by Alan Beechey
“Alphabetical order,” Oliver commented, reading the hand-lettered tabs. “Identity cards, inoculations, international publishing rights, jewelry, jury duty, kitchen appliances, knighthood, laundry, legal actions, library membership, life insurance, loans, Lorina…Want to see what he kept about you? It’s quite a thick file. Actually, it’s several.”
He hefted the files out of the drawer and piled them on top of the desk. Several odd-sized papers and documents avalanched across the shiny surface. Most had other sheets of notepaper stapled to them, covered in Sir Harry’s spidery handwriting. More recent records were adorned with fluorescent yellow labels. Lorina picked up a booklet with a little cry.
“This is my school report, from when I was eight years old,” she cried in amazement. “And here’s my certificate of confirmation. And an article from the local newspaper about a ballet recital when I was twelve. God, I look awful in this picture. No, you don’t” she added laughingly as Oliver tried to snatch the sallow clipping. Satan chose the moment to bite firmly into his ankle, but Oliver was used to the beast’s habits and pushed him away.
“I think he always wanted to write his autobiography, which is why he made notes about everything that ever happened to him.” Lorina chuckled. “Who’d believe the old fraud had never traveled further than a day trip to Boulogne?”
“There’s no entry under L for ‘Last will and testament,’” Oliver reported. “Shall I try W for ‘Will’ or F for ‘Funeral arrangements’?”
The doorbell rang. Lorina looked startled.
“Can you get that?” she asked, looking down at her clothes. “I’ll search in the meanwhile. Oh, and Ollie—try to be diplomatic.”
Bristling at the last remark, Oliver headed for the hall and opened the front door without using the peephole. He was surprised to find himself staring into his uncle’s necktie.
“So Harry’s death was murder,” he breathed, raising his eyes, in which glimmerings of triumph were appearing.
“Actually, I’m here to pay my respects to Lorina,” Mallard replied scornfully. “And I sincerely hope you haven’t been bothering her with your half-witted theories. Can I come in?”
“It’s my Uncle Tim,” Oliver called as he ushered Mallard across the threshold. Lorina hurried into the hall and hugged the detective. Satan rubbed his cheek against Mallard’s trouser-leg.
“Found it,” she said to Oliver, waving a piece of paper. “O for ‘Obsequies.’”
“Lorina, my dear,” said Mallard, after he had recovered from his astonishment at her casual appearance, “I didn’t know your father as well as I hoped. His passing has sadly taken away the pleasure of achieving that ambition.”
“How nicely put!” she said with delight. “Oliver, you could learn a lot from your uncle. Now, you two make yourselves comfortable in the living room, I’m going to put the kettle on for tea. Give me a few minutes to change first, though.”
She skipped away. The men stared at each other uncomfortably, then drifted into the large, paneled living room. Satan followed them, trying to make his destination look like a coincidence.
“Not much like a house of mourning,” muttered Mallard eventually, as he inspected the line-up of Sir Harry Random’s literary awards on the stone mantelpiece. Oliver had perched on an unyielding recamier and patted his lap. The cat ignored him and began to wash himself in offensive places.
“It’s her way of dealing with it,” Oliver said. “She cares, I can tell.”
“Strange to think she’s now a rising star of the Civil Service, when she was neither civil nor serviceable in her student days,” Mallard continued. “You do realize, dear nephew, that if you want me to investigate Harry’s death as a murder, Lorina becomes a suspect? It was well known they didn’t see eye to eye.”
Oliver didn’t look at his uncle. “I thought you said it was a dead issue, excuse the pun.”
“I don’t think I should in the house of the deceased,” Mallard replied huffily. “Anyway, I meant what I said before. Officially, Harry drowned accidentally unless the inquest says otherwise.”
“So why are you here? You didn’t know the family that well. A sympathetic greeting card would have sufficed.”
“I called your office and Mr. Woodcock said you’d come here.” Mallard fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out his notebook, turning to the page on which he’d copied the two zigzag lines. He thrust it under Oliver’s nose.
“Mean anything?”
