Report on Probability A (15 page)

C eased the car into third gear, and through into fourth almost immediately. He pressed his stockinged foot down on the accelerator. He held the steering wheel loosely in both hands, with his two thumbs on the outside of the wheel pointing outwards. He held his head high and looked keenly ahead at the closed double doors a few centimetres beyond the bonnet of the car.

“How's this, madam? Lovely day, eh? Aren't you glad we didn't bring that husband of yours? Perhaps madam would care for me to spread a rug on the ground when we stop, so that madam can lie herself down on the ground. Does madam realize how attractive she is in the prone position?”

His mouth opened wide, his eyebrows rose towards the line of his hair. Thrusting his head forward, he swung the wheel hard over to the right, at the same time letting his body slew to the right, until his right shoulder touched the driver's door. Slowly he came back into an upright position, gasping and wiping his forehead with the back of his left hand. He changed down into second gear and then back to fourth, finally allowing a smile to play over his features as he turned again to the back seat.

“Sorry about that, honey. I must keep my mind on my driving, madam. We nearly got that old girl, didn't we? A couple of centimetres more round the waist and she'd have been a goner.”

Facing forward again, C ceased the pretense at driving. Resting both elbows through the steering wheel, he cupped his chin in his upthrust hands. He brought up his right leg, doubling it until the stockinged foot rested on the upholstery and the knee against the door of the car. His eyes still stared ahead.

He began to whistle a tune called Whistling Rufus. He changed his position, forgetting to whistle as he did so, arranging his legs across the passenger's seat so that he could rest his back against the door of the car and his right arm over the steering wheel. With the nails of the fingers of the right hand, he tapped against the steering wheel. With the left hand, he pushed his cap from behind so that it slid forward until the stiff peak rested along his nose. The left hand remained clamped at the back of the neck.

“Get out of this bloody set-up. You don't stand a chance. Get a job down on the coast somewhere, down in the sun. Go abroad. Go south. Nice little chauffeur's job on the Riviera. Drive a rich widow about. Get out of here.”

The fingers of his left hand began to tap against his neck. He drew up his left knee. Bringing his left hand away from the back of his neck, he rested it over the top of his left knee.

“Stuffy in here. Maybe stick it out a bit longer. At least you see her every day. Christ, what's life for, anyway?”

By ducking his head slightly, C could look through the small window with hinges in its upper side and see a small area on the south-east side of the house. A third of the visible area was brickwork; the rest was part of a narrow window of frosted glass. It was the upper part of a frosted glass window. By craning his neck further, he could see an overflow spout projecting from the brick wall beside the window. The window belonged to an upstairs lavatory. The view of it was obscured by the rain running down the pane of the garage window.

Sitting up again, C let his left leg slide down flat against the seat again, twisting his body to the left so that he could rest his arms over the back of the driver's seat. He rested his chin on top of his hands. Without interest, he gazed into the back seat. The darkness inside the car seemed particularly thick on the back seat.

“Don't let 'em get you down, boy. Bastards. All bastards, the lot of 'em. It's too late now anyway. You're swallowed like those snakes. Still, Monte Carlo, Nice—why not? Also among the missing.… Nobody'd care. Old Violet, perhaps.”

Raising his chin, C moved his right arm over to the back of the front seat, sliding it to and fro over the grey leather upholstery. With his left hand trapped under his chin, he began to tap with his left fingers on the upholstery beneath them. He whistled tunelessly, gazing down at the lines in the upholstery that ran from the front to the rear of the back seat.

“No point in hanging around here.”

C opened the car door and set foot on the garage floor. By the rear wheel of the car, a puddle had collected. Rainwater seeping through the bolt holes in the roof had dripped down the ends of the bolts onto the floor of the loft above the car; eventually small puddles had formed on the floor of the loft, some of which had dripped between the boards of the floor onto the roof of the car. On either side of the roof of the car were small runnels into which the water dripping onto the top of the car had drained. The runnels followed the streamlining of the car and led down to a point just above the rear wing. The water from the top of the car had trickled over the rear wing and onto the concrete floor. It lay in a puddle against the grey skinny folds of the collapsed tire.

