Embarrassment of Corpses, An (14 page)

“Of course it's foolishness,” replied the astrologer, slinging an arm over the back of his chair. “Making a daily prediction that's supposed to affect one twelfth of the population. It's poppycock. ‘The excellent foppery of the world,' as the Bard put it.”

“So how on earth can you justify your daily horoscopes?”

“Entertainment, sir. Pure entertainment.”

“But your readers don't think it's entertainment. They run their lives by it.”

“And so what if they do?” asked Lipsbury-Pinfold artlessly. “I never give them bad advice. To say, for example ‘You should take care in money matters' or ‘Think carefully before confronting a co-worker' can't hurt, surely? Even true astrology, based on an individual's horoscope, is descriptive, not predictive. It detects influences and tendencies, not future events. As Thomas Aquinas said, ‘the stars dispose, but they do not determine.'”

“So you're still saying our lives can be influenced by the movement of planets and stars millions of miles away?” asked Oliver intently, through a mouthful of currants.

Lipsbury-Pinfold drained his fourth glass and poured another, with a surreptitious glance at his wrist-watch.

“There's clearly no fooling you, you're your uncle's nephew,” he said generously. “The signs of the zodiac aren't really up there, as you know. They're just the way we choose to group the dim twinkles of stars that are unimaginable distances from us and from each other. All that apparent heavenly movement is an indication of our own motions on this traveling planet. So I merely use the celestial clock face to track earthly influences and rhythms that I believe affect mood and personality, just as you use the sun's arc in the sky to measure days and seasons.”

“But then why make so much of the signs of the zodiac?” Oliver asked as the astrologer sipped more wine. “Why, for example, do you say Leos are kingly, Virgos gentle, Libras fair-minded?”

“You did say you don't believe in blanket personality types,” Effie chimed in.

“I don't,” replied Lipsbury-Pinfold, stroking the gray fringe from his face again. “But I also said the horoscope is descriptive, not prescriptive. You shouldn't assume, my dears, that the sign was named first and the personality force-fit after. What if it was the other way round? An ancient astronomer is staring at the patch of sky though which the sun rose on the king's birthday, and behold—he finds he can join up the dots and make out a lion, the king of beasts. Very flattering for his majesty, when the stargazer might just as easily have descried a toad. It's not so easy the other way round. Take your Scorpio. It was the Greeks who cut the sky into a 12-piece pie, making the heavenly Scorpion one of the pieces, which they inherited from the Chaldeans, who called it Gir. Remarkably, people born in the Scorpio slice were found to be secretive, defensive, and aggressive, just like a real scorpion. However, the scorpion is a stubbornly disgusting beast, as we know from this morning's newspapers, and so astrologers had to concoct a second image in order to squeeze out some more appealing traits. Thus Scorpio is the only zodiac sign to be represented by two creatures. By the way, Tim, do I detect the hand of Scotland Yard behind the capital's current scorpion scare?”

Mallard smiled inscrutably. “So what's Scorpio's other image?” he asked.

“An eagle. That way, the eagle-eyed king of the birds can offer intuition and perfectionism to round out the scorpion's limited personality. Hello, did I say something?”

Effie had reacted suddenly, causing a mouthful of cheap wine to take a detour into her lungs. But Oliver, patting her severely on the back, asked the question that she couldn't articulate.

“Did you say an eagle?”

“Oh yes,” said Lipsbury-Pinfold happily. “In antiquity, the symbol of the eagle was always associated with Scorpio. I forgot to mention it earlier. I say, does that help?”

***

As Effie Strongitharm undressed that evening in her Richmond flat, she wanted to think about the zodiac murderer, but she couldn't get her mind off Oliver. Before this case, she had met him on only a few occasions, when Tim Mallard's wife, Oliver's Aunt Phoebe, had invited them to the same lunches or parties. And she had once sat next to him for an hour and a half waiting for Tim's appearance as a singing Richard the Third in the Theydon Bois Thespian's annual Shakespearian pantomime (
All's Will That Ends Will
), the first time they had realized “A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!” fits the music of “Tonight” from
West Side Story
. But during those brief encounters, Oliver had struck her as standoffish and vague. Effie was envious of Tim's unswerving trust in his nephew, who failed to understand that most murders were not solved with the mind alone, but with the active support of the detective's ear, the pathologist's microscope, and feet that weren't afraid to cover the same ground over and over again.

