The Midden

by Tom Sharpe

  There were other grievances. One of his patrol cars had chased a vehicle that was obviously being driven by a drunk down the drive into the Middenhall estate. An elderly man who was seen stumbling across the lawn was pinioned to the ground and handcuffed. Anywhere else in the Twixt and Tween area that sort of police action would have roused no comment. On several housing estates on the outskirts of Tween it might just have provided the local youths with an excuse for a punch-up with the cops, but that was to be expected. What came as an unnerving shock to the Chief Constable was for a supposedly law-abiding member of the middle classes to use the law to make a mockery of two of his officers in court when the whole thing could have been avoided by a quiet word with him.

  But Miss Midden hadn’t done that. Instead she had pursued a vendetta with the two constables most unreasonably. After all, they had merely taken the supposed driver back to the Stagstead Police Station when he had refused a breath-test (and had already assaulted them both in pursuance of their duty) and the police doctor had taken a blood sample which had clearly shown that the defendant’s blood alcohol level was way over the limit. As a result the defendant, Mr Armitage Midden, an elderly white hunter who had recently returned from Kenya where he had been known as ‘Buffalo’ Midden, had been charged with dangerous driving, driving with a faulty rear light, assaulting two police officers, and drunken driving. Bail had been granted the next day when the said Mr Midden had spent a salutarily uncomfortable night in the cells and had been driven back to the Middenhall by Miss Midden herself. She had been thoroughly unpleasant to all the officers in the Stagstead police station.

  But it was only when the case came to court that the police learnt the defendant was (a) without a licence to drive, (b) had such an aversion to motor cars that he had once walked from Cape Town to Cairo, and finally (c) had earned his formidable reputation as a superb shot by being a lifelong teetotaller. In short, it had been an excruciatingly embarrassing case for the Chief Constable, the two arresting officers, and the police surgeon, and had done nothing to enhance the reputation of the Twixt and Tween Constabulary. Miss Midden had gone to her cousin, Lennox, and had insisted he brief an extremely sardonic and experienced barrister from London. And quite clearly she had instructed him to put the police conduct in the most protracted and worst possible light. The barrister’s cross-examination of the police witnesses had been particularly painful for the Chief Constable, who had inadvisedly allowed himself to be called to give evidence in support of his own constables and the Twixt and Tween Constabulary. Looking back on the case Sir Arnold considered he had been deliberately inveigled into appearing and made to look an idiot and worse. He had testified to the police surgeon’s absolute probity before the case was stopped by the judge. And finally there had been Buffalo Midden’s splendid war record – he had been awarded the DSO with bar and the MC for conspicuous bravery in Burma. In the public gallery Miss Midden had enjoyed her triumph. The Chief Constable had been careful not to look at her but he could imagine her feelings. They’d been the very opposite of his.

  *

  But now he was not concerned with Miss Midden’s arrogance. In the middle of the party his thoughts kept returning to the fellow in the cellar. He was particularly irritated and alarmed by Ernest Lamming who kept insisting that Sir Arnold had a splendid selection of wine and who wanted to see it was being kept in the proper conditions.

  ‘I mean I don’t sell plonk. Only the genuine article and there’s some lovely stuff you got like that ’56 Bergerac and the ’47 Fitou. That’s worth a bob or two now if you’ve been looking after it properly. I mean I want to see you got those bottles on their sides and all that. If you’ve got them standing up, the corks will dry out and your investment is down the plughole.’

  ‘Actually I moved it back to the Sweep’s Place house,’ Sir Arnold told him. ‘I didn’t like to leave valuable wine like that out here with the house being empty all week.’

  ‘But you haven’t even got a cellar there,’ said Lamming. ‘Out here was just right for it. The cellar here was specially built to keep the champagne and suchlike the waterworks millionaires drank when they came out on a spree at the end of the last century.’

  Sir Arnold had been saved by the intervention of one of the new waterworks millionaires, Ralph Pulborough, whose salary had just been increased by 98 per cent while water charges had gone up 50 per cent.

