The Smell of Evil

by Birkin, Charles

  Sister Carstairs raised her eyebrows at Nurse Butlin and then bent lower over the narrow bed. The patient was in great distress. Although her face had been deeply cut, and despite the fact that she was badly concussed, the poor dear was obviously endeavoring to tell them something.

  Sister Carstairs trusted that it would not fall to her to have to break the news of the husband’s death when the patient had recovered sufficiently to be informed of it. She pursed her lips. Of course it was always possible that his life might be saved. They were working on him at the moment in the theatre, but he had grave injuries, very grave indeed.

  Gina’s head turned from side to side on the pillow. Her eyes were open but unseeing, and she was talking quickly, her words slurred and run together. Nurse Butlin whispered: “I think, Sister, that she’s worried about the loss of her handbag.”

  Sister Carstairs gently touched Gina’s forehead. “It’s quite safe, dear,” she said. “Your handbag is being looked after for you. You had it with you when . . . when you went out. Don’t worry, dear, nobody will steal it. Everything is being taken care of, and there’s nothing at all for you to be anxious about. Just try and rest.”

  “Bag . . .” repeated Gina. “Somebody must . . . remove the bag. Important . . . dangerous . . . Miloscar . . . life or death . . . the bag . . . it must be taken . . . it must . . .” She made an effort to raise herself in the bed.

  “There, there, dear!” said Sister Carstairs soothingly. “You have not lost your bag. You must believe me. We have it here. You can see it if you like. It’s in the office. I will go and get it for you.” She nodded to Nurse Butlin to stay with the patient and walked briskly away.

  What a terrible waste of human life these car crashes caused. It was pitiable, and a large proportion of them were so unnecessary since they were caused by drunken driving. Not that she had proof that Mr. Cumberland had been drunk, but tests had shown that he had lately consumed a quantity of alcohol. After their identities had been established the young police constable had gone round to the Cumberlands’ flat. Naturally the hospital had telephoned there at once, but there had been no answer. Like most people nowadays they had probably no living-in domestic, or perhaps it had been the maid’s night out.

  Fortunately identification had been easy. Mr. Cumberland’s name and address had been on the driving license in his notecase, and his wife had been carrying among her effects a letter which had been addressed to her. Sister Carstairs sighed. When would people be made to realize the criminal folly of driving when they were not sober? Why had they to be in such a frantic hurry? “More haste, less speed” was a truism if ever there had been one. She hoped sincerely that there were no children to whom it would have to be broken that they had lost their father.

  As she sailed back down the ward with Gina’s bag in her hand she saw Nurse Butlin smile and raise a cautionary finger to her lips. The sedative had taken effect and the patient was sleeping.

  Milo could hear the shrilling of the telephone. He opened his eyes weighed down by fatigue and groped for the flex of the lamp by his side. It was a quarter past eleven. He had been dozing. Gradually memory returned. Surely his parents must be back. Perhaps they had already gone to bed. Anyway it was none of his business whoever it might be.

  The dual summons continued. No one was answering it. There was an extension in the hall as well as one in his parents’ bedroom. Milo was wide awake. Maybe, after all, he should see who it was. As he lay there listening and making up his mind to get up and do so, the ringing stopped.

  He began to wonder where his mother could be. He had overheard his father saying, presumably to Oscar, that they were off to buy something for dinner but that they would be back soon. Surely that must have been hours ago? And he hadn’t heard Oscar leave. His father must have untied him and he had slipped out quietly without his hearing him. He decided that he would run along and see.

  All the lights were on. He buttoned up the jacket of his peppermint-striped pyjamas and went out cautiously into the hall. The drawing-room door was ajar and he caught sight of Oscar who was, to his surprise, still tied to the pillar, just as he had left him. He felt a spasm of guilt. Why had he not been released? It had been a game that they had been playing, that was all.

  Milo put his head round the side of the doorway. Apart from Oscar the room was unoccupied. He walked in with dragging footsteps and stood eyeing the bound figure. “Oscar?” he said tentatively.

