One Foot in the Grave by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t be coy, there, force open and the neck muscles are showing the same symptoms of protein precipitation. . . .
    â€œJenny?”
    â€œI’m staying, and that’s flat. I want to know what’s going on.”
    . . . Helpless. You start helpless. Slowly you conquer a kingdom, impose your will, first on your own body, then on your surroundings, then on other people. But the kingdom shrinks. The frontier moves in. No other people in it, only objects your subjects. Then not even those, not your own body. … Large room, crammed with furniture, dust on the glistening veneers. Persian rugs on walls. Blue line painted on floor, dividing room. Thick oil paint, three inches wide, slap across good carpet. At one end, little old woman lying on Madame Récamier daybed, mouth open, flies, dead five days. Brother (smoking jacket, pince-nez) reading Telegraph other end of room. “Nothing to do with me — that’s her side.” Gestures at blue frontier, goes back to paper. … Not my body. Rupert of Hentzau.
    He must have genuinely slept. A figure in glossy black boots, frilled shirt open to the navel, came and went, not always the same face but always handsome as the devil, laughing like the devil before turning away to display a mess of hair and bone and brain at the back of the head.
    Jenny woke him with a touch on his cheek and he opened his eyes to see her wearing her starched uniform cap, nurse at her nursest.
    â€œThe gentlemen have come to talk to you,” she said. “Do you feel up to it?”
    â€œUrrgh.”
    â€œWant a pee before they come?”
    â€œI’m all right.”
    â€œI think you’d better. You don’t want …”
    He gave in. She needed to demonstrate her power, not to him, but to them. Keep them waiting. When he’d done she took the bottle to the bathroom, returned, wiped the crust of sleep spittle from the corner of his mouth, straightened his sheets and at last went to the door and muttered. Two men came quietly into the room—one big and one small but both as surely policemen to Pibble as a dog is a dog to another dog, however human breeders may have reshaped them. The small man wore his black hair almost to his shoulders, which made his thin face seem even thinner and paler than it really was. He looked a little over thirty. The large man must have been twenty years older—heavy, balding but not bothered about it, pale eyes set wide in the many-seamed face.
    â€œâ€™Lo, Jimmy,” said the large man. “Good to see you again.”
    Pibble felt his brow pucker even while he was forcing his lips into a smile of fake recognition. The past was too much with him. Readable emotions crossed the large man’s face, the welcome suffused with mild hurt at not being known, and discomfort at the sight of the creature lying on the bed. Behind these, less readable, lay a sense of doubt. Pibble spoke on a note of query that sounded more like complaint.
    â€œMike Crewe?”
    â€œGot it,” said the large man, almost in the same breath.
    â€œBut I thought—weren’t you Chief Super, last I heard?”
    â€œFor my sins,” said Mike, smug in his mock sadness.
    â€œDet Super Cass,” he added, nodding at the other man. “Ted to his friends. Ted’s running the case—I’m just taking the excuse to come and say hello. Ted, this is my old boss, Jimmy Pibble.”
    â€œHi,” said Cass with a wary smile. Iago to Crewe’s extrovert Moor. Awkward relationship for him, big gun on his manor, one witness big gun’s old crony. “The doctor says we mustn’t stay more than ten mins.”
    â€œSee how it goes,” said Pibble. “Jenny will blow the whistle.”
    Neither man glanced at her, but a signal seemed to pass. Crewe settled into the visitor’s chair. Cass pulled the other one up to the bed and perched on its arm, in a pose of curious tension which made him