by Tom Sharpe
*
Rossiter Grove hadn’t prepared Gaskell for the situation he found when Sally woke him with ‘Noah baby, it’s drywise topside. Time to fly the coop.’
He opened the cabin door and stepped outside to discover that Eva had already flown and had taken the airbed and the lifejackets with her.
‘You mean you left her outside all night?’ he said. ‘Now we’re really up Shit Creek. No paddle, no airbed, no goddam lifejackets, no nothing.’
‘I didn’t know she’d do something crazy like take off with everything,’ said Sally.
‘You leave her outside in the pouring rain all night she’s got to do something. She’s probably frozen to death by now. Or drowned.’
‘She tried to kill me. You think I was going to let her in when she’s tried to do that. Anyhow it’s all your fault for shooting your mouth off about that doll.’
‘You tell that to the law when they find her body floating downstream. You just explain how come she goes off in the middle of a storm.’
‘You’re just trying to scare me,’ said Sally. ‘I didn’t make her go or anything.’
‘It’s going to look peculiar if something has happened to her is all I’m saying. And you tell me how we’re going to get off here now. You think I’m going swimming without a lifejacket you’re mistaken. I’m no Spitz.’
‘My hero,’ said Sally.
Gaskell went into the cabin and looked in the cupboard by the stove. ‘And another thing. We’ve got a food problem. And water. There’s not much left.’
‘You got us into this mess. You think of a way out,’ said Sally.
Gaskell sat down on the bunk and tried to think. There had to be some way of letting people know they were there and in trouble. They couldn’t be far from land. For all he knew dry land was just the other side of the reeds. He went out and climbed on top of the cabin but apart from the church spire in the distance he could see nothing beyond the reeds. Perhaps if they got a piece of cloth and waved it someone would spot it. He went down and fetched a pillow case and spent twenty minutes waving it above his head and shouting. Then he returned to the cabin and got out the chart and pored over it in a vain attempt to discover where they were. He was just folding the map up when he spotted the pieces of Scrabble still lying on the table. Letters. Individual letters. Now if they had something that would float up in the air with letters on it. Like a kite. Gaskell considered ways of making a kite and gave it up. Perhaps the best thing after all was to make smoke signals. He fetched an empty can from the kitchen and filled it with fuel oil from beside the engine and soaked a handkerchief in it and clambered up on the cabin roof. He lit the handkerchief and tried to get the oil to burn but when it did there was very little smoke and the tin got too hot to hold. Gaskell kicked it into the water where it fizzled out.
‘Genius baby,’ said Sally, ‘you’re the greatest.’
‘Yeah, well if you can think of something practical let me know.’
‘Try swimming.’
‘Try drowning,’ said Gaskell.
‘You could make a raft or something.’
‘I could hack this boat of Scheimacher’s up. That’s all we need.’
‘I saw a movie once where there were these gauchos or Romans or something and they came to a river and wanted to cross and they used pigs’ bladders,’ said Sally.
‘Right now all we don’t have is a pig,’ said Gaskell.
‘You could use the garbage bags in the kitchen,’ said Sally. Gaskell fetched a plastic bag and blew it up and tied the end with string. Then he squeezed it. The bag went down.
Gaskell sat down despondently. There had to be some simple way of attracting attention and he certainly didn’t want to swim out across that dark water clutching an inflated garbage bag. He fiddled with the pieces of Scrabble and thought once again about kites. Or balloons. Balloons.
‘You got those rubbers you use?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Jesus, at a time like this you get a hard on,’ said Sally. ‘Forget sex. Think of some way of getting us off here.’
‘I have,’ said Gaskell, ‘I want those skins.’
‘You going to float downriver on a pontoon of condoms?’
‘Balloons,’ said Gaskell. ‘We blow them up and paint letters on them and float them in the wind.’
‘Genius baby,’ said Sally, and went into the toilet. She came out with a sponge bag. ‘Here they are. For a moment there I thought you wanted me.’
