by Alan Beechey
Now the bell died away, and silence fell outside. But inside, in the darkness of his bedroom, Dworkin became aware again of his body’s chorus: the tide of blood pumping in his ears, the liquid fauxbourdon from his lungs with every breath, the distant grumbling that refused to subside, although he had eaten the salmon paste sandwich three hours ago. There was a time—how long now?—when his digestion was silent, when he didn’t wheeze, when he woke up in the morning and his chin and pillow were still dry. For years, he had deprecated the signs of his own aging that he would have found distasteful in others—a forgotten blob of shaving soap behind the ear, an occasional unzipped fly. Now, in these insomniac hours, Dworkin almost believed he could hear himself growing older, the crackle of brittle skin settling into wrinkles, the draining of pigment from his hair, and the steady pitter-patter of a day’s loss of brain cells, cascading like invisible dandruff onto his shoulders.
What was that? His stomach again? No, the noise was outside himself. A cat, probably, nosing around the dustbins. He didn’t want to be old. Those gossipy fools at the Sanders Club were wrong when they said he was too fond of children. He wanted to be a child, to relive the childhood he’d failed to appreciate the first time, because…
There again! No doubt this time. Somebody is downstairs, moving slowly, quietly. Call the police? The only telephone is downstairs. All right, a surprise attack.
Dworkin threw back the covers and noiselessly eased himself onto the floor, sliding his feet into the waiting leather slippers. He slept naked, but his thin silk kimono was within reach. Knotting the sash, he crept out of the bedroom and down the stairs, straining his ears. There was nobody in the hallway, but the door to his living room was open. He was sure he had closed it before going to bed. He reached the bottom of the stairs and felt in the umbrella stand for the shillelagh his brother had brought him during an unscheduled stopover at Shannon airport, couldn’t find it, chose a tightly rolled umbrella instead, holding it ferrule-first, like a fencing foil. Then he slid into the living room, reaching for the light switch.
“Don’t move,” he yelled as the room was suddenly bathed in a weak, yellowish light. He squinted and stared. Nothing was out of place in the room. Except for the little girl in the plain blue dress, sitting on the settee, who stared back at him with frightened, green eyes. She drew her knees up to her chin.
“Who are you?” he yelped.
The girl didn’t speak. Dworkin lowered the umbrella, aware that she posed no threat and, more important, that he looked ridiculous.
His first impression, that she was about twelve or thirteen, had been wrong. Her figure had the slim lankiness of that age, but from her features, he could see now that she was in her late teens, if not early twenties. The sense of childishness was real, however: She wore no make-up on her pretty, freckled face and her long, auburn hair was parted simply in the middle of her head. She continued to watch him timidly.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
The girl lowered her legs primly and placed her hands in her lap.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?” she asked meekly.
“No. I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”
“You have, you know,” the girl said, but not as an accusation. “I’ve lived around the corner for ten years. Since I was nine years old.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember,” said Dworkin, suddenly conscious of his naked, blue-veined legs below the kimono. He dropped the umbrella onto a chair.
“Well, I don’t go out much. My mother’s very strict. If she knew I was here now, she’d kill me.”
She tugged her dress tightly along her thighs.
“Anyway, I’ve decided that I have to find my own way,” she continued, a new resolve in her voice. “But I know so very little about the world, and I’m afraid of being an easy target for men of low morals. I’m still a…. well, you know.”
“Yes, I see,” mumbled Dworkin, aware that his heart was pounding. The girl looked directly at him and mustered a tentative smile.
“You’ve always seemed a very kind man, sir. So I’ve plucked up all my courage and come here tonight to ask you a big favor.”
“And that is?” Dworkin’s mouth was dry.
She stood up. “Please, Mr. Dworkin, would you make me a real woman?”
“Oh, my goodness gracious,” he stammered, taking a step backward and dropping into an armchair. The girl stood in silence for a moment. Then she sighed.
