Ancestral Vices

  ‘But he isn’t absent. The man’s in there,’ said Croxley.

  Mrs Billington-Wall gave the door of Lord Petrefact’s bedroom a disparaging look. ‘One must suppose so,’ she conceded. ‘All the same, my judgement is that he’s not in a fit state to make a lucid assessment of the situation. Legally speaking, he is absent. I am not, and in my opinion—’

  ‘Yes, but what about the scandal?’ said Croxley, now fighting with a desperation made positively ferocious by the knowledge of what Lord Petrefact would do when he learnt that the police had been invited to take a look at his private affairs. Short of actually asking Her Majesty’s Income Tax Inspectors to send half a dozen of their brightest young men to browse through his third set of ledgers, Croxley could think of nothing more likely to give the old man terminal apoplexy than the intrusion of the police.

  ‘What scandal?’ asked Mrs Billington-Wall. ‘If there’s been any scandalous behaviour here I would say that the destruction of . . .’

  But Croxley had taken her arm and was leading her down the corridor away from the door.

  ‘Pigs,’ he whispered conspiratorially.

  ‘Pigs?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What do you mean “exactly”?’

  ‘What I said,’ continued Croxley, frantically trying to lure the woman into a maze of misunderstanding from which she would emerge determined to stop the police on the doorstep.

  ‘But you said “Pigs”. Now you say “Exactly”. I’ve not the slightest idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘A nod’s as good as a wink,’ said Croxley with what he hoped was a suggestive leer.

  Mrs Billington-Wall ignored it. ‘Not to me it isn’t. Are you trying to tell me . . .’

  ‘Quite,’ said Croxley. ‘Say no more.’

  ‘That that old man in there has a perverse penchant for pigs?’ Croxley raised his eyes to heaven and prayed. If it ever got to the old man’s ears . . . Still, anything was better than the police. He ploughed on.

  ‘Sucking pigs,’ he said, trying to imbue the participle with a positively revolting emphasis. He succeeded. Mrs Billington-Wall stiffened.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m not asking you to,’ said Croxley truthfully. ‘All I’m saying is that if the police come tramping round the house in their dirty great boots the name of Billington-Wall’s going to hit the front page of the News of The World next Sunday with banner headlines like “Brigadier General’s Widow in Pork Orgy”. And if you don’t believe me go and ask the contract chef in the kitchen. Lord Petrefact had one disembowelled last night so that it would fit.’

  ‘Fit?’ said Mrs Billington-Wall with an expression of quite extraordinary disgust.

  ‘Fit,’ said Croxley. ‘It wasn’t the right size.’

  ‘Size?’

  ‘Look, you surely don’t want me to spell out the physiological facts for you, do you? I should have thought a woman with your experience of—’

  ‘Never mind my experience,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall, ‘and I can assure you that it doesn’t extend to bestiality.’

  ‘I suppose not. Still . . .’

  ‘And if you think I’m going to be party to a conspiracy to cover up the disembowelling of a pig for the purposes you have suggested—’

  ‘Now, wait a moment—’ began Croxley but Mrs Billington-Wall was not a woman to be stopped.

  ‘Let me assure you I’m not. As Secretary of the Fawcett branch of the RSPCA I feel deeply on these matters.’

  ‘I’m sure you do,’ said Croxley, now so enmeshed in suggestio porcine that he was prepared to be rude, ‘and you’ll feel a damned sight deeper by the time the fuzz have had their crack at you. You try and explain the presence of a good third of intersected pig in the deep freeze and see how far it gets you. And don’t believe me. Go and ask the bleeding chef and see for yourself.’

  Leaving the bewildered woman he stalked back to Lord Petrefact’s room.

  Mrs Billington-Wall tramped downstairs and presently was engaged in a frantic attempt to elicit from the contract chef exactly what had happened the previous night. The process wasn’t helped by the chef’s Italian origin, the confusion of consonants, the insult to his profession implicit in Croxley’s insistence that he turn a full-grown pig into a baby one by truncating the bloody thing, and now Mrs Billington-Wall’s peculiar line of questioning.