And yet, since Oliver had appeared at Kew on Tuesday night, in the company of Ben Motley, she had been forced to reconsider. First, there was his invulnerability to the Look, after that embarrassing but—in retrospect—comical misunderstanding of Ben's photographic intentions. Then there was his admitted success at fathoming the patterns laid down by the zodiac murderer, justifying Tim's faith. This was, after all, the one case in a thousand where the young man's fly-paper mind could actually help the Yard, although even he hadn't known the odd astrological fact that explained Vanessa Parmenter's death below the outstretched wings of the largest eagle in London. And finally, there was the growing realization that Oliver's apparent aloofness was actually a rather endearing bashfulness, made worse by his obvious attraction to her.

Effie had come to accept she was attractive from the constant attention she received. But she resisted seeing the attractiveness for herself, often scraping back her rebellious hair and gazing at her features in the bathroom mirror with contempt. She did so now, as she stepped out of her shower, and once again felt like chanting the famous title card from the silent version of
The Phantom of the Opera—
“Feast your eyes, gloat your soul, on my accursed ugliness!” Her odd-shaped nose, with nostrils that were too small and thin, her wide, flat cheeks, her tiny mouth, the lines that swept down from her inner eyes, the mole beside her chin (which she wouldn't dignify by dubbing it a beauty spot). Her scrutiny was too deep to appreciate the harmony and proportion of her features—which the Greeks knew to be the true secret of beauty—a gestalt that made Ben Motley want her as the Queen of Heaven in his first tableau.

Oddly, she saw that harmony when she studied Oliver's face. His slightly receding chin, for example, would be ugly on a face that was otherwise rugged and sharply defined, such as Ben's; but it complemented Oliver's innocent, toothy smile, his pale, untidy hair, and the gentle, blue eyes—the same color as her own, she'd noticed—that seemed misleadingly foolish behind his round glasses. He looked like a not-too-overgrown schoolboy. But even if he was well under six feet, at least he was taller than Effie. She was pleased about this.

She wasn't falling in love with him, of course, or anything stupid like that, she told herself, sliding a cotton nightdress over her naked body and climbing into bed. (How could she ever love someone who had the bad judgment to be attracted to her?) It was true that she responded rather well to the idea of a friendship with Oliver, more than with any other man she had encountered in the three years since becoming a detective had devoured her private life. But she was certain she had no romantic interest in the hapless writer of children's books.

She turned off the light and lay awake, thinking of Oliver.

***

Underwood Tooth was not surprised when he woke up in the London Library at three o'clock on Saturday morning with his head resting on—or more accurately, in—a dusty first edition of
Sartor Resartus.
In the fierce heat, he often fell asleep in stuffy public buildings, only to regain consciousness hours later, when the lights had been extinguished by guards or janitors who had simply overlooked his unconscious form.

For Underwood Tooth was the world's greatest expert on being ignored. In his sixty-six years, he had been ignored by everyone. Waiters, shop assistants, cab drivers, ticket collectors, hotel receptionists—they all looked through Underwood as if he were transparent, a fleeting retinal sensation that hadn't the energy to stroll along the optic nerve and rattle the door handle of the cortex. Most of his conversations had begun with the phrase “Sorry, I didn't see you there,” uttered by strangers who had backed into him in elevators or let shop doors swing into his face. Computers found his name and address as hard to hold as a greased eel. He never received any junk mail.