‘Days of wine and roses,’ said Gaskell, ‘are over. Remind me to divorce you.’ He tore a packet open and blew a contraceptive up and tied a knot in its end.
‘On what grounds?’
‘Like you’re a lesbian,’ said Gaskell, and held up the dildo. ‘This and kleptomania and the habit you have of putting other men in dolls and knotting them. You name it, I’ll use it. Like you’re a nymphomaniac.’
‘You wouldn’t dare. Your family would love it, the scandal.’
‘Try me,’ said Gaskell, and blew up another condom.
‘Plastic freak.’
‘Bull dyke.’
Sally’s eyes narrowed. She was beginning to think he meant what he said about divorce, and if Gaskell divorced her in England what sort of alimony would she get? Very little. There were no children and she had the idea that British courts were mean in matters of money. So was Gaskell and there was his family too. Rich and mean. She sat and eyed him.
‘Where’s your nail varnish?’ Gaskell asked when he had finished and twelve contraceptives cluttered the cabin.
‘Drop dead,’ said Sally, and went out on deck to think. She stared down at the dark water and thought about rats and death and being poor again and liberated. The rat paradigm. The world was a rotten place. People were objects to be used and discarded. It was Gaskell’s own philosophy and now he was discarding her. And one slip on this oily deck could solve her problems. All that had to happen was for Gaskell to slip and drown and she would be free and rich and no one would ever know. An accident. Natural death. But Gaskell could swim and there had to be no mistakes. Try it once and fail and she wouldn’t be able to try again. He would be on his guard. It had to be certain and it had to be natural.
Gaskell came out on deck with the contraceptives. He had tied them together and painted on each one a single letter with nail varnish so that the whole read HELP SOS HELP. He climbed up on the cabin roof and launched them into the air. They floated up for a moment, were caught in the light breeze and sagged sideways down on to the water. Gaskell pulled them in on the string and tried again. Once again they floated down on to the water.
‘I’ll wait until there’s some more wind,’ he said, and tied the string to the rail where they bobbed gently. Then he went into the cabin and lay on the bunk.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Sally asked.
‘Sleep. Wake me when there’s a wind.’
He took off his glasses and pulled a blanket over him.
Outside Sally sat on a locker and thought about drowning. In bed.
*
‘Mr Gosdyke,’ said Inspector Flint, ‘you and I have had dealings for a good many years now and I’m prepared to be frank with you. I don’t know.’
‘But you’ve charged him with murder,’ said Mr Gosdyke.
‘He’ll come up for remand on Monday. In the meantime I am going on questioning him.’
‘But surely the fact that he admits burying a lifesize doll …’
‘Dressed in his wife’s clothes, Gosdyke. In his wife’s clothes. Don’t forget that.’
‘It still seems insufficient to me. Can you be absolutely sure that a murder has been committed?’
‘Three people disappear off the face of the earth without a trace. They leave behind them two cars, a house littered with unwashed glasses and the leftovers of a party … you should see that house … a bathroom and landing covered with blood …’
‘They could have gone in someone else’s car.’
‘They could have but th
ey didn’t. Dr Pringsheim didn’t like being driven by anyone else. We know that from his colleagues at the Department of Biochemistry. He had a rooted objection to British drivers. Don’t ask me why but he had.’
‘Trains? Buses? Planes?’
‘Checked, rechecked and checked again. No one answering to their description used any form of public or private transport out of town. And if you think they went on a bicycle ride, you’re wrong again. Dr Pringsheim’s bicycle is in the garage. No, you can forget their going anywhere. They died and Mr Smart Alec Wilt knows it.’
‘I still don’t see how you can be so sure,’ said Mr Gosdyke.
Inspector Flint lit a cigarette. ‘Let’s just look at his actions, his admitted actions and see what they add up to,’ he said. ‘He gets a lifesize doll …’
‘Where from?’
