Nursery Crimes Part 13

She opened her bag and took out two small bottles of vitamin tablets. Well, she'd brought them - she might as well get rid of them. "Good for your teeth," she said.*** Murphy couldn't get the smell of the mortuary out of his nose. It was over three days now since he had made the identification and he could still taste the place. It was on his palate, in his sinuses -- everywhere. Bridget hadn't looked like Bridget, but of course it was. He had never seen her in repose. In death she had looked almost smug. "Yaboo, you can't reach me now," she seemed to say. "I loved you just a bit," she seemed to say. "Remember the gorse p.r.i.c.kles?" He had nearly snapped at her to open her G.o.dd.a.m.n eyes. To let him see the smile behind them. The mortuary attendant, or someone, had draped something over her forehead where the gash was. There was supposed to be a wound on the back of her neck, too, but that couldn't be seen because she was lying on it. When he had nodded and made the identification, Mother Benedicta had come in to make everything doubly sure. The old biddy had stood stock still by the bier - or whatever it was called -- taken one peek, and then taken out her rosary. Her face was as bloodless as Bridget's - two arctic masks - one beautiful, one not. While she was saying her prayers he had walked down to the other end of the room. Bridget's feet were poking out from the end of the sheet. Pretty little feet. Very clean. Very cold. Varnish on the nails, chipped a bit. He had held her feet in his hands, warming them. Mother Benedicta had come alive like Lucifer falling out of heaven and snarled at him not to touch. He had given Bridget's feet a last rea.s.suring little squeeze and then moved back. Goodbye, Bridget. I don't believe it, but it's true.

The policeman had driven Mother Benedicta back to the convent.

He had gone on a bender.

He had been on a bender every day since it happened, but he could still smell the mortuary through the whisky fumes - so keep drinking boyo - drink - drink -drink.

"You can't go and see him," Dolly said. "If you do and you're caught, you'll be chucked out."

"And you -- also," Zanny said. Being expelled didn't bother her. It would be awkward and a nuisance. The only tragic thing about being expelled would be the fact that she would no longer see Murphy. She would be sent to another school, perhaps miles away. It was essential, therefore, that she should call on him without anyone finding out. In this she needed Dolly's help. Murphy would have to be visited in the dark when the nun on dormitory duty was asleep. The only safe way out of the convent was down the fire escape which was on the landing outside the dormitory and near the -bathrooms. The fire escape door was bolted at night. It was an easy matter for her to unbolt it, but if it were later checked it would be bolted again and she wouldn't be able to get back in. So it was necessary for Dolly to be around to make sure that the bolt was left alone. The lavatories were adjacent to the bathrooms. An hour or so after she had gone, Dolly would take a nocturnal trip to the lavatory -- in fact, several nocturnal trips -- and check the door each time.

"If you don't do it," she told her, "and I get caught, you can kiss Cambridge goodbye."

After due consideration Dolly reluctantly agreed with Zanny's statement. The nuns here had a touching faith in her. They had mothered her for years. They had almost created her. She was their s.h.i.+ning example of what could be done with a tough little slum child who had sufficient intelligence to make the polis.h.i.+ng up process worth while. If Zanny went, the Moncriefs would make her go, too. Another school simply wouldn't take the same interest in her.

"I think," she told Zanny, "that you're crazy."

At that particular moment she hadn't Zanny's homicidal tendency in mind. Later, on reflection, she still couldn't equate Zanny's calm killing of those who got in her way with madness. She knew exactly what she was doing each time. She just didn't care.

"It isn't crazy," Zanny said, "to go and tell Murphy I'm sorry about Bridget."

"Then you're going to tell him that you . . ." Dolly didn't finish it. Little Willie's death had been out in the open between them -- so had Evans the Bread - but with the pa.s.sing of time Dolly had learned to be more discreet. It wasn't the sort of thing you bawled out. You didn't even state it sotto voce. You implied it because you knew, and it was necessary that Zanny should know you had her over a barrel. At the same time you had to be careful that you didn't find yourself inside the barrel, going downhill fast.

So you played along - carefully.

"I mean," Zanny said coldly and distinctly, "that I'm sorry that somehow Bridget fell over the cliff and died. I am going to pay my condolences."

It sounded like the rent. For cool effrontery, Dolly thought, it took the biscuit. She could imagine it very clearly. "I'm so sorry that I disposed of Bridget, Mr, Murphy. But here I am -- have me instead."

"You don't pay your condolences," she told Zanny, "at eleven o'clock at night - or even later. He'll think you're going for one thing only."

Zanny thought he probably would, too, but he would be very much a gentleman about it all. She began to play the scene in her mind.

"My dear young lady," he would say when he opened the door. "My dear Zanny! How extraordinarily nice it is to see you. What a wonderful surprise . . . but why so late?"

She would then explain about the amusingly suspicious att.i.tude of the nuns and he would laugh with her and ask her in. "A breed apart," he would say, "these religious ladies - les religeueses," (his French would be a great deal better than hers), "like ladies in aspic, wouldn't you say? Glued up with convention. Stuck fast in moral torpor." (Oh, he was clever, Murphy.) He would ask her in and make her a particularly good cup of coffee. They would sit at either side of the small fireplace and he would gaze into the flames looking sad. She would then touch his hand gently and express her sympathy.

"Ah, Bridget," he would say, "a wild girl, Bridget. Wanton. Demanding. An enormous s.e.xual appet.i.te." He would look at her sideways then. "My little Zanny--I shock you?"

She would a.s.sure him that he did not.

