Dread and Water

by Douglas Clark

  “Not what you’re thinking, Sergeant. It wasn’t because of Marian Mailer that I stopped climbing. I didn’t get to … well, know her properly, until I started having every week-end free just like she did.”

  “Why did you stop going on the trips, then?”

  “Because I’m gutless.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Scared.”

  “Of mountains?”

  “Yes. I wasn’t, until eight months ago. But about that time I nearly bought it. That did for me.”

  “You nearly fell?” Hill was now more interested than ever. Here was a scientist who had probably had the same experience as his three colleagues, but who had lived to tell the tale. The one who got away, in fact. He recalled Masters’ reference to the possibility of three murders—or more.

  “You slipped?”

  “No, I didn’t. Otherwise I shouldn’t be here now probably. I got a dizzy spell. On a traverse. I was flat against the rock, leaning over sideways to the left when all of a sudden the whole blasted mountain started turning somersaults.”

  “You managed to hang on, though.”

  “Obviously. I’d tied on just a moment before and I’d got good holds for both hands and feet. Otherwise I’d have gone like a stone.”

  “It passed off quite quickly—the dizzy spell?”

  “Did it hell! Not for several minutes after I’d taken a swig from my flask.”

  “Water?”

  “Flask! Brandy!”

  “Brandy? On a mountain?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. That I was drunk. I wasn’t. I promise you I’d had nothing to drink except water from my bottle half an hour earlier. But I always carry a flask in my breast pocket. Just in case I’m caught out at night in an exposed place. By the grace of God I remembered I’d got it when the world started swimming. I just managed to get it out of my pocket with one hand. I tell you it saved my life. Three or four minutes after I’d had it, I began to recover. Another three or four minutes and I was able to start down.”

  “Completely recovered?”

  “Badly shaken, I can tell you. I’d been going round on that pitch like a croupier’s ball for nearly twenty minutes by my reckoning, and that’s a hell of a time to defy gravity. I know it finished me as regards mountaineering.”

  “It’s an interesting story, Alec.”

  “Meaning you don’t believe me?” Bullock seemed to have sobered up slightly, but his manner seemed to be growing belligerent.

  “Meaning I believe every word you’ve told me. And I’m grateful you did tell me. Now, if you intend to go on drinking, I’ll get you another.”

  “You’ll join me?”

  “I’d like to eat. But I tell you what I will do, tomorrow. And that’s introduce you to Superintendent Masters, my boss. I think you’ll like him. He’s a bit of a clever devil, but he’s an understanding bloke.”

  “George Masters?”

  “That’s the one. You’ve heard of him?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  Brant had got separated from Hill. As more people came into the bar, the two sergeants were nodded to or given good evening in a pleasant enough way. And just as Hill had become involved with Bullock, so Brant found himself talking to two young scientists. One male, one female.

  Gerald Newsom—at Brant’s best guess—was about twenty-seven. He was a pleasant-faced young man with a large moustache. Brant got the impression he had grown it in the vain hope of giving himself a little air of authority in this community where he appeared to be much the youngest. Unfortunately, as he drank, the beer froth adhered to the ends of the face fungus and made a ludicrous picture. But he was impeccably dressed in a charcoal-grey suit with limb-clinging trousers that showed off admirably the strength of his long legs.

  “Astrology’s the thing,” said Newsom to Brant. “That’d solve your mystery for you. What the quasars foretell! Black holes of hell gape upon those born under the sign of the goat! I’m engaged in collecting every so-called forecast for every day and comparing them one with the other. I shall do it for a year and a day and publish my findings.”

  “So you’re the one,” said Cynthia Dexter, coming up behind him, with a glass of tomato juice.

  “Of course I’m the one,” said Newsom, turning towards her. “But which particular one did you mean?”

  “The clot who cuts up all the papers in the ante room every day.”

  “I only cut out What The Stars Foretell columns. Don’t tell me you read them.”