C avoided the puddle as he went towards the ladder at the rear of the garage. He stood with his left hand resting on one of the rungs of the ladder, his right hand on his right hip, listening with his head cocked. He went forward and opened the light metal door that had the symbol 12A painted on its upper panel.

3

The rain had stopped.

From the earth came a constant fruity noise as the rainwater soaked away into the ground. In the sky above the sunken garden were a thinning of cloud and a suggestion of sky.

A length of grass bordered on its south-east side by a bed of standard rose bushes stretched down as far as a flight of four steps leading to a sunken garden. Just in front of the steps was a pigeon, pecking at the ground and thrusting its neck forward with every step it took.

At the back of the bed where the standard roses grew was a brick wall. It ran down the side of the garden, beyond the sunken garden, to meet a privet hedge at the bottom. On the other side of the sunken garden was an arrangement of banked flower beds, fringing the sunken garden with a long lawn on the other side of them. Growing from the long lawn were trees, their bare branches dripping. At the back of the trees, and partly screened by them, was a rubbish tip. Through the trees, lying more to the right, could be seen most of an old brick building. The lower part of the front of this old brick building was taken up by two sagging timber doors. Above the timber doors, set in the brickwork, was a round window. A slight movement could possibly be detected in the round window.

Raising his right hand, C folded it into a fist and shook it in the direction of the old brick building. He saw no more movement in the round window.

The south corner of the house cut off the larger and more northerly part of the garden from view. Several windows lay on the south-east side of the house overlooking the garage. C surveyed these windows. Their aspect was forbidding; they reflected only grey cloud. The overcast had not cleared, and the brief afternoon was yielding to sunset.

Next to the south corner of the house downstairs was a wide window. Through it, C could look into the dining-room. Part of a table was visible and, on the opposite wall, most of a sideboard on which stood some sort of a plant in a pot. On the wall above the sideboard could be seen a picture, the details of which were not clear. Clearly seen on the sill of the window was a china representation of a dog. The dog had large ears. It sat on its hind legs and tail and raised its forepaws in the air, begging. It faced into the room. The window was fringed on either side by green patterned curtains. Also visible through the window was the second of the dining-room's windows, this one set in the south-west wall of the house; not all of it could be seen from where C stood, because this was a long window, facing directly out onto the garden at the rear. The light from this window was reflected on the shining top of the dining-room table so clearly that the bars of the long window could also be seen in the reflection. By looking through both windows of the dining-room, C could observe a part of the garden not otherwise visible to him. Nothing could be clearly determined, except a few fruit trees and a privet hedge and, beyond the privet hedge, another property belonging to a bachelor whose grandfather had built a lighthouse somewhere along the coast of South Africa or South America.

On the first floor, a small bow window protruded some metres above the bricked recess. This bow window matched a similar one on the other side of the house, overlooking a wooden bungalow; this one was the window to Mr. Mary's wife's bedroom.

An expanse of brickwork followed, until a narrow window was reached. This window was glazed with frosted glass. It was built directly over a window in the ground floor that contained a similar section of frosted glass. It was the window of the upper lavatory. Beside it, a small overflow pipe stuck out from the face of the wall; a small overflow pipe stuck out of the wall beside the lower frosted window. Near the overflow pipes, a thick pipe ran down from the house into a square of concrete set in the ground.

Further along the wall was one more window, situated near the south corner of the house. It formed one of the two windows of the bathroom, the other window being round the corner on the south-west or rear side of the house. Through the window, blue curtains could be seen, and part of the shade of an electric light hanging from the ceiling. The colour of the shade could be seen to be blue. None of the other window could be seen from where C stood, although its presence was marked by a particular bightness across the bathroom ceiling emanating from the south-west. No movement was visible in the bathroom.

