The Midden (16 page)

To the Chief Constable, peering over Aunt Bea's knee with all the enthusiasm of a man
temporarily reprieved from death and one who no longer cared with any real intensity what his
public reputation might be, Mrs Thouless' intervention was a Godsend. On the other hand, if Lady
Vy came all high and mighty, the damned housekeeper might walk out of the house straightaway. It
was not a prospect to be borne. 'Dear Mrs Thouless,' he called out, 'you mustn't leave us.'

From the doorway the housekeeper became aware of the very dubious nature of her employers'
marital arrangements. She stared short-sightedly at Sir Arnold's head and then at Auntie Bea and
finally up at Lady Vy. 'Ooh mum,' she said, all trace of a Scotch accent entirely gone. 'Ooh mum
I don't know what...'

Lady Vy forestalled her. 'Now pull yourself together, Mrs T.,' she said. 'I know it's been a
trying morning and you've had a long weekend but there is no need to overdramatize. Just go
downstairs and make us all a nice pot of tea.'

'Yes, mum, if you say so, mum,' said Mrs Thouless with her jaw sagging, and went off down the
landing utterly bemused.

Lady Vy turned her attention back to more urgent matters and picked up the revolver again. 'I
must say,' she said with a renewed air of social confidence, 'it's come to a pretty pass when the
staff march into bedrooms without knocking. I can't think what the country's coming to.'

On the bed Auntie Bea responded to the call of her upbringing. 'My dear,' she said, 'I have
exactly the same trouble at Washam. It's almost impossible to get anyone to stay and they demand
quite exorbitant wages and two nights off a week.' And with a final obscene flick of her skirt
she signalled to the Chief Constable that he could go now.

Sir Arnold scrambled off the bed and hurried through to the bathroom and was presently busy
with a toothbrush and some cold water. There was no hot. There had been no time to have the tank
repaired. He was staring into the bathroom mirror and wondering what message God had intended to
have put him through such an awful ordeal, when it dawned on him that Mrs Thouless had said
something important. What was it? '...that thing has come out of the cellar again...' What thing?
And why wasn't whatever it was a fit sight for a decent woman to see? For the first time that
morning the Chief Constable suddenly saw things in a longer perspective of time than the previous
five minutes. Someone had been down into the cellar and found the young bastard gone. Of course.
That explained everything, and in particular Auntie Bloody Bea's murderous assault on him. She
had found her accomplice had disappeared and had come upstairs to kill him in revenge. Or
something. The Chief Constable's late night and fearful weekend had taken their toll of his
capacity for rational thought. All he could be certain of was that he was in an isolated house
with three women, one of whom he detested, another he despised, and a third who was presently
making a pot of tea in the kitchen. Of the three only Mrs Thouless held even the faintest of
charms for him and they were entirely of a practical order. He was about to hurry from the
bathroom and get down to the relative safety of the kitchen when he remembered the shot. And Vy
had taken the bloody gun downstairs with her. What the hell had she been firing at? Without
thinking clearly Sir Arnold stumbled out of the bathroom to find his wife swabbing Auntie Bea's
groin with eau-de-Cologne and discussing the advisability of a tetanus shot.

'Or rabies,' said Lady Vy, looking villainously at her husband.

Sir Arnold gave up all thought of questioning her. Instead he went down to the kitchen to see
for himself what had been going on there. He found Mrs Thouless, quite recovered and restored to
her own domestic role, unwinding the demoralized Rottweiler's insulated muzzle. Sir Arnold sipped
his cup of tea and cursed the dog, his wife, his wife's murderous lover, and most of all the
swine who had deposited a drugged lout in his bed.

