The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl (9 page)

‘No,’ said the surgeon.

‘No. You wouldn’t expect any, I hope – given that it was a perfectly healthy, undamaged arm.’

‘If you’re regretting it’, the surgeon said as he was shewn into the office, ‘it’s too late. I hope you haven’t forgotten that you signed a paper discharging me of all liability.’

‘It’s nothing like that,’ the businessman said. ‘Sit down. Calm yourself. How do you find that chair?’

‘This chair? It’s O.K.’

‘It’s what you might call young for its age. I’ve saved a lot of wear and tear on it already.’

‘Did you summon me to tell me that?’

‘Not
only
that. Don’t you usually ask after your patients’ health? Don’t you think I’m looking well?’

‘Yes, all right. You’re looking well.’

‘I’ve been living at what you might call a profit for some months now. It gives one an extra zest. So you see: what you did
was
to the benefit of my general health.’

‘Did you just want to gossip?’

‘No. It’s about my right leg.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Nothing. I guarantee it’s a perfectly healthy undamaged leg. I want it off.’

‘No,’ the surgeon said.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t expect you to charge only £5 this time. I realise that was a quixotic gesture. But you see, a leg is larger than an arm, so the saving would be greater, so I could afford to pay more.’

‘God knows I’m no psychoanalyst,’ the surgeon said, ‘but it appears to me that you have a castration complex.’

‘That’s an idea,’ the businessman said. ‘But the saving would be minimal. There’s really very little wear and tear involved. I think I’ll stick to the leg – or, rather not stick to it. Now, since it’s a leg this time, the question of balance really does come into it. That’s why I picked on the right leg. I still have my right arm, so that can hold the crutch. And the general effect – left arm, right leg – will be symmetrical, like a proflt-and-loss account.’

‘I’ll have nothing to do with it.’

‘If it was ethical for an arm, it’s ethical for a leg.’

‘I refuse to consider it.’

‘That’s unethical. You see how much good it’s done my health to lose an arm. How can you deny me the yet greater improvement to my health that will result from my losing a leg?’

‘I’m not prepared to argue with you.’

‘Fine. Let’s discuss the fee now while you’re in an
unargumentative
mood.’

Soon after the second operation, the surgeon lost his nerve. His hands began to shake. He drank to still them. Drink made them shake worse. He retired. He tried to occupy himself with the oriental ceramics which had always been his pleasure and on which he had spent much of his income (including the huge fee he took for the second operation), but he was bored. Bored, he soon died. His widow and two teenaged daughters
discovered that most of the pots he had bought were fakes. He had bought only what took his fancy, for the pleasure the objects gave him.

‘It seems incredible, if I may say so, that you’re 95.’

‘It does to me too. I’m in full possession of my faculties – and my assets.’

‘No one would dispute it. Can you, for the benefit of our audience, give a recipe for living a long and healthy life?’

‘Live up to your principles.’

‘Well now, anyone who lives up to his principles is bound to get involved in battles at one time or another. Are you, as you look back over your career, conscious of having made many enemies?’

‘Not one.’

‘Not one? In a business life as extensive as yours?’

‘Not a single one. You see, nobody envies me. They take one look at me and think “Poor maimed bugger, I don’t envy
him
his money.”’ (Laughter.) ‘You might say I’m disarming.’ (Renewed laughter.)

‘You know, as the years have gone by, you’ve become – which is unusual for a businessman – something of a national institution. How do you account for that?’

‘My continued vitality has become a symbol of the vitality of our financial and economic system.’ (Applause.)

‘It’s quite true you have this really astounding vitality, this zest for life. Can you offer us a recipe for a lifetime of vitality?’

‘Profit by every experience.’

Plan of Library

Seating
Plan
in
the
Breakfast
Room
(
the
next
morning
)

‘Now you’ve got us all assembled,’ Lord Stock said to the detective, ‘I hope you’ll be quick about it. It’s pretty
disagreeable
, don’t jer know, living with a cloud over one’s family and one’s guests. Quite puts me off me feed.’

