One Foot in the Grave (5 page)

“He'd made himself comfortable, Jimmy. He was supposed to be guarding that side of the main building. He'd been issued with a loud hailer and a high-powered rifle, as well as his handgun. But he'd made himself comfortable. Chair to lie down in, radio, paraffin heaters. The window was shut and misted up on the inside, too.”

“All those guns?”

“Licenses quite in order. Special permission.”

“He must have been something special himself, then,” said Pibble.

“Not really,” said Mike, still noncommittal. “He came here with one of the residents—job-description chauffeur, but more like a bodyguard. Flycatchers is used to that sort of setup, so they took him onto the security staff. Only he doesn't seem to have taken his duties very seriously.”

“He did his rounds very regularly,” said Pibble. “You could set your watch by him.”

“How do you know?” said Cass, just managing not to pounce.

“I'm right above the kitchen door. I used to hear him coming and going.”

“But not on Thursday night,” said Cass.

“I mightn't have heard. There was a storm.”

“There was too,” said Cass, softly.

A brief pause, as though that section of the interview had ended and they were about to move on to fresh ground. But Pibble recognized the moment well—he had used it himself, often. You let the chappie relax, think he's clear, and then you punch him. It was surprising how well his own wits seemed to be working, as though the policemen's presence—Mike's in particular—was restorative, forcing him to square moral shoulders, pull up moral socks, not be seen in a state of total dissolution, though he might well have to take refuge in that state, because this surge of energies had brought him to another decision. With Jenny in the room he was going to stick to his lie. It shouldn't do much damage. He'd be bound to be able to see Mike alone before long and tell him the truth. It wasn't the sort of thing anyway which pushes a case along the wrong tracks—an old buffer who thought he heard a shot. …

“Yes,” said Cass quietly. “It was quite a storm. But Dr. Follick tells me you heard a shot. He says you were quite definite about it.”

“Well … yes, I suppose I was sure at the time. It was just after Jenny left me. Between nine twenty-five and nine-thirty, then. There was a lull in the storm, and I heard it—knew what it was at once.
Thought
I knew, I mean. If you asked me now … anyway, I lay there for a minute or two, and then I started to get in a fret. … When you get old, you know …”

“You're sixty-four, Jimmy,” said Mike rather sharply. “I looked you up.”

“I know, I know. It's blood pressure … has the same effect … Jenny will tell you …”

“He's perfectly all right,” said Jenny in a dry voice. “He's good for years and years. But he's been very ill, and that's like being old. Go on. You haven't got much longer.”

“I'm all right,” said Pibble. “Listen, I told you about the man who came to the kitchen door to do the shutters and the lights. I didn't know his name was Tosca, but I guessed he must be one of the security men. I thought I'd just go down and tell him about the shot. I got up and dressed—”

“Why?” interrupted Cass. (Not
How?
—he wouldn't see that that was the real question. Jenny would, though.)

“Keep warm. I get cold, you know … besides, this man, finding some old idiot in the kitchen, still in his dressing gown, rabbiting on about hearing a shot. …”

Mike grunted affirmation. He was a good policeman. He understood about the obstinate vanity of decay—old women spending half an hour putting on their makeup before tottering along to the station to report some urgent horror, old men. …

“You made a dummy,” said Cass.

“I didn't want Jenny to worry.”

They glanced at her for confirmation.

“He didn't want me to find out, more likely,” she said, still remote and clinical. “Then he could tease me about it next morning. It's a game, you know. They like doing things they're not supposed to, just to show they still can.”

“Some Colditz!” said Cass. “Where were you while all this was going on, me old Stalagführer?”

“Putting my other patients to bed, I imagine.”

“You were in Turnbull's room when I went by,” said Pibble.

“You couldn't have … oh, yes, that's right—I went back to him.”

“OK,” said Cass with a reluctant shrug. “So you went down to the kitchen to wait for Tosca. But he didn't come. Because he was dead. Then …?”

