Ancestral Vices (32 page)

The tale of Mr Watford’s terrible life went on while Yapp tried to stay awake. In the ordinary way he would have been interested and even sympathetic, but the knowledge that he was in all likelihood destined to become the Bournemouth poisoner’s next victim counterbalanced the call of his social conscience while his previous cellmates had given him a traumatic inkling into the mentality of the common-or-garden murderer. If he was to survive in Mr Watford’s lethal company he must establish an immoral superiority over the man. Above all he must be different and subtle and in some horrible category of crime that was all his own. For the very first
time in his life Yapp addressed his mind to a problem that was personal, immediate and real and had nothing to do with politics, history or the inequality of class.

By the time supper arrived he had reached a decision. With genuine revulsion and a ghastly smile he handed his tray to Watford, shook his head and pointed to his mouth.

‘What, don’t you want this grub?’ asked the poisoner.

Yapp smiled again and this time leaned forward so that his face was disturbingly close to Mr Watford’s.

‘Not enough blood,’ he croaked.

‘Blood?’ said Watford, looking up from Yapp’s awful smile to the sausages and back again. ‘Well, now you come to mention it, you don’t get much meat in prison sausages.’

‘Real blood,’ whispered Yapp.

Mr Watford shifted further back on his bed. ‘Real blood?’

‘Fresh,’ said Yapp leaning forward in pursuit. ‘Fresh from the jugular.’

‘Jugular?’ said Mr Watford, losing a good deal of his facial colour and all his bedside manner. ‘What do you mean “Fresh from the jugular”?’

But Yapp merely smiled more horribly.

‘Lumme, they’ve put a nutter in with me.’

Yapp stopped smiling.

‘No offence meant,’ continued Mr Watford hastily, ‘all I meant was . . .’ He broke off and looked doubtfully
at the sausages. ‘Are you sure you won’t have your supper? You might feel less . . . well, better or something.’

But Yapp shook his head and lay down again. Mr Watford eyed him cautiously and began to eat rather slowly. For several minutes there was silence in the cell and Mr Watford’s colour had begun to return to his cheeks when Yapp struck again.

‘Dwarves,’ he groaned. A portion of sausage that was on its way to Mr Watford’s mouth quavered on the end of his fork.

‘What do you mean “dwarves”?’ he demanded rather belligerently this time. ‘Here I am eating my supper and you have to—’

‘Little dwarves.’

‘Fuck me,’ said Mr Watford, and immediately regretted it. Yapp was smiling again. ‘Well, if you say so, though I’d have thought all dwarves were little.’

But Yapp was not to be mollified. ‘Little baby dwarves’ blood.’

Mr Watford put the portion of sausage back on the plate and stared at Yapp. ‘Look mate, I’m trying to eat my supper and the topic of fucking little dwarves and their blood isn’t conducive to . . . oh my God.’

Yapp was on his feet and looming over him. Mr Watford recoiled against the wall.

‘All right, all right,’ he said shakily. ‘If you like little baby dwarves’ blood it’s fine with me. All I ask is . . .’

‘Straight from their little jugulars,’ Yapp went on,
rubbing his bony hands together and staring pointedly at Mr Watford’s neck.

‘Help,’ yelled the prisoner and shot off the bed and beat on the door, ‘get me out of here! This bloke shouldn’t be in prison. He should be in a loony-bin.’

But by the time two warders bothered to investigate his complaint Yapp was sitting quietly on his bed eating sausages and mash.

‘All right, all right, now what’s been going on in here?’ they demanded, shoving the gibbering prisoner aside.

‘He’s mad. He’s clean off his chump. You’ve stuck a fucking psychopath in with me. He won’t eat his grub and keeps going on about drinking dwarves’ blood . . .’ Watford stopped and stared at Yapp. ‘He wasn’t eating before.’

‘Well, he’s eating now, and with you around I can’t say I blame him not eating before,’ said the warder.

‘But he kept on about dwarves’ blood.’

‘What do you expect him to do, talk about arsenic all the time? Anyway what are you worried about? You’re not a fucking dwarf.’

‘The way he looks at me I might just as well be. And I’m entitled to talk about poisons. That’s my speciality. Why do you think I’m here?’

‘Right, so he’s entitled to talk about bloody dwarves,’ said the warder. ‘What do you think he’s here for?’

Mr Watford looked at Yapp with fresh horror.

