The Midden (11 page)

Sir Arnold took his courage in his hands. 'Then perhaps Miss Midden is available,' he
said.

'She's not here either. They won't be back till Monday or even Tuesday.'

'Oh well, it can wait,' said the Chief Constable and, before the woman could ask who was
calling, he put the phone down.

Now all that remained was to move the Land Rover down to the old byre so that he wouldn't be
heard from the house when he started it up. Having done all the essential things, Sir Arnold
settled down to get some rest.

In fact there was no need to wait until 2 a.m. to make the move. At ten o'clock Auntie Bea
said she was dead tired and wandered off to bed and Lady Vy followed, looking very weirdly pink.
Sir Arnold hoped he hadn't overdone the Valium in the tonic. Well, it couldn't be helped now. He
went down to the cellar and gave the unwanted visitor his final shot of whisky before trying to
move the body up to the ground floor.

It was at that point that he realized he was dealing with a dead weight. It had been easy
enough to get the fellow down to the cellar. For one thing Vy had helped him and for another it
had all been downhill. Getting the brute up again was another matter altogether. Sir Arnold
tugged Timothy Bright halfway up the cellar steps, and dropped the load twice to avoid having a
heart attack. After that he changed his mind about the route out. If he dropped the blighter
again he might well kill him, and if he went on trying to get him up the steps he would almost
certainly kill himself.

Having got his racing pulse almost back to normal, Sir Arnold stood up and went over to the
hatch. Originally it had been used to roll beer barrels down into the cellar. He would have to
use it now to get the bloke up. Sir Arnold pulled the ropes and undid the bolts. Then he went
upstairs and round to the yard and opened the hatch from above. Beside him Genscher wheezed
strangely and sniffed. The poor creature was still in a bad way. But Sir Arnold hadn't got time
to worry about the Rottweiler's problems. He had far more important ones of his own to
consider.

He fetched a rope from the garage and dropped one end down the hatch into the cellar. Then he
went back down into the cellar and dragged the body over to the beer ramp under the hatch. Here
he tied the rope round the fellow's waist. So far so good.

He was about to go up the steps when to his horror he heard footsteps on the floor above.
Switching off the light, he stood in the darkness sweating. What the hell was happening? That
bloody Bea couldn't be prowling round the house now. It wasn't possible. He had watched her sink
three gin and tonics and there'd been all that Valium in the tonic bottle. The woman must have
the constitution of the proverbial ox to stay awake with that lot inside her. Or perhaps the cow
had realized her drink had been doctored and had taken something to counteract it. She was
obviously far brighter than he had supposed. And the door of the cellar was open. She was bound
to spot it.

Upstairs, Aunt Bea blundered across the kitchen in search of some bicarbonate of soda,
anything to stop her head spinning. She hadn't felt this drunk in a long time, and to make it all
the more peculiar she'd only had three small gin and tonics and had drowned the gin in tonic too.
At this rate she'd have to give up drinking altogether. There must be something terribly wrong
with her liver. As she blundered into the kitchen table and clutched at the back of a chair and
finally sat down, she was an extremely puzzled woman. She was even more puzzled by an over-riding
desire to sing. She hadn't had that urge for ages and usually did it in the privacy of her own
flat, and in the bathroom at that. It was all very well being a powerful woman and generally
rather masculine in many ways, but it was no great help having the voice of an extremely bad
soprano. But now for some unknown reason she felt like singing 'If you were the only girl in the
world and I was the only boy.'

As the sounds reached the Chief Constable in the cellar and were translated into an overture,
a new and frightful thought occurred to him, that the ghastly Auntie Bea was making some
disgusting proposition to him one that he rejected out of hand. She evidently knew he was in the
cellar but, if she thought he was going to play the girl to her being the boy, she had another
thing coming. And she couldn't possibly be singing to anyone else in the house. Mrs Thouless was
as deaf as a post and Vy was without question dead to the world. As if to confirm him in this
insane notion that he was being courted by an unabashed lesbian, and if she had looked any
different the normally passive Sir Arnold might have welcomed the experience, Auntie Bea got up
and crossed to the cellar door and peered down the steps. 'If there is anyone down there, you can
come up now to Auntie Bea and give me the tongue of day,' she whispered. The Chief Constable
curdled in the corner. He had many fantasies in his life, but that was definitely not one of
them. 'All aboard the Auntie Bea. Last orders and rites. The rest is silence.' And having uttered
these ominous words, she shut the cellar door and locked it.

