The Human Factor Part 12

'How do you do, sir. Elizabeth has spoken such a lot about you.'

'I can't say the same,' Daintry said. 'So you are Colin Clutters?'

'Not Clutters, Father. Whatever made you think that? His name's Clough. I mean our name's Clough.'

A surge of latecomers who had not been at the registry office had separated Castle from Colonel Daintry. A man in a double-breasted waistcoat told him, I don't know a soul here-except Colin, of course.'

There was a smash of breaking china. Mrs Daintry's voice rose above the clamour. 'For Christ's sake, Edward, is it one of the owls?'

'No, no, don't worry, dear. Only an ashtray.'

'Not a soul,' repeated the man with the waistcoat. 'My name's Joiner, by the way.'

'Mine's Castle.'

'You know Colin?'

'No, I came with Colonel Daintry.'

'Who's he?'

'The bride's father.'

Somewhere a telephone began to ring. No one paid any attention.

'You ought to have a word with young Colin. He's a bright lad.'

'He's got a strange surname, hasn't he?'

'Strange?'

'Well... Clutters...'

'His name's Clough.'

'Oh, then I heard it wrong.'

Again something broke. Edward's voice rose rea.s.suringly above the din. 'Don't worry, Sylvia. Nothing serious. All the owls are safe.'

'He's quite revolutionised our publicity.'

'You work together?'

'You might say I am Jameson's Baby Powder.'

The man called Edward grasped Castle's arm. He said, 'Is your name Castle?'

'Yes.'

'Somebody wants you on the telephone.'

'But no one knows I'm here.'

'It's a girl. She's a bit upset. Said it was urgent.'

Castle's thoughts went to Sarah. She knew that he was attending this wedding, but not even Daintry knew where they were going to end up. Was Sam ill again? He asked, 'Where's the telephone?'

'Follow me,' but when they reached it-a white telephone beside a white double bed, guarded by a white owl-the receiver had been put back. 'Sorry,' Edward said, 'I expect she'll ring again.'

'Did she give a name?'

'Couldn't hear it with all this noise going on. Had an impression that she'd been crying. Come and have some more champers.'

'If you don't mind, I'll stay here near the phone.'

'Well, excuse me if I don't stay here with you. I have to look after all these owls, you see. Sylvia would be heartbroken if one of them got damaged. I suggested we tidied them away, but she's got more than a hundred of them. The place would have looked a bit bare without them. Are you a friend of Colonel Daintry?'

'We work in the same office.'

'One of those hush-hush jobs, isn't it? A bit embarra.s.sing for me meeting him like this. Sylvia didn't think he'd come. Perhaps I ought to have stayed away myself. Tactful. But then who would have looked after the owls?'

Castle sat down on the edge of the great white bed, and the white owl glared at him beside the white telephone as if it recognised him as an illegal immigrant who had just perched on the edge of this strange continent of snow-even the walls were white and there was a white rug under his feet. He was afraid-afraid for Sam, afraid for Sarah, afraid for himself-fear poured like an invisible gas from the mouth of the silent telephone. He and all he loved were menaced by the mysterious call. The clamour of voices from the living-room seemed now no more than a rumour of distant tribes beyond the desert of snow. Then the telephone rang. He pushed the white owl to one side and lifted the receiver.

To his relief he heard Cynthia's voice. 'Is that M.C.?'

'Yes, how did you know where to find me?'

'I tried the registry office, but you'd left. So I found a Mrs Daintry in the telephone book.'

'What's the matter, Cynthia? You sound odd.'

'M.C., an awful thing has happened. Arthur's dead.'

Again, as once before, he wondered for a moment who Arthur was.

'Davis? Dead? But he was coming back to the office next week.'

'I know. The daily found him when she went to-to make his bed.' Her voice broke.

'I'll come back to the office, Cynthia. Have you seen Doctor Percival?'

'He rang me up to tell me.'

'I must go and tell Colonel Daintry.'

'Oh, M.C., I wish I'd been nicer to him. All I ever did for him was-was to make his bed.' He could hear her catch her breath, trying not to sob.

'I'll be back as soon as I can.' He rang off.

The living-room was as crowded as ever and just as noisy. The cake had been cut and people were looking for un.o.btrusive places to hide their portions. Daintry stood alone with a slice in his fingers behind a table littered with owls. He said, 'For G.o.d's sake, let's be off, Castle. I don't understand this sort of thing.'

Daintry, I've had a call from the office. Davis is dead.'

'Davis?'

'He's dead. Doctor Percival...'

'Percival!' Daintry. exclaimed. 'My G.o.d, that man. He pushed his slice of cake among the owls and a big grey owl toppled off and smashed on the floor.

