The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest (19 page)

Elijah winked and brought the key from the bag which now hung flopping on his chest.

“You must show us round Scotland Yard someday,” he said. “That would also be interesting. Good night.”

“Good night,” said Pibble, and went groggily down the stairs. He recognized that he was in a state of half shock—vaguely the same sort of walking-dead feeling as he'd had when Richard Foyle, his first boss and only hero, had been convicted of corruption. More than vaguely; once again the intellectually stimulating and cheerful surface of his job had suddenly rotted away, leaving only the wicked skeleton. He was sure now that the drumming ritual was wicked, a corruption of humanity as horrid, in its way, as Richard's involvement with the Smith machine had been.

Light glared out from the door of Eve's living room. A voice said, “That you, Jimmy?” so Pibble went in. Paul was lying on the floor reading
Graphis
, and Eve and Ned Rickard sat together on the sofa, solemnly regarding an elaborate structure of string which Eve held on her fingers.

“The next bit is not easy,” said Eve in her don's voice, “and is considered as a
pons asinorum
, or shibboleth, among the tribes of the Ku group. The tribes on the other side of the big range, as well as those in the coastal strip and most of the islands, have a completely different cultural history which includes a form of cat's cradle a man can play by himself. Indeed, this is perhaps the most discriminating criterion of the cultural origins of a tribe, as it is completely independent of any oral tradition or communication. You have to be shown. A man from one of the other groups of tribes might have picked up the earlier stages, but unless he had learned and practiced this one among the other children in his village he would probably make a mess of it. Do you think you can get this onto your own hands, Superintendent, and I will show you?”

“I don't see any way in,” said Ned. “Try and tell me. It doesn't matter if I make a mess of it, as I ought to have a chat with Jimmy. I hope he's been treating you proper.”

“He would have made a sound scholar,” said Eve seriously. Paul looked up from his magazine with a booming chuckle, waved a paw at Pibble, and returned to the study of a group of André François's posters.

“Now, Superintendent,” said Eve, “you have two problems. First, as you can see, the initial asymmetry involved in the crossing of strings in any cat's cradle pattern has now multiplied itself to a point where we must either go back, or tangle ourselves in a knot, or evolve a countervalent asymmetry. The left hand is quite easy. Put your index and thumb round the upper crossing and hook your little finger round the inside of the lowest string. You are going to have to turn that hand inward and down when the time comes. Now, with your right hand, take the lower crossing between the little finger and the ball of the right thumb; that's right. Move your wrist out a bit. You are going to have to turn that hand inward and up. Tuck your two middle fingers out of the way. The problem is to put your thumb and index into the two loops that will be made by the slackening of the upper crossing after they have traversed the first parallel string and before they come to the second.”

“I see what you mean about oral communication,” said Ned. “Are you ready? One, two, three, go!”

The four hands danced together in a quick flight. One of them stumbled. Ned cursed and then laughed, gazing at the meaningless mess of string on his hands.

“Not bad,” said Eve. “You did catch one, Superintendent. If you had caught them both, I would have owed you a suckling pig. What happened upstairs, Mr. Pibble? I would be most grateful if you let me have some notes when you have finished with the criminal aspects of this affair.”

“Hell, Jimmy,” said Ned. “What've you been up to? You look as if you'd been walking the fells with ghouls.”

“I have,” said Pibble. “You look better, Ned. Has something broken?”

“Not half. Come outside and I'll tell you—it's your doing, really. Scuse us, Dr. Ku.”

“Good night,” said Pibble. “I'll be back about nine in the morning. Perhaps I'll have some ideas by then. In any case, there are several things I ought to talk to you about, I suppose.”

“Good night,” said Eve and Paul together.

It was quite dark in the street. Only the lamp at the end was working. Ned walked over to a long car, whose bodywork gleamed glossy in the faint illumination, and rested an arm across it in an ownerly way.

“Like my new bus?” he said. “The Ass. Com. ordered me to take it. It's the bulletproof job.”

“Crippen, Ned, are you as near as that?”

The car was a souped-up Mercedes saloon, both joke and myth at the Yard, the folly of a long-retired Commissioner who had convinced himself that Chicago was coming to London any month now. It would do a hundred and forty; its bodywork was solider than most chassis; the interior was pitted with pockets for small arms, tear-gas cylinders, smoke bombs, and such; there was a searchlight on the roof as well as the usual loudspeaker. Pibble leaned over the roof to feel for its controls.

