The Throwback (16 page)

In the garden Lockhart knew precisely. His patent horsewhip had needed no lead weights added to the leather thongs.

‘Well, all I’m telling you,’ shrieked Mrs Raceme, ‘is that if you think I did that to you, you’re out of your mind.’

Mr Raceme was. Impeded by the bed and driven insane by the pain, he hurtled across the room in the general direction of her voice, smashed through the dressing-table behind which Mrs Raceme was sheltering, and carrying all before him, dressing-table, bed, bedside lamp and teamaker, not to mention Mrs Raceme, shot through the curtains of the patio window, smashed the double glazing and cascaded down into the flowerbed below. There his screams were combined with those of Mrs Raceme herself, lacerated in much the same part of her anatomy by the double glazing and a rose bush.

Lockhart hesitated and crossed into the bird sanctuary, and as he moved silently towards Number 12 the sound of sirens could be heard above the shouts and yells of the Racemes. The Pettigrews had exercised their social conscience once again and phoned for the police.

‘What on earth was all that noise?’ Jessica enquired as
he came in from the garage where he had deposited his horsewhip. ‘It sounded as if someone had fallen through a greenhouse roof.’

‘Most peculiar tenants we’ve got,’ said Lockhart, ‘they seem to kick up such a rumpus.’

Certainly Mr and Mrs Raceme were kicking up a rumpus and the police found their predicament most peculiar. Mr Raceme’s lacerated posterior and his hood made instant identification difficult but it was the fact that he was still tied to the bed that intrigued them.

‘Tell me, sir,’ said the Sergeant who arrived and promptly phoned for an ambulance, ‘do you make a habit of wearing hoods when you go to bed?’

‘Mind your own bloody business,’ said Mr Raceme inadvisedly. ‘I don’t ask you what you do in the privacy of your home and you’ve got no right to ask me.’

‘Well, sir, if that’s the line you’re going to take, we’ll take the line that you’ve used obscene language to a police officer in the execution of his duty and have issued menaces against the person of your wife.’

‘And what about my person?’ yelled Mr Raceme. ‘You seem to have overlooked the fact that she thrashed me.’

‘We haven’t overlooked it, sir,’ said the Sergeant, ‘the lady seems to have made a good job of it.’

The arrival of a constable who had been investigating the contents of the Racemes’ bedroom and was now carrying a bundle of rods, whips, canes and cat-o’-nine-tails merely confirmed the police in their suspicion that Mr Raceme had got what he asked for. Their sympathy
was all for his wife and when Mr Raceme tried to renew his assault on her they dispensed with the need for handcuffs and carried him bed and all into the Black Maria. Mrs Raceme went away in an ambulance. The Sergeant, following in a police car, was frankly puzzled.

‘Something bloody odd going on down there,’ he said to the driver. ‘We’d better keep an eye on Sandicott Crescent from now on.’

From that night on a patrol car was stationed at the bottom of the Crescent and its presence there forced Lockhart to adopt new tactics. He had already given some thought to the use of the sewage system, and the police lent him the incentive. Two days later he purchased a wet-suit for underwater diving and an oxygen mask and, making use of the late Mr Sandicott’s detailed plans of the Crescent’s amenities, lifted the cover of the main sewer opposite his house, descended the ladder and closed it behind him. In the darkness he switched on his torch and made his way along, noting the inlets from each house as he went. It was a large main sewer and afforded him fresh insight into the habits of his neighbours. Opposite Colonel Finch-Potter’s subsidiary were deposited a number of white latex objects which didn’t accord with his supposedly bachelor status, while Mr O’Brain’s meanness was proven by his use of a telephone directory for toilet paper. Lockhart returned from his potholing determined to concentrate his attention on
these two bachelors. There was the problem of the Colonel’s bull-terrier to be considered. It was an amiable beast but of as ferocious an aspect as that of its owner. Lockhart knew the Colonel’s habits already, though the discovery of so many contraceptives in the vicinity of his drain came as something of a surprise. There was more to the Colonel than met the eye. He would have to observe him more closely. Mr O’Brain presented less of a problem. Being Irish, he was a relatively easy target, and when Lockhart had divested himself of his wet-suit and had washed it, he resorted to the telephone yet again.

‘This is the Pursley Brigade of the Provisional IRA,’ he said in a supposedly Irish voice. ‘We’ll be expecting your contribution in the next few days. The code-word is Killarney.’