'Edward,' a woman's voice shrieked, 'John's broken the grey owl.'

'Edward thrust his way towards them. I can't be everywhere at once, Sylvia.'

Mrs Daintry appeared behind him. She said, 'John, you d.a.m.ned old boring fool. I'll never forgive you for this-never. What the h.e.l.l are you doing anyway in my house?'

Daintry said, 'Come away, Castle. I'll buy you another owl, Sylvia.'

'It's irreplaceable, that one.'

'A man's dead,' Daintry said. 'He's irreplaceable too.'

2.

'I had not expected this to happen,' Doctor Percival told them.

To Castle it seemed an oddly indifferent phrase for him to use, a phrase as cold as the poor body which lay in crumpled pyjamas stretched out upon the bed, the jacket wide open and the bare chest exposed, where no doubt they had long since listened and searched in vain for the least sound of a heartbeat. Doctor Percival had struck him hitherto as a very genial man, but the geniality was chilled in the presence of the dead, and there was an incongruous note of embarra.s.sed apology in the strange phrase he had uttered.

The sudden change had come as a shock to Castle, when he found himself standing in this neglected room, after all the voices of strangers, the flocks of china owls and the explosion of corks at Mrs Daintry's. Doctor Percival had fallen silent again after that one unfortunate phrase and n.o.body else spoke. He stood back from the bed rather as though he were exhibiting a picture to a couple of unkind critics, and was waiting in apprehension for their judgement. Daintry was silent too. He seemed content to watch Doctor Percival as if it were up to him to explain away some obvious fault which he was expected to find in the painting.

Castle felt an urge to break the long silence.

'Who are those men in the sitting-room? What are they doing?'

Doctor Percival turned with reluctance away from the bed. 'What men? Oh, those. I asked the Special Branch to take a look around.'

'Why? Do you think he was killed?'

'No, no. Of course not. Nothing of that kind. His liver was in a shocking state. He had an X-ray a few days ago.'

'Then why did you say you didn't expect...?'

'I didn't expect things to go so rapidly.'

'I suppose there'll be a post mortem?'

'Of course. Of course.'

The 'of courses' multiplied like flies round the body.

Castle went back into the sitting-room. There was a bottle of whisky and a used gla.s.s and a copy of Playboy on the coffee table.

'I told him he had to stop drinking,' Doctor Percival called after Castle. 'He wouldn't pay attention.'

There were two men in the room. One of them picked up Playboy and ruffled and shook the pages. The other was going through the drawers of the bureau. He told his companion, 'Here's his address book. You'd better go through the names. Check the telephone numbers in case they don't correspond.'

'I still don't understand what they are after,' Castle said.

'Just a security check,' Doctor Percival explained. I tried to get hold of you, Daintry, because it's really your pigeon, but apparently you were away at some wedding or other.'

'Yes.'

'There seems to have been some carelessness recently at the office. C's away but he would have wanted us to be sure that the poor chap hadn't left anything lying about.'

'Like telephone numbers attached to the wrong names?' Castle asked. I wouldn't call that exactly carelessness.'

'These chaps always follow a certain routine. Isn't that so, Daintry?'

But Daintry didn't reply. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom looking at the body.

One of the men said, 'Take a squint at this, Taylor.' He handed the other a sheet of paper. The other read aloud, 'Bonne chance, Kalamazoo, Widow Tw.a.n.ky.'

'Bit odd, isn't it?'

Taylor said, 'Bonne chance is French, Piper. Kalamazoo sounds like a town in Africa.'

'Africa, eh? Might be important.'

Castle said, 'Better look in the Evening News. You'll probably find that they are three horses. He always bet on the tote at the week-end.'

'Ah,' Piper said. He sounded a little discouraged.

'I think we ought to leave our friends of the Special Branch to do their job in peace,' Doctor Percival said.

'What about Davis's family?' Castle asked.

'The office has been seeing to that. The only next of kin seems to be a cousin in Droitwich. A dentist.'

Piper said, 'Here's something that looks a bit off-colour to me, sir.' He held out a book to Doctor Percival, and Castle intercepted it. It was a small selection of Robert Browning's poems. Inside was a book plate with a coat of arms and the name of a school, the Droitwich Royal Grammar School. Apparently the prize had been awarded in 1910 to a pupil called William Davis for English Composition and William Davis had written in black ink in a small finicky hand, Pa.s.sed on to my son Arthur from his father on his pa.s.sing First in Physics, June 29, 1953: Browning and physics and a boy of sixteen certainly seemed a bit strange in conjunction, but presumably it was not this that Piper meant by off-colour '.

'What is it?' Doctor Percival asked.

'Browning's poems. I don't see anything off-colour about them.'