It was, nevertheless, to be noted that, despite this last asseveration, Lord Stock began to (as Simon Light would doubtless have put it) ‘tuck in’ to the still sizzling rashers with which he had just replenished his plate at the sideboard.

‘Do you really mean’, Mrs Aspic demanded in her
quavering
but imperious voice, ‘that one of us is a killer?’
Abandoning
her breakfast for a moment, she turned to look directly at the detective. ‘One of
us
? One of us round this table?’

‘Some damn’ mistake,’ muttered Lord Stock, taking a further mouthful. ‘There are far too many damn’ mistakes these days.’

‘I think it’s thrilling,’ declared Miss Betty Brunch and burst into giggles. From the other side of the table, Simon Light (who had come down too late to ‘bag’ his usual place next to her) began to giggle, too, and had to take out his handkerchief.

‘That just shews how young you are, my dear,’ put in Mrs Chitterling’s deep, velvety voice from the far end of the table. ‘
I
think it’s
too
morbid – and
too
fatiguing.’

‘Let me get you something to recruit your strength,’ offered Archdeacon Hide, leaning tenderly towards Mrs Chitterling across the corner of the table. ‘Some of these excellent
kidneys
?’

‘No, no. Something light. A little of the haddock, perhaps.’

‘Delighted.’ The Archdeacon sprang towards the sideboard with Mrs Chitterling’s plate.

‘To take up your point, Mrs Aspic,’ Professor Chine
remarked
to her between munches, ‘I don’t think the detective is necessarily implying that
one
of us is a killer. As I understood it,
several
of us may be.’

‘A – how you say? – conspeeracy!’ exclaimed Monsieur Achille Bouillon. ‘My mother has always warned me: ze Engleesh are being very crafty.’

‘See what I mean, detective?’ said Lord Stock, waving his fork, which had a piece of bacon fat impaled on it. ‘It’s
disagreeable
for the foreigners. Gives the country a bad name. By the way, I wish you’d join us in a spot of breakfast, like an honest chap. Gives me the creeps to see you just sitting there eating an apple.’

‘—and thinking bloody thoughts,’ added Mrs Chitterling in her ginny voice.

‘Like a death’s head at the feast, don’t jer know,’ said Lord Stock.

Miss Brunch again got (to use her own inelegant expression) the giggles.

‘Don’t be so hard on the feller, Leviathan,’ grunted Lady Artemisia Chase. ‘Feller’s only doing his job.’

‘Which consists’, said Mrs Chitterling, ‘of sniffing out blood.’

‘Well he’s sniffing up the wrong tree here,’ declared Lord
Stock. ‘We’re all men of peace here. And women, too, of course. There are no killers here.’

‘The suggestion seemed to be’, said Archdeacon Hide, ‘that it wasn’t a matter of “doing the job oneself”, as no doubt the criminal fraternity would put it, but rather of employing
someone
to do it for one.’

‘First conspeeracy’, cried Monsieur Bouillon, ‘and now hired assassins!’

‘Assassins!’ exclaimed Lord Stock. ‘Not political ones, I trust?’

Simon Light had to get out his handkerchief again.

‘What
I
understood of the matter,’ said Mrs Chitterling throatily, ‘which wasn’t much, seemed to imply that there was more than one death involved.’

‘Ooo!’ cried Miss Brunch. ‘Multiple slaying!’

‘That child reads too much of the gutter press,’ commented Lady Artemisia gruffly.

‘It’s getting a damn’ sight too complicated,’ said Lord Stock to the detective. ‘It’s high time you started to explain.’

‘It’s only his job, Leviathan.’

‘All the same’, said Professor Chine, leaning earnestly
forward
and fixing the detective, ‘you do owe us an explanation. And it’ll have to be a pretty complicated one. You’ve started so many hares – trailed so many red herrings—’

‘Perhaps you would care’, said Monsieur Bouillon, ‘to begeen at ze beginning. Toujours la logique. You will explain to us why, last night, you were making a leetle map of ze library?’