  The figure did not stir and Milo swaggered twice round the pillar, hands on hips, inspecting his prisoner. Then, with arms akimbo, he stopped directly in front of him. “Hello,” he said. “Hello, Oscar.”

  He noticed with dismay the lolling head and the congested blue-lipped and blood-suffused face. The body drooped forward against the restraining cords as limply as a straw-stuffed effigy. “Oscar . . .” Milo said again and more loudly, and this time his voice quavered.

  He stood staring at the man’s body without making a movement. From the Square below the curtained windows there came the sound of a car driving away amidst a chorus of shouted “good nights”.

  The child did not know what to do. He remained gazing solemnly up at the figure in the transparent helmet, his expression worried and puzzled. He could not bear the silence in the room and he began to talk to himself in an authoritative voice. “Don’t be frightened, Oscar,” he said reassuringly. “I’ve come back and now I’m going to let you go. I must have forgotten all about you. You made a wonderful prisoner, really you did, and it was such fun our playing together, wasn’t it?”

  He did not want to have to look at Oscar. He went over to pick up one of the chairs that circled the dinner table, glancing back over his shoulder in spite of himself as he did so, as if his little head was being pulled round against his volition, like a puppet’s. He would not allow himself to admit what he knew must be true. “Wait a minute,” he said, “and I’ll take off your helmet, and then we can talk for a bit until Mummy comes in.” He studied his naked toes and then said again: “I’m sorry I forgot all about you, Oscar.”

  He kept his eyes averted from the sagging shape behind him, and all at once he could think of nothing more to say. Yet there must not be a silence between the occupants of this familiar room. He abandoned the chair which he had been about to move and turned on the tape recorder which his mother had been playing to herself while she had awaited the arrival of her friends. It was an old tape that they had made years and years and years before, shortly after his fourth birthday. This evening when they had been listening to it he had laughed himself silly.

  The voices began to speak from the limbo of those past days. “Sing it for me, Milo,” his mother was coaxing. “Come along, you remember it!” There was a hiatus and she began to sing the song herself. “‘And if one green bottle should accidentally fall . . . there’d-be-how-many-green-bottles hanging on the wall?’”

  And it was his own voice, and it seemed to him that of a baby that had eventually chimed in. “‘Four green bockles hangin’ on the wall . . .’” Milo smiled to himself. Imagine his having said “bockle” instead of bottle!

  A little reassured he turned back to deal with the chair and lugged it over to Oscar’s side. If he went on listening to the tape recorder, in some curious way he wouldn’t really be here, he would be in another place and in another time. He would be back in the cottage in Kent with his mother on that autumn afternoon when they had made the recording.

  “‘There were no green bockles hangin’ on the wall!’” he heard himself asserting triumphantly. There followed a burst of delighted laughter and a new voice had broken in, Oscar’s, and it was saying: “Well done, Milo! That was a splendid effort. Before you’re through you’ll be another Einstein!”

  Milo climbed up on to the chair. The piece of pink string around the bottom of the plastic bag had been tied around Oscar’s neck in a simple bow. He undid
it, trying not to touch his skin, and lifted the bag carefully over the man’s head and removed the bunched up handkerchief from his mouth. Oscar’s voice on the tape was saying: “Young Milo’s got tenacity, Gina, and a good ear. He made a jolly good job of that. I envy you that boy . . .” The tape became a meaningless jumble of conflicting noise. There were snatches of singing and spurts of disjointed argument and a lot of gobbledigook, and that was the end.

  The telephone broke into the quiet. Milo hesitated and climbed down from the chair. He had a hunch that it must be his father or mother, and that they wanted to speak to him. He knew that it would be his mother on the line. He lifted the receiver, glowing with relief.

