A Three Pipe Problem

by Julian Symons

  Thirty yards from the bushes there was a small storage hut used by the park attendants. Standing beside it, they could see anybody who approached the bushes from this side. The disadvantage of the position was that a man coming from the Park Lane direction was likely to be concealed, but still it seemed the best place in which to stand. Sher felt in his hip pocket, took out a flask, and handed it to Johnson. The warden put it to his lips, gave a sigh of satisfaction, and handed it back. Sher felt the whisky sting his throat and the glow through his body, and he experienced an accompanying emotional glow, a feeling of pure joy. The icy night, the sense of being on the track of a mystery in the heart of a great city, the possible nearness of danger among the bushes – all this, surely, was what Holmes had meant when he said to Watson, ‘The game’s afoot.’

  ‘That really hit the spot,’ Johnson murmured. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Wait to see if Sarah keeps the appointment, and what happens when she does. If she doesn’t come, then we may get cold outside but we shall stay warm within.’

  ‘You haven’t brought a camera?’

  ‘Holmes never took photographs.’ He spoke sharply, and Johnson looked at him in surprise. Sher laughed. ‘That isn’t a good reason, I know. I do have a camera with a flash, but I forgot to bring it.’

  ‘How about a revolver?’

  ‘I have no licence.’

  ‘What happens if we see somebody?’

  ‘We do whatever seems right at the time. We shall have to improvise.’

  Johnson subsided, although he was evidently not satisfied. Minutes, or what seemed like minutes, passed. The hut protected them from the sleet, but not from the wind. The traffic warden stamped his feet, then said, ‘I think I can see people moving. Through the bushes. We ought to be on the other side of them.’

  Sher saw them too, what looked like three or four figures grouped together. Then some of them moved away. ‘We can’t be on the other side, we shall be seen.’

  ‘Doing no good here though, are we? Shall I start to work my way round?’

  Before Sher could reply, a thin scream sounded on the air, and was repeated. Both men broke from their cover and ran across the grass.

  As soon as they reached the bushes Sher saw the body. It lay on the grass face down, the body of a woman lying sideways in an awkward posture. She was still wearing a coat, and the clothing was not disarranged. An open handbag was by her side, with the contents scattered on the grass.

  Johnson looked around. ‘I don’t see anybody.’ Sher was on his knees beside the body. ‘You shouldn’t move her.’

  ‘She may still be alive.’ He turned the body over gently, to make sure that it was Sarah. The fine profile and the arrogant look were unmistakable. A gout of blood ran down from her mouth.

  He looked up to tell Johnson that it was indeed Sarah Peters and that she was dead, when a flashlight went off. Three people were standing a few yards away, one of them the photographer. ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking a shot of the bewildered Sher beside the body, a shot from above, a double shot of Sher and Johnson. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ Then the other two were with them, Basil Wainwright and the mufflered and hatted man, who revealed himself as Jimmy Quade. Sarah sat up, peeled the plastic blood from her face, and said, ‘I’m bloody cold.’

  ‘Darling, you were superb. Just superb, wasn’t she, Jimmy?’ That was Basil.

  Sher stood up, dusting his knees, turning his head slowly from side to side to look at them. ‘It was a trick.’

  ‘Your face. If you could have seen your face.’ Basil let his jaw drop, wagged his hands like an idiot.

  ‘If he could see it now,’ Sarah said.

  Johnson’s Pickwickian features were unusually solemn. ‘I suppose the photographer was from a paper.’ The man was already fifty yards away. ‘Shall we try to stop him?’ He spoke to Sher who stood like a statue, apparently unhearing. The traffic warden transferred his attention back to the others. ‘A nasty trick.’

  ‘Who are you, his Watson?’ Basil giggled. ‘That ought to be me. We simply had to do it, you’ve no idea how we’ve suffered, has he, Sarah darling? All those tantrums in rehearsal. And then saying to me, “I’m investigating the case.” I mean, really. Too much.’

  ‘I don’t mind somebody being stupid, but I do object to them thinking they’re so bloody clever,’ Sarah said.

