A Three Pipe Problem

by Julian Symons

  The speaker was a tall, thin young man, with fair hair cut unfashionably short, and very bright blue eyes. He wore an old tweed jacket and dirty grey flannel trousers. ‘Did you want the Drummonds?’

  It is usually a good idea to go as near the truth as possible when you are telling lies. ‘I don’t think so. That car looks like one owned by a friend of mine named Claber. He’s got a number-plate with his initials on it, and the number’s very much like that one.’

  The young man moved up the bar. The girl behind the bar, polishing glasses, watched them warily. ‘That wouldn’t be the Drummonds, the idea’s a joke. He’s a kind of a journalist, they say, calls himself a writer, but he can’t make a living at it. I don’t know what he does make a living at. Often in here, though.’ He moved his empty glass about on the counter in an experimental way, and Sher took the hint. ‘Isn’t he, darling?’ the young man said to the barmaid. She looked at him, and made no reply.

  ‘He’s married?’

  ‘Indeed he is. And got a son.’

  ‘Is his wife a dark girl who’s usually rather untidily dressed?’

  ‘That’s her. You’ve got her perfectly. Chrissie, his better half. She’s an artist, and very clever, they say. Commercial, of course. Whatever bread comes in that house, she brings it home.’

  ‘You called her Chrissie. You know her?’

  ‘Ah, everybody round here knows Chrissie. They feel sorry for her with a husband like that. I mean, Hugh Drummond is no good, he’s a bad character.’

  ‘Hugh Drummond?’

  ‘You recognise the name, you’re a reading man yourself. Yes, he’s got the same name as Bulldog Drummond.’ The young man’s smile was wolfish, showing sharp white teeth. ‘Did his parents give him the name or did he take it for himself? Who can tell? You haven’t said how it is you know Chrissie Drummond.’

  ‘I don’t know her by name. My friend Claber knows a girl who looks like that.’

  The young man did not seem to notice the yawning gap in credibility here, which Sher realised as soon as he had spoken – why should the fact that Claber knew a girl who looked like Chrissie have made him imagine that it was this girl? The young man drummed with his fingers on the counter and looked at Sher, still with the wolfish smile. A man came out of the house opposite. It was Claber. He got into the Mercedes and drove away. Sher was uncertain what to do. Should he call at the house?

  ‘Well?’ the young man said. He was off the bar stool, and in front of Sher.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Was it your friend Claber? You were looking hard enough.’

  ‘I think it was, yes.’

  The barmaid spoke for the first time. ‘We don’t want any trouble in here, Mr Drummond.’

  At that the young man relaxed, and made a mock-bow. ‘Hugh Drummond at your service. Come and meet Chrissie.’

  A couple of minutes later he was in the front room with the bay window. It was a living and dining-room, and it was extremely untidy. Two ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts, and a third had been knocked on to the floor. There was an old sofa, and a couple of shabby chairs with empty coffee cups on them. A toy garage stood under a table, and toy cars were scattered round the floor. A plate was on the table, with a half-eaten piece of bread and butter on it. Beside it were crumbs of fruit cake. Round the walls were half a dozen paintings which looked to Sher like splurges of colour running into each other. He disliked them, he disliked the sluttishness of the house, he disliked Drummond.

  And no doubt Drummond disliked him. He had shouted ‘Chrissie’ at the bottom of the stairs, and now stood in the doorway. A flick knife had appeared in his right hand. He tapped the point of it gently into the palm of his left.

  ‘So what’s the story?’ Sher did not know what to say. ‘Come on, buster, you go in that pub and you ask a lot of questions about me and my family. I’m entitled to know what it’s in aid of. If you ask me, I’ve been too damn nice already.’ He threw up the clasp knife and caught it. ‘You like Bulldog Drummond?’

  ‘It’s a long time since I’ve read about him.’

  ‘English, are you?’

