The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest

by Peter Dickinson

  All this, together with most of the income from my property, goes into the Trust which I have established for the benefit of the Kus. Dr. Kerway, of King’s College, London, and myself are the surviving Trustees; Aaron was one.

  I pay a pension to my old nanny, whose name I do not imagine to be germane, and I have left her a sum of money in my will. I have no relatives, according to a firm of detectives I employed to ascertain whether any existed. I have left Paul enough money to maintain him should his talent fail. The rest will go to the Trust.

  I have not told any of the Kus, except Paul and Aaron, about these arrangements. The men would regard it as an impertinence on my part and the women as not being their affair.

  Aaron himself had no property beyond a few personal possessions. These would be valueless, except for the Crucifixion Paul painted for him, whose value (as it is not quite in the style of the paintings which have been selling so well) is difficult to estimate.

  Clear, thought Pibble, but beside the point. I wish she’d put down how much rent Caine pays and whether he pays it. And whether the Kus are conscious of the extent to which she is supporting them. Can they guess how much her glass-sided ants’ nest is costing her? Are they even aware of the value of money? They must be, after all that telly. And what. . . Ah, forget it. He turned to the chunk of filial piety in the blue loose-leaf folder.

  It was not a coherent document. As far as Pibble could see, there were three distinct beginnings, about seven different swatches of middle (some overlapping), and no ends. Several title pages were scattered through all this, none apparently connected with any of the parts. One said, “The Reverend John Hennekey Mackenzie, A Memoir”; another, “The Guinea Stamp, by Eve Mackenzie”; and another, “After the Manner of Men, An Experiment in Anthropology, by Dr. Eve Ku.”

  There was a genealogical table on a different size of paper and with different typewriting—the work of that detective agency, presumably. They’d done their stuff, going back three generations all along the line and more elsewhere. Eve’s mother’s mother’s father, the note on finance had said; the table made him Ephraim Flagg, builder, d. 1893, leaving two d., one unmarried. A thoroughly unsatisfying solution to that mystery. Perhaps it meant that Eve owned the whole damned Terrace—say five flats in each of eleven houses, let at an average of four guineas a week (you couldn’t visualize her as the extortionate landlord beloved of journalists), and not all that much upkeep on buildings put up by the proud and virtuous Grandfather Flagg. (Pibble stopped to wonder whether Eve knew anything about him; surely he must have left legends behind, to people the turrets of his fantasy.) Say ten thousand quid a year before tax, probably more. How many of the Kus would the tax hawks let her list as dependents? Rebecca, perhaps; Robin and the other kids? Bob Caine? Tchah!

  He smothered his last morsel of bread with mustard, balanced a carefully preserved triangle of cheese on top, and began to read, chewing. She seemed to have tried every known style of biography:

  … In many ways a typical child of the Manse. From that source he drew his romantic but practical venturesomeness, his deep natural piety, his belief in the virtue of labour, his obstinate certainty of the rightness of his own motives. But from what fey Celtic strain did this typical Lowlander inherit the visionary side of his faith? His almost Oriental ability to accept both of two conflicting truths? His uncondescending sympathy with alien modes of thought and action, so far from typical of the Lowland Scot? His spiritual humility? His …

  There were several pages of that, with every abstract noun balanced by a contradictory one and hardly a fact anywhere.

  School in the village was not like school elsewhere. Attendance was not compulsory. Adults and children both came, the women and girls and small boys squatting on the floor on one side of the big hut, the men and youths on the other. Down the gangway between the sexes Mackenzie walked. No writing was attempted. Mackenzie argued that it was more useful and less disturbing to the pupils if he worked on the resources of their elaborate oral culture, the (to a European) incredible memories, and the ingrained desire to arrange the structure of facts and events into ritual patterns. When his daughter came out at the age of thirteen, she joined the class, but was lost without these special abilities and had to have coaching in the evening.