Mr O’Brain’s reply went unheard. A retired gynaecologist, he was sufficiently Anglicized and wealthy to feel resentful of this call on his time and resources. He promptly phoned the police and asked for protection. Lockhart, from the window of his bedroom, saw the patrol car at the end of the street move forward and stop outside the O’Brain house. It would be as well not to use the telephone again, he decided, and went to bed with a different scheme in mind. It involved the use of the sewer and was likely to disprove Mr O’Brain’s claim to have nothing to do with any organization that sought to achieve its ends by violence.

The following morning he was up early and on his way to the shopping centre when the mail van arrived
and delivered several packets to the Misses Musgrove. Lockhart heard them express some surprise and the hope that these were fresh donations to the church jumble sale. Lockhart doubted the suitability of the contents for any church function, a view shared a moment or two later by the Misses Musgrove who, having glimpsed Mr Simplon’s penis, recognized some awful similarity between it and the monstrous objects that they found inside the packets.

‘There must be some mistake,’ said Miss Mary, examining the address. ‘We didn’t order these frightful things.’

Her elder sister, Maud, looked at her sceptically.

‘I didn’t anyway. I can assure you of that,’ she said icily.

‘Well, you don’t suppose for one moment that I did, do you?’ said Mary. Maud’s silence was answer enough.

‘How perfectly horrid of you to entertain such a suspicion,’ continued the outraged Mary. ‘For all I know you did and you’re just trying to throw the blame on me.’

They threw the blame on one another for the next hour but finally curiosity prevailed.

‘It says here,’ said Maud, reading the instructions for the ejaculatory and vibrating dildo of adjustable proportions, ‘that the testicles can be filled with the white of egg and double cream in equal proportions to attain the effect of a lifelike ejaculation. Which do you think the testicles are?’

Miss Mary correctly discovered them and presently
the two spinsters were busy mixing the necessary ingredients, using the vibrating dildo to best advantage as an egg-beater. Having satisfied themselves that the texture was that recommended in the instructions, they had just filled the testicles to capacity and were arguing from their little observation of Mr Simplon’s unobtrusive organ what proportion to adjust the dildo to, when the doorbell rang.

‘I’ll answer it,’ said Mary, and went to the front door. Mrs Truster was there.

‘I’ve just dropped in to say that Henry’s solicitor, Mr Watts, is confident that the charge will be dropped,’ she said, sweeping in her accustomed way down the passage and into the kitchen. ‘I thought you’d be glad to know that …’

Whatever the Misses Musgrove might be glad to know, Mrs Truster was horrified at the spectacle that greeted her. Maud Musgrove was holding an enormous and anatomically exact penis in one hand and what appeared to be an icing syringe in the other. Mrs Truster stared wildly at the thing. It had been bad enough to suspect that her husband was a homosexual; to discover with absolute certainty that the Misses Musgrove of all people were lesbians who mixed slight culinary gifts with gigantic sexual ones was too much for her poor mind. The room swam for a moment and she collapsed into a convenient chair.

‘Dear God, oh Lord,’ she whimpered, and opened her eyes. The beastly thing was still there and from its …
whatever you called a dildo’s opening … there dribbled … ‘Jesus,’ she said, calling on the Almighty yet again before reverting to more appropriate speech, ‘what in hell’s name is going on?’

It was this question that alerted the Misses Musgrove to their socially catastrophic predicament.

‘We were just …’ they began in unison when the dildo answered for them. Triggered by Miss Maud’s sitting on the mechanism that controlled its functions the dildo expanded, vibrated, jerked up and down and fulfilled the guarantee of its manufacturer to the letter. Mrs Truster stared at the terrible thing as it gyrated and expanded and the mock veins stood out on its trunk.

‘Stop it, for hell’s sake, stop the fucking thing,’ she yelled, forgetting her own social position in the enormity of her horror. Miss Maud did her best. She grappled with the creature and tried desperately to stop it jerking. She succeeded all too well. The dildo lived up to its promise and shot half a pint of mixed egg white and double cream across the kitchen like some formidable fire extinguisher. Having achieved this remarkable feat it proceeded to go limp. So did Mrs Truster. She slid off her chair on to the floor and mingled with the dildo’s recent contents.

‘Oh dear, what do we do now?’ asked Miss Mary. ‘You don’t think she’s had a heart attack, do you?’