  ‘Of course. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Not so much of course. This country’s getting crowded out with foreigners, friend, Pakis, blacks, yids. Some you can tell, but the worst are the ones you can’t, the ones that look just like you and me.’ He opened the door, shouted, ‘Chrissie, I called you,’ closed it again, and went on talking. There was something uncertain about him, a geyser of malice bubbling up that never quite boiled. ‘That’s why I’m proud of my name. Bulldog Drummond, what a character. A real Englishman. He knew what to do with the reds and the yids, and he’d have known what to do with the coons. They’re all around, you know, it’s not just Brixton and Battersea, they’re here in Fulham too, just a couple of doors down the street. They even use the boozer over the road. I tell you, I sometimes don’t fancy drinking there, I’m not sure how well they wash the glasses. How about you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Drink out of a glass after a coon, would you? A bloody nigger lover. What are you doing here, come on, I want to know.’ He was pressing the button on the knife almost automatically, in out, in out, as he came nearer. Sher was conscious of danger, and his own movement was almost involuntary. He took one step forward, kicked hard at Drummond’s instep and at the same time grasped the other’s wrist and twisted. Drummond cried out. The flick knife dropped to the floor. Sher picked it up and put it in his pocket.

  There was handclapping at the door. The girl with long hair stood there. ‘Clever Hugh,’ she said. ‘Next time you should take on a blind old age pensioner, it would be more of a match.’

  Drummond sat down in one of the shabby chairs, and looked as if he was going to cry. ‘He was in the pub. Asking questions about you, who you were. He said he knew Harry, he was a friend of Harry’s. He’s a spy. And what’s Tony doing here for God’s sake?’

  A small boy in pyjamas had sidled into the room. He at once settled down on the floor and started pushing the toy cars about, muttering to himself as he did so.

  ‘If he’s a spy it’s more than you’ll ever be. Do you know what he did a few months back? Put one of those ads in The Times, saying go anywhere, do anything. And he got some answers.’

  ‘Ah, they weren’t serious, they were–’

  ‘There was a man came here, said he was a Colonel; getting together a commando group to fight in Angola, but would he go? His teeth were chattering so loud the Colonel couldn’t hear himself speak. Piss and wind, that’s what he’s made of, piss and wind and pot. Half the time he’s stoned out of his mind.’

  ‘I never trusted the man, he was a crook. If it’s the way you say, why is Harry pleased to use my services?’

  ‘As an errand boy. You were frightened even to speak to him tonight, I had to do it myself.’ She took a cigarette from a pocket in the stained smock she was wearing, and stared at Sher from under thick brows. ‘I know you. Do you know who this is, Hugh? It’s the actor who plays Sherlock Holmes on the telly. Sherlock was on drugs too, they tell me, a main liner, only he had the guts to kick the habit. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Main line,’ said the boy on the floor. ‘Main line goes along motorway zoom zoom, here come drugs zoom zoom, and they go crash – crash.’ He turned over both cars.

  ‘Sherlock Holmes meets Bulldog Drummond.’ Drummond’s laugh was thin, nervous. He moved between Sher and the door. ‘But what’s he doing here, what does he want?’

  ‘Don’t make yourself more ridiculous than you are.’ She said to Sher, ‘You can give him his toy back, he wouldn’t hurt you with it, not unless you turned your back on him. But I think I know what you’re doing, Mr Sherlock Holmes. Something to do with what I read in the paper this morning, isn’t that right?’

  When lies are no longer possible, then truth is the only resort. ‘That’s right. I saw you leave the Carrousel with Claber this evening, and followed you.’

  �
�And you let him in here,’ she said to her husband. ‘You’re clever. Yes, you’re a smart boy, you are.’

  Drummond said defensively, rhetorically, ‘And isn’t that just where we’d want to have him? Wasn’t it a good move? He leaves when we say so, and not before.’

  The little boy was using Sher’s shoes as traffic islands round which his cars moved. Sometimes the cars cannoned into the islands, sometimes they whizzed past them. All the time he kept up a muttering, in which words ran indistinguishably into each other.

  ‘What are you after?’ The girl tapped her cigarette on the edge of the table, and the ash dropped to the carpet.