  “Unlike ninety per cent of other people, I’m a non-believer, but I do like a whole newspaper.”

  “If you want to see what you’ve missed, come up and see my scrapbook sometime.”

  “If I came near you it would be a scrap. For virtue.” She smiled at Brant. “We’re ignoring you and you’re a guest here, aren’t you? I heard somebody say you’re a detective.”

  “Sergeant Brant, ma’am.”

  “And I’m Cynthia Dexter, usually referred to as Sin in the ‘ugly-as’ context. This, in case he hasn’t told you, is Gerald Newsom, gently-bred, well-educated, beautifully-spoken, highly-connected and totally-useless.”

  “How d’you do, Mr Newsom.”

  “Oh, come on now, Sin. Play fair.” He turned to Brant. “You can see how much store to set by what she says. When she calls herself as ugly as sin she lies in her teeth. Her veracity is equally at fault when describing me.”

  Brant could see the force of this argument clearly enough. Miss Dexter—at least he assumed she was not married because she wore no rings—was a personable woman, not much older than Newsom. She was long blonde, with beautiful regular teeth, all her own, the sort of lips that Brant imagined could smile while being kissed and eyes that had a twinkling humour much like a single expensive item in a diamond merchant’s display.

  “You don’t have to worry,” said Brant. “Either of you. I’ve been taught to take nothing I hear for granted, but to believe the evidence of my own eyes.”

  “A pretty speech,” said Newsom. “It deserves more beer. Same again, Sergeant Brant?”

  “Please.”

  Cynthia Dexter smiled at him. “Are all policemen like you? You don’t seem a bit like the archetype fuzz I heard so much about as a student.”

  “I don’t suppose I am. And I’ve never met a copper who is—if you can believe that.”

  “I think I can.”

  “Would you like a cigarette?”

  “Thank you.” She accepted a light. “I suppose you’re here because of Clive Mailer.”

  “Because he was the third scientist from here to die in the same way.”

  She looked at him gravely. “I’ve only been here just over a year, but I knew all three of them.”

  “Well?”

  “Not awfully well. I never worked with any of them.”

  “Pity. You might have been able to tell me what it was in their characters that made Redruth and Mailer climb alone, when it’s usual for climbers to rope together.”

  She frowned prettily. “I know why Philip Redruth did it. For a bet.”

  Brant felt vaguely excited. “What sort of a bet? Who with?”

  “I honestly don’t know—or if I ever did, I’ve forgotten.”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “I don’t remember that, either. Perhaps I’m wrong. You’d better forget it or I’ll be accused of misleading you—hampering the police in the course of their investigations is the term, isn’t it?”

  “Something like that. Oh, thank you.” He took the tankard Newsom was holding out to him. “Cheers.”

  “What have you two been gassing about in my absence?”

  “Mr Brant was asking if I knew why Philip Redruth and Clive Mailer should have gone on to the pitches alone.”

  Newsom shrugged. “I can’t help you there. I’m not a mountaineer.”

  “Wouldn’t your all-knowing stars help us?”

  “Who can tell? The horoscopes of all three men …”<
br />
  “Oh, shut up! You’re the horror, Gerald.” She addressed both men. “Finish those drinks and let’s eat.”

  “Not for me,” said Newsom. “I’m due in the village to play bridge with the General.”

  “That’s why you’re all dressed up!” She turned to Brant. “One of his highly-placed distant relatives. They’re spattered all over the land.” She smiled. “It looks as though you’re stuck with me for a supper partner, if you can bear the prospect.”

  Brant put his empty tankard on a nearby table. “I shall be delighted.”

  “Are all women as trusting as that with policemen?” asked Newsom.

  “It’s one of the few perks of the job,” replied Brant. “Haven’t you noticed that policemen’s wives are always the best-looking girls around? It’s a fact. Get to know a few some time.”

  When they were seated at table, Brant asked Cynthia: “Is Mr Newsom totally useless? I ask because you described him that way when introducing us, and it could be that with his connections he might get a job a bit above his ceiling.”