The main thing was that he didn't mind much that Bridget was dead. He would be too nice to say so, of course. It would just be implied.

After that. . . well, after that. . .

Dolly cut across her thoughts. "There's supposed to be a safe time of the month, but I can't remember when it is -- and there's something called interrupted coit . .. something or other - which means you stop just before it happens. For G.o.d's sake be careful."

Zanny didn't know what she was talking about.

"If you get yourself b.l.o.o.d.y pregnant," Dolly said, recognising the need for plain-speaking, "you'll be out on your ear-hole -- and so will I."

"In times of stress," Zanny said, "you're downright common!"

And then - as they sometimes did - they felt a rare moment of affinity and began to giggle.

By eleven o'clock it had begun to rain; a fine thin drizzle falling from a pale grey sky. Zanny, b.u.t.toned into her mack which she had smuggled up to the dormitory, picked her way quietly and cautiously across the lawns. The nuns went to bed early and rose at six. There was a light in Miss Sheldon-Smythe's window, she was probably talking to her budgerigars, and that was the only light in the building. Poor Miss Sheldon-Smythe. Zanny thought, poor ancient, barmy, budgerigar-loving Miss Sheldon-Smythe. Fancy spending the last of your days in a place like this. Poor manless, withered, end of the road, cutter up of worms, Miss Sheldon-Smythe. My road, thought Zanny, picking her way carefully through the blackcurrant bushes bordering the path to Murphy's door, is like the Milky Way, blazing with stars.

But it was cold. Wet. More than a little muddy. Hens in their sleep sounded like babies having nightmares. Babies? Coit . . . what? Her heart was beginning to thump.

Murphy, deep in his own whisky-induced nightmare, heard the knocking on the door as nails being knocked into his skull. He was being held in an att.i.tude of crucifixion against a huge cellar door. His hands and feet were already impaled and now they were impaling his head. The bottom of the cellar steps was awash in a pool of beer and the level of the pool was rising slowly. It gave off fumes, visible like mist on an Irish bog. That beer should give off whisky fumes was a puzzle that he found hard to solve. He moved his head slightly on the pillow and moaned with pain. If only the b.a.s.t.a.r.d would stop hammering. "b.l.o.o.d.y scarper, b.l.o.o.d.y soddin' punk," he muttered.

Zanny, discovering at that point that the door was unlocked, opened it and went in. The kitchen was very dark and it took her a while to find the switch.

The light streamed out from the kitchen and into the bedroom like molten metal. And now the sods were trying to burn him. Murphy rolled about on the bed and twitched.

Zanny, in the past, had seen her father mildly inebriated. It showed in the eyes and ever so slightly in the speech. Graham, intoxicated, was exceedingly dignified. He walked with a slow, careful grace. He smelled slightly and rather sweetly.

Murphy asprawl under tumbled sheets was something quite different. His forehead was pallid with sweat. He threshed around. He smelt as if gallons of cough mixture had been spilt and mixed with kerosene.

He was, Zanny thought, quite obviously ill. She fought down her own sudden nausea and breathed deeply into her handkerchief. She had seen a film once in which a woman missionary looked after a hobo in a jungle hut - the hobo had something awful like cholera - but the missionary had sat beside his bed wiping away the sweat. Later in the film, when he was better, she had taken off her gla.s.ses and most of her clothes and let down her hair. And the hobo had a shave and stopped being delirious and began speaking very nicely. He had been a diplomat, or something. They had made love on a clean bit of beach outside the dirty hut and the moon had been big as a melon.

This, too, was a very dirty hut.

The wallpaper had a damp line running along the skirting board. No wonder he had pneumonia ... or something.

He had a very beautiful body. She gazed upon it with fascination.

It was at that point that Murphy opened his eyes. An angel-wh.o.r.e with hair like spun gold was standing ankle deep in the whisky. The angel-wh.o.r.e was blus.h.i.+ng. He pulled the shroud around him in a moment of modesty.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," he said.

"It's quite all right," Zanny a.s.sured him politely, "I didn't mind a bit."

There was a chair near the dressing-table with Murphy's clothes on it. Zanny put the clothes in a pile on the dressing-table and took the chair over to the bed. "I'm so sorry," she said, "to find you ill."

Murphy, losing the drift, just heard a swish of words. Purgatory was cold and wet like the inside of a beer barrel when you had drunk your fill and were awash up to your eyeb.a.l.l.s.

"Would you," asked a voice that might have come from heaven or from h.e.l.l, "like a little warm milk?"

Definitely from h.e.l.l.

Milk! It might be good to vomit. So far he had resisted it.

Zanny. interpreting his silence as yes, went to look for some. She found his b.u.t.ter ration in a cheese dish on the draining board. In the cupboard to the right of the window was a loaf of bread, fairly fresh. Margarine. A couple of small lamb chops. Eggs in a bowl. Milk. She didn't need to sniff the milk to know it was off.

The missionary hadn't fed the hobo. She had mopped his brow. It might be better just to rinse out a cloth in warm water and do the same.

Oh, Murphy, Murphy, what a blessing I came to you, Murphy. In the days to come we'll remember this night. You -- ill, sweating and smelly. I -- caring for you -- encouraging you through the crisis - pneumonia had a crisis, hadn't it? Not being disgusted. Not the smallest, slightest bit put off. Was the missionary put off? She was not. For better or for worse, Murphy. This is worse than worse, but it can't last. Anyway, the place hasn't a bathroom. Fancy the nuns putting him in a sordid dump like this. A man of his sensitivity -brought low. What was Mother Benedicta thinking of?