The Old English Peep Show (3 page)

“It sounds terrifying,” said Pibble.

“We have strong nerves, thank God,” said Mrs. Singleton. “Even so, I can't think how we'd have coped if all this had happened a couple of months ago.”

“Deakin was very important to the enterprise, then?” said Pibble.

“Deakin?” said Mrs. Singleton, with a tiny lilt of surprise. “He hated it. What makes you …”

“You said ‘all this,'” said Pibble, “and it rather suggested …”

“Oh, I see what you mean. No, but it is terribly upsetting, of course, and it makes it difficult to keep a proper eye on things, and so on. Come and meet the General. We live in this bit. There were meant to be four, one at each corner of the Main Block, but they only built two, thank God. The other one's the old Kitchens, which Harvey's turned into a super sort of ye olde restaurant. This way. They'll be in the study, I should think.”

She led him through a glass door into the colonnade. Through the arch opposite he could see the symmetrical colonnade curving away from the main building to where the symmetrical block stood, pretty and refined by distance, a beautifully judged piece of perspective. It was difficult to think that even now a roistering lunch was being prepared so that two coachloads of Americans could contribute to the tottering economy of the country. This colonnade was used as a greenhouse and was heavy with rich, dusty, vegetable odors, dominated by the muscat vine which reached across the corridor ten paces from where they had entered; there were a few clusters of grapes pendent from it. Mrs. Singleton led him in the other direction, into the Private Wing.

At first sniff and glance it was surprisingly like the inside of any other largish house. The stairs leading up from the hall were wood and not the expected marble, and the furniture was handsome but ordinary. The hall was really only a widening in a long passage that led straight ahead of him, with half a dozen doors on either side; it was dark enough for the lights to be on.

“Josiah built it for visiting orchestras and genealogists and people like that,” said Mrs. Singleton, “people who weren't quite servants and weren't quite gentry. He had nightmares about a penniless Scotch flutist running off with one of his daughters, so he wanted to keep that kind of visitor separate, which makes it much more comfortable than the Main Block, by our standards. Let's try in here.”

She opened the second door on the left, and for a moment the noise of a male voice, low, droning, persuasive, hung in the air. It stopped short. Mrs. Singleton went in, but stood aside so that Pibble could pass through.

“This is Superintendent Pibble,” she said. “You'll have to watch your step, General, he's as quick as old Treacle. I'll go and see how the visitors are getting on—Mr. Waugh was still reading his paper when they came, Harvey. You'll have to watch your step, too, Mr. Pibble. The General likes telling lies. I hope I'll see you again at luncheon. Goodbye for now.”

She was gone. Pibble, who had been trapped in the predicament of having to listen to somebody who was behind him without turning his back on the people he was being introduced to, moved properly into the room. There were two men there, both already standing, though he could see from their attitudes that they had just risen from a pair of long, chintz-covered, brokenspringed armchairs on either side of the fireplace. The older man walked across and held out his hand for Pibble to shake; it was dry, cold and rough-textured, like the skin of a grass snake. Pibble looked curiously at the famous face. He remembered his image of the chosen vulture. At close quarters this did not seem like a lion who was ready to have his carcass settled onto.

11:30 A.M.

Y
ou mustn't worry about Anty,” said the General. “She talks like that and expects everyone to follow because she never went to a proper school. Treacle was a Jack Russell—best ratter I ever owned. Let's have a look at you.”

The words came with such authority in the high but husky voice that they were offenseless. Pibble suppressed an instinct to stand to attention and looked back at the General. Sir Ralph Clavering was a smallish man, not as small as a jockey, though there was something about his stance which gave that impression­; and his clothes were definitely horsy—a flared russet jacket, scrambled-­egg waistcoat, and narrow twill trousers. The white eyebrows probed forward like the horns of a stag beetle, and the brisk mustache repeated the note. There hadn't been any color photographs in the folder, so Pibble was surprised by the General's tan—an even fawn color like a starlet's legs, with only a faint suggestion­ of the mottlings of age beneath it. The eyes were a guileless blue, clear as a child's except for the red-laced whites.

“You a gentleman?” said the General abruptly.

“Not even in a technical sense,” said Pibble.

“Excellent!” said the General, with an alto giggle. “Absolutely excellent!”

He crossed the room to the desk and flicked a button on a tape recorder.

“File this under test section,” he said. “Asked policeman who came to see about Deakin the usual. Answer ‘Not even in a technical sense.' No hesitation.”

He flicked another button and turned back.

“Funny how few people have the nerve to say yes, straight out,” he said. “This is my son-in-law, Harvey Singleton. He runs our sideshows. He'll explain why we got you down rather than letting in the local cops. Put it more glibly than me. Bloody lampreys! Sit down.”

