Embarrassment of Corpses, An (25 page)

“‘We'?” Oliver repeated, startled. Tradescant looked at him with exaggerated puzzlement, as if his visitor were stupid. Oliver did not feel stupid and resented it.

“Surely you don't think I could do this alone?” Tradescant asked, with scornful surprise. “I told you I had alibis. Yes, I killed Sir Harry Random, with the same lead pipe I used the next day on Nettie Fisher. I just had time to draw that symbol on his chest—with a pen, incidentally, not chalk, your late uncle was overstretching himself there—and push him into the fountain before you blundered into the Square. I hid behind the lions and slipped away while you were fishing his body out of the water. But it was a pretty female colleague who lured Mark Sandys-Penza to Kew Gardens, hence the importance of the breath mint. And I can't ride a motorcycle—we had an enthusiastic young management trainee shoot Vanessa Parmenter.”

“Your victims were innocent people, with real lives. You speak about them as if they were characters in a book.”

“Oh, don't be melodramatic, Mr. Swithin. There was nothing personal about this. I even gave you an opportunity to stop the murders after Gordon's death, by dropping a big hint about my serving on a jury with Sir Harry, but I was rather rudely cut off by that pert little policewoman, the one with all the hair. You must understand, these murders were company business, pure and simple. Decisions like that are taken at board level.”

He flung his whisky into Oliver's face and lunged out of his seat.

Tradescant's hidden hand was wrapped in the flex of the standard lamp. It went out, and in the darkness Oliver heard it crash heavily into his stereo equipment. He tried to jump out of the chair, but Tradescant got to him first, pushing him back into place with strength that Oliver didn't expect. Tradescant was still dragging the lamp. As Oliver struggled to sit up, he felt the cable go across his neck. He flailed his legs, but Tradescant twisted his body aside and the impetus of the empty kick pressed Oliver back into the chair.

The cable was cutting hard into his windpipe. He tore at it helplessly, scratching at his neck to slide a finger under the taut plastic. Then he tried to dig his nails into Tradescant's hands on either side of his throat. It suddenly occurred to Oliver that he was in pain, rather more than he had expected when he first clambered up to the window. It also occurred to him, as he became aware that consciousness was leaving him, that the time had come to put an end to the struggle.

“Effie!” he managed to gurgle.

There was an ear-splitting scream behind them. Oliver felt the cable suddenly relax against his throat. A body shot by him in the dark, and he heard the deeply satisfying noise of a pharmaceutical executive smashing into a cocktail cabinet. The room's main light was switched on by somebody near the door. Oliver tried to shake awareness back into his head, but found he was too dizzy to stand. He watched Tradescant stagger to his feet, swinging a decanter wildly. There were two sudden, balletic blurs of blue denim, and two more lung-emptying screams.

Effie's first kick caused the decanter to fly from Tradescant's hand and shatter against the ceiling. The room rained whisky. Her second kick spun his face to the wall, his head cracking the glass in a framed architectural print. He stayed there, his hands clawing the wallpaper.

“That's my boyfriend you're strangling,” she snapped and backed toward Oliver. As she looked with concern at his reddening throat, Tradescant turned again. Oliver tensed and tried to shout a warning to Effie, but Tradescant had frozen in place, staring in horror at something behind them. Then, the fear faded, and was replaced with a smile. He relaxed, shook his head, and laughed. He was still laughing when Moldwarp dragged him handcuffed from the room.

“Does it hurt?” Effie asked, touching his neck gently. Oliver winced.

“It'll be okay,” he croaked. “I think I can talk.”

“That's not what I asked,” she replied and kissed him, pushing his glasses off his face. Then she sat in his lap, lifted his glasses onto the top of his head, and kissed him again, harder. Their noses did not bump, as Oliver had once feared, but they had already established a clockwise facial approach that afternoon, in the deserted office at Scotland Yard, after Tim Mallard had told Effie the true reason for Oliver's visit to Lorina Random and had diplomatically withdrawn for a good ten minutes. Oliver, for once sensing the need for determined action, had apologized for no apparent reason and then decided to leave words alone for a while. Effie's hair felt even better than it looked, he rapidly concluded.

