King and Joker (21 page)

“It wasn't your fault, Lulu,” said Father. “You did bloody well …”

“If only Theale hadn't dragged me clear! I was quite all right.”

“He thought he was rescuing you. I daresay I'd have done the same if I'd got there first. But I can't have been more than a few seconds behind him, and I thought poor Pilfer was a goner the moment I saw him. It wasn't just his arm, darling. He had bits of gong all through him. Try not to think about it. Now, listen, Lulu—d'Arcy wants to see you. Are you up to that?”

“Yes, of course, provided he doesn't whisper. You're a bit woolly still, and this whining noise hasn't quite gone, but it's better. Will it go right away?”

“Sir James was pretty optimistic, and he wouldn't lie to me. My own guess, Lulu, is that it'll clear right up, but you may get it back sometimes when you're very tired or under tension.”

“I don't want to be deaf and boring—I really don't.”

“You'll be all right. Now, do you want me to stay while you talk to d'Arcy?”

“Aren't you supposed to be shaking hands with all those American lawyers?”

“I've cancelled everything. It's up to you, Lulu.”

“Then stay. If he clams up you can ask him questions. He'll have to tell you.”

Only after she'd spoken did Louise remember that Father might have quite different reasons for wanting to stay to hear what she told Mr d'Arcy.

In fact the Superintendent was very forthcoming. He sat by Louise's bed, taking his endless notes, while she described how she'd come down the stairs and seen Pilfer going past at the bottom.

“Was he carrying anything, Ma'am?” said d'Arcy, who had clearly been getting used to the conventions in the last few days. Even his suit seemed a better fit.

“No. I don't think so. I certainly didn't see anything in the hand nearest me. Then I came on down the stairs and when I reached the corner he was just getting ready to biff the gong.”

“One moment. Would he have had time to do anything to the gong before you saw him again?”

“I don't think so. He was hovering in front of it, and then he gave his sleeve a hitch and bashed it, forehand, as though he thought he was Jimmy Connors.”

“Are you saying that he seemed to you to hesitate and then to hit the gong harder than usual?”

“You had to hit it pretty hard to make it work at all.”

“Superintendent,” said Father. “Are you implying that Pilfer might have seen something wrong with the gong?”

“That's not exactly the position, Sir. You remember I reported to you on your return to London that as a result of an incident in Prince Albert's menagerie I had decided to include the series of practical jokes in my investigations? And that, on the assumption that the whole series was the work of one person it had been possible to eliminate all the potential perpetrators except Miss Fellowes and Mr Pilfer?”

A savage-sounding grunt from Father. Louise looked at him. She thought of Nonny's strong arm round her shoulders, holding her steady through the bucking spasms of hysterics. If you were mad, you could be loving and ordinary at one moment, and murderous the next, and perhaps not even know yourself what you had done. Nonny was strong enough to kill McGivan, but she could never have made a bomb. But somebody trying to protect Nonny …”

“We respected your wishes, Sir,” said Mr d'Arcy, “and pursued our investigations along other lines. But as a result of this latest incident I ordered a search of Mr Pilfer's room, and the following articles were discovered.”

He flipped back several pages in his notebook and began to read.

“One manual on bomb construction; one ditto on unarmed combat; one aerosol can of red paint; several pairs of black cotton gloves, one with a thread pulled which appears to match a thread found on one of the opened cages in the menagerie; a large tin can, pierced with breathing-holes and containing a quantity of what appear to be mouse-droppings; a quantity of electrical tools and apparatus suitable for the construction of a bomb …”

“I know about that. He was a radio ham.”

“Yes, sir. And finally an empty package to which one of our dogs, trained to detect explosives by smell, reacted very strongly.”

“Good God!” said Father. “Pilfer! No question of anybody having planted the things there, I suppose.”

“I think not, sir. I understand that the deceased was touchy about people meddling with his radio apparatus and kept his room securely locked.”

“Good God!” said Father again. “Of course he did. How does your theory work, Superintendent?”

