The Glass-Sided Ants' Nest by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

even.”
    He spread his palms out, flat, over his fork. Like a hypnotized hen, Pibble leaned forward and craned down at them. They were big hands with square palms, white and callus-free. The little fingers seemed only half as long as the others. The right hand was visibly larger, and its heart and head lines were joined together in the single horizontal which palmists call the simian line and believe to be a sure sign of criminal degeneracy. Still staring, Pibble wondered whether Walewski had borne the same stigma.
    â€œSeen enough, copper?”
    â€œYes, thank you.”
    Pibble straightened up, back onto his ignominious perch, then decided he’d had enough and stood upright. Caine did not stir.
    â€œD’you mean,” he said, “that the old bastard was killed with a left-hander? That makes it look pretty like a Ku, if you ask me. They always …”
    â€œDr. Ku has already explained the point, and I am bearing it in mind.”
    â€œWell, don’t strain yourself, copper. So long. I’ll be seeing you.”
    â€œThank you, Group Captain, for your help. I’ll let myself out.”
    At the top of the steps Pibble turned right, away from No. 9; right again along the spick-and-span street; right at the lights. Yes (the lost details of the district were coming clear in his mind), there was still a telephone kiosk on the corner of the little square, momentarily unvandalized, too. He rang the Yard and asked for Sergeant Crewe.
    â€œMike? Jimmy Pibble here. Got a pencil and paper? There are half a dozen things I want checked on. Ready? One: a Professor Fleisch at Melbourne—in the anthropology department, I should think. Anything he can tell me about a New Guinea tribe called the Kus, Dr. Ku who belongs to it, and the sort of circumstances in which one of them might murder their chief. Second: this Dr. Ku got her doctorate in anthropology in roughly 1954, odds are at London University. Find out how serious a figure she is, and anything useful. Third: Turner’s Hotel, Crerdon Road, Southampton—did one Group Captain Caine spend last night there? Get on to that one quickly, Mike, and make sure the people at the hotel realize this is serious; there’s something a bit fishy there—he got back from Southampton without even a toothbrush. Fourth: ask Tim Speer whether there’s a 1930 two-point-three Alfa Romeo in London which someone in the trade might have lent to a pal last week, and whether it’d do a hundred and twenty. Fifth: ginger Australian Air Force Records into letting you know all they have about this Caine, missing in New Guinea during the war, returned to Australia 1946—might have a police record then—now in England. Sixth: if Superintendent Rickard is driving home this way this afternoon, ask him if he could spare me five minutes; I’d like his advice, but it’s not very important. Seventh: nor is this, but see if you can get someone to find out how a place called Flagg Terrace came to be called that and built like that. That’s the lot—will you read them back? … Fine. No, it’s a lucky dip at the moment, about twenty possibles, one a real swine. I’ll ring again before lunch—you might have something from Southampton by then.”
    Though it must have been near noon by now, with the sweet May sun bouncing off the stilted sycamores outside, all the lights were still on in Dr. Ku’s living room. Even so, it did not seem as staring as it had earlier. Sixteen jet-black faces, like a platoon in some Zoroastrian skirmish, fought against the light. They had been waiting for him for some time, evidently, but with the patience of peasants awaiting the oppression of the taxgatherer. The furniture had been moved. A card table and one of the little gilt chairs were set for him at one end of the room; the sofas had been pushed against the wall opposite the windows, and seven inscrutable women sat on them in a silent