Not to Disturb by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online

olive-green soft leather which, ageless and unworn,
seems almost certainly to have come from another part of the house, probably the
library, in the course of some complete refurnishing. A thick grey carpet covers
the whole floor. Lister’s bed is narrow but spectacular with a well-preserved
bushy bear-like fur cover which he might have acquired independently or which
might have once covered the knees of an earlier Klopstock while crossing a
winter landscape by car, and which, anyway, looks as if importance is attached
to it; indeed, it is certain that everything in the room, including Mr McGuire,
is there by the approval of Lister only.
    Between the two men, on the floor, is a heavily built
tape-recorder in an open case with a handle. It is attached by a long snaky cord
to an electric plug beside the bed. The two magnetic bobbins, of the
18-centimetre size, have come to a standstill at Mr McGuire’s touch of the
stop-switch; the bobbins not being entirely equal in their content of tape it
can be assessed that half-an-hour of something has already been recorded at some
previous time.
    Lister says, ‘Style can be left to the journalists, Mr
McGuire. This is only a preliminary press handout. The inside story is something
else — it’s an exclusive, and we’ve made our plans for the exclusive. All we
need now is something for the general press to go on when they start to question
us, you see.’
    â€˜Take my advice, Lister,’ says Mr McGuire, ‘and give it a
conversational touch.’
    â€˜Whose conversational touch — mine or the
journalists’?’
    â€˜Theirs,’ says Mr McGuire.
    â€˜Turn on the machine,’ says Lister.
    Mr McGuire does so, and the bobbins go spinning.
    â€˜When I was a boy, fourteen,’ says Lister, ‘I decided to
leave England. There was a bit of trouble over me having to do with Eleanor
under the grand piano, she being my aunt and only nine. Dating from that
traumatic experience, Eleanor conceived an inverted avuncular fixation, which is
to say that she followed me up when she turned fourteen and — ’
    â€˜It isn’t right,’ says Mr McGuire, turning off the
machine.
    â€˜It isn’t true, but that’s not to say it isn’t right,’
Lister says. ‘Now, Mr McGuire, my boy, we haven’t got all night to waste. I want
you to take a short statement of similar tone from Eleanor and one from Heloise.
The others can take care of themselves. After that we have to pose for the
photographs.’ Lister bends down, turns on the machine, and continues. ‘My
father,’ he says, ‘was a valet in that house, a good position. It was Watham
Grange, Leicestershire, under the grand piano. I worked in France. When Eleanor
joined me I worked in a restaurant that was owned by a Greek in Amsterdam. Then
we started in private families and now I’ve been butler with the Klopstocks here
in Switzerland for over five years. But to sum up I really left England because
of the climate — wet.’ Lister turns off the switch and stares at the
tape-recorder.
    Mr McGuire says, ‘Won’t they want something about the
Klopstocks?’
    Lister says, impatiently, ‘I am thinking.’ Presently he
turns on the recorder again, meanwhile glancing at his watch. ‘The death of the
Baron and Baroness has been a very great shock to us all. It was the last thing
we expected. We heard no shots, naturally, since our quarters are quite isolated
from the residential domain. And of course, in these large houses, the wind does
make a lot of noise. The shutters upstairs are somewhat loose and in fact we
were to have them seen to tomorrow afternoon.’
    Mr McGuire halts the machine. ‘I thought you were going
to say that him in the attic makes so much noise that you mistook one of his
fits for the shots being fired.’
    â€˜I’ve changed my mind,’ Lister says.
    â€˜Why?’ says Mr