  Cynthia grinned delightedly. “Handsome, well-breeched Gerald isn’t your idea of a serious-minded boffin, is that it?”

  “He seemed a little … superficial, to me,” admitted Brant. “Acts the fool a bit, I dare say.”

  “Don’t let appearances mislead you, nice Mr Policeman. Gerald is a silly ass on the surface, but a resolute character inside. The point is that, unlike most of us here who have to scrabble for a foothold in science, he has never had to put up much of a fight for anything in his life. He was born nicely-thank-you in the social and financial senses, and he was endowed with enough grey matter to make full use of what he was born to. So he can’t really imagine why anybody should get very intense about work—except when actually doing it. I suspect him, deep down, of being an ambitious scientist despite his amiable oaf antics.”

  “When you say ambitious, what exactly do you mean?”

  Cynthia opened her eyes at that one.

  “There are unsuspected depths to you, too, Mr Fuzz. That is, if I read your question aright. Do I?”

  “I was always brought up to believe that everything is comparative,” said Brant. He speared half a pickled onion and popped it into his mouth. “Lovely sweet violets you have here, Miss Dexter. One of my great weaknesses, sweet violets.”

  “Doesn’t your wife object to your eating them at supper-time? Or does she take the line of least resistance and eat them, too, in sheer self-defence?”

  “The girl that I marry,” said Brant, not looking at her, “will have to be an onion-eater.”

  “You’re not married? But I thought from the way you were running on about how good-looking police wives are that you would be hitched to a former Miss Spanish Onion circa nineteen seventy.”

  “As you so rightly said a moment or two ago, first impressions can be misleading. Up to now I am heart-whole and fancy onions.”

  “He would be humorous.” Cynthia smiled. Brant found something special in that smile. He had to make a great mental effort to jerk himself back to reality and remind his companion that the conversation had strayed.

  “Oh, yes! Everything is comparative. What about it?”

  “As if you didn’t know! Newsom’s ambition. How shall I put it… ?”

  “What you are asking me is whether Gerald is ambitious to become a leading light in his own right, or whether his ambition is simply to be on equal terms with his colleagues.”

  “That’s right. I regard the one as a soaring ambition where one strives to stand out head and shoulders above one’s work-mates—something like my boss, George Masters—the other as a rather comfortable posture which enables one to live on more or less equal professional terms with those around one—a situation in which their conversation is on one’s own level, their—perhaps somewhat limited—goals one’s own goals.”

  “I get your drift. I’ll try to answer you despite the fact that you make the ordinary run of us poor scientists sound terribly smug and self-satisfied. Almost like bureaucrats for whom the future is already laid down and secure as long as we keep our noses clean and our superannuation subscriptions up.”

  “I didn’t mean to …”

  “Of course you didn’t. I’m ribbing you because you’ve been a clever Mr Plod. Gerald could never be one of the herd. Or at least not for long. I would say that ambition would drive him into becoming the government’s senior scientific adviser. That would be the sort of mixture he would love—a nice corridor of power leading to his research lab.”

  “Would you say that on his way to his ultimate objective he would have a half-way mark? Somewhere where he might rest to recuperate for the final onslaught?”

  “The second, more comfortable ambition you spoke of? Equality with his peers rather than superiority?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think he might. Or he might appear to. Gerald would never want to give the impression that he was a professional rung higher. He would regard that as bad-mannered. But he would like the fact to be acknowledged by others, nonetheless.”

  “So you reckon he is a very determined young man.” Brant was stating a conclusion, not asking a question. As he spoke, he realised with some amazement that in conversation with Cynthia Dexter he was reaching a standard of verbal exchange such as he had never achieved before. But he got little time to wonder why this was so before Cynthia continued.

  “Gerald was born to regard the doing of a good job as the corner-stone of life, and he was blessed with enough brains to improve even on that precept.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Satisfied?” That smile again.

  “Shall we just say better informed?”

