This momentary gleam of good cheer was eclipsed by the memory of the cockatoo problem, and Mrs Oliver resumed her unhappy prowling, picking up things off tables unseeingly and putting them down again somewhere else. She fitted with some care her spectacle case into a lacquered box which already contained a Chinese fan and then gave a deep sigh and said:
"I'm glad it's you."
"That's very nice of you."
"It might have been anybody. Some silly woman who wanted me to open a bazaar, or the man about Milly's insurance card which Milly absolutely refuses to have - or the plumber (but that would be too much good fortune, wouldn't it?). Or, it might be someone wanting an interview - asking me all those embarrassing questions which are always the same every time. What made you first think of taking up writing? How many books have you written? How much money do you make? Etc. etc. I never know the answers to any of them and it makes me look such a fool. Not that any of that matters because I think I am going mad, over this cockatoo business."
"Something that won't jell?" I said sympathetically. "Perhaps I'd better go away."
"No, don't. At any rate you're a distraction."
I accepted this doubtful compliment.
"Do you want a cigarette?" Mrs Oliver asked with vague hospitality. "There are some somewhere. Look in the typewriter lid."
"I've got my own, thanks. Have one. Oh no, you don't smoke."
"Or drink," said Mrs Oliver. "I wish I did. Like those American detectives that always have pints of rye conveniently in their desk drawers. It seems to solve all their problems. You know, Mark, I really can't think how anyone ever gets away with a murder in real life. It seems to me that the moment you've done a murder the whole thing is so terribly obvious."
"Nonsense. You've done lots of them."
"Fifty-five at least," said Mrs Oliver. "The murder part is quite easy and simple. It's the covering up that's so difficult. I mean, why should it be anyone else but you? You stick out a mile."
"Not in the finished article," I said.
"Ah, but what it costs me," said Mrs Oliver darkly. "Say what you like, it's not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all to have a motive for killing B - unless, that is, B is absolutely madly unpleasant and in that case nobody will mind whether he's been killed or not, and doesn't care in the least who's done it."
"I see your problem," I said. "But if you've dealt with it successfully fifty-five times, you will manage to deal with it once again."
"That's what I tell myself," said Mrs Oliver, "over and over again, but every single time I can't believe it, and so I'm in agony."
She seized her hair again and tugged it violently.
"Don't," I cried. "You'll have it out by the roots."
"Nonsense," said Mrs Oliver. "Hair's tough. Though when I had measles at fourteen with a very high temperature, it did come out - all round the front. Most shaming. And it was six whole months before it grew properly again. Awful for a girl - girls mind so. I thought of it yesterday when I was visiting Mary Delafontaine in that nursing home. Her hair was coming out just like mine did. She said she'd have to get a false front when she was better. If you're sixty it doesn't always grow again, I believe."
"I saw a girl pull out another girl's hair by the roots the other night," I said. I was conscious of a slight note of pride in my voice as of one who has seen life.
"What extraordinary places have you been going to?" asked Mrs Oliver.
"This was in a coffee bar in Chelsea."
"Oh, Chelsea!" said Mrs Oliver. "Everything happens there, I believe. Beatniks and sputniks and squares and the beat generation. I don't write about them much because I'm so afraid of getting the terms wrong. It's safer, I think, to stick to what you know."
"Such as?"
"People on cruises, and in hostels, and what goes on in hospitals, and on parish councils - and sales of work - and music festivals, and girls in shops, and committees and daily women, and young men and girls who hike round the world in the interests of science, and shop assistants -"
She paused, out of breath.
"That seems fairly comprehensive to be getting on with," I said.
"All the same, you might take me out to a coffee bar in Chelsea some time, just to widen my experience," said Mrs Oliver wistfully.
"Any time you say. Tonight?"
"Not tonight. I'm too busy writing or rather worrying because I can't write. That's really the most tiresome thing about writing - though everything is tiresome really, except the one moment when you get what you think is going to be a wonderful idea, and can hardly wait to begin. Tell me, Mark, do you think it is possible to kill someone by remote control?"
