by Tom Sharpe
‘If she went away she’d have taken half her wardrobe,’ he said. ‘I know women. On the other hand if she’s pushing up twenty tons of premix she wouldn’t need more than what she’s got on.’
Eva’s wardrobe was found to be well stocked. Even Wilt had to admit that she hadn’t taken much with her.
‘What was she wearing when you last saw her?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Lemon loungers,’ said Wilt.
‘Lemon what?’
‘Pyjamas,’ said Wilt, adding to the list of incriminating evidence against him. The Inspector made a note of the fact in his pocketbook.
‘In bed, was she?’
‘No,’ said Wilt. ‘Round at the Pringsheims’.’
‘The Pringsheims? And who might they be?’
‘The Americans I told you about who live in Rossiter Grove.’
‘You haven’t mentioned any Americans to me,’ said the Inspector.
‘I’m sorry. I thought I had. I’m getting muddled. She went away with them.’
‘Oh did she? And I suppose we’ll find they’re missing too?’
‘Almost certainly,’ said Wilt. ‘I mean if she was going away with them they must have gone too and if she isn’t with them I can’t imagine where she has got to.’
‘I can,’ said the Inspector, looking with distasteful interest at a stain on a sheet one of the detectives had found in the dirty linen basket. By the time they left the house the incriminating evidence consisted of the sheet, an old dressing-gown cord that had found its way mysteriously into the attic, a chopper that Wilt had once used to open a tin of red lead, and a hypodermic syringe which Eva had got from the vet for watering cacti very precisely during her Indoor Plant phase. There was also a bottle of tablets with no label on it.
‘How the hell would I know what they are?’ Wilt asked, when confronted with the bottle. ‘Probably aspirins. And anyway it’s full.’
‘Put it with the other exhibits,’ said the Inspector. Wilt looked at the box.
‘For God’s sake, what do you think I did with her? Poisoned her, strangled her, hacked her to bits with a chopper and injected her with Biofood?’
‘What’s Biofood?’ asked Inspector Flint with sudden interest.
‘It’s stuff you feed plants with,’ said Wilt. ‘The bottle’s on the windowsill.’
The Inspector added the bottle of Biofood to the box. ‘We know what you did with her, Mr Wilt,’ he said. ‘It’s how that interests us now.’
They went out to the police car and drove round to the Pringsheims’ house in Rossiter Grove. ‘You just sit in the car with the constable here while I go and see if they’re in,’ said Inspector Flint, and went to the front door. Wilt sat and watched while he rang the bell. He rang again. He hammered on the doorknocker and finally he walked round through the gate marked Tradesman’s Entrance to the kitchen door. A minute later he was back and fumbling with the car radio.
‘You’ve hit the nail on the head all right, Wilt,’ he snapped. ‘They’ve gone away. The place is a bloody shambles. Looks like they’ve had an orgy. Take him out.’
The two detectives bundled Wilt, no longer Mr Wilt but plain Wilt and conscious of the fact, out of the car while the Inspector called Fenland Constabulary and spoke with sinister urgency about warrants and sending something that sounded like the D brigade up. Wilt stood in the driveway of 12 Rossiter Grove and wondered what the hell was happening to him. The order of things on which he had come to depend was disintegrating around him.
‘We’re going in the back way,’ said the Inspector. ‘This doesn’t look good.’
They went down the path to the kitchen door and round to the back garden. Wilt could see what the Inspector had meant by a shambles. The garden didn’t look at all good. Paper plates lay about the lawn or, blown by the wind, had wheeled across the garden into honeysuckle or climbing rose while paper cups, some squashed and some still filled with Pringsheim punch and rainwater, littered the ground. But it was the beefburgers that gave the place its air of macabre filth. They were all over the lawn, stained with coleslaw so that Wilt was put in mind of Clem.
‘The dog returns to his vomit,’ said Inspector Flint, evidently reading his mind. They crossed the terrace to the lounge windows and peered through. If the garden was bad the interior was awful.
‘Smash a pane in the kitchen window and let us in,’ said the Inspector to the taller of the two detectives. A moment later the lounge window slid back and they went inside.
