Froomb! Read online

  “You were born there?” Peter snapped.

  “Yes. My father owned the pub. Oliver Brunt. That was my father’s name. Funny how I couldn’t remember the name of the pub till then—■”

  “You lived there?”

  “Of course. It was very busy, fashionable. A lot of VIPs used to stay there for the quiet and comfort.”

  Peter took up his pencil and began writing again.

  “When did you leave?” he barked.

  “When I was nineteen,” John Brunt said. “I went with a chap to sail round the world in a thirty-foot yacht. I put two thousand in I borrowed from my father, but the other chap never got round to paying his share. He ran off in Sydney to dodge creditors and I was left holding the baby and a ticket nailed to the mast. From there I—”

  “Your father!”

  “He had an accident and died while I was away. That was why no money was sent to me and I ended up in a jail—” “Your mother!”

  “She married a wealthy customer while I was aWay. I

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  didn’t like him, though I didn’t know him well enough to like one way or the other. I just wasn’t prepared to like him. I was jealous, I suppose. I never really tried to find out what the feeling was because I was ashamed to feel it, anyway.”

  The edge of Peter’s sharpness was being blunted by an increasing puzzlement.

  “What happened to you then?” he said.

  “I took a job as jockey to a flying doctor who lost his license through drink,” John said. “The curious thing is he tried most of the time to get me drunk as well, when I was flying him. I don’t know whether it was bonhomie or just masochism. He was never so happy as when he thought we would crack up.

  “He was a bit biffo. He used to get me to tell him how my creditors were getting near and creeping round the gum trees or hiding down the manholes outside the surgery.”

  Peter’s puzzlement increased.

  “Go on,” he said, watching closely.

  “Then my mother heard about me and money was sent. I’d saved from my wages and with this remittance I went out to pay up the creditors but the doctor got my ear, and we blew the lot between us. Then I used his airplane to get to Tasmania, and got a job in the crew of a ship.”

  “Your mother sent you money?”

  “Yes ”

  “Why?”

  “Well, she didn’t want me to be in trouble. I didn’t know my father was dead. She forgot to mention it till some time after—when I found he’d left me ten thousand.”

  John had the feeling that his listener didn’t understand something but would not admit it and therefore didn’t ask.

  “But haven’t you got all this in the records, somewhere?” John asked.

  “George has gone to look.”

  George came back suddenly carrying a mug that steamed. He gave it to the traveler. John took the mug gratefully. His dryness had got to a pitch where he could hardly talk without pain.

  He took a gulp of the hot coffee, and when he had swallowed and the taste permeated his tongue he started.

  “Good God, what’s that?” he said, horrified.

  Peter’s eyes narrowed.

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  “Coffee,” said Peter watchfully.

  John felt hot with embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry. That was very ungenerous of me,” he said, and took up the mug again, bracing himself to drink more.

  But George took the mug away and went out again.

  “Don’t you drink coffee in London?” Peter said.

  “I did,” John corrected mildly. “Yes.”

  “Describe your father.”

  “He was a big man, very good figure. He used to dress rather oddly, frilly silk suits, cravats, mutton chop whiskers, silk knee breeches and black stockings, shoes with buckles. It was part of the act, he said, good for business. The whole staff was dressed in period style.

  George re-entered with another steaming mug. Peter turned to him.

  “Brunt,” he said.

  “Yes,” said George, as if agreeing.

  Peter turned back to John. John was eyeing the steaming mug with apprehension, which dissolved as he smelled coffee. George gave him the mug. John drank.

  “Ah, that’s better,” he said, hiding new doubt about the flavor.

  Peter and George exchanged glances.

  “Real,” said George, staring at Peter.

  “Yes,” Peter agreed.

  George wrenched the mug out of John’s grateful hand. Some coffee spilled on the floor. George shoved John hard in the chest. Surprised, John sat heavily in a chair that was behind him.

  “Look, I—” John began, his temper flashing.

  “Sit still,” Peter said. “There are more questions.”

  George stood against the wall, and drank the rest of the coffee as if for want of something to do. A girl came in, tall, dark-haired and plainly dressed, in a kind of Puritan frock, black with white collar. Her green eyes rested on John for a moment, bright, it seemed, with suspicion. She held a thick file under her arm, which she put on the desk in front of Peter.

  John saw the cover was marked in big black letters, BRUNT.

  Peter opened the file, watching John as he did it.

  “Are you sure that you were killed?”

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  The girl watched. The traveler felt an almost electric

  barrage of searching eyes.

  “Yes. That was the one thing Packard couldn’t have made a mistake about. That was the easiest part of all. I mean, you couldn’t possibly make a mistake about killing somebody if you really meant it, could you?”

  •3

  The sky was blue above London, marbled with streaky formations of very high cloud. The river wound down to the Estuary, covered from shore to shore with a ten-foot-deep carpet of detergent foam. The hulls of ships in the Pool rose out of it like rafts. David Packard’s office looked out upon this scene from a great height. It was a place of windows and colored metals, rich nylon carpet, plastic sofas and armchairs, bookcases, pastel telephones and crystal tape banks, the reels now idle. Beyond the office on the north side a private laboratory led off. On the west, his luxury flat offered rest after the rigors of too-long workdays. In his office of translucent plastics and dural frames, of winding chrome tubes and blown-up atom structures, there was an incongruous metal-bound Victorian trunk, defying the rest of the furnishings. It contained Packard’s collection of Victorian penny plays whose lurid covers, more than the lines, had saved him, he said, from madness many times.