In the darkness Sir Arnold Gonders listened to her retreating footsteps and cursed the day his
wife had brought the beastly woman into their life. Either she was taking the piss out of him or
she was clean out of her skull. Whichever she was he had to get himself out of the fucking
cellar, one, and two, drag the blighter up after him. The only way out now was up the planks of
the beer-barrel ramp. By the light of the moon shining occasionally through the scudding clouds
he tried climbing the plank by gripping the edge with his hands and moving one of his feet at a
time. Halfway up he slipped and was left clutching the plank to himself like a mating toad. With
infinite care to avoid splinters he let himself down and considered the problem again. What he
needed were some non-slip soles or, since they weren't available, something he could attach to
the plank that wouldn't slip. For a minute he thought of using Timothy Bright as a temporary
ladder and had got so far as to prop him against the plank when he decided that wasn't very
clever. Unless he tied the fellow on...

Sir Arnold cancelled the project and went back with his torch to look for something to stand
on. He found it at the back of one of the stone wine racks in the shape of a battered suitcase
which contained ancient copies of La Vie Parisienne and which had once belonged to a waterworks
employee who had evidently whiled away his spare time with photographs of unclad French women of
the thirties. Sir Arnold had kept them for his own amusement but now the suitcase was going to be
put to a better purpose.

Five minutes later he was out into the cool night air and grasping the rope attached to the
body in the cellar. He stood for a moment to consider the problem. It was amazing how quite
simple tasks became problematical when they had to be put into effect. One thing he wasn't going
to do was have the rope slip back through the hatch if he had to let go. Walking across the
cobbled yard he tied the end to the leg of a bench in his workshop. As he straightened up he
began to realize that pulling the body wasn't going to be at all easy. He wished now he hadn't
left the bottle of whisky in the cellar. He could do with a stiff dram before attempting the big
pull. He went round to the French windows and was grateful to find that Auntie Bea hadn't locked
them too. In his study he poured himself a large Chivas Regal and drank it down. Yes, that felt
better.

Back in the yard he grasped the rope and began to pull. Slowly, the body crept up the planks
and Sir Arnold was beginning to think he had done it when his feet slipped on the cobbles and
with a nasty thud Timothy Bright fell onto the floor of the cellar again. As the Chief Constable
fought to get his breath back Genscher whined beside him. Sir Arnold looked down at the huge dog
and was inspired. He had found the perfect method of getting the damned lout up and out. He went
into the workshop and found several rolls of insulating tape.

'Genscher old boy, come here and make yourself useful,' he called softly. 'You're going to be
my dumb chum.'

Five minutes later the Rottweiler was. With twenty metres of insulating tape strapped tightly
round its jaws and the back of its head it was incapable of whining and its breathing had taken
on a new and stressful wheezing.

'Now then,' said Sir Arnold, 'just one more thing.' And he tied the rope to the dog's collar.
Then he stepped back and took a deep breath before unleashing all the rage against circumstance
that had built up in him since he had been hounded by the press at the Serious Crime Squad
celebrations. As he kicked Genscher's so far unscathed scrotum the great beast bounded forward,
desperately trying to come to terms with this appalling visitation and the changed relationship
with a master who had previously treated it almost kindly. In the cellar, happily oblivious to
the fate waiting for him, Timothy shot up the ramp and through the hatch onto the cobbles and was
dragged across the yard by the desperate dog. As Genscher hurled himself away from his own
backside, Timothy followed and was dragged into the workshop where he collided with the leg of
the bench, bounced off it and was finally wedged under the front off-side wheel of Lady Vy's
Mercedes.