“Would this help you decide?” she asked. She hoisted her dress from the waist until the blue material hung in folds around her shoulders, revealing slender legs. Slipping her arms out of the dress’ sleeves, she pulled it over her head and discarded it. The long red hair floated down again.
Dworkin stared at the girl’s thin, pallid body, noticing the small breasts and unblemished skin. “Are you sure you’re nineteen?” he asked huskily.
“Nearly twenty,” she replied.
“I’m old enough to be your father,” he mused. Then he smiled. “But not your grandfather. Let’s go upstairs.”
Later, as Dworkin lay on the bed, there were new sounds—his faster heartbeat, his shallow, rasping breathing, and the girl’s steadier respiration. He reached for the alarm clock on his bedside locker. As he did, she stirred and looked at him with a predatory expression.
“That was wonderful,” she whispered, kissing the loose skin on his throat. “Let’s do it again.” Her lips slid to his wrinkled chest, teeth pulling playfully at the few white hairs.
“No, my child,” he said with an indulgent smile and a comforting pat on her perfect bottom, “we should rest a while. A man needs to get his…breath back.”
She threw her body over his beneath the sheets as if he hadn’t spoken, hugging him tightly and pressing her taut belly into the folds of damp flesh around his waist. Was the rhythmic thumping in his head getting louder?
“Look, I really can’t right away,” he gasped, trying now to push her away, but his arms were drained of strength. “You see, I have a heart condition. I have to be careful.”
Still, she didn’t hear. How could she over the screaming of blood. It was deafening him. And that ringing in the head.
“Come on, old man,” she snarled. “Now!”
She was suddenly heavy on his chest. Or was the weight some other pain? The ringing was louder, regular, insistent.
“I can’t breathe,” he wheezed. “Please…” But it was too late. The girl’s contorted, rapacious face began to fade from view, her cries dying away, until all that was left was the piercing ringing, ringing, in his ears.
The ringing…
Dworkin shook himself fully awake and gazed blearily at the alarm clock, but it wasn’t guilty of the noise. Quarter past midnight! Whoever was telephoning at this hour had better have a good reason for interrupting his regular Sunday night fantasy about the girl who lived across the street. Now he’d have to start all over again, and he wasn’t sure he could recreate the mood. He stumbled from his bed, put his woolen dressing gown on over his pajamas, searched unsuccessfully for his slippers, and staggered grumpily down the stairs. He really should get an upstairs extension.
“Yes?” he snapped into the telephone.
“Mr. Dworkin?”
“Yes. Who’s this?”
“This is Oliver Swithin, from the Sanders…”
“Oh, Mr. Swithin.” Dworkin knew that deference was never off-duty in his job. “How nice of you to call. What can I do for you, sir?”
“I have to ask you a question, very urgently. It could be a matter of life and death.”
“Please go on.”
“What sign are you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“What’s sign of the zodiac were you born under?”
That was it. Swithin had lost his marbles. Dworkin always thought the young ma
n was one dormouse short of a tea-party, and the behavior with the waste paper last week had only fueled this suspicion. But to wake people up in the middle of the night with some nonsensical question about signs of the zodiac! There could only be one solution: not being Californian (which might also have excused the time of the call), Swithin had to be insane. Dworkin knew exactly what to do: humor him, then telephone the authorities. Wasn’t his uncle some kind of bigwig at Scotland Yard?
“I’m Taurus, sir, the sign of the bull. My old father used to say I was born under the Bull and the Bull was rather surprised about it. Thank you for asking.”
A sigh of relief came down the phone line.
“Then let me ask you something else. You were on a jury a couple of years ago, at the Old Bailey.”
Juries now. Swithin had really gone over the edge. Not healthy for a young man to think about ferrets all day long. “Yes, sir. That’s where I first met your late friend, Sir Harry. It was through him that I got my job at the Sanders.”
“Can you remember anybody else on the jury?”