  ‘How should I know what for he wanted it that way? Is not my business. If he say cut pig I cut pig. So he likes little pigs. Is all right with me.’

  It wasn’t all right with Mrs Billington-Wall. ‘How utterly revolting. I’ve never heard anything so disgusting in my life.’

  The chef shrugged philosophically. ‘Not disgusting. Is peculiar I admit but English milords is known for being . . . how you say . . .?’

  ‘Disgusting,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall adamantly.

  ‘Eccentric,’ said the chef finally finding the word he was after.

  ‘Well, you may think it eccentric but as far as I’m concerned the whole thing is beyond description, repulsive.’

  She turned to leave the kitchen when a fresh thought struck her. ‘And what did you do with the . . . er . . . the thing afterwards?’ she enquired, now quite convinced that Croxley’s advice had been sensible.

  ‘Afterwards?’ said the chef. ‘So his lordship didn’t like it we weren’t going to waste it. We ate it, of course.’

  For one terrible moment Mrs Billington-Wall stared at the chef with a look of such incredulous revulsion that he felt called upon to amplify his statement.

  ‘Was very good. The crackling . . .’

  But Mrs Billington-Wall had gone. There were limits to her sense of what was right and proper and even sane and what she had just heard . . . As she dashed from the kitchen fighting to keep her gorge down she knew one thing absolutely. The police must on no account be allowed to investigate the horrible sequence of events that had taken place at Fawcett House.

  7

  For once her views and those of Lord Petrefact could be said to coincide. His reaction to Croxley’s announcement that the police were on their way had been so violent that he was out of bed and almost on his feet before he realized the lack of a wheelchair.

  ‘I’ll have the law on the bitch,’ he yelled, ‘so help me God I’ll . . .’

  Croxley helped him off the floor and back into bed before pointing out that the trouble with the police was that, colloquially speaking, they were the law and in any case tended to represent it. Lord Petrefact wasn’t in the mood for fine distinctions.

  ‘I know that, you moron. I don’t mean that sort of law. I mean my sort.’

  ‘Yours being the sort with teeth to it,’ said Croxley. ‘I’ve always been interested in the dichotomy between civil law and . . .’

  ‘Dichotomy?’ yelled Lord Petrefact. ‘If you so much as mention that word again after serving up that fucking dichotomized pig last night I’ll . . .’ He ran out of threats and lay breathing heavily. ‘And get me another bleeding wheelchair.’

  Croxley considered the matter. It was certainly more to his liking than discussions about pigs. ‘We’ve got a problem there,’ he said finally.

  Lord Petrefact took his own pulse and tried to keep calm. ‘Of course we’ve got a problem,’ he spluttered at last, ‘that’s why I need another fucking wheelchair.’

  ‘It’s Sunday.’

  Lord Petrefact stared at him dementedly. ‘Sunday? What the hell has Sunday got to do with it?’

  ‘For one thing the shops aren’t open and for another even if they were I doubt if the local Post Office runs to motorized invalid chairs. I mean this isn’t London . . .’

  ‘London?’ yelled Lord Petrefact, disregarding the intimations of his pulse. ‘Of course it isn’t London. Any fool knows that. It’s the back of bleeding beyond. That doesn’t mean you can’t phone Harrods or some place and tell them to send one in by helicopter.’

  ‘Some place being possibly the Galapagos
Islands?’ said Croxley, deciding to chance his arm.

  Lord Petrefact stared at him wildly but said nothing. Croxley was evidently trying to kill him. ‘Never mind where. Just get me one.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, but I don’t suppose it will arrive before the police and there’s Yapp to consider. I mean if they find him locked in the nursery I don’t know what they’re going to think or he to say.’

  Lord Petrefact did, and could hardly find words. ‘You don’t mean to say he’s . . .’ Croxley nodded.

  ‘But I told you to let him out. I told you I wanted to see the swine.’

  ‘It was a little difficult to persuade Mrs Billington-Wall that letting him out was an advisable course of action. She seemed to think . . .’

