One Foot in the Grave by Peter Dickinson Page B

for emphasis and hobbling after it. “I told them if only Mr. Pibble was here he’d say I’d done the right thing. McQueen wouldn’t have it. So in the end I had to come and ask you. You don’t mind?”
    â€œCome in. Would you like a chair? Shall I ring?”
    â€œNo, no, no, my dear man. I shall do quite well on my scaffolding. Now listen. They were vulnerable, we were not. McQueen, on my right, dealt. I picked up one spade, eight hearts—eight, Mr. Pibble, but only the queen and tiddlers. …”
    Jabbering technicalities, Lady Treadgold rotated herself and her frame until she presented only her monolithic rear to the bed. She manipulated the gadget at the side of the frame which unfolded a sort of canvas seat across it, so that it became what she called her “scaffolding,” a support against which she could prop herself without the pain of sitting. Colonel McQueen had once told Pibble that she could sit perfectly well if she wanted to, but that she preferred to stand because it gave her a better view of her opponents’ hands. Pibble, before his adventure, had sometimes spent the empty hours between tea and supper watching the regular game in the bridge room. He seldom played—the stakes were too high for him, the conventions too new and complex, his own attention span too short; but Lady Treadgold used the bystanders as part of her armory, appealing to them to confirm the sanity of her crazier forays and taking their approval for granted before they had time to answer. Now he did his best to concentrate on her story and, as he did so, became aware of an oddness about it.
    â€œSo there I was,” she snapped, her stony blue eyes popping in the brick-red face. “Five hearts, doubled on my right. What would you have done?”
    (Kicked the table over? Had a fit and fallen frothing to the floor? Challenged McQueen to fisticuffs?)
    â€œBid six hearts?” guessed Pibble, who had lost track halfway through.
    She cackled as she settled onto her frame.
    â€œNaughty, naughty. I won’t say it didn’t cross my mind. No, I redoubled.”
    â€œFor a rescue?”
    â€œMy dear man! Nobody rescues me !They all passed.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œGuess.”
    (Three down? Five? Seven? It had happened—but there was that oddness.)
    â€œYou made it.”
    â€œI did. I crashed the king and ace of hearts, ran the rest of the trumps, threw McQueen in with his ace of diamonds, which he’d been too mean to get rid of, and forced him to lead into dummy’s club tenace!”
    (Yes. There it was. She’d come all this way not to appeal about something which had gone wrong but to crow over something that had gone right. So she hadn’t come for that at all.)
    â€œWell done. I wish I’d been there to see you do it.”
    â€œI wish you’d been there to see McQueen’s face, especially when I pointed out they had six diamonds cold.”
    â€œIt’s nice to know that life is going on without me.”
    â€œLife! You can’t call it life, Mr. Pibble. Not compared with what you’ve been up to. I want to know all about that. It’s ridiculous, there must be at least a dozen policemen hanging around, looking as though they expected one of us to leap out of our wheelchairs and shoot them, but they don’t seem any further on, do they?”
    â€œI’m afraid I really don’t know much about it.”
    â€œBut you found George’s body, didn’t you? Nurse says you’d spotted something was up and went out to check. I’d have done the same in your place—never could keep my nose out of mischief. Now, don’t tell me you haven’t told them about George; that’s not very public-spirited of you, Mr. Pibble, though of course blackmailers deserve everything they get.”
    â€œI’m sorry, I—”
    â€œStill, murders are murders.”
    â€œYes,