She knelt beside Mrs Truster and felt her pulse. It was extremely weak.

‘She’s dying,’ Miss Mary moaned. ‘We’ve killed her.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Miss Maud practically, and put the deflated dildo on the draining board. But when she knelt beside Mrs Truster she had to admit that her pulse was dangerously weak.

‘We’ll just have to give her the kiss of life,’ she said, and together they lifted the Vicar’s wife on to the kitchen table.

‘How?’ said Mary.

‘Like this,’ said Maud, who had attended a first-aid course, and applied her knowledge and her mouth to the resuscitation of Mrs Truster. It was immediately successful. From her swoon Mrs Truster regained consciousness to find Miss Maud Musgrove kissing her passionately, an activity that was entirely in sexual keeping with what she had already observed of the two spinsters’ unnatural lusts. Her eyes bulging in her head and her breath reinforced by that of Miss Maud, Mrs Truster broke away and screamed at the very top of her voice. And once again Sandicott Crescent resounded to the shrieks of an hysterical woman.

This time there was no need for the Pettigrews to phone the police. The patrol car was at the front door almost immediately and, breaking the glass panel in the window beside it, the police unlocked the door and swarmed down the passage into the kitchen. Mrs Truster was still shrieking and crouching in the far corner, and, on the draining board beside her, motivated a second time by Miss Maud’s slumping into the chair on which its mechanism stood, slowly swelling and oozing, was the dreadful dildo.

‘Don’t let them come anywhere near me with that thing,’ screamed Mrs Truster as she was helped out of the house, ‘they tried to … oh God … and she was kissing me and …’

‘If you wouldn’t mind just stepping this way,’ said the Sergeant to the Misses Musgrove in the kitchen.

‘But can’t we put that …’

‘The constable will take that and any other evidence he finds into possession,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Just put your coats on and come quietly. A policewoman will come for your night clothes, et cetera.’

And following in the footsteps of Mr Simplon, the Revd Truster and Mr and Mrs Raceme, the Misses Musgrove were taken to the police car and driven off at high speed to be charged.

‘What with?’ Lockhart asked as he passed the constable on duty outside the house.

‘You name it, sir, you’ve got it. They’ll throw the book at them and two nicer old ladies to meet you couldn’t imagine.’

‘Extraordinary,’ said Lockhart, and went on his way with a smile. Things were working remarkably well.

When he got home Jessica had prepared lunch.

‘There was a phone message for you from Pritchetts, the ironmongers,’ she told him as he sat down. ‘They say they’ll send round the two hundred yards of plastic piping you asked for some time later this afternoon.’

‘Great,’ said Lockhart. ‘Just what I needed.’

‘But, darling, the garden’s only fifty yards long. What on earth can you want with two hundred yards of hosepipe?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t have to go and water the Misses Musgrove’s garden at Number 4. I think they’re going to be away for some considerable time.’

‘The Misses Musgrove?’ said Jessica. ‘But they never go away.’

‘They’ve gone this time,’ said Lockhart. ‘In a police car.’

That afternoon, on Lockhart’s suggestion, Jessica went round to the Wilsons to ask if there was anything she could do as their landlady to rectify the state of their drains.

‘There’s a very nasty smell,’ she said to the wild-eyed Mrs Wilson. ‘It’s really most offensive.’

‘Smell? Drains?’ said Mrs Wilson, who hadn’t considered this practical reason for the stench of death in the house.

‘Surely you can smell it?’ said Jessica as Little Willie wafted from the coal cellar.

‘The grave,’ said Mrs Wilson, sticking firmly to first principles. ‘It is the smell of afterlife.’

‘It smells more like that of afterdeath,’ said Jessica. ‘Are you sure something hasn’t died? I mean things do, don’t they? We had a rat die once behind the fridge and it smelt just like this.’

But though they looked behind the fridge and under the oven, and even inside the Wilsons’ tumble drier, there was no sign of a rat.

‘I’ll ask my husband to come over,’ Jessica said, ‘and see if it isn’t the drains. He’s very practical.’

Mrs Wilson thanked her but doubted there was anything
practical Mr Flawse could do. She was wrong. Lockhart arrived ten minutes later with two hundred yards of plastic piping, and proceeded to investigate the drainage system with a thoroughness that was entirely reassuring. His conversation wasn’t. Lapsing into his broadest Northumbrian as he worked he spoke of ghosties and ghouls and things that went bump in the night.