The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest (5 page)

Silence.

“Do you all understand what I am saying?”

Silence.

Pibble glanced at the top card in the left-hand pile.

“Melchizedek Ku, do you hear what I say?”

“Your tongue is lucid and apt, policeman.”

The voice was as deep as Paul's, but grittier. The speaker was second from the right in the group of graybeards, a very fat man but with most of his weight low on his torso, which was thus shaped like an American space capsule. He had a thin tassel of beard, which wobbled as he spoke.

“Then why did you not answer me first time?” said Pibble.

“There is none to speak for us. Our chief is dead.”

“I see. Well, then, I am the Queen's servant, and I appoint you, Melchizedek, to speak for the Kus until you choose yourself a new chief. . .” He'd made a mess of it. The tension and shock in the air were tangible. Plunge in deeper. “And Leah Ku will speak for the women.” Tension and shock gone. He wondered if Eve had purposely put the most suitable leaders at the top of the pile; he wouldn't put it beyond her.

“Now, Leah and Melchizedek, are there any of your people who do not understand what I say?”

“The men understand.”

“The women understand.”

Damn. He must remember to put the men before the women. Leah, he thought, was the beldame who had knelt at Aaron's feet, though it might have been any of the four older ones. Two were obviously younger, and an unfortunately ugly one had strewn the herbs. She clearly had some disease; even in this strong light she seemed hardly to possess a distinct outline, as if she were some figurine which the sculptor had scarcely begun to model before he was called on by a celestial gentleman from Porlock. Funny, Pibble would have expected her eyes to be small and piggy amid those hummocks of flesh, like a whale's. He turned his head away, as an animal abashed, from her soft jet gaze.

“So I may take it that none of you heard anything?” he said.

A deep, formless muttering, like double basses tuning up.

“The men heard nothing.”

“The women heard nothing.”

“Right. Now the next thing to sort out is whether we can be sure if there are any of you who could not have done the killing. Some of you must sleep in the same rooms, for instance, and could not leave without—”

A knock on the door, and Fernham entered, gripping a boy by the shoulder.

“I found this one, sir, upstairs under a bed, reading with his thumbs in his ears. I think he's just playing truant, sir. And there are several locked doors on both the top two floors, sir. Do you want us to force them?”

“No, thank you, Fernham. That's all for the moment. You've done very well.”

Pibble looked at the boy. He might have been any English urban school child in his scrambled-into blazer and flannels, except that his face was as black as a boot. Otherwise it was an English face, beaky and bony, not the squashed, half-melted look of the Kus. He was about fourteen.

“Hello,” said Pibble, “where do you fit in?”

“I'm Robin Ku,” said the boy. “I'm supposed to be at school, but Jacob and Daniel didn't go to the buses, so I thought I'd lay off, too—it's bloody geography, and I haven't done my homework, and I thought no one would notice. They were all so busy with bodies. And bobbies.”

He smiled, confident in his own charm, pleased with his tiny joke. Pibble flicked through the pile of school children's cards. Martha, Luke, Robin, Mark, James, Ruth—surely there wasn't a Robin in the Bible.

“You haven't told me where you fit in,” said Pibble.

The boy studied the formal arrangement of people in the room.

“That's my mum.” He pointed to the half-formed herb strewer. “But tribe-wise I belong over here.” He passed close in front of the card table and settled cross-legged at the feet of the elders, giving them suddenly the look of people posed for a group photograph.

“Right,” said Pibble. “Where were we? Um, yes—I was asking whether any of you slept in the same rooms, so that you could know of each other's movements in the night. Melchizedek?”

“The men sleep all in one hut. It is the custom of the Kus.”

“And the women, Leah?”

“The women have that custom also.”

“I see. That should simplify matters.” Should it hell. “But I imagine you are all very silent movers—you could get about so that I could not hear you pass. Would it be possible for one of you to go out of the room where you sleep without any of the others hearing? Melchizedek?”

“Elijah is the keeper of our door.”

Elijah's beard was a Hemingway fringe. He was the one in the brown polo-necked jersey and brown corduroys, an arty getup. His voice had the same low register as the other male Kus.

“I sleep at the door, lest some stranger should come in, but I think none could go out, either.”

“And the women, Leah?”