  ‘Now look here, Ernest, fair dos and all that. I don’t want to hear any more snide remarks about water rates and so on,’ he said, ‘and I object to being called a waterworks millionaire. I was a millionaire long before I went into water, and you know it. If you want efficiency you have to pay for it. That’s the law of the market. It’s the same with that plonk you sell.’

  ‘I do not sell plonk,’ Lamming retorted angrily. ‘You won’t find a better bottle of Blue Nun this side of Berlin than what I sell. And your water’s nothing to write home about. There was a dead sheep floating out there by the dam when I drove over just now. And the tap water is so bad we’ve had to install a reverse osmosis diaphragm for Ruby to have a clean bath.’

  ‘My dears, a reverse osmosis diaphragm,’ minced Pulborough, ‘how very appropriate for her. Did it hurt very much at first? I simply must ask her.’

  Sir Arnold hurried out of earshot and went in search of Sammy Bathon, the TV interviewer and entrepreneur, who had recently established a chain of betting shops with the help of the Government’s Aid to Industry Scheme. Sammy Bathon was a chap with his ear close to the ground and, if anything had been going the rounds about a Press coup that failed last night, he’d be the one to know.

  He found him discussing the advantages of cryogenics with the Rev. Herbert Bentwhistle. ‘Sure, sure, Father, I’m not knocking the Holy Book but where does it say anything about leaving things to chance? So I have eternal life without liquid nitrogen by being a good boy. I prefer my way. Bigger chance for Sammy with the nitrogen maybe.’ He winked at Sir Arnold but the eye behind it did not suggest any secret information about the intruder.

  It was a remark he caught as he passed the group round Egeworth, the MP for West Twixt, that interested the Chief Constable most. ‘She’s a confounded nuisance, Miss Midden is,’ Egeworth was saying. ‘Spends half her life preventing developments that would serve the community. I wish to God someone would shut her up.’

  ‘You mean she’s been poking her nose into the housing scheme at Ablethorpe?’ someone said. ‘You preserve a few trees and lose the chance of a development grant. Where’s the sense in that?’

  ‘That’s the trouble with these so-called old families. They seem to think the past matters. They don’t think of the future.’

  Sir Arnold went into his study and shut the door. He was exhausted and he had to think of his own future. The vodka had been of only temporary help. Why wouldn’t they hurry up and go so that he could get some shut-eye and give that bastard his next dose of whisky and whatever? He sat down and thought about Miss Marjorie Midden. Her and that Major MacPhee. If only he could find out if it was one of her weekends away birdwatching or visiting gardens. The Midden would be an ideal place to dump that sod in the cellar. There were all those old weirdos living at the Middenhall and, while he wasn’t prepared to venture down the drive to the Hall itself, the Midden farmhouse where the old cow lived with Major MacPhee was conveniently isolated. It would be nice to get her to take the rap for the young toyboy. It was a lovely idea. In the meantime he’d just make a phone call.

  He dialled Miss Midden’s number. There was no reply. He’d call the Middenhall later to check she was really away. As he passed the kitchen door he heard Auntie Bea talking to Mrs Thouless the housekeeper. ‘I really don’t see why Arnold had to say that he’d taken the wine to Sweep’s Place when it’s patently untrue. And as for a ’47 Fitou! Can you imagine how frightful it must be?’

  Fortunately the housekeeper was deaf. She was talking to herself about glass and blood all over the bedroom floor and the mirror broken and a
ll that water. Sir Arnold hurried upstairs to check that there were no bloodstains on the wall about the bed. There weren’t, and the marks on the carpet were all his own. He was also glad to see that Vy had passed out on the bed. She had spent the party drinking gin and Appletise and pretending it was champagne. It hadn’t worked. The gin had won.

  9

  By the time he had seen all the guests leave, Sir Arnold’s exhaustion was almost total. Only terror kept him going – terror and black coffee. But during the afternoon a new stimulant entered the picture. It came with the realization that whoever had brought that filthy lout to the house and his bed must have had an accomplice on the inside. All the facts, in so far as he could marshal them, pointed to that incontrovertible conclusion. Sir Arnold in his awful condition certainly couldn’t controvert it. He clung instead to certain facts, the first of which was that someone, and if he could lay his hands on that someone . . . some shit had unlocked the iron gates to let some other shits in with the young bastard now in the cellar and, when they had left, had locked the gates again. There was no other way they could have got in. The walls and the steel-shuttered windows on the reservoir side of the house made any other route impossible. When it came to self-protection, the Chief Constable did himself well.