  ‘So we thought we’d play this little charade, and see if he fell for it. And dear Jimmy helped. First the anonymous letter saying meet me at the Carrousel, to see if he bit, then the sinister letter fragment. We thought you’d like that, Sher.’

  Sarah sneezed. ‘I’m simply freezing. I shouldn’t be surprised if I’ve got pneumonia.’

  ‘Darling, you’re made of tougher stuff than that.’ They looked, now a little nervously, at Sher standing apart and staring across the park.

  ‘You’ve upset Mr Haynes,’ Johnson said. ‘You shouldn’t have done it. He was just playing at Sherlock Holmes, not doing any harm. Now it’ll all be in the papers.’

  ‘It was your idea to tell the press,’ Sarah said defensively to Basil. ‘What paper did he come from?’

  ‘He’s an agency man. I give him a scoop. I tell you what, why don’t we all go and have a drink together and get hold of that photographer, Dickie whatever his name is, and he can take a picture of us all together, all good friends.’

  ‘Sher’s gone.’ The tall figure was striding away across the grass. Johnson hesitantly followed him. ‘Oh, balls to Sherlock Holmes,’ Sarah Peters said. ‘Let’s go and have a drink.’

  It was one in the morning. The residential street was empty except for some parked cars. Sarah stopped the car, got out, picked up the cat and took it to the pavement. It miaowed in faint protest, arched its back. A spurt of blood came from its mouth as she laid it gently down, and then it stiffened. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Bloody bloody bloody hell.’ The cat, a handsome large black and white cat, was dead.

  She stood looking down at it, wondering what to do. She had not seen the animal at all, just felt the smack as she hit something. She had been driving over the speed limit, but then who doesn’t at one in the morning? And she had had a good deal to drink, although she was far from drunk. It was a bad end to an evening she regretted, although she had gone along with Basil’s idea happily enough at the time. But what was she going to do about the cat? Ring the bells of these darkened houses, wake the occupants to ask if they owned a black and white cat, and then say that she had killed it? In the end she picked up the cat carefully and placed it just inside the front gate of the nearest house, so that it should not be kicked accidentally by somebody passing. Then she drove slowly and carefully to her Paddington flat.

  Chapter Eighteen The Last Day of Life

  Val had, after all, stayed another night with Marjorie Billings. She had been unable to reach Willie. His secretary said that he was casting a new play, not TV but live theatre, and had gone up to Manchester to see an actress playing in rep up there, a girl totally unknown outside Lancashire, who was said to be a new Vanessa Redgrave. He was staying overnight. And who with, Val wondered. Would the totally unknown actress be able to resist the charm of Mitteleuropa? So she telephoned Marjorie, who was always delighted to have somebody to talk to about her nightly problems and achievements.

  It was not about The Thing that she spoke, however, when she burst into Val’s bedroom wavinig the Enquirer, which was the newest of the tabloids.

  ‘Sherlock in the news,’ she cried. ‘Really in the news. Did you know about it?’

  The headline said sherlock finds a body, and then beneath only the blood was plastic. There was a picture of Sher leaning over Sarth Peters, another of the recumbent body, and a third of Sher looking up into the camera. She read the story, which was written in a vein of unrelenting heavy humour, and handed it back.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ Marjorie asked eagerly.

  ‘I told you he was investigating. I didn’t know he’d fall for anything like t
his. Basil Wainwright must hate him.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ New-woman Marjorie loved drama. She was obviously disappointed by Val’s response.

  ‘Nothing. I’ve left Sher because he was making a fool of him-self. Why should I worry if he proves to be a bigger fool than I expected?’

  Nevertheless, when she left Marjorie an hour later, she thought about Sher on the drive down to Greenwich. It was a foggy morning when she left Battersea, and by the time she reached the shop the fog was quite thick. After her arrival she had to restrain herself from making a sympathetic telephone call to him. What would have been the point?