Oliver stared at the paper. “Some sort of trademark?” he ventured.
“That’s what Effie Strongitharm said, but I don’t think so,” Mallard replied, noticing Oliver’s unconscious flinch with curiosity. “Effie also found out, by the way, that the fountains in Trafalgar Square had been on all Sunday night, although I probably shouldn’t tell you that since it ruins my theory of Harry’s death.”
“Good old Effie,” muttered Oliver, trying to determine Mallard’s mood. “So what’s the story with the squiggly lines?”
“They’re a clue to a real murder. Some poor woman, so far unidentified, who was clubbed to death at Sloane Square tube station this morning. This symbol was on a card, attached to the murder weapon. A rather prosaic length of lead piping.”
“Sounds like a board game. You know, ‘Colonel Mustard, in the Ballroom, with the lead pipe.’” Oliver grinned. “I take it you thought this symbol might have some connection with the symbol drawn on Sir Harry Random’s chest?” he ventured.
“Not officially,” said Mallard guardedly.
“Then officially, I can’t think of any connection.”
“And unofficially?”
“Unofficially, I still can’t think of any connection,” Oliver confessed. “Although they do seem somewhat familiar. I’ll think about it.” He grinned again, for no apparent reason. The cat sneezed.
“Funny thing about Sloane Square station,” Mallard continued in an airy tone, idly stroking his white moustache. His nephew’s self-satisfaction was beginning to wear on him. “It’s got a river running through it.”
“Oh yes, the Westbourne. Goes through in a big pipe, doesn’t it? The station took a direct hit from a Nazi bomb in 1940, but the pipe didn’t break. Ah, now there’s a connection,” Oliver exclaimed, unaware of his uncle’s growing exasperation. “A bomb once went off in Trafalgar Square, too. Sometime in the 1880s, planted by the Irish Nationalists. Nearly destroyed Nelson’s Column.”
“I asked you if you recognized a symbol, I didn’t want a bloody history lesson,” Mallard growled. He reflected for a moment. “I suppose Harry’s views on Ireland weren’t noticeably controversial?” he added, with insufficient nonchalance.
“He thought the Irish Question was rhetorical.”
Mallard snapped his notebook shut. “Well, I doubt there’s much connection between his death and a century-old Fenian outrage. Just as I truly doubt there’s any connection between Harry and this morning’s victim.”
“Perhaps the two symbols will turn out to be the start of a coded message,” Oliver persisted. “Like the ‘dancing men’ in the Sherlock Homes story.”
“Oh, enough with the Sherlock Holmes, already,” Mallard protested.
“Sherlock Holmes?” echoed Lorina from the doorway. She had changed into a simple dark dress—navy, not black, both men noticed—and was carrying a loaded tea-tray. Mallard stepped over to take it from her. “Did you know that Oliver adores Sherlock Holmes?” she continued brightly, with a smile at her former boyfriend. “He likes anything to do with detection. You’ve been quite a role model for him, Uncle Tim.”
The two men fell into an embarrassed silence, each pretending to have a deep fascination with the way Lorina was placidly stirring the tea, like closely packed riders in an elevator studying the floor numbers. Mallard had more reason to be distracted, because he was trying to decide if he should be complimented or insulted by L
orina’s remark. Suddenly, Satan lifted his head and unspooled himself from his chair. A few seconds later, the doorbell rang and, with an apology, Lorina followed the cat out of the living room. They heard the front door open, and a strangely high-pitched voice declaimed a greeting.
“So, Squire Random’s finally trodden the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire, eh Ina, old thing?”
The voice stopped abruptly. Half a minute later, Lorina put her head around the door of the living room and smiled awkwardly at them.
“Look, sorry about this, but Ambrose has turned up, and I think he may have been drinking.”
Mallard got to his feet instantly. “I have to leave anyway, my dear,” he said quickly. “Thank you for the refreshments, and once again, my condolences on your loss, which I trust you’ll extend to your brother. Come, Oliver, I’ll give you a lift home.”
