A Three Pipe Problem

by Julian Symons

  ‘Willie, you’ve got something to tell me.’

  ‘You are so clever, it’s what I have always loved about you. Such intuition. I can hardly believe you are English. You had a Hungarian grandmother. I think you have already understood.’

  ‘I think so too perhaps, but I shall understand even better when you tell me.’

  ‘The blow has fallen.’ Rather in the tradition of a Marx Brother announcing bad news, but in his case with perfect seriousness, Willie allowed his head to droop. ‘Sherlock Holmes is finished. Cut off. Like that. The last two scripts for the series are not even to be made.’

  ‘I haven’t got an ashtray.’ He got up and brought one over, looking at her penetratingly as he did so, a doctor waiting to see if the patient was seriously affected by the news. Val tapped ash serenely.

  ‘After that affair last night, so ridiculous, so awful, they have operated one of the clauses in, as they say, the small print. And what objection could I raise? So ridiculous.’

  ‘I agree. Isn’t there anything to be done?’

  He shook his head. ‘There is a terrible man named Dryne.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him.’

  ‘He talked to me. By now he will have spoken to Sher. I thought it was better if it was Dryne who said it, otherwise Sher might have suspected that I had something to do with it. Under the circumstances, you know.’ He sighed profoundly. ‘Poor Sher.’

  ‘Poor Sher. Still, this doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, does it, Willie?’

  ‘But to learn these two things together. Can you imagine?’ He smacked one plump fist into the other fat palm. ‘Biff, I have lost the part that has made me famous. Biff, I have lost the wife I love to my best friend.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say you were exactly Sher’s best friend. He doesn’t have many friends.’

  Willie disregarded this. ‘Val, we cannot do this to him. You and I, at such a time, we cannot do it.’

  He was offended when she burst out laughing. ‘I’m not laughing at you.’

  ‘You are not? I could have been fooled, as they say.’

  ‘Dear Willie, you’re an original, you really are. Why was I so stupid?’ Tears formed in her eyes, and she could not easily have said whether they were of laughter or vexation. ‘Don’t worry. I can take a hint if I’m hit over the head with it. Going to bed is one thing, living with somebody is another, I should have seen it. If I came and lived with you I might even start talking about marriage.’

  ‘My darling, you are being unjust.’ A pout of disappointment was contradicted by his almost evident relief. Arms were flung wide. ‘You stay here as long as you like. Stay forever. What more can I say?’

  ‘It’s not what you say, it’s the way that you say it.’

  ‘What I say is that we cannot do this to Sher. We must sacrifice ourselves.’

  ‘Enough is enough, Willie. You needn’t go on. I think you’re right really, we’re both too old for this sort of thing. So it’s over and goodbye. No copulation without cohabitation will be my motto in future.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette, and moved away when he tried to embrace her again. He asked what she would do now.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m a survivor.’

  ‘But you cannot go now. In the fog.’

  ‘Oh yes, I can. Goodbye, Willie.’

  Then she had gone. He looked out of the window and saw her get into her car and drive away slowly, merging with the mass of traffic. It was not what he had envisaged as the end of the scene, and he felt slightly cheated.

  Sarah would have been leaving the Sherlock Holmes series in the next episode in any case. In that story she escaped from a police trap set for her, and Holmes then let her go on condition that she left England for ever. Accordingly she was looking for a play, and she was reading a script that had been sent by her agent when Basil rang, full of glee about the success of what he called their little prank, and saying that he had been asked to write an article for a Sunday paper on what it was like to work with Sher.

  ‘Of course this rather nice journalist will be doing it mostly, putting it all down on paper after talking to me. You know the kind of thing, frank revelations, and I really do intend to let my hair down. I mean he really is, let’s face it, round the bend.’

  It was a phrase she had used herself when talking to Willie, yet somehow she did not like it being used back at her. She was becoming less sure every minute that she approved of what she had done last night.