  “That you, Gina?” asked a woman’s voice. Without waiting for a reply she went on: “Sorry to disturb you at this ungodly hour, but like a blasted fool I left my diary in your flat earlier on this evening. It’s got all my telephone numbers and dates and what have you in it, and frankly I’m sunk without it. Would you be a lamb and post it to me the first thing in the morning? I may have left it on the arm of the sofa. It’s black and has my initials in the corner. Sorry to be such an atomic bore!” Milo said nothing and the voice asked more sharply: “Who is it I’m speaking to?”

  “It’s Milo,” he said.

  “And what are you doing out of your bed in the middle of the night?” the voice demanded. “It’s ‘Mumso’. ‘Mumso’ Vivian. You are a bad boy! Isn’t your mother in?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” said Milo.

  “Oh!” said Mrs. Vivian. “Apologies for waking you up. You might give her my message tomorrow, Milo, will you?” She coughed. “Too many cigarettes!” she said in explanation. “So they’ve left you to hold the fort?” she asked.

  “What?” said Milo.

  “Left you all alone,” persevered “Mumso”. “Well, never mind, they’re bound to be back soon.”

  “I’m not all alone,” Milo said. “Oscar’s here.” Immediately he regretted having told her.

  “Is he?” said “Mumso” disapprovingly. “Perhaps I’d better have a word with him.”

  “He can’t speak at the moment. He’s . . . he’s sort of funny.”

  “Oh!” said Mrs. Vivian, and she sounded even more disapproving, her fears realized. “You’re quite sure everything’s all right, Milo?” she demanded gruffly, but with concern. “I mean you wouldn’t like me to look in on my way home to . . . to tuck you up, or anything of that kind? I could be with you in a few minutes.”

  “No, thank you,” said Milo politely. He didn’t want anybody “looking in”. Not until his mother or father came back. He said a meticulous good-bye and put down the receiver with care.

  “One spade,” said “Mumso” when she had settled herself down at the table. “Those Cumberlands are honestly the bottom!” Her clear and indignant gaze settled on Waveney Payne. “They’ve no sense of responsibility whatsoever. They’ve gone off on the tiles leaving Milo by himself in the flat with that ghastly Oscar Landmore who, from what the boy told me, has obviously passed out!” She clicked her teeth disparagingly.

  Waveney minutely considered her cards. “No bid,” she said. “You don’t know Oscar Landmore, do you, Bobby?” she inquired. “He’s an adorable old soak. If I were Gina I couldn’t wish for a more beguiling baby sitter!”

  Milo pushed the chair to the wall and stepped round to the back of the pillar. The knots round Oscar’s waist and those on the cords that bound his hands proved obstinate, but finally he succeeded in loosening them. He was breathing quickly. “Done it!” he said. He took a swift pace forward as Oscar began to sway alarmingly before slumping ponderously and face downward on to the floor, his buttocks raised above the level of his head and shoulders by the skipping rope which still bound his ankles, forcing his body to take up a grotesque position of humble obeisance.

  In the lull that followed the impact of the leaden fall came panic. The little boy knew that Oscar wasn’t pretending, that he wasn’t even ill, but that he was dead. He had known it from the beginning, when he had first said “Oscar”. He was alone with a dead man, and the dead man was Oscar, and he didn’t look at all the same as he had done when he had been alive. Somehow he had been responsible for Oscar’s death, for the death of his friend who had been always so willing and eager to play with him, and who had understood everything so well.

  But people often died when they grew old, didn’t they? It hadn’t been his fault when Leila, Mummy’s spaniel, had died when she had been twelve, and Oscar must have been much older than that. Much older.

  He stood gazing down at Oscar. What action should he take? Should he make himself undo his feet and try to get him on to the sofa and then telephone for a doctor? But he didn’t know Doctor Standen’s number, wasn’t even sure how to spell his name. And did doctors come out at night? He’d never seen one. He regarded in dismay the fifteen stones of the man’s body which was prostrated in servile worship below him.

