“Yes,” said Humphrey. “We found it necessary. No one was anxious to touch the case. Your methods seem to be unique and peculiar to yourself.”
Doctor White inclined his head. “I think that I may say that they are.” He did not feel at ease with Humphrey. He had never done so. His reaction to him, like that of many other people, was that Humphrey was summing him up with lazy dislike and disapproval.
Alathea opened a bedroom door. “Your bathroom is opposite,” she said. “We will wait for you downstairs.”
As they were once more crossing the hall they could see Alexis sitting on his haunches at the top of the flight of steps, his head cocked to one side, as motionless as a basalt statue of an animal-headed Egyptian deity. “Ugly great brute!” Humphrey said. His expression was grim as he went on: “I could kill that bastard, White,” he said. “I can hardly keep my hands off him.”
Alathea did not answer at once. Then she said: “We went to him of our own volition. Nobody forced us. It was my fault for having listened to that verbose fool, Cathleen.”
“Our fault,” Humphrey corrected her.
“That was kind of you,” said Alathea. She smiled briefly, momentarily her face lit up and took on an endearing charm like that of a surprised bush baby. In recent months she had smiled rarely.
They were in the drawing-room and Humphrey crossed over to the drink tray. There was the clink of glass on glass and the sharp sibilant splash of soda. Then he stood by the window with his slim tapering back rigid, turned towards her, and looked out into the garden which was already losing its color to the night.
Alathea thought of Max White’s question and Humphrey’s abrupt answer, remembering when la ronde of doctors had begun again, although after a preliminary talk the majority of those they had consulted had found it more convenient to make the journey down to Welford rather than have Rachel call at their places of business. None had been able to offer the slightest help or consolation. They had been definitely unwilling to get themselves involved in the case, pleading the excuse of professional etiquette. She recalled that Gilbert Adler, as he was leaving after his examination, had muttered under his breath: “White is no better than a criminal. He should be deported.” He had thought that he had not been overheard.
The atmosphere was tense with waiting. It seemed a long while before they heard the doctor’s footsteps cross the marble floor.
Humphrey swung round as he came in. “A drink?” he asked, but there was no warmth in the invitation.
“I think not,” said his guest, “not, that is, until after we have seen my patient.” He pushed back his cuff. “It will soon be her bedtime.” Doctor White had made a leisurely change into a country suit and had washed his hands and combed his hair.
Humphrey did not insist and they walked together through the fading light across the driveway to the lawn and past borders burning with the bright defiant flowers of autumn. “Rachel and her old Nanny have been installed in a small house in the garden,” said Alathea, “. . . on their own. She likes it better there, and it is easier that way.”
Max White halted. Ahead of them the big dog circled, delighting in his liberty. “It might be wiser,” Doctor White said, “if I were at first to see Rachel by myself. For five minutes only,” he added, “then Mr. Decker and you can join me.”
Alathea opened her mouth to remonstrate, for she did not want the child to be alarmed, and doubted too the manner of Nanny’s reception, but she caught Humphrey’s barely perceptible nod and did not speak.
“Just as you wish,” Humphrey said. “You follow the path at the end of the rose garden and then turn to your left.”
“Thank you.” Doctor White whistled the dog to heel and began to walk on.
“I think it might be better if you left Alexis in the house,” called Alathea after him. “Nanny is the president of the Anti-Dog League!” She made it sound like a joke. “Will he follow me if I take him?”
“I doubt it,” said Doctor White. “He is an independent character.” He walked back with her without speaking and the lurcher was shut into the flower room.
When they had rejoined Humphrey Alathea put a hand on Max White’s sleeve. “Rachel may be rather frightened when she sees you,” she said. “She had a rough time at High Hall, so please be very gentle with her.”
The doctor laughed softly. “Mrs. Decker,” he said, “I have an easy manner with children. Also much experience. You need not be alarmed. I have no threatening syringes with me this evening.” He made a gesture of farewell. “A bientôt.”
“Why did you agree to his suggestion?” Alathea asked when he was out of earshot. “Why shouldn’t we have all gone down to the folly together?”
“Because,” said Humphrey with bitterness, “Rachel’s impact on him will strike him more forcibly if he is alone and knows that in a few minutes he will have to face us.” They stood where they were until the doctor’s neat figure had been swallowed up among the bushes and then very slowly they began to walk after him. “It may not be impossible even now,” Alathea said. “He may still be able to do something for her. We must not forget that he has had his successes. There was that boy from America . . .”
Humphrey flicked away his cigarette stub. “He must have taken a new line with Rachel,” he said with suppressed violence. “Maybe he found his penchant for experimenting during his Belsen days.”
Through the thickening dusk they entered the dark tunnel of the pergola, the petals of the rearguard of the summer’s white roses gaining in substance and brilliance as night fell, and the air was saturated with the scent of the flowers. Alathea’s mind was filled with memories of Rachel as she had been before the onset of her illness, so appealing and lovely and with an infinite capacity for spontaneous enjoyment and affection, and her heart was heavy.