“It's got a trigger grip inside,” said Ned. “You can switch it on and off, turn it, and tilt it all with one hand. I say, Jim, that flat is going to be a breakthrough. We knew it existed but we didn't know that it mattered. I've had five chaps worrying at it all afternoon, and we've turned up trumps. It's registered in Mrs. Furlough's maiden name—she's a nice lass, Roedean, breeds West Highlands down at Sonning, thinks her hubby's in show business—and Burnaby did a fluke with the carrot merchant opposite—it's just off Covent Garden, you know—who remembered the name of the builders who did the alterations last summer, because he was thinking of putting on an extra bathroom himself and was on the lookout for builders. I suppose the breaks always come in the end if you wait for them. You know one of the things they put in where any normal man would have put a hanging cupboard? A ruddy great fireproof, thief proof steel filing cabinet. We're going in tonight, and I'm due for the sack if it's got nothing in it except theatre programs. Furlough's got some biggish friends.”

“Good luck,” said Pibble. “Will you be able to keep Miss Hermitage out of it?”

“Hope so, Jim. She's a dish, isn't she, our Nan?”

“What about Caine?”

“Our legal Johnnies don't think he's broken the law,” said Ned flatly. “Besides, I don't want him in in case the whole show gets mucked up with accusations of personal bias. Besides, Sukie seems happy with him. How's your show going?”

“Getting nowhere,” said Pibble tiredly. The shock of the drumming ritual and that abominable liquor seemed to have drained him of will. He looked up at the crenelations of Flagg Terrace, where the façade stood black against the reflected blue-pink glare of neon which is all London ever seems to know of night. Robin was presumably up there somewhere, mooning on the roof and becoming a schoolboy again. Pibble stared at the pitch-black vertical shadows that hung where the beams of the single street lamp could not reach to the brickwork. You'd never see a climber working his way across there, even if you were looking. Yes, you would, though! At least you'd see
something
.

Pibble opened the near door quietly and slid on his back across the front seats till he could look out of the far window. The movement in the shadow seemed to have gone, but he knew where it ought to be, and reached up for the pistol grip of the searchlight. Lying like this, he had to work it with his hand back to front, but he aimed it roughly and tilted it back and switched on.

Missed! A circle of brickwork and pipes and window ledge glared into being too low and to the left. He steadied the searchlight up and caught the climber five feet below the battlements.

Dear God, the climber was moving quickly, like a scurrying spider. He was too small! He was making a mess of it!

Struck by the solid blaze like a rioter caught in a power hose, the climber staggered in his lissome movements. A straining white face shone for a moment over his shoulder; then the right hand, no longer guided by the light-blinded eyes, grabbed an inch below the overflow pipe it was reaching for while the left hand had already let go of a drip course. The body, face still twisted to the fatal summons of the searchlight, heeled slowly back from the wall, feet splayed along an inch-wide slope of bath waste, then peeled away and plunged outside the circle. It fell four stories into the basement area, but there was no cry. Only a thud like a sack of cement dropped too heavily onto a path and bursting a little at the corners.

Pibble weaseled out of the car and ran across the road. Ned was already there, craning over the railings. Pibble craned beside him and looked down to where the body lay broken-backed on the spikes of the cross-railings between the areas of No. 8 and No. 9. The light was on in the women's kitchen, so that you could see at once that the climber was dead, not even twitching, with a mess of blood black below the body. You could see the off-mouse hair trailing downward. You could see who it was.

“Oh God!” said Pibble, “she was left-handed!”

He moved his hand along the railing toward Ned and touched something loose, a pair of National Health spectacles, both the strong lenses shattered. Instinctively he held the frame out consolingly to Ned.

“Crippen,” he said, “I'm—”

He never saw Ned's fist that came looping out of the dark, but felt the stunning agony in his nose and all over his face, and the helpless backward reeling, and then …