  ‘The thing is, sweetie, if you liked to do something too, about how we planned it and wrote that note, I think the paper–’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh,’ Basil said expressively. ‘Of course, if that’s the way you feel–’

  She was suddenly sick of Basil. ‘The way I feel is that we’ve had our joke, and that’s it. The poor bastard may be a little bit round the bend, but if he isn’t you’re going the right way to send him there.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so moral. I mean, somebody who goes to bed with Harry Claber shouldn’t be quite so choosey, is what I think.’

  ‘Oh, balls.’

  It was hardly a satisfactory way of ending the conversation, and she was still thinking about Sher when Joyce returned in tears. James James had been back, had called her a stupid slut who was no use even in bed, and said that he was bringing a bird home with him that night, and that if she didn’t like it she could get out.

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ Joyce wailed. ‘I mean, it is my flat. What shall do?’

  ‘I told you I can get Harry to lean on him. Okay, so you don’t want that. Well then, you can choose between getting out or staying and sharing him with his other bird. I dare say that’s what you want anyway.’

  ‘Sarah, you are beastly to me.’

  Sarah ignored this. ‘I’ve had Basil Wainwright on. Some paper’s asked him to write about what working with Sher is like, and of course he’s going to put the boot in. I wish we hadn’t done that to Sher last night. Or I wish we hadn’t told the press. That was Basil’s idea.’

  ‘You went along with it.’

  ‘I didn’t realise they’d make him look such a fool.’

  ‘You must have known what papers like the Enquirer would say. And you told me yourself that he’s round the bend.’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t want to feel responsible for putting him in a bin.’ She crossed to the telephone and began to dial.

  ‘What are you going to do? I mean, what will you say?’

  ‘Tell him I’m sorry. And there’s something else.’ She was thinking of what Harry had said about teaching Sher a lesson. When she got through, Joyce could hear the voice at the other end loud and angry, although she could not hear the words. Twice Sarah tried to interrupt, but the voice evidently overbore her. Joyce saw the ivory of Sarah’s complexion turn a dull red. Again she tried to say something without success, and then she put down the receiver.

  Joyce had her share of the malice of the weak. ‘That didn’t seem to go too well. What did he say?’

  ‘The company aren’t going to make the last two programmes at all. It doesn’t matter to me, they’ll pay me out, but I don’t know what it’ll do to Sher.’

  ‘He blames you?’

  ‘You could put it like that.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Ruining his life was about what it amounted to. He’s apparently in some trouble with his wife, and he seemed to blame me for that too. I rather liked him. He seemed almost human for the first time, instead of sounding like a third carbon copy of Sherlock Holmes. There’s one thing, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There was something I meant to tell him, and I never got around to it.’

  After speaking to Sarah Peters he was utterly exhausted. The ache in his stomach was still there, but with it went a weariness so great that he could hardly keep his eyes open. He sat in the chair beside the telephone, wondering whether he had the energy to get into the bedroom and lie on the bed. To conside
r this more carefully he closed his eyes.

  He was walking down a street which he knew yet failed to recognise, until he saw ‘J Hampton – Cellulose – Acetate’, and realised that it was the street down which Shorty and Joey had pursued him. As soon as he understood this he began to run, but although he ran and ran the street seemed to have lengthened immeasurably, because he never reached the end of it. At the same time he was aware that somebody was running at his side, and turning saw that it was Lestrade, foxy-faced little Lestrade. What a relief! He tried to say this to Lestrade without ceasing for a moment to run down the street, but the Scotland Yard man did not seem to understand. They turned into another street, and this surprised him because he had not realised that this turning existed. He tried to say as much to Lestrade, but the detective merely grinned, and said as they ran gasping along, ‘Pure, Mr Holmes, you have to be pure, that’s the answer.’ What did the man mean? ‘Pure, you must pass the Pure Fruit Standard if you want to go down there.’ Now he was pointing a finger downwards, and the descent was steep, they were running and slipping and sliding downwards. He tried to hold on to the sides of what seemed a grassy slope, but his fingers could get no purchase, and he understood that they were slipping down into danger, and that Lestrade had led him here quite deliberately.

