Boxer, Beetle (23 page)

‘Mr Bruiseland, I’m sorry, but this is utterly absurd. I had no inkling that you and Mr Erskine had anything to do with this ersatz newspaper. In fact, I would have thought rather better of both of you.’

‘Admit it, and we can settle this.’

‘It would be more sensible if we could both talk this over with Mr Erskine.’

‘You’re caught, boy. Don’t embarrass yourself.’

‘Perhaps we should just go to bed and in the morning we can—’

‘Oh, you Blackshirts are scum. You’re as bad as the Jews. I don’t know why I even bothered to give you the chance to behave like a hargh margh nargh nargh nargh nargh gentleman. Come here.’

‘Mr Bruiseland, for God’s sake!’ screeched Morton, and then for an instant Sinner found himself looking directly into Morton’s panicked eyes through a gap in the machinery as Morton’s face was smashed into the side of the brass brain. Morton seemed to recognise him, but then Bruiseland grabbed him by the hair, jerking him back out of view, and the metal around Sinner reverberated with blow after blow, droplets of blood spraying like some evil lubricant grease over the cogs and levers. There was a final thud as Bruiseland dropped Morton’s body on the carpet of the library, and after that all Sinner could hear was the older man’s loud phlegmy breathing. He could smell blood and tobacco and it reminded him of Premierland.

During the murder, Sinner had been too bewildered to try to intervene. He now thought of confronting Bruiseland; but the trouble was, he was still so drunk that it wasn’t impossible that Bruiseland might get the better of him with a curtain rail; and it wouldn’t do either Sinner or Morton any good if Sinner was discovered beating up a house guest; and anyway, Erskine had said that Morton was an arsehole and Evelyn hadn’t really disagreed, so perhaps Bruiseland had basically the right idea, even if he was obviously loony himself to have gone as far as he had. Frink would have known what to do. But Sinner didn’t. So he just stayed where he was, listening to Bruiseland’s grunts as he dragged Morton’s body feet-first out of the library. He felt a draught of cold air, and a little
while later there was a faint splash from outside the house followed by some startled quacking. When it was obvious that Bruiseland wasn’t going to come back to clean up the blood or even to turn the lights off, Sinner dolloped himself out of the brass brain, stretched his tingling legs, and staggered upstairs to Erskine’s room.

Evelyn came into the hall while Erskine was still sitting there in the bentwood chair. He jumped up.

‘I suppose you’re pleased,’ she said.

‘Oh, no, Evelyn, please don’t say that – I wouldn’t wish what’s happened on my worst enemy. Certainly not on my sister’s fiancé.’ Actually, he had wished humiliation, torture and death on Morton dozens of times, but he decided now that he hadn’t really meant it. ‘I’m so sorry, it’s the most awful … I don’t know what to say.’ Gingerly he reached out to touch her shoulder but she rolled her eyes and pushed his hand away.

‘You’re not cut out for sentimentality, Phippy. Anyway, I’m in shock, they insist, so it doesn’t really make any difference what you say now. Save it up for when I’m crying myself bald. Have you seen Tara?’

‘No.’

‘I must find Tara. She will know what to do. But she seems to have disappeared from the house. What about your chap?’

‘Do you mean, was he, er, responsible?’ said Erskine, wondering how Evelyn had already come to share his suspicions.

‘No, of course not – one of those fascist fuckers did it, that is absolutely obvious to anyone with even a knitted brain. I mean, where is he to be found?’

‘He’s asleep.’

‘Where?’

‘In my room. Why?’

Evelyn smiled. ‘Oh, yes, Tara told me you’d persuaded Father to let him sleep up there with you. I don’t know how on earth you managed it but clap clap clap.’

‘I did not “persuade”—’

‘No, dear brother, of course you didn’t. No. Well, I’m off to smoke a hundred cigarettes, so I’ll see you at lunch.’ As Evelyn started up the stairs to her room, she turned and added, ‘And if you want to gawp at the blood with all the others, they’re in the library.’