  ‘Anything to do with the killings, nothing else. I had a note to meet someone in the Carrousel, but he didn’t turn up. You looked the wrong sort of person to be there, so I followed you.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And your husband says you’re a commercial artist. I suppose those paintings on the wall are yours too.’

  ‘You like them?’

  ‘I can’t say I do, no.’

  ‘More fool you. They’re bloody good, and some day some stinking gallery owner’s going to realise it.’ Drummond, beside the door, began to whistle, ‘I’m a Dreamer, Aren’t We All?’ She said without heat, ‘Do you suppose the reason I stay with him is he’s such a clown?’

  ‘So you really are a painter. You’ve got paint marks on that smock. But still, I imagine it was something else that Claber wanted.’

  He felt something cold and hard inside his trouser leg, and looked down. The little boy said, ‘Main line gone to bed.’ When he shook his leg the toy car dropped to the floor. Tony yelped in protest. As he looked up again it seemed to him that he had missed some look that was passing between the Drummonds.

  A telephone began to ring. Chrissie Drummond said ‘Good night. If you want a bit of advice, don’t play around with Harry Claber.’

  Drummond showed his wolfish teeth. ‘It could be dangerous. I’m a friendly man myself, but Harry–’ He shook his head. ‘Are you not going to answer that telephone, Chrissie? And could I have my knife back?’

  The telephone was in a corner of the room. The girl crossed to it, said ‘Just a minute,’ and put her hand over the receiver, waiting for Sher to go. He handed back the knife, and Drummond immediately pushed the button so that the blade flicked out. Sher stepped back, and something crunched under his foot. There was a wail of anguish. Fists pummelled his leg.

  ‘Main line, you broke main line.’ Tony held up the squashed car.

  ‘Be your age,’ Chrissie said to Drummond, and to Sher, ‘He’s like a kid playing with those things. They make him excited.’ Her hand was still over the receiver.

  As Sher moved past Drummond into the hall, the fair man made a playful gesture with the knife, stopping it three inches short of Sher’s stomach. Tony followed him, crying ‘You broke main line, you spy, you broke main line,’ and battering away with punches below knee height. A pound note quietened him only momentarily. At the door Drummond said, ‘I’ll remember you,’ and made another playful thrust. It was a disorderly retreat.

  Chapter Fifteen Sherlock in Trouble

  On the following evening Sheridan Haynes and Joe Johnson sat opposite each other in the Baker Street rooms. Smoke curled up from Johnson’s pipe. It was a Sherlockian scene, except that Johnson had come straight from work, and was still in his uniform. And there were other differences, when you came to think of it. The smokeless fuel was warm enough, but it did not contain those flickering blue-gold flames into which both Holmes and Watson had often broodingly looked. There was, of course, no Mrs Hudson. And more important, coming back to actuality, there was no Val.

  She had returned that morning, to find Sher in the middle of what turned out to be a very long telephone conversation with a man who said that he was the Karate Killer, and wanted both to confess and to give details of his next crime. He sounded so convincing, and seemed to know so much about the killings, that Sher did not put down the telephone until he had heard the man’s account of his next victim, and the place of execution. The victim was to be the Prime Minister, and the place 10 Downing Street.

  He found Val packing clothes in the bedroom. It seemed that two people within him watched her, as she put in the clothes with her usual neat efficiency. One was Sheridan Haynes, who had lived with Val for more than a quarter of a century, had slept in her bed and given her a child, and yet perhaps had never fully understood what lay beneath her surface practicality.

  This man would miss Val, her absence would leave a gap in his life that would ache for ever like a missing limb. But another man within him felt that women at best were an indulgence, that they interfered with those logical processes of the mind that were man’s chief claim to be distinguished from the animals. This second man who was not Sherlock Holmes, but who regarded Holmes as a figure to whose genius one should aspire, saw what was happening almost with indifference. With one part of his mind he felt that the great detective would at last be free. Both the grieved husband and the indifferent detective found it equally difficult to say anything, and it was Val who spoke.

  ‘I told you I should. And you know why.’ There was something unusually defensive in her tone.

  ‘Because of the investigation, yes.’ Was it Sheridan or Sherlock who had the upper hand? He could not be sure.