He brushed his lips against Lorina’s cheek and swept into the hallway, which was visibly empty of Ambrose, although a well-stuffed backpack had been dropped on the parquet.
“Will you be okay?” Oliver asked her anxiously as they stood at the front door. She nodded.
“I can handle Ambrose, whatever mood he’s in. He’s scared of me.”
She hugged him closely and watched him until he reached Mallard’s Rover. Then, with a sigh, she closed the door.
Chapter Three
“Yes, sir, they certainly were innocent times,” said Dworkin wistfully. “Take the works of Arthur Ransome, for instance. Boys and girls—barely adolescent—camping together, bathing together, living as free as nature intended. Did they hide their shame behind scraps of clothing, the swaddling bands of civilization?”
“I seem to recall some mention of bathing drawers,” muttered Oliver to the porter’s shoes.
“Ah, but there was nothing about scurrying behind bushes to change, was there, sir? Swallows, Amazons—these are names from nature, from myth. Bold and free, as nature intended. I certainly picture them all naked. That island in the lake was a return to Eden for them. Where else could a young girl be proleptically called ‘Titty’ without the vile sniggerings of censorious society?”
“Where indeed?” grunted Oliver, finding himself wondering where Dworkin, the day porter at the Sanders Club, had picked up the word “proleptically.” Must have been reading Anthony Burgess again.
Dworkin’s obsessions with Adamitic innocence were notorious at the club, and most members avoided eye-contact with the dapper ex-sapper. It had been noted that, since Dworkin had arrived a couple of years earlier, the club’s copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s collected tales always seemed to fall open at the picture of the Little Mermaid, and all the illustrated editions of The Water Babies had disappeared. Unfortunately, Dworkin was the only other occupant of the club lobby, and because the porter had initially applied for the job after serving on a jury with Sir Harry Random, Oliver felt obliged to put up with him for his late friend’s sake.
Oliver was at the club that Wednesday afternoon because of a brain wave that had struck him earlier in the day. On the night Sir Harry died, Oliver recalled, he had been waving a piece of paper that was in some way connected with his supposed assignation at six o’clock on Monday morning. This paper was in Harry’s possession while the two men were playing poker in the club’s card room; but it was gone by the time the police searched the body that he and Urchin had dragged from the fountain. Oliver knew that Harry never disposed of any paper carelessly—the state of his study suggested that Harry seldom disposed of any letters or notes at all. So where had the paper gone? If Harry had dropped it outside the Club, Oliver knew there was no chance of recovering it. But the fastidious old man was much more likely to have tossed it into one of the Club’s rarely emptied waste paper baskets. So at five o’clock, Oliver had hurriedly left the sleepy premises of Woodcock and Oakhampton and taken a taxi to the Sanders Club.
The basket in the card room had yielded nothing, so Oliver had moved on to the lobby. Under the curious eye of the dreaded Dworkin, he had scattered the contents of the metal rubbish bin across the lobby floor and was on his hands and knees, examining every piece of paper. If this failed, he would be forced to investigate the noisome rubbish pail in the gentlemen’s toilet. But even this had its appeal, compared with the porter’s flapping tongue.
“And then there’s Enid Blyton,” droned Dworkin, idly watching Oliver. “Five Have an Adventure. I bet they did, with no adult chaperons. Ah, good morning, Mr. Scroop!”
These last words were addressed to a tall and well-dressed member—the author of several short novels about a boy whose football turns out to be an entire alien world—who had hurried in from the sunshine and, like most members, was not prepared to break his stride until he was well past Dworkin. But catching sight of Oliver, crouched at the porter’s feet, he paused.
“Afternoon, Swithin.”
“Hello, Mr. Scroop,” said Oliver, hardly looking up. He disliked the author, who used a constant veneer of flippancy to mask his shallowness.
“Any particular reason why you’re treating the lobby like a garbage tip? Still hunting your precious Snark? Or is this the remains of some attempt on the world origami record?”
Scroop laughed, too loud and long for the weakness of the joke, and Dworkin—who had just realized he would have to clean up after Oliver—switched sides quickly and joined in the mockery. Oliver smiled.