Out on her balcony with a Sobranie Evelyn looked down at the pond, where a stiff breeze whisked the sunlight gently through the water. It occurred to her that if she were a girl in a melodrama she would presumably take Morton’s death as a punishment for her little crime with Sinner and be scared off sex for the rest of her life. But actually she had always felt it was natural that things happened all at once. Still, it was impossible to clear her head because thinking about one just reminded her of the other, as if the events were two older, taller girls throwing a ball back and forth to keep it out of her reach and she would have to run endlessly from tormentor to tormentor until she collapsed from exhaustion. What she’d done with Sinner wasn’t horrible like what had happened to Morton – she felt deeply grateful for it, in fact – but it was still perplexing down to her bones. And now there began to emerge a third, kindred uneasiness, a stealthier, more complicated thorn: the guilty possibility that really she cared more about what had happened last night in the music room than what had happened (at exactly the same moment, for all she knew) over in the library – the possibility that even if she never saw Sinner again (and they had still only really met twice) she would still remember his face for longer than she would remember Morton’s. She had always known that one day she would escape from the Wykehamist and all that he represented, but she had never guessed, nor truly desired,
that it would happen so soon, or so drastically. The border between her past and her future, hostile countries, had been drawn in blood.

Downstairs, in the library, Erskine found Bruiseland, Aslet, Amadeo and the Mowinckels standing in a row along the smeary brown trail that led from the brass brain to the French windows. Like soldiers at a frontier they did not seem to want to step over it. He thought of Fluek, that disputed village.

‘We’re certain it couldn’t have been suicide?’ said Aslet.

Erskine noticed that a few of Morton’s hairs were still stuck to the floorboards.

‘Secret agents of Zion,’ said Berthold Mowinckel. ‘Not for years have they struck so deep into the heart of the nobility.’

‘It was no secret agent of Zion who produced a pistol at dinner last night,’ muttered his son.

‘What are you suggesting?’ said Amadeo.

‘I have read some of your poetry. “The Bliss of Violence”?’

‘I wonder why you would make these baseless insinuations unless you yourself have something to hide?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Berthold Mowinckel. ‘Unlike his late brother, my son would never have the courage to do something like this.’

‘Courage? No. Stupidity? Perhaps.’

‘Do you wish to settle this like men?’ said Kasimir.

‘What do you mean?’ said Amadeo.

‘A duel.’

‘Oh, steady on,’ said Aslet.

‘A duel! How laughably quaint,’ said Amadeo. ‘But, still, why not?’

‘Choose your weapon, then.’

‘Let me see. I choose.…’

‘Yes?’

‘An electric tin-opener.’

‘You are mocking me!’ shouted Kasimir Mowinckel. He
snatched up a brass poker and lunged at Amadeo, but the poker thumped harmlessly into the kidneys of Battle, who had entered the room without anyone noticing and interposed himself at the last moment. ‘Lord Erskine would be very grateful if his guests might join him in the drawing room,’ said the butler.

They did as they were told. Erskine’s father waited until they were all assembled and then said, ‘I’m happy to inform you that at least one part of this unpleasant ordeal is over. We know who is responsible. Battle has made a search of the house and has found various things missing. These include much of our most valuable silverware and jewellery. They also include a footman, a maid and all of their personal effects. It is all too clear what took place last night. The two servants were planning to elope and also to burgle the house while they were at it. Morton must have caught them in the act, and they decided they had no choice but to murder him. Such things happen quite often these days. The police will be on the look-out and I don’t expect they shall get far.’

‘Which servants?’ said Erskine.

‘Godwin, and that girl of your sister’s.’

‘Tara?’

‘Yes.’

Erskine felt great relief about Sinner, but he still couldn’t help saying, ‘They wouldn’t have eloped. She detests him. I remember Evelyn saying so.’

‘I think my daughter probably has better things to do than keep up-to-date with her servants’ romantic lives. Or at least I hope she does.’

‘Have you told her? She’ll be upset.’

‘Your mother will tell her.’

‘Were either of these servants Jewish?’ said Berthold Mowinckel.

‘If it were up to me I’d have my footmen neutered,’ said Bruiseland.

‘Will the conference continue?’ said Aslet.

‘That boy, whatever his faults, was supposed to be my son-in-law,’ said Erskine’s father. ‘The conference will not continue.’

‘Why put your trust in the police?’ said Amadeo. ‘We should capture these beasts ourselves.’

There was a small cheer, and soon the five fascists were rushing off to find out how many hunting dogs you could fit in a motor car. Erskine followed them as far as the hall, not wanting to be left alone with his father, and then sneaked upstairs to his bedroom and woke up Sinner.

‘Something pretty bad has happened. Morton’s dead. You know, my sister’s fiancé.’

‘Do they know who did it?’ said Sinner. His face showed no reaction.

‘Two of the servants here.’

‘Which ones?’

