One Foot in the Grave

by Peter Dickinson

  Was that true? For instance, half an hour ago he had felt a strong urge to try and tell her about the Balham poisoner going, in her daze of beauty, innocent to the gallows. He was aware without thinking about it that this wish was partly defensive, an attempt to explain what he had been talking about, and so in a way undo Jenny’s last remark, and thus not have to add it as an extra element into the by now tedious puzzle. But at the same time he acknowledged a sense of daily increasing solidity in himself, obviously connected with improving health but not the same thing. And this growing confidence in his own existence seemed in turn to be connected to the shocking energy of certain memories—things not thought of for many, many years—which nowadays would spring at him out of the apparent oblivion where they had been lying all the while in ambush. It was as though memory itself was trying to assert his existence. He had seen these sights, done these things. In a sense he was them. And if he was going, after all, to live, then so were they.

  The door of the coffee room opened, and Pibble began to cringe a little. He had chosen the stuffy little nook because it was seldom used before meals, so he had hoped to enjoy an hour or so of unbraced privacy without having to struggle up to his own room. He glanced up to see what thickness of armor he was going to have to put on. Mrs. Fowles, Flycatchers’ general secretary, came in first, then held the door, beaming shortsightedly at the room and making a well-there-it-is gesture with her pudgy and bangle-rattling arm. The woman who stood just inside the door—Mrs. Fowles was evidently showing a newcomer round—was a striking contrast, slim, short, dressed all in heavy black, severely smart, probably in her sixties. She held a black cane in one hand, but not in a manner that suggested she was used to needing it. Her skin had the slight transparency of recent illness. She nodded at the room, accepting it as adequate but unenthralling. As Mrs. Fowles turned to go, the newcomer’s gaze met Pibble’s.

  Without realizing it, he had been staring. Perhaps the unconscious mind had a given signal that something out of the ordinary had happened, but now, before he could look decorously aside, recognition flashed from the woman’s eyes. Her gaze swept past him, unfaltering. With another nod she turned and followed Mrs. Fowles out. The door closed.

  Memory, of course, refused its task. It was like a Russian farmworker, hopelessly incompetent on the collective, allowing the crops to rot in the barns and the tractors to rust amid weed-riddled­ fields, but capable of raising record crops on his own small patch. Pibble was perfectly certain that he and the woman had met at some time, but equally unable to raise the faintest flicker of a notion where or when. Under his effort to recall her, the whole of his memory apparatus began to sulk. At one point, in an effort to restimulate it, he returned to the Balham poisoning but found that even there both outline and detail had become shadowy. In the end he took refuge in the notorious inattention of the old and returned to doddering through Country Life until the soft throb of the gong announced lunch.

  Energy continued to wane. Pibble ate at a table by himself, concentrating on his food with deliberate greed. Taste was a sense that seemed not to have diminished at all, and so could be asked to stand in for other varnished pleasures. The woman in black had attracted the attentions of Colonel McQueen, who must have invited himself to her table and was talking to her with gallant deference, but Pibble barely noticed them. He ate slowly and was one of the last to leave the dining room. He found Lady Treadgold waiting in ambush for him.

  Lady Treadgold had exercised her talent for inconvenience by insisting on having a sort of counter built for her so that she could eat standing; she had chosen the site for it so as to command the dining-room entrance. She lurked there like the Sphinx on the road to Thebes. Either one faced her riddling glare or one got no food.

  “Isn’t that the most extraordinary coincidence, Mr. Pibble?”

  “Ur?”

  “Surely you haven’t forgotten. We were talking about her only the other day—I can’t recall why—something to do with geese, killing the geese, Switzerland. No, it wasn’t Switzerland. Geese, geese … how infuriating … start somewhere else … my husband trained my memory for me, you know. I never used to have one at all … it could be quite embarrassing, forgetting which country you were in, Turkey, for instance, at some dinner and getting onto the subject of Armenians and asking the Minister of Justice about those massacres because you’d got it into your head you were in Greece—it was the fisherman’s fault, the way they pull on the ropes and sing; you see, when I was about nineteen I met this fisherman called Stavros—my dear man, it was an idyll, he couldn’t speak English and I couldn’t speak Greek—couldn’t have been more perfect; when I wanted to bring him home, Daddy said he’d have to go into six months’ quarantine, which was perfectly ridiculous considering the way Mummy used to smuggle her Cairns in and out … that’s why I always think I’m in Greece anywhere it’s hot enough for the fishermen to strip to the waist … Cairns, Daddy, Stavros, Greece, getting poor old Treadgold thrown out of Turkey, training my memory … yes, it’s like a chain. If you can remember one link, you can find the next … what was I trying to remember, now?”

  “Something about geese. You said it was extraordinary.”

  “It wasn’t Greece?”

  “Geese.”

  “I do have my good teeth in, too. Geese, geese … start somewhere else … this woman, Bunty Jaques—that’s it—the soi-disant­­ Mr. W, tax advantages, geese, Switzerland … there! Don’t you think that’s extraordinary?”