As a result of his chronic anonymity, he had learned from necessity how to find his way out of dozens of locked shops, museums, and libraries in the middle of the night, invisible to infrared beams and motion detectors, and rarely setting off the alarms. Mulling over these experiences once, during a five-hour sojourn in his doctor's waiting room (he eventually felt better and went home without hearing his name called), it occurred to him that he might make a good burglar. But he feared that, like Midas, his personal touch would spread like chocolate in a child's hand, besmirching anything that came into his possession. Stolen money would never talk for Underwood Tooth; it would catch laryngitis from his fingers. So he decided instead to apply for several positions as a private investigator. He received no replies.

Yesterday evening, he realized, the librarians must have collected the books from the table on which he was slumped and gone home for the weekend without spotting him nose deep—literally—in Thomas Carlyle, the Library's founder. Fortunately, this had happened three times before, and by now he could easily thread his way through the building and into St. James's Square without leaving a trace. He half considered taking the ten books he had come to borrow that afternoon, but he had no idea how to check them out. It hardly mattered, since the Library's system invariably failed to register his loans, but Underwood believed in doing the right thing.

He drifted through the Victorian house like a benign ghost, unlocked the front door, and stepped out sleepily into the warm night air. The moon was bright, making the leaves on the Square's trees sparkle like flakes of silver on an old photographic plate. Underwood took a couple of deep breaths, started cautiously down the steps, and walked headfirst into the sandbag.

Abrupt collisions were not a new sensation. He often struck his head when automatic doors refused to open for him. So his first reaction was more puzzlement than pain. What was a large sack doing, seemingly hovering in the air in front of the Library entrance? Was it something from another world, another dimension? It would be a supreme irony if, of all people, alien life-forms in a burlap spacecraft were trying to contact
him
.

Underwood looked up, and realized that the heavy sack was not defying gravity but hanging from an unlit streetlamp, which sprouted from the pavement beside the Library railings. And the sack was not alone. A second bag, black this time, also dangled from the lamppost, attached to the first by a length of rope. The rope had been slung over a decorative metal bar, which seemed to serve no function except to remind people that London was once illuminated by gaslight. The two bags swayed together slightly, like…well, the first simile that struck Underwood caused him to blush.

The second bag, hidden behind the first. Was it a bag? He touched it. It swung into view and stared at him.

A man! Gawd bleedin' blind O'Reilly, a hanged man!

Underwood started, as if death were contagious. He fell back onto his haunches, reaching for the railings for support. Fear struck him instantly, not for his own safety, but for his effectiveness. He prayed quickly that the man was dead, because the last time he had dialed 999 for an ambulance, he had been put on hold for thirty minutes.

He looked up. The hanging man was dead, no doubt about it. Those staring eyes had not blinked for a long time. Underwood stood up stiffly, ignoring his pulsating heart and looked more closely at the corpse. The man was about his age, the face hard, cold, and frozen in the moonlight, the one patch of white on the dark-clothed corpse.

One? No, now that he looked, there were two. On the dead man's chest, a light square. Underwood stared more intently. It was a card, pinned to the man's black shirt with a safety pin. And there seemed to be some writing on it. He knew he should leave it alone, don't touch anything, fetch the police. But maybe it had some important information, some way of identifying the dead man, something that could bring a policeman hurrying more quickly if Underwood succeeded in getting his attention.

He reached up and unclipped the pin, lifting the card curiously to his eyes. But it wasn't writing. It wasn't anything. Just a couple of parallel lines in what seemed like blue ink. One line was straight, the other had a bump in the middle. Disappointed, Underwood slipped it into his jacket pocket as he scurried away into the night.

Chapter Seven

Oliver was sitting behind a table at the back of the crowded bookstore cursing Geoffrey under his breath for being late. Then he rapidly adopted a beatific smile as a woman dressed in riding gear approached his table, clutching a miniature version of herself by the hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Blithely,” she said crisply. “My name's Mandy Brudenell and this is my daughter, Courtney.”

“Hello, Courtney, have you just had a riding lesson?” asked Oliver. The child simpered unpleasantly.

“Oh yes,” she cried, “I got up to a canter today. I'm the only one in my class who can do that.”

