He didn't get much. Half an hour later his wife stormed into the room and woke him. She was in a filthy mood. 'You disgust me,' she told him. 'Can't you leave anyone alone?'
'Leave anyone alone? I never went anywhere near the bitch. She was the one who attacked me.'
'You really expect me to believe that? Bea has an aversion to men. She finds them repulsive.'
'The feeling is mutual,' said the Chief Constable. 'And I don't care what she finds repulsive, she's got no right to go round attempting to murder people.'
'You must have provoked her in some way. She's a very lovely, peaceful person.'
Sir Arnold looked at her with bloodshot, unbelieving eyes. 'Peaceful?' he snarled. 'Peaceful? That woman? You've got a bloody odd idea what peace is like. There I was hunting for my slippers that's all I was doing, trying to find my slippers under the bed and without the slightest warning she hurled herself on me.'
'I don't believe it. But I haven't come here to argue with you. Bea and I are leaving now. We're going to Tween. You can come when you feel up to it.'
'Like never,' Sir Arnold thought, but he didn't say it.
'And while we're on the subject, I suppose you know that young man has escaped from the cellar. He wrapped insulating tape round Genscher's nose and got away.'
'Really?' said Sir Arnold, trying to think how he could use this new interpretation of events. 'The bloke escaped after wrapping tape round Genscher's nose? How very peculiar.'
'He got through the hatch,' said Lady Vy. 'You can't have tied him up very well. Thank goodness the whisky and the Valium didn't kill him.'
'How very remarkable,' said Sir Arnold. 'You don't think the people who brought him could have realized they'd made a mistake and moved him to the place they'd intended?'
'How the hell would I know what to think?' Lady Vy answered and looked at her husband suspiciously. 'And you look as if you hadn't had much sleep, come to that. You should take a look at yourself. You're not at all a picture of health.'
'I don't feel it,' said the Chief Constable, 'and you wouldn't either if you'd been half suffocated by that beastly Bea. And for Heaven's sake, don't mention anything about the fellow in the cellar to her.'
'You don't think she doesn't know already? Honestly, you are a fool. With all that noise going on? She hasn't said anything because she's too tactful. She just thought you'd been beating me up. Mrs Thouless saw the blood too.'
The Chief Constable sat wearily up in bed. This was the sort of news he least wanted. 'Has she told you that?' he stammered.
'Not in so many words, but she asked what to do with the rug in your study with the blood on it. And of course you had to leave a bloodstained bedside lamp by the desk.'
'Dear God,' said the Chief Constable. 'It's a wonder she hasn't sold the story to the Sun already.'
'Since she didn't see anything else she can't be certain what has been going on.'
'Not the only one round here,' said the Chief Constable and slipped miserably back under the bedclothes. He felt like death.
So did Timothy Bright. After lying under the bed listening for sounds of movement in the house and not hearing any, he crawled slowly and awkwardly out and tried to get to his feet. He almost succeeded. He got halfway up before falling over and banging his head against the edge of the chair on which the Major had folded his clothes. The chair toppled over and Timothy Bright's scalp wound began to bleed again, this time onto the Major's tweed jacket and his natty little waistcoat. Timothy Bright lay there for a bit trying to think where he was or how he came to be naked and cold and hungry and why his mouth tasted like...He didn't know what his mouth tasted like. He tried again to get up by clutching the bed, then slumped down on it and lay there. Thought was returning. To get warmer he pulled the duvet over him and felt slightly better. Only slightly. A terrible thirst drove him to try to stand up again. He succeeded and stood, wobbling a little, listening.
The house was silent. Nothing moved. The sun shone in the window and outside he could see a patch of vegetable garden with some broad beans and a row of twigs for peas. Beyond it a wooden shed and a copse of tall trees and a drystone wall with more trees behind it. There was no sign of life, apart from a thrush breaking a snail's shell on a concrete path. A cat appeared round the pea twigs and stopped, its eyes fixed on the thrush. Then it turned and slid round the broad beans and crept forward with the utmost stealth. For a moment Timothy Bright was almost transfixed by the drama, but the thrush flew off and the cat relaxed. Only then did he notice the blood on the pillow and the duvet. It was fresh blood. He was bleeding. Oh God, he had to do something about it.
The bathroom door was open and he went through to it and grabbed a towel and wiped his hair with it. There was a lot of blood on the towel and when he looked in the mirror over the washbasin he didn't recognize himself. His face was covered with dried blood, his hair was matted with it and his chest was scratched and horribly bruised. In an instant the vision of that skinned pig returned and he lurched back. The Major's bathroom was not a large one, was in fact merely a shower-room with a little shelf under the shaving-mirror on which he kept his bottle of Imperial Russian eau-de-Cologne (at least the bottle was genuine, he had pinched it from a rich friend, but he had long ago used up the contents and refilled it with 4711). Timothy lurched backwards into the shower curtain, a plastic one to which the Major had neatly sewn a rather pretty piece of Laura Ashley floral material, and as he tripped he clutched the shelf. The Imperial Russian Cologne bottle fell into the basin and broke. It was followed by the shaving-brush, the Major's cut-throat razor which he used very carefully to trim his hair before dyeing it, his toothbrush and the scissors that were necessary for his moustache. But it was the cut-throat that threw Timothy Bright. It brought to mind a scene from a nightmare, the nightmare that had become central to his being, that of a man with black shiny hair in the back room of a bar who had sliced the end of his nose and talked about piggy-chops and what was going to happen to Timothy Bright if he didn't do something terrible. It brought to mind that terrifying photograph of the pig. Somewhere still deeper within him it may even have rekindled the forgotten horror of Old Og's ferret, Posy, with blood on its snout after killing the bought rabbit. In his panic reaction he fell back into the shower taking the curtain with him and sat with blood running down the curtain and the wall. There he sat crying, with tears and blood running down his face. He cried noiselessly. The house was silent again.
It remained so through the midday and into the afternoon. It was only then that Major MacPhee rose from his vomit and on all fours crawled out into the hall. The silence suited him too. It seemed to indicate that Miss Midden had gone down to the Middenhall and that he could use the upstairs bathroom and not go through his room past the body under the bed to clean himself up. Never, except by military convention, a very clean man, he felt the need to wash at least his face and neck before getting dressed...He had reached the bathroom and had turned the tap on before it dawned on him that his only clothes were in his bedroom and to get them he would have to go in there. He held the edge of the basin and sensibly didn't look at his face in the mirror but bowed his head over the warm water and dipped his face into it very gently several times. The stitches above his eye stung. He washed his hands and somehow his neck with soap. He emptied the basin and dipped his face into the water again and very carefully used a flannel to clean it.