After a while Sir Arnold concentrated his thoughts on some method of getting his revenge. He
could confront that bloody lesbian bitch upstairs and demand to know what the hell she had hoped
to achieve by having the lout brought to the Old Boathouse. It didn't make sense. On the other
hand she had just tried to murder him and had very nearly succeeded. Would have succeeded if Vy
hadn't, for once, come in at the right moment. So fucking Bea had to be mad. Mad, insane, out of
her tiny, way off her trolley and a homocidal maniac. (The Chief Constable hadn't got the word
wrong: 'homocidal' was exact.) And in addition she had an accomplice. He had no doubt about that
either. She couldn't possibly have left the Old Boathouse and driven somewhere to find the young
lout and drug him, and then driven back and carried him upstairs on her own. That was out of the
question. She had been drinking with Vy all evening. He'd asked Vy that and she'd told him the
truth. He was sure of that. His wife had been just as astonished to find the bastard in bed with
her as he'd been himself. So there was someone out there and here the Chief Constable's mind,
never far from paranoia, turned lurid with fury. And fear. A conspiracy had been hatched to
destroy him. Hatched? Hatched wasn't strong enough, and besides it was too reminiscent of eggs
and hens and things that were natural. There was absolutely nothing natural about drugging some
young bastard to the eyeballs before stripping him naked and shoving him into a respectable Chief
Constable's marital bed. It was an act of diabolical unnaturalness, of pure evil and malice
aforethought. Hatched it wasn't. This vile act had been plotted, premeditated and planned to
destroy his reputation. If this little lot had got out he'd have been ruined. If it got out now
he'd still be ruined. In fact now that he came to think of it, he was in a far worse position
than before because he had beaten the young bastard over the head and had kept him tied up in the
cellar for twenty-four hours. He might even have killed the sod. For all he knew the bastard was
dead and at this very moment under that narrow bed at the Midden rigor mortis might have set
in.

A cold sweat broke out on the Chief Constable's face and he went through to his study to try
to think. Sitting there at his desk feeling like death he searched his mind for a motive.
Blackmail was the first and most obvious. But why, in God's name, should the beastly Bea want to
blackmail him? There was no need. The woman had enough money of her own, or so he had always
understood from Vy. Mind you, Vy had the brain of a mentally challenged peahen but she was good
at smelling incomes. One of her upper-class virtues. No, Auntie Bea's motive had to be something
else. Pure hatred for him? She had that all right. In spades. Not that the Chief Constable cared.
A great many people hated him. He was used to being hated. He rather liked it, in fact. It gave
him a sense of power and authority. In his mind hatred went with respect and fear. To be feared
and respected gave him a sense of worth. It assured him that he meant something.

On the other hand, he was damned if he could see what anything else meant. There had to be
some other more sinister motive. No one would go to all this trouble simply to ruin him. No,
Auntie Bea was merely a willing accomplice, a subordinate who could open gates and keep Genscher
quiet. In all likelihood she had been blackmailed, or at least persuaded, into acting as the
insider. She wouldn't have needed much persuading either. Yes, that was much more like it. There
was somebody out there here the Chief Constable's horizons expanded to include every villain in
Twixt and Tween who had deliberately set out to destroy him. Or, and this seemed a more rational
explanation, to hold him to ransom by threatening to expose him. That was much more likely. Well,
that was going to take some doing now. Unless, of course, that young bloke was dead, in which
case the fat would really be in the fire. Again the cold sweat broke out on his pallid face. The
Chief Constable gave up trying to think. He was too exhausted. Making sure that Vy and Bea were
now in the kitchen having breakfast, he went upstairs and climbed into bed. He needed sleep.

He didn't get much. Half an hour later his wife stormed into the room and woke him. She was in
a filthy mood. 'You disgust me,' she told him. 'Can't you leave anyone alone?'

'Leave anyone alone? I never went anywhere near the bitch. She was the one who attacked
me.'

'You really expect me to believe that? Bea has an aversion to men. She finds them
repulsive.'

'The feeling is mutual,' said the Chief Constable. 'And I don't care what she finds repulsive,
she's got no right to go round attempting to murder people.'

'You must have provoked her in some way. She's a very lovely, peaceful person.'

Sir Arnold looked at her with bloodshot, unbelieving eyes. 'Peaceful?' he snarled. 'Peaceful?
That woman? You've got a bloody odd idea what peace is like. There I was hunting for my slippers
that's all I was doing, trying to find my slippers under the bed and without the slightest
warning she hurled herself on me.'

'I don't believe it. But I haven't come here to argue with you. Bea and I are leaving now.
We're going to Tween. You can come when you feel up to it.'

'Like never,' Sir Arnold thought, but he didn't say it.

'And while we're on the subject, I suppose you know that young man has escaped from the
cellar. He wrapped insulating tape round Genscher's nose and got away.'

'Really?' said Sir Arnold, trying to think how he could use this new interpretation of events.
'The bloke escaped after wrapping tape round Genscher's nose? How very peculiar.'

'He got through the hatch,' said Lady Vy. 'You can't have tied him up very well. Thank
goodness the whisky and the Valium didn't kill him.'

'How very remarkable,' said Sir Arnold. 'You don't think the people who brought him could have
realized they'd made a mistake and moved him to the place they'd intended?'

