by John Brunner
“Yes, his sister mentioned that. It was sent to her with Sammy’s other private papers.” Laird sipped his drink. “Did you find anything?”
“Not a breath of suspicion. When I said you’d been both thorough and lucky, though, what I meant was that you seem to have come up with as much in a couple of days as I managed in a week. You’ve proved your point. I’ll give you any help I can, so long as you feed me everything you find out in return. Is that fair?”
“Sure.”
“Great.” Lewis gave a faint chuckle. “You know what that makes you, don’t you?”
“No, what?”
“A common informer. Otherwise a ‘grass’. That’s what we policemen mainly rely on. We even have a formal phrase for it: ‘acting on information received’! Generally informers get paid for what they tell us, in cash. I don’t imagine you’d be interested in the kind of payments they allow me to shell out. But I could pay you in information, within limits.”
It was as though the shade of Bitchy Legree had come into the room; Laird could hear the echo of that intersexed voice imitating Lewis’s words. He shuddered.
“Suits me fine,” he said. “So you’ll check out Tileman—and that secretary of his. I’m sure she has something to hide.”
“As soon as I can spare the time,” Lewis promised. “I’m not sure it’ll lead to anything, though. When a case like Logan’s has been tidily put away, with a proper inquest verdict and everything, it’s hell’s own job trying to get it reopened. But I’ll do what I can, out of sheer spite if for no better reason. Where can I get hold of you?”
Laird gave him the number and cradled the phone. From outside came two long blasts on a car-horn. He waved from the window and went down to let Courcy in.
TWENTY-ONE
“You’re not in the best of moods today, are you?” Courcy said as the Jensen nosed through the dense traffic of West London towards the M4 motorway.
“Sorry,” Laird muttered. He gave her a sidelong glance; she was worth looking at, in a stark yellow minidress with a big lozenge-shaped window cut between her throat and her cleavage. Enormous black sunglasses masked her eyes.
“Are you still brooding over Sammy?” she persisted.
“Aren’t you?” he countered in a sour voice.
“Yes, I suppose I am in a way.” She put her hands demurely in her lap. All the windows were down and a breeze strayed in to disturb her fair hair. “I’d had two boyfriends before Sammy, and I’ve had two since—maybe I caught his habit of making quick changes. But he was something very special. Being with him felt so—so permanent, even though I knew I must be kidding myself. It was just that when I was with him I felt so bloody important!”
She hesitated. “I felt somehow… more real. Do you get me?”
“I think so,” Laird muttered. “Tell me, did you ever get the impression that Sammy was making—well, a particular effort for your sake?”
“Oh yes! And I found it terribly flattering. I mean, I had this idea of what he was like from his other girlfriends, and with me he wasn’t like that at all. What made you ask?”
Laird hesitated. He said finally, “Apparently he was thinking of marrying again. I wondered whether he was trying on the domesticity bit to see if it suited him.”
“Well!” Courcy was hurt; she disguised it excellently, but not completely. “I was being used as a dress rehearsal, was I?”
“Sorry,” Laird sighed. “I’m really guessing.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said after a pause, looking straight ahead. “It was fun being around him anyway.”
Changing the subject forcibly, Laird said, “Have we much further to go through this mess?”
“No, you’ll see the motorway signs pretty soon.”
There was a long uncomfortable silence. Purely in order to end it, Laird said at random, “By the way, do you know anybody called Tileman?”
“Dr Tileman? He was a friend of Sammy’s, wasn’t he?”
Laird was so astonished he almost ran up the exhaust pipe of the car in front as it halted for a red light. He said, “How did you come across him?”
“Oh, I never met him. But I was on my own at Sammy’s place once, and the phone went, and it was a Dr Tileman calling. When he heard that Sammy wasn’t in, he asked if I could get him to call back and I wrote down his number.”
So that was where the mysterious scrap of paper had come from. Laird gave a nod.
