Pure Dead Batty

by Debi Gliori

  By which time Rand was beating out a measured thudda, thud, thud, thudda, thud on the bass drum, over which he laid a vaguely familiar rhythm on snare and bells. He looked up at Titus and gave a twisted grin, closed his eyes, and surrendered himself to the beat.

  “Rand”—Titus tried to keep his voice level—“those are my drums. They live in my room, not yours.”

  This remark was obviously having no effect whatsoever, judging by Rand’s continued drumming which, if anything, grew louder and more insistent.

  Titus tried again. “Look. I mean, it’s cool if you want to use them, but I’d rather you asked me first”—thudda, thud, thud, thudda, thud—“and it’s really not a good idea to take them out of my bedroom. Your room’s way too damp—” Titus stopped, aware that he’d put his foot in it.

  “Yeah,” Rand said, “you’re telling me. A frog would feel right at home here.” He narrowed his eyes and stared at Titus, then stood up from behind the sprawling drum kit. “Talking of frogs, what happened to you, anyway? You’ve, er …”

  Titus willed his face to remain pale. No rosy cheeks for this chap, right? Got that? Don’t blush, don’t blush, don’t—Oh, never mind.

  “And you’ve got taller. Have you been working out? Sneaking off to the gym? Sprinkling steroids on your Cheerios?”

  “Miserablios,” Titus corrected automatically. “And no. No drugs, no weights, nothing. Just … er … some of Mum’s wax.”

  “Wax?” Rand’s expression radiated confusion. “What? Like hair wax? Candle wax? Modeling wax like—er, Madame Tussaud’s?”

  “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.” Titus picked up his bass drum and nodded toward the bedroom door. “C’mon. Give me a hand to put this lot back in my room, then I’ll find you a different bedroom. Okay?”

  “No,” Rand muttered. “It’s not okay. You haven’t answered my question. What wax? Where can I get some? I want to look older too.” His voice was rising in pitch and his punctured face was pink with effort and embarrassment. “I want to sound like a bloke, not like a squeaky freak—that’s what my dad’s always calling me.…”

  Titus stared. Judging by his voice, Rand was on the point of losing it completely. He’d no idea Rand’s father called him names. The very notion appalled Titus, coming as he did from a family where affection underpinned every word and deed; where he knew himself to be loved extravagantly, embarrassingly, and totally without restraint; loved no matter what he looked like or, indeed, how he spoke. Remembering how vile Rand’s dad had been when he delivered the news about Luciano, Titus decided that Munro MacAlister Hall had been about as warm and reassuring as an iceberg. His parting shot had been “Of course, the house will have to be sold. Your mother patently can’t manage this mausoleum on her own, and with a new baby on the way she can hardly be expected to go out to work. So you’d all better prepare yourselves to tighten your belts considerably.…”

  Titus shuddered at the memory. What a horrible, unfeeling scumbag he’d turned out to be. Imagine him being your dad? No wonder Rand was so … awful. God. What a mess. He tried not to notice that Rand’s nose was running. Copiously.

  “Yeah. Okay,” he muttered. “Don’t panic. First the drums, then a nicer room, and then the wax. But don’t get your hopes up. I don’t know if there’s any left. Mum might have used the last on me.” Titus jerked his head in the direction of the door once again. “Let’s get a move on, shall we?” He tried desperately to take Rand’s mind off whatever dark thoughts had threatened to consume him. “What was that riff you were playing back there? On the snare, with the bells? It sounded so—like some tune I know really well, but I can’t place it.”

  “That thing?” Rand sniffed, rubbed his eyes, and gave a small watery smile. “Ah. Don’t you know anything? That was Mozart’s first-ever composition. He wrote it for the klavier when he was only three. Pretty amazing, actually. I’ve kind of, yeah, chopped it up a bit and reassembled it, added in a be-bop beat with a smattering of jazz-type syncopation in the backing, but, um, basically it’s ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ with menaces.”

  At this, Titus burst out laughing and nearly dropped the bass drum. Maybe Rand staying wasn’t going to be a total nightmare after all. Perhaps there was a sense of humor buried under all that attitude.