  They were very close together, an arm was round his shoulders, and the face pressed to his, the teeth that nibbled at his ear, were not Lestrade’s but belonged to Sarah Peters. She whispered something to him, and by a great effort he managed to hear the words. Slowly, as she pulled at his ear lobe, she said, ‘The karate killer has the naval treaty.’ That’s the answer? he asked incredulously, and she said solemnly yes, yes.

  The revelation had been made, and he knew the urgency of acting on it, and of moving up, up out of the pit. ‘You will find it in Hyde Park,’ she said, as he struggled upwards at last, moving away from her and from Lestrade, until he had reached the top of what turned out to be a kind of well. It should have been simple enough to hoist himself out of it, but when he tried, something passed over his fingers with a quick damp movement like that of a sponge. This continual damping of his fingers made it impossible for him to get any hold on the surface above ground. Who was doing this? He hardly dared to look up, knowing as he did what he would find. At last, with infinite effort, he raised his head, to discover the terror he had always known. It was the Hound, the Hound of the Baskervilles, with lolling licking tongue outstretched, muzzle and dewlap outlined in flickering flame. With that knowledge he heard a terrible cry.

  And woke, woke screaming, to find the light on and the telephone ringing, and to know that the cry was his own. He stared at the black instrument, which seemed an extension of his dream, then lifted the receiver and spoke.

  Joe Johnson’s voice said, ‘Mr Haynes, is that you? You don’t sound like yourself.’

  ‘Perhaps I am not.’

  ‘What’s that? Mr Haynes, are you all right?’

  He replied that he was all right. Johnson went on to say that it was a nasty night, a real fog like they’d not had for ages, but that the tube lines were running, and if Mr Haynes would like him to come along, if there was anything they ought to talk about –

  He interrupted. ‘Joe, I’ve had a dream. I want to think about it.’

  When Joe Johnson had rung off, he said to Emmy that he hoped Mr Haynes was all right, he’d sounded very funny.

  Sher thought about the dream. It seemed to him that some-thing had been said in it, something holding the answer to the final problem. Some elements of the dream were easily explicable, the run down the street, Sarah’s presence, the transformation of the dog that had licked his face into the Hound of the Baskervilles. If one said that Lestrade stood for the unknown killer, what had he been trying to say? Was the killer somebody always at Sher’s side, why had Lestrade talked about being pure? In wondering this, he put a hand in his pocket. The hand touched paper, he drew out the envelope upon which he had written the number of Rochester’s house and of the van that had delivered the picture. He looked at it and he knew the answer, the answer to the question he had asked himself the whole afternoon. He knew what the dream had been trying to tell him.

  He telephoned Johnson again, and talked to him for five minutes. Then he made another call. The person he wanted was out, so he left a message. Then he turned off the light, put on his thick raglan overcoat, and went out.

  The Devenishes were giving a dinner party, and Roger had promised to be home by six. He came in an hour after that to find Sue upset, partly because of his lateness and partly because the paté she had made as a first course had turned out to be so thin that it could almost be poured. She had then tried to thicken it, and mysterious lumps had appeared. When he tasted it and shook his head, she burst into tears.

  ‘Do you know what we shall have for the first course?’ she asked between sobs. ‘Tinned – soup.’

  ‘Never mind. Maybe they won’t come, it’s such a filthy night. Or maybe I’ll have to go out.’ To make her forget about the paté he told her about the court martial of Sergeant Instructor Haynes. As therapy it was entirely successful. She stared at him wide-eyed.

  ‘But you can’t think he’d have anything to do with the murders. I mean, why?’

  ‘It was you who told me he wished the internal combustion engine had never been invented. All the people killed have been involved in car accidents. He’s an expert in unarmed combat, or he was. And he once killed a man.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘I don’t say that I do, but it seemed worth putting a man on to him. It could be for his own protection too, just in case Harry Claber tried to be funny. My man might just ring up. So be prepared. And speaking of that–’

  ‘Oh no, Roger, we haven’t got time.’