“I'm not quite sure. I suppose getting down there had taken it out of me a bit more than I expected. Perhaps I was feeling a bit cocky about having got that far. I got impatient. I went and tried the door—I expected it to be locked, you see, but it wasn't—”

“You're quite sure about that?” interrupted Cass.

“Oh, yes. How else could I have got out otherwise?”

“They run this place like a fortress,” said Crewe. “Everything locked. That's right, isn't it, Nurse?”

“Yes,” said Jenny. “I mean, we've got our own door in the staff wing, but we aren't allowed night keys to it. It's always locked just before dark, and after that we have to come in and out through the main entrance.”

“OK, I'll check what the routine was for the kitchen door,” said Cass.

“Somebody usually saw the kitchen staff out after supper and locked it,” said Pibble. “I could hear them, but the storm …”

“Right,” said Cass. “But at any rate it was unlocked around ten o'clock. You opened the door, and then …”

“Well, I went out,” said Pibble. “I don't know why—it seems perfectly stupid now. I suppose the storm mightn't have been so bad in the courtyard, and I'd got it into my head I wanted to find the chap, and then … well, the door blew shut, for a start, so I couldn't get back in that way. Had to get round to the front. Started off and … fell over. Wind, it was like. … Anyway, started crawling, I suppose, and just went on. Stupid. Found myself at the tower—must have gone wrong way, you know. Wind. Door open, went inside for shelter—at least that's what must have happened. I can't remember
deciding
to do any of these things. Expect I crawled across and sat on the bottom step—remember feeling I couldn't just sit there. I'd better do something. Started to climb up. Habit, you know.”

“Habit?”

“You tell them, Jenny.”

“I think we'd better stop soon,” said Jenny. “Can you hear how tired he's getting?”

“I'm all right,” said Pibble, aware that he had been overdoing the note of feebleness in order to force them to accept his story. “Give me a bit of a rest. Tell them about stairs.”

He closed his eyes and half-listened to Jenny's explanation. His body seemed detached from his mind, the former whining­ with aches and weariness, the latter eager as a puppy on a walk. Even if he hadn't had a position to defend, a need for alertness, he might have had something of the same feeling. It was as though the working machinery of investigation—Mike and Cass—carried­ a voltage strong enough to wake inductive currents­ in his discarded circuits.

“Well, I suppose it's pleasant to have a couple of mysteries cleared up,” said Mike.

“If you say so,” said Cass, mock-subservient. “I'll check with the kitchen staff about the door—now I come to think of it, there was something about that first time through. …”

(Rustle of notebook leaves.)

“Yes. I've only put a query. I remember now. One of them—the fat one—wanted to say something and the thin one interrupted her. Damn. I should have gone back to that earlier. … What else? This shot, if that's what it was …”

“Just one,” whispered Pibble, eyes still closed. “Didn't hear the other one.”

“A little after nine twenty-five … that's ten minutes beyond the pathologist's outer limit.”

“I wouldn't worry about that, Ted,” said Mike. “A different boffin would have given you a different limit. Bloody cold night, wasn't it? Snow thawing with the body warmth, adding to the wind chill. … How old is this boffin?”

“Youngish. Nobody's made him a knight yet.”

“There. If he'd been a bit older he'd have allowed himself double the leeway.”

Pibble, eyes still closed, was aware of a tautness between the two men, an unspoken area of dispute, reaching beyond the timing of the shot. It relieved itself in movement. Cass's voice came from near the window.

“That's a fine old cedar out there,” he said. “I've heard a tree like that make some pretty odd noises in a storm.”

“It groans,” said Jenny. “I've never heard it bang.”

“Dendrophonics
and
medicine,” said Cass.

Pibble sensed the conversation floating beyond his reach. Jenny's sudden, firm intrusion, as if determined that
her
patient must be a reliable witness … Cass's instinct to tease her … a nip of jealousy. …

“It could have been the cedar,” he said, loudly. “I thought of it at the time and decided it wasn't.”

