Nursery Crimes Part 28

She sat slumped in her chair and fixed her gaze a couple of inches above his head. An eye-testing chart on the opposite wall seemed to be full of Os like a noose. Her confession was like a small fire-arm letting off bullets. If she flagged he re-loaded the gun. Her aggression ran the whole gamut of sound from a whisper to a shout - and once she burst into tears. Clare, like a shrivelled up little ghost, listened in horror.

At the end of it Caradoc was as unimpressed with Zanny's truth as was everyone else. Willie and Bridget were almost believable - but not Judge Ponsonby. Respectable judges were not seduced by convent schoolgirls at convent fairs. No way! She had a high-grade technicoloured imagination and saw too many B movies. Just now she was in the middle of an X horror film and couldn't find her way out. She needed that night's sleep. Afterwards -- for a while -- she might need a shrink. A placebo would probably put her to sleep as well as anything - a physical examination might give her more faith in the dud pill. He told her to strip off to her vest and pants and get on the couch.

Zanny, snuffling with the catarrh that followed her tears, accepted the handkerchief that Clare handed her.

"Why," she asked, after she had blown her nose, "should I get on the couch?"

"Well, I'm not going to b.l.o.o.d.y rape you," Caradoc said, fetching his stethoscope. (One day your language will be your downfall, an outraged matron had told him once, but on the whole they liked it.) Zanny, through her snuffles, was beginning to like it, too. He was the first real man she had met since Murphy. He was a few years older than Murphy and his hair was beginning to go at the top. But he had shoulders like an ox and he had all his teeth. His fingernails were clean and he smelt of surgical spirit.

He was putting the cold stethoscope on her warm flesh and telling her to breathe. She breathed - gave a little shudder - and breathed again. Now he had her on her stomach and was listening at the back. Her body, until now cold-frozen with the horror of Murphy, warmed a little.

"Turn over again," he said, "I'm going to prod your stomach."

It was all quite unnecessary, but a good act. "The pill I'm going to give you," he said, "is a b.l.o.o.d.y marvel. You'll never sleep better in your life." He gave her stomach another push. "How does that feel?"

"All right," said Zanny. (Rather nice, actually. Don't stop.) He stopped.

"Good. Get dressed. Go home. Stop being a nuisance. Okay - so you murdered Bridget - and others. Okay -you've told me. I don't know what the h.e.l.l you expect me to do. I don't know what the b.l.o.o.d.y blazes anybody can do. You've spewed it out of your conscience. Fine! That's your limit of positive action. Once you get the pus out of a boil it heals. So - start healing. Come and see me in five years and I'll take you out to dinner."

Then he smiled.

Zanny didn't smile back, but she felt the cage of her frustration bending a little. Her mind had stopped converting pence into shillings. Her hands had stopped battering on unyielding doors. His door had opened a little. His disbelief had been dented. They had communicated. There was a tiny little glow under her naval where his hands had touched.

"Just one pill?" she heard Mummy uttering in disappointment.

"Packs one h.e.l.l of a punch," Caradoc lied.

"I thought that - perhaps - for myself - ?" Clare suggested tentatively.

"Oh," asked Caradoc, "what's your crime then, -arson?"

Clare stalked out in silence. "An impossible man," she told Graham. "No wonder his practice is dwindling. Have you noticed how plebeian the doctors are these days? He should be on a footplate of a train heaving goal."

"Not smooth like Tolliston, you mean," said Zanny, getting back into the car.

It was a tactless remark and she knew it. On the whole, she was feeling better. Had Murphy prodded her in her naval it would have felt the same. Firm very masculine fingers. But the soil got embedded in yours, Murphy, and you hadn't the time to wash.

I'm aching for you. Sighing for you. Tonight we'll sit it out together in our minds. What you suffer, I'll suffer. I'll be with you every step of the way.

She refused to take Caradoc's pill.

Clare, annoyed and tired of the whole business, said "Stew, then!" and walked out of the bedroom.

Graham, more loving, more patient, less sensitive, less guilty, crushed it up and put it in her hot chocolate. "Cross my heart," he said, "there's no pill in this."

"Then give me Ovaltine."

"We're out of it," he lied, "darling, please."

Because she loved him, she took it.

He bent and kissed her and smoothed her hair away from her forehead. It would never happen again, he believed. She had .suffered too much this time. She would never kill again.