They all sat, Pibble on one of those many-cushioned sofas the slackness of whose upholstery precludes any posture except a lounging one. Mr. Singleton settled back into his chair and began to poke about at strawy wisps of tobacco in the bowl of an ugly great pipe, not as though he had any intention of smoking it but as though fiddling with it was a substitute for more vehement action. Pibble had hardly looked at him before he spoke, and had a vague feeling that he was unusually tall. Now he saw a pale, high-domed face, curly black hair, and an oddly straight mouth. When Mr. Singleton spoke, his lower jaw moved all of a piece, with a fluttering, but vaguely mechanical motion, like that of a TV puppet. The droning voice which their arrival had interrupted had been his.

“Not glibly,” he said. “Plainly; the General tends not to mean precisely what he says. I do. Let me say at once, Superintendent, that we live an odd life here at Herryngs. I would not want you to think that we are proud of our ability to pull strings, such as the ones we pulled to get you down here. There are times when we are literally forced into actions of this sort. To put it bluntly, we have found the local police are too free with what they pass on to newspapermen. I don't know whether you know about journalists in an area like this—I have to, because we are so concerned with publicity—but most of them have some sort of connection with at least one of the national papers, and they can make a few quid by sending tidbits about Herryngs up to London.

“To be honest, we are usually glad of this arrangement, and from time to time we stage a newsworthy event, just to keep our name in the papers. But I spoke to one of them at a reception we gave and—I'm sorry to have to tell you this, and ought in fairness to add that he'd already drunk more than he could hold—he said that what he would really like from Herryngs was a nice juicy scandal. This may seem very shocking to you, Superintendent, but it is a fact we have to live with.

“Poor Deakin's death is not a scandal—by no means; I hope you won't think that. In fact it's a great sadness to us all, a great sadness, but journalists of the type I have described are distressingly willing to exaggerate a minor calamity of this sort into a major event, and to dress up their imaginings with irrelevant gossip. Now, from one or two things which have happened in the past year we have come to believe that there is at least one officer in the local force who is more than willing to abet these gentry in their efforts. We could, and I put it to you fairly, pull yet more strings and have the men posted elsewhere, but if we took that course and the facts leaked out, we would be running the risk of an even greater scandal; so for the most part we put up with them, and with the tiresome little insinuations about thefts and vandalism here of which they are the source. But in this case, to put it bluntly, we decided to circumvent them.”

“Rang up the Chief Constable,” broke in the General. “Bit of an ass, but not a bad chap. Know him well. Squared it with him.”

“I hope you understand,” said Mr. Singleton, leaning earnestly forward like a politician leaning toward a TV camera for a peroration. “You may feel that we have called you down here over a trivial matter, but I assure you it is not trivial to us, even at this stage of the season. May I take it that you concur?”

“Of course,” muttered Pibble, shrinking further back into the bosomy cushions, half hypnotized by the dull, plangent voice. No point in telling them they were making a mistake: this, if anything, was the way to cause a stink, even if the Coroner was as tidily under their thumb as the Chief Constable seemed to be. And, Crippen, think if it had been Harry Brazzil! He'd have
arrived
with a carload of friends from Fleet Street.

“Doubtful?” said the General.

“It's only that routine procedures usually turn out to be least trouble in the end,” said Pibble. “But you're stuck with me now, so there's no point in worrying about it.”

“Sound fellow,” said the General. “What would you like to do first?”

“Perhaps Mr. Singleton could tell me about finding the body; then I could ask any questions that occurred to me, and then we could look at the place where he died. I must see the body, and talk to the doctor who examined it—I suppose it's in Southampton. I ought also to talk to any of the local police who have already been involved; it would be madness, from your point of view, if I didn't.”

“Quite right,” said the General, springing from his chair. He picked an internal telephone off the desk and pressed one of the dozen buttons that lined its base.

“Judith? Arrange to get Dr. Kirtle out here at once, please. Ask him if he'd be kind enough to pick up Sergeant Maxwell on his way. Then ring up the police station and see that you talk to Roberts, not Flagstaff. Ask him to arrange for Maxwell to be free in ten minutes' time for about an hour, and say that Dr. Kirtle will pick him up. Got all that? Good lass.”

“The body's still here,” said Mr. Singleton. “We have a spare cold-storage room which we hardly use at this time of year, with the visitors tailing off; to be frank, they have nothing as suitable in town, and Southampton's a long way for you to drive over to. As for what happened, I never go to bed until three or four in the morning, and I have excellent hearing. There was a curious thud at about two, followed by a brief drumming, which I thought came from Uncle Dick's floor. I do not normally go up there, but I felt it was my duty to investigate. The light was on in Deakin's pantry, and the door was open. He was hanging by a rope from a pipe across the ceiling; his stool was lying on the floor; he was still swinging. I cut the rope with one of his chisels and lowered him to the floor to administer the kiss of life, a technique in which I have taken instruction. It was not efficacious. Indeed, Dr. Kirtle told me afterward that it could not have been, as Deakin had broken his neck.”

“Hanged himself bloody neatly,” said the General approvingly. “Deakin was always a thoroughly seamanlike fellow.”

“Didn't Sir Richard hear any of this?” said Pibble.

