’s not much left.’

‘You got us into this mess. You think of a way out,’ said Sally.

Gaskell sat down on the bunk and tried to think. There had to be some way of letting
people know they were there and in trouble. They couldn’t be far from land. For all he knew
dry land was just the other side of the reeds. He went out and climbed on top of the cabin
but apart from the church spire in the distance he could see nothing beyond the reeds.
Perhaps they got a piece of cloth and waved it someone would spot it. He went down and
fetched a pillow case and spent twenty minutes waving it above his head and shouting. Then
he returned to the cabin and got out the chart and pored over it in a vain attempt to
discover where they were. He was just folding the map up when he spotted the pieces of
Scrabble still lying on the table. Letters. Individual letters. Now if they had
something that would float up in the air with letters on it. Like a kite. Gaskell
considered ways of making a kite and gave it up. Perhaps the best thing after all was to
make smoke signals. He fetched an empty can from the kitchen and filled it with fuel oil
from beside the engine and soaked a handkerchief in it and clambered up on the cabin
roof. He lit the handkerchief and tried to get the oil to burn but when it did there was very
little smoke and the tin got too hot to hold. Gaskell kicked it into the water where it
fizzled out.

‘Genius baby.’ said Sally, ‘you’re the greatest.’

‘Yea, well if you can think of something practical let me know.’

‘Try swimming.’

‘Try drowning’, said Gaskell.

‘You could make a raft or something.’

‘I could hack this boat of Scheimacher’s up. That’s all we need.’

‘I saw a movie once where there were these gauchos or Romans or something and they came
to a river and wanted to cross and they used pigs’ bladders.’ said Sally.

‘Right now all we don’t have is a pig,’ said Gaskell.

‘You could use the garbage bags in the kitchen,’ said Sally. Gaskell fetched a plastic bag
and blew it up and tied the end with string. Then he squeezed it. The bag went down.

Gaskell sat down despondently. There had to be some simple way of attracting
attention and he certainly didn’t want to swim out across that dark water clutching an
inflated garbage bag. He fiddled with the pieces of Scrabble and thought again about kites.
Or balloons. Balloons.

‘You got those rubbers you use?’ be asked suddenly.

‘Jesus at a time like this you get a hard on,’ said Sally. ‘Forget sex. Think of some way
of getting us off here’

‘I have,’ said Gaskell, ‘I want those skins.’

‘You going to float downriver on a pontoon of condoms?’

‘Balloons,’ said Gaskell. ‘We blow them up and paint letters on them and float them in the
wind.’

‘Genius baby.’ said Sally and went into the toilet. She came out with a sponge bag.
‘Here they are. For a moment there I thought you wanted me’

‘Days of wine and roses,’ said Gaskell, ‘are over. Remind me to divorce you.’ He tore a
packet open and blew a contraceptive up and tied a knot in its end.

‘On what grounds?’

‘Like you’re a lesbian,’ said Gaskell and held up the dildo. ‘This and kleptomania and
the habit you have of putting other men in dolls and knotting them. You name it, I’ll use it.
Like you’re a nymphomaniac.’

‘You wouldn’t dare. Your family would love it, the scandal’

‘Try me,’ said Gaskell and blew up another condom.

‘Plastic freak.’

‘Bull dyke.’

Sally’s eyes narrowed. She was beginning to think he meant what he said about divorce
and if Gaskell divorced her in England what sort of alimony would she get? Very little.
There were no children and she had the idea that British courts were mean in matters of
money. So was Gaskell and there was his family too. Rich and mean. She sat and eyed him.

‘Where’s your nail varnish?’ Gaskell asked when he had finished and twelve
contraceptives cluttered the cabin.

‘Drop dead,’ said Sally and went out on deck to think. She stared down at the dark water
and thought about rats and death and being poor again and liberated. The rat paradigm. The
world was a rotten place. People were objects to be used and discarded. It was Gaskell’s
own philosophy and now he was discarding her. And one slip on this oily deck could solve
her problems. All that had to happen was for Gaskell to slip and drown and she would be free
and rich and no one would ever know. An accident. Natural death. But Gaskell could swim and
there had to be no mistakes. Try it once and fail and she wouldn’t be able to try again. He
would be on his guard. It had to be certain and it had to be natural.

Gaskell came out on deck with the contraceptives. He had tied them together and
painted on each one a single letter with nail varnish so that the whole read HELP SOS HELP.
He climbed up on the cabin roof and launched them into the air. They floated up for a
moment, were caught in the light breeze and sagged sideways down on to the water. Gaskell
pulled them in on the string and tried again. Once again they floated down on to the
water.

‘I’ll wait until there’s some more wind,’ he said, and tied the string to the rail where
they bobbed gently. Then he went into the cabin and lay on the bunk.

‘What are you going to do now?’ Sally asked.

‘Sleep. Wake me when there’s a wind.’ He took off his glasses and pulled a blanket over
him.

Outside Sally sat on a locker and thought about drowning in bed.

‘Mr Gosdyke,’ said Inspector Flint, ‘you and I have had dealings for a good many years
now and I’m prepared to be frank with you. I don’t know.’

‘But you’ve charged him with murder.’ said Mr Gosdyke.

‘He’ll come up for remand on Monday. In the meantime I am going on questioning
him.’

‘But surely the fact that he admits burying a life-size doll…’

‘Dressed in his wife’s clothes, Gosdyke. In his wife’s clothes. Don’t forget that.’

‘It still seems insufficient to me. Can you be absolutely sure that a murder has been
committed?’

‘Three people disappear off the face of the earth without a trace. They leave behind
them two cars, a house littered with unwashed glasses and the leftovers of a party…you
should see that house…a bathroom and landing covered will blood…’

‘They could have gone in someone else’s car.’

They could have but they didn’t. Dr Pringsheim didn’t like being driven by anyone else.
We know that from his colleagues at the Department of Biochemistry. He had a rooted
objection to British drivers. Don’t ask me why but be had.’

‘Trains? Buses? Planes?’

‘Checked, rechecked and checked again. No one answering to their description used any
form of public or private transport out of town. And if you think they went on a bicycle
ride, you’re wrong again. Dr Pringsheim’s bicycle is in the garage. No, you can forget
their going anywhere. They died and Mr Smart Alec Wilt knows it.’

‘I still don’t see how you can be so sure.’ said Mr Gosdyke.

Inspector Flint lit a cigarette. ‘Let’s just look at his actions, his admitted actions
and see what they add up to,’ he said. ‘He gets a lifesize doll…’

‘Where from?’

‘He says he was given it by his wife. Where he got it from doesn’t matter.’

‘He says he first saw the thing at the Pringsheims’ house.’

‘Perhaps he did. I’m prepared to believe that. Wherever he got it, the fact remains
that he dressed it up to look like Mrs Wilt. He puts it down that hole at the Tech, a hole he
knows is going to be filled with concrete. He makes certain he is seen by the caretaker
when he knows that the Tech is closed. He leaves a bicycle covered with his fingerprints
and with a book of his in the basket. He leaves a trail of notes to the hole. He turns up at
Mrs Braintree’s house at midnight covered with mud and says he’s had a puncture when he
hasn’t. Now you’re not going to tell me that he hadn’t got something in mind.’

‘He says he was merely trying to dispose of that doll.’

‘And he tells me he was rehearsing his wife’s murder. He’s admitted that.’

‘Yes, but only in fantasy. His story to me is that be wanted to get rid of that doll,’
Mr Gosdyke persisted.