Murphy's suffering he dropped a veil over in his mind. To help the veil stay down he intended to drink as heavily as he dared. Clare would drink with him. Would Murphy drink, he wondered? Would they allow him to pickle his mind in alcohol so that in the end everything was a complete and merciful haze?

Don't think.

Don't think.

Don't think.

At two o'clock in the morning Clare went and sat in the hall with the telephone receiver cradled on her knee. She hadn't yet made the call to the police station, but when her voice was steady enough she would make it. The last few hours of deliberate imbibing hadn't taken the edge off anything - in fact the booze had made her feel worse. A small draught from the hall window made the gla.s.s pendants of the chandelier jangle softly against each other in what seemed to her agonised conflict. Graham, who hadn't gone to bed either, was on his way upstairs to the lavatory when he saw her sitting there. He asked her mildly what she was doing. She told him: nothing - yet.

He changed his route and made for the kitchen.

When he returned he was carrying a pair of kitchen scissors.

She asked, "You're going to cut it?"

"Yes."

She didn't make even a token protest, but held up the telephone cord and tried to stop thinking about Murphy's rope.

"I've got to tell them," she said, still holding the cord taut and very handy.

"But now you can't," he said comfortingly, and snipped it.

She began to weep softly with relief.

"Silly cow," he said gently, "silly, maternal, stupid cow. Let's hope she's sleeping."

Zanny was.

Caradoc's magic had nothing to do with his wonder pill. He was with her in her dreams. They were transported back in time to the sinking of the t.i.tanic. The band was playing "Abide with Me". Old Granny Morton was leading the singing. Mournful, toothless, and with a voice like a sick crow she stood on a rostrum and skinny-armed conducted the damp pa.s.sengers in their final song. Zanny, wet to her knees, and with tears pouring down her cheeks, raised her voice with the rest. And then, miraculously, Caradoc was beside her. "Let's get the h.e.l.l out," he said.

Up on deck the sun shone. The sea, a long way down, was an acid green. "Now, b.l.o.o.d.y jump!" said Caradoc.

His arm was around her waist and they floated down through lavender smoke as the t.i.tanic tilted sideways.

They were together on a raft on a shipless sea. The sea went on for eternity, gentle and blue and beautiful. She had nothing on. "d.a.m.n and blast," he said, poking her stomach, "but you're beautiful."

"So are you," she whispered, "so are you." There was something familiar about the naked male body - a little niggle of pain came and went. Out of the cloudless sky came a single drop of rain. It dropped into her navel and turned into a small, perfect, creamy pearl. She touched it wonderingly and then she touched him. The waves began to suck and flow -- suck and flow -- in a wonderful rhythm. She moaned gently.

Graham and Clare, pausing by the bedroom door, heard the moan and interpreted it very decently as sorrow and remorse. That their interpretation could well be off-beam they realised with some surprise. b.i.t.c.h, Clare thought. The life force, Graham thought. He suggested to Clare that they should go to bed. Destruction and creation - it was a fine balance. A life went out -- a new life came in. Drunkenly philosophic he went to great lengths to explain to Clare why he wouldn't wear his sheath. But she was past caring.

"Odd that the telephone should be dead," said Sergeant Thomas, aiming the car up into the hills. "Under the circ.u.mstances, probably just as well," said Detective Inspector Warrilow. It was a nice morning. The mountains were clear of cloud. The air was very clean. "You'll leave most of this to me," he reminded Thomas. "None of your Welsh . . . what's the word . . . hwyl?" Slightly offended, Thomas didn't answer. He couldn't see how religious ecstasy equated with what lay ahead. He wished he could turn the car around and go back home. Sausages for breakfast. Tea the colour of soft brown leather, thick with sugar. Warrilow, as lean as Ca.s.sius, was breakfastless, too. Vulpine, Thomas thought. In the thick undergrowth of your mind lurks your juicy prey. A morning of blood - this. Not nice.

Graham was shaving when he saw the police car coming up the drive. It was nine o'clock. Murphy had been dead an hour. At eight o'clock he and Clare had turned their backs on each other and pretended to be asleep. She had been shivering under the bed-clothes. He had gone down and made her a cup of tea. He had made one for Zanny, too, but fortunately she was still asleep. There was a tiny little smile on her lips and her cheeks were flushed.