'I want to get into touch today,' Ida said.
'Dead or alive?' Old Crowe said.
'Dead. I seen him burnt this afternoon. Cremated.
Come on, Old Crowe, put your fingers on.'
'Better take off your rings,' Old Crowe said. 'Gold confuses it.'
Ida unclothed her fingers, laid the tips on the board, which squeaked away from her across the sheet of foolscap. 'Come on, Old Crowe,' she said.
Old Crowe giggled. He said: 'It's naughty,' and placed his bony digits on the very rim, where they throbbed a tiny nervous tattoo. 'What you going to ask it, Ida?'
'Are you there, Fred?'
The board squeaked away under their fingers, drawing long lines across the paper this way and that. 'It's got a will of its own,' Ida said.
'Hush,' said Old Crowe.
The board bucked a little with its hind wheel and came to a stop. 'We might look now,' Ida said. She pushed the board to one side, and they stared together at the network of pencilling.
'You might make out a Y there,' Ida said.
'Or it might be an N.'
'Anyway something's there. We'll try again.' She put her fingers firmly on the board. 'What happened to you, Fred?' and immediately the board was off and away. All her indomitable will worked through her fingers: she wasn't going to have any nonsense this time, and across the board the grey face of Old Crowe frowned with concentration.
'It's writing real letters,' Ida said with triumph, and as her own fingers momentarily loosened their grip she could feel the board slide firmly away as if on another's errand.
'Hush,' said Old Crowe, but it bucked and stopped.
They pushed the board away, and there, unmistakably, in large thin letters was a word, but not a word they knew: 'SUKILL.'
'It looks like a name,' Old Crowe said.
'It must mean something,' Ida said. 'The Board always means something. We'll try again,' and again the little wooden beetle scampered off, drawing its tortuous trail. The globe burnt red under the scarf, and Old Crowe whistled between his teeth. 'Now,' Ida said and lifted the board. A long ragged word ran diagonally across the paper: 'FRESUICILLEYE.'
'Well,' Old Crowe said, 'that's a mouthful. You can't make anything out of that, Ida.'
'Can't I though?' Ida said. 'Why, it's clear as clear. Fre is short for Fred and Suici for Suicide and Eye--that's what I always say an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'
'What about those two L's?'
'I don't know yet, but I'll bear them in mind.' She leant back in her chair with a sense of power and triumph. 'I'm not superstitious,' she said, 'but you can't get over that. The Board knows.'
'She knows,' Old Crowe said, sucking his teeth.
'One more try?' The board slid and squeaked and abruptly stopped. Clear as clear the name stared up at her: 'PHIL.'
'Well,' Ida said, 'well.' She blushed a little. 'Like a sugar biscuit?'
'Thank you, Ida, thank you.'
Ida took a tin out of the cupboard drawer and pushed it over to Old Crowe. 'They drove him to death,' Ida said happily. 'I knew there was something fishy. See that Eye. That as good as tells me what to do.' Her eye lingered on Phil. 'I'm going to make those people sorry they was ever born.' She drew in her breath luxuriously and stretched her monumental legs. 'Right and wrong,' she said, 'I believe in right and wrong,' and delving a little deeper, with a sigh of happy satiety, she said: 'It's going to be exciting, it's going to be fun, it's going to be a bit of life, Old Crowe,' giving the highest praise she could give to anything, while the old man sucked his tooth and the pink light wavered on the Warwick Deeping.
PART TWO
THE Boy stood with his back to Spicer staring out across the dark wash of sea. They had the end of the pier to themselves--everyone else at that hour and in that weather was in the concert hall. The lightning went on and off above the horizon and the rain dripped. 'Where Ve you been?' the Boy said.
'Walking around,' Spicer said.
'You been There?'
'I wanted to see it was all safe, that there wasn't anything you'd forgotten.'
The Boy said slowly, leaning out across the rail into the doubtful rain: 'When people do one murder, I've read they sometimes have to do another to tidy up.'
The word 'murder' conveyed no more to him than the words 'box,'
'collar,'
'giraffe.' He said: 'Spicer, you keep away from there.'
The imagination hadn't awakened. That was his strength. He couldn't see through other people's eyes, or feel with their nerves. Only the music made him uneasy, the cat-gut vibrating in the heart; it was like nerves losing, their freshness, it was like age coming on, other people's experience battering on the brain.
'Where are the rest of the mob?' he said.
'In Sam's, drinking.'
'Why aren't you drinking too?'
'I'm not thirsty, Pinkie. I wanted some fresh air.
This thunder makes you feel queer.'
'Why don't they stop that bloody noise in there?' the Boy said.
'You not going to Sam's?'
'I've got a job of work to do,' the Boy said.
'It's all right, Pinkie, ain't it? After that verdict it's all right? Nobody asked questions.'
'I just want to be sure,' the Boy said.
'The mob won't stand for any more killing.'
'Who said there was going to be any killing?' The lightning flared up and showed his tight shabby jacket, the bunch of soft hair at the nape. 'I've got a date, that's all. You be careful what you say, Spicer. You aren't milky, are you?'
'I'm not milky. You got me wrong, Pinkie. I just don't want another killing. That verdict sort of shook us all. What did they mean by it? We did kill him, Pinkie?'
'We got to go on being careful, that's all.'
'What did they mean by it though? I don't trust the doctors. A break like that's too good.'
'We got to be careful.'
'What's that in your pocket, Pinkie?'
'I don't carry a gun,' the Boy said. 'You're fancying things.' In the town a clock struck eleven--three strokes were lost in the thunder coming down across the Channel. 'You better be off,' the Boy said. 'She's late already.'
'You've got a razor there, Pinkie.'
'I don't need a razor with a polony. If you want to know what it is, it's a bottle.'
'You don't drink, Pinkie.'
'Nobody would want to drink this.'
'What is it, Pinkie?'
'Vitriol,' the Boy said. 'It scares a polony more than a knife.' He turned impatiently away from the sea and complained again: 'That music'--it moaned in his head in the hot electric light, it was the nearest he knew to sorrow, just as a faint secret sensual pleasure he felt, touching the bottle of vitriol with his fingers as Rose came hurrying by the concert hall, was his nearest approach to passion. 'Get out,' he said to Spicer. 'She's here.'
'Oh,' Rose said, 'I'm late. I've run all the way,' she said. 'I thought you might have thought '
'I'd have waited,' the Boy said.
