King and Joker (22 page)

“Why don't you do it anyway? I'd like that. You could do it in secret. Nobody would ever know.”

“God and the saints huould know. And there are too many secrets already.”

Looking at her properly Louise saw that she was paler even than usual, and her eyes were sunk into dark sockets.

“Darling Mother,” she said. “It's all over now. It's going to be all right. It's not going to be the same as it was, but it's going to be a new all right. There's nothing to worry about.”

Mother smiled at her, a tired and unmeaning movement of lips. Louise sank back on the pillows and shut her eyes again. It's not all right, she thought. Something else is wrong. Something to do with Father. Something I mustn't know about. Oh, God.

Chapter 14

I
n the hush of Wednesday morning Miss Durdon lay and listened to the wireless—the old, brown, domed box from which she'd once heard the boy-King's voice coming clipped and firm as he made his first Christmas broadcast to his people in 1938. A year later she'd heard the same child speaking to an Empire at war, and almost a year after that to him saying, in words which he had for the first time insisted on writing for himself; that though Hitler's armies seemed poised for an invasion, he had persuaded his advisers to let him stay with his people in England.

In Miss Durdon's mind the box seemed to vibrate with an unheard duet—Churchill's thick, furry, melodramatic bass interlacing with King Victor's no-nonsense tenor. The box had had three new sets of innards since those days, but to Miss Durdon it was still the same wireless, just as Vick was still King Victor II in spite of his baldness and his bad temper and his doctoring.

This morning there was a flavour of wartime in the announcer's voice. For months it had been like that as the economic crisis lurched on, and every new fall in the pound had to be greeted with a darkest-days note, such as had announced the sinking of HMS
King Victor
by the
Scharnhorst
or the surrender of Singapore. And, just as in wartime, any heartening little gobbet of good news or story of British courage was given its special rift-in-the-clouds resonance: “In a bulletin issued from Buckingham Palace this morning, and signed by the Otorhinolaryngologist Royal, Sir James Corker, it is announced that the hearing of Her Royal Highness Princess Louise continues to improve and is unlikely to be permanently damaged. No further bulletins will be issued. It will be remembered that apart from the dead man Her Royal Highness was closest to the explosion that occurred on Monday evening in the private apartments of the Palace. She was found by rescuers attempting to stem the flow of blood from the man's arm. In recognition of her bravery the President of the Royal Humane Society, HRH the Duchess of Kent, has suggested …”

That Eloise, thought Miss Durdon. Trust her to stick her oar in. Bad as the Dowager Princess, she is.

After the News came the
Today
programme. Miss Durdon had already forced her good hand to press the buzzer when a voice said, “And now, with an account of American reactions to the tragedy in Buckingham Palace, here is Sir Alastair Cooke.”

The door opened and Kinunu came prancing in.

“No, don't switch it off,” squeaked Miss Durdon. “I want to listen. Just do the clock.”

“Yethmith.”

Miss Durdon approved of Sir Alastair. This morning he talked about the American love-hate of British Royalty, and some of the absurd things that were said and done on old King Victor's visit to the States in 1936, and then picked his way delicately back to a tone of grave sympathy. Meanwhile Miss Durdon watched Kinunu cross the room, check and wind the Mickey Mouse clock, pull the chain that wound up the weights of the cuckoo clock and finally move its big hand ten minutes forward. Then she came round the bed and waited by the wireless for the voices to change.

“Yes, turn it off now, thank you,” said Miss Durdon. “Kinunu, my dear, I feel a little cold this morning.”

That was only a way of putting it. Miss Durdon could no longer feel the drop in body temperature. Memory could construct for her the icy draughts of Abergeldie, and the, rubbery shivers of her own skin under a flannel nightdress with the inner warmth fighting outwards against the chill, and the feel of two bodies clinging close as if their love was a hearth for them to cluster to; but nowadays all she knew of cold was that the blood seemed to run thin in a tired brain.

Kinunu had already checked the console of instruments by the bedside, as she did first thing each morning, but now she went round the bed again and frowned down at the dials, comparing each with the chart His Majesty had drawn above.

“OK. All OK,” she whispered.

Then it will be soon, thought Miss Durdon. Perhaps it will be today. I feel cold when I'm not cold. That's a sign. I'm going over the edge at last. I mustn't tell Vick. I'll try and live long enough for another crumpet tea. I'll die with butter on my lips.

“Make me a little warmer,” she squeaked.

