Cigarette, who was watching Titch Whitbread with hot-eyed, dreamy abstraction, said: ‘Why, I think that’s wonderful!’
Shocket stopped talking, blew his nose into a handkerchief which he afterwards unfolded and scrutinized with the air of a man who is reading a threatening letter from a creditor, and watched her closely. She had already emptied two glasses. It had brought out a smoulder on her cheeks. She was beginning, in her avid way, to look from face to face among the gathering guests. She wanted to recognize somebody, to make new contacts. Tobit Osbert and Catchy were engaged in polite conversation with Thea Olivia, behind whom hovered Sir Storrington Thirst, leaning familiarly upon the shoulder of Graham Strindberg. Cigarette sauntered over with her glass.
Thea Olivia was saying: ‘I know I’m a silly old woman and you’ll laugh at me, but I simply don’t understand. I admit that I simply don’t understand why these people do such things. Why do they? What benefit do they get out of it? It all seems so useless.’
Graham Strindberg said: ‘They re made that way:
Sir Storrington Thirst said: ‘They get a kick out of it. I knew a man in Kenya —’
‘It’s so horrible, vile!’ said Catchy, ‘hanging is much too good for anyone who doe’s a thing like that. Much too good. He deserves — why, I don’t know what he deserves. He deserves to be cut into little bits.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Sir Storrington, ‘little bits, quite right.’
Tobit Osbert shrugged a non-committal shoulder and said: ‘No, I can’t say I agree with you altogether there, Sir Storrington. One simply doesn’t do that sort of thing. Find him out, try him properly, and hang him quickly if he’s guilty. That’s the only thing to do. But no little bits. Certain people have no right to live among their fellow men. It seems to me that the thing to do is to stop them. I mean, to put an end to them.’
‘How do they get to be like that?’ asked Thea Olivia.
‘Environment, upbringing,’ said Catchy, ‘that’s the root of it all.’
Sir Storrington said: ‘I don’t quite get what you mean.’
‘Well,’ said Catchy, ‘what I mean to say is, the way you’re brought up. I don’t quite know how to put it. I know what I want to say but I don’t know how to say it.
In an ingratiating growl Sir Storrington said: ‘Can’t say I see eye to eye with you there, my dear. Look at me. Why, for the slightest word, I got hell. Why, if I failed to cell my father “sir”, he knocked me down. Remember once, I was accused of stealing pears. Didn’t steal pears. Naturally denied stealing pears, was horse-whipped twice, once for stealing pears and the second time for lying. Couldn’t sit, stand or lie down for a fortnight. Went into a high fever. Then my young brother owned up — he’d stolen the pears. I may say that I’d known it all along, but had said nothing; brothers stick together, what? I went to my father and said: “Hope and trust you’re convinced that I’m not a liar now, sir?” Father said: “Yes, my son, I’m convinced. But take this for your temerity — for daring to address me in that tone of voice.” And gave me about three dozen with a malacca walking-stick that had a silver knob carved to look like an elephant’s head. Upbringing? Environment? Never had any worth mentioning. Can’t say I believe in it. Father used to grab me by the ankle and hold me down out of a four-storey window, supposed to give one a horror of heights. Have I a horror of heights? Once, for a bet, I walked blindfold around the top of the Flatiron Building, New York. Do I go about killing little girls, on account of environment? Stuff!’
‘Oh Christ!’ said Cigarette, ‘is everybody still talking about this Sonia Sabbatani business? Everywhere I go, all I hear is Sonia Sabbatani, Sonia Sabbatani, Sonia Sabbatani: murder, murder, murder. Can’t anybody talk about anything else, for God’s sake?’
Tobit Osbert said: ‘But it really is a bad business. I knew the Sabbatanis. Sam did me more than one good turn. It brings the real monstrousness of the thing home to you, in a case like that.’
‘I never saw Toby cry before,’ said Catchy.
‘Did you really cry?’ asked Thea Olivia with tender coquetry.
‘I didn’t actually cry. I saw the grief of the others, and it may be that tears came into my eyes.’
‘Yes, Toby, and ran down your face,’ said Catchy.
‘You mustn’t be ashamed of having cried. It does you credit,’ said Thea Olivia.
Graham Strindberg muttered: ‘Where was God? Where was God?’
Suddenly Cigarette’s eyes became narrow and hard. They were focused on the face of a man who stood talking to Asta Thundersley in another corner of the room. ‘Look,’ said Cigarette, ‘look who we’ve got here. Dicks!’
‘Dicks?’ asked Thea Olivia. ‘Who is Mr flicks?’
‘I mean detectives,’ said Cigarette. She was looking at the man who at that time was Detective-Inspector, but now is Chief Inspector, Turpin.
BOOK THREE
33
The affair of Chicken Eyes Emerald having been resolved, Turpin was taking time off. Now, in his strenuous, jerky way, he was resting.
Normally, after a long-drawn-out job of work, Turpin took his wife to a cinema and spent a calm hour or two, smoking an inexpensive cigar and admiring the footwork of Fred Astaire. He laughed until he choked (‘laughed like a lavatory’, as the Bar Bacchus crowd would have said) at Mickey Mouse, and could give a tolerable imitation of Donald Duck. After the pictures, Turpin and his wife went home arm-in-arm, in perfect accord, never exchanging two words until they reached their doorstep, when she said: ‘I hope you’ve got your key …’ Then there would be supper. The implacable man-hunter loved his long, lazy evenings at home, where there was always something to be done — a nail here, a screw there, a dab of glue and a firm hand at such-and-such a joint — something to be done which he seldom did. He was the laughing-stock of the family. The children called him In-A-Minute — he was always putting things off. In the end it was Mrs Turpin who unstopped the sink or fixed the rattling window.
But she had gone to visit her mother. He was alone. Turpin found no pleasure in the cinema if his wife was not with him: there was no one to whisper to. Asta Thundersley’s invitation intrigued him. There was no harm in paying half an hour’s visit. He had met Asta twice — call it three times — and considered her as a lunatic, wrong-headed in a good direction, but not quite right.
Officially, he could not approve of Asta; yet she was a person after his own heart. She was angry and rebellious: that was silly. She knew exactly what she hated: he could not blame her for that. Her heart got into her throat: he was not out of sympathy with the noise she made. There had been occasions when Turpin had teetered on the verge of an outburst in the high, wide and handsome manner of Asta Thundersley. But the sort of scene she was capable of making over the impoliteness of a bus conductor would have cost him his position: detectives may not make scenes. They should not even express anger. Two or three times in his life Turpin would have given anything but his job for the joy of exploding like an overstrained boiler. But he was bound by the cold white bands of legal dialectic. Still, he envied Asta, who, privileged as a woman and a popular eccentric, could push open doors marked ‘Private’, grab terrified officials by the collar, beat people over the head with her umbrella and shout at the top of her voice wherever she happened to be She had guts where her brains ought to have been, he thought; but he liked guts. -