  That was the first point and it was confirmed by the second, the pitiful state of the Rottweiler. If Sir Arnold felt awful – and he did – the dog was in an even worse state. True, its legs had recovered and it could walk – well, at any rate hobble – but in nearly every other respect it had the look of an animal that had made the mistake of taking on a thoroughly ill-tempered JCB. Its jaws were in a particularly nasty state and, when once or twice it tried to bark or make some sort of audible protest, it merely achieved what looked like a yawn. No sound issued from its massive throat, though when it hobbled, it wheezed. In more favourable circumstances Sir Arnold would have got his wife to call the vet, but that was out of the question. Circumstances were the least favourable he had ever known and he had no intention of allowing any damned vet to come poking around the place. He had even less of allowing Lady Vy or that beastly Bea to go anywhere. Genscher would have to suffer in silence. All the same, the dog provided further evidence that Bea had helped the swine who had put that lout in his bed. The dog knew her and had evidently come to like the cow. In his disgusted opinion it ought to have savaged her the first time she set foot on the premises. Instead it had trusted her. Sir Arnold wasted no sympathy on the animal. It had only itself to blame for its present condition. The damned woman must have taken a crowbar to the brute.

  Following this line of reasoning, he wondered what she had taken to Lady Vy. Probably a near-lethal dose of anti-depressants. Like twice her normal dose. And this on top of her usual bottle of gin. Well, two could play that game, and he wasn’t going to have anyone interfering with his plans for the disposal of the bloke in the sheets.

  He was now left with the practical problem of getting the bloke out of the cellar and depositing him somewhere else. Once that had been achieved successfully any attempt to blackmail him would be a right give-away. That bloody Bea wouldn’t be able to say a thing. The opportunity would have passed. It was a nice thought.

  Sir Arnold applied his mind to the solution of this problem. First the place would have to be somewhere near enough for him to be able to get there and back in an hour. Sometime between 2 a.m. and 3 would be ideal. And this time Auntie Bea would be the one to have something to make her sleep. Say 80 mg of Valium in her tonic. That would undoubtedly do the trick. Or in the gin? No, tonic was better. She would drink more of the tonic. He went through to the sitting-room and got a bottle and made up the potion. And it wouldn’t hurt if Vy got a dose too. He didn’t want her interfering in his plan or even knowing what it was. He knew his wife. She had an infinite capacity for forgetting the unpleasant facts of her experience and for concentrating on only those things that gave her pleasure. With the help of enough gin she could forget any sort of crime. He wasn’t going to worry about Vy.

  His thoughts, such as they were, reverted to the Middenhall. If only he could be absolutely sure Miss Midden had gone away and the old farmhouse was unoccupied it would make the ideal spot to dump the bastard. It was close enough to be convenient and at the same time far enough away to remove all suspicion from the Old Boathouse. Best of all was the proximity of all those very dubious Midden family eccentrics in the Hall itself. In a way it would be easier to dump the fellow in the garden there but there was always the danger he might die of exposure in the night air. No, he’d have to go inside a building, preferably a house, where he’d definitely be found fairly quickly. And the farmhouse was sufficiently close to the Middenhall proper to cast suspicion on its strange inhabitants. Let Miss Midden come home and find that little lot in her bed and it would be very interesting to get her reaction.

  In spite of his fatigue the Chief Constable almost smiled at the thought. Once again he phoned the farm and got no reply. He tried the Middenhall itself and asked for the Major. ‘I’m afraid he’s away for the weekend,’ a woman told him.

  Sir Arnold took his courage in his hands. ‘Then perhaps Miss Midden is available,’ he said.

  ‘She’s not here either. They won’t be back till Monday or even Tuesday.’

  ‘Oh well, it can wait,’ said the Chief Constable and, before the woman could ask who was calling, he put the phone down.