  And she was right. On the way up to the bedroom she was saved by the door bell.

  It did not prove easy to get rid of Joyce Lane. In the end she went back to her flat after Sarah had given her a spare key, and had said that if James James brought back his threatened bird, Joyce could come round and stay the night. Left alone, Sarah found herself thinking about the black and white cat. In her thoughts the cat assumed a bloodiness it had not possessed in fact, and in recollection also seemed to have had an enormous head. She could feel this head burrowing away into her hands, and letting out its wretched rusty miaow. Why did such ideas enter her mind when she knew them to be false?

  A game of patience was her usual solvent for emotional problems, and she got out the cards. She played all sorts of patience games from simple single-pack patiences like the simple Caufield or the Windmill to complicated double-pack games like French Blockade and Triple Line. Tonight she played one of the very few triple-pack patiences, the Curse of Scotland. The patience took its name from the fact that the nine of diamonds is known as the Curse of Scotland, and the foundation cards used were the three nines of diamonds in the packs. The game was complicated, with all sorts of possibilities becoming apparent in the first moves, and this intellectual and mathematical quality was one of its attractions for her. Another was that you never got it out, or at least she had never done so. You could be going along swimmingly for three-quarters of the game and then come to a total block quite suddenly. On the other hand you could stumble along at the beginning, and then have an exhilarating run. The book in which she had found it said that the chances against getting it out were several millions to one.

  The game took about an hour, and in playing it she became completely absorbed. She had a difficult passage at one point in transferring cards from one column to another. Then the difficulties cleared, and she built rapidly on the foundations. Suddenly there were less than a dozen cards left. She played them hesitantly, unbelievingly. They went into their proper places. She had got out the Curse of Scotland.

  While she was looking at the neatly piled cards the telephone rang. She lifted the receiver, gave her number, and then said ‘This is Sarah Peters.’ The receiver at the other end
was replaced. She put back her own telephone, poured herself a large vodka gimlet, and thought again about the cat. Somehow the conjunction of the three things, the successful game of patience, the telephone call, and the image of the cat, made her shudder.

  Cassidy signed off at seven in the Wardens’ Centre. After that he went out to look at Miranda, in the adjacent car park. He unlocked the door, switched on the engine, and listened to its rackety coughing. Then he turned it off, relocked the car and patted the bonnet.

  ‘You’re a good old girl,’ he said to Miranda. ‘But you’re not going home yet, it’s too foggy. And anyway I want some nosh. And I’ve got things to do. See you later, old girl.’

  In this, however, he was mistaken.

  It was another world out here. You could see only a few feet even in brightly lighted Baker Street, and the people who loomed in front of you moved as though there were a nimbus of mist around them. They did not scurry like modern ants, but moved gently and cautiously, as though they had only recently recovered from an illness, and were a little unsure of their legs. And the faces that emerged out of the fog seemed, as they came close and then passed, gentler and more attractive than anything seen in the hard light of day. The women in particular had some quality of mystery about them. Many of them were wearing hats, and beneath the brims their faces took on the quality, at once vague and solidly fleshy, of a painting by Renoir.

  DC Lovesey had seen the light go out in the rooms. He let Haynes get a few yards ahead and then followed him down Baker Street. Haynes was walking slowly, and Lovesey stopped once or twice to look in shop windows. Tailing somebody was in Lovesey’s view almost impossible in daylight if the man you were following had his wits about him, but on a night like this it was a cinch, even though you couldn’t call it a pleasure.

  Hugh Drummond, who was standing in a pub doorway a few yards from Lovesey, also saw the light go out, and went into the pub to get Shorty. They had agreed to take turns in keeping watch. This meant that Shorty, whose appetite seemed in-exhaustible, spent a lot of time in the pub. Drummond found him eating sausages and drinking beer. He gulped down the last of the beer and came out wiping his mouth. ‘Where is he?’