Gingerly Kinunu slid a lever an eighth of an inch up its groove.

“I talked to His Majesty last night,” said Miss Durdon. “I told him he's got to find you a husband. He's got such a lot of worries now, poor man, but he said he'd try.”

“Yethmith. Marry pleethman, pleathe.”

“A policeman!”

“Yethmith.”

“Policemen don't grow on trees, you know,” said Miss Durdon sharply.

Kinunu's frown was beginning to deepen with worry when there was a firm rap at the door.

“See who that is, my dear,” said Miss Durdon, glad of the chance to collect her old wits and explain—as she must have done ten thousand times to other greedy infants—that Father Christmas could not gratify all conceivable wishes, even in a palace. A man's voice muttered at the door. Kinunu turned.

“Pleathemith. Pleethman,” she said.

“We'll talk about that later,” snapped Miss Durdon. “Who's there?”

“Pleathemith. Pleethman. Thee you.”

Cunning little wretch, thought Miss Durdon. She's already found herself another follower, and she's had him out there, listening to that dratted monitor; she'd have brought the subject up herself if I hadn't.

“All right, I'll see him if you want me to. You'd better wait outside.”

The man who came in wasn't in uniform. He had a doggy look, not McGivan's boring-old-housedog air, but the bright-eyed sharpness of a hunt terrier, or a good ratter. He was younger than McGivan, and ten times more of a man. Kinunu wouldn't tease
him
, thought Miss Durdon.

“I don't know you,” she said. “What's your name?”

“I'm Sergeant Theale, Miss,” he said.

“Oh, you're one of
our
people?”

“That's right, Miss. Only I've not had the honour to visit the nurseries before. All right if I check this clock now?”

The question caught Miss Durdon so much off balance that he had crossed to the far wall and put the black Gladstone bag he was carrying down on the high chair before she'd collected her wits.

“You leave that clock alone, young man,” she said. “It's not been the same since King Haakon went meddling with it, and I don't want it getting any worse.”

“Orders, I'm afraid, Miss,” he said.

He pulled a stop-watch out of his pocket and set it going. He seemed to be counting the swings of the pendulum. The tick of the clock came and went, sometimes seeming to be inside her head and sometimes far away, beyond the barred windows, as though the cuckoo was hovering with it out over the gardens. She felt herself sliding down the slope of a shallow wave and then gradually floating up to the crest of consciousness again. When she was fully herself the clock was back on the wall with the man still counting its ticks. Miss Durdon felt what she called “hot”, but there was no knowing whether the buzzing in her mind, like the beginnings of a fever, was caused by Kinunu setting the lever too high or the panic of watching the man check the cuckoo clock or was something to do with the slide out of the whirlpool and over the edge. I can't go yet, she thought. I must do something.

“Excuse me, Mr Theale,” she squeaked. “That dratted girl's set my bed too hot. Be so kind as to move the switch down for me, save me calling her in with my buzzer.”

He stayed where he was for a few more ticks, stopped his watch and made a couple of notes in a notebook. At last he turned and crossed to the console, which he stared down at, smiling slightly.

“Like the flight deck of a jumbo,” he said. “I'm Miss Durdon. Fly me to San Francisco.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” said Miss Durdon in the tone she used for boys whose independence she approved of but whose impertinence had to be kept in check. “It's the third lever along. There's a chart above it shows how it ought to be. And don't you be pert about my friend there—that machine's the better half of me, these days. It does my heating and my breathing and Lord knows what. If it stopped working I'd be dead in half an hour.”

Out of the corner of her eye she could see him using the butt of his pencil to move the lever down to its proper setting.

“Lot to go wrong there,” he said.

“Lot to go wrong with all of us, young man.”

“And they've given you a buzzer too?”

“Under the bedclothes by my left hand, where my two good fingers are.”

She wanted to keep him talking, to prevent him going back to the clock. But he wasn't to be put off.

“Your clock's running a bit slow, far as I can see,” he said.

“Or your stop-watch is fast, young man.”

“No, it's spot on. I do a bit of hurdling and I need it for training, so I have it checked, regular. I make it your clock's losing two or three minutes a day. Funny it's being fast while it's running slow.”

“It has its ups and downs,” snapped Miss Durdon, no longer indulgent.

He nodded and returned to stare at it, then opened his case and took out an aerosol can with which he carefully sprayed the clock face, producing a fine grey film all over it, like mildew.

“Stop that,” said Miss Durdon. “Stop that at once, or I'll know the reason why.”