‘No need for forcible entry,’ said the detective. ‘The back door was unlocked and so was this window. They must have cleared out in a hell of a hurry.’
The Inspector looked round the room and wrinkled his nose. The smell of stale pot, sour punch and candle smoke still hung heavily in the house.
‘If they went away,’ he said ominously, and glanced at Wilt.
‘They must have gone away,’ said Wilt, who felt called upon to make some comment on the scene, ‘no one would live in all this mess for a whole weekend without …’
‘Live? You did say “live” didn’t you?’ said Flint, stepping on a piece of burnt beefburger.
‘What I meant …’
‘Never mind what you meant, Wilt. Let’s see what’s happened here.’
They went into the kitchen where the same chaos reigned and then into another room. Everywhere it was the same. Dead cigarette ends doused in cups of coffee or ground out on the carpet. Pieces of broken record behind the sofa marked the end of Beethoven’s Fifth. Cushions lay crumpled against the wall. Burnt-out candles hung limply post-coital from bottles. To add a final touch to the squalor someone had drawn a portrait of Princess Anne on the wall with a red felt pen. She was surrounded by helmeted policemen and underneath was written.
THE FUZZ AROUND OUR ANNY THE ROYAL FAMLYS FANNY THE PRICK IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE CUNT.
Sentiments that were doubtless perfectly acceptable in Women’s Lib circles but were hardly calculated to establish the Pringsheims very highly in Inspector Flint’s regard.
‘You’ve got some nice friends, Wilt,’ he said.
‘No friends of mine,’ said Wilt, with feeling. ‘The sods can’t even spell.’
They went upstairs and looked in the big bedroom. The bed was unmade, clothes, mostly underclothes, were all over the floor or hung out of drawers and an unstoppered bottle of Joy lay on its side on the dressing-table. The room stank of perfume.
‘Jesus wept,’ said the Inspector, eyeing a pair of jockstraps belligerently. ‘All that’s missing is some blood.’
They found it in the bathroom. Dr Scheimacher’s cut hand had rained bloodstains in the bath and splattered the tiles with dark blotches. The bathroom door with its broken frame was hanging from the bottom hinge and there were spots of blood on the paintwork.
‘I knew it,’ said the Inspector, studying their message and that written in lipstick on the mirror above the washbasin. Wilt looked at it too. It seemed unduly personal.
WHERE WILT FAGGED AND EVA RAN WHO WAS THEN THE MALE CHAUVINIST PIG?
‘Charming,’ said Inspector Flint. He turned to look at Wilt whose face was now the colour of the tiles. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that. Not your handiwork?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Wilt.
‘Nor this?’ said the Inspector, pointing to the bloodstains in the bath. Wilt shook his head. ‘And I suppose this has nothing to do with you either?’ He indicated a diaphragm that had been nailed to the wall above the lavatory seat.
WHERE THE B SUCKS THERE SUCK I UNDERNEATH A DUTCH CAP NICE AND DRY.
Wilt stared at the thing in utter disgust.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ he muttered. ‘It’s all so awful.’
‘You can say that again,’ the Inspector agreed, and turned to more practical matters. ‘Well, she didn’t die in here.’
‘How can you tell?’ asked the younger of the two detectives.
‘Not enough blood.’ The Inspector looked round uncerta
inly. ‘On the other hand one hard bash …’ They followed the bloodstains down the passage to the room where Wilt had been dollknotted.
‘For God’s sake don’t touch anything,’ said the Inspector, easing the door open with his sleeve, ‘the fingerprint boys are going to have a field day here.’ He looked inside at the toys.
‘I suppose you butchered the children too,’ he said grimly.
‘Children?’ said Wilt. ‘I didn’t know they had any.’
‘Well if you didn’t,’ said the Inspector, who was a family man, ‘the poor little buggers have got something to be thankful for. Not much by the look of things but something.’
Wilt poked his head round the door and looked at the Teddy Bear and the rocking horse. ‘Those are Gaskell’s,’ he said, ‘he likes to play with them.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t know they had any children?’