  A typical class sounded like a long, rambling, bilingual conversation. Mackenzie insisted, with some justice, that each party was really teaching the other, since he was learning (slowly but to an extraordinary depth) the habits and thought patterns of the Kus. It is one of the tragedies of modern anthropology that his early death prevented his knowledge from being set down on paper. What a substructure it would have provided for the observations and theories of his more superficial colleagues!

  He spoke to his class in both English and Ku, but never in any sort of mixture. He despised pidgin English, declaring that it was a tool of colonialism and the badge of a subject race. Instead he taught, with considerable success, standard English. He repeated longish passages in English and Ku, relying on the memory of his pupils to retain the one while hearing and comparing it with the other. After slow beginnings, this proved wholly successful.

  Pibble skipped an intricate analysis of the areas of the two cultures with which the language of the other did not overlap, and picked up again where a capital “C” caught his eye.

  But what of his avowed purpose in being in New Guinea at all, that of being a Christian missionary? Here again both his beliefs and his methods were personal and eclectic; and perhaps he was fortunate that the Church of Scotland maintained no organized missionary structure in New Guinea; his superiors would have been unlikely to approve of all he did. He felt that the more closely Christianity could be integrated with the existing customs of the Kus, the better. Dr. Schroeder, Baptist colleague who worked in a group of villages a dozen miles down the valley, used to twit him by saying that Mackenzie would have condoned head-hunting—had that been a custom of the Kus—as perfectly consistent with Christianity. Mackenzie would laugh and say his was the only way he could work. The basis of his every action was solid and abiding respect for each individual man, with a conviction that man’s existing structure of beliefs was a part of his being, and therefore a part of human civilization. Uproot these beliefs, with however creditable a motive, replace them with however noble a creed, and your converts will be half destroyed in the process of conversion, at best dependent and at worst demoralized. And, in the end, the old roots will send out suckers, draining the strength from your new graft, corrupting and killing it. The last state of your flock shall be worse than the first!

  Pibble skimmed again, this time an unconvincing and, he thought, unconvinced discussion of the nature of conversion. It had the feel of a conversation heard long ago and imperfectly remembered. He next found himself in the middle of a section, apparently earlier in date, written horribly in the historic present.

  John walks slowly across the great patch of beaten earth between the huts. The whole tribe is assembled to see him, men and boys in one group, women and children in the other. Between them stands the chief and behind him squats the priest with the ceremonial slit-drums. The Kus believe that this priest, jealous of a rival, brought sickness and death to John’s predecessor by incantations, drumming, and a magical arrangement of sacred bones. The previous missionary died, in fact, of malaria, but the priest is a creature of power. John speaks formally to the chief, asking permission to live among them. He exchanges a careful greeting with the priest and …

  A hand fell on Pibble’s shoulder, blighting his repose, an accent of lead. He knew who it was without looking up, and before the voice spoke.

  “What’ll you have, copper? Another pint of ordinary? They know how to look after it here.”

  Caine picked up Pibble’s tankard and strode off to the bar, his steps artificially long and masterful. There was a fair-sized group of lounging shouters there, but he was through it and being serv
ed at once. Angrily Pibble fished two and tuppence out of his pocket; he didn’t want another pint, however good. But at least he did have something he wanted to talk to Caine about. The man came back, slopping beer without apology over another drinker’s suède shoes.

  “I’m afraid,” Pibble said, “you’ll have to let me pay for my own. We must keep this talk on a formal basis.”

  He slid the coins across. Caine said nothing for a full ten seconds; then he put the beer down.

  “Bad as that, is it?”

  “You told me you spent last night at Turner’s Hotel, Crerdon Road, Southampton. The hotel informs us that they have in the past provided you with an alibi for social reasons, but that you were not there last night. They are not prepared, you see, to give false information to the police in a matter of importance.”

  Caine laughed happily, and his eyes crinkled at the corners as though he had suddenly begun to enjoy himself.

  “Poor old Ma Gittory,” he said. “Must have turned her blue rinse green getting mixed up with the cops again after all these years. You shouldn’t have done that to her, copper.”

