The Bat that Flits (20 page)

The real trouble, of course, had simply been that I wasn't thinking about what I was saying. When I should have been concentrating on MacConkey's medium and Peyers' patches, I was going over Hilda's peculiar behaviour pattern. And it kept on coming as a surprise to me to see those hungry fanatical eyes all staring at me and praying that they could somehow keep awake long enough to learn something. The funny thing was that if I had gone back now I could have delivered a perfect discourse. Because somewhere in the shame of my departure I had completely forgotten about Hilda.

So completely, in fact, that there must have been a five-or ten-seconds' time lag before I realised that I was looking at the dwindling back number-plate of her car. But there it was all right—WWW972. And there, also, through the rear window of the little Singer I could see Hilda—though why on earth she should be out in this part of the country I couldn't imagine. And still less could I imagine when she took the Padstow branch when she came to it.

It was then that I decided to follow her. I still didn't like to think of Hilda's being mixed up in anything. But it certainly looked pretty fishy. She had told me herself that
she hadn't any friends in that part of Cornwall. And less than a couple of hours ago I had heard her telling the Old Man that she was going off early so that she could get to bed because of her headache. The way she was driving she had got rid of that headache long ago.

And now that she was on the straight she put her foot down. The car that she was driving was a 1928 model with marked curvature of the main shaft and thrombosis in the petrol feed. It was the sort of car that only a woman could have driven without realising that the whole history of mechanics was against her. And if she had let me be nicer to her I would have taken the engine and the transmission right down just so that the souls of the original fitters could rest in some kind of peace. But so far as engines are concerned, there is a brutality in the female sex that is equalled only by the Italian's love for the horse. She was perfectly content with everything as it was, she said. By now the little medallion of St. Christopher that the dealer had supplied with the car had a mysterious dark stain across it that might have been blood. Or sweat. Or tears.

At the moment, she was knocking a full forty out of the thing and the shaft must have been turning like a skipping rope. For my part, I was following flat out at about 38.5. It was like a Hollywood car chase in slow motion, and it would have sounded fastest over the radio. Both cars were acoustically very impressive, and old men and little frightened children crowded to cottage windows to see which way the tank convoy was going.

By sheer bad driving and cutting off the corners with a ruler, I kept her in sight all the way. And apparently she knew exactly where she was going. Padstow isn't an easy town. Nothing that is built on the side of a hill with a harbour at the bottom ever comes out that way. There was
even one moment when I thought I'd lost her. But it was all right. It was simply that Hilda had made one of those astonishing right-angle turns of which no man has ever found the secret. At one moment she was roaring up the hill with a plume of oil like a destroyer smoke-screen pouring out behind. And, at the next, without any indicator or hand sign or brakes, she had parked herself about twenty-five yards up a side turning. By the time I had followed she was already getting out of the car and going towards a small dark house that was so ordinary looking and respectable that the local agents could have charged Moscow almost any premium that they cared to ask.

What was significant was that somebody had evidently been expecting her. The light in the little hall had come on already, and the door was open. Over her shoulder I could even see the head of the man who had come to the door to meet her. The gaslight shone full down on him as though he were an exhibit in the waxworks: I could see the thin, greasy hair that had been brushed right across to cover up the bald part. But it wasn't until he raised his face that I recognised him. Then I saw that he was the dago who had been walking with Hilda on the moor.

There wasn't the slightest possibility of mistaking him. Cornwall is full of dark, swarthy people with features like fish-hawks. In some villages you could stage a whole Old Testament pageant simply by getting the Parish Council together. But this was something else. There was nothing vulturine in that face. It was a flat, blank face with smooth gentle curves where there should have been angles and hard ridges. It takes wine and olive oil to make a face like that. Sharp cider and national mark margarine produce an effect that is quite different.

Then the door shut. And I was left out there in the
darkness of the Padstow night with the wind coming up from the Bristol Channel with the keenness of a band-saw.

I didn't like the idea of the white and red-gold Hilda being shut up in that house with the black and olive foreigner. And it was only because I told myself that Wilton wouldn't approve, that I didn't go straight across and start kicking the door down. Not that I was really Wilton's man in all this. Not any longer. I was determined to have a nice long talk with Hilda before Wilton, with that tired, bored grin of his, could slip the handcuffs on to her. If necessary, I was prepared to spend the whole night out there on the pavement just to be certain of getting my word in first.

It was the approach of a stalwart of the Cornish Constabulary that interrupted me. A large man who seemed to take his breathing seriously the way some people take singing, he came up to me to see if I knew anything about an open sports car with no lights on that was parked slantwise across the junction of Prideaux and Park Streets.

“Quite impossible, officer,” I said politely as I walked back with him. “It just couldn't be mine.”

It was while I was explaining to him that the lights weren't really off and that it must have been simply that I had kicked the switch with my foot as I got out, that I heard a sound that I didn't want to hear. It was the sound of Hilda's car starting up. And while I was still trying to convince the policeman that summoning me would merely be penalising the wrong social bracket, Hilda shot past me.

Wilton had suddenly taken to cultivating me again. Apparently he couldn't snap back the spring of a Gordon's stopper without my image automatically coming into his mind. And with every day that passed Wilton was becoming more embarrassingly intimate. We had passed through a number of successive stages. Complete stranger and complete stranger. Policeman and suspect. Friend and friend. Soak and soak. Father and son. Brother and brother. And finally Darby and Joan. Every time I came into the room I was more than half prepared to have him toss over a pair of socks that needed darning.

This evening, however, he was unusually moody and silent. About the only sound that came from his corner of the room was the steady sip-sip as the tonic-water went down, and a noise like a piece of firewood snapping when he felt the need for exercise and unfolded his legs, recrossing them left to right. Then I remembered that it was the wife's place to keep the home cheerful. So I said something.