  ‘Investigation. You can’t think how ridiculous you make yourself. You don’t understand that, do you?’

  For a moment as she looked at him, he saw the woman who had been contented as the wife of a moderately successful actor, who had brought up their son, and had been delighted by the occasional finds she made in the antique market. ‘Val,’ he said questioningly, almost as if he were groping for her, unsure that she was there. Then the moment had gone, and whatever spark of emotion flashed between them had gone too.

  ‘I’ll leave you with the collected works, you don’t need me.’ She made a gesture towards his side of the bed, where the individual volumes stood, each of them specially bound. He had said something then, something about her return when this was over, and she had commented that he didn’t even want to know where she was going. This was true, or at least it was true that part of him simply wanted her to go away. He said that he had supposed she would be going to her sister.

  ‘I shall go to Willie.’ Even then he did not understand until she spelt it out for him. ‘He’s been asking me to live with him for a long time. Since we started going to bed together. You didn’t know that.’

  ‘No, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Anyone else would have done. The awful thing is that what I loved always was the fact that you didn’t notice things – oh, some things I know, but not that kind – and now–’ She did not finish the sentence, but began another. ‘Why did I tell you that? To hurt you, I suppose. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you in love with him?’ Again, part of him was hardly interested in the answer. She laughed.

  ‘With Willie? He’s just a fat little Pole out for everything he can get. But I can talk to him, and he answers. Half the time you don’t even know I’m there. That’s why I’m off.’ She touched two fingers with her lips, pressed the fingers to his cheek, and was gone.

  Afterwards he tried to discover what he felt. The act of physical unfaithfulness had never meant much to him, and there had been times in the first years of their marriage when both of them had been to bed with somebody else, and both had understood that these affairs were not to be taken seriously. Why did he feel this to be something different? Partly perhaps because those other beddings had been long ago, and it was years since he had wanted to sleep with another woman, but there was a special feeling of betrayal that she had slept with Willie. It was Willie who had been the inspiration of the Holmes series, and it seemed to him that she had deliberately set out to spoil his pleasure in the Sherlock Holmes association. Or was all that an illusion, an obsession? The thought was still worrying him when he went in the afternoon to the Anglo-American Fitness an
d Athletic Club, which he had used for some years, and had a work out with Riverboat Johnson. Usually they had three minutes of what was mostly shadow boxing, but today he found pleasure in landing punches to the head and body, and in slipping Riverboat’s half-power returns.

  For his white clients Riverboat often played the role of American Negro, Mark One, in action and speech. He allowed himself to be used as a punching bag as long as he didn’t get hurt, and then camped it up afterwards.

  ‘You sure in fine condition,’ he said now. ‘You ain’t even raised a sweat, and just look at old Riverboat puffing. And that right hand, I thought you got lead in that glove.’

  ‘You could lay me flat in thirty seconds,’ Sher said, but he was still pleased.

  In the changing-room Riverboat said, ‘I was reading in the papers about that investigation of yours, and you know what I thought. I thought you ought to take lessons in karate or judo, Mr Haynes.’

  ‘What for? Would it help to find the killer?’

  ‘You ain’t going to find no killer, that’s all publicity.’ He saw from Sher’s face that he had not said the right thing, and changed course effortlessly. ‘Just that my opinion is, these ain’t no karate killings. I had a big man walk in here from Scotland Yard, man working on the case, told him the very same thing. I reckon this is some amateur riding his luck. Course I could be wrong, it’s just what old Riverboat thinks. But what I was going to say, why don’t Sherlock Holmes take a few lessons in karate, then you tell those studio bosses you discovered he’s a black belt, and you bring it in one of the stories.’

  Riverboat grinned happily, a simple nigger easy to please, and Sher responded as he always did to discussions of Sherlock. He knew very well that Riverboat was stringing him along, but he took the question seriously.

  ‘As a matter of fact Holmes did spend some time in Tibet, but there’s nothing in the stories to say that he knew karate or judo. He was a baritsu expert though, do you know what that is?’ Riverboat shook his head, grinning. ‘Neither does anyone else.’