Sir Arnold groped his way back to the bathroom and found the Redoxon. Or thought he did. A few moments later he knew he hadn't. The fucking things were Auntie Bloody Bea's denture cleaners. In the darkness Sir Arnold Gonders spat desperately into the basin and thought dementedly about his wife and her rotten relatives. And she had the gall to blame him for her nerves. They were the result, she claimed, of being married to a man with such a close relationship with all those dreadful criminals he worked with. She'd been ambiguous about which criminals she'd meant, but he had always been conscious that she and her family believed she had married beneath her and really couldn't have done anything else short of marrying one of the classier Royals. The Gilmott-Gwyres were appalling snobs. On the other hand she also felt very badly about his relationship with God, and if God Almighty wasn't socially upmarket, Sir Arnold Gonders would like to know who was.
Unfortunately Lady Vy's nerves had recently been made very much worse by some clown in the Communications Repair Section who had twice programmed her car phone so that it had put her through to some very shady establishments down by the docks. The next time Vy had used the phone she had been answered by the sod who ran The Holy Temple of Divine Being or on occasion, the second occasion in her case, The Pearly Gates of Paradise. Lady Vy, trying to get through to her sister who was supposed to be still alive, had been horrified to find a clear indication that her husband actually did phone God and that the blighter was manifestly an Oriental bent on offering her 'any sexual application, herb or vibrating what-not that will bring you Heavenly satisfaction. Money-back guarantee. Massage and manual assistance also available.' Her reaction to this first call had been to write off her Jaguar and two other cars by going down the up slipway onto the M85. On the second occasion, three weeks later, she told God, or whoever was in charge of The Pearly Gates of Paradise and it could be the Angel Gabriel himself for all she cared, to fuck off, you shit. As a result she had had a terrible crisis of conscience before she'd even got home at the thought that she might indeed have been speaking to God. 'You're always having talks with the bloody man,' she had screamed hysterically at Sir Arnold, 'and for all I know...But why me? Why pick on me of all miserable sinners?'
It had all been most harrowing and Sir Arnold had counted himself lucky that he knew exactly who she had been talking to Glenda used some of the bastard's gadgets and had told the swine he'd put him out of business and circulation for a long time if he ever played God again. This hadn't helped Lady Vy. She had never been the same woman since and had threatened him with divorce if he ever said God was love again in her hearing. Sir Arnold had blamed that bloody Indian, and his wife had blamed herself for ever marrying a policeman. In the end her doctor had persuaded her to consult a psychiatrist who had advised her that she was suffering from a very natural condition in women of her age and from lack of sexual satisfaction. The Chief Constable, who had had his men bug the psychiatrist's office in the hope that she'd admit to committing adultery, had temporarily agreed with this diagnosis. The woman was obviously depressed and lacked sexual satisfaction and he'd sometimes wondered what the result would have been if she had been subjected to the sort of test female shot-putters in the Olympics were given. The psychiatrist's next suggestion, that she must insist on her conjugal rights at least twice a week together with Vy's raucous laughter and protest that he couldn't get an erection once a year let alone twice a week, was far less to his liking. The confounded woman's appeal for him had always sprung from her social connections rather than anything approaching sexual fancy. In fact even before the Lord had shown him the error of his ways he had been far more attracted by lithe and girlish figures like Glenda's and not by Vy's muscular and ill-proportioned torso. All the same, spurred on by her diabolical laughter and by massive doses of Vitamin E, he had done his damnedest to satisfy her marital needs. Fortunately the anti-depressants combined with her nightly intake of gin to render her too doped to want sex or even to know when she hadn't had it. Still, Sir Arnold didn't want to lose her entirely she had influence through her father, Sir Edward Gilmott-Gwyre, and she gave him a social acceptability he would otherwise lack. But now, to judge by the hideous snores, she was in serious trouble.
He pushed himself away from the bathroom wall and staggered down the passage again and had opened the bedroom door before another alarming thought hit him. He'd never heard her make a noise like this. And naturally she had thought he'd be staying in Tween as he usually did after a heavy night. Perhaps that horrible butch Aunt Bea was sleeping in his bed. If she was, the old slut was in for a nasty surprise. He might not like his wife, but he was damned if he was going to have a lesbian take his place in his own bedroom. The Chief Constable moved towards the bed very cautiously with his hand out and as he groped about towards those snores, his fingers touched some hair. In the darkness Sir Arnold Gonders froze in his shambling tracks. That wasn't Vy's hair he'd know her curls anywhere and it wasn't Bea's either, hers was short and straight. The stuff he'd just felt was long and greasy. It was a man's hair and, come to that, those were a man's snores. There was no mistaking the fact. There was no mistaking something else either. The smell.
He knew now why Genscher was limping and wheezing. He also knew that he was dealing with an exceptionally dangerous intruder. All his life he'd known something like this was going to happen if Vy left the bloody door open in his drunken and exhausted state he wasn't thinking at all clearly. The possibility of the house being taken over by the IRA flashed through the Chief Constable's disordered mind. He had to get to his gun in the bedside drawer, the gun and the panic button. With the utmost caution he felt for the bedside table and began to ease the drawer open. The damned thing was stuck. He pulled harder and the thing came a short way out with a loud squeak. The next moment there was a movement on the bed. Sir Arnold hesitated no longer. If he couldn't get to his gun...his hand groped around inside the drawer but there was no gun and no panic button. Grasping the wooden bedside lamp by its top he swung the base down onto the snores. A horrid thud, the bulb in the lamp shattered, the plug came out of the wall socket and the snores stopped. In the darkness Sir Arnold stepped back to the main light switch by the door, trod on a piece of broken bulb, cut his foot and swore.
By the time he'd managed to turn the light on it was fairly clear that things were more dreadful than even he had anticipated. For one thing Lady Vy was awake she had been kicked into a semblance of life by the reflex convulsion of Timothy Bright's legs and without her contact lenses was having difficulty telling who was who. Beside her in the bed what she imagined was Sir Arnold lay bleeding horribly from a scalp wound while a naked man with some sort of club in his hand was swearing horribly over by the door. To Lady Vy's boozy anti-depressed mind it seemed obvious she was about to be raped and murdered. Acting with remarkable speed for a woman in her condition, she scrabbled for the Chief Constable's revolver which she'd kept handy in her own bedside drawer. It was her ultimate line of defence and she meant to use it. Her first shot hit the mirror in the Victorian wardrobe to the murderer's right. Lady Vy tried to aim more carefully for the second and as she did so she was vaguely conscious that her attacker was yelling at her in a faintly familiar voice. 'For fuck's sake put that fucking gun down '