  He stood, his back to the broad Thames scene at the window, his hands in the pockets of his baggy trousers. His white shirt was open at the neck, the tie hanging. He was big, loosely built, a kind of sag in his stance as if not to make another look too small. His face was heavy, lined with humor, eyes alight with a zest for life. His hair was red and untidy, too much ruffled by his fingers.

  He faced the end wall of the office, with its press button scene-change charts temporarily hidden by artificial flowers on sliding panels. He kept his back not only to the Thames, but his secretary as well.

  She was a big woman of over thirty, fair, soft looking,

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  peaches and cream and china blue eyes, a fine figure, her big bosom heaving with a mixture of wrath and alarm.

  “David!” she said, horrified. “You didn’t!”

  “Well, I did,” he said, shrugging. “I keep telling you I did. Do you want me to wrap it up and throw it?”

  “But your brother, of all people!” She put a hand to her breast as if to stop its rapid rise and fall.

  “I thought the wretch would look on it in a Christian way and give it a sort of blessing. I didn’t think he’d take the line that Heaven was his own private ward and he the big surgeon.”

  “But he is the Archbishop of Canterbury! What did you expect?”

  “I suppose I expected the same old bull-headed
prejudice and bullying tactics as I got,” he said, swinging round to her. “But at the back I suppose I hoped he might be a little different. After all, I was going to kill a man and I wasn’t sure about the religious aspect. I felt a bit frightened of God, like a small boy. These things are ground into you when you’re young. You can’t shake them out of your soul.”

  “And you actually told him you were going to kill John Brunt?” Her voice whined up in fear like a lift and ended in a hiss.

  “I just said I was sending him to Heaven,” he said.

  “Don’t be absurd, David! What other way is there but by killing him?”

  “I think he’s jealous,” said Packard, rattling change in one pocket. “He probably thinks if we succeed it’ll make him look like a second spot salesman.”

  “Oh God!” she said hopelessly. “You didn’t say that?”

  He stared at her, evasive as a schoolboy in fake innocence.

  “I can’t remember exactly,” he said.

  “Oh lord, you did!” She turned away as if to seek assistance from the empty rest of the room. “Now what! How

  on earth you two managed to live together in the same family, I don’t know!”

  “We were forced to live together,” he said, starting to walk about. “We had a very stern father, and my mother

  died when I was three. So I was constantly squashed be

  tween my father’s iron will, and my eighteen-year-old brother’s unbending prejudice, and I kept flying up like an orange pip you squeeze between your fingers. Those flights were the only joys in a life of constant flattening, but they always

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  ended in a landing with my pants down. That’s how I became a rebel.”

  “You’re just talking,” she said. “Where is John Brunt now?” An awful chill clutched her. Ten years with David Packard had taught her what to expect when he began to speak airily or with aggressive humor.

  “On his way, Ann. On his way.”

  “You’ve—killed him?”

  Beyond the open panels of the window Big Ben struck a half hour before Packard replied.

  “That was the idea, wasn’t it?”

  “But you weren’t to do it till tonight!”

  “Having leaked to Gordon, I had to advance the program.” “Why on earth did you tell him? I can’t understand you, David. It’s as if you deliberately try to hang yourself—” She stopped on a sharp intake of breath. David Packard had been a member of the government who had voted to bring back hanging for all murders instead of for some. Hanging was once more the law. She felt her heart racing, as if this was the first time she had thought of the awful connection. She had thought of it before, but the deed had not been done then, and all along had seemed unreal.

  “He might hold his trap,” said Packard. “Gordon, I mean.” “He might? When you know how he hates your science and all your experiments. You’re constantly at war. Every new discovery seems a challenge to everything he stands for, and he stands for an awful lot, David. His conscience wouldn’t let him stay quiet about it if he really thought—” “True, true. He has a conscience like a turtle’s back,” Packard said. “It was because of that I advanced the program., Anyhow, Dicky knows. Dicky Wayling, I mean.”

  “The Prime Minister? Oh no! When did you tell him?” “A little while back.” He rattled change again. “I was running short of my own cash for it, and needed some equipment. I told him vaguely what the project was—kind of space travel. He was very pleased. He said it would put us way ahead of the Yanks and the Ruskies.”

  “That’s just what he would say—until you fail,” she said sharply. “Then he’ll have your head. You know what a weathercock he is.”

  “You have beautiful teeth when you hiss,” he said. “Tee- to-tum is the word I would use.”

  She went to him and put her hand on his arm.

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  “David, bring the boy back. Please. Now! Don’t wait till they come—”

  “Who?”

  “Who do you think? Your brother will try and stop you doing this. He’s sure to. He’ll feel he has to. He can’t let murder go on when he knows about it. He’ll have to try and stop you!”

  “How, would you suggest?”