  Plucking the hi-hat cymbals off their stand, Rand opened the door for Titus and followed him out. “Problem is,” he continued, his thin voice echoing down the corridor, “I need to come up with some lyrics that’re slightly more cutting-edge than ‘Twinkle, twinkle.’ ”

  Up ahead, Titus kicked his bedroom door open and turned back to him. “Don’t be too quick to dismiss those original lyrics. You know, ‘Twinkle, twinkle’s got a lot going for it.” He paused and ad-libbed, “We could turn it into something, er, like a ballad about the destructive nature of fame. You know. Like, ‘Twinkle, twinkle, superstar, Pickled in a whisky jar—’ ”

  “ ‘Drinking, smoking, getting high, Thinking you’re too cool to die,’ ” Rand improvised, laying the cymbals down on the floor outside Titus’s bedroom and turning back to fetch another armload of drumming paraphernalia.

  Titus stopped on the threshold of his room and stared, open-mouthed, at something inside. “Excuse me?” he managed, at length. “Just what are you doing on my computer?”

  Pandora didn’t bother to turn round. Flapping her right hand in the air as if to indicate that she was too busy to be disturbed, she continued tapping something on the keyboard with the other. Titus suppressed a scream. He’d crossed his bedroom in five strides before remembering that he was hefting a bass drum above his head as if he intended to brain his sister with it. On reflection, that didn’t seem like such a bad idea.…

  “I said, what are you doing—?” Then he caught sight of what Pandora had on the screen. “Is that me? When did—? God. I look like a wee kid. Pandora?”

  Pandora gave an exaggerated sigh, turned round, and raked Titus with a sisterly stare before turning back to the screen and muttering, “Did you know your head has sprouted a big drum? The mind boggles as to what’s next. A piano tucked between your teeth? Flutes up your nose? Bagpipes in your pits? Castanets between your legs? Er—perhaps not. Anyway. Look, check this out. Who d’you think this is?”

  Pandora moved the cursor over the image and double clicked on it. Immediately the figures on the screen quadrupled in size, and Titus found himself gazing at a vastly enlarged nostril, complete with an enhanced thicket of hair sprouting out of it.

  “Ooops.” Pandora moved the cursor to the toolbar and clicked on a little mountain icon. After a chitter of protest from somewhere inside the computer, the nostril was replaced by the face it originally came from.

  “Him?” Titus squinched up his eyes in an effort to recall who he was looking at. “No. Don’t tell me. I know who that is—I know I know who that is—I know I’m going to kick myself when you tell me who that is.… Give in. Who is it?”

  “Watch,” Pandora said, clicking on an open-hand icon and dragging it until it was on top of the almost-recognizable face. She clicked, and the hand became a fist, grabbing the image and hauling it across the screen until Titus could see who else was in the picture.

  “When did you take—? How did this get—? That’s Damp, and Mrs. McLach—What’s going on, Pan?”

  She ignored him, keying in commands and manipulating picture files with an apparent ease that Titus was beginning to find, well, maddening. Since when had Pandora become such an expert? Last time he’d looked, she’d been claiming that anyone who was computer-literate was a lower life-form, several evolutionary stages behind tapeworms. He was on the point of reaching out and spinning her round to face him when an image appeared on the screen that sucked the breath out of his lungs completely.

  “Oh, hell,” he groaned, “I know who that is now. It’s him. That photographer who turned up on the night Mrs. McLachlan van—die—disap—yeah.”

  Pandora turned round slowly to face him. “You know, Titus, fo
r a lower life-form, you do manage some incredible intuitive leaps. I’m impressed. Now pay attention. This is a photograph from a film I took last week. I ran off thirty-six shots of trees and clouds and—”

  “Girly stuff. Yeah, I know. I’ve seen you—” Catching sight of Pandora’s expression, Titus immediately backtracked. “Um, what I mean to say is, yeah, artistic compositions—er, painterly cloudscapes and—Oh, help, you know I haven’t the first idea about photography—I’m a digital man myself—”

  “I’d say binary, not digital,” Pandora muttered. “You’ve only got two settings: ‘Off’ and ‘Totally off.’ Anyway”—she heaved a huge sigh—“if you’d let me finish—thirty-six photos. I posted the film off to the developers, and a few days later back came my prints together with a free CD. At first I thought I’d been sent someone else’s prints by mistake, so I loaded the CD into the computer—”

  “My computer, actually.”

  “Whatever. And anyway, the pictures were the same. What you see here is what I got. All of them. Not a single one of which I recognize. Not one. I didn’t take these pictures, Titus. And look, check out the date in the corner of the prints.”

