A Three Pipe Problem

by Julian Symons

  Drummond looked up and down. ‘He’s gone. If you’d not spent all your time in the pub now–’

  ‘Why didn’t you wait till he came out, so that you could see the way he was walking? You don’t know you’re born, do you? If you’d seen the way he was walking, we’d have been with him in a minute. Come on.’ He began to walk briskly in the direction of Marylebone Road.

  Drummond followed, protesting. ‘How do you know he went this way?’

  ‘I don’t. We take a chance, can’t do anything else. No point in splitting, we’d never meet up again. Watch where you’re going, mate.’ Shorty shouldered aside a man walking the other way, and jostled a girl in front of him. ‘You’d better hope I’m right. Harry won’t like it if we’ve lost him.’

  ‘There he is.’ Just a little way ahead a tall figure in a raglan overcoat walked along, slowly, meditatively. They passed him. It was Haynes.

  ‘Right then, it’s your lucky night,’ Shorty said. ‘We stand here trying to cross the road, let him get on a bit. Then we follow on. Can’t do it here, too many people.’

  Crossing Baker Street would have been a daunting enterprise, not because the traffic was moving quickly, but because the people in the cars moving forwards at snail pace were ignoring the existence of anything except the machinery which contained them. Traffic lights showed dimly their ruby, amber and green, but many drivers paid no attention to them, going forward in their head to tail crawl whenever they saw a space, so that street intersections saw many cars trying to cross simultaneously but at right angles. These near-collisions, however, were strangely unaccompanied by anger. Drivers leaned out of windows, or got out of their cars, and discussed the unsnarling of their particular traffic knot in the calmest of voices. It was rather as though the fog was a disaster, like an earthquake or an air raid, which made the victims indulgent towards each other.

  Drummond and Shorty were far from such thoughts. ‘I tell you what,’ Drummond said with a giggle. ‘The fuzz’ll be so busy sorting out this lot, they’ll have no time to worry about us. It’s perfect, just perfect.’

  Shorty made no reply, but the remark irritated him. Every-thing about Drummond irritated him. Lovesey, following Sher, passed them standing looking across the road, and just after he had gone by they began to walk in the same direction, two men who had apparently made up their minds not to attempt crossing the road.

  Johnson sat in one easy chair, puffing at his pipe and watching the TV. Emmy was in the other, knitting something. When they sat like this the bad side of her face was turned away from him.

  ‘You want this on, Emmy?’ It was a quiz programme. She shook her head. He turned it off and stood beside the set, his cherubic face puckered. Then he left the room, and came back wearing his good thick overcoat and a scarf.

  ‘Uncle Joe, you’re never going out.’

  ‘Think I ought to, Emmy. That call from Mr Haynes–’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It worries me, I don’t know what he’s trying to do.’

  ‘But how will you find him? Shouldn’t you ring up first?’

  ‘I think I know where he’ll be.’

  She pulled aside the curtains. ‘It’s thick. You’ll get lost.’

  He kissed her good cheek. ‘Looks thicker than it is here, be-cause we haven’t got street lights this end of the road. Don’t worry. I’ll go on the tube.’

  When he was outside he found that the fog had certainly thickened. Just at the end of the road the traffic along Westway purred instead of roared. He lost his way to the Underground station, and it took him nearly thirty minutes to cover less than half a mile.

  Sher walked along without particular purpose, except to gather his thoughts and decide upon a course of action. If he told Devenish what he had learned, the Chief Superintendent would laugh at him. He had no proof of what he believed to be the explanation of the killings, and proposed to solve them as Holmes might have done, by direct confrontation. Holmes had never flinched from such encounters, either with real villains or tangible terrors. What an occasion it had been when, in the affair of the Devil’s Foot, he had exposed both Watson and himself to the subtle, nauseous odour of an unknown poison. Well, there was no Watson with him now, and if he was right there was no villain, only a pitiable man who had done villainous things.

  While thinking about this he almost cannoned into a man who was shuffling along head down. The man shouted abuse after him, waving a bottle and then throwing it, so that it crashed on the pavement. The encounter was distasteful, and Sher turned left into York Street. Here there were fewer people, less light. Here, too, people had abandoned their cars in despair of reaching home in them. Some were neatly parked, others stuck out into the road. In the darkness the fog seemed thicker.

