Hire Me a Hearse (13 page)

‘Who's driving me back?' asked the hearse's driver in the tone of a man
who has suddenly thought of something important.

Wilma Haven looked at him.

‘I can lend you a bike,' she said.

The man looking at her appeared to be regurgitating his epiglottis in slow motion, which she seemed to consider very clever of him, judging by the expression on her own face. Then he got out the word that was like a bone stuck in his throat.

‘Thanks.'

‘I'll show you where it is.'

She led the way back down the knoll to another chorus of ironic cheers from the spectators in the lane.

Some wit shouted, ‘On with the show, Wilma,' and another called, ‘Tell us your system, Wilma.' There was some laughter, and someone started ‘Why are we waiting?' and the others took it up as a chant.

The peanut vendor and the icecream seller both began to find customers. An almost festive atmosphere existed beyond the boundary wall of Broomwood. One uniformed policeman said to the other keeping him company in the lane, ‘If
it's like this today, what will it be like tomorrow?'

‘She's barmy of course,' said the other as though he had come up with the only acceptable answer to the other's question.

‘She's certainly a rare 'un,' the first policeman said in a tone of agreement.

Meanwhile the hearse's driver had been provided with the old bicycle that had been left in the gardener's shed. As he pedalled it towards the gate the wheels ground protestingly at their hubs, and when he appeared in his black coat and silk hat on the rusty old bike the crowd started cheering and calling ribald witticisms. By the time he had pedalled far enough up the lane to glance over his shoulder and stare at the hearse he had left on the crest of the knoll he had to correct a bad wobble to prevent piling up in a ditch. The blonde was painting the hearse in bright colours, and paint was flecking off a large-size whitewash brush she was using in all directions.

The crowd was calling for more colours.

At midday the Chief Constable of Kent was on the phone to the Home Office. The Home Secretary rang the Director of Public Prosecutions, and after seventeen minutes on the phone said, ‘Well, Arthur, you tell the Chief Constable.'

At two o'clock the word went out. The lane to Broomwood had to be cleared.

It took nearly three-quarters of an hour to accomplish and three people were arrested before traffic was moving at a pace that could be called freely past the Broomwood boundary wall, with that ‘Russian Roulette' legend and the gnome on the coffin and the hearse vying with the gnome in colours all above the top of the wall. Cars began arriving with drivers driving past for a quick view. By mid-afternoon a few City types with chauffeurs were using their ciné cameras on the long way home. That was after a couple of B.B.C. announcements in the afternoon news roundups.

At six o'clock the excitement had died down a good deal. The colour-daubed hearse and the gnome in patriotic colours, as well as the coffin, were still on view,
with sundry bunches of vegetables and some wilting flowers strewn around, where they had fallen after being tossed over the wall by those who had dug out Wilma Haven's advert for another check of its terms. By ten past six it was raining and the clouds were packing together all over most of south-east England. Frank Drury sat in his office looking at them. When the phone rang the Commander's voice said, ‘Come in, Drury. Somebody at the Home Office has had a change of mind. I want to see you about tomorrow.'

Thursday morning the cars were back in the lane. The ribald comments were even coarser, some of them occasioned by what the rain of the past twelve hours had done to the painted hearse.

Mr Thynne had been on the phone, his tone apoplectic. He had been scared into speechlessness when Wilma Haven said, ‘Oh, stop whining, man. You've been paid enough for the damned hearse.
Want me to tell the papers how much?' She waited, giving him an opportunity to reply, but Mr Thynne required more time simply to regulate his breathing. ‘Very well, I'll pay to have it cleaned up. So don't worry, Mr Thynne. Think of your ulcers.'

By nine o'clock the first of the cars carrying the nuts who had written asking to play Russian Roulette, and had been accepted, arrived. By ten o'clock there were a score of cars, parked in a semicircle by a pond in the grounds not far from the tennis courts.

There was a freshly erected marquee by the far side of the knoll. The flaps along one side were up, so that the contestants could sit under cover and watch the performance.

‘Shots on the hour every hour from one p.m. to five p.m., weather permitting.' So the advert had promised.

There had been seventy-three applications that could be taken as ‘serious' in the exceptional circumstances. Wilma Haven had chosen a score. By eleven o'clock they sat under the marquee,
smoking, drinking cups of coffee.

At half-past eleven the van with the Tannoy public address apparatus arrived. Two of the loudspeakers were set up one each side of the sheet with the scarlet words ‘Russian Roulette'.

Half an hour later, dead on the stroke of noon, local history began to repeat itself. The Chief Constable phoned the Home Secretary again, who this time referred him direct to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who told him, ‘Superintendent Drury of Scotland Yard has the matter in hand.'

‘You mean it's not our pigeon?' the Chief Constable said, wanting clarification.

‘Just tell your people to co-operate with Drury. He's in charge.'

‘What about clearing the lane? That damned Russian Roulette is due to start in less than an hour if it isn't all an appalling hoax.'

‘Leave it to Drury.'

The Chief Constable phoned his superintendent who was standing by, the superintendent got in touch with a radio car on the hill overlooking the lane.

It was twelve twenty-two.

‘No sign of Superintendent Drury's car,' said the inspector sitting in the radio car on the hill.

The superintendent swore. He was on edge. He decided to wait till half-past before telling the Chief Constable the worst. But he was saved from doing that. At twelve twenty-eight the radio car reported, ‘Superintendent Drury just arrived and turned in the gate. Do we clear the lane now?'

‘No,' the superintendent told his radio operator, who passed on the negative. ‘Just hold yourselves in readiness.'

‘In readiness for what?' asked the inspector in the radio car, but only after the transmitter was off. He too was on edge.