‘They haven’t. Gaskell is Dr Pringsheim. He’s a biochemist and a case of arrested development according to his wife.’ The Inspector studied him thoughtfully. The question of arrest had become one that needed careful consideration.
‘I don’t suppose you’re prepared to make a full confession now?’ he asked without much hope.
‘No I am not,’ said Wilt.
‘I didn’t think you would be, Wilt,’ said the Inspector. ‘All right, take him down to the Station. I’ll be along later.’
The detectives took Wilt by the arms. It was the last straw.
‘Leave me alone,’ he yelled. ‘You’ve got no right to do this. You’ve got—’
‘Wilt,’ shouted Inspector Flint, ‘I’m going to give you one last chance. If you don’t go quietly I’m going to charge you here and now with the murder of your wife.’
Wilt went quietly. There was nothing else to do.
*
‘The screw?’ said Sally. ‘But you said it was the con rod.’
‘So I was wrong,’ said Gaskell. ‘She cranks over.’
‘It, G, it. It cranks over.’
‘OK. It cranks over so it can’t be a con rod. It could be something that got tangled with the propshaft.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like weeds.’
‘Why don’t you go down and have a look yourself?’
‘With these glasses?’ said Gaskell. ‘I wouldn’t be able to see anything.’
‘You know I can’t swim,’ said Sally. ‘I have this leg.’
‘I can swim,’ said Eva.
‘We’ll tie a rope round you. That way you won’t drown,’ said Gaskell, ‘all you’ve got to do is go under and feel if there’s anything down there.’
‘We know what’s down there,’ said Sally. ‘Mud is.’
‘Round the propshaft,’ said Gaskell. ‘Then if there is you can take it off.’
Eva went into the cabin and put on the bikini.
‘Honestly, Gaskell, sometimes I think you’re doing this on purpose. First it’s the con rod and now it’s the screw.’
‘Well, we’ve got to try everything. We can’t just sit here,’ said Gaskell, ‘I’m supposed to be back in the lab tomorrow.’
‘You should have thought of that before,’ said Sally. ‘Now all we need is a goddam Albatross.’
‘If you ask me we’ve got one,’ said Gaskell, as Eva came out of the cabin and put on a bathing cap.
‘Now where’s the rope?’ she asked. Gaskell looked in a locker and found some. He tied it round her waist and Eva clambered over the side into the water.
‘It’s ever so cold,’ she giggled.
‘That’s because of the Gulf Stream,’ said Gaskell, ‘it doesn’t come this far round.’
Eva swam out and put her feet down.
‘It’s terribly shallow and full of mud.’
She waded round hanging on to the rope and groped under the stern of the cruiser.
‘I can’t feel anything,’ she called.
‘It will be further under,’ said Gaskell, peering down at her. Eva put her head under the water and felt the rudder.
‘That’s the rudder,’ said Gaskell.
‘Of course it is,’ said Eva, ‘I know that, silly. I’m not stupid.’
She disappeared under the boat. This time she found the propeller but there was nothing wrapped round it.
‘It’s just muddy, that’s all,’ she said, when she resurfaced. ‘There’s mud all along the bottom.’
‘Well there would be wouldn’t there,’ said Gaskell. Eva waded round to the side. ‘We just happen to be stuck on a mudbank.’
Eva went down again but the propshaft was clear too. ‘I told you so,’ said Sally, as they hauled Eva back on board. ‘You just made her do it so you could see her in her plastic kini all covered with mud. Come, Botticelli baby, let Sally wash you off.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Gaskell. ‘Penis arising from the waves.’ He went back to the engine and looked at it uncertainly. Perhaps there was a blockage in the fuel line. It didn’t seem very likely but he had to try something. They couldn’t stay stuck on the mudbank forever.
On the foredeck Sally was sponging Eva down.
‘Now the bottom half, darling,’ she said, untying the string.
‘Oh, Sally. No, Sally.’
‘Labia babia.’
‘Oh, Sally, you are awful.’
