Fall

A return to Barchester Towers. It seems as if I've been away for ages. I've almost come to miss the place: the view, the grubby comfort of its unyielding concrete faces, the sharp astringent pinkness of my door, the shuddering stinking lift and wheezing stairs. It's like a homecoming. A place I've been yearning for, a sanctuary, a hideaway from the rough and tumble of the world below. I have here all I want: privacy, peace, quiet. What else is there?

Up here the real world is toy town with matchstick houses and matchbox cars, the people meaningless ciphers, as populous and unfathomable as ants. Height and distance gives one a true perspective; you see things as they are. A hilly city, a rocky coastline, the monoliths like this one clinging to the scant flat land between. And even this land isn't real, not real land, not land with history. That road was shrugged up by a casual earthquake a century and a half ago; they used to sail ships along it and refit them in the basin where the cricketers now play. A hundred and fifty years. Not much in time, two lifetimes near enough, but those lives and lifetimes are barely known to us now; dimly imagined, barely appreciated. We're selfish individuals in a very selfish species. We really matter only to ourselves.

• • •

No rest for the wicked, no flight from the knock that comes in the middle of the evening torpor. Insistent knocking, like that of a child, annoying, making you hasten to open the door and cool the grated nerves. And on the step, familiar faces. I recognise the panting.

'Mr Balding?'

I touch my head. 'Well, I am getting a little thin ...'

'Thank goodness we've arrived after the diet, eh Roger?'

'Look I think you've got the wrong chapter.'

A quick check of a notebook. 'Oh, it must be Mr Dumpey then.'

'I see your reading skills haven't improved. It's Dombey And I'm surprised you knocked. Wouldn't you rather kick it in?'

'Quite frankly, yes, but we're pacing ourselves. We hope to end the evening with a good kicking, but for now I'm afraid I must call a halt to all this banter. There's serious police business afoot. We'd like a word.'

'You'd better come in then.'

I usher them into the lounge. 'I suppose I should offer you something.'

'What have you got?'

'Well if this is a British cop show I'd say a cup of tea. If it's American I'd say a hail of bullets.'

'Tea please.'

I go to the kitchen and switch on the jug, then realise I'm out of milk.

'I'm out of milk,' I say, poking my head around the door.

'Oh, we prefer it black,' says old Bill. 'Like our suspects.' They both laugh.

Three steaming mugs of suspect tea and we sit sipping in the lounge, though it seems my arrival's interrupted something.

'Surprising thing, the human body ...' the older one is saying.

'What it can take ...'

'Eleven floors ...'

'Eleven and a half...'

'Splat! you'd think.'

'Splat!'

'Not much left.'

'Strawberry jam.'

'Just hose the pulp into a body bag ...'

'You'd think ...'

'What is it?' I ask. 'What's going on? What's all this double-act? You're like a couple of third-rate music hall comedians.'

'We're in the right place, then.'

'Stick to the script, Roger. Ahem. Are you acquainted with one Harold "Harry" Purvis, lay preacher ... ?'

'Drunk.'

'That's not an occupation, sir.'

'With him it is.'

'... lay preacher, late of this building?'

'Late? You mean he's dead?'

'You didn't know?'

'No, I didn't.'

'Yes, dead sir. Took a walk, our Mr Purvis.'

'A long walk...'

'... off a short balcony.'

'Cut it out, you're talking in riddles. You mean he fell?'

'Fell. Good word. Succinct. I like it.'

'I'm not surprised,' I say. 'He was pissed out of his tree most of the time.'

'Fell,' he repeats. 'Did he fall ...

'... or was he pushed.'

'It's very hard to say.'

'Or maybe even "dropped"?' his colleague adds.

'Dropped. Interesting word. Has implications, that. All sorts of implications.'

'What are you two on about?'

'Harold Purvis is what we're on about, sir. Harold Purvis, lay preacher, late of this building. The aforementioned gentleman was found reclining on the pavement after apparently stumbling over the parapet between the eleventh and twelfth floors.'

'How sad.'

'Sadder still, sir, is the fact that we suspect his flight was power-assisted.'

'Pushed?'

'No, dropped, as Roger said. There are marks, certain marks upon the body that suggest the gentleman possessed his angel wings before his corpse took flight. To put it bluntly, he was dead before he hit the deck. The perpetrator biffed the body thinking the impact would disguise his deed, but as we said ...'

'... it's surprising what the human body can take.'

I sip my tea and burn my tongue; it's too hot without the milk.

'And what has this to do with me?' I ask through scalded tongue.

The older man clicks his fingers at the younger one, who deposits a notebook in the outstretched palm. He takes it back and reads: "Bloody fucking drunken bastard. Bugger off and bloody kill yourself." Unquote.'

'Who ... ?'

'You.'

'Me?'

'When did I say that?'

'About twenty-two chapters ago.'

'I thought the statute of limitations was twenty chapters?'

'I don't know anything about statues, sir. Are they your words or not? I could go on ...

'No need, I said it, I confess. You've got your man.'

'You mean ... ?'