“Let's leave it at that,” said Mike.

There were sounds of rising. Pibble opened his eyes and saw him standing by the bed, smiling down.

“We'll leave you alone now, Jimmy …”

“A couple of mysteries?”

“What? Oh yes. The tower stairs. I don't know whether you noticed when you were doing your circus act, but they didn't get cleaned very often. Plenty of dust, just right for footprints. Policeman's dream. Only somebody had worked the whole way up, sweeping them clean all down the middle where the prints would have been. Gun wiped, we thought. Stairs swept clean. Rummy bit of work. … We weren't to know, were we, that an old friend had been slithering up on his arse, wiping all those prints out?”

“Crippen! I'm sorry, Mike.”

“Not your fault, mate. And Tosca had swept his hidey-hole out, so that wasn't any good either.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Forget it, Jimmy. I mean, it would have been handy to have some prints, but at least we're better off than we were, trying to work out how our chappie had the nerve to spend the time doing that job.”

“And who'd have thought it necessary,” said Cass. “We don't have half a million footprints on computer, do we?”

Pibble lay staring up at Crewe, stunned with guilt. The sense of alertness, of being at least mentally his old self, was sucked away like water down a drain. He had the impulse, as the last swirls vanished, to blurt out his real reasons for climbing the tower, to atone for this huge mess by undoing his minor lie; but before he could grasp at the notion, all will had gurgled away.

“Don't worry, Jimmy,” said Mike in a changed voice. “I shouldn't have told you. Worse things happen every day, remember?”

“I'm sorry” seemed to be all Pibble's lips would say.

“I think you'd better go now,” said Jenny, her voice for the first time tinged with something more than medical dispassion.

“Right. Come along, Ted. See you, Jimmy.”

“Come and see me again,” whispered Pibble.

They were gone.

Come and see me again. I can tell you then. Come and see me alone. Old days. Like the old days. Never come back. Come back. …

He felt Jenny's hand at his pulse.

“Are you all right, Jimmy?”

She wouldn't understand. It was no use. For the moment she represented only the world of sickness and helplessness, which for a while he seemed to have escaped.

“Just tired,” he whispered. “I'm all right.”

“Do you think you can go back to sleep for a bit?”

“Urrh.”

She stood for a moment, then smoothed his bedclothes and moved away. Through the sigh of the door he heard the mutter of male voices. Before they could wake in him fresh springs of guilt, he pulled sleep down over himself and hid.

While he slept a decision made itself. It was quite easy. There were writing things in his bedside table. There was a police guard in the corridor. He could write a note to Mike—two short sentences to explain that he had heard no shot, but that the rest of the story was true, and a third to say he didn't want the staff at Flycatchers to know. Weak though he was, he could surely reach the man in the corridor, sometime when Jenny's routine took her elsewhere. …

He woke decisively, almost as though the train of thought had been a coherent one, despite being the product of sleep. He was already moving his arm out from the bedclothes to reach for pen and paper when he saw that she was in the room, sitting quietly in one of the chairs, watching him.

“I think you're marvelous,” she said.

“Oh?”

He was confused, and thought she must be talking about the note he was preparing to write.

“Your friend thinks so too.”

“Uh?”

“They were still out in the passage when I left you, talking about what you'd said. The thin one must have been saying something about not believing you, because your friend—he wasn't angry, but he was very serious—was telling him that if you said it, it was true. He saw me coming and asked me to back him up, so of course I did. Then they moved off. I listened as long as I could, but it wasn't very much. He was starting to tell the other man about some case you'd once been in—someone called Smith, was it?”

“The Smith Machine. Mike's too young.”

“He said it was before his time. I didn't hear any more. What was it about, Jimmy?”

“My boss was bent. The Smith brothers had bought him. I was the chief witness.”

“That must have been awful for you!”

(Typical. Despite her air of having grown and come to flower in some garden untouched by the rots or aphids of the ordinary world, she knew what mattered.)

“Yes. Don't let's talk about it.”