“I think we have to assume, Sir, that we are dealing with a mind becoming steadily more and more unbalanced. I think the progression of incidents shows this—the first three more or less harmless, then the damage to property in the shape of Sir Savile Tendence's trousers, then an attempt to ruin Sergeant Theale's career, then the clearly unbalanced cruelty to the animals in the menagerie.”

“You've left out McGivan,” said Louise.

“I'll return to that later, Ma'am. Now, as I told you, our process of elimination had reduced the suspects to Pilfer and the extremely unlikely person of Miss Fellowes. Let us suppose that Pilfer learnt of this fact—I've never known a place like this for rumours, Sir. The Yard's bad enough, but here! If you'll excuse me saying so …”

“We did tend to say things in front of him pretty freely,” said Father. “I don't think we'd have discussed that, but …”

“He might have worked it out from our not talking about it,” said Louise.

“Exactly,” said Mr d'Arcy. “I don't think anyone really knows how the mind of a madman functions, but I think it's reasonable to suppose that he realised that the game was up and decided to go out with, well, a bang. We found a piece of card in his jacket pocket with a red cross on it, and another of the objects in his room was a felt pen of the right shade. I understand he normally wore gloves when on duty.”

“I can't believe it,” said Louise.

“Let's think,” said Father. “Your idea is that this was a final practical joke, meant to make us all go on suspecting each other? But he must have known that the kit would be found in his room. Surely he'd have disposed of that first.”

“Perhaps he felt he hadn't time before we got onto him,” said Mr d'Arcy. “Or having set the bomb he may have decided to get it over—otherwise he'd have had to sleep on it, which even for a madman …”

“Quite,” said Father. “Or he might have wanted us to find out in the end, so that we'd know who'd been fooling us. Yes, I see it makes a sort of sense, but I still don't believe it.”

“If you'd seen some of the suicides I've seen, sir. The things they get up to. There's some of them whose one idea seems to be to go out in a way which'll get them into
The Guinness Book of! Records
, it doesn't matter how messy or painful. I assure you this isn't all that out of the ordinary, sir.”

“That's not what I meant. I've known Pilfer all my life—much better than you'd realise. He taught me wireless. I spent a whole evening with him, calling up distant pals, only a month ago. There must have been somebody else.”

“I assure you, sir, that everybody else has already been eliminated from the series of jokes. We've put in some very thorough work on that in the last few days. And have you asked yourself how the red cross got into his jacket pocket? Her Royal Highness was on the scene within a very few seconds of his death. Are you suggesting that somebody slipped it into his pocket while he was alive?”

“No, but …”

“I assure you, sir, that I haven't got a closed mind. I'll check and re-check the evidence. I'll go very thoroughly into the possibility of all that gear being planted in Pilfer's room. All I'm saying is that as of now this appears to be the most likely solution.”

“All right. What about poor McGivan?”

“Well, sir, I still don't go along with McGivan's death as fully part of the series. We've drawn a complete blank so far in our investigation of terrorist groups, and in the matter of entry and exit from the Palace—but you'll understand that all that's a very complicated matter to check. I understand that Pilfer was younger and stronger than he looked, and the unarmed combat manual suggests he might have been able to kill McGivan. But there was no red cross left. So it's possible that Pilfer was interrupted in the process of setting up a joke—by Her Royal Highness, maybe—or alternatively that he simply found the body and fixed it like that.”

“Hang on,” said Father. “Pilfer wouldn't have been on duty at the reception. He was our personal family servant.”

“He was seen in the vicinity not long before the body was found, Sir.”

“I know about that,” said Louise. “I saw him too. He'd got a bee in his bonnet about Mr Lambert nicking Family silver for official binges. He used to hover about and count the spoons.”

“If you saw him,” said Father, “that was quite a bit after McGivan died.”