“I keep our door. None passed in the night.”

“Are none of you married, Melchizedek?”

“We do not go to sleep to beget our children.”

He answered deadpan, but the room thundered with deep laughter, delighted female giggles riding the storm of noise. Eve was laughing as happily as anyone. Only Paul worked on in a daze of concentration. The riot ended in a decrescendo of coughs and squeaks. Pibble plugged on.

“Elijah, wouldn't Aaron have disturbed you when he came in?”

“The chief sleeps in his own hut.”

“So none of you could have left your rooms last night, except Elijah or Leah themselves?”

“What about Paul and Eve, Mister?” Robin was trying to sound detached and bored, but his voice had not broken long enough ago to keep the squeak of excitement out of the penultimate syllable. He was one who was never going to achieve the midnight timbre of the pure male Ku.

“Thank you for reminding me,” said Pibble, and made the mistake of hesitating between sarcasm and avuncularity, like a tennis player trying to convert a drive into a pat in mid-swing. The result was so inane that it was an effort to look at Eve. She rescued him impassively.

“I do not think, Superintendent, that we can prove that we did not commit the murder in concert, but we share a bed so creaky that it would be impossible for either of us to embark on a midnight excursion unknown to the other.”

Pibble sorted through the pile of men's cards while the Kus enjoyed their laugh. Really it was like trying to solve a crime in the Stock Exchange, the way the mildest mention of sex interrupted business.

“I see that Jacob and Daniel have jobs with London Transport,” he said. “Should they not be working now?”

One of the younger men answered, solemn as a priest at a graveside.

“We cannot leave the Kus until a new chief is found.”

“Um,” said Pibble, interested to know that the young ones took their tabus as seriously as the old ones, and wondering whether Robin's cockiness extended to questioning his elders' lore. “That looks as far as we are likely to get for the moment. I think I must tell you that it still seems to me probable that the murder was done by someone who lives in this house, and I must impress on you that it is your duty as citizens to tell me if you know anything which might help me solve the crime. I will question you individually later, but first I must search the locked rooms upstairs. Who has the keys?”

“Elijah has the key to the men's hut,” said Melchizedek.

“I have the key to the women's hut,” said Leah.

“Constable Fernham told me that several rooms were locked.”

“Only two,” said Melchizedek. “The walls have been taken away.”

“I see,” said Pibble. Eve must have spent a packet setting her tribe up in the style to which they were accustomed. “I will search the men's room myself. Leah, I should also like to search the women's room, but if that would offend you I can send for a policewoman to do it.”

“Search, Mister. The Reverend Mackenzie taught us that the law is above our customs. I will come with you. There will be matters you do not understand.”

“Fine. Well, we'd better get on with it … Oh, just before you go” (casual, now, casual), “have any of you seen a two-headed penny in the house?”

Not a sausage. Pibble had been listening like a hunter. Perhaps there'd been a whisper of indrawn breath in the group of men, but too slight and quick to be sure of, let alone traced. Try again.

“I'd better explain. When Aaron's body was examined, he was found to be clutching a penny in his hand. Not just an ordinary penny”—Pibble scratched some change from his trouser pocket and held a coin up—“with the Queen's head on one side and the seated woman on the other, but a penny with a king's head on both sides. Does anyone know who it belonged to?”

Blank. Blankety-blank, in fact. Where in screaming hell was he going to make even a clip in the featureless façade of this case? Pibble spun the coin fiercely in the air, caught it, and slammed it on the table.

There! Done it, by God! Tension tangible in the room, as if a demon had slid through the door behind his chair. The hair on his nape stirred, but he managed not to look around. One of the elders had opened his mouth like a zany, but no words came before Melchizedek's black claw dug into his shoulder. Paul stopped drawing for the first time, stared at Pibble, and then glanced carefully at Eve, who was watching, with a small frown, the byplay among the men. The women were whispering.

“Well, Melchizedek, what does it mean?”

Silence.

“Why the excitement, man?”

“Policeman, I cannot tell you what a penny with two heads may mean.”

“Then what was all the fuss about when I tossed my penny just now?”

Silence.

“Eve?”

“I do not know, Superintendent.”

“Paul?”

“Superintendent, I cannot tell you.”