‘Oh Gawd, don’t tell me—’

‘That’s right, Wattie. His speciality is murdering little
bleeding dwarves. The Governor thought you’d get on well together. The other villains don’t want him.’

And before Mr Watford could say he didn’t either, the door was shut and he was warned he’d be doing punishment if he made any more noise. Mr Watford crouched in the corner and only climbed onto his bed when the light went out.

Yapp in the meantime had been considering his next move at self-preservation. It came with Mr Watford’s attempt to masturbate himself to sleep. This time he decided a religious tone would help and began to sing in a sinister whisper. ‘All dwarves pink and horrible, all midgets fat and small, all dwarves white and villainous, the good Lord kills them all.’

Mr Watford stopped masturbating. ‘I am not a dwarf,’ he said, ‘I wish you’d get that into your head.’

‘Dwarves masturbate,’ said Yapp.

‘I daresay they do,’ said Mr Watford, unable to fault the logic but finding its implications as far as he was concerned exceedingly disturbing, ‘the fact remains that I am not a masturbating dwarf.’

‘Spilling the seed stunts your growth,’ said Yapp, recalling a rather oblique remark his religious aunt had once made on the topic. ‘The Lord God of Righteousness has spoken.’

In his bed Mr Watford decided not to argue the toss. If the raving lunatic he had been lumbered with chose to combine the belief that he was the Lord God with disapproval of self-abuse and a predilection for dwarf
blood, that was his business. He turned on his side and failed to go to sleep.

But the horrors of the night were not yet over. Having discovered the remarkable effects of implied madness on a genuine poisoner, who must, to Yapp’s way of thinking, be mad, he was determined to continue the treatment. Presently he was groping in his trouser pocket for one of the soluble pessaries the prison doctor had prescribed and Yapp had not used. For a moment he hesitated. Soluble pessaries were not to be eaten lightly but they were infinitely preferable to some deadly potion Watford was likely to add to his diet. With a resolution that stemmed in part from his ascetic background, Yapp put the pessary in his mouth and began to munch loudly. In the other bed Watford stirred.

‘Here,’ he muttered, ‘what are you doing?’

‘Eating,’ said Yapp through a mouthful of gelatine and colonic lubricant.

‘What the hell have you got to eat at this time of night?’ asked Watford, for whom the subject of ingestion was of perennial interest.

‘You can have one,’ said Yapp. ‘Where is your hand?’

But Mr Watford knew better. ‘You can put it on the stool.’

Watford took it cautiously.

‘What on earth is it?’ he asked after fingering the thing and failing to identify it.

‘If you don’t want it I’ll have it back,’ said Yapp. Watford hesitated. He was fond of eating things, but the
experience of his victims suggested caution and the shape and texture of the pessary weren’t exactly inviting.

‘I think I’ll keep it for the morning, thank you very much.’

‘Oh no you don’t,’ foamed Yapp, ‘either you eat it now or I’ll have it back. I’m not wasting them. I’ve only two left.’

Watford put the pessary hurriedly back on the stool. ‘I’d still like to know what they are,’ he said. Yapp grabbed the thing and made bubbling noises.

‘Dwarf’s balls,’ he mouthed. For a few seconds there was no sound from Watford as he fought to keep his supper down and then with a sickening yell he was out of bed and battering on the cell door with the wooden stool. As the other prisoners on the landing joined in the din, Yapp spat the remains of his munched pessary into the toilet, rinsed his mouth out and pulled the chain. He was lying peacefully in bed when the door opened and Watford hurled himself at the warders. This time he gave no explanation but, to ensure he was transferred to the safety of the punishment block, hit one warder over the head with the stool and bit the other.

Yapp’s conversion to the
Realpolitik
of prison life had begun. It continued next morning. Summoned before the Governor to explain his part in turning the Bournemouth poisoner from a detested prisoner into a demented one, he gave it as his considered opinion that Watford’s illness, manifesting itself as it had done prior to his sojourn in
Drampoole Prison in the covert and libidinously oriented attempt to surrogate to himself the paternal role vis-à-vis his mother by chemically eliminating the pseudo-persons of his father, had been environmentally aggravated to terminal paranoid-schizophrenia by prolonged incarceration and the absence of normal socio-sexual relationships.

‘Really?’ muttered the Governor, desperately struggling to preserve his authority in the face of this socio-jargonic onslaught. Yapp delivered several more extended opinions on the subject of indefinite imprisonment and the cabbage
Gestalt
before the Governor put his foot down and had him taken back to his cell.