  Sher had asked for incoming telephone calls to be cut off after he reached home the previous night, but the papers, The Times, the Telegraph and the Enquirer, were on the floor, pushed through the letter-box. He read the Enquirer story, and then turned to the others. The Telegraph had a picture, and a paragraph which included a short interview with Basil who said the whole thing was a joke. The Times ignored it. In a couple of days, Sher thought, it would be forgotten. Had he been foolishly credulous in believing the evidence of the letter fragment? Perhaps he had, and the remembrance of Basil’s red gloating face made him angry. But how many other people who laughed at him would have been deceived as well?

  In the kitchen, making coffee and toast, he looked out of the window and exclaimed aloud: ‘There’s a fog.’ True London fogs were rare nowadays, and this was hardly a fog as yet but only a yellowish swirling mist that dulled sounds and softened out-lines, making the buildings on the other side of Baker Street look mellow and gentle, giving a mysterious delicacy to the shopfronts below.

  As he stood looking out, he saw through the mist a vision of the past. On such a day, on such a day as this, had Holmes and Watson rattled in a cab through London’s opalescent reek towards the adventure of the Abbey Grange. On such a day had the great detective stood at the window, where Sher stood now, and exclaimed about the yellow fog as it drifted across the dun-coloured houses opposite. In the mist there were visions of the great man and his friend, sounds of clip-clopping horses. The vague shop lights held an image of the gas illumination in which Sherlock Holmes had read many messages and started on many quests. ‘You would have made an actor and a rare one.’ Athelney Jones had said to the great man once. If a detective could be an actor, was it not possible also for an actor to play the detective?

  ‘No more, love.’

  ‘They’re American,’ Sue said. ‘Called dollar pancakes. The children loved them.’

  ‘Putting on too much weight, got to cut down.’ He burst out laughing. ‘Sherlock’s got his comeuppance. Look at that.’

  It was a centre spread in the Daily Mail. ‘What a dirty trick. And they’re supposed to be his friends.’

  ‘With actors it’s hard to tell friends from enemies, so they tell me. He deserves anything that comes to him.’

  ‘You didn’t say that when he was being helpful to you.’

  ‘That was luck. Anyway, I thanked him. And gave him some information.’ He began to pick his teeth, stopped when he saw Sue’s reproachful look. ‘I can’t stand bloody amateurs, that’s the truth.’

  ‘I think he looks sweet here. As if he’s lost, somebody from another world. But I suppose that’s what he is in a way, isn’t it? With what he thinks about cars, and all that.’

  He stared at her. ‘Come again.’

  ‘He wishes the internal combustion engine had never been invented. Hates cars, he’d like to go back – oh, seventy, eighty years I suppose. Back to the days of Sherlock Holmes. Everybody knows that.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said meekly. He kissed her goodbye with more enthusiasm than usual. ‘Shall I tell you something? I love you.’ When he got in he asked for a check to be run on Sheridan Haynes. He also rang a journalist to whom he had done a couple of good turns, and arranged that he should be given access to the newspaper’s morgue.

  Sarah’s flat was in a mews that was also a dead end. It was a neat little place with largeish living-room, tiny dining-room, bedroom and bath. Outside were window-boxes, which she looked after carefully. Crocuses were beginning to show through even in this hard winter. Below was the garage in which she kept her MG.

  From time to time she had shared the flat with men she fancied, but always within a few weeks she got bored with them and turned them out. She was eating her grapefruit alone when the telephone rang. It was Willie, spluttering with anger.

  ‘Darling, I have just arrived from Manchester by the train, and I have seen the papers. What can have made you do such a stupid, stupid thing. From Basil, yes, I expect stupidity, but you are intelligent. I can tell you now, the company are simply wild. They have gone through the roof, do you understand, through the roof.’

  ‘Yes, I know what through the roof means.’

  ‘As a thing to do it was, I must say darling, idiotic.’

  ‘It seemed like fun at the time.’

  ‘I can tell you they are talking about stopping the series. Not completing it.’ Dryne had been on to Willie a week ago and told him in a few ill-chosen words that this was under consideration, and although it was supposed to be confidential information he saw no harm in repeating it.

