Hire Me a Hearse (4 page)

He read that address three times before he dropped the letter into the pillar box. Why he ran his eyes over what he had written on the envelope he did not know, unless it was merely a means of tantalising himself, for he knew that address by heart. It was one he had been reciting during the waking hours he had sat through the past few nights.

Maybe he was wrong.

Maybe Drury and the police could do nothing.

Maybe Jeremy Truncard wasn't even
concerned in whatever she was plotting, as he thought of it to himself.

In that case he would have to find out for himself, if only for Jeremy's sake. To find out there was but one sure way. He must see Wilma, plead with her if he had to, but certainly endeavour to persuade her to do nothing harmful to Jeremy or to the young scientist's career.

She would most certainly grin at him, mockingly and provocatively. All right, so she might act amused. She might even be genuinely amused.

But she might listen, and he might convince her if he chose the right words.

He went back to Lincoln's Inn Fields. On the way he found it necessary to chew a couple of indigestion tablets. He had never liked their dry minty taste. It gave him a thirst and drinking was no good for his stomach.

For the remainder of the working day he suffered mentally and physically. When he collected his briefcase and hat at five o'clock he had to remind himself to call at a chemist's for a fresh supply of the tablets he didn't enjoy chewing and
couldn't afford to be without.

That night he slept only in snatches and in the morning he awoke tired and feeling rather drained. The day was filled with minor frustrations in the regular routine, beginning with Peregrine Porter ringing up to say he would not be in until after lunch. He eventually arrived at half-past three, showing signs of being both irritable and broodingly morose, and said he had no time to deal with problems. Everything must wait over till the morrow. Which was an unusual decision for him. By that time, however, Tom Bayliss had a headache and a stabbing pain behind his left eye and was waiting for a couple of Veganin tablets to bring him relief.

He didn't leave until ten-past five. Peregrine Porter was still in his office.

On the way home that evening he felt drained. He prepared his bachelor's dinner and ate it, tidied up his bachelor's flat, and afterwards did some unrewarding bachelor chores which any female could have done more quickly and better.

That night he didn't sleep at all.

He lay waiting in the darkness, thinking and at the same time trying not to think, and trying anxiously to convince himself he was not waiting for daylight and the coming of the postman, who usually dropped his first offerings of the day through the letter-box between half-past seven and a quarter to eight.

He heard the letter-box cover snap back on its spring at ten minutes to eight by the electric clock in his miniature kitchen, which was also his breakfast room. So this morning the postman was late. He considered that a bad omen for the day.

But not consciously, for he did not consider himself to be superstitious.

He dusted toast crumbs from his thin mouth and rose to fetch the post. There were three envelopes on the worn mat just inside the front door. He passed over the two bills in their buff commercial envelopes and turned over the letter with the familiar handwriting and the equally familiar misspelling.

Bayless instead of Bayliss.

That was when he smiled a trifle
ruminatively before inserting his little finger and slitting open the third envelope, which was long-shaped and white and had been posted in Kent the previous afternoon.

Mr Thynne, who was inaptly named because he was bulbous and almost amusingly rotund, coughed into a stale-looking handkerchief, said into the telephone he was holding, ‘Beg pardon, ma'am, my chest, you know,' and proceeded to wipe the area of his moist red neck just below the rim of his white collar. He fingered his funereal black tie which was that colour because no one expected an undertaker to sport a square of Macclesfield silk with a hand-painted nude on it. At least, not in normal office hours. Out of office hours undertakers can perform, presumably, like other men. If they know how. From which no one is expected to be too clever and deduce that Mr Thynne, Charlie to Mrs Thynne, had a sneaking preference for nudes, on a tie or anywhere else. Whether he had or not was essentially his business, and that was something Mr Thynne knew very well
how to take care of. His business.

He went on talking into the phone although his neck felt neither cooler nor drier and he mutely wondered with a detached part of his brain why he bothered to keep wiping his neck, which did him no good at all and made the skin feel raw.

He was saying, ‘I can't possibly get you a hearse with horses and plumes, ma'am. As I've been trying to explain, there aren't any to be got now. No horses, no horse-drawn hearses. They're all motor hearses today.'

Mr Thynne had to give way to a fresh torrent of argument which made his ear feel quite numb. He sighed, and then allowed a testy note to creep into his voice, cracking the professional unction that it had taken a lifetime to acquire.

‘No, ma'am, no horses. I'm sorry. I couldn't lay my hands on a horse and I haven't got a horse-drawn hearse. We do a very nice job with our motor hearses. Plenty of commendations and no complaints. Everything quiet and seemly. Very seemly and dignified. Dignity is
most important on such occasions, don't you think, ma'am?'

He didn't know it, but he was sticking his conversational neck out. However, he knew it the moment she said sharply against his eardrum, ‘No, I don't think dignity is important. How the hell should I know, anyway? I've never been buried before.'

Mr Thynne took that with his mouth open. She must be ready for the loony bin, he decided. He must be careful, humour her, make sure he didn't get blamed for her doing something stupid, like putting down the phone and jumping from a high window.

He asked, ‘What floor are you on, ma'am?'

‘Don't be a bloody fool,' she retorted, and sounded grimly sane to his still thrumming eardrum. ‘If it can possibly be any of your bloody business, I'm not on any floor. I'm sitting in a chair.'

She must be mad, never mind how she sounds, he told himself.

‘I meant, ma'am — '

‘I know very well what you meant,
you funny man,' she said tartly, ‘but if you have to ask a stupid question don't be surprised if you fail to get a too-intelligent reply. I'm on the ground floor, and I'm not mad, I'm white, over twenty-one, and I can pay for a hearse, with horses, and fancy plumes, and — '

‘No horses,' he said weakly.