“My brother's a bit deaf,” said the General. “Sailors never learn; they will go standing too near those bloody great guns they affect. He's very cut up about it, particularly about not hearing, as a matter of fact. That's one reason why he's left it to us to cope with you.”

“And the other reason?” said Pibble.

“He's an author,” said the General, with his silly giggle, “and authors mustn't be bothered.”

Mr. Singleton sighed, the despairing exhalation of the puritan confronted with frivolity.

“Let me be honest with you,” he said. “The Claverings don't give a damn for anybody. I have reasoned with them, but they still insist on behaving with all the social irresponsibility of their grandparents.”

The General leaned back in his chair, beaming as at a compliment.

“At the moment,” said Mr. Singleton, “Uncle Dick is absorbed in writing a book about lions. We have some here, as you may be aware—indeed we make quite a feature of them. Uncle Dick has not interested himself much in the business side of the Herryngs enterprise, but a year ago he began to study the lions very seriously, very seriously indeed.”

“He's had papers published in zoological journals,” said the General with motherly pride. “He's got a theory that in a couple of generations there won't be any wild animals left; they'll all have to be kept in conditions like ours because pressure of human population will have squeezed them out of their habitats. Dick says these fellows who insist on studying them in the wild are all to cock, and will be out of date in a jiffy. Thing is to know as much as possible about them in captivity. Gets letters from dozens of zoos every day, you know. Costs us a fortune in stamps.”

Harvey laughed suddenly, with the tolerant amusement of the expert.

“It hardly costs us a penny, General,” he said. “Anything concerned with the welfare of the lions is an allowable expense. Be that as may be, Superintendent, Uncle Dick works at his book from nine to twelve-thirty every morning, and refuses to be disturbed. But there will be plenty to keep you occupied until luncheon, and then he can tell you all you need to know about Deakin's private life, which was, to be frank, negligible. The General is going to Chichester shortly, so if you can think of anything you wish to ask him now, that would be convenient.”

“I shall have to have a word with the Coroner at some point,” said Pibble.

“Coming out this afternoon,” said the General. “Always comes on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month.”

“He's one of our solicitors,” explained Mr. Singleton, “and I have enough business with him to make a regular appointment worth while. You can see him before I do, and if you both agree that this matter is as straightforward as it appears to me, you will be able to catch the four-forty back to London.”

“Almost all suicides are straightforward, in one sense,” said Pibble. “Anybody except a complete bungler can kill himself if he really wants to, and leave no doubt about how he did it. But in another sense almost all suicides are mysterious, because we find it difficult to imagine ourselves reaching that pitch of desperation or resentment or whatever in which we'd take our own lives. However clear the time and method of Deakin's death may be, you'll find most people wondering why he did it—I think you'd have told me if he'd left a note.”

“No note,” said the General. “Too tidy and secretive for that—early pot training, I daresay. But Deakin was a randy little fellow, always hanging around after Harvey's serving wenches. You haven't seen him, but he was the hairiest little runt I ever clapped eyes on, and you know what they say about hairy runts. It's rubbish, of course—I'm a hairy runt myself, and I've always run neck and neck with Dick in the fornication stakes, and he's nothing like as hairy. Course, if I'd been a hairy runt
and
a sailor—”

He broke off with his bizarre giggle, suggesting in the aposiopesis whole littorals of dishonored womanhood. Mr. Singleton's implacable drone brought the conversation back to the coxswain in the cold-storage room.

“Our theory,” he said, “is that Deakin was crossed in love. I am forced to employ a number of attractive girls and, though I have no wish to speak ill of the dead, he was in the habit of pestering them. He was, to put it bluntly, an unprepossessing specimen, and they used to lead him on and let him down. I must admit that tempers tend to wear thin by this stage of the season. By the way, General, I doubt if we can employ Waugh for another year—he was incapable again last night. I'm sorry, Superintendent, but there is so much to think of. I've told Mrs. Hurley, who is in general charge of the girls, to find out what she can, but she has not yet produced a solution.”

“Fine,” said Pibble. “That's all I can think of for the moment. What are you going to see in Chichester, sir?”

Social unease stalked into the room, like a ghost walking over a live man's grave. Pibble couldn't conceive what solecism he'd committed, as both the men stared at him in withdrawn surprise. Then the General giggled and the ghost was exorcised.

“What'll I see?” he sang, in a creaky countertenor, “I'll see the sea.”

Mr. Singleton sighed again, the sigh which Pibble, after years of working with certain police colleagues, recognized as that of a man faced with a levity he has not the authority to reprimand.

“The General is going sailing,” he said, “not to the theatre.”

“God forbid,” said the General. “I'm the last of the Philistines, Superintendent. I'll see you at the inquest, no doubt.”

He left with a bouncy little strut, rising slightly onto the ball of his foot at each step. Mr. Singleton sighed for the third time as the door closed, but this time the sigh suggested that conversation would now be easier, without the monitoring presence from a dead generation. He rose and walked to the window. He really was unusually tall, at least six feet four. He stood for half a minute gazing through the glass, and then spoke without turning his head. There was a softer note in his robotlike utterance.