‘He says he was given it by his wife. Where he got it from doesn’t matter.’
‘He says he first saw the thing at the Pringsheims’ house.’
‘Perhaps he did. I’m prepared to believe that. Wherever he got it, the fact remains that he dressed it up to look like Mrs Wilt. He puts it down that hole at the Tech, a hole he knows is going to be filled with concrete. He makes certain he is seen by the caretaker when he knows that the Tech is closed. He leaves a bicycle covered with his fingerprints and with a book of his in the basket. He leaves a trail of notes to the hole. He turns up at Mr Braintree’s house at midnight covered with mud and says he’s had a puncture when he hasn’t. Now you’re not going to tell me that he hadn’t got something in mind.’
‘He says he was merely trying to dispose of that doll.’
‘And he tells me he was rehearsing his wife’s murder. He’s admitted that.’
‘Yes, but only in fantasy. His story to me is that he wanted to get rid of that doll,’ Mr Gosdyke persisted.
‘Then why the clothes, why blow the thing up and why leave it in such a position it was bound to be spotted when the concrete was poured down? Why didn’t he cover it with earth if he didn’t want it to be found? Why didn’t he just burn the bloody thing or leave it by the roadside? It just doesn’t make sense unless you see it as a deliberate plan to draw our attention away from the real crime.’ The Inspector paused. ‘Well now, the way I see it is that something happened at that party we don’t know anything about. Perhaps Wilt found his wife in bed with Dr Pringsheim. He killed them both. Mrs Pringsheim puts in an appearance and he kills her too.’
‘How?’ said Mr Gosdyke. ‘You didn’t find that much blood.’
‘He strangled her. He strangled his own wife. He battered Pringsheim to death. Then he hides the bodies somewhere, goes home and lays the doll trail. On Sunday he disposes of the real bodies …’
‘Where?’
‘God alone knows, but I’m going to find out. All I know is that a man who can think up a scheme like this one is bound to have thought of somewhere diabolical to put the real victims. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he spent Sunday making illegal use of the crematorium. Whatever he did you can be sure he did it thoroughly.’
But Mr Gosdyke remained unconvinced. ‘I wish I knew how you could be so certain,’ he said.
‘Mr Gosdyke,’ said the Inspector wearily, ‘you have spent two hours with your client. I have spent the best part of the week and if I’ve learnt one thing from the experience it is this, that sod in there knows what he is doing. Any normal man in his position would have been worried and alarmed and downright frightened. Any innocent man faced with a missing wife and the evidence we’ve got of murder would have had a nervous breakdown. Not Wilt. Oh no, he sits in there as bold as you please and tells me how to conduct the investigation. Now if anything convinces me that that bastard is as guilty as hell that does. He did it and I know it. And what is more, I’m going to prove it.’
‘He seems a bit worried now,’ said Mr Gosdyke.
‘He’s got reason to be,’ said the Inspector, ‘because by Monday morning I’m going to get the truth out of him even if it kills him and me both.’
‘Inspector,’ said Mr Gosdyke, getting to his feet, ‘I must warn you that I have advised my client not to say another word and if he appears in Court with a mark on him …’
‘Mr Gosdyke, you should know me better than that. I’m not a complete fool, and if your client has any marks on him on Monday morning they will not have been made by me or any of my men. You have my assurance on that.’
Mr Gosdyke left the Police Station a puzzled man. He had to admit that Wilt’s story hadn’t been a very convincing one. Mr Gosdyke’s experience of murderers was not extensive but he had a shrewd suspicion that men who confessed openly that they had entertained fantasies of murdering their wives ended by admitting that they had done so in fact. Besides his attempt to get Wilt to agree that he’d put the doll down the hole as a practical joke on his colleagues at the Tech had failed hopelessly. Wilt had refused to lie and Mr Gosdyke was not used to clients who insisted on telling the truth.
Inspector Flint went back into the Interview Room and looked at Wilt. Then he pulled up a chair and sat down.