  Now all that remained was to move the Land Rover down to the old byre so that he wouldn’t be heard from the house when he started it up. Having done all the essential things, Sir Arnold settled down to get some rest.

  In fact there was no need to wait until 2 a.m. to make the move. At ten o’clock Auntie Bea said she was dead tired and wandered off to bed and Lady Vy followed, looking very weirdly pink. Sir Arnold hoped he hadn’t overdone the Valium in the tonic. Well, it couldn’t be helped now. He went down to the cellar and gave the unwanted visitor his final shot of whisky before trying to move the body up to the ground floor.

  It was at that point that he realized he was dealing with a dead weight. It had been easy enough to get the fellow down to the cellar. For one thing Vy had helped him and for another it had all been downhill. Getting the brute up again was another matter altogether. Sir Arnold tugged Timothy Bright halfway up the cellar steps, and dropped the load twice to avoid having a heart attack. After that he changed his mind about the route out. If he dropped the blighter again he might well kill him, and if he went on trying to get him up the steps he would almost certainly kill himself.

  Having got his racing pulse almost back to normal, Sir Arnold stood up and went over to the hatch. Originally it had been used to roll beer barrels down into the cellar. He would have to use it now to get the bloke up. Sir Arnold pulled the ropes and undid the bolts. Then he went upstairs and round to the yard and opened the hatch from above. Beside him Genscher wheezed strangely and sniffed. The poor creature was still in a bad way. But Sir Arnold hadn’t got time to worry about the Rottweiler’s problems. He had far more important ones of his own to consider.

  He fetched a rope from the garage and dropped one end down the hatch into the cellar. Then he went back down into the cellar and dragged the body over to the beer ramp under the hatch. Here he tied the rope round the fellow’s waist. So far so good.

  He was about to go up the steps when to his horror he heard footsteps on the floor above. Switching off the light, he stood in the darkness sweating. What the hell was happening? That bloody Bea couldn’t be prowling round the house now. It wasn’t possible. He had watched her sink three gin and tonics and there’d been all that Valium in the tonic bottle. The woman must have the constitution of the proverbial ox to stay awake with that lot inside her. Or perhaps the cow had realized her drink had been doctored and had taken something to counteract it. She was obviously far brighter than he had supposed. And the door of the cellar was open. She was bound to spot it.

  Upstairs, Aunt Bea blundered across the kitchen in search of s
ome bicarbonate of soda, anything to stop her head spinning. She hadn’t felt this drunk in a long time, and to make it all the more peculiar she’d only had three small gin and tonics and had drowned the gin in tonic too. At this rate she’d have to give up drinking altogether. There must be something terribly wrong with her liver. As she blundered into the kitchen table and clutched at the back of a chair and finally sat down, she was an extremely puzzled woman. She was even more puzzled by an over-riding desire to sing. She hadn’t had that urge for ages and usually did it in the privacy of her own flat, and in the bathroom at that. It was all very well being a powerful woman and generally rather masculine in many ways, but it was no great help having the voice of an extremely bad soprano. But now for some unknown reason she felt like singing ‘If you were the only girl in the world and I was the only boy.’

  As the sounds reached the Chief Constable in the cellar and were translated into an overture, a new and frightful thought occurred to him, that the ghastly Auntie Bea was making some disgusting proposition to him – one that he rejected out of hand. She evidently knew he was in the cellar but, if she thought he was going to play the girl to her being the boy, she had another think coming. And she couldn’t possibly be singing to anyone else in the house. Mrs Thouless was as deaf as a post and Vy was without question dead to the world. As if to confirm him in this insane notion that he was being courted by an unabashed lesbian, and if she had looked any different the normally passive Sir Arnold might have welcomed the experience, Auntie Bea got up and crossed to the cellar door and peered down the steps. ‘If there is anyone down there, you can come up now to Auntie Bea and give me the tongue of day,’ she whispered. The Chief Constable curdled in the corner. He had many fantasies in his life, but that was definitely not one of them. ‘All aboard the Auntie Bea. Last orders and rites. The rest is silence.’ And having uttered these ominous words, she shut the cellar door and locked it.