King and Joker (20 page)

“If you wish, Sir,” said Mr d'Arcy coldly.

“Yes please.”

After lunch Louise decided that she'd be in the way in the zoo, with a whole forensic team mucking around. She settled down to break the back of the extra homework which the school had sent for her, and managed to keep Father and McGivan out of her mind until the sergeant who'd trodden on the lizard knocked on the Library door. His name was Bannerman, and he took Louise through the whole series of “incidents”, making ticks and crosses according to whether she could or could not have been responsible for any of them.

“Waste of time, really,” he said when he'd finished. “We kept you to the end, seeing you're in the clear for the first two. And the pianos, of course. That's number five. You're about average. Funny how it works out—you don't get anybody who's in the clear for the whole lot, then there's a couple for all but one, a few twos, a lot of threes, fours and fives, and then you're back in the low numbers—half a dozen who could have done all but two, and four who could have done all but one.”

“There ought to be at least one person who could have done the whole lot,” said Louise.

He looked at her, hesitating and running the butt of his pen along his fabulous teeth like a boy running a stick along railings. The story princess smiled back at him and found, as she had guessed, that detective-­sergeants do not keep secrets from story princesses.

“Just a couple so far,” he said. “A Mr Pilfer …”

“Oh, it couldn't be him!”

“You never can tell, this sort of thing, Ma'am.”

“Well … who else?”

“We haven't been able to question her about this morning's incident, but there's a Miss Fellowes.”

“It couldn't be her, either.”

The story Princess's voice came out quite calm and even. Behind the screen Louise's mind said Nonny! That would explain about Father! He knows! He's trying to protect her. Nonny going mad. She never wanted to be Queen. She still hates the Royalty scene, but she can't show what she feels because she doesn't know how. Like me, like me.

Sergeant Bannerman looked up from making a few more marks on his chart.

“We ought to get him next time, whoever it is,” he said.

Next time! There mustn't be a next time.

Chapter 13

N
ext time Louise saw what happened.

She had managed to insist on going back to school on Monday, compromising by allowing herself to be driven right up to the gates. The extraordinary thing was that quite a lot of the GBP had turned out to see her arrive and a few had even cheered in a subdued and sympathetic way, as if she'd just recovered from a serious operation. School itself had been a bit like the horrible first weeks of her first term, with people glancing at her and away all the time, as though she'd been a strange but repulsive kind of goldfish. But Julie had been really nice, and Jerry was recovering from being let down by his new girl. So it was better than another day in the Palace.

She didn't usually visit Durdy on Mondays, but when she'd done her homework there was still forty minutes till the supper gong; supper was going to be edgy; she decided to go and see Durdy after all—though it wouldn't be fair to worry her with the nightmare suspicions that kept creeping in and out of Louise's mind, at least she'd be amused to hear the gossip about Jerry.

“Julie keeps telling me we've got to find him somebody really nice,” she said, nudging the rocking-horse to and fro. “I don't see how. The trouble with Jerry is he's so precocious, and he's a baby at the same time. Most of the other boys in my year are still really interested in football and things, and only make an occasional play for a girl because they think it's time they did so, but Jerry really likes girls. What's more he likes them at least two years older than he is, all bust and smothered with make-up and loud-voiced and
thick
. One after another. You can spot a Jerry-type girl at a hundred yards. And he's got a good line to start with—a sort of junior Paul Newman—so the girl doesn't see what a baby he is and he's in his seventh heaven for a week which is perfectly ghastly for Julie and me. And then something turns up with its own motor-scooter, and wearing one of those moustaches, and the girl drops Jerry flat. He never learns, never. So then he's miserable, which is a bit better than when he's moony but not much. Julie says we're lucky to have known him because all men are like that underneath so he's an object-lesson, sort of. But I don't see how they can be or the human race would have died out long ago. What's the answer, Durdy?”

“I don't know much about men, Your Highness. In my experience they cry for the moon and when they get it they find they don't want it.”

Louise had done all the talking, prattling away mostly to occupy her own mind. She knew Durdy was tired, but this weary bitterness was new.

“Don't Highness me, Durdy darling, or I'll start Durdoning you and you won't like that one bit. What's up? What's the matter? What do you mean by pretending not to know anything about men. Half your babies must have turned into men, roughly. Look, there's Father, and Bert, and Uncle Bill. They're all right, aren't they? I mean it's not their fault if …”

Sniff. An upsettingly feeble signal, like the growl of a dying dog. Louise longed to cry, not just for the dog, or Durdy, dying, but for the island of love and happiness which she'd inhabited a week ago and now would never find again. She let the rumble of the rockers still. The clock whirred. Its little door opened and the wooden bird began its idiotic call. Eight! She leapt from the horse.