In fact, everyone seemed on edge except Drury, who knew he couldn't afford to feel that way. When Hazard had said, ‘What about clearing the lane?' Drury had shaken his head.

They were then driving through Bromley. Which was leaving it pretty late, though Hazard knew from long
experience that Drury had a fine sense of timing.

Fine in any sense, in fact.

‘If anyone is going to give trouble a jam-packed lane outside won't help them get away, Bill.'

Secretly Hazard thought this was taking quite a few chances. When they drove down the lane to the gate he was not so sure. It was like a fairground. Transistor radios were blaring, kids were sucking lollipops while their parents ate sandwiches and drank beer from bottles and tea and coffee from flasks. A couple of uniformed police looked lost. Drury caught the look on Hazard's face.

‘It is close to lunch time,' he reminded his assistant.

Hazard choked.

Claude and Cedric scowled at them in recognition and they drove up to the end of the semicircle of cars. Drury looked at his watch.

Twenty-five minutes to one.

‘Get the numbers, Bill,' he said, and Hazard took out his notebook and jotted down the numbers of the twenty parked
cars. At twenty to one they walked away from the pond and the cars. Five minutes later loud pop music poured over the Tannoys, drowning sounds of the crowd in the lane, the radio transistors, and the occasional shouts of the peanut seller. Some of the crowd responded by turning up the volume of their transistors and car radios.

It became an organized bedlam.

‘All right, let's find her,' Drury said.

He didn't sound hurried. Hazard said nothing. The space between his shoulder-blades was damp.

They walked in step towards the knoll. At seven minutes to one, while the two Yard men were still walking, the pop music was switched off.

Wilma Haven's voice said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. I have a few minutes before the deadline of one o'clock. In those minutes I want to introduce you to two persons. First, Professor Warrender, the well-known authority on psychiatrics and mental medicine. Secondly, my friend Mr Jeremy Truncard, who has had some difficulty in
arriving here today.'

The pair of Yard men came round the last of the trees and saw her on the knoll by the hearse. She held a hand-mike as she pointed to a grey-haired man in a grey suit with an Old Etonian tie and then to a young man in flannel trousers and sports jacket and very new suède shoes, clothes that looked as though someone had only very recently taken them off the peg for a quick cash deal.

‘I am going to play this very special game of Russian Roulette by — '

She didn't get any farther. Jeremy Truncard had leaped to his feet.

‘No, no!' he yelled, and there was a graven look of fear on his face.

Professor Warrender also jumped up. The two men had been sitting one each side of the coffin with the preposterous red, white, and blue gnome surmounting it. Jeremy darted down the knoll, the professor after him.

Drury and Hazard appeared. Jeremy ran like a man without sight, straight at Drury, catapulted into the Yard man, and the two went down. Laughter spilled
from the onlookers.

The professor tried to apply his personal brakes on that slope too late to be effective. He threw up his arms, windmilling them at Hazard, who thought to catch him, but fumbled it, and let the men he held push him over Drury's legs. Hazard went down, and with him went the professor.

The laughter redoubled.

Seconds ticked away.

Drury tried to haul himself up from the hips. His legs were pinioned by the length of a well-dressed body with an Old Etonian tie fluttering in the mild breeze.

The Yard man had a glimpse of Wilma Haven, standing there by the hearse she had hired and daubed with a riot of gaudy colours, and looking completely nonplussed. Possibly, Drury thought, for the first time in her life since she had decided to think for herself.

He glanced at his watch.

The second hand was coming up to five seconds before one o'clock. Out in the lane a car radio was sounding a time signal.

It was like a count down, Drury thought. He took two breaths, and then there was a splitting roar and the colourful gnome on top of the coffin disintegrated. The sides of the crudely daubed hearse were smashed. There was a rising pall of dust and smoke where the coffin had been, and on the ground by the wheels of the hearse there was a bundle of rags.

Or so it seemed.

But the bundle of rags had silky blonde hair, and over it waved lazily a torn sheet with some scarlet letters on it that no longer made sense, and might have been a floating shroud, for it had been blasted free and was dropping over one side of the wrecked hearse and that very still object wound in a length of flex ending in a broken hand-mike.

Drury didn't see his wife and family for forty-three hours. He worked the clock round almost twice and lived on coffee and cheese and tomato sandwiches for the most part, eating standing up and one-handed and talking between mouthfuls. It was that kind of life.

With members of the Kent C.I.D. and the Yard's Flying Squad as well as two of the South-east Regional Crime Squads he made progress, but it was slow. There was one prime question that made all others subsidiary and very, very secondary.

‘Who put that plastic bomb in the gnome?'

Drury asked it aloud seven times, to Bill Hazard's knowledge, in the forty-one hours of the forty-three that they were together sorting, scrapping, querying, discarding, asking again, rearranging, dictating, phoning, arguing, checking,
double-checking, interrogating, and generally cursing and doing everything except voicing a personal complaint that would have been meaningless.

The jobs went like this sometimes. They blew up, put reporters and public alike in a jittery state, and the hours ground away like a treadmill to which they were chained.

The reporters argued in print whether the lane should have been cleared and arrived at no stable answer. Alleged TV personalities who would have been happier adjudicating on the merits or demerits of a new skirt or pop tune or deodorant were dragged in before a studio camera to give their opinion on what was being written up as the Broomwood bomb. People in the street were asked their opinion in outside broadcast hookups.

A Sunday newspaper announced a series on
The Intractable Miss Haven
. It was a paper whose accountants were worried men. Another Sunday newspaper announced a different series,
Wilma the Wackiest Woo
. Its proprietor was buying
up other journals all round the British Isles and in several Dominions.