  What little blood there was left in Titus’s face flooded south. “Today?” he whispered. “They’re dated today? How? Wh-what’s—? I don’t like this one little bit.”

  “Really.” Pandora smiled grimly. “Guess what, I don’t much like it either. Especially not seeing that creep of a photographer again. D’you remember how bad he smelled? Like rotten eggs.”

  “Sulfur,” Titus said, remembering something else that turned his blood to ice, and wondering if he should share this sudden knowledge with his sister.

  Pandora got there before him: “It’s the smell of demons,” she said in a very small voice. “Like that one from Mum’s witchcraft class—Fiamma Whatsername …” She trailed off, biting her lip. “D’you know what, Titus? I think Mrs. McLachlan threw herself in the loch as—as bait.”

  Titus reeled visibly. Something about the word bait made him want to howl. It implied being bitten. Bait got itself devoured by vast things, blindly predatory things, things which were drawn to the bait by its smell—or taste.

  “I think she was protecting us from … it,” Pandora whispered, and her eyes widened as the logic of Mrs. McLachlan’s sacrifice began to dawn on her. “I think these photos are—oh, it sounds crazy, but I’m sure the photos are from her—” She broke off, stared meaningfully at Titus, and gave an exaggerated sigh.

  Rand had appeared in the corridor outside Titus’s room and was looking at Pandora with an expression of such intense longing that Titus wanted to slap him. Stop it, stop it, he thought. Not now. We’re busy, can’t you see?

  But it was too late. Rolling her eyes, Pandora turned back to the computer and ejected the disk of photos, dropped it into its case, and stood up to go.

  “Thanks for the loan of your computer,” she said, bowing slightly toward Titus. “While I was waiting, I downloaded an upgrade to your virus protection software, defragmented your hard disk, and tidied up your inbox—” She held up a hand as if to forestall any interruptions. “No. Don’t thank me. It was my pleasure. You’ll find I’ve changed your screen saver, too.” Squeezing past her brother, she stopped in front of Rand and turned back, as if struck by a sudden thought. “I’ve left copies of all the photos on your computer. Have a look. I put them in your picture file inside your math/physics homework folder on the hard disk.”

  Titus immediately turned a luminous shade of pink. How had she known to go there? Oh, bloody hell, he thought bitterly, mortified beyond measure. Of all the files he hadn’t ever wanted anyone to find ever, ever … Oh, please let the ground swallow me, he begged. I want to die—

  “Don’t—” he managed to say, before realizing that Pandora had the upper hand. As usual.

  “Don’t worry,” she snapped back, turning the CD over in her hands. “Unlike you guys, I haven’t got the least interest in looking at half-dressed blondes on a computer screen. Why ever would I?” And with this parting shot she sidestepped Rand and stalked off down the corridor, her head angled back as she breathed in the rarefied air of the moral high ground.

  The Baleful Bain

  Interview with Marie Bain, one-time chef de partie at StregaSchloss House, Auchenlochtermuchty, Argyll and Bute. Two P.M., fourth of October, attending officers DS Bill Waters and DCI Finbar McIntosh—Something I said amused you, Sergeant Waters?”

  “No, sir. Just never heard your name before, sir.”

  “Indeed.” The weasel-faced Detective Inspector from the Serious Crimes Unit fixed his colleague with a look so sharp it required its own scabbard. “As I was saying: Interview with Marie Bain, two-oh-two P.M., October fourth, also attending, officers Detective Sergeant Waters and interrogating officer, myself, Detective Chief Inspector McIntosh of the SCU Caledonian Division. The witness was present at the scene of the crime at StregaSchloss House on the evening of August fifth, when she saw the accused acting in a suspicious fashion. In your own words, Ms. Bain, what caused you to become alarmed?”

  Sitting across a pockmarked table, Marie Bain twisted her hands in her lap and hunched her shoulders. Observing this, the DS made a note to book a shoulder massage at the police gym; just looking at the witness made his neck ache as if he’d been doing bench presses with a couple of rhinocerii. Marie Bain batted her eyelids at the DCI in a forlorn attempt to make herself alluring; combined with continual hand-wringing and hunched shoulders, this gave her the appearance of a neurotic vulture badly in need of a laxative.