A nice distinction, and Melchizedek had used the same ambiguous phrase. Pibble felt that Paul meant him to catch it, and the dark glance that flicked sideways to where the women sat.

“Leah?”

“Rebecca will speak.”

The shapeless creature at the farthest end of the sofa began to struggle with language; she was the first inarticulate Ku Pibble had come across, but at once he sensed—or, rather, wanted to sense, wanted to feel—that that peat-water gaze was not a symptom of less than human intelligence, that the impediment was only physical.

“White man come … talk with Reverend Mackenzie and …­ Moses and Aaron throw penny … We hide … Yellow men …­ come­ … burn
. . . kill.”

“This white man, was he Group Captain Caine?”

Nod.

“Moses was the chief?”

Nod.

“You saw Group Captain Caine talk with the Reverend Mackenzie and Moses and Aaron, and then toss a coin. Who else saw this happen?”

“Many.”

“Of the people in this room, who saw this happen?”

“Paul … Nahum … I do not know … More.”

“Paul, why …”

Oh, let it pass for the moment. Let's assume that Caine had tossed a penny twenty-five years ago to decide something with Eve's dad (presumably), and that shortly after this unfamiliar gesture the whole tribe had been near-as-dammit obliterated. Wouldn't the act of tossing a penny have the same effect of sick shock on the survivors as the echo of a traumatic moment does on any neurotic? Though why had they left it to Rebecca to explain? Presumably Paul hadn't wanted to drag it all out in front of Eve, but the others …

And did it matter? Well, it might conceivably have been a (even
the)
two-headed penny which had spun and sung in the tropic clearing. Better slog on.

“Nahum, did you see this?”

“I saw this.”

Another graybeard, in a bulging boiler suit this time, and another colossal bass.

“And did you hear what they spoke about?”

“When I was a hunter, I talked no English.”

“Did you hear anything, Paul?”

The black mask panned up from the desk, taut with patience.

“I heard nothing, Superintendent.”

Pibble caught him, just, before he plunged back into the world he was creating.

“Can you guess?”

“No.”

“How soon after Group Captain Caine's arrival in the village did this happen?”

“Two hours, no more. Dr. and Mrs. Mackenzie had fed him in the mission house. I was houseboy. Then Dr. Mackenzie sent me to summon Moses. Aaron came also. They spoke out by the altar. We had no church in the village, but an altar stood in the open before the mission house. Then I saw Caine laugh, and he took a coin from his pocket, tossed it in the air, caught it, and slammed it on the altar, as you did on the table. Then he laughed again, and Dr. Mackenzie led him back to the mission house, still laughing. Hysteria, I now perceive.”

“Um. Was it dangerous for you that the Group Captain should stay in your village?”

“Everything was dangerous when the Japanese were in the mountains, but I had heard Dr. Mackenzie and Mrs. Mackenzie talking the day before of a village which had been burnt because they sheltered Australian airmen.”

“Thank you, Paul. Melchizedek, do you all know the purpose of tossing a coin?”

“We have seen it on the television set.”

“Have you ever seen a two-headed penny used?”

“Two years ago, the bad man tossed a coin to decide whether the white-haired woman must come with him to Berlin to search for her lover, although the bad man well knew that this lover was tied with a rope in a barge near Wapping. But the white-haired woman turned the coin over and saw that it had two heads, and from that she knew the badness of the man, whom she tricked, so that he went to Berlin while she untied the rope that bound her lover.”

The Kus sighed and clucked with nostalgic appreciation.

“Did Aaron see this?” said Pibble.

“Aaron saw this.”

Pause for thought—excited reverie, rather. Suppose the conversation with Dr. Mackenzie had been about whether it was fair to the Kus for Caine to stay in the village, and suppose Caine had tossed a crook penny to decide, and suppose, all this time after, Aaron had seen this drivel on the telly and (being distrustful of Caine—that we know) had found a chance to nip next door and look for the coin. . . Steady, steady. How could Caine have known Aaron knew? How could he have got in? Could Mrs. Caine be lying about his being away? Why (an academic point) had the Kus insisted on Rebecca's telling the story first when they all knew? Just because we
want
Caine to be our man it doesn't let us off the rest of the rigmarole. Stop daydreaming; search house. (Anyway, even for Caine, you couldn't call it more than a fractional-motive.)