"What do you mean by remote control? Press a button and set off a radioactive death ray?"
"No, no, not science fiction. I suppose," she paused doubtfully, "I really mean black magic."
"Wax figures and pins in them?"
"Oh, wax figures are right out," said Mrs Oliver scornfully. "But queer things do happen - in Africa or the West Indies. People are always telling you so. How natives just curl up and die. Voodoo - or ju-ju... anyway, you know what I mean."
I said that much of that was attributed nowadays to the power of suggestion. Word is always conveyed to the victim that his death has been decreed by the medicine man - and his subconscious does the rest.
Mrs Oliver snorted.
"If anyone hinted to me that I had been doomed to lie down and die, I'd take a pleasure in thwarting their expectations!"
I laughed.
"You've got centuries of good Occidental sceptical blood in your veins. No predispositions."
"Then you think it can happen?"
"I don't know enough about the subject to judge. What put it into your head? Is your new masterpiece to be Murder by Suggestion?"
"No, indeed. Good old-fashioned rat poison or arsenic is good enough for me. Or the reliable blunt instrument. Not firearms if possible. Firearms are so tricky. But you didn't come here to talk to me about my books."
"Frankly no - The fact is that my cousin Rhoda Despard has got a church fкte and -"
"Never again!" said Mrs Oliver. "You know what happened last time? I arranged a Murder Hunt, and the first thing that happened was a real corpse. I've never quite got over it!"
"It's not a Murder Hunt. All you'd have to do would be to sit in a tent and sign your own books - at five bob a time."
"We-e-l-l-l," said Mrs Oliver doubtfully. "That might be all right. I shouldn't have to open the fкte? Or say silly things? Or have to wear a hat?"
None of these things, I assured her, would be required of her.
"And it would only be for an hour or two," I said coaxingly. "After that, there'll be a cricket match - no, I suppose not this time of year. Children dancing, perhaps. Or a fancy dress competition -"
Mrs Oliver interrupted me with a wild scream.
"That's it," she cried. "A cricket ball! Of course! He sees it from the window... rising up in the air... and it distracts him - and so he never mentions the cockatoo! What a good thing you came, Mark. You've been wonderful."
"I don't quite see -"
"Perhaps not, but I do," said Mrs Oliver. "It's all rather complicated, and I don't want to waste time explaining. Nice as it's been to see you, what I'd really like you to do now is to go away. At once."
"Certainly. About the fкte -"
"I'll think about it. Don't worry me now. Now where on earth did I put my spectacles? Really, the way things just disappear..."
Chapter 2
Mrs Gerahty opened the door of the presbytery in her usual sharp pouncing style. It was less like answering a bell, than a triumphant maneuver expressing the sentiment "I've caught you this time!"
"Well now, and what would you be wanting?" she demanded belligerently.
There was a boy on the doorstep, a very negligible looking boy - a boy not easily noticeable nor easily remembered - a boy like a lot of other boys. He sniffed because he had a cold in his head.
"Is this the priest's place?"
"Is it Father Gorman you're wanting?"
"He's wanted," said the boy.
"Who wants him and where and what for?"
"Benthall Street. Twenty-three. Woman as says she's dying. Mrs Coppins sent me. This is a Carthlick place all right, isn't it? Woman says the vicar won't do."
Mrs Gerahty reassured him on this essential point, told him to stop where he was and retired into the presbytery. Some three minutes later a tall elderly priest came out carrying a small leather case in his hand.
"I'm Father Gorman," he said. "Benthall Street? That's round by the railway yards, isn't it?"
"'S'right. Not more than a step, it isn't."
They set out together, the priest walking with a free striding step.
"Mrs - Coppins, did you say? Is that the name?"
"She's the one what owns the house. Lets rooms, she does. It's one of the lodgers wants you. Name of Davis, I think."