  “By telling the police. What other way is there?”

  “Yes, the old Cantuar might do that, even,” Packard said, frowning. “But I’ve got to wait the twenty-four hours. That’s the whole point. People have often died and come back again, with no idea where they’ve been. There’s a protective lock, a vacuum in between us and Heaven. We’ve got to give John Brunt time to get to the other side of that, because that’s half the object of the exercise. No, I can’t bring him back now. Much too soon, sweet Ann. Much too soon.”

  “But they’ll say you murdered somebody. And supposing you can’t bring him back—I mean, you don’t know you can, David!”

  “I’ve done it with animals,” he said gruffly.

  A new spasm of alarm shot through her. The years had taught her many things about David Packard, and she could recognize fear when no one else could.

  “You’re frightened of something—”

  “Well, you’re not easing my mind, are you? All these bloody alarms and excursions! It’s an experiment, long thought out, agreed between me and Brunt and put into effect with every possible care and forethought.”

  “Yes, I know, David, I know, but you were going to do it so that nobody would know. That was essential because of— well, because of the way you had to do it. But now somebody knows you must bring him back!”

  “It would ruin the experiment,” he said briskly.

  She shook her head, her china blue eyes sharply concerned.

  “Listen, David, if Gordon has told the police, and I think he’d have to!—they’ll come. They’ll come here and go into that lab and they’ll see John Brunt sitting up dead in that awful chair!”

  “They won’t, Ann. They won’t!”

  “But they must do! You can see that chair as soon as you open the door!”

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  “They won’t see him, Ann!”

  “How can you stop them?”

  “John Brunt isn’t there!”

  “Good God! What have you done? You haven’t hidden the body? That would be disastrous! They would—”

  “Will you shut up screaming like a cockatoo?” he cried out.

  She swallowed and smoothed her dress across her thighs where it tended to wrinkle. The action calmed her a little.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “This way of killing and then holding the corpse in suspension turns out to have a side-effect.”

  Her blood began to freeze. The term “side-effect” of recent years had become another name for disaster.

  “What side-effect?” she whispered.

  Packard showed big white teeth in a bitter grin.

  “He disintegrated,” Packard said.

  “I will ask the Special Branch to look into it if you like, my lord,” the Home Secretary said. “They are very diplomatic.” He hesitated. “You don’t think it might be a case of your brother’s—er—humor, your Grace? . . . No? Only he has rather a record for—for joking, especially when he is in the periods between very heavy work. It’s a kind of safety valve—No, I don’t suggest for a moment that you would be misled! Not his brother, no. Of course not, no! . . . I fully agree! . . . No, quite . . . Yes, of course. Yes, your Grace, I wiH'ask the Special Branch to look into it confidentially.” He put his telephone down and made a face at the wall of his spacious study.

  “Crazy Cantuar,” he said, and poked his intercom. “Billy, get me Hoskins will you? Yes, Special Branch Hoskins. Thank you. It is suggested that a Minister is going to murder somebody. Highly unlikely, I should say, but Hoskins will enjoy.”

  “I don’t know how you can stand there, just—just looking out of the window!” Ann said tearfully angry.

  “What else can I do?” Packard said, turning.


  “Look David,” she said urgently, “even if he’s vanished he can be easily traced here.”

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  “Don’t flap!” he pleaded. “It’s going to be all right!” “What—now you’ve disintegrated him?”

  “Don’t make such a fuss!” he said. “It will be all right when we reverse. He’ll reassemble again, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps! Oh David! Why on earth did you do such a crazy thing?”

  “You mean why in Heaven did I,” he said, and grinned. “I did it because it’s got to be done by somebody and I’m not going to be forced off right in the middle of the greatest of all man’s discoveries! I knew it would be dangerous. That’s why I’ve gone through on my own with just John Brunt. I couldn’t bring anyone else in because of the risk if something went wrong.” He went to her. “There’s no point in our fighting, Ann. I began this. I’m going to hang on and see whether it’s right or not. If mighty Cantuar does try and shove his boathook in the gears, he still couldn’t get anything done before I’ve proved it one way or the other.”

  “But how long must you wait for that?” Her voice shook. “Not a whole day! Oh, no!”

  “Till tomorrow afternoon; twenty-four hours,” he said. “Oh, no! Do it now! See if it works now! Please do! Otherwise it means going on a whole day without knowing whether he’ll come back or not!”

  “He’s got to come back!” Packard snarled at the river scene. “He’s bloody well got to! The animals did. You know that!”

  “But they didn’t disintegrate,” she said.

  “No,” he said, frowning at the river. “That might show at last that there is some subtle difference between Man and the other animals. Or it might show that Man just hasn’t got the adaptability.”

  Ann turned away from him.

  “You’ll kill yourself, David. One way or another, that’s what will happen!”

  “And one thing I’m sure of; nobody I know will want to bring me back.”

  “It’s Froomb!” she cried. “Don’t you care at all?”

  “When rushing to disaster, don’t waste time flapping,” Packard said. “Sit back. Enjoy the ride. Something might turn up, and you’ll be a hero instead of a nasty mess at the crossroads.”

  “I hate you!” she said, and left the room in tears.