  Hugh Drummond was suddenly taken with a fit of hiccups. They shook him every few seconds, as if he were being given electric shocks. The sound was distinctly audible.

  Shorty was disgusted. ‘Hold your breath, you’d wake the bleeding dead.’

  Drummond opened his mouth to say that he had been holding his breath, and let out a sharp hiccup. ‘Do it now. Good place.’ he said.

  ‘All right. You ready?’

  ‘Got my little – hic – carver.’ The carver was a metal strip which went round the palm, with razor blades set into it on the slant. Drummond had bought it from a man in a pub, who said he had worked for the Kray gang. He had frightened Chrissie by waving it in front of her, but apart from that had done no more than make passes at himself with it in a looking-glass. Now he fitted it on his right hand.

  Shorty had a small club with spikes sticking out of it. The club was very light, made of aluminium, and closed up so that it looked like a long shiny case, of the shape that might be used for holding cigars. When it was opened out, the club had on it small chains like a dragging net. The spikes had hooked ends which caught in anything, and when you pulled on the club they tore the substance they were embedded in, whether it was cloth or flesh. He did not much like using the club, but he did what he was told.

  Now he said, ‘Let’s go,’ and they went. Carefully, because it was not easy to see more than a yard or two, they began to run, or at least to trot.

  Within seconds they were up with Lovesey. They saw him just in time and separated to pass him, one on either side. The sight of two men trotting in thick fog reminded Lovesey that his brief was not only to watch Haynes’ movements, but to look after him. In what might be called a policeman’s voice he shouted at the men to stop, and took one of them by the sleeve. As though the action had prompted an inevitable response, the man gave a loud hiccup. Lovesey did not relinquish his grip. ‘Now hold on a minute,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  When Drummond felt the hand on his sleeve he panicked. He shouted to Shorty for help, and brought round his right hand with the carver in it, striking up at Lovesey’s face. The detective ducked aside, took the blow on his shoulder, heard cloth tear, and realised that the man had a weapon. He brought up an elbow into his assailant’s face, heard his teeth rattle, and with the other fist punched the man in the stomach. Drummond gave a really tremendous hiccup, and sank to the ground groaning.

  Shorty, turning to help his companion, stumbled over Drummond’s outstretched foot. The foot sent him sprawling, but also cast him unexpectedly into Lovesey’s arms in the parody of a loving embrace. Struggling together, the two men staggered off the pavement, bounced into a parked car, and came back again. Drummond clutched at a pair of legs and brought them down.

  They were Shorty’s and, still gripping Lovesey, he brought down the detective as well.

  Lovesey had realised that it was not a matter of reading the Riot Act to these men, but of getting away from them and taking one with him if he could manage it. Shorty tried to get an armlock round his neck, but he broke free, got almost to his feet, and aimed a kick at Drummond’s groin. His intention was to disable one of the men, lay hold of the other, and try to get reinforcements, but although the kick hurt D
rummond he took the force of it on the inside of his thigh, not on his genitals. Crying out with anger and pain he got up and slashed the carver across Lovesey’s face.

  The detective felt nothing for a moment, then there was a sensation of warmth. He put up a hand, encountered the stickiness of blood, tried to wipe it away, and felt terrible pain in his eye. As he screamed, Shorty shouted ‘Come on.’ They left Lovesey on his knees, a hand to his face, crying out something.

  A woman walked by him a couple of minutes later, but thought he was drunk, and made no response to his cry for help. He staggered out into the road, and a car crawling along York Street just managed to avoid hitting him. The driver got out, prepared to be angry, but when he saw the man’s condition put him in the car and took him to St Mary’s Hospital in Praed Street.

  Shorty and Drummond ran along for fifty yards without speaking, aware that they had lost Haynes. Then they stopped a man walking towards them, and asked if he had passed a tall thin man in the last couple of minutes.