“Well done,” Oliver said heartily. “Did you get a nice horse this morning?”

The girl looked at her mother with a puzzled expression.

“Courtney has her own pony, of course,” explained Mrs. Brudenell.

“I'm the only one in my class to have one,” Courtney said proudly. “It drives the others
crazy
. Especially Penelope. She's my best friend, but I won't let her ride Finsbury.”

“Finsbury?” Oliver echoed.

“Courtney insisted on naming her pony after your creation,” Mrs. Brudenell informed him fulsomely. “We love your work. You know, I often tell Courtney stories of my own, and several friends have told me I should write them down.”

“Well, why not,” Oliver suggested politely.

“I'm so glad you agree,” she said. “So you'll read my manuscript? I have it here. I thought we could use some of Courtney's own pictures as illustrations.”

The third author in half an hour. The manager of the bookstore, a sullen woman with untidy hair and glasses that were too large for her face, failed to come to his rescue yet again. Where the hell was Geoffrey? He was supposed to head these people off.

“I'm sorry,” he stammered, “I get so many requests…Make it a personal rule not to…”

“I see,” said the woman, with sudden disdain. “Then perhaps you could give me the name of your editor?”

Oliver hastily supplied the name of his ex-girlfriend at Tadpole Tomes for Tiny Tots. Serve her right.

“I can say I'm writing with your recommendation,” Mrs. Brudenell informed him as she briskly jotted the information into a small pocket diary. Meanwhile, Courtney passed him a copy of the latest Railway Mice book to sign.

“I'm the first one in my class to have this one,” she claimed.

Oliver opened the book to the title page and mutely scribbled “To Courtney, best wishes, O.C. Blithely.” He felt odd, adding curlicues and paraphs to individualize a signature that was not his own. Then he added in crude block letters “P.S. LET PENELOPE RIDE YOUR BLOODY PONY, SIGNED FINSBURY THE FERRET.”

“How charming,” muttered Mrs. Brudenell, glaring at the inscription. She snapped the book shut and led the child away.

“Can I go back to calling Snaffles by his real name now, Mummy?” Courtney was saying as they went out of the shop and into the maze of paved passageways that ran between the High Street and Richmond Green. Geoffrey, who was struggling through the entrance with a huge plastic sack, held the door open for them. The noise level inside the store was suddenly augmented by the shouts of a pack of animal rights protestors outside.

“Fair deals for ferrets!”

“Weasels are winners!”

“They're not all Finsburys!”

The door swung shut. Geoffrey eyed the long line of children and parents waiting restively for their thirty seconds with Oliver and smiled.

“Not a bad house,” he said as came over to the table, dragging the sack behind him.

“Where have you been?”

“Sorry, I had to park miles away, and this bag was heavy. Besides, there's cricket on the Green—Richmond police versus a team of gay dermatologists—so I watched for a few minutes. Local newspapers been here yet?”

“What's in the bag?” Oliver asked impatiently. He loved cricket and didn't want to hear that he was missing a late-season match. Geoffrey tapped the side of his avian nose and grinned in a way that made Oliver want to pinch him. He took a yellow carton out of the sack and from this, he removed a plush, beige object with stumpy legs and a long tail. It looked like an ectomorphic Persian cat.

“Meet Finsbury—the cuddly toy!” Geoffrey crowed. “Only eighteen pounds ninety-five pee.”

“Oh, no.”

Oliver stared in horror at the furry doll, which Geoffrey had put on the table in front of him. It stared back with eyes that were the color of bubblegum.

“You haven't seen the best bit” Geoffrey said. He reached underneath the toy and flipped a switch, hidden in the creature's fur. The ferret whirred and started to flail its front legs, causing it to move awkwardly across the tabletop toward Oliver. He watched aghast as the toy reached his arm, nosed his wrist once, and stopped. Then with a sudden metallic yelp, it darted forward and caught the edge of his hand in its mechanical jaws. Oliver yelled and leaped back, but the ferret came with him, teeth gripping a fold of his skin.