  ‘Seemed? That loathsome creature has no right to think. She shouldn’t even have the fucking vote in my opinion. And when I say I want him out . . . Go and get the bastard, Croxley, go and get him. And if that woman gets in your way you have my permission to use the utmost physical force. Kick the cow where it hurts.’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Croxley, and left the room.

  *

  But downstairs Mrs Billington-Wall was too engaged in defending her own reputation against the consequences of a police enquiry to be bothered about Yapp. The Sergeant and two constables who had driven over had already entered the hall before she could stop them.

  ‘And what brings you here, Sergeant?’ she asked with an unfortunate attempt to look surprised.

  ‘You did, Mrs Billington-Wall.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Sergeant. ‘If you remember, you phoned the station and said there’d been an affray . . .’

  Mrs Billington-Wall put a supposedly startled hand to her cultured pearls. ‘You must be mistaken. I assure you I . . .’ She drained off. The Sergeant was studying the crumpled wheelchair and the bloodstains on the marble floor.

  ‘What’s more, by the look of things you weren’t far off,’ continued the Sergeant and took out his notebook. ‘One badly damaged invalid chair, one large blood patch, one deal table . . .’

  ‘Oak,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall involuntarily.

  ‘All right, one oak table with leg missing . . . And what’s that horrible pong?’

  ‘Pong?’

  ‘Smell, then.’

  ‘I really can’t think,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall truthfully.

  ‘I can,’ said the Sergeant, and ordering a constable to stand guard by the wheelchair, the bloodstain and the oak table, followed his nose.

  ‘His Lordship will take great exception to your intrusion,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall, trying to pull rank, but the Sergeant was not to be deterred.

  ‘Not the only thing he’ll take exception to,’ he said, ‘I can’t say I like the look of things and as for that niff . . .’ He took out a handkerchief and covered his nose. ‘I think we’ll have a look down this corridor,’ he mumbled.

  Mrs Billington-Wall barred his way. ‘You have absolutely no right to enter private premises without permission,’ she said staunchly.

  ‘Which, since you invited us here in the first place, I can only presume has been given,’ said the Sergeant.

  ‘But I keep telling you I didn’t. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ said the Sergeant, ‘but I’m going to find out.’ And pushing past her he headed down the foetid corridor. As he opened the shattered baize door there was no doubt in his mind that Mrs Billington-Wall had not been exaggerating when she had stated there had been an affray in Fawcett House. If anything she had been understating the case.

  ‘One smashed door,’ he noted as he stepped over the wreckage, ‘one soiled mat . . .’

  ‘One Shirvan rug,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall. ‘It’s an extremely fine specimen of Persian rug.’

  ‘Was,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I wouldn’t like to be the bloke who has to clean that lot up.’

  ‘And I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes when Lord Petrefact gets to hear about your invasion of his privacy.’

  ‘More like his privy, if you ask me.’

  By the time they had reached the wrecked bedroom the Sergeant had noted several more exhibits in his book and Mrs Billington-Wall had given her reputation up for lost.

  ‘Jesus, looks like the place has been hit by a hurricane,’ said the Sergeant surveying the destruction. ‘Talk about bleeding bulls in china shops. And what’s that thing?’

  Mrs Billington-Wall looked at the commode with disgust. ‘I hesitate to say.’

  ‘I shouldn’t hesitate too long. I’m going to want a statement from you as to exactly what’s gone on in here. And there’s no use your looking like that. You phoned us and said there’d been an affray and we were to come immediately. Now we’re here and there’s blood on the floor and the place looks like a thousand football hooligans have been through it and you clam up. Now I want to know why. Has someone been putting the frighteners on you?’

  Mrs Billington-Wall thought about pigs and said nothing. She was saved by the dishevelled appearance of one of the doctors who passed the door carrying a bedpan.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ said the Sergeant, ‘what the hell was that?’ But before Mrs Billington-Wall could answer he was out into the corridor. ‘OK, hold it,’ he shouted. The doctor hesitated but a glance towards the hall sufficed to tell him he was trapped. Another policeman was standing there.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked belligerently.

  ‘I want to know who you are and what you’re doing with that thing,’ said the Sergeant, eyeing the bedpan with very considerable suspicion.