“Oh, sir, it was two years ago, and we didn’t deliberate very long, as I recall. Let me see.” Dworkin subsided onto the stairs, trying to remember. “Most of the talking was done by Sir Harry and another man, who was some kind of estate agent.”
“If I say some of the names, will that help?”
“You could try.”
“Nettie Clapper.”
“Clapper? Doesn’t ring a bell…”
“Some might say otherwise,” murmured Oliver. “Mark Sandys-Penza.”
“It sounds very familiar, but I couldn’t be sure.”
“Gordon Paper.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Vanessa Parmenter.”
“Yes!” Dworkin exclaimed. “Ah now, I definitely remember her. Young thing, isn’t she? Probably in her twenties but looked younger. Blonde hair. Lived in Kingston.”
Bingo. Oliver was silent for a moment. “I think that’s her,” he said quietly. “Any others?”
“I don’t know. Oh wait, there was this old fellow who kept us in stitches. Worked on the railways. What was his name? Arnie something.”
“Archie?”
“That’s it, Archie. Archie…Brock!”
“Any more?”
A pause. “No, sir, not that I can bring to mind right now.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dworkin, and please keep thinking. If you remember any other names, call me at the club. Don’t go back to bed. The police will call on you shortly and ask you to go with them. There’s nothing to worry about. Good night.”
Paranoid, thought Dworkin as he put the receiver down. Poor Mr. Swithin, thinks he’s in some Kafka story. Ah well, time enough to call the funny farm in the morning. Vanessa Parmenter, eh? He’d forgotten about her. Now what if she were to turn up in his sitting room in the middle of the night…
***
Oliver ran from the club manager’s office, where he had been using the telephone, and found his uncle in the lobby. Mallard was still speaking to Detective Sergeant Moldwarp at the Yard. The waiter, who had bound Scroop’s bleeding finger, put him into a taxi, and scooped the ferret back into its box, was sitting on a bench, watching the activity with his mouth open a little and his eyes open a lot.
“That’s it!” Oliver shouted. Mallard covered the mouthpiece.
“What?”
“Dworkin remembered two of the victims. It’s definitely that jury.”
Mallard closed his eyes and seemed to say a short prayer.
“What sign was Dworkin?” he asked.
“He’s Taurus.”
“Then he’s safe for now. I’ll get one of my lads to pick him up and take him somewhere safe. Did he give us any new names?”
“No.”
“Hell’s teeth. So we still don’t know who the Virgin is.” He returned to the telephone. “I don’t care what time it is, Sergeant, I need those records. Even if we have to wake up the Lord Chancellor. We must find out who was on that jury. Yes, it’s definite now. Good, call me back.”
Mallard hung up the phone. “Bloody red tape,” he muttered. “I may have to go over to the Yard and add my own weight to the proceedings. I wish Effie were there—she has ways of getting things done that even I can’t fathom.”
“Shall I call her?” asked Oliver, hopefully. He was prepared to risk her sleepy irritation for the privilege of being the first voice she’d hear on waking. Maybe it wouldn’t be the only time. He wanted to find out what had she thought of the inscription he had eventually written in the Finsbury book and mutely handed over when she returned from the hospital with Geoffrey: “To Effie, best wishes, Oliver (O.C. Blithely).” Could she read between the lines?
“No, let her sleep.” Mallard noticed the waiter, who had been attempting to follow the conversation without success. The Lord Chancellor was a virgin? “How about a couple of brandies?” Mallard asked genially.
“I shall sit here, on and off, for days and days,” the waiter intoned, and began whistling. Then he noticed Mallard’s expression, and slipped away quickly.
“Brandy, uncle?” asked Oliver. “Not champagne?”
“No celebrations yet,” Mallard replied seriously. “We haven’t saved the life of the Virgo, even assuming there is one, and we certainly haven’t identified the murderer.”