  No, he decided, it would be better if he went back to bed and waited there for his parents to come home, and they would know what to do. They could arrange anything. He took a cushion from the sofa and, raising Oscar’s head, which he found very heavy, he eased the cushion beneath it so that the tormented and congested face, from which the tongue protruded, would not have to come into contact with the discomfort of the hard parquet flooring.

  He turned out the lights in order that Mrs. Vivian, should she arrive after all, might think that everyone had gone to sleep and would then drive off. Standing in the doorway between the drawing-room and the hall he was suddenly desperately afraid. Should he go back and try once more to free Oscar’s legs? He looked so . . . so horrid lying there like that, as if he was imploring some king or judge for mercy. No, he could not enter that room again. He did not dare to make a further approach.

  Milo turned off the switch in the hall. He would get back into bed with Penny and wait, and in the morning everything would be all right. A wedge of light showed from his bedroom. As he reached its security the front door bell rang unexpectedly and imperiously.

  His heart leapt. It must be Mummy and Father, and they had forgotten their key. It had happened once before, and they had been full of excuses and shamefaced for having woken him up. It had to be them. But then again it might not. He remembered the many cautions that he had been given about admitting people into the flat if he should chance to be alone there.

  There was a spyhole sunk into the door and he tiptoed softly towards it, standing on the balls of his feet so that he could peep through. On the landing outside there stood a policeman. Milo could see his chin and his collar and tie and the silver chain that looped down on his chest before it disappeared into the pocket of the blue uniform that was framed by the glistening cape draped over his wide shoulders. There would be a whistle on the end of it, or so he had been told, and if he opened the door he would be certain to make a search, and he would find Oscar, and then he would blow the whistle and more policemen would arrive.

  His thoughts fled to the drawing-room. How could the policeman have known about Oscar? Milo wanted to let him in, but if he did so the policeman would think that he had killed Oscar, and in a way he would be right, and he would arrest him and he would be taken away and shot or hanged, and no one would know where he had gone.

  He would stay quiet as a mouse and pretend that there was no one at home, and then the policeman would get tired of keeping his thumb on the bell and he would go away, and when Father returned he would tell him all about it and he would know what steps to take. It had been an accident. He would never have done anything to hurt Oscar. What he must do now was to go back to bed, and if by any chance he should drop off, then when he woke up it would be morning and he wouldn’t be alone any more, for his parents would be here with him.

  He crept back to his bedroom where he lay stiff with fright, and after what seemed to be a long whil
e the trilling of the doorbell ceased.

  “No,” said Dick Persse to Constable Gerrard, “there’s no one up there. The kid went off to stay with an aunt or grandmother or some such relation. He often does that of a week-end. They think the sea air does him good, and of course they’re right. Can’t tell you where, I’m sure. Comes back on the Sunday evening. Mrs. Cumberland happened to mention it to me early on in the week. Now I think of it I believe she mentioned something about Suffolk. Nice breezy county Suffolk.” Dick Persse paused. “She’s a nice lady is Mrs. Cumberland, and he’s not a bad sort of a chap. Bit of a one sometimes when he’s had a couple. You know, the larky kind. I’m sorry to hear that they’ve met with an accident. Where was it you said they’d been taken? My missus will be sorry, too. I shouldn’t wonder but if she’d like to go along with some flowers.” He picked at a front tooth with his thumbnail. “They don’t leave a key with me like most of the tenants, not except when they goes away for their summer holidays. But there’s no one up there, that I can tell you. I saw ’em all leave. They’d been having a bit of a do. Mrs. Jackson will be along at nine in the morning. She’s their daily. If you likes to call back then she’ll be glad to take you over.” He frowned, trying to think of something helpful. “There’s a Mrs. Vivian who visits them a lot,” he said. “She might know where the kid’s gone, if it’s all that urgent. Intelligent little chap. Full of beans!”

  Constable Gerrard thanked him. There did not seem to be much that he could do until the morning. He walked down the steps and swung a sturdy black-gaitered leg over the saddle of his motor bicycle. The machine roared into life and he headed through the rain to the station to make his report.