'I swore at Harry Purvis. I hope the courts are kind.'

He hands back the notebook.

'It's not the swearing we're concerned about.'

'Well, bugger off then.'

'Note that Roger. "Uncooperative."' Roger scribbles in the notebook. 'No, what we're interested in sir is why?'

'Aren't we all, eh? Why? Why us? Why this? Why here and now? It's very metaphysical.'

'Look, Mr Dimbey, I'm a simple chap. I don't need all that philosophical tosh. I do my job, lead my life, raise my kids and believe that in the closing chapters or maybe in the great hereafter, all will be revealed. Who really shot JFK, why the other queue always moves faster, where you can get a good old-fashioned haircut without all that washing and blow-waving nonsense, and what the ultimate meaning of life is. For now, the only question that concerns me is why you were swearing at Mr Purvis.'

'I'd have thought that was obvious.'

'We have a witness to your words, sir, but not your motivation.'

'It's simple. He was in my way.'

'And you swore and kicked him because of that.'

'I didn't kick him. I stepped on his foot.'

'Deliberately?'

'Sort of.'

'Got that, Roger?' Roger nods and scribbles some more. 'And why did you deliberately assault Mr Purvis?'

'It wasn't an assault.'

'You just admitted to it.'

'You're putting words in my mouth.'

'Only in the absence of words of your own.'

'Look, you've seen what the lift's like in this building. It almost never gets past the ninth floor. That means I have to carry myself and my weekly shopping up four flights of stairs. That's bad enough without having some drunken bum sprawled all over one of the landings, throwing up and rolling empty bottles in your path. I asked him to move a couple of times but he was too drunk to respond. He just sat there singing. I inched around him, saw his foot in the way and accidentally trod on it.'

'Accidentally?'

'Accidentally on purpose. To teach him a lesson. If he wanted to get plastered out of his skull, why didn't he do it in the comfort of his own hovel?'

'Maybe he was a social drinker.'

'The fact is he used come back wrecked from his religious revivals and flake out halfway up the stairwell. He was a menace. To himself and everyone else.'

'Defenestration's an excessive cure, though, don't you think?'

'Only just.'

'And why the suggestion of suicide? "Bugger off and bloody kill yourself." A somewhat unusual oath, wouldn't you say?'

'He was a drunken bum. My own father was heading that way when he died. I see now that my father had died long before his accident, inside I mean. He was like Purvis, desperate to escape. He too escaped through the bottle.'

'And you don't approve.'

'No, not the bottle. Escapes all right, but not that way. I've seen what it does to families.'

'Which ways are okay then?'

'Books, films, TV to some extent, imagination, harmless fantasy ...'

'Drugs?'

'No thanks.'

'Well, if you know anyone that does ...'

'And what about a little mindless violence, Mr Doombey? Beat up a drunk and launch him into space. Relieve the stresses and strains of a hard afternoon at the supermarket.'

'What, with four bags of shopping in my hands?'

'And why not?'

'I'd be too knackered for a start. Look, why do you start every sentence with an "and"?'

'And why would you want to know that? (Bugger!) Not thinking of impersonating a police officer are you?'

'I couldn't afford the lobotomy.'

'So you didn't kill Harry Purvis?'

'No. Not really.'

'Pardon?'

'I s'pose that in a sense I did kill him.'

'Say that again.'

'Well, I created him, didn't I? An unpleasant, smelly, malaprop of a man, but pretty harmless nonetheless. And now we find he's dead. Died violently too, all on the whim of his inventor.'

'Well, we can't do you for that.'

'Of course you can't.'

'And there's quite a few we'd go for first if we could. Christie for one.'

'John Reginald?'

'Agatha. Not even Poirot could nail her.'

'Still, there's one thing about it.'

'What's that?'

'A murder investigation has to be more interesting than arresting people for unpaid fines.'

'Yes, that's true. That's very true. Hear that, Roger?' The younger one grunts, still scribbling in his notebook. 'Haven't you finished yet?'

'Nearly,' he replies. 'There,' ending in a flourish. He passes it back to the inspector, who holds it up and looks from it to me.

'Yes. Yes, a good likeness. This lad's missed his vocation.'

'No, I had two weeks off in March.'

He stands up. 'Well, I think that's all. Sergeant?'

'Sir.'

'Thank you for your help Mr Dambey,' he continues. 'A nice juicy murder to sink our teeth into, eh Roger? Do pardon the expression.' He adds, sotto voce, 'No hints, I s'pose?'

'Sorry.'

'Just thought I'd ask.'

They set their cups down in the kitchen sink as they depart. At the door the inspector turns as they always do in police shows when they've had damning evidence all the time and have just been stringing the suspect along. He says, 'Just one more thing before we go, sir. Would you like to buy a raffle ticket?'

'For the policeman's ball,' chimes the other.

'You thinking of having it stitched back on then?'

'Very droll, sir.'

I part with five dollars and scribble my name on the stub.

'See you again,' calls Roger with a friendly wave.

'Not likely,' I reply, 'I've read the plot.'

• • •

That's better. I'm ready now. I'm ready for anything.