  “It was hardly we who did it. I will now ask you again where you spent last night.”

  “Honestly, old man, I’d rather not.”

  This wasn’t going to be any good. The light but candid voice, the smiling eyes, the lasciviously rueful curve of the lips—all declared that Caine had decided to tease him and wanted him to know it. In a spasm of schoolboy temper, he said the meanest thing that came into his mind.

  “Never mind; we’ll find her ourselves quite easily.”

  Crippen! Had he scored, or was Caine just sulky because he wasn’t going to play the game? Anyway, he replied in the tone of a cheat discovered.

  “Are you implying, copper, that my marriage is less perfect than it appears?”

  “If it is, you may be sure we will keep the fact to ourselves.”

  Caine picked up his glass and crossed to the telephone on the far wall. He found sixpence, dialed, listened for a long time, hung up. Started to dial again and stopped. Finished his beer standing and moved toward the door. Pibble beckoned him back with a sideways nod of the head. Caine hesitated, then came.

  “Another thing I’d like to know,” said Pibble. “Was there a priest in the village when you were there? I don’t mean a Christian priest—a pagan, or whatever you’d call the religion the Kus had before Mr. Mackenzie turned up.”

  “I was bloody sick most of the time, so it’s not much use asking me. But there was an old boy who blew flutes with his nose during church. They didn’t have proper hymns, ‘Father, Hear the Prayer We Offer,’ and that caper—just a sort of wailing and thumping and some of them danced. I thought it was blasphemous, but the Rev. swore it was O.K. And this flute figure was different from the others. He had scars all over him, done on purpose, in a pattern, not just the three on the face like the ordinary men had. And they all acted very respectful with him. None of the usual cackling and joshing. I gathered he’d been some sort of holy man. That what you want?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “So long, then.”

  Caine left. Pibble went to the telephone and dialed the Yard. Ned was out but he got on to Sergeant Burnaby.

  “Afternoon, Burnaby. Has Superintendent Rickard told you about my troubles? Well, look, I’ve just tackled my chap about it and I don’t think he’s going to be any use to me, but he might be to you. He was with some woman last night, and he tried to ring her up (I think) and got no answer, and then he started to dial someone else and thought better of it. He overacted quite a bit, so I think it’s possible that he stepped out of line last night (he’s done it before, Rickard says) and is scared of Furlough finding out that we’re badgering him. Anyway, I’d bet my boots there’s something a little fishy there which might give you a bone to gnaw at. So if you can get a line on the girl … You have? Crippen, that’s a bit of luck! Ned told me you’d made a hobby of him … I’d like to have a word with her if you can spare her … Oh, O.K., I’ll go gently. She’d better not come right to the house, though. Can you get her to the Station Hotel out here before closing time? Looks as if there’s a little bar round on the west side. I’ll go and have a word with an estate agent while I’m waiting; there’s one with a funny name just by the railway bridge, if you want me.”

  Well, Pibble decided, you deserved the occasional fluke, even if it was more likely to add its pebble to the cairn of evidence that would one day send Furlough down than to get him—Pibble—much further with his excursion into anthropology. Quite right, too. Pibble thought he’d like to hear the argument about capital punishment as a deterrent applied to a case like this.

  In the fumy air of the main road, he began to wish he’d had more of his second pint. He could easily sit and wait for Caine’s bird and do his neglected crossword puzzle. Will power won, just.

  The estate agent was nothing like as seedy as he’d remembered, but the name was unaltered—Lackadaisy, Lackadaisy & Squill, all freshly picked out in gilt paint. The “For Sale” notices were written with an electric typewriter on paper with an ultra-classy heading. Freeholds from £15,000 up; flats at 20 gns. a week and more, suit young executive. Pibble’s money-counting soul gasped at a photograph of Brissac Street, a fag end of long lease going for a mere £6,000. He wondered whether that was the house where he’d gone to pick up a sixteen-year-old pilferer and found him singing a sick baby to sleep in a room with half a dozen other kids littered about, father snoring on the bed, and mother weeping into the parsnip stew on the gas ring.