“Drat that clock,” squeaked Durdy in her proper voice. “It's fast again.”

“Thank heavens! How fast? Oh, you've got the Mickey Mouse going. Is that right?”

“
Of
course.”

“Twenty minutes fast! Still five minutes to the gong. Durdy, that clock's gone mad. Why did you tell me it never gained, it only lost?”

“Didn't hear is own brother to Won't listen, Your Highness.”

“But Durdy, you said …”

“I daresay I said it never
used
to gain. That's not the same as doesn't gain now, is it, Miss?”

“But twenty minutes in a day!”

“You can't count on anything these days. Dearie me, no. You can't count on anything.”

After the sudden spurt of proper Durdy-talk the old voice lost its energy between sentence and sentence.

“Oh, Durdy, you do sound tired. Shall I ask Father to come and look at you after supper.”

“His Majesty was here an hour ago. Perhaps I am a wee bit tired, darling. Give Durdy a little kiss and then good-night.”

That was the wrong way round. Durdy was supposed to say that when she tucked
you
in for the night. Again Louise felt the frustrated pressure of tears dammed somewhere behind her eyes as she bent to kiss the chilly cheek. She completed the ritual in its proper fashion, though still the wrong way round.

“Good night, sweet repose. Lie on your back and not on your nose.”

Durdy didn't even smile.

Louise raced down the stairs and swung herself round the half-landing to take the last flight. As she did so Pilfer marched across her line of sight along the corridor below. He didn't seem to notice her as he stalked past, silent as one of the Palace ghosts, his pale and hollow-cheeked head stiff at the top of his black attire. Albert was right—he did look as if he were attending a death; even his gloves were black. Pilfer! Whoever had opened the cages in the zoo had worn cotton gloves and left a thread of black by one of the locks! It
couldn't
be Pilfer, but …

Normally Louise would have waited on the half-landing until the gong sounded. It wasn't exactly a rule, because it was one of those things you knew without having to be told, but you didn't start making for the dining-room until Pilfer had sounded the gong. If you happened to be in the lobby when he appeared, you pretended to have some tiny mission to complete elsewhere, so that you could go and come back. It was as if striking the gong was a ritual central to Pilfer's craft, a summons to the royal family to gather for a meal which he would then serve in due order. It would detract from the ritual if the family was already there, slavering in the lobby, while the deep round note swam along the corridors to tell them grub was up,

But this evening Louise felt she wanted to see Pilfer strike the gong. She felt that the way he did it would tell her, somehow, something about him, about whether he was the kind of man who could at one moment be so formal and unbending and at another savagely attack Albert's harmless pets. So she came quietly on down the stairs and turned the corner at the bottom. That was how she happened to witness the next “incident”.

The gong, Mother said, was the ugliest object in the whole Palace, and the competition was stiff. It was a trophy of the Burma Wars, almost four foot across, hung from a frame of black wood carved with grimacing heroes and demons. It stood in the lobby which was really just a widening in the main corridor outside the dining-room and breakfast-room. It only made its noise if you knew the knack—if you biffed it at random you just got a thuddy sound out of it. You had to catch it a real wallop almost at the rim, and then keep the resonances going with little patting strokes. The dull, hammer-beaten bronze had one bright patch where Pilfer used to wallop it. Now Louise saw him pick the stick off its hook, give his cuff an absurd little flick as if to make sure it wouldn't impede the stroke, and swing.

In the instant before the lights went out she saw Pilfer lifted off the floor, suddenly unshaped, like a rook at the moment of impact with a car's windscreen. Then the blast reached her and she was hurtling backwards. She felt the buffet all down her side as she banged into the carpet and sprawled draggingly along the skirting-board. What had hit her came as noise, one deep bellowing thud, like thunder clap over the Palace. When it was gone there was a shrill high whine but no other noise. She scrambled to her knees and pressed her palms to her ears to shut it out, but the whine went on. The lights behind her were still working, and she saw yellow fog billowing down towards her from the lobby. She dropped to her hands and crawled forwards, now only able to see about a foot through the choking dust. Into that visible space a chunk of plaster dropped and exploded without a sound on the carpet. She crawled on over its crumbs. There ought to be people shouting, she thought, and alarm-bells, and running feet, but she could hear no noise except the unvarying whine.