"Davis. I wonder now. I don't remember -"
"She's one of you all right. Carthlick, I mean. Said as no vicar would do."
The priest nodded. They came to Benthall Street in a very short time. The boy indicated a tall dingy house in a row of other tall dingy houses.
"That's it."
"Aren't you coming in?"
"I don't belong. Mrs C. give me a bob to take the message."
"I see. What's your name?"
"Mike Potter."
"Thank you, Mike."
"You're welcome," said Mike, and went off whistling. The imminence of death for someone else did not affect him.
The door of No. 23 opened and Mrs Coppins, a large red-faced woman stood on the threshold and welcomed the visitor with enthusiasm.
"Come in, come in. She's bad, I'd say. Ought to be in hospital, not here. I've rung up, but goodness knows when anybody will come nowadays. Six hours my sister's husband had to wait when he broke his leg. Disgraceful, I call it. Health Service, indeed! Take your money and when you want them where are they?"
She was preceding the priest up the narrow stairs as she talked.
"What's the matter with her?"
"Flu's what she's had. Seemed better. Went out too soon I'd say. Anyway she comes in last night looking like death. Took to her bed. Wouldn't eat anything. Didn't want a doctor. This morning I could see she was in a raging fever. Gone to her lungs."
"Pneumonia?"
Mrs Coppins, out of breath by now, made a noise like a steam engine, which seemed to signify assent. She flung open a door, stood aside to let Father Gorman go in, said over his shoulder "Here's the Reverend for you. Now you'll be all right!" in a spuriously cheerful way, and retired.
Father Gorman advanced. The room, furnished with old-fashioned Victorian furniture, was clean and neat. In the bed near the window a woman turned her head feebly. That she was very ill, the priest saw at once.
"You've come... there isn't much time..." she spoke between panting breaths. "... wickedness... such wickedness... I must - ... I must... I can't die like this... confess - confess - my sin - grievous - grievous..." The eyes wandered... half closed...
A rambling monotone of words came from her lips.
Father Gorman came to the bed. He spoke as he had spoken so often - so very often. Words of authority - of reassurance, the words of his calling and of his belief. Peace came into the room. The agony went out of the tortured eyes.
Then, as the priest ended his ministry, the dying woman spoke again.
"Stopped... it must be stopped... you will..."
The priest spoke with reassuring authority.
"I will do what is necessary. You can trust me."
A doctor and an ambulance arrived simultaneously a little later. Mrs Coppins received them with gloomy triumph.
"Too late as usual!" she said. "She's gone."
II
Father Gorman walked back through the gathering twilight. There would be fog tonight, it was growing denser rapidly. He paused for a moment, frowning. Such a fantastic extraordinary story. How much of it was born of delirium and high fever? Some of it was true, of course - but how much? Anyway it was important to make a note of certain names while they were fresh in his memory. The St Francis Guild would be assembled when he got back. He turned abruptly into a small cafй, ordered a cup of coffee and sat down. He felt in the pocket of his cassock. Ah, Mrs Gerahty - he'd asked her to mend the lining. As usual, she hadn't! His notebook and a loose pencil and the few coins he carried about him, had gone through to the lining. He prised up a coin or two and the pencil, but the notebook was too difficult. The coffee came, and he asked if he could have a piece of paper.
"This do you?"
It was a torn paper bag. Father Gorman nodded and took it. He began to write. The names - it was important not to forget the names. Names were the sort of thing he did forget.
The cafй door opened and three young lads in Edwardian dress came in and sat down noisily.
Father Gorman finished his memorandum. He folded up the scrap of paper and was about to shove it into his pocket when he remembered the hole. He did what he had often done before, pressed the folded scrap down into his shoe.
A man came in quietly and sat down in a far corner. Father Gorman took a sip or two of the weak coffee for politeness' sake, called for his bill, and paid. Then he got up and went out.
The man who had just come in seemed to change his mind. He looked at his watch as though he had mistaken the time, got up, and hurried out.