‘Henry,’ he said with an affability he didn’t feel, ‘you and I are going to have a little chat.’
‘What, another one?’ said Wilt. ‘Mr Gosdyke has advised me to say nothing.’
‘He always does,’ said the Inspector sweetly, ‘to clients he knows are guilty. Now are you going to talk?’
‘I can’t see why not. I’m not guilty and it helps to pass the time.’
17
It was Friday and as on every other day in the week the little church at Waterswick was empty. And as on every other day of the week the Vicar, the Reverend St John Froude, was drunk. The two things went together, the lack of a congregation and the Vicar’s insobriety. It was an old tradition dating back to the days of smuggling when Brandy for the Parson had been about the only reason the isolated hamlet had a vicar at all. And like so many English traditions it died hard. The Church authorities saw to it that Waterswick got idiosyncratic parsons whose awkward enthusiasms tended to make them unsuitable for more respectable parishes and they, to console themselves for its remoteness and lack of interest in things spiritual, got alcoholic. The Rev St John Froude maintained the tradition. He attended to his duties with the same Anglo-Catholic Fundamentalist fervour that had made him so unpopular in Esher and turned an alcoholic eye on the activities of his few parishioners who, now that brandy was not so much in demand, contented themselves with the occasional boatload of illegal Indian immigrants.
Now as he finished a breakfast of eggnog and Irish coffee and considered the iniquities of his more egregious colleagues as related in the previous Sunday’s paper he was startled to see something wobbling above the reeds on Eel Stretch. It looked like balloons, white sausage-shaped balloons that rose briefly and then disappeared. The Rev St John Froude shuddered, shut his eyes, opened them again and thought about the virtues of abstinence. If he was right and he didn’t know whether he wanted to be or not, the morning was being profaned by a cluster of contraceptives, inflated contraceptives, wobbling erratically where by the nature of things no contraceptive had ever wobbled before. At least he hoped it was a cluster. He was so used to seeing things in twos when they were in fact ones that he couldn’t be sure if what looked like a cluster of inflated contraceptives wasn’t just one or better still none at all.
He reeled off to his study to get his binoculars and stepped out on to the terrace to focus them. By that time the manifestation had disappeared. The Rev St John Froude shook his head mournfully. Things and in particular his liver had reached a pretty pickle for him to have hallucinations so early in the morning. He went back into the house and tried to concentrate his attention on a case involving an Archdeacon in Ongar who had undergone a sex-change operation before eloping with his verger. There was matter there for a sermon if only he could think of a suitable text.
*
At the bottom of the garden Eva Wilt watched his retreat and w
ondered what to do. She had no intention of going up to the house and introducing herself in her present condition. She needed clothes, or at least some sort of covering. She looked around for something temporary and finally decided on some ivy climbing up the graveyard fence. With one eye on the Vicarage she emerged from the willow tree and scampered across to the fence and through the gate into the churchyard. There she ripped some ivy off the trunk of a tree and, carrying it in front of her rather awkwardly, made her way surreptitiously up the overgrown path towards the church. For the most part her progress was masked from the house by the trees but once or twice she had to crouch low and scamper from tombstone to tombstone in full view of the Vicarage. By the time she reached the church porch she was panting and her sense of impropriety had been increased tenfold. If the prospect of presenting herself at the house in the nude offended her on grounds of social decorum, going into a church in the raw was positively sacrilegious. She stood in the porch and tried frantically to steel herself to go in. There were bound to be surplices for the choir in the vestry and dressed in a surplice she could go up to the house. Or could she? Eva wasn’t sure about the significance of surplices and the Vicar might be angry. Oh dear it was all so awkward. In the end she opened the church door and went inside. It was cold and damp and empty. Clutching the ivy to her she crossed to the vestry door and tried it. It was locked. Eva stood shivering and tried to think. Finally she went outside and stood in the sunshine trying to get warm.