Outside Sir Arnold tried to undo the rope. The Chivas Regal had got to him now and he was
conscious that the family pet no longer trusted him. 'It's all right, Genscher old chap,' he
whispered hoarsely but without effect. The Rottweiler was not a very bright dog and it certainly
wasn't a fit one but it knew enough and was fit enough to keep out of the way of owners who
muzzled a dog's jaws with half a mile of insulating tape and then kicked it in the balls. As the
Chief Constable stumbled about the yard in pursuit, Genscher made for the only bolt-hole it could
find and shot through the hatch. Behind it the rope tautened and for a moment it seemed as though
the body in the sheets would follow it. But Timothy Bright was too tightly wedged under the
Mercedes and the rope had wound itself round an upright in the garage. As the Rottweiler began to
strangle to death halfway down the chute, Sir Arnold acted. He wasn't going to lose the fellow
whatever happened. Groping among the tools on the bench he found a chisel and, kneeling on the
ground, stabbed at the rope. Most of his attempts missed but in the end the rope parted and a
dull thud in the cellar indicated that the Rottweiler had dropped the remaining five feet to the
floor. Sir Arnold got to his feet and began to haul the body from below the Mercedes.

He collected a wheelbarrow and, wedging Timothy across it, slowly wheeled him down to the Land
Rover in the byre. Twice the body fell off and twice he replaced it, but in the end he was able
to heave it up into the back of the vehicle. Then he checked his watch. It was almost one
o'clock. Or was it two? It didn't matter. He didn't give a fig what time it was any longer so
long as that old bitch Miss Midden was well and truly away from the farm. The Chief Constable was
pissed and mentally shagged out and only his sense of self-preservation kept him going. He wasn't
going to waste time getting the wretched fellow out of the sheets here. He'd do that once he'd
unloaded the bugger at the Midden. Sir Arnold climbed back into the driving seat and eased the
handbrake off. The Land Rover coasted slowly down the hill away from the Old Boathouse and the
reservoir. When he was out of sight he let in the clutch and started.

Twenty-five slow minutes later, still driving without lights, he turned up towards the Midden
and got out to open the gate. For a moment he hesitated. There was still time to dump the bugger
somewhere else. Once in through the gate there could be no turning back. And a little way down
the road to his right was the Middenhall itself. The entrance to the estate was only a quarter of
a mile further on. Sir Arnold could see the beech trees that marked the wall of the estate. No,
even at this late hour there might be weirdos up and about in the grounds. It was here or
nothing. He pushed the gate open and drove up into the back yard and then under the archway to
the front of the house. There he sat for a moment with the engine running but no lights came on
in the house. Ahead of him was another gate and the track that had once been the old drove road
to the south. It was unpaved and led across the fell but it would provide a very useful route
away from the house when he had finished. The Chief Constable switched off the engine and got out
and listened. Apart from the hissing in his right ear, which he attributed to too much whisky,
the night was silent.

He went round to the back of the Land Rover and put on a pair of washing-up gloves. Then,
moving with what he supposed was stealth, he crossed to the front door and shone his torch on the
lock. It wasn't, he was glad to find, a Chubb or even a complicated Yale-type lock. It should be
easy enough to break in.

In fact there was no need. The door was unlocked. Typical of a woman, thought the Chief
Constable, before realizing that the door might be unlocked but it was also on a chain and he
still couldn't get in. Another thought struck him. Perhaps Miss Midden was still there. It was
possible she had changed her mind about going off for the weekend. He should have thought of that
earlier. Sir Arnold backed away from the front door and went back through the archway to the back
yard. It was here Miss Midden garaged her car. He looked in the old barn across the yard and was
relieved to find it empty. After that he tried the back door, but that was locked and with a
Chubb too. No chance of breaking in there. He went round the windows, trying them all. They were
of the old-fashioned sash type and on one the catch was broken. Sir Arnold Gonders slid the
window open and clambered through. His torch showed him that he was in the dining-room. A large
mahogany table with chairs all round it and a bowl of faded flowers in the middle and a large old
sideboard with a mirror above it. To his left a door. He crossed to it and found himself in a
room with a bed, a desk, an armchair and a bookcase. A pair of men's shoes and slippers and a
dressing-gown. He was evidently in Major MacPhee's room. Nothing could be more convenient. With
renewed confidence he opened the window and returned to the Land Rover. Ten minutes later Timothy
Bright was out of the bedsheets and the Chief Constable had dumped him, with some difficulty,
through the open window into the Major's bedroom.