“What did you want to know for?” Courcy demanded.
“I’m not sure yet. Ah, there are the motorway signs. Where exactly are we going, anyway?”
“I’m leaving it to you—at least I thought I was! Oh, let’s go down the Thames, have lunch by the river somewhere. Suit you?”
“Fine,” Laird said, and swung up the motorway ramp. He could have sworn he heard the car give a sigh of relief as it slipped into the fast west-bound traffic.
“This is more like the way I hoped to spend my time in England,” Laird said contentedly, glancing over the lawn of the riverside pub. He was very full of brown ale, chicken sandwiches and salad. Behind him there was a murmur of voices from the bar; in front, grass as green as emeralds stretched down to the bank where a line of launches and cabin-cruisers had tied up. On the far side of the water the street of a lazy country town allowed passage to occasional cars.
“What’s been stopping you?” Courcy said with a laugh.
“Sammy.”
“I see.” She turned her glass of cider around in both hands, watching the bubbles as they rose to the surface. “Have you found out anything?”
“Not much. Right now I think I’m well advised to leave the job to someone else for a while.”
“Who?”
“Bitchy Legree promised to dig around for me.”
“Now why did I never think of that?” Courcy spoke wonderingly to the air. “I knew Bitchy was a friend of Sammy’s, and it never occurred to me.”
“Think it’ll pay off?”
“If there’s dirt that Bitchy can’t dig out, you might as well quit now because there isn’t anyone better. Know who told me that? Sammy.”
A bee buzzed past Laird’s face and investigated a slice of tomato he had left on his plate, in the hope that it might be a flower. They watched it finding out that it was wrong.
“So what shall we do this afternoon?” Courcy said eventually. “How about taking a boat on the river?”
“Sounds great,” Laird approved. “What kind of boat?”
“Settle up and we’ll go along to the boatyards. On a fine day like this there may not be very much left, but we can try.”
TWENTY-TWO
There was nothing left but a skiff, and it was years since Laird had handled oars, but the weather was beautiful and the river like a mirror, so they took it and rowed upstream to a place where there were lush fields and they could laze in the sun chatting and smoking, bothering no one bar a herd of incurious cows. Later, they ate dinner in a restaurant that had once been a boat-loft, in another small riverside town where signs boasted of a royal charter granted eight centuries before.
While they were eating it grew cool; clouds drifted in from the west and shed a half-hearted sprinkle of rain, so that the road back to London glistened in the headlights, the wipers crossing and re-crossing Laird’s field of vision.
It was about ten or ten-fifteen when they reached Paymaster Mews.
“Coffee!” Courcy said as the car rolled into the garage.
“Sure. I remembered to buy some groceries this morning.” He shut the garage door and led the way upstairs.
“Sit down,” he invited. “Put a record on if you like. I’ll go fix the coffee.”
But she wasn’t listening. “Laird, you so-and-so!” she exclaimed.
“What?”
“You didn’t tell me I’d got grass-stains all over the back of my dress!” She was tugging her skirt around to look at the green smear.
“Didn’t seem much point,” Laird murmured. “I didn’t k
now until it happened, and after that there wasn’t much you could do about it.”
“Well, there is now!” She hauled her zip down furiously. “I like this dress!”
She skinned it over her head. Underneath she wore only a pair of white panties so skimpy they barely hid the hair below her navel. Abruptly she checked in mid-movement.
“Laird,” she said in a changed voice, “do you mind?”
Organising my affairs for me, hm? Well, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea.
He pulled a face at her, and she grinned back mischievously. Balling up her dress, she headed for the bathroom, while he went upstairs in search of the electric percolator. That was one thing which had escaped Polly’s attentions; the basket was full of grounds that had grown a fluff of greyish mould, and he had to scrub it thoroughly before he judged it safe to fill.