‘Good God Almighty,’ he muttered to the Deputy Governor, ‘if I hadn’t heard that with my own ears I wouldn’t have believed it.’

‘And having heard it with mine, I don’t,’ said the Deputy, who had served in Northern Ireland and knew bullshit when it came his way. ‘Look at the brute’s background. He’s a political fanatic and a typical H-block troublemaker and before you can say Stormont he’ll have every other murderer in High Security smearing faeces all over the walls and demanding terrorist status.’

‘But this used to be such a nice quiet little prison,’ sighed the Governor looking sadly at a signed portrait of Pierrepoint he kept on his desk to remind him of happier days. ‘Anyway, we know what broke that ghastly little prisoner. Just imagine being locked in a cell with a man with a vocabulary like that.’

Two days later the Governor made an urgent recommendation to the Home Office asking for Professor Yapp’s transfer to a Grade One Prison for First Term Offenders from the Professional and Educated Classes.

But it was elsewhere that Yapp’s future was being most profoundly decided. Emmelia’s first attack was made in the village of Mapperly where a diminutive Miss Ottram worked in the Post Office. The place was twenty miles from Buscott and Emmelia had reconnoitred it several times to discover her victim’s routine. Miss Ottram left home at one end of the village at a quarter-past eight every morning, walked to the Post Office at the other end, spent the day behind the counter and walked home again at five, presumably, as her letter to Frederick suggested, to tend her bottle garden. On the night of the attack Miss Ottram’s bottle garden went untended. As she was walking in a dark area between two street lamps a car door opened and a husky voice asked her the way to a house called Little Burn.

‘I don’t know anywhere called that,’ said Miss Ottram, ‘not round here.’

There was a rustle of paper in the car. ‘It’s on the Pyvil road,’ said the voice. ‘Perhaps you could find Pyvil on my map.’

Miss Ottram said she could and moved closer. A moment later a blanket had been thrown over her head and she was bundled into the car.

‘Stop making that noise or I’ll use the knife on you,’ said the voice as Miss Ottram’s muffled screams came from under the blanket. The screams stopped and her hands were manacled behind her back. The car then drove off, only to stop a mile further on. In the darkness Miss Ottram felt hands clasp her and then the voice spoke again.

‘Damn,’ it said, ‘too much traffic.’ And Miss Ottram was thrust out into the road still covered in the blanket while the car drove away at high speed. Half an hour later Miss Ottram was discovered by a passing motorist and taken to Briskerton police station where she told her terrible story with more graphic and inaccurate detail than it actually deserved.

‘He said he was going to rape you?’ asked Inspector Garnet.

Miss Ottram nodded. ‘He said if I didn’t do what he told me he’d use the knife on me and then he handcuffed my hands behind my back.’

The Inspector looked at the shackles the Fire Brigade had taken some considerable time to cut off. They were extremely strong and since they required the use of a key to lock them it was impossible that Miss Ottram had put them on herself.

‘I didn’t like the sound of that knife threat,’ said the Sergeant when she had finally been allowed to go home in a police car. ‘Puts me in mind of that murder we had . . .’

‘I’m aware of that,’ said the Inspector irritably, ‘but
that Professor bastard’s inside. I’m more interested in this blanket.’

They looked at the blanket carefully. ‘Cats’ hairs. An expensive blanket with cats’ hairs. That tells us something. We’ll have to see if Forensic can come up with any other detail indicators.’

The Inspector went home and spent a troubled night.

At the New House Emmelia had difficulty getting to sleep too. It had been one thing to plan to molest dwarves but another thing altogether to put it into practice and she was worried about Miss Ottram. With the blanket over her head she might have been run over. Then again she had certainly been terrified. Emmelia weighed her terror against the life sentence passed on Yapp and tried to console herself that Miss Ottram’s horrible experience was partially justified.

‘After all, life in Mapperly must be very dull,’ she told herself, ‘and silly women who answer Lonely Hearts advertisements are asking for trouble. Anyway she’ll have something to talk about for the rest of her life.’

Nevertheless when she struck again three nights later it was at a more mature and divorced dwarf called Mrs May Fossen who lived in a council house on the outskirts of Briskerton. Mrs Fossen was just putting her chihuahua out for its nocturnal pee when she was confronted by a masked figure wearing an overcoat from which protruded the biggest you-know-what she’d ever seen in her life.