When they had brought her back from High Hall she had for a time made progress and Alathea had felt a humble gratitude, but gradually she had relapsed. The child had not become weak or listless, quite the contrary, but Alathea had feared that her brain had been affected, and that the terrifying tumor was growing again. As the weeks passed and her speech had become increasingly difficult, words had grown meaningless. Her hair had dulled and dried up into brittleness and had fallen out, and in its place had come a brownish down, while scaly scabrous patches had made their appearance on her skin. Her soft child’s body had hardened and grown curiously muscular, and her features had sharpened and changed until she was grotesque in her little girl’s frocks, and Alathea had dressed her in jeans and long sleeved shirts to disguise the travesty of a human being into which she was degenerating. And then . . .
Alathea shuddered and endeavored to force her thoughts into other channels. There must be a way to save her. There had to be a way. If there was not there was no justice in the world, nor any God in heaven.
As they followed the path towards the folly they heard the barking of a dog, a high frenzied note of hysterical excitement. “It’s that bloody great tike of White’s,” said Humphrey, and he quickened his pace, “How in the hell did he get out? I wonder what it can be that he’s put up.”
A stretch of rough grass sloped down to the point where the stream had been dammed to form a small lake mottled with brown islands of the moored leaves of the water lilies. At its narrow end it was spanned by a humped wooden bridge that gave access to the folly on the further side, and as they stepped out from the shadows of the trees on to the grass they realized that the barking of the dog had ceased.
In each of the rooms of the sculptured building the lights had been turned on and they were streaming through the open door and windows, illuminating the verandah, and it was against this backcloth that the group of actors were struggling in dark and chaotic silhouette.
Rachel and Nanny must have been waiting under the colonnade for the doctor’s arrival, and when he was pushing throug
h the swing gate Alexis must have rushed up and brushed past him and must have leapt straight for the child. Now he had her down on the flagstones and was savaging her, the man and woman bent double and unable to get a hold, trying in vain to pull him off.
The slatted floor of the bridge beat a drum-like tattoo as Alathea and Humphrey tore forward. As they neared the scene they saw that both Nanny and Doctor White were spattered with blood, and that there was a long tear in the sleeve of Nanny’s uniform.
The child was twisting and turning desperately in an effort to escape the dog’s jaws, her lips drawn back from her teeth in an animal snarl, her bright eyes glittering balefully. Her hands with their clawed nails and her feet, one of which was in a pink bedroom slipper, struck impotently upwards in automatic and savage retaliation, raking without effect against the dog’s chest and belly. The shrill squealing, degradingly exciting, that issued from the little girl’s mouth was like that of a doomed rodent engaged in a hopeless death struggle, rather than any sound that could have come from the body of a member of the human race caught, however tightly, in the grip of deadly fear.
The dog’s deep growl rumbled from the base of his throat while he worried at the child, exerting all of his strength as he tried repeatedly to lift her from the ground in order to swing her furiously from side to side so that her neck might be broken, as a terrier will break the neck of a rat, cleanly and with despatch, for it was in the guise of a huge rat that she had appeared to him.
It had been from the living bodies of young sewer rats that the cultures for the serum had been made, rats that were the strongest and most voracious of all, and while Max White wrestled with the lurcher he knew with horrid certainty that its potency, and that of the capsules, had been beyond dispute.
As her parents reached her Rachel’s twitching ceased and the mutilated body in the torn Jaeger dressing gown lay limply splayed out in death. After nuzzling the head to make certain that life was extinct the lurcher raised his muzzle from the mangled bizarre corpse. His jowls were dripping with blood, for it had not been at all a clean killing. The quarry had been too heavy.
He shook himself and wagged his tail, and the liver colored lips curled back from his teeth in anticipatory pleasure as he waited in the pool of light, confident and expectant, for the customary murmured words of approval and the congratulatory pat on the back which would be his merited reward for a job well done.
“DANCE LITTLE LADY”
There had been a scene of the greatest confusion outside the Golden Plover. The imperious blasts of police whistles, the shouts and cries and curses of the combatants, the shrieks of the women and girls had all combined to shatter the enjoyment of the Saturday night.
For the main part the mêlée had been composed of immigrant Irish and colored men, but a number of the local boys had weighed in on the side of the Micks, egged on by the clamor of the girls who had been with them.
Buzz and Lofty had managed to make their getaway just in time, taking Rosie with them. They had walked off with long unhurried strides, supporting the protesting girl between them, for she had wanted to remain to see the outcome. At the first side turning which they had reached they had broken into a run.
Buzz had been the one to instigate the break away. He had no desire to be picked up by the coppers, not for the second time in six weeks, he hadn’t, not on your ruddy life, not with knuckle-dusters and a flick knife on him. The police could be proper buggers when they got you inside, especially where racial incidents were concerned, and with a record like his. Sometimes he thought that they sided with the black bastards.