By the time he returned to the living-room, Courcy had reappeared in an old bathrobe of Sammy’s and was sorting through the records beside the player. Glancing up, she said, “I hope you don’t think I’m awful, Laird!”
“You are. But what the hell? Don’t you enjoy it?”
She chuckled.
“Mm-hm! Know something? It was mainly meeting Sammy that convinced me I ought to stop trying to impress people and be myself.” She slid a disc from its sleeve and set it on the player; somewhat to Laird’s surprise, he saw it was the Mozart Clarinet Quintet.
“How do you mean?” he inquired.
“Oh…” She made a vague gesture and completed it by helping herself to a cigarette. “I suppose it was… No, that doesn’t sound right. In fact it sounds terrible! But I can’t think of any other way of putting it.”
She looked at him with large, troubled eyes.
“Hell, try saying it,” Laird suggested.
“Okay, I will. I felt sorry for Sammy. I mean, all the things he had to put up with, the way his childhood and his teens were spoiled. And then he turned into this awfully nice guy… I had this weird feeling he deserved his fun more than most people. Am I making sense?”
“Yes.”
“Thank goodness. So anyway I got to this point where I thought here I am one of the lucky ones, and what’s the good of trying to make an impression all the time? The image bit—you know? What I like about you…”
Laird cocked an eyebrow as she hesitated.
“Well, you make me feel sort of relaxed. I don’t have to—to push myself.”
“It’s an improvement,” Laird said.
“I know. You didn’t like me at all the evening we met at the Lizzie Borden, did you?”
“Well—”
“Oh, don’t bother denying it! I could tell! And I don’t blame you. It was being in the company of those pseuds, Reggie and Miriam and Alec. It’s—well, it’s sort of contagious. But do you like me now?”
“Yes,” Laird said after a pause for thought. “Yes, a whole lot.”
“Thank goodness!”
She parked her cigarette in an ashtray and jumped to her feet. “Well, I’ll just go peg out my dress while the coffee’s brewing. Good as new by the morning, with luck.”
As she passed, Laird caught a strand of her tousled hair and drew her head down, meaning to give her a kiss on the cheek.
But she grasped him around the neck, straddled his lap with her thighs, and thrust her tongue fiercely into his mouth.
“Letter for you, Laird!”
He struggled back from sleep. He had been vaguely aware of Courcy leaving the bed, but it might have been a dream. Forcing his eyes open, he saw her leaning over him, a tall glass of orange-juice in one hand and an envelope in the other.
He muttered thanks, wriggling into a sitting position, and glanced at the window. The sky was overcast and the trees were stirring in a light wind. Absently he tore the envelope and drew out the contents.
At first he was puzzled. He held a large stiff card folded once, the outside completely blank. Opening it, he read without understanding words engraved in copperplate writing: the pleasure of the company of…
Then the address leapt out at him—“Apricots”, Margravia Road, NW 9.
“What is it?” Courcy inquired.
“It’s an invitation to a party this evening.”
“Oh, lovely! Can I come with you?”
“I’m afraid not.” Laird swung his legs to the floor, his toes fumbling for his slippers.
“Why not? Are you taking someone else?”
“No, someone else is taking me.”
“I see.” Courcy hesitated. “I must say you don’t look overjoyed!”
“I’m not exactly looking forward to it.”
“In that case can’t you get out of it? It’s Saturday—I could find something else to do that you’d definitely enjoy!”
“Thanks, but I have to go.” Laird padded towards the door of the shower. “It’s important.”
“Oh, I see. Business?”
“If it’s any kind of business at all, it’s an extremely dirty one.” On the point of closing the shower door, Laird checked. “Courcy! Do any of your or Sammy’s friends get invitations to parties they don’t talk about afterwards?”
“What sort of parties?”
“Where something goes on they daren’t have discussed in public. Hell, I wish I knew more about the scene here! Drugs, maybe. Orgies. Anything!”