'How the hell would I know what to think?' Lady Vy answered and looked at her husband
suspiciously. 'And you look as if you hadn't had much sleep, come to that. You should take a look
at yourself. You're not at all a picture of health.'

'I don't feel it,' said the Chief Constable, 'and you wouldn't either if you'd been half
suffocated by that beastly Bea. And for Heaven's sake, don't mention anything about the fellow in
the cellar to her.'

'You don't think she doesn't know already? Honestly, you are a fool. With all that noise going
on? She hasn't said anything because she's too tactful. She just thought you'd been beating me
up. Mrs Thouless saw the blood too.'

The Chief Constable sat wearily up in bed. This was the sort of news he least wanted. 'Has she
told you that?' he stammered.

'Not in so many words, but she asked what to do with the rug in your study with the blood on
it. And of course you had to leave a bloodstained bedside lamp by the desk.'

'Dear God,' said the Chief Constable. 'It's a wonder she hasn't sold the story to the Sun
already.'

'Since she didn't see anything else she can't be certain what has been going on.'

'Not the only one round here,' said the Chief Constable and slipped miserably back under the
bedclothes. He felt like death.

So did Timothy Bright. After lying under the bed listening for sounds of movement in the house
and not hearing any, he crawled slowly and awkwardly out and tried to get to his feet. He almost
succeeded. He got halfway up before falling over and banging his head against the edge of the
chair on which the Major had folded his clothes. The chair toppled over and Timothy Bright's
scalp wound began to bleed again, this time onto the Major's tweed jacket and his natty little
waistcoat. Timothy Bright lay there for a bit trying to think where he was or how he came to be
naked and cold and hungry and why his mouth tasted like...He didn't know what his mouth tasted
like. He tried again to get up by clutching the bed, then slumped down on it and lay there.
Thought was returning. To get warmer he pulled the duvet over him and felt slightly better. Only
slightly. A terrible thirst drove him to try to stand up again. He succeeded and stood, wobbling
a little, listening.

The house was silent. Nothing moved. The sun shone in the window and outside he could see a
patch of vegetable garden with some broad beans and a row of twigs for peas. Beyond it a wooden
shed and a copse of tall trees and a drystone wall with more trees behind it. There was no sign
of life, apart from a thrush breaking a snail's shell on a concrete path. A cat appeared round
the pea twigs and stopped, its eyes fixed on the thrush. Then it turned and slid round the broad
beans and crept forward with the utmost stealth. For a moment Timothy Bright was almost
transfixed by the drama, but the thrush flew off and the cat relaxed. Only then did he notice the
blood on the pillow and the duvet. It was fresh blood. He was bleeding. Oh God, he had to do
something about it.

The bathroom door was open and he went through to it and grabbed a towel and wiped his hair
with it. There was a lot of blood on the towel and when he looked in the mirror over the
washbasin he didn't recognize himself. His face was covered with dried blood, his hair was matted
with it and his chest was scratched and horribly bruised. In an instant the vision of that
skinned pig returned and he lurched back. The Major's bathroom was not a large one, was in fact
merely a shower-room with a little shelf under the shaving-mirror on which he kept his bottle of
Imperial Russian eau-de-Cologne (at least the bottle was genuine, he had pinched it from a rich
friend, but he had long ago used up the contents and refilled it with 4711). Timothy lurched
backwards into the shower curtain, a plastic one to which the Major had neatly sewn a rather
pretty piece of Laura Ashley floral material, and as he tripped he clutched the shelf. The
Imperial Russian Cologne bottle fell into the basin and broke. It was followed by the
shaving-brush, the Major's cut-throat razor which he used very carefully to trim his hair before
dyeing it, his toothbrush and the scissors that were necessary for his moustache. But it was the
cut-throat that threw Timothy Bright. It brought to mind a scene from a nightmare, the nightmare
that had become central to his being, that of a man with black shiny hair in the back room of a
bar who had sliced the end of his nose and talked about piggy-chops and what was going to happen
to Timothy Bright if he didn't do something terrible. It brought to mind that terrifying
photograph of the pig. Somewhere still deeper within him it may even have rekindled the forgotten
horror of Old Og's ferret, Posy, with blood on its snout after killing the bought rabbit. In his
panic reaction he fell back into the shower taking the curtain with him and sat with blood
running down the curtain and the wall. There he sat crying, with tears and blood running down his
face. He cried noiselessly. The house was silent again.