‘Yes!’ said Simon Light eagerly. ‘And why was it so jolly important about the walls being lined with books?’

‘Is it a locked room mystery?’ asked the Archdeacon. ‘I love those.’

‘Why were you so keen on uncle’s old leather-topped desk?’ put in Lady Artemisia.

‘The point about the books, Simon’, said Miss Betty Brunch, ‘is that most of them are bound in calf. Though what the point of
that
is, I don’t know I’m sure.’

‘
I
always think’, said Mrs Aspic soothingly, ‘they give a library a nice musty smell. You can tell it isn’t often used. Like a cathedral you know. Saving’, she added politely to the
Archdeacon, ‘your cloth, Archdeacon.’

‘What
I
don’t understand’, the Archdeacon said after
nodding
an acknowledgment to Mrs Aspic, ‘is why you wanted to catch us all in here at breakfast.’ He pushed his chair back from the table and turned towards the detective. ‘It scarcely seems the time of day to – Look!’ The Archdeacon’s finger pointed at the notebook open on the detective’s knee. ‘Why, you’ve drawn a plan of the sideboard!’

‘Has he, by Jove,’ cried Simon Light, rising and running round the table. ‘By Jove, you know, he has! It’s all marked here. Bacon, kidneys, everything!’

‘Ooo!’ This from Miss Betty Brunch. ‘You don’t suspect one of us of – of
tampering
with
the
food
?’

‘Or trying to choke the others to death?’ suggested Simon Light.

‘Strangling’, pronounced Mrs Chitterling, ‘is a woman’s crime.’

‘Shooting’, said Mrs Aspic, ‘is a man’s.’

‘So’s knifing,’ said Miss Betty Brunch. ‘And blunt
instruments
.’

‘Lots of women can shoot, too,’ said Lady Artemisia.

There was a tense pause.

‘I tell you the whole thing’s some damnfool mistake,’ said Lord Stock.

‘I’m sure Leviathan’s right,’ said Mrs Aspic, turning
appealingly
to the detective. ‘Surely you’ve only to look at us to realise that none of us would’ – she shuddered – ‘take a life.’

‘I assure you the very idea is alien to me,’ the Professor said. ‘My concerns lie in the realm of the mind. In practical affairs, I’m deplorably ineffective.’

‘I could not – how you say zis? – bring me to do it,’ said Monsieur Bouillon.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Simon Light.

‘Too fatiguing,’ said Mrs Chitterling.

‘Well, there it is, don’t jer see,’ said Lady Artemisia. ‘You’ve only to look. The Archdeacon, the Professor, silly little Miss Brunch. None of us would hurt a fly.’

The detective rose and walked out of the room.

For a moment the group sat stupefied. Then:

‘You don’t think—’ began Betty Brunch. She stopped.

‘What?’ demanded Lord Stock.

‘No. It’s silly.’

Simon Light walked over to her and bent down beside her chair. ‘Whisper.’

She did.

‘Surely not,’ said Simon.

‘What?’ demanded Mrs Aspic.

Simon bent down in the other direction and whispered in her ear.

‘That can’t be it,’ Mrs Aspic said.

‘I didn’t quite catch,’ said the Archdeacon.

The whisper went round the table, finally reaching Lord Stock.

‘What a waste of time,’ Lord Stock said. ‘Footling feller.’

‘I must say,’ said the Archdeacon. ‘I thought it was
something
important.
He implied it was a matter of life or death.’

‘Too trivial,’ said Mrs Chitterling.

‘
Every
body does it,’ said Mrs Aspic.

‘So it must be all right,’ said Miss Brunch.

‘And whatever would become of ze art of gastronomie?’ demanded Monsieur Bouillon.

‘Let’s all have some more breakfast,’ said Lord Stock. ‘My bacon’s gone cold. Mrs Chitterling: can I help you to some more haddock?’

A fly whined towards Lord Stock’s cold bacon.

Lady Artemisia thumped her hand onto the table and killed it.