X

The trouble with delirium is this—that the trouble with delirium is this—that the trouble with delirium is that unless you get a hold on yourself man and keep a hold on yourself and keep keeping a hold on yourself and—unless—and—you—unless—and you just fall backward and backward and backward into a nasty mucky messy drivelogue going round and round and round and a handsome male head with bruise sacs under the eyes going round and round and round in the cannibal pot and it'll never be cooked laughing at you like that because it married a left-handed wife who chops up her left thumb slowly, slowly as though it were vital that every strip should be the same precise width because she doesn't want you to see that if she were chopping up her
right
thumb with her left hand she'd be able to go snip snap snop and it'd all be done in a second and you'd be able to plaster it up with knots of string wound in and out like the cultural traditions on the other side of the mountain of love and never mind about the meaty smell because it's been in your nostrils all night and you can't expect to smell it in the morning any more than an old man who's been with a lady all evening can be expected to smell her waiting to murder him with a piece of wood or a stone picked up by the path and you can't expect—and you can't expect—and you can't—get a hold on yourself man and keep a hold on yourself and keep keeping a hold—get a
hold—
expect a secretive old man but very honorable too not to come waddling round in his pajamas to tell his lady friend that he was stopping his installments on the sacrifice—twenty years of little outgoings after the first down payment and in the end it had not turned out to have been worth while—and so she knew—she knew—and we knew she knew because she made a mess about the drums which he
had
talked about—of course he had because he was an honorable man and he'd tell her the reason and show her the penny too—but she'd made a mess about the drums—and the drums had made a mess of her when the snake god killed her mashed her into bleeding pulp which was what Ned wanted to do with Furlough and perhaps she'd known about Furlough too—more than Bob realized Miss Hermitage had said and you'll never see her again with her gawky walk—she looks different already and tells her real name to her clients before she's got a stocking off and she'll kill herself next Christmas with a college scarf round her neck because she was a truth addict—but Mrs. Caine would lie Ned said and go up to the police station pretending to have lost keys and asking about a missing husband—so she hadn't known about Furlough
then—
but perhaps she took steps to find out and then she'd know like she'd known what Aaron had stolen only she stopped herself saying it and like she'd known that Caine—was a mover-on and that was the foundation of a happy marriage believe it or not but the foundations were sand and when Bob got turfed out he'd leave her of course Miss Hermitage had said but she was a sharp princess who wanted to stay with her loathsome worm and if I want something I want it—and—if I want somebody dead I want him dead and while he's walking home I go and pick up a shiny
piton
from my husband's desk and then I remember about the owl so I put it back in the wrong place and go and bash my old pal all for the sake of a pair of bruise-colored sacs going round and round with bits and bobs of people's behavior swirling past in the stew—bits of Bob and parts of the flesh are succulent but other parts are poisonous—and the eyes laugh because Bob was the catalyst and when the explosion is over all that's left of God's chemistry set is Bob untouched and laughing because he lured you into believing he'd do anything for himself when he could get someone else to do it and our legal Johnnies don't think he's broken the law and the law is above our customs but there may be matters you do not understand any more than you can see the fish in the stomach of a heron any more than you can understand why a cuddly admiral's daughter the daughter of a cuddly admiral the cuddly daughter of an admiral any more than you can understand why why why why got it! “They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn” because it's Australian and her dad reads her Wodehouse now she's a big girl but he read her Kipling when she was younger and children are easily bored even by prolonged excitement so it would be a kindness to take the body away a kindness to take the tiresome old puritan out of the permissive system which he was irritating after all Our Father was very averse to overriding anyone unlike some I could name who want a jungle to tidy and are in and out of the jungle whenever there's scarlet fever because they're nurses and Ned had said she was between hospitals and her voice had the sharp reasonableness no not of a businesswoman in a B film but a sister telling Gregory Peck to stay in bed and so they know exactly where to hit and exactly where to find a loose owl because they're in and out of the jungle whenever there's scarlet fever and the jungle's where they live their strong cruel tiger life and they're too stupid to see that this is something different and their agent will chalk it up against the future because he's that sort and he's more important than our irrelevant little tragedy here the breaks always come in the end you fish but it has its moments when you see a slight change in the surface and color of the water and you know there's a big one there and the question is can you get him out but who'll be a farthing worse off if we never find out what happened here so vey wouldn't send one of ver big boys out on a kinky little case like vis too much to lose nuffing to gain they'd send Pibble because it's your cup of tea honest send honest Pibble honest Iago Pibble to nose around like a maggot in the glass-sided ants' nest with his scholarly inquisitiveness and oh my lord beware of jealousy it will send you beagling after a white Othello with bruise sacs under his eyes and the hell with the black one who's already reached the butt and very seamark of his utmost sail and it's you who'll be the catalyst while the head goes laughing round in we call it stew you who'll tell her that Robin says he could name the murderer if he chose and you who'll lie on your back and fiddle with the trigger grip and make a blind guess too low and to the left blinded by the obvious blinded by a searchlight blinded too blinded to notice ah no you noticed there was something clumsy about the way she was sewing but you'd put the plaster onto her curving thumb that very morning onto her curving thumb with its nail bitten to the quick her left thumb her perfect woman slips sensation curving left thumb because she'd been wrestling with her right hand to open the tin not her left hand which she would have managed easily but her right not her left right left right get a
hold
on yourself man if I haven't said that before get a hold he said and so she got a hold and she used her thumb with the plaster to hold the needle and you saw it her left thumb to hold the needle hold the needle hold the needle but it's stuck in the groove and goes round and round like the laughing head in the stew saying hold the needle hold the needle hold the needle.

“Mike,” the nurse said, “will you be coming up this way soon? I'm in Prince Albert.”

“Anything for you, Mary, darlint. Whassamatter?”

“Nothing much, but I've a concussion who's a bit more restless than he ought to be. He's keeping some of the others awake.”

“Arrah, I wouldn't be minding keeping you awake one of these nights, darlint.”

“I detest stage Irishmen.”

“I'll go to plastic surgery tomorrow and have me freckles removed. In the meantime, I'll come up and give your joker a jab.”