  ‘Passed him. No, haven’t passed him.’ The man was small, waggish, in his fifties. ‘Thick fog right enough, but still I’d know if I’d passed a man, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘If you haven’t seen him, he must have gone into one of these houses,’ Drummond said wildly.

  ‘I didn’t say I hadn’t seen a man such as you’re describing, now, did I?’ The man actually wagged a finger.

  Drummond raised his hand threateningly, but Shorty stopped him. ‘It’s a friend of ours, and we’ve lost him in the fog. if you’ve seen him–’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen him but he’s not passed me, if you take my meaning. He crossed the road just before he reached me. Stepped right out, if there’d been anything coming he’d have been hit. People get more and more thoughtless, you know that? And in this fog.’

  They ran recklessly across the road in their turn. A small side road turned off York Street here. They went down it, and found themselves in Marylebone Road. There were more lights here, and there was traffic. They were in luck again. Twenty yards ahead, momentarily visible as he passed under a lamp standard, stalked the raglan-coated figure of Sheridan Haynes.

  The girl had gone into the cabinet swathed in blue and black silky material from head to foot. The magician winked at the audience, and said ‘Now, for the trick, the most extra-ord-in-ary-di-vest-ment trick you ever saw.’ Above the cabinet was his name and occupation: Professor Porno Graff, the Great Lubrician. Through a hole in the cabinet no bigger than the eye of a large needle he pulled a thread of blue and black stuff. As he pulled the thread was a strand, was finger-thick, arm-thick, then cascaded out of the hole as he pulled it, more and more, until the magician had fairly wrapped himself in the material.

  The door of the cabinet flew open. The girl inside was naked. The spotlight focused on her extreme embarrassment as her hands moved first between her thighs, then up to breasts. Then she stepped out, turned and bent down to show her buttocks and the cleft between them. Turning again she made a V sign at the audience, said distinctly ‘Up yours.’ The stage blacked out.

  The bald-headed man with thick sidewhiskers on Val’s right had been trying to make contact throughout the show. Now his thigh moved unequivocally against hers, and a hand touched her breast as he leaned over to say, ‘At least we know she’s not wearing falsies.’

  ‘No, but I am,’ she said. ‘I’m transexual, but I only do it with women.’

  He withdrew his hand as though the tip of the breast had been a bee. She got up and walked out, wondering why she had gone to the show. ‘Makes Oh Calcutta look like a vicarage tea-party,’ said a placard outside, but what had attracted her about that? She found it hard to admit that rejection by Willie had been a blow to her sexual pride, and that she had gone to the show with the intention of being picked up. Well, that was no problem, but the whole thing revolted her, its unromantic coarseness and the way in which the men in the audience assessed the women as if they were cuts of meat. She felt a real distaste for Willie and a longing for Sher. What did it matter if he played at being Sherlock? She could not imagine why she had ever left him.

  The car was in a multi-storey park, but she felt no inclination to get it out, or even to get her case from it. She pushed a way through the foggy, crowded streets to the nearest Underground, and went to Baker Street. From there, even in the fog, it was only a few minutes’ walk to the flat. She was disappointed not to find Sher at home, but the pleasure of being back was immense. She ran herself a very hot bath, and as she luxuriated in it knew that she would never leave Sher again.

  Half past ten, Harry had said, but Sarah felt that she could not stay in the flat another minute. Thoughts of the cat oppressed her, the cat and the completed Curse of Scotland and the telephone call. What did it matter if she got to the club early? She would get some chips, charge them to Harry, and play roulette.

  Outside in the mews she was surprised by the denseness of the fog, and decided that it would not be a good idea to take the car. There must be taxis about, and she would get one to the Carrousel.

  She had almost reached the exit of the cobbled, silent mews when the figure moved away from the wall. ‘Miss Peters?’ said a voice unknown to her.

  She said that it was, before she had thought that to answer at all might be foolish.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you, Miss Peters. You killed something. You have to pay for that,’ the voice said.

  She knew then that she was in danger. Her instinct had always been to fight trouble rather than run away from it, and now she sprang at the man, screaming at him to get out of her way. He grappled with her, her nails raked away at him, her shoes kicked his shins. Then he had twisted her round. She knew that something terrible was about to happen, and then the something came, a blow somewhere on her neck, a tearing, a breaking, a conclusion.