“Not getting very far, are we?” I remarked.

“Far from what?” he asked.

That showed obtuseness on his part and meant that I had to rephrase things.

“Other way round,” I explained. “Not much nearer a solution, I mean.”

Wilton paused. In a sense, he'd been pausing ever since I had come in. From nine o'clock onwards it had been one long uninterrupted pause.

“I wouldn't say that,” he replied at last.

Then he sat back again. But by now the liveliness of Wilton as a conversationalist had got me all keyed up.

“How d'you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” said Wilton, “we know more than we did, don't we?”

“You may do,” I said, remembering my role. “I don't. You never discuss your work with me nowadays.”

But this was no use. To-night apparently nothing less than a direct question could coax an answer out of hubby. So I tried again.

“Are you satisfied about poor old Mann?” I asked.

I'd had Dr. Mann on my mind rather a lot lately. That was because of a scheme I'd had for keeping up the weekly food parcels for the Berlin relatives.

“Perfectly, thank you,” Wilton answered, and began opening another packet of twenty.

“Meaning
you
think he did it?”

I couldn't quite keep the contempt out of my voice. But I could see the shape of things clearly enough. The Wiltons of this world have to produce results like everybody else. And when a red-hot suspect commits suicide while on bail it comes as a godsend for the “Case closed” side of things.

But Wilton had got the packet open by now, and was able to relax.

“Meaning that I'm sure he didn't,” he said. “I've eliminated him.”

“Come to that, he eliminated himself,” I pointed out.

“Same thing.”

“Not entirely,” I said. “If he'd still been alive there's quite a lot he could have told you.”

“Such as?”

Here I drew in a deep breath. I didn't mean to. It just
came. And I was rather annoyed by it. Because it meant that I was even breathing in cliches by now.

“Oh, about Dr. Smith,” I said, speaking casually, as though the betrayal of a fellow-worker or two meant nothing to me. “Mann had several very interesting notions about Dr. Smith. Found out that he'd been using the poste restante at Plymouth instead of having his letters sent to the Institute.”

I knew that in all this I was qualifying for a Class A Cad's Diploma, Top Grade. But there was a reason for it. I wanted to keep Wilton busy and occupied for as long as possible in other directions while I continued quietly and undistracted with my Padstow researches. I still, however, hadn't found the right dose for re-energising Wilton.

“Mann was a bit of an authority on post offices, wasn't he?” was all he said.

I smiled.

“You mean that story about the burglary?” I said.

Wilton nodded. I found that rather depressing. It meant that all my efforts to make him talk hadn't been too successful. If we were back to sign language already, the original primal silence might ensue at any moment. But I wasn't to be beaten all that easily.

“Silly, wasn't it?” I said.

“Very,” Wilton answered.

“Because, of course, he was in my room all the time.”

“Why ‘of course?' You didn't usually sleep together, did you?”

This was much better. At last Wilton was really making his own contribution to the conversation. Soon I would be able simply to sit back and listen. And that would have suited me far better.

“Oh, no,” I said, with the sort of laugh that smoothes
out difficulties at big business conferences. “Nothing like that. It was purely coincidence.”

“It was more than coincidence,” Wilton said. He had shifted himself so far back in his chair by now that he was lying in a practically straight line. His neck was supported on the back of the chair and his feet were propped up against the fender to stop him from slipping. If I hadn't known him I would have said that he was in the tertiary and final stages of tetanus. But apparently he was comfortable. “It was co-existence,” he went on.

This shook me.

“Come again, please,” I asked.

“Co-existence,” he said. “You know. Astral separatism. Projection of the body through space. Corporeal ambivalence. It's well attested.”

The pause was longer this time. It may have seemed longer to me than it did to Wilton. But it evidently seemed quite long enough for him too. Because he turned towards me, and I saw that he was one long wide grin. The fact that he had a cigarette between his lips meant that the grin was also a thin one. It was like a new moon in the middle of his face. But it was still a grin.

“Don'tcher follow?” he asked.

“Only a long way behind,” I admitted.

“Well, you see,” he said, “one half of him was in the post office going through the mail bags while the other half was with you. Therefore, one of them must have been astraloid. I only wondered if you noticed anything strange about him. If you'd touched him, you might have found that he felt cold. They do sometimes when they're in that state.”

“But that's absurd,” I said.

I wasn't particularly proud of the remark. I wanted time to think, however, and I had to say something.

Wilton, I noticed, seemed disappointed in me.

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “There have been other cases. Psychical records are full of them. You have to consider all possibilities in my job. Even doppelgangers.”

“Mann never had a double,” I said.

Wilton exhaled a lot of smoke through his nostrils. Playing dragons was one of his more irritating habits. And it always happened when the other person was impatient about something.

“That's my view,” he said.

“And you still think it was Mann who burgled that post office?”

“I know it was.”

“How?”

By now the grin was wider than ever. It had long since passed the new moon phase. The whole of Wilton's head looked like a boiled egg with the top ready to come off.

“I was there too,” he said. “In the corner cabinet. Watched him for about ten minutes through the keyhole.”

“What were you doing there?” I asked.

“Wrong track altogether,” Wilton admitted. “I was looking for the culture. Thought it might have been sent by post. Silly of me.”

I drank the rest of my gin-tonic before answering. In the last few seconds things had taken a rather nasty turn.

“Then to put it bluntly,” I asked, “you didn't believe my story about having Mann up in my room all the time.”

The grin didn't waver.

“I wouldn't say that,” he replied. “Why, in those days I scarcely knew you.”