“By the way,” said d'Arcy, “we've had the pathologist's full report now, Sir. You'll remember we had it checked because of the apparent discrepancy over the possible time of death? Well, it' appears the original report was a bit inflexible, and the symptoms are now thought to be consistent with death at approximately twenty to six—that's to say immediately after McGivan was seen by Her Royal Highness and the nurse Kinunu. When I say consistent, I mean not inconsistent. Without other evidence the time of death would have been put some twenty minutes earlier.”

“You mustn't go too much on the cuckoo clock,” said Louise. “It was wildly fast yesterday.”

“Was it by God?” said Father.

There was something odd about his tone, Louise glanced at him. She could read nothing in his face, but for a moment the old nightmares stirred. Don't be stupid, she told herself. It was poor old Pilfer, and now everything's going to be all right. Mr d'Arcy didn't seem to have noticed the oddness and went on checking his notes.

“Well, that's about it,” he said. “The immediate point is that the princess thinks there was not enough time for Pilfer to have attached a bomb to the gong immediately before hitting it. Therefore he must have arranged it earlier, when there'd be fewer people about. It would take at least two minutes, in the opinion of our explosives chaps.”

“He'd have had the place to himself from about eleven on, apart from the other servants,” said Father. “The whole family were eating for England—I mean we had lunch engagements.”

“Good,” said Mr d'Arcy, snapping his notebook shut. “At least it's a working theory.”

He would have made a good courtier. In the short time he'd been in the Palace he'd learnt the curious shorthand of inflection and expression which meant that he was now ready to leave if His Majesty would be so gracious as to grant permission. Father grunted. d'Arcy rose. His little nod as be reached the door was an exact replica of Sir Sam's mini-bow.

Father shook his head as the door closed. “Not quite out of the wood yet, Lulu,” he said. “Sure about that clock?”

“Yes. Durdy was rather rambly, but when it struck eight she pulled herself together and cursed it.”

He shook his head again, frowning.

“Father,” said Lulu. “When Pilfer saw the toad on your ham-dish, that was a real faint, wasn't it?”

“Yes. That's what I mean about not being out of the wood. McGivan was the joker all right … but listen, suppose Pilfer worked it out—he might even have done that from the toad, somehow—and tackled McGivan and then suppose that they started to work as a team, pooling their information, and then McGivan finds out about you and Nonny and tells Pilfer and Pilfer kills him …”

“Why?”

“Depends how mad you think Pilfer was. If not very mad, because he realised that the knowledge could be used to squeeze a great deal of money out of us, or to sell to the media. I'd have paid up without a murmur, Lulu. If very mad, out of loyalty, because he didn't want the secret to come out. I'd rather it was the second. I liked old Pilfer. He was very good to me when I was a kid. Sorry. Yes. OK, then killing McGivan unhinges him a bit more—he starts setting the body up as a joke, then panics, but hovers about. You saw him, and thought it was for the spoons. Then he does the zoo. At least that explains the savage attack on Bert's toad—the way he fainted that breakfast shows he had a thing about toads—and of course he'd have known where Bert kept the keys. And then he decides to do himself in. He does it with the gong, because be had a thing about it. I don't know … What do you think?”

“I don't know either. It sounds a bit wishy in places. I hope it's true. Are you going to tell Mr d'Arcy?”

“I don't see the point. It doesn't make any real difference, and I never managed to persuade them that McGivan was the original joker; if I brought it up again it'd take us nearer a lot of things we don't want known. Let's let sleeping dogs lie, eh?”

And lying dogs sleep, Albert used to add. When Father had taken her pulse and temperature and asked a few medical questions, brusquer even than his usual bedside manner with the family, Louise lay back on the pillows. In the silence the whine in her ears seemed worse, but she closed her eyes and waited. She woke somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, to judge by sunlight on her window-frame. Mother was sitting in the arm-chair, wearing her specs and working at the tiny-stitched embroidery which she believed to be the only proper occupation for the idle hands of queens.

“Don't huake up, darling,” she said.

“I've done it now. Are you all right, Mother? Was anybody else hurt?”

“Nobody, thank heavens, and Vick says your ears hull soon be huell. If I huere a Catholic I huould light a hundred candles in thanks to Holy Mary.”