  “Are you …”

  “Of course I am. It’s the sort of thing I’m never wrong about. Never! I caught a spy once, you know. I was having luncheon with Nina Phipps at the Café Royal—Nina was having one of her divorces and wanted her hand held and an excuse for a good sob and some oysters; extraordinary woman, used to have cravings just before the case came to court, as if she was pregnant—and there he was. He’d grown a mustache and wasn’t wearing his eyeglass and done his hair differently, but I went straight home and rang up Treadgold at his office and said I’d seen this Hun who’d used to be the military attaché in Riga—oh, ten years before, when he was all heel clicks and the Bolshevik menace—perfectly absurd, those young Huns used to be, behaving as though banging their boots together and snatching your hand and kissing it was all that was needed to make you want to leap between the sheets with them, like those birds you see on the television which only have to snap their beaks and blow up their neck bags to have the females crouching down as though it’s the best thing that ever happened to them … they hanged him, but they wouldn’t let me watch, for some reason … yes, I’m right about this woman. She’s the one Bunty Jaques picked up, though she’s made herself look as different as she can. Not quite sure how to use her stick, you notice?”

  “Yes. But she’s been ill.”

  “I think so. I think so. What are you going to do, Mr. Pibble?”

  “Don’t know. Have to …”

  “Well, don’t take too long. You want me to keep my mouth shut, I expect?”

  “Please.”

  “All right, provided you do something. Otherwise … I’d have made a good detective, wouldn’t I?”

  She cocked her head into its outrageous-bid position and glared at him, challenging him not to take her seriously. Through his own weariness he was conscious that the challenge was at heart an appeal, a version of the universal appeal of the old, the cry that the world should think of them as something more than feeble and incompetent grotesques.

  “Pretty good,” he murmured. “Not the paperwork, ur?”

  She cackled till she choked, but amid the spasms contrived to wave him away.

  Sitting on the lowest stairs, resting for the climb, he became vaguely aware that there was something he was supposed to be doing. It troubled him because he couldn’t connect it either with the unwelcome burden imposed by Lady Treadgold’s news (if it was news) or with the no more welcome but at least s
elf-imposed task of unraveling Jenny’s relationship (if it was a relationship) with Tosca. It didn’t even seem to be concerned with the question of whether he could climb the stairs unaided. Or did it? Tottering along the lower passage, he had had his doubts, but now, after a surprisingly brief rest, he felt fully up to the effort.

  Still, he stayed where he was. With returning energy, the need to be lying in his own bed, floating in a half-doze, safe from the world, became less urgent. He found himself thinking again about the woman in black. Now, with no struggle, a picture of the Smith trial came back to him. The slight wait between witnesses. The sense of doubt and frustration after the apparently pliable little landlord of the Plough and Pigeon had proved such a sturdy liar. Shuffling at the side door, usher holding it for the new witness. She stops just inside, outlined for an instant against dark oak, and looks round the court. Her square-shouldered suit is plain but smart, her makeup subdued. She nods to herself, as if accepting the court, accepting the gaze of all those eyes, and only then, as she moves toward the witness box, seems to shrink a little and become frail and timid. “Mary Lou Porter,” whispers the Inspector, sitting on Pibble’s left. “Last time I saw her she was wearing rubies. And not much else.” “What were you doing there?” “Guest of Smith’s. Typical. Those rubies had never been reported nicked, so he lays on a show to tell us he’s got them and we can’t do anything about it.” “She doesn’t look the type.” “No.”

  She still didn’t, supposing it was the same woman. Only the nod woke any positive echo. She was small enough, and slight enough, and must be roughly the right age. The long disassembly line of the years could account for all other modifications to the original model. And the mannerism might have remained. The woman in black had accepted the coffee room with exactly the same gesture as that with which the witness had accepted the court. … The clothes, too. The combination of smartness and plainness … and Mary Lou Isaacs had been in Switzerland, having an operation. …

  Pibble got carefully to his feet and made his way back toward the incident room.

  Cass was polite, but clearly irritated.

  “Well, thanks,” he said. “I must say I can do without it. The Chief Super’s still a bit gone on that side of the case, but. …” He shrugged.

  “He’s not here?”

  “London.”

  “Oh.”

  Well, thought Pibble, that’s that. He was turning toward the door when Cass spoke again.

  “Don’t go for a moment, Mr. Pibble. I’d like a word with you. This shot you heard?”

  “Ur?”

  “Are you still certain about that?”

  (Neutral a few seconds before, Cass was now suddenly enemy.)

  “As certain as I was in the first place. Fairly but not totally.”

  “I see. … You mustn’t think I’m getting at you, Mr. Pibble. This is a sod of a setup we’ve got here. Sometimes I think if I’d had it to myself I’d have sorted it out in twenty-four hours, but the Chief Super … I’m not saying anything against him. I can see his problems. He’s put almost two years’ work in on Wilson and pushed his luck as far as it would go. I hear along the grapevine that there’s one or two up in London who wouldn’t mind if he made a mess of it … and what it’s all been costing the taxpayer! So there’s only one way he can look at it, but somehow … you know, if he hadn’t found you down here I don’t think he’d be taking quite such a blinkered view of the whole thing. It’s as though he’s got to prove you right, as well as himself.”