“There's a button over his eyes,” Geoffrey told him. “Press it and he'll let go, just like a real ferret.” But the toy dropped off Oliver's hand anyway, taking several blond hairs with it.

“You're insane!” Oliver hissed, nursing his pinched skin. “You can't possibly give this to children!”

“It's not for children,” Geoffrey replied insouciantly as he picked up the toy from the floor. “Well, not for children under five, anyway—there's a label on the boxes, so we're covered legally. We're really trying to cater to the adult market, who make up forty-eight percent of the Finsbury readership. Hence our advertising slogan—‘Put a Ferret Down Your Trousers.'”

Oliver wanted to tell Geoffrey exactly where to put the toy ferret, and the public relations officer's trousers were only the first stop on the journey, but the next pair of customers had stepped up to the table—a boy of about ten with moussed hair, dressed entirely in blue denim and a woman wearing, explicably, sunglasses, and inexplicably, a fur coat.

“And what's your name?” Oliver asked.

“Tristram,” said the boy. He eyed Oliver suspiciously. “I thought you were going to be a woman.”

“I get that a lot.”

“I'm not surprised, sailor.”

“Is this your mother?” asked Oliver, growing irritated. Tristram gave the woman a swift glance, as if noticing her for the first time.

“Do me a favor, John! No, this is my old man's secretary, if you get my drift. She's just collected me from my acting class. Call her Sharon.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sharon,” said Oliver.

“Likewise, I'm sure,” said the woman, with a brief curtsy. Tristram raised his eyes theatrically to heaven.

“Oh, the things you see when you don't have a gun,” he sighed.

“Hello, little boy,” said Geoffrey, stepping over with a boxed toy while Oliver signed Tristram's book. “How would you like to buy your very own Finsbury the Ferret? You can put it down your trousers.”

“Last person who said that to me is doing fifteen years in Parkhurst,” said Tristram. “How—”

“Much is it?” Geoffrey interrupted, undaunted. “Only eighteen pounds and ninety-five pee. Batteries are included.”

Tristram considered the toy. “Okay, shorthouse, I'll buy it,” he said. “Pay the man, Sharon.”

“You can pay at the cash register,” said Geoffrey to the woman, who bobbed again. “Now, let me show you how it works.”

“Oh, Geoffrey,” said Oliver smoothly, “I'm sure a clever young gentleman like Tristram is quite capable of figuring that out for himself.”

“Yes, but—”

“Yeah, I never bother with the instructions,” boasted Tristram. “I'll soon find out what this thing can do.”

“I certainly hope so,” murmured Oliver.

The shop door was flung open suddenly, to the cheers of the demonstrators outside. A burly young woman bustled in, marched to the center of the shop and, without a pause, started to address the waiting customers through a small megaphone.

“Do not be fooled by Finsbury,” she announced metallically, as she wrestled with something in a raffia bag, slung around her neck. “The ferret is only doing what comes naturally. I ask you, is this the face of a villain?”

With a sweeping gesture, she plucked a thin, struggling creature from the bag and held it up in front of the children's eyes. The manager, who was striding toward the demonstrator, stopped short. Oliver could see from his limited research that the animal was a cross between a domesticated ferret and its wild counterpart. It had a brown body, but its appealing face was white, apart from a domino mask of darker brown fur across its sparkling eyes. The children, seeing something furry with a face like an anorexic panda, let out a chorus of “Ahhhh!”

“I don't allow dogs in here, and I certainly won't allow that badger!” cried the manager. She started to push firmly against the animal rights activist. The other shop assistants began to help their boss, trying to keep out of range of the dangling and confused ferret. With a final cry of “Release all your companion animals!” the demonstrator was hustled through the door. Through the window, Oliver watched as she stumbled into Sharon, who had exited a few seconds earlier. The two women glared at each other, and then several demonstrators converged on the secretary and sprayed red paint on her fur coat. Sharon squealed, but Tristram was too busy laughing to help her. A police whistle was blown, and several cricketers, waiting for their turn on the Green, swooped on the belligerent demonstrators.