He paid no attention but stood on tiptoe to peer at the clock through a pocket magnifying glass.

“Somebody's been dusting, I see,” he said. “It's not often you get 'em conscientious enough to dust the clocks.”

“But here's a nice print. Now, that's a small finger—would that be Princess Louise's, Miss Durdon?”

“I don't know what you're talking about, and I'll trouble you to clean the mess off my clock this very instant.”

He stood gazing at the clock a moment longer and then, to Miss Durdon's great surprise, he took a duster out of his bag and cleaned the whole surface. She watched him spray the clock again and photograph it with a neat little camera. Finally he cleaned it up for the second time. When he turned to the bed he was smiling.

“Good thing to get everything dusted pretty regular,” he said. “Now, I'll tell you something, old lady. You see that pendulum wagging to and fro? Suppose somebody wanted that clock to go fast, there's a little screw under the weight there, and they'd only have to take a couple of turns on it, shortening the pendulum, you see, and it'd begin to swing faster. Perhaps they might take it into their heads to rub a bit of dust into the thread under the screw, make it look as though it's been like that a long time—you follow me?”

“I still don't know what you're talking about.”

“No, of course not, old lady. You've seen a lot of 'em come and go, but never seen anything like this, I dare say. Perhaps you'll explain to Princess Louise next time she comes up … it won't matter if she touches it again, or that nurse of yours … you can't tell from a fingerprint whether somebody's been putting it forward a-purpose, or putting it back because it'd got fast of its own accord. I only went through all that palaver to show you I'm on your side, see?”

Miss Durdon had needed all her will-power to pay attention to what he was saying, because she'd just felt herself beginning to slide into another of the wave-like dips of consciousness, but she forced herself to understand.

“That's very kind,” she squeaked.

“Trouble is,” he said, “I can't bring anyone else in on it. I've got to look after things by myself, because you can't expect the others to see things our way. They might, they might not—you can't take the risk. My problem is I'm working in the dark, and there's always a danger I'll make things worse. That's why I worked it so it was me they sent up to check the clock, because I wanted to have a word with you. For instance, I'd be able to move a lot freer if I knew why HRH took it into her head to say she'd seen McGivan up here when she hadn't, and then to go messing around with that clock.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Ah, come off it. I'm sure as I'm sure my name's Desmond Theale that she hasn't been doing anything wrong—and even if she had I'd stand by her. That's what I've been trying to tell you, old lady. But if whatever she's been up to is important enough for her to muck up a murder investigation—and she's a sensible little thing—she wouldn't be doing that for a lark—then I've got to know what it is, so as I don't go putting my big feet in it, see? The only other thing is for me to chuck up trying to help and go and tell the Superintendent about the clock being mucked around with.”

He had a funny way of speaking, with a rising lilt as though even the last threat weren't a serious one. Miss Durdon lay and looked at him. He was outside her experience, she realised, not just because of what he'd done, but because he was a complete loner. She wondered whether he'd ever had any family at all.

“Well?” he said.

“You killed poor Ian McGivan,” she said.

I'm getting deaf again, Louise kept thinking, but it was only the horrid silence of breakfast. Usually there'd be quarrels over the papers, and Mother reading out bits of recipes and Father grousing about his Ministers saying “refute” when they meant “repudiate” and Nonny trying to get advice on what horses she should back; but on Wednesday morning the loudest sound in the room was the crunch of Albert's carrots, and it was that steady rhythm that told Louise that her ears were almost well again. Mrs Mercury, the housekeeper, did Pilfer's work, stealing in and out and looking as though she'd been crying all night, though she and Pilfer had been ancient enemies. Mother looked tired and old, and had moved her place so that she sat between Nonny and Albert; she and Nonny were breaking all custom by muttering their way through Mother's schedule for the day, long before Sir Sam was due to appear. Nonny was her unreadable self; only once, when Father looked up from his paper, began to say something and stopped in mid-sentence, Louise thought she glimpsed another Nonny, the one you never saw, tense as a tennis player waiting for a serve. Father himself was in a state Louise had never seen; it looked as though he were furious about something but couldn't get his temper to catch fire. Mostly he hid behind his paper, eating his food with one hand. When Louise caught Albert's eye she could see that he was as mystified as she was. She ate her breakfast quickly, as though she were getting ready for school, and managed to slip out of the room unnoticed. I can't stand any more of that, she thought. I'll go and see Durdy and make her tell me the truth about that clock. Then I'll know where I am.