“She can't have gone out in all that rain.”

On the lawn, a pigeon waddled. A black and white cat stalked it, taking advantage of the cover of a privet hedge running from behind the house to the end of the foremost banked flower bed fringing the sunken garden. It moved to within a metre of the pigeon. It crouched, its skull pressed against its forepaws, its ears flat on its head. The pigeon moved away.

Through the window of the dining-room there was a movement. C turned his head and looked through the window. A woman with tawny hair swept up onto her head had entered the part of the room visible to C. She wore a light afternoon coat of brown tweed. She came round the table until she was between the window and the table, so that she was visible to C in profile. She was no more than two and a half metres from C, separated from him only by one thickness of glass. It appeared that she was about to look out of the long window that faced from the back of the house onto the garden. She stopped, and looked over her left shoulder. She looked at C.

C looked at the woman. Her lips were red. They had opened slightly. Neither C nor the woman moved. C raised his right hand in a gesture, at the same time slightly lowering his head, though still keeping her under observation.

The woman moved hastily out of sight. As she went it seemed to be that she contorted her face and opened her mouth. C moved into the garage and closed the door behind him.

He stood there, clutching the doorknob. Then he moved on his stockinged feet and climbed up a wooden ladder bolted to the rear wall of the garage. Near the top of the ladder in the loft was a small window that did not open. It was divided into four by two crossed bars. Three of these four sections were glazed; the bottom right section was not glazed. The glass had been removed, and in its place was a block of wood. C removed this block of wood. It was wet He dropped it on the floor of the loft.

Just under the window lay a home-made periscope. It had been constructed from half a dozen round tins fitted one into the other to make a hollow tube some fifty-four metres long. Circular openings had been cut in the top and bottom tins facing onto two mirrors fitted into the tube at an angle of ninety degrees to each other. The bottom tin was made to rotate in its socket. Picking up this instrument, C prepared to push one end of it through the empty square of the window. As he did so, he glanced up and saw a movement in the dining-room window.

A man in dark suiting was looking round one of the green patterned curtains. His gaze was fixed on the window of the garage. In his right hand he carried a rifle, grasping it by the barrel.

C sank back into the shadows without removing his gaze from the man with the gun. The man did not move; only his eyes moved. C held the periscope. The man held the gun.

From the lawn came a shrill cry, and a clatter of noise. Both C and the man with the gun looked towards the lawn. Near to the point where the four steps descended into the sunken garden, a black and white cat had pounced upon and caught a large pigeon. The pigeon attempted to escape. It fluttered its wings and uttered a piercing cry. The cat was on its back. The fierce fluttering of wings startled the cat. It released the pigeon, which broke from it with a flurry of feathers. Running in a lop-sided manner, the pigeon beat its wings furiously. It left the ground. The cat sprang. Its paws raked the round body of the bird. With a more violent pulsation of its wings, the pigeon managed to remain in the air. Raising itself so that it danced on its hind legs, the cat clawed upwards, striking the pigeon even as it was struck on the nose by a battering wing. This frightened the cat. It dropped onto all fours in a manner that suggested that it might be about to retreat, but its dewclaw caught in a pewter ring that was fastened round one of the legs of the bird, so that the bird was dragged down on top of the cat. Frightened, the cat jumped round and pinned the pigeon to the ground with its paws. It put its mouth down to the pigeon's neck. The pigeon fluttered only feebly. Taking one of its wings into its mouth, the cat started to drag its victim over the grass. As it passed out of sight, obscured by the south corner of the house, the pigeon was still struggling.

The man with the gun moved away from the dining-room window. Still clutching his periscope, C went to the front of the garage, his shoulders hunched under the low roof, and sat with his back against the wall. He sat with his legs drawn up before him, his arms crossed over his knees, and his chin resting on his wrists. One end of the periscope rested against the side of his head.