  “You’ve been using me, you have.” There was no reproach in the tone.

  “Were you ever in any doubt about that? I didn’t try to hide the fact that I’m a policeman here on a job.”

  “You’re frank, too. But I don’t know that I like being used.” This time she sounded a little more in earnest.

  Brant put his knife and fork carefully on his empty plate. “When I admit to using you, I mean I am trying to get into the boffin mind, which is alien to me. I was not questioning you with the intention of trying to incriminate Mr Newsom.”

  “I should hope not. But when you discuss o’erweening ambition, you are touching on what may be regarded as motive for aberrant behaviour.”

  “True. And I confess that should any of us in the team find the slightest link between Mr Newsom and the three deaths, then I would use what you have told me without compunction—if I thought it relevant.”

  “I see.”

  “That’s how you work, too, isn’t it? You take everything into account when doing research.”

  “You are a clever Mr Flatfoot, you know. Turning every word said to your own advantage. I’d like to change the subject. What shall we talk about now?”

  “You,” said Brant. “I’d like to know a lot more about you.”

  “Professionally, or otherwise?”

  “That,” said Brant, “would be telling.”

  Green and Toinquet had returned to the bar after supper.

  “Not bad beer this, Widow.”

  Toinquet grimaced. “I’ve always suspected these scientists of adding a flask of raw alcohol to every keg of beer that comes into the mess. Either that or the local brewery makes a special bevvy for them—as a sort of insurance against being blown up or polluted.”

  “Now there’s a point. How does a security man like you make sure that what enters the Centre in the barrels is beer and nothing but beer?”

  “We can’t. Short of sampling it, there’s no way. And if we sampled, my crew would be half seas over most of the time.”

  “Or dead from some noxious substance.”

  “There’s always that.”

  “Could Mailer have been poisoned?”

  “Ask me another. Post-mortems on the first two obviously showed no hint of poison in the systems, otherwise you’d
have been here months ago. What Mailer’s guts will show you’ll know tomorrow or the next day.”

  “Why should he be such a BF as to climb alone?”

  “We’ve answered that one.”

  “Not to my satisfaction you haven’t, Widow. I can understand the first chap, Redruth, doing it, but not anybody else. Not after one fatal casualty.”

  “Silk was roped to a second man.”

  “A novice who couldn’t hold him. What’s his name, by the way?”

  “Hawker. Doctor of Philosophy. Nuclear physicist. He’s never been on a mountain since.”

  “And no wonder. We shall want to see him.”

  “Now?”

  “You mean he’s here?”

  “About four feet behind you. From the looks of him he’s only come in to get news of Mailer, and what he’s heard seems to be bringing back unhappy memories.”

  “Is he drowning his sorrows?”

  “In so far as he’s not a great drinker but he’s on his second sherry now, yes.”

  “Do you keep an eye on every tot that’s drunk by this crowd?”

  Toinquet closed one eye. “Unobtrusively. It’s a good idea from the security angle. You know as well as I do, Greeny, that part of my job is to watch out for any habits—drinking, sexual, financial—that could put an employee here at risk from blackmail.”

  “Do you reckon Hawker would mind meeting me now? Or will my presence push him over the edge of grief to the point where he’ll have to have a third sherry to sustain him?”

  Toinquet took Green by the arm and turned him about. “Come on. He’s alone at the moment.”

  “Doctor Tom Hawker: Detective Inspector Green of Scotland Yard.”

  Hawker was a big man. Green thought he was big enough to box in the dreadnought class—that was, if he could box. His hair was short, scrubby and indeterminate brown. The eyebrows were slightly darker, the eyes the colour of the bag-blue Green’s mother used to use on washing day, the chin square and protuberant. He gave an immediate impression of great physical strength.

  “Clive Mailer was a friend of mine,” said Hawker. “A great friend. We were at Cambridge together and then met up again here. We’re near-neighbours in Pottersby. Can’t you people stop these bloody mountains claiming victims like him—and Stanley Silk?”