“For a second-rate murderer, you're a first-rate kisser,” Effie whispered, brushing her lips across Oliver's bruised neck.

“Never mind the sob stuff, did you get it all?” The gruff voice came from the doorway. Effie grinned, flicked her tongue swiftly over Oliver's ear-lobe, and stood up.

“It's all here, Superintendent,” she said, pulling a small tape recorder from her pocket and passing it to Mallard, who had walked into Oliver's field of vision. He bent over his nephew and inspected the livid marks on his neck.

“Did Tradescant do all that, or were you and Effie necking behind the curtain?” Mallard asked facetiously, although Oliver looked up and saw the anxiety in his uncle's eyes.

“I don't need any medical attention,” he replied painfully, knowing he was answering an unspoken question. “Frankly, I'm amazed at Effie's accomplishments as a housebreaker. She took out the alarm and picked the window lock in about two minutes. Do all detectives make good burglars?”

Mallard laughed. “Talking of housebreakers,” he said loudly, “you can come out now, Geoffrey.”

The long curtains covering the window shook slightly. “Is it safe?” said a muffled voice.

“Oh yes. Mr. Tradescant's well on his way to the Yard.”

“I mean, has Ollie stopped kissing Effie? There are some sights even a public relations executive can't stomach.”

Mallard strode across the room and pulled the drapes aside, revealing Geoffrey Angelwine's avian features above the collar of an oversize yellow oilskin. “Sergeant Strongitharm's still on duty,” Mallard said, “so she'll have to keep her h—”

“Hormones in check?” Geoffrey concluded wickedly.

“As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I was going to say,” claimed Mallard, with an admonitory glance in Effie's direction.

“Well, thanks for letting me be here, Uncle Tim,” Geoffrey continued. He moved into the room, creaking with every step.

“A promise is a promise. I'm only sorry I couldn't let Ben and Susie come, too, but there's only so much room in the charabanc for civilians. However, you were the one who gave us the clue we needed.”

“So you said this afternoon. It was that business about the murderer playing games with the police. Only Tradescant was the player, not Ollie.”

Mallard shook his head. “It wasn't that at all. We just used that to set up the false accusation of Oliver.”

“Then how did I help?”

“I'll let Oliver explain, if he's up to it,” said Mallard, who had noticed that his nephew had struggled to his feet and was vacantly stroking his sore neck. “I have to go and see a man about a search warrant.”

As Mallard left, Geoffrey turned quizzically to Oliver.

“This morning, you reminded Uncle Tim that the police thought Sir Harry Random's death had been an accident at first,” Oliver rasped. “In fact, Harry's death was never reported in the newspapers as a murder. It was a surprise to Lorina when I let it slip that night.” His voice faded conveniently, and he began to cough. Effie smiled wickedly.

“Your comment jogged Tim's memory,” she said, as Oliver hunted for some water among the debris of the cocktail cabinet. “When Tradescant had first tried to clue us in about his connection with Sir Harry, he said that Sir Harry had ‘been killed.' Now that expression applies to a murder; it applies to a car accident, where there is a clear agent of death; but it isn't used to describe a drowning accident. So we looked back at Tradescant's statement, and found some other inconsistencies. He claimed to have heard a whizzing sound before the bolt hit Paper. But you only hear that when a bolt or an arrow goes
past
you—on the receiving end, there's little time for noise before the weapon strikes. And why would Tradescant immediately tell us that Paper had no enemies? Why should he assume that a death in a public place was a targeted act of murder, and not a random killing? Later, at Sir Harry's funeral, he speculated about the connection between the ‘murders' of Gordon Paper and Harry Random. At that point he hadn't been told why he was in protective custody, and so he still had no reason to believe Sir Harry was murdered.”

Oliver returned with a glass and a crystal soda syphon.