Oblivion is not to be hired, but they can give it to you with a needle, with a needle, with a needle.

Pibble woke late, by hospital standards. His nose felt like a wet sandbag and his head sang with pain. He was still drinking his Codis when Superintendent Graham rolled in, wearing a suit which looked as though he'd put on half a stone since he'd worn it last. He was carrying a brown paper bag.

“Hello, Sandy,” said Pibble. Both his nostrils were blocked with blood and his voice came very guttural.

“Morning, Jimmy. I've brought you some tangerines. Grapes are Ass. Com.'s and above.”

“Thanks, Sandy. I've made a fair old mess of things, I'm afraid.”

“D'you want me to hold the fort on the Kus, or shall I ask for someone else from the Yard?”

“No point. Mrs. Caine killed him but there's no proving it. The only thing you can do to ease my conscience is to get a doctor to look at Robin's back—he's one of the children. Have a word with Dr. Ku first.”

“Right you are, Jimmy. What happened to you?”

“Didn't Ned Rickard tell you?”

“Rickard's dead.”

“Dead!”

“Aye. He dumped you here and rushed off to raid a flat in Soho; at least that's what I hear. There were villains there, burning papers and carting others away, and a couple of them had shotguns. Rickard stopped a load of buckshot with his stomach. They've got about five hundred men down there now, but they aren't in yet, last I heard. Burnaby rang to say this Caine was somehow involved, and he thought Rickard might have said something useful to you.”

“No, I don't think so. Christ, Sandy!”

“Nurse said I wasn't to excite you, as they want you out by this afternoon, so I've left all the papers outside. What hit you?”

“Ned did. Mrs. Caine had just fallen off the building and he started pointing up at something when I walked into his gesture. Then I suppose I fell back and cracked my skull on something. Does my wife know?”

“Hospital rang her last night. What was Mrs. Caine doing on the building?”

“Climbing across to murder Robin. I'd told her he said he knew who'd killed the old man, and I'd told her he'd be out on the roof. I put her up there, Mac, and then I pulled her off with that bloody searchlight.”

“Easy, Jimmy, easy. She was a villain, too.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Why'd she do it? Was she a nut?”

“Not really. She was obsessed with Caine. She loved him, Sandy, probably more than you or I will ever love anyone, villain and all. She sat at home and bit her fingernails down to the quick for him. I think she knew about Furlough—”

“Burnaby said something about that,” interrupted Graham. “He said he became so worried about Rickard a few months ago that he sent Mrs. Caine an anonymous letter, telling her all about her husband. Does that make sense?”

“Yes. But don't pass it on, Sandy. Ah well. Anyway, she persuaded herself that Aaron Ku could get Dr. Ku to turn Caine out of his flat.”

“That doesn't sound much of a motive to me.”

“Miss Hermitage told me that if he was turned out he would leave Mrs. Caine, too. He'd apparently done something like that before. And Mrs. Caine said something, I've forgotten what—I remembered it last night … Oh God …”

“Take it easy, Jim. Take it easy. The only point is that you're sure she killed the other one?”

“Pretty well. What was she doing climbing across in the dark if she wasn't on her way to kill Robin? And pretending to be right-handed whenever there was a policeman in the room! Dear Lord, I was slow! How're you getting on with your sex maniac, Sandy?”

“Not a sausage. I ought to be getting back to him now. But first you'd best tell me, in simple words which a poor Celt can understand, just what did happen, and what you think happened. I'll have to put a bod on it to tidy up the messes you've left.”

“Ah, hell, I suppose so. Dr. Ku brought the remains of the tribe back from New Guinea. She'd inherited enough money from her mother to allow them to set up as a tribe on their own, keeping their own customs. She owns all Flagg Terrace, you know.”

“Does she, now?” said Graham. “That must be worth a pretty penny.”

“Yes. That's what caused the trouble. It's worth enough to take them back to New Guinea and set up again in a valley—to go native, you might say.”

“Why'd they want to do that?”

“Aaron wanted to—the one who was murdered. The old men had become bored, and were turning back to a rather nasty but exciting kind of paganism, but Aaron was an ardent Christian. He thought he'd be able to bring them to their senses on their own ground. He didn't know that Eve—Dr. Ku, that is—wouldn't have let them go, because she wanted to stay in London for the sake of Paul's painting. But Aaron warned Mrs. Caine about what he was trying to do (
he
thought Eve was staying for the sake of Caine), and then
she
thought that'd mean the Caines' being turned out of their rent-free basement and Caine leaving her. So she climbed across and bashed him—she'd been a nurse, and knew how. You ought to be able to find marks of her movements on the pipes, if you can get some ladders up before it rains—she wasn't wearing gloves.”

“Right. Damned expensive ideas you have, Jimmy.” Graham pulled out a pad from a strained pocket and made a note.