Nursery Crimes Part 25

"Sugar," he moaned.

"Honey" said Zanny. She had taken off her shoes.

Her feet were near his forehead. Not yet. Not yet. Not steep enough. The third flight.

He began crawling across the second half-landing as she crouched in front of him, urging him on.

He was quite mad. He was sane enough to know he was quite mad. He was mad. He was drunk. He should stop this minute while there was still time. He stopped and rolled over on his side. He would lie still while his breath raged through him like a wind across a burning desert.

She leaned over him -- cool -- smiling.

"Crawl a bit - lie a bit - ?"

He crawled a bit. Lay a bit. He couldn't ask how much further it was. He couldn't speak at all. He was beginning to forget why he had come this far. There was another mountain . . . blacker . . . higher . . .

Her feet were in front of him all the time. Up a few steps they went. He crawled up one step. Down a few steps came the feet. They touched his forehead - gently - softly.

"Up," said a voice that seemed to come from a very long way. "p.u.s.s.y - p.u.s.s.y - p.u.s.s.y -- p.u.s.s.y--up -- up--up -- up-"

The side of the mountain was jagged with rough rocks that were pressing into his flesh. An avalanche of cold water - could it be his sweat? -- was was.h.i.+ng into his eyes. He was almost at the top now. Almost - but not quite.

"Miaw," Zanny encouraged, "miaw -- miaw -- pretty p.u.s.s.y - miaw." She put on her shoes.

Down in the main hall Mother Benedicta and the judge's wife heard what they interpreted as a mewling cry of fear. They looked up and in the distance saw the judge nearing the top step of the top landing. They didn't see Zanny's sudden kick. It was doubtful if the judge felt it. He had begun falling into a black pit before she touched him. And then he fell in reality, his rotund body slithering from step to step. The half-landing, highly polished, gave his descent momentum; he skidded across it, and thumped down the second flight, his head beating against the banisters in sharp cracks. The flower-pots around the Virgin halted him on the first landing. His dead eyes peered through fuchsia petals like small helpless slugs.

Zanny slowly descended.

One for you, Murphy.

She felt like a sponge that had been squeezed. Her legs began to tremble and her jaw shook as if she wanted to cry but couldn't.

They were with him now. Mother Benedicta and his wife. His wife had moved him away from the flowers and had put him to lie flat. She had her ear to his chest. She was very calm. She looked at Mother Benedicta and shook her head. Mother Benedicta's cheeks looked as if someone has taken a dollop of rouge out of a jar and rubbed it all over them. And now the rouge was paling off- draining away in patches.

Zanny went and stood beside them. ''Is he dead?"

Mother Benedicta turned and looked at her. She looked particularly hard at her open dress and then with fumbling fingers b.u.t.toned her up into respectability.

"Yes," she said.

"I killed him," Zanny said. This time there were witnesses. Two of them. This time Sergeant Thomas would be satisfied. This time there would be no doubt about it at all. They would believe she had killed Bridget. Murphy would go free.

"You understand, don't you," she said quite clearly, despite the fact that her jaw still shook, "that I killed him?"

"You poor shocked child," said the judge's wife, surprisingly. She stood up and held Zanny in her arms. "My husband," she said, "could behave very foolishly. I hope he didn't frighten you. I hope he didn't hurt you. I noticed your dress . . ." she held Zanny a little away from her and looked at her with deep concern.

"He didn't touch me," Zanny said truthfully.

"I appreciate your saying that," Betty said. "I appreciate it enormously."

And then she began to cry - and so did Zanny. They wept, for different reasons, each in the other's arms.

Six.

Imagination, Father Donovan thought, could be a terrible thing. Fortunately, Murphy was relatively free of it. Take his choice of books, for instance. Father Donovan had made a point of keeping him well supplied with reading material - mostly The Farmer and Stockbreeder and innocuous stories of the saints. If the saints were also martyrs - and quite a lot of them were - Father Donovan did some careful editing. The horrific sufferings of others tended to heighten one's fear of one's own impending doom -- or so Father Donovan argued. When Murphy, who read very little anyway, asked for a collection of s.e.xton Blake stories Father Donovan had held out for as long as he could. Not that he read them himself or knew much about them apart from the dust-jackets which were b.l.o.o.d.y in the extreme. On his visit this week he had chosen the mildest-looking one he could find - a gloved hand with a gun in it. He had also included copies of the Dandy and Beano. That a grown man should read comics had come to him as a surprise. But Murphy did. Murphy had requested them. He had also requested a book on the Irish potato famine by an author he couldn't remember. Father Donovan, drawing a blank here, gave him his own copy of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Pay c.o.c.k. Murphy received it politely and without enthusiasm. He had seen it on stage in Dublin. He hadn't liked it. Booze and the Troubles were serious matters. No joke.

Neither was his being here a joke.

Most of the time he couldn't believe it.

He must, surely to G.o.d, be in the depths of an alcoholic nightmare.

.- "Well, Murphy," said Father Donovan, falsely bright, "and how are you, this day?"

"All right," said Murphy.

"Sleeping?" asked Father Donovan.

"Tis an explanation," said Murphy.

Small talk in these horrific circ.u.mstances was difficult. Father Donovan told him about Miss Sheldon-Smythe's behaviour at the convent fair. "Sure, she nearly had everyone marching here to get you out."

"Nice old biddy," said Murphy, surprised and rather pleased. Father Donovan's t.i.ttle-tattle about the convent was usually a bit of a bore.

The next item wasn't boring either. Father Donovan told him about the judge. "It seems he climbed some stairs" (no reason given) "and fell. The coroner at the inquest said it was a ma.s.sive heart attack."

Murphy brightened perceptibly. It was an act of treason for Mother Benedicta to get a judge to open the fair. It was an act of G.o.d to kill off the old b.u.g.g.e.r.

"Good," he said.

Father Donovan's gentle elderly face creased in disapproval and then smoothed out again into understanding. If he, Father Donovan, were sitting here with the sure and certain knowledge that the hangman had viewed him at some stage -- probably during his period of exercise -- and a.s.sessed his weight and all the other disgusting details connected with an execution - then he, too, might regard the death of Ponsonby without sympathy.

"It's a pity," Murphy said, "it wasn't the b.l.o.o.d.y punk of a judge who set me up at my trial."

Father Donovan struggled to be silent and lost. "My son," he said, "'tis a state of grace you should be aiming for. Will you not confess it to me now?"

Murphy listened to a burst of birdsong just outside the barred window of the visitors' room. It reminded him of his hens. He wondered who was looking after them. He wondered, too, who would look after the auld fellow in Ireland in the days of his dotage -- not too far in the future. It occurred to him very forcibly that he wouldn't be around himself to do so. He was in no great hurry to reach a Catholic heaven, full of rabbits and a celestial Bridget. (Would Bridget's unborn baby go to Limbo? He wasn't well up on this sort of thing.) A sudden spasm of fury shook him. He had done nothing. He was here for something he didn't do.

"If I had a bomb," he said, "I'd explode it."

"May the Blessed Virgin forgive you."

"Oh, she would," Murphy said with the supreme conviction of his faith, "she most surely would."

"You still insist you didn't kill Bridget?"

"May the Lord strike me dead this minute if I did," said Murphy.