“Actually, Mr. Scroop, I’ve lost my ferret.”
“Your ferret?” Scroop repeated nervously.
“Well, my books have been so successful since I introduced a ferret that I thought I’d buy a real one as a mascot. He just got away. Can you help me look for him?”
“You brought a ferret into the club?” Scroop said aghast.
“Yes, I wanted to show it to Mr. Dworkin. But I suppose it will turn up. Somewhere.”
“You’re mad!” spluttered Scroop. “Ferrets! Why they’re like long rats. They bite! Oh, my God! The committee shall hear about this.”
As he scurried away, his elegant boot caught a screwed-up piece of paper, sending it across the marble floor and under the porter’s desk. Oliver made a dive and fished the paper out again. He flattened it carefully and read it. Then he calmly folded it and slipped it into his pocket.
***
Under the cloudless sapphire sky, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew were basking in the warm coral and amber light of the early evening. Although still an hour from setting, the sun was hovering low above the broad, tree-lined horizon, almost dim enough to look at directly. Long, mauve shadows stretched across the elegant lawns. Inside the Temperate House, the massive Victorian greenhouse designed by Decimus Burton, the white girders and mullions were overlaid with a competing web of soft-edged shadow, which climbed slowly as the sun descended, creating new moirés and traceries with every minute. Former Colour-Sergeant Derwent Prussia, now a park attendant at the Gardens, observed the delicate effect from a walkway and hated it.
Prussia glanced at his watch. Nearly time to throw out the last remaining visitors, gawping at the tall palms and other plants that thrived in the hot, humid conditions. Which is more than could be said for him. He hated heat, hated summer, and only ventured into the Temperate House for the pleasure of shouting “This building is now closed!” at the end of the day. He liked that. It reminded him of his days in the army. His new boss had thought so, too.
“You sound like a sergeant-major,” Mr. Birdwich had once murmured, overhearing the park attendant at closing time. Prussia had been flattered. A sergeant-major! That was more than he’d ever dreamed.
“Have you ever considered asking them to leave politely?” Birdwich had continued, with a smile that disturbed only one side of his moon-shaped face.
“We’d never get the place emptied, sir. They’d take their time, pausing for one more read of the labels, one more sniff of the flowering shrubs.”
“Well, we can’t have people enjoying themselves in a public park, can we,” said Birdwich reflectively as he drifted away.
Prussia, immune to irony, smiled at the memory. Good head on that one, despite his youth, he thought. He looked at his watch again and braced himself against the handrail.
“This building is now closed!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Visiting hours are over!”
Prussia was poised on a catwalk that girdled the interior of the vast, rectangular greenhouse, about halfway up its sloping side, giving a view of the Kew pagoda across the treetops. He liked to deliver the message from an elevated position; it awakened some atavistic sense of authority within him. Perhaps he should try it in more than one language, what with all these foreign tourists—they were the hardest to get rid of. For some reason, German struck him as an appropriate alternative.
Fifty feet below, after several startled glances in his direction, the few visitors began to wander along the gravel paths toward the main doors of the building, the central pavilion in a string of greenhouses. Good. Obedience was good. He would be home early at this rate. But wait a moment! What about those two down there? Two men—are they men? The one staggering toward the spiral staircase in the opposite corner of the building certainly was. And he was climbing it!
“Oi! You’re going the wrong way!” Prussia shouted. The man paused, staring over the curving banister at the attendant above him. Then he ran on.
“Right!” thought Prussia, who habitually addressed himself in the same tones he used for members of the public. He marched swiftly along the catwalk, hoping to intercept the man, who was still climbing upward in an awkward helical path. But the man reached the top of the staircase first, and headed around the walkway in the opposite direction. There was nothing for it. Prussia was forced to run.
“Just you stop there!” he shouted as he made the turn. The man was wearing a lightweight business suit and seemed to be in his early forties. He looked back, grinned, and stumbled, striking his head on a girder. But he stayed on his feet and kept trotting away. The perspiring Prussia was starting to regret his vow never to remove his uniform jacket under any circumstances.