  ‘If one of us went in the public bar I don’t reckon it would do any harm.’

  ‘You’re the greatest man for feeding your face I ever did see. I don’t know where you put it.

  Shorty and Drummond had walked half a mile along the Marylebone Road. It was not hard to keep Sher in sight, even when he crossed a road and they were held up by a red light, but there were too many people for them to make a move. Now they were outside a pub called the Bear and Staff, a couple of hundred yards away from Marylebone Flyover. On the sign above their heads the bear danced, a staff in his hand. Mellow light shone through the windows, there was the sound of a piano. Sher had gone into the saloon bar five minutes earlier.

  ‘All right, you go in. I know this pub, if you’re in the public nobody in the saloon can see you.’

  ‘I don’t want anything. I’m waiting for Sherlock.’ Drummond’s right hand moved in an upward arc. He saw the blood on his hand and licked it. The blood was not his own. ‘Bulldog Drummond strikes again. Didn’t I crease that copper.’

  ‘You’re a fool.’

  ‘Ah, come on now, it was beautiful.’ Drummond’s hiccup had gone, he was in high spirits. He patted his pocket. ‘My little carver. I can hardly wait.’

  ‘Do you think Harry wanted us to cut a policeman?’

  ‘How was I to know? By the smell? Anybody who stands in Hugh Drummond’s path is swept aside.’ He began to laugh.

  ‘You know what you are? A nutter. I’m going to tell Harry.’

  ‘Tell him what you like.’ Drummond’s hand moved again in the arc. ‘Beautiful.’

  ‘If you don’t want a drink in there I do. Tell me when he comes out. But watch which way he goes first.’

  Shorty pushed open the swing door that said ‘Public Bar’, and was gone. Drummond stamped his feet and blew on his hands. It was cold, but he could not see his own breath, which merged into the fog. He heard the rumble of traffic on the flyover.

  Shorty, inside, ordered a ham roll and a half of bitter. By standing right at one end of the counter he could see Sher in the other room. He sat at a table on his own, staring into space. Once get him outside and in a dark street, and th
e job wouldn’t take a minute. If he stayed in the main road with the lights and people, well, they’d have to take a chance on rushing him. In this weather it shouldn’t be difficult, although you never knew where you were when you had a nutter for a partner.

  In the saloon bar Sher looked at his watch. Ten minutes to nine. For the first time it struck him that the appointment he had made might not be kept. It occurred to him also that he had no real evidence of any kind, and that there was not much he could do in the face of a flat denial.

  The pianist in the corner was playing schmalzy tunes from the forties and fifties. For some reason they made him think of Val. A voice behind him said ‘Mr Haynes. I got the message you left in the Centre to join you. Here I am.’

  It was Cassidy, overcoated and mufflered, his long face pinched with cold.

  ‘Cassidy. What are you drinking?’

  ‘A drop of scotch would go down well. I haven’t known a night like this in years. Scotch and water.’ Sher brought back a large scotch and the water jug, and watched as Cassidy poured water with a steady hand. ‘You wanted me? I ought to tell you, I haven’t got Miranda.’

  ‘Miranda?’ Sher was momentarily confused. ‘Oh yes, your car.’

  ‘I’ve left her near the Centre. It isn’t a night for her, though I might take her home later if it clears.’

  ‘Home. That means Purefoy Road.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I know the address because I took an envelope from your car to make a note when we were following that van. And then I had a dream. Do you believe that we see real things distorted in dreams?’ Cassidy did not answer. ‘Pure, the dream said to me, pure. And I dreamed about a dog that looked like the Hound of the Baskervilles. So then I remembered something I’d been told, that the Poles had an accident in Purefoy Road. Or they thought they had, but there was no report in the papers, not even the local one. And I remembered something else, fragments of conversation I’d heard at the Warden Centre about an accident to an animal, and somebody being morbid about it. It was your dog, wasn’t it, the one I saw in those pictures in the car. That was what Pole hit, that was why there was nothing in the papers.’