Gaskell struggled with the adjustable wrench. All this Touch Therapy was getting to him. And the plastic.
*
At the County Hall the Principal was doing his best to pacify the members of the Education Committee who were demanding a full enquiry into the recruitment policy of the Liberal Studies Department.
‘Let me explain,’ he said patiently, looking round at the Committee, which was a nice balance of business interests and social commitment. ‘The 1944 Education Act laid down that all apprentices should be released from their places of employment to attend Day Release Classes at Technical Colleges …’
‘We know all that,’ said a building contractor, ‘and we all know it’s a bloody waste of time and public money. This country would be a sight better off if they were left to get on with their jobs.’
‘The courses they attend,’ continued the Principal before anyone with a social conscience could intervene, ‘are craft-oriented with the exception of one hour, one obligatory hour of Liberal Studies. Now the difficulty with Liberal Studies is that no one knows what it means.’
‘Liberal Studies means,’ said Mrs Chatterway, who prided herself on being an advocate of progressive education, in which role she had made a substantial contribution to the illiteracy rate in several previously good primary schools, ‘providing socially deprived adolescents with a firm grounding in liberal attitudes and culturally extending topics …’
‘It means teaching them to read and write,’ said a company director. ‘It’s no good having workers who can’t read instructions.’
‘It means whatever anyone chooses it to mean,’ said the Principal hastily. ‘Now if you are faced with the problem of having to find lecturers who are prepared to spend their lives going into classrooms filled with Gasfitters or Plasterers or Printers who see no good reason for being there, and keeping them occupied with a subject that does not, strictly speaking, exist, you cannot afford to pick and choose the sort of staff you employ. That is the crux of the problem.’
The Committee looked at him doubtfully.
‘Am I to understand that you are suggesting that Liberal Studies teachers are not devoted and truly creative individuals imbued with a strong sense of vocation?’ asked Mrs Chatterway belligerently.
‘No,’ said the Principal, ‘I am not saying that at all. I am merely trying to make the point that Liberal Studies lecturers are not as other men are. They either start out odd or they end up odd. It’s in the nature of their occupation.’
‘But they are all highly qualified,’ said Mrs Chatterway, ‘they all have degrees.’
‘Quite. As you say they all hold degrees. They are all qualified teachers but the stresses to which they
are subject leave their mark. Let me put it this way. If you were to take a heart transplant surgeon and ask him to spend his working life docking dogs’ tails you would hardly expect him to emerge unscathed after ten years’ work. The analogy is exact, believe me, exact.’
‘Well, all I can say,’ protested the building contractor, ‘is that not all Liberal Studies lecturers end up burying their murdered wives at the bottom of pile shafts.’
‘And all I can say,’ said the Principal, ‘is that I am extremely surprised more don’t.’
The meeting broke up undecided.
11
As dawn broke glaucously over East Anglia Wilt sat in the Interview Room at the central Police Station isolated from the natural world and in a wholly artificial environment that included a table, four chairs, a detective sergeant and a fluorescent light on the ceiling that buzzed slightly. There were no windows, just pale green walls and a door through which people came and went occasionally and Wilt went twice to relieve himself in the company of a constable. Inspector Flint had gone to bed at midnight and his place had been taken by Detective Sergeant Yates who had started again at the beginning.
‘What beginning?’ said Wilt.
‘At the very beginning.’
‘God made heaven and earth and all …’
‘Forget the wisecracks,’ said Sergeant Yates.
‘Now that,’ said Wilt, appreciatively, ‘is a more orthodox use of wise.’
‘What is?’
‘Wisecrack. It’s slang but it’s good slang wisewise if you get my meaning.’
Detective Sergeant Yates studied him closely. ‘This is a soundproof room,’ he said finally.
‘So I’ve noticed,’ said Wilt.
‘A man could scream his guts out in here and no one outside would be any the wiser.’
‘Wiser?’ said Wilt doubtfully. ‘Wisdom and knowledge are not the same thing. Someone outside might not be aware that …’
‘Shut up,’ said Sergeant Yates.
Wilt sighed. ‘If you would just let me get some sleep …’