  ‘I happen to be Lord Petrefact’s medical attendant,’ said the doctor, ‘and this is a bedpan.’

  ‘Is it?’ said the Sergeant, who disliked irony. ‘And I suppose you’re going to tell me next that Lord Petrefact needs it?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I should have thought it was a bit late in the day for bedpans. There’s a portable loo in there and . . .’ He stopped. The doctor was staring over his shoulder and Mrs Billington-Wall was mouthing something at him. The Sergeant wasn’t having witnesses to a serious crime interfered with.

  ‘All right, take him in there,’ he told the constable, ‘I’ll question him later. I’m going to drag the truth out of her first. And call the Regional Crime Squad. This is no ordinary case.’

  While the doctor, still protesting that he was being prevented from carrying out his professional duties, was hustled into Croxley’s study, the Sergeant turned his full attention on Mrs Billington-Wall.

  ‘But I don’t know what happened,’ she said, though with rather less force than before. ‘I arrived this morning to find the house . . . well, you’ve seen what it’s like but . . .’

  ‘So why did you tell that medic with the bedpan not to mention pigs?’

  Mrs Billington-Wall swallowed and said she hadn’t.

  The Sergeant shook his head. ‘Listen, when someone starts whispering about pigs over my shoulder to another witness I rate that as obstructing justice. Now what’s with the pigs?’

  ‘I think you ought to have a word with the chef,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall, ‘and please make a note in that beastly little book that I wasn’t anywhere near this house at any time last night. I swear I wasn’t.’

  The Sergeant looked from her to the wrecked room. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that pigs had anything to do with this?’ he asked before forming an even worse impression of her. ‘Or were you by any chance referring to the police as pigs?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t. I’ve always had the highest regard—’

  ‘Right, so now you can demonstrate some of that high regard by telling me exactly what the hell’s been going on here.’

  ‘Officer,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall, ‘I can honestly say I’ve no idea.’

  ‘But you say the chef does?’ said the Sergeant.

  Mrs Billington-Wall nodded miserably and wished to hell he didn’t. They went down the corridor to the kitchen. Bu
t by the time they emerged twenty fraught minutes later the Sergeant was none the wiser. The contract chef’s claim that he had no idea what on earth had caused the chaos in the bedroom or the bloodstains in the hall had been interjected with hysterical denials that he had been hired to provide perverse entertainment for Lord Petrefact by way of fucking pigs. Mrs Billington-Wall had promptly demanded the right to leave the room.

  ‘I’m not standing here while this disgusting little man goes on about this disgraceful business,’ she said, ‘I’ve had all I can take this morning.’

  ‘You think I like being asked these questions?’ shouted the outraged chef. ‘I’m not an ordinary chef . . .’

  ‘You can say that again,’ said Mrs Billington-Wall and walked out.

  ‘Never mind her,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Now, you say that Mr Croxley . . . who the devil is Mr Croxley anyway? Lord Petrefact’s secretary. Right, so this Croxley told you to cut the pig in half because Lord Petrefact wanted to fuck it? Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘I don’t know what he wanted. First he says for me to order a pig. So I get a pig. Then he says too big for sucking.’

  ‘Sucking? You did say sucking?’ said the Sergeant, beginning to share Mrs Billington-Wall’s misgivings.

  ‘I didn’t say anything. All I say is I work all my life as chef and I never seen such a big fucking pig. No way could I get that pig in the oven. Not even two ovens. Maybe three. I don’t know. And then there was the turtle.’

  ‘Turtle?’

  ‘Yes, first he wants a turtle. Mr Croxley telephones the aquarium and—’

  ‘The aquarium?’

  ‘That’s what he say. Don’t ask me. If Mr Croxley tell me . . .’

  ‘This Croxley bloke’s got some answering to do,’ said the Sergeant and made some notes, while the chef fetched the turtle-shell and showed it to him. The Sergeant shook his head in disbelief. The notion that anyone could find anything remotely resembling carnal pleasure with an enormous turtle was even less appealing to think about than that fucking pig.