  DCI Finbar McIntosh groaned inwardly. It was going to be a long day, and it had barely begun. Come on, woman, he thought. Get on with it. Marie Bain’s bottom lip trembled with emotion and her hands abruptly disengaged, flying off on separate search missions for a handkerchief to stem the flow of tears beginning to well up in her pale eyes.

  And this is our star witness for the prosecution, the DCI thought bleakly. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Wish I was anywhere but here. He looked away, trying to appear fascinated by the pattern of cigarette burn marks on the linoleum floor beneath his feet. Beside him, the police tape recorder stopped, standing by automatically until activated by the sound of voices. Time passed, measured out by silent dabbings of a gray handkerchief at Marie Bain’s nose, then Marie Bain’s eyes.

  At length Marie Bain composed herself sufficiently to blurt out, “Eeet was so horreeble …” And then they were off, the tape recorder whirring away in a corner, a veritable flood tide of disinformation pouring forth from the vengeful cook; her gray handkerchief growing wetter and wetter until the nauseated DS vowed to buy a box of tissues for the interview room against the possibility of future repeats of Marie Bain’s snurking, blowing, honking, nose-dabbing, and endless unfolding and searching for a mucus-free zone on that vile and disgustingly germ-laden linen square that more than qualified for the name snot-rag.

  Finally she stopped, a strangely triumphant smile on her face, a shiny patina of nasal effluent still visible around the general area of her nostrils. “Therrrrre,” she pronounced with evident satisfaction. “Zat ought to nail the murrrderrrous crrreep, n’est-ce pas?”

  Something wasn’t right, the DS decided, trying and failing to catch his superior officer’s eye. It wasn’t that Marie Bain’s story didn’t add up; it did, spectacularly, putting that pathetic Italianate landowner slap-bang in the frame for just about every single murder committed in Argyll over the previous decade. This was good news for the crime-solving rate, and the DCI was obviously delighted with Miss Bain’s account, judging by the way he was now praising her powers of observation, but—the DS shook his head—it was too good. Real life and real crime didn’t work like that. Crime was messy; the majority of murders were committed by extremely stupid people in order to get their point of view across when reasoned debate and intellectual argument had failed. In the DS’s opinion, Luciano Strega-Borgia was far too intelligent. He also had too much going for him: beautiful wif
e, great kids, huge house, new baby on the way … Why on earth would he risk all that by bumping off the nanny? Even if, as Miss Bain had implied, the nanny had witnessed Luciano fatally shooting a lawyer the previous summer—a lawyer who, again according to Miss Bain, was blackmailing Luciano over the matter of a multiple murder Luciano had purportedly also committed the winter before that; this mass murder apparently being a further cover-up attempt after Luciano had fed four of his half-brother’s bodyguards to his pet alligator—or was it a crocodile?

  His head throbbed, just trying to straighten out the witness’s tangled account. Rubbing his temples, the DS tried to concentrate on what his colleague was saying. To his annoyance he found that the plan was now for both policemen to escort Marie Bain back to StregaSchloss the next day. The purpose of this trip was to refresh the witness’s memory regarding the exact times and locations of the events leading up to the abduction and murder of Mrs. Flora McLachlan.

  “Tomorrow?” the DS squeaked. “But—but, sir, it’s my day off, sir. I’ve got an appointment with my chiropodist at ten. I can’t accompany you to Streg …” He trailed off, aware that he’d need an appointment with a cosmetic surgeon if the Chief Inspector kept spearing him with more of those barbed glances. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Of course, sir. Right away, sir. Say … nine? Sir?”

  The DCI stood up and gallantly helped Marie Bain to her feet, steering her out of the interview room with a guiding hand clasped around her elbow. Halfway through the door, he turned round as if suddenly remembering that the DS was still there, waiting for further instructions.

  “Bring the car round at nine-forty, Sergeant Waters. That means twenty minutes to ten. Don’t be late. I’m a busy man, as I’m sure you’re well aware. And”—he narrowed his eyes in warning—“a word to the wise, DS Waters. If you are ever to have any chance of promotion beyond detective sergeant, you’d better sharpen up your act.” To the humiliated DS’s horror, the DCI adopted a squeaky falsetto and minced out of the door chirruping, “Ooooh, sorry, sir, can’t come with you to the scene of the crime because my feet hurt something wicked, sir.…”