He hadn’t intended to get mixed up in anything tonight. Not really. He’d just been having a few drinks with Lofty before closing time to round off the evening like, when who should drift in but Rosie, and after that they’d stayed until the end, and had plenty.
He knew her slightly. One of Spike Logan’s lot, she was, somewhat on the fringe of his mob—but she went along with them. Said she was eighteen but he doubted it, more like sixteen, but that hadn’t put the fellahs off, and after all there was no telling, was there? When she was in the mood, or so he’d heard, she’d been known to take on four or five a night. Real hot stuff.
The surprising thing about Rosie was that she did not look at all tarty. You might have mistaken her for a straight girl if you hadn’t known better. Not much make-up, no kinky clothes. It was her eyes and mouth that gave her away after she’d got outside a few gins, when she became all sort of moist and clinging and couldn’t seem able to keep her hands to herself.
You didn’t have to pay her or anything of that kind, or so they said; not, that was, unless you felt like doing so, and then, of course, she wouldn’t say no. But she never asked. She was an odd one in a lot of ways.
It was Rosie who had got them involved. She had a thing about the West Indians. Couldn’t stand them. Buzz wondered why. From all he’d been told about them he’d have thought that they’d have been right up her street. But perhaps it was only a lie. Propaganda put about by those strutting show-off bucks. The black girls weren’t no different, he knew that for a fact; and the smell when they got hotted up! Enough to fair turn your stomach up it was. Talk about the cat house at the zoo!
An ambulance shrilled its alarm and a police car tagged along close behind it. They’d all be converging now on the Plover. Here came a second of them. Vultures, that’s what they were, a pack of bloody vultures.
Buzz muttered to Lofty and they slowed their pace to a careful walk. He thought that Lofty was rather overdoing the nonchalance. In his stained duffle coat and with that scruffy beard he looked as shifty as could be. Buzz halted and lit a cigarette with the last of his matches, shielding the flame in his cupped hands. Rosie giggled and Buzz felt a flash of irritation. He wasn’t going to let himself be picked up, not carrying these “offensive weapons”. Lofty had a knife too. He’d seen him use it on a great slob of a nigger. “Shut up!” he said curtly to Rosie.
As it went by on their side of the road the police car was crawling along at no more than seven miles an hour. The pale ovals of the officers’ faces were turned inquiringly towards them. After a short close scrutiny the car increased speed. The trio stood where they were until it had turned away into Blakeney Road.
“Now,” whispered Lofty. “Come on!” They must put as much distance as they could, and as quickly as possible, between themselves and the scene of the disturbance. He had made no plans ahead. They couldn’t go to Rosie’s house, she lived with her mother and brother. And so did he and Buzz, that is, they too were cooped up with their families. That was always the trouble. No place to go. They’d have to find an archway. Parky, but better than nothing.
From the end of the roadway behind them there came the patter of running feet. They looked back apprehensively over their shoulders. A knot of jostling shouting youths was surging towards them, and further back they glimpsed blue uniforms.
“Get a move on,” urged Lofty again. They broke into a run. On their left was a narrow alley, little more than a passage, and they doubled down it. It was long and straight, its sides unbroken by doorways, a depressing canyon, claustrophobic and moldering. They had covered more than half of it when the sound of the shouting grew louder.
“We’d best leave ’er, Lofty,” said Buzz in a matter of fact voice.
“That you don’t!” Rosie said. She was beginning to sober up in the cold night air. “If you think you’re going to scarper off and leave me to that there bunch you’ve got another think coming.” Her hands tightened spasmodically on the boys’ arms.
They made a dash for it to Latham Street from which radiated a maze of small and ill lit roads. They darted across the thoroughfare to get away from the passers-by. A car hooted at them indignantly, the driver reviling them obscenely from his side window.
Once in Logwood Grove they stopped, all of them panting and out of
breath. Their immediate danger passed, the boys at once forgot all about it. Buzz tugged out a bottle of whisky from his overcoat pocket. He took a deep swig and handed it to Rosie. “Here,” he said, “have a go—but don’t drain it, mind!”
“Haven’t you got no gin?” she asked querulously.
“Lofty’s got the gin,” Buzz said. “One thing at a time as the sailor said to his mates!”
They walked slowly on down the street. Logwood Grove consisted of two-storeyed houses backed by the hoarding bordered cutting of the railway line. The dwellings grew increasingly squalid until, at the end of the residential area, they petered out altogether into a down-at-heel district of warehouses and small factories. Against the skyline loomed the obese bulk of a gasometer.
Buzz wondered who should be the first with Rosie, Lofty or himself. Not that he minded. He wasn’t particular. Rosie was wondering the same thing. She was equally indifferent. It was a part of her evening routine, going with boys, that was, when she could get away.
She thought that she could go for Buzz. His heart would be in it, unlike so many of the weeds who did it just to bolster up their own silly egos. She liked his thick shoulders and quick smile. A bit stocky, but then you couldn’t expect everything. He dressed smartly too, took trouble with himself, and his finger nails were clean.
The Smell of Evil Page 16