She found Pilfer by feel. He was lying face down against the door of the dining-room. She reached up for the handle but couldn't shift the door. She realised that she'd been holding her breath for some time against the fumes and wouldn't be able to much longer. Desperately she got to her feet and shoved at the door, which opened wrenchingly, biting into the dining-room carpet. The lights were on in the dining-room. She stepped to one side of the door, took two deep breaths, crouched and worked her way back to where the yellow fog was now streaming in. Pilfer's body had been partly supported by the door and had now slumped a little further into the room. She linked her hands under an armpit and hauled at him until she collapsed choking in the stinging fumes. Between spasms she saw a black sleeve close by her head. There was no hand at the end of it, but something that gleamed and seemed to be jumping about like a small trapped frog. At its third or fourth wriggle she saw that this live thing was a pulse of blood from the smashed wrist. Even in the convulsions of choking she knew what to do because Father had always insisted that the family's Christmas charades should contain gruesome accidents which had to be realistically treated. She had no chance of getting Pilfer's jacket off without help so she felt for the elbow joint with her right hand and dug her thumb into the softness of it while she bent the forearm back with her other hand. Pilfer's flesh beneath the black broadcloth felt squishy and boneless and the choking made it difficult for her to keep a steady grip. She was trying to twist herself round to a better position without letting go of the joint when she was picked bodily up from the floor and carried across the room.

“Pilfer!” she yelled. “He's bleeding to death!”

She felt the movement of words in her throat and a vague vibration of sound, but all she actually heard was the piercing whine in her skull. Whoever was carrying her halted, twisted her over and laid her neatly down on the yellow chaise longue against the far wall. He turned to open the windows. It was Theale.

She shouted to him again about Pilfer and saw his lips move. The fog wasn't so bad now, but she still couldn't see across the room. She rolled herself off the chaise-longue and crawled back towards the door, but it was shut, with Pilfer right inside the room and Father kneeling by his body holding the arm just as she had done. Pilfer's face was all mottled meat. Father saw her and spoke.

“I can't hear you,” she said. “I've gone deaf: I can hold the artery while you get a tourniquet ready.”

He nodded and let her take the appalling arm. Because she was no longer trying to cope all by herself she felt a sudden wave of revulsion, but she forced it down and let Father guide her thumb to the right spot. He shouted over her shoulder at Theale, disappeared from her line of sight, came back at once with the carving-knife from the sideboard and slashed through the sleeve at the shoulder. She was just getting ready to alter her grip so that he could free the cloth from the elbow when a man's hand moved to take over from hers. She stood dizzily up. The room was still hazed with smoke, but no worse than it often was when Nonny contrived to burn her toast. Nonny was there now, and Mother was coming through the door. Nonny put an arm round her shoulder and led her out into the lobby. Two men seemed to be fighting, but it was only Sergeant Bannerman trying to prevent one of the Palace firemen from covering the whole area with foam. A man came rushing along the corridor with a big Calor lamp.

“Nonny, I'm deaf.”

Louise felt her mother's arm tighten round her shoulders. She began to laugh, and laugh still more because she couldn't hear the sound of her own shrieking.

In the middle of a tumbled dream the story princess stepped down on to the platform. She was wearing an achingly heavy crown and a nurse's overall with nothing underneath. The wind kept snatching at the overall, which wasn't properly buttoned, so with one hand the Princess had to hold it down while in the other she carried the proclamation she was going to read in a language she didn't know. All the time she had to smile and smile while the people cheered. She could hear them cheering. Even in the confusion of dream the return of sound was enough to wake Louise.

The whine was there, but far fainter, and a heavier noise was fading away. Her neck hurt. She was in her own room, which seemed to be bathed in a strange mild glow as though the moon had got inside it. She shifted and saw a hospital nurse sitting in her armchair and reading a magazine by the light of a shaded lamp.

“Nurse.”

She could hear her own whisper through the whine. The nurse looked up.

“Say something, please, Nurse.”

The nurse was a spruce middle-aged Englishwoman, who gave Louise an understanding smile but shook her head.

“I think I can hear things now,” explained Louise. “Wasn't that an aeroplane?”

“Just now, Your Highness? Yes, I think one did go over.”

The voice sounded furry, though Louise could see from the movement of the nurse's lips that she was speaking with extra care.

“Great!” she whispered. “I'm not going to be completely deaf, like Alexandra. How's Mr Pilfer?”

Still with the same mechanical smile—her version of public face—the nurse rose, crossed the room and felt Louise's pulse.

“You go back to sleep my dear,” she said. “You oughtn't to be awake at all, the size of the sedative they gave you. You shut your eyes and stop fretting. That's right.”

It was true that a treacly heaviness seemed to be sucking Louise back into the bog of sleep. She listened to the whine of another jet going over. It wasn't quite right—too dull—but it was noise. She smiled until she remembered how the nurse had avoided answering the question about Pilfer, but she was too sleepy to open her eyes and ask again.