  “I’m sorry, but …”

  “Forget it. I shouldn’t have loosed off at you like that, even if it’s still officially my case, which it is, for God’s sake! He’s only here … oh, forget it! But if you could bring yourself to say something—don’t mind what—to let him take a slightly more open-minded … well, I’d be grateful. Sorry. I suppose he’d better know about this other nonsense, if only to show I haven’t been dragging my feet. Want me to give him a buzz? Just see if he’s in. … He’ll be in touch this evening in any case, and I could pass the old bag’s views on then. Hang on. …”

  He dialed, waited, gave an extension number, waited.

  “Mike? Busy? Your mate’s got a saucy bit of news for you—your side, not mine. I’ll pass you over. …”

  Pibble took the handset and started to explain, stammering and urring with the absurdity of the message. Mike listened patiently.

  “Well … what do you think, Jimmy? Not much by the sound of it.”

  “Ten minutes ago …”

  “Of course. Listen, I don’t think I can spare a bod who knows her to come and check up. I’m pretty certain she’s still in Switzerland. She’s on the move-watch list, but there’s a bit of a time lag there. … Listen, best I can suggest is you take another look at her, talk to her if you get the chance, see what you think then. Now, just supposing Lady T’s right—or you even think she might be right—you’d better have a word with our friend. He’s got this heart, you know. I don’t want him bumping into Mary Lou—or even somebody who looks a bit like Mary Lou—and dropping dead of shock. So he’d better know, either way. Think you can manage that?”

  “I expect so.”

  “Good. You sound a bit brighter, Jimmy.”

  “I have my ups and downs.”

  “Keep it up, then. Pass me back to Ted, will you? See you.”

  Pibble passed the receiver over and rose incautiously enough to bring on the blackness. He came to, to find himself still upright, propped against the end of the desk, with Cass looking at him with the usual mixture of surprise and pity, tinged with that element of disgust which springs from the knowledge that the watcher will himself one day arrive at this dotage. Pibble scrabbled for his stick and stumped his way out.

  Mrs. Fowles flapped in the friendly chaos of her office like a hen in a nest box. (“The shareholders put up with her,” Jenny had once said, “because she’s a scapegoat. She’s untidy for the rest of us.”)

  “You might have met her, Mr. Pibble,” piped Mrs. Fowles. “Colonel McQueen certainly thought he had. Or said he thought he had,” she added shrewdly. “She asked me who you were after we saw you in the coffee room this morning.”

  “Oh. Did she—”

  “It was quite casual, Mr. Pibble. She was interested in all the residents, though she’ll only be here for a month, I believe. She’s convalescing after surgery, you know.”

  “Is she English?”

  “Oh, I think so. Pereira’s only her married name. She’s led a very interesting life, I should think. She’s still rather beautiful, isn’t she?”

  It had taken Pibble a long time to discover that Mrs. Fowles’s curious little-girl voice was capable of great subtlety of innuendo. He smiled, and she smiled back.

  “I should think you might have met her,” she said.

  The emphasis of the pronoun was barely perceptible, but enough to imply both that McQueen had not done so and that there was a reason other than pure coincidence why Pibble might.

  “Well, thanks,” he said. “Do you know if she’s been abroad recently?”

  “Why, yes. She booked in from—now, where’s that dratted folder? Bother, I’ll have to take that call, Mr. Pibble, excuse me. … Hello, Flycatchers. …”

  Pibble mumbled his way out, wondering how much she told inquirers about the other residents—Wilson, for instance.

  Again his legs started to totter him toward his room, but he discovered that the notion of dozing now bored him. Keep it up, Mike had said. Keep what up? Never mind. … Voices rose in the bridge room, but when he poked his head round there was only the usual four in action. In the TV room three more residents were watching the dreary routine of weekday racing. The large morning room was empty. It looked like a doze after all. As he passed the coffee-room door, a waitress started to go back through, pulling the trolley with the urn on it behind her. Holding the doo
r, Pibble saw the woman in black sitting, apparently alone, apparently doing nothing, in the chair next to where he’d sat that morning. Deliberately he allowed himself to shrink a little, then doddered in, using his stick more than he needed. He picked up a Country Life and lowered himself carefully beside her.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” he muttered. “Usually sit here.”

  “No.”

  He read carefully through the gardening article, forcing himself to understand every sentence. When he’d finished he glanced at her. She seemed not to have moved at all, but was staring with trancelike chill attention at a harsh still life of scarlet poppies on the wall above the sideboard. It made him feel painfully absurd and dotardly, trying to break in on this striking stranger.

  “Wilt,” he mumbled. “Fellow says he’s got the answer.”

  “Oh.”

  “I wonder if he’s right. I wish I’d known that twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty years you’ve had it?”