Having got his racing pulse almost back to normal, Sir Arnold stood up and went over to the hatch. Originally it had been used to roll beer barrels down into the cellar. He would have to use it now to get the bloke up. Sir Arnold pulled the ropes and undid the bolts. Then he went upstairs and round to the yard and opened the hatch from above. Beside him Genscher wheezed strangely and sniffed. The poor creature was still in a bad way. But Sir Arnold hadn't got time to worry about the Rottweiler's problems. He had far more important ones of his own to consider.
He fetched a rope from the garage and dropped one end down the hatch into the cellar. Then he went back down into the cellar and dragged the body over to the beer ramp under the hatch. Here he tied the rope round the fellow's waist. So far so good.
He was about to go up the steps when to his horror he heard footsteps on the floor above. Switching off the light, he stood in the darkness sweating. What the hell was happening? That bloody Bea couldn't be prowling round the house now. It wasn't possible. He had watched her sink three gin and tonics and there'd been all that Valium in the tonic bottle. The woman must have the constitution of the proverbial ox to stay awake with that lot inside her. Or perhaps the cow had realized her drink had been doctored and had taken something to counteract it. She was obviously far brighter than he had supposed. And the door of the cellar was open. She was bound to spot it.
Upstairs, Aunt Bea blundered across the kitchen in search of some bicarbonate of soda, anything to stop her head spinning. She hadn't felt this drunk in a long time, and to make it all the more peculiar she'd only had three small gin and tonics and had drowned the gin in tonic too. At this rate she'd have to give up drinking altogether. There must be something terribly wrong with her liver. As she blundered into the kitchen table and clutched at the back of a chair and finally sat down, she was an extremely puzzled woman. She was even more puzzled by an over-riding desire to sing. She hadn't had that urge for ages and usually did it in the privacy of her own flat, and in the bathroom at that. It was all very well being a powerful woman and generally rather masculine in many ways, but it was no great help having the voice of an extremely bad soprano. But now for some unknown reason she felt like singing 'If you were the only girl in the world and I was the only boy.'
As the sounds reached the Chief Constable in the cellar and were translated into an overture, a new and frightful thought occurred to him, that the ghastly Auntie Bea was making some disgusting proposition to him one that he rejected out of hand. She evidently knew he was in the cellar but, if she thought he was going to play the girl to her being the boy, she had another thing coming. And she couldn't possibly be singing to anyone else in the house. Mrs Thouless was as deaf as a post and Vy was without question dead to the world. As if to confirm him in this insane notion that he was being courted by an unabashed lesbian, and if she had looked any different the normally passive Sir Arnold might have welcomed the experience, Auntie Bea got up and crossed to the cellar door and peered down the steps. 'If there is anyone down there, you can come up now to Auntie Bea and give me the tongue of day,' she whispered. The Chief Constable curdled in the corner. He had many fantasies in his life, but that was definitely not one of them. 'All aboard the Auntie Bea. Last orders and rites. The rest is silence.' And having uttered these ominous words, she shut the cellar door and locked it.
In the darkness Sir Arnold Gonders listened to her retreating footsteps and cursed the day his wife had brought the beastly woman into their life. Either she was taking the piss out of him or she was clean out of her skull. Whichever she was he had to get himself out of the fucking cellar, one, and two, drag the blighter up after him. The only way out now was up the planks of the beer-barrel ramp. By the light of the moon shining occasionally through the scudding clouds he tried climbing the plank by gripping the edge with his hands and moving one of his feet at a time. Halfway up he slipped and was left clutching the plank to himself like a mating toad. With infinite care to avoid splinters he let himself down and considered the problem again. What he needed were some non-slip soles or, since they weren't available, something he could attach to the plank that wouldn't slip. For a minute he thought of using Timothy Bright as a temporary ladder and had got so far as to prop him against the plank when he decided that wasn't very clever. Unless he tied the fellow on...
Sir Arnold cancelled the project and went back with his torch to look for something to stand on. He found it at the back of one of the stone wine racks in the shape of a battered suitcase which contained ancient copies of La Vie Parisienne and which had once belonged to a waterworks employee who had evidently whiled away his spare time with photographs of unclad French women of the thirties. Sir Arnold had kept them for his own amusement but now the suitcase was going to be put to a better purpose.
Five minutes later he was out into the cool night air and grasping the rope attached to the body in the cellar. He stood for a moment to consider the problem. It was amazing how quite simple tasks became problematical when they had to be put into effect. One thing he wasn't going to do was have the rope slip back through the hatch if he had to let go. Walking across the cobbled yard he tied the end to the leg of a bench in his workshop. As he straightened up he began to realize that pulling the body wasn't going to be at all easy. He wished now he hadn't left the bottle of whisky in the cellar. He could do with a stiff dram before attempting the big pull. He went round to the French windows and was grateful to find that Auntie Bea hadn't locked them too. In his study he poured himself a large Chivas Regal and drank it down. Yes, that felt better.
Back in the yard he grasped the rope and began to pull. Slowly, the body crept up the planks and Sir Arnold was beginning to think he had done it when his feet slipped on the cobbles and with a nasty thud Timothy Bright fell onto the floor of the cellar again. As the Chief Constable fought to get his breath back Genscher whined beside him. Sir Arnold looked down at the huge dog and was inspired. He had found the perfect method of getting the damned lout up and out. He went into the workshop and found several rolls of insulating tape.
'Genscher old boy, come here and make yourself useful,' he called softly. 'You're going to be my dumb chum.'
Five minutes later the Rottweiler was. With twenty metres of insulating tape strapped tightly round its jaws and the back of its head it was incapable of whining and its breathing had taken on a new and stressful wheezing.
'Now then,' said Sir Arnold, 'just one more thing.' And he tied the rope to the dog's collar. Then he stepped back and took a deep breath before unleashing all the rage against circumstance that had built up in him since he had been hounded by the press at the Serious Crime Squad celebrations. As he kicked Genscher's so far unscathed scrotum the great beast bounded forward, desperately trying to come to terms with this appalling visitation and the changed relationship with a master who had previously treated it almost kindly. In the cellar, happily oblivious to the fate waiting for him, Timothy shot up the ramp and through the hatch onto the cobbles and was dragged across the yard by the desperate dog. As Genscher hurled himself away from his own backside, Timothy followed and was dragged into the workshop where he collided with the leg of the bench, bounced off it and was finally wedged under the front off-side wheel of Lady Vy's Mercedes.