The staff of the bookstore turned back from the door and tried to calm the line of overexcited Finsbury fans. Their parents checked their watches and shot despairing glances at Oliver. Meanwhile, a grubby-looking man with a warty nose, who had been hovering by the Beatrix Potter display, pushed into the line and approached the table.

“Are those effigies of Finsbury the Ferret for sale?” he asked throatily. Geoffrey beamed. “You bet,” he replied. “How many would you like?”

“None,” said the man, passing Geoffrey a piece of paper.

“What's this?” asked Geoffrey as he took the paper. “If you want an autograph, I'm not the author.”

“No need. That's a summons. My client is the original illustrator of Finsbury the Ferret, and she claims all rights to income from the sale of any reproduction, two- or three-dimensional. We thought you'd try something like this. She's suing Tadpole Tomes for Tiny Tots and the agency of Hoo, Watt & Eidenau for five million pounds.”

Geoffrey moaned and fell into an empty chair as heavily as his small frame would allow.

“Am I being sued, too?” asked Oliver anxiously.

“No, Mr. Blithely. You're off the hook.”

Oliver relaxed. “Is that because your client recognizes my rights as the original author of the character?”

“No, sir. She just knows you don't have any money. Good morning.” He made his way out of the shop, and was instantly felled by a cricket bat.

“I'm ruined!” whined Geoffrey. “They'll blame me! Why didn't I keep my mouth shut?”

“Oh, Geoffrey, look on the bright side,” Oliver said with detached amusement, patting his friend on the shoulder. “They can only fire you once.”

“Not at Hoo, Watt & Eidenau,” Geoffrey groaned. “All three partners get to fire you, one at a time. Mr. Hoo is the worst. I only hope he's on first.” He slumped forward, clutching his head in his hands.

“Can we get on, Mr. Blithely?” the manager pleaded. Oliver signaled his readiness for the next group, but as he did so, he felt something brush his ankle and looked down. A pair of quizzical black eyes stared up at him. The polecat! The demonstrator must have let it go in the confusion. Front paws on his foot, it was sniffing his trouser turn-ups, as if contemplating an ascent into the darkness above. Oliver quickly grabbed the creature and dropped it into the bag of soft toys, just as another mother and her daughter came up to the table. He knew the polecat would relish the darkness and relative peace between the boxes, where it wouldn't be tempted by the proximity of small fingers.

“Hello, I'm Tully Mandivel, and this is Gretchen,” said the woman, who was toting a camcorder.

“Hello, Gretchen,” said Oliver as cheerfully as possible. The little girl, who was probably six years old, stared at him owlishly.

“Gretchen, aren't you going to say hello?” prompted the woman, training the camera on her daughter.

Gretchen inserted a crooked finger into her mouth, but still made no noise.

“Darling, you're being very rude. Do you know who this is?”

Her blue eyes fixed on Oliver, the child shook her head slowly in reply to her mother's question.

“This is O.C. Blithely,” Mrs. Mandivel told her. “This is the gentleman who makes up the stories about Finsbury the Ferret,” the woman went on.

Gretchen's blue eyes widened even further. She gradually opened her mouth as far as possible, extracted her finger, and screamed at Oliver at the top of her lungs.

It was five minutes before anything approaching order was restored to the line of children, who, like molecules, seemed to take up more space when they were agitated. Through it all, Geoffrey was alternately reading the summons and quietly keening his predictions of what was going to happen to him on Monday morning, what kitchen equipment it was going to be done with, and in what postal district each of his body parts was to turn up. Oliver, wishing he had decided to write employee policy manuals instead of children's books, didn't raise his eyes when the next figure arrived at his table.

“To whom shall I sign it,” he asked wearily.

“How about ‘To Effie, from Finchley'?”

He looked up and gulped. She was here. She was beautiful. And, good heavens, she was smiling at him.

“Never a dull moment around the Swithin household,” Effie commented. Oliver swallowed and tried to make his tongue coordinate with his lips.