  In the front office, a weaselly youth glanced unimpressed at his warrant card and disappeared, returning almost at once to say that Mr. Evans-Evans would be glad to help him. The further office was small but rich, with a thick dark carpet, a vast desk, and one of Paul’s paintings over the fireplace. Mr. Evans-Evans was wearing a Magdalene tie and a tiny, tidy beard. He stood up and shook hands with Pibble across the desk; they had to stretch a bit to achieve contact, like housewives in those medieval cantilevered houses demonstrating their ability to shake hands across the street from their upstairs windows.

  “Well, Superintendent, what can we do for you?”

  “I don’t really know,” said Pibble, “but it might help me a bit if you could tell me something about property values in this area. Your firm seems to have looked up quite a bit, for instance. I knew it just after the war.”

  Mr. Evans-Evans deprecated with an eyebrow, and began to speak very rapidly but just distinctly enough to understand, in the manner of a priest rattling through some prayer for minor members of the Royal Family.

  “It is hardly the same firm, you know, we are really an old established West End partnership but a dozen years ago I had a hunch that this was going to prove a lively area, much livelier than any of the local chaps realized, it was only just beginning then, of course, so I persuaded my father to buy out Mr. Josset, you may have known him, big reddish chap and rather demoralized after a lifetime of arranging leases on slums, so here we are and very lively it’s been.”

  He paused for a long draught of breath. Pibble had been looking at Paul’s picture, which was in his best-selling style and showed a marmalade tomcat stalking through a blue-green pattern, very jungly. There was a bird in the cat’s stomach, lying on its back with its wings crossed in the attitude of pious resignation in which undertakers lay out the dead. For all the formalization of style, this cat was a particular cat, very smug and feline, not at all anthropomorphized.

  “I take it you’ve had some dealings with the Kus?” said Pibble.

  “You like it?” said Mr. Evans-Evans. “I didn’t at first but I took the advice of a cousin who has a flair for that sort of thing and he swore it was bound to appreciate over the next ten years, that was before Kus became O.K., so I dare say he’s right already, but now I’ve got used to it and you’d have to offer me a very good price ind
eed to tempt me to sell, can’t say more than that, can I?” Gulp of breath. “I take it you’re the officer concerned with this bizarre mishap at Flagg Terrace?”

  “Yes,” said Pibble. “I really want to know what the whole property is worth today, and whether you think it likely that any pressures have been put on Dr. Ku to sell.”

  Mr. Evans-Evans sat down behind the desk, opened a drawer, took out a pair of spectacles with rims like fortifications, put them on, and changed his personality. He began to speak in a slow, light, precise voice.

  “Let me see. I must first decide how much it is proper for me to tell you, because I am more deeply involved in the matter than you may realize. Let me deal with your first question, since that is straightforward enough. The value of Flagg Terrace would depend on what the buyer proposed to do with the properties. Suppose he were to keep them as they stand, get rid of most of the existing tenants (you may be aware that Dr. Ku does not ask an economic rent for her flats), and spend some thousands on modernization, he could derive an income between twenty and thirty thousand pounds a year from them. That would include a selling price of around two hundred thousand pounds.”

  Mr. Evans-Evans took off his spectacles and added a parenthetical mutter: “That is supposing you could find tenants with that sort of money who were prepared to live in a terrace that looked like that, it’s not what people expect these days, nothing you could do to it would ever get it into House & Garden.” He put his spectacles on again.

  “But that would be an improbable solution. I do not know if you realize how much ground Flagg Terrace covers with its gardens. If the buyer were to pull down the existing houses, he could erect nearly forty new dwellings and sell them at up to thirty thousand pounds apiece, thus realizing his profit in three or four years instead of waiting for it to dribble in over the decades, with unpredictable governments always likely to deprive him of it.