“Oh, lots of people have orgies. Alec took me to one the other day. But the guests were awful, particularly the men. Mostly drunk and—well—incapable. That can’t be what you mean, though, because people certainly talk about them. Sometimes they say pretty horrible things, too—‘So-and-so can’t make it until he’s been whipped, ha-ha!’ But I wouldn’t know about drugs very much, except pot.”
“It’s nothing that conventional,” Laird sighed. “Thanks anyway, though.”
“What would you like for breakfast?” Courcy said.
“Coffee and toast is what there is, doll. They haven’t come to turn the gas on yet.”
TWENTY-THREE
Promptly at six-thirty he arrived at Medea’s hotel. Exquisite in a shimmering dark red dress, a stole around her shoulders because the weather had turned so much cooler, she greeted him warmly enough. But there was something amiss in her manner, and after watching her for a few minutes from the corner of his eye as he drove, noting how her hands fidgeted in her lap, her legs restlessly crossed and uncrossed, he was certain that she was badly worried about something.
He could make a good guess at the reason.
Consciously needling, he said, “How did Tileman react to the idea of inviting me to his party, Medea?”
A look of suspicion narrowed her luminous dark eyes. “Did you not get an invitation card?” she countered.
“Sure, it’s right here in my pocket.”
“So he obviously agreed, didn’t he? Why did you ask that?”
Braking gently for a red light, Laird shrugged. “I have this impression he doesn’t care much for friends of Sammy’s.”
“Nonsense. A lot of Sammy’s friends will be there tonight, I gather.”
“Anybody I might know?”
“Very possibly.” Medea eyed her watch, a tiny gold one narrower than its own wrist-band. “You made certain of the way, did you?”
“Checked it in the street-guide. You haven’t been to one of these parties before, have you?”
“No.”
“So it’s not much good my asking what kind of party it is.”
“I told you, a very special kind.”
“Funny. I’d never have thought of Tileman as the hospitable type,” Laird murmured. The light changed; he put his foot down, and the car leapt ahead as though the other traffic had stuck to the roadway.
Nothing more was said until they reached Margravia Road, when Medea told him unnecessarily to slow down in case they overshot Apricots. It was only a little after seven o’clock.
With half his attention Laird took in the character of the district. Here they were on the fringe of the “green belt�
��, the compulsorily maintained open country girdling the gross bulk of London, and most of the houses were large and stood in their own gardens. Hardly anybody was in sight apart from a group of laughing teenagers with scooters, some of whom stared enviously at the Jensen.
Apricots was even larger than its neighbours, set well back from the road and heavily screened by trees and shrubs. Its driveway was closed off by tall wrought-iron gates on brick pillars. Laird swung the car’s nose up to the gates and halted.
“What happens now?” he inquired, peering along the drive for signs of life. The gardens were overgrown and the gravel was thick with weeds.
“Someone’s supposed to check our invitations, I think,” Medea said uncertainly. “Ah, here comes somebody now.”
“Evening!” called a man in a dark suit, emerging from shadow beside one of the pillars. “May I see your cards, please?”
Another man, similarly clad, appeared beyond the gates with a key poised to unlock them. Tileman was going to great trouble to exclude party-crashers, that was plain.
Their invitations were in order; they were waved on, and when they reached the house another man signalled them to draw in alongside a car which Laird recognised, a Park Ward Bentley convertible. He switched off, got out, and went to open the passenger door for Medea. She was pale and kept glancing nervously from side to side.
You don’t look much like a guest at a real swinging party, sweetheart!
For a second he was tempted to abandon her here, get back in the car himself and go look for Courcy and do something else. Anything! Memory played back for him the sound of Dagmar’s voice declaring that Tileman’s parties were for selfish people, greedy people, nasty people!
But he didn’t. He had to know about these events which so excited Medea that she’d insisted on being brought here far ahead of due time. He took her arm and led her towards the front door. There was no sign of life in the house, and although it was still well before dark all the windows were tightly curtained.