“Given that the victims were on a jury,” Oliver mused, “it does rather suggest a motive—some connection with the case they were trying, a disgruntled convict, perhaps. The whole zodiac thing could have been a smoke screen to get us looking in the wrong direction.”
“As soon as we get the court records, we’ll be able to draw up a list of suspects. Right now, I want to get what remains of that jury into protective custody as soon as I can. Do you have Dworkin’s address? Ollie?”
But Oliver wasn’t listening. His features had assumed a configuration rather similar to those of the recently departed waiter, like a startled haddock.
“I think I may be able to get the names of the jurors more quickly,” he said slowly.
“How?”
“Harry Random kept notes on everything that happened to him during his life. He had the most extensive personal filing system—I know, I was looking through it earlier this week. I’m sure I saw a file marked ‘jury duty.’ It would be like him to have recorded everyone’s name, age, appearance—who knows, even their birth signs!”
Mallard produced his wallet and plucked out five twenty-pound notes. “Look, I have to go to the Yard. Take a cab and get out to Barnes as quickly as you can. And you’d better hope the newly domesticated Lorina hasn’t thrown away those files. I’ll send over a car to bring you back. Call me as soon as you get the names.”
***
Half an hour later, Oliver was hammering on the door of the Random home in Barnes. After a long wait, a window opened above the front door. Oliver could just make out the silhouette of a head.
“Who is it?” called a woman’s voice sternly.
“Lorina? It’s me, Oliver.”
“Oliver?” There was a pause, then a chuckle. “This is so sudden. Are we eloping?”
“Look, I’m sorry to disturb you so late,” he hissed, “but I need to see your father’s files. Very urgently.”
“Well, you certainly know how to sweep a girl off her feet, my Romeo,” Lorina said. “I’ll be right down.”
A minute later, a light came on in the entrance hall and Lorina opened the front door, clutching Satan, the cat, like a baby. She was wearing an oversize white T-shirt, which had fallen down over one shoulder, and apparently little else. Dworkin would have approved. Oliver, who didn’t need to be, was reminded anyway of how much he had always liked her shoulders. And her feet.
“I’m very sorry, Lorina,” he said again, stepping across the threshold without waiting fo
r an invitation. “It’s very important.” He set down the ferret’s traveling case.
“Last time you brought roses,” she said ruefully as he ran past her and headed for Sir Harry’s study. She closed the front door and followed.
“So what’s so urgent?” she asked, yawning. He was crouched over the filing cabinet that he knew contained Random’s personal files. The light was harsh to her sleepy eyes.
“We need this information to stop Harry’s murderer from killing again,” he told her.
“Murderer?” she faltered. She dropped the cat and sat down on an upright chairs. “Daddy was murdered?”
Oliver spun around, clutching the desk to keep his balance. “Oh my dear Lord,” he moaned softly, seeing her dark eyes fill with tears. “You didn’t know, did you? I completely forgot.”
“You said it was an accident,” she reminded him, clasping her hands in her lap and lowering her head. A tear splashed onto her wrist.
“The police thought it was an accident then,” he said, choosing to conceal his own opinions at the time. He scuttled across the floor on his knees, causing Satan to leap aside, and without seeking permission, slid his arms around her waist. Lorina fell into the embrace, resting her cheek on the top of his head. “But now we know it’s murder,” Oliver continued quietly, his face pressed against her sternum. “Your father was killed because he was on a jury. Back at the Old Bailey about two years ago. He’s not the only victim.”
She cried for about half a minute without moving. Then she sniffed loudly and pulled herself away. “I’m okay,” she said, wiping her eyes with the neckline of the T-shirt. “Thanks for the hug, Ollie. It was nice.”
“Is Ambrose staying here? He should hear this, too.”
“He didn’t want to stay in Daddy’s house. He’ll be back for the funeral on Monday. I suppose I should have guessed Daddy’s death was more than an accident, what with that gloomy Scotland Yard detective showing up during the week, asking all kinds of questions about Daddy’s life.”