  He wanted Sarah at least to say that she was sorry, but she did not give him the satisfaction. ‘Good idea. Everyone’s sick of it anyway. And as for Sher, he’s round the bend.’

  Why didn’t she say she was sorry? He said venomously, ‘A thing of this kind, it gets to be known. Afterwards it is not so easy to get work, people say “Sarah Peters, a good actress yes, but she is not reliable.” What you have done is not so clever.’

  Willie had become tiresome, and she had a standard reply with which she finished a tiresome telephone conversation. ‘Oh, balls,’ she said, and put down the receiver.

  Johnson went on duty at seven-thirty in the morning. Emmy had given him eggs and bacon for breakfast, but the chilly mist penetrated his thick overcoat, and after a couple of hours his feet felt like lumps of ice. Traffic wardens can start booking cars on yellow lines after eight o’clock, but Johnson was indulgent that day, and didn’t hand out a single ticket until nine. At ten o’clock he knocked off for a tea-break at the Centre, and there he saw the Enquirer.

  At first Sher’s agent Desmond O’Malley had approved of the investigation as a good publicity gimmick, but he had changed his mind when he heard that the company was opposed to it. Willie was circuitous as ever in talking about it, but as O’Malley liked to say, he kept his ear to the ground, and what he heard about J O Dryne was not reassuring. When he saw the Enquirer he tried to ring Sher without success, and then went round to Baker Street.

  Sher had just finished dictating to a secretary his answers to the morning mail. O’Malley, who valued his own power of persuasion highly, found it almost impossible to talk to him. He refused to discuss the effect the publicity might have on the programme company, or to consider giving up his investigation. At last O’Malley lost patience.

  ‘Look, Sher, if you want to make sure the company don’t renew the contract at the end of the series, you’re going the right way about it. Viewing figures have dropped, and this sort of thing isn’t going to help.’ He tapped a newspaper. ‘The least you can do is agree to give it up. I’ll be honest with you, I thought at first it was good publicity, but I was wrong.’

  Sher had been pacing up and down the room. Now he stopped by the window. ‘I believe the fog’s thickening. Tonight it could be an old-fashioned pea-souper.’

  ‘Sher–’

  ‘I heard what you said. Suppose Sherlock Holmes solved the crime, what effect do you suppose that would have on the ratings?’

  It was useless to talk to him, and O’Malley said so. He said a few other things about Sher’s stubbornness and stupidity, but they had no visible effect. He summed it up to his secretary afterwards. ‘I’ll be sorry to say goodbye to Sher, but I shall have to give him up.’ The secretary, who knew how reluctant O’Malley was to give up anythin
g resembling a meal ticket, thought it sounded as if he meant it.

  Val had rather a good morning at the shop. She sold the two near-Morlands to an American who had just discovered English painting, and a damaged Pembroke table skilfully repaired by Fritz to a woman who was actually looking for a brass fender. Then she rang Willie, who was delighted to hear from her.

  ‘Darling, I have just got in from Manchester. I rose at the most impossible hour.’

  ‘How was the new Vanessa Redgrave?’

  ‘Unbelievably hopeless. Seven foot tall, and like a wooden puppet. When you pull a string she starts to talk to her leading man as if she cannot see him because her head is in the clouds and he is somewhere down below on earth. And then I come back to find this idiocy that happened last night. What are they doing, I ask you, do they all want to destroy themselves? I have tried to speak to Sher, but he has cut off his telephone. Darling where are you speaking from? You must talk to him, make him see sense.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be much point. I’ve left him.’

  Total silence. She could almost hear the wheels turning in Willie’s mind. ‘Wonderful news. That will bring Sher to his senses.’

  ‘That wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Willie, I’m coming to move in with you. That’s all right, isn’t it? You’ve been talking about it long enough.’

  ‘Wonderful, wonderful. When are you coming?’ Evidently the wheels had finished turning. Willie sounded absolutely himself, enthusiastic, happy, unreliable. She said that she would be with him by five o’clock.