He had never been spoken to in such a fashion in his life. If he told her, Babs would never believe him. Babs was the middle-aged woman who called him Charlie, cooked his meals, and snored beside him in his lumpy double bed, Mrs Thynne, who had been christened Barbara on a rainy Tuesday forty-seven years ago, though for some reason she insisted it was only forty-six. Her married surname was, in her case, more of a fit. She was two inches taller than Charlie and weighed three stone less, but then her hobby was looking to her diet.

‘You really mean that, don't you?' said the voice over the telephone.

‘That's what I've been saying, ma'am, for the past ten minutes,' Mr Thynne said with a return to his unctuous tone,
which he felt was a triumph of mind over matter in the circumstances. That only went to show how much he could delude himself. It was merely a demonstration of how much he had become a creature of habit as well as a creature of his spouse, though it might have come to the same thing if he had thought long and deeply about it.

‘No horses?' she said, as though to make quite sure.

‘The only black horse I know is a pub that serves bad beer, which isn't surprising with a name like that.'

Whatever made the usually tractable, and certainly dignified, Charles Horace Thynne make such a comment he couldn't possibly understand. He was appalled at his own slide from grace, and decided it must be the effect this woman at the other end of the line had on him. She was young, certainly, but two bloodies in two sentences was rather off-putting, and the way she had kept on . . .

Her laugh was suddenly unnerving.

‘Oh, very good, Mr Thynne. I'll try to
remember that if I'm not dead first.'

Then she went off into another peal of laughter, rich and liquid laughter that made Mr Thynne twist in his chair like a young man in spring-time listening to the first female pop singer in the week's top ten. He was secretly sorry when she stopped. Really secretly. He wouldn't even admit it to himself.

Mr Thynne gave a tip-of-the-tongue titter, which must have sounded ludicrous at the far end of the line, wherever that was. But she went on, ‘Very well. A motor hearse. I shall want it for two days, of course.'

Mr Thynne was no longer twisting or twitching. He was numbed. Who in the name of sanity, he asked himself, would require a hearse for two days? Unless . . .

‘You wish to convey the deceased a long way, ma'am?'

‘No, I want it for two days in my garden.'

Mr Thynne had to fight for breath. He hoped he had not heard aright, but knew he had.

‘Look, ma'am,' he began cautiously, his earlier fears returning threefold. ‘I think another undertaker would — '

‘You're the last one left in Sevenoaks,' she told him with devastating bluntness. ‘The others think I'm crazy. But you're the last, so I'll skip the rest of it and ask your price. Two days, and you are quite free to cheat me. I shan't mind. I expect it. Don't bother to tell me about all the corpses that will have to be put in cold storage while I hog your hearse, Mr Thynne. I couldn't care less. Two days, and at your price. Think, you could take a holiday. Two days at full rates. You can't lose, Mr Thynne, so think greedily. Enjoy being avaricious for once. Feel encouraged to love filthy lucre — though mine won't be as filthy as some I could name. How am I doing?' she broke off.

Mr Thynne swallowed painfully.

‘I don't quite understand, ma'am.'

‘It's miss really,' she bothered to explain. ‘I mean am I getting through, coming over, making my meaning clear to you, Mr Thynne?'

‘Oh, yes,' he said, wondering if he was
telling the truth or even if he knew what the truth sounded like.

‘Good. Now tell me your price.'

‘Now, this minute?'

‘Certainly this minute, or haven't you heard there is no time like the present?'

Mr Thynne didn't bother to answer that one, for he had already been warned about stupid questions. He was doing some quick thinking and figuring. He totted up with remarkable computer-like clarity what would show a handsome profit for first one day, then for the second, added the two figures together, and then doubled the result. He added ten per cent to the final figure to be on the safe side, and breathed it over the phone.

‘You old fraud,' she laughed. ‘Very well, that's the figure. Two days, from eight o'clock in the morning.'

‘That's a bit early.'

‘Eight o'clock,' she insisted, ‘and for the figure you've asked it ought to be eight o'clock the night before with arclights and a tableau of singing angels with harps and organ music. You agree?'

‘Eight o'clock.'

Mr Thynne felt about as sad as he would have done had his undertaking business been about to be disposed of by an auctioneer who was deaf and stuttered and had turned up without his spectacles.

‘May I have your name, and perhaps a deposit, ma'am — miss? I mean, this is — '

‘I'm on my way, so have a receipt made out for the full amount. I'll give you a cheque to cover the two days.'

‘I shall need your name for the receipt, ma'am — miss.'

‘Haven,' she said. ‘Wilma Haven.'

Then she hung up. Presumably to avoid having to listen to the choking sounds that suggested Charles Horace Thynne was cleverly strangling himself without using his hands.

‘And she turned up, paid the cheque, took your receipt, and now you owe her two days' hearse,' said Frank Drury after listening to Mr Thynne's stumbling
recital of a business transaction completed with Miss Wilma Haven of Broomwood, Hever.

Mr Thynne nodded.

‘I didn't want to take her cheque,' he confessed.

‘Why not?' Drury asked.

‘Well, she's trouble on wheels that young woman. But the money was more than I could turn away. I couldn't have faced my wife if I had refused to accept her cheque, Mr Drury. How could I have refused to take her to the Costa Brava this summer if I had? She would never have forgiven me.'

‘Do you have to tell her?'

‘She says I talk in my sleep. I couldn't risk it.'

Drury grinned. ‘No, I can see that. Do you talk in your sleep?'

‘I don't know.' Mr Thynne shook his round head and then clutched a cheek with a hand as though to stop the motion forcibly. ‘How can I be sure?' he asked unhappily, dropping his hand. ‘That's the devil of it.'