‘Godwin the footman and Tara the maid. They’ve run off with a lot of valuables. My father says Morton must have caught them and so they beat him to death and threw him in the pond. It’s rather horrifying. But a relief in a way because – I won’t lie to you – I did think for a moment it might have been—’

‘No,’ said Sinner.

‘What?’

‘That’s wrong.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It weren’t them.’

‘How can you possibly know that?’

‘I seen it. Well, I ain’t seen it, but I heard it. Last night.’

‘What do you mean? Who was it, then?’

‘The beefy old toff.’

‘Bruiseland?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That’s nonsensical.’

‘I heard it,’ said Sinner.

‘Why on earth would Bruiseland want to murder Morton?’

‘He thought he was trying to blackmail him.’

‘Morton thought Bruiseland was—’

‘No, the fat one thought the other schmuck was sending the fat one letters.’

Erskine’s heart almost stopped when he remembered what he’d heard through the library door the previous afternoon. Still, there were other ways that Sinner might know about that – one of the other servants might have eavesdropped on a related conversation and then gossiped about it.

‘I was talking to Tara last night,’ said Sinner. ‘She didn’t say nothing about wanting to leave. And your sister says she hates that other bloke.’

‘Yes, but. …’

‘The other schmuck got done in the library, right? So how could he have caught ’em stealing? What would they be stealing from a library?’

‘My father owns some important rare books,’ said Erskine, but he realised how implausible it sounded that servants fleeing a house on foot would decide to weigh themselves down with a few antique folios.

‘And, last, that slimy one – what’s his name?’

‘Godwin?’

‘He couldn’t knock the wings off a moth. How was he supposed to smash the other schmuck’s face in on that machine?’

‘Fine, fine, I admit all that, but still, Bruiseland – it’s too ridiculous.’ And then Erskine remembered something his sister had heard from Casper Bruiseland: that on the day Leonard Bruiseland’s wife had finally left for Florence, he had strangled all five of her terriers with his bare hands.

He sat down heavily on the bed. ‘Or, well, what if it is true? What does it matter? What can anyone do?’

‘Tell them the truth.’

‘Be serious.’

‘What about the maid? What’ll happen to her?’

‘So you’re going to go down there and say, “You’re all wrong, I know what happened, arrest the Master of Foxhounds”? It’s impossible. They’d start asking questions, they’d find out exactly who you are – that you’re not really a valet – that, even worse, you’re a Jew. They’d ignore everything you said and just insist you were part of the plot. You’d end up in the village jail on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, or something like that. That is if Mowinckel or Amadeo didn’t try to stage a summary execution.’

‘I know all that. I’m not a bleeding half-wit.’

‘Good.’

‘You’d have to come with me.’

‘What?’

‘If I go and tell ’em on my own, I’m fucked. If you’re with me, what can they do?’

‘In principle, yes, I might be able to stop them putting you in jail. But they’d ask all the same questions and find out all the same things. Am I supposed to admit I brought an East End Jew into my parents’ house? This week of all weeks? How could I explain it?’

‘What about your sister? What if she knew it was really the fat cunt who’d knocked off her fella, but her maid was going to get done for it? What would she have you do?’

‘That’s a bad example. My sister has no idea what’s good for her or anyone else. What about the trouble it would cause? How could I possibly carry on with my work? How could I do anything at all after that?’

‘There ain’t any other way.’

‘It’s impossible.’

Sinner looked Erskine in the eyes for a moment, then grabbed Erskine’s shoulders and pulled him down on to his back so that Erskine’s legs were dangling off the side of the bed. He got down, kneeled on the carpet, unbuttoned
Erskine’s trousers, freed Erskine’s cock, and licked it with his dry morning tongue all the way from the balls up to the tip. Erskine went bright red.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he whispered.

Sinner began to slide the head of Erskine’s narrow cock in and out of his mouth, stroking Erskine’s balls with his nails. Erskine squeaked and slapped the palms of his hands on the bed like a frustrated child. Sinner started to push the tip of his little finger into Erskine’s arsehole. This was too much, and Erskine tried to sit up, but Sinner cuffed him across the face, just as he once had outside the Caravan, and pushed him back down. Before long, Erskine’s trousers were around his ankles, the whole of Erskine’s cock was in Sinner’s mouth, and Sinner’s middle finger was in Erskine up to the second joint. Erskine was making a continuous low groaning sound like the vacuum pump downstairs. Then Sinner got to his feet, took a pot of hair tonic from the dressing table, and flipped Erskine effortlessly on to his front. Outside, the hunting dogs were barking.