“Uncle Tim called me this morning at about half past ten,” he said. “By the time I arrived at Scotland Yard, he and Effie were looking again at Gordon Paper, and they'd concluded that Edmund Tradescant may have had a motive for killing his surprisingly mobile colleague. But we couldn't prove it. That's when I dreamed up the idea of posing as the murderer myself and staging the death of Mallard under Tradescant's nose. If we could secure a confession, then we could conclude the case before Uncle Tim's midnight deadline.”

“It was essential to provide enough interested parties in Trafalgar Square so that Tradescant's presence among the witnesses would not look too pointed,” said Effie as they left the room and headed down the stairs. “We also needed a lot of people to cluster round the dying superintendent, keeping Tradescant at a safe distance, so that he wouldn't spot the deception. It's a shame you had to leave, Ollie. You missed some choice performances. Did you know that Cliff Burbage, who for obvious reasons hadn't been briefed, set off in hot pursuit of you, dragging a protesting Moldwarp along after him? They got as far as Charing Cross station before Moldwarp could stop him and explain.”

“Susie Bassett rather overdid it, if you ask me,” said Geoffrey with a sniff. “After you cut Tim's throat, she pretended to faint dead away.”

“So did you,” Effie murmured. “Only I don't think you were faking it.”

Geoffrey avoided her eye. “Did it have to be so gory?” he asked plaintively.

“I doubt that Tim would have taken such a risk if he wasn't about to be taken off a case for the first time in his life. Even so, the opportunity to perform his Banquo death scene in the middle of Trafalgar Square was probably what tipped the balance. He is not without his vanity. We used the makeup from his blood-soaked
Macbeth
production—a fake fold of flesh among the other, natural flaps under his chin, and a bag of blood behind it, supplemented by a couple of tubes behind the collar. All Tim has to do is jerk his head upward and the latex ruptures across a pre-scored line. Then he goes down, pumping more blood from a bottle hidden in his pocket. If every other member of the Mallard theatrical troupe performed on cue, then Tradescant would believe the murder really happened, and that he may speak with a certain amount of license to the fugitive, Oliver Swithin.”

“Which is where we came in,” said Geoffrey. “Sorry about your loss, Ollie.” They had reached the front door of the building, which was opened grandly for them by Constable Urchin, once he had figured out that he had to pull it rather than push it.

“My loss? You mean my voice?”

“Why would I mean that?” Geoffrey sounded mystified. “No, I mean your beloved umbrella. You must have taken it apart to make a sword-stick.”

“Ollie's umbrella is safe in my desk at Scotland Yard,” Effie reported. “The sword-stick umbrella was a rather unpleasant exhibit borrowed from the Yard's Black Museum. But it does remind me that you're the only one who's equipped for this weather, Geoffrey. Will you bring my car round? I'll give you both a lift home.”

She tossed him the keys to her Renault, which he promptly dropped. He fished them out of a puddle, pulled a large yellow sou'wester from his pocket, and scurried away into the rain like a clockwork lemon. Effie and Oliver waited for him under the shelter of the porch.

“Will you come in for tea this time?” Oliver asked her tentatively. Effie turned to him slowly and gazed at him.

“I thought you'd never ask,” she said. And as Oliver looked down into her aquamarine eyes, he was convinced they were the most erotic words he had ever heard. Did the celebrated Strongitharm Look also work in reverse? Although he needed no supernatural compulsion to kiss her again.

They stood there together, watching the rain, enjoying the unfamiliar wetness, the relief from the oppressive heat. English summer was English again. Gradually, Oliver became aware that a third person was standing beside them on the porch.

“As for you, Uncle Tim,” he said pointedly, “you got a little personal in Trafalgar Square. I hope you're going to apologize for those ‘second-rate' jibes.”

“Don't worry,” Mallard replied genially, “there was nothing second-rate about your performance tonight. If you were a member of the Theydon Bois Thespians, you'd get a standing ovation, an honor that is normally reserved for the prompter. And talking of theatrical events, isn't there something about this situation that reminds you of the beginning of
Macbeth
?”

“When shall we three meet again?” Oliver ventured. “In thunder, lightning, or…”

“In rain!” they all shouted. Mallard laughed and hugged the other two. Then they stepped happily together into the glistening street, soaking in the English rain.

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