Report on Probability A Read online

  On the first floor, a small bow window protruded some metres above the bricked recess. This bow window matched a similar one on the other side of the house, overlooking a wooden bungalow; this one was the window to Mr. Mary’s wife’s bedroom.

  An expanse of brickwork followed, until a narrow window was reached. This window was glazed with frosted glass. It was built directly over a window in the ground floor that contained a similar section of frosted glass. It was the window of the upper lavatory. Beside it, a small overflow pipe stuck out from the face of the wall; a small overflow pipe stuck out of the wall beside the lower frosted window. Near the overflow pipes, a thick pipe ran down from the house into a square of concrete set in the ground.

  Further along the wall was one more window, situated near the south corner of the house. It formed one of the two windows of the bathroom, the other window being round the corner on the south-west or rear side of the house. Through the window, blue curtains could be seen, and part of the shade of an electric light hanging from the ceiling. The colour of the shade could be seen to be blue. None of the other window could be seen from where C stood, although its presence was marked by a particular bightness across the bathroom ceiling emanating from the south-west. No movement was visible in the bathroom.

  “She can’t have gone out in all that rain.”

  On the lawn, a pigeon waddled. A black and white cat stalked it, taking advantage of the cover of a privet hedge running from behind the house to the end of the foremost banked flower bed fringing the sunken garden. It moved to within a metre of the pigeon. It crouched, its skull pressed against its forepaws, its ears flat on its head. The pigeon moved away.

  Through the window of the dining-room there was a movement. C turned his head and looked through the window. A woman with tawny hair swept up onto her head had entered the part of the room visible to C. She wore a light afternoon coat of brown tweed. She came round the table until she was between the window and the table, so that she was visible to C in profile. She was no more than two and a half metres from C, separated from him only by one thickness of glass. It appeared that she was about to look out of the long window that faced from the back of the house onto the garden. She stopped, and looked over her left shoulder. She looked at C.

  C looked at the woman. Her lips were red. They had opened slightly. Neither C nor the woman moved. C raised his right hand in a gesture, at the same time slightly lowering his head, though still keeping her under observation.

  The woman moved hastily out of sight. As she went it seemed to be that she contorted her face and opened her mouth. C moved into the garage and closed the door behind him.

  He stood there, clutching the doorknob. Then he moved on his stockinged feet and climbed up a wooden ladder bolted to the rear wall of the garage. Near the top of the ladder in the loft was a small window that did not open. It was divided into four by two crossed bars. Three of these four sections were glazed; the bottom right section was not glazed. The glass had been removed, and in its place was a block of wood. C removed this block of wood. It was wet He dropped it on the floor of the loft.

  Just under the window lay a home-made periscope. It had been constructed from half a dozen round tins fitted one into the other to make a hollow tube some fifty-four metres long. Circular openings had been cut in the top and bottom tins facing onto two mirrors fitted into the tube at an angle of ninety degrees to each other. The bottom tin was made to rotate in its socket. Picking up this instrument, C prepared to push one end of it through the empty square of the window. As he did so, he glanced up and saw a movement in the dining-room window.

  A man in dark suiting was looking round one of the green patterned curtains. His gaze was fixed on the window of the garage. In his right hand he carried a rifle, grasping it by the barrel.

  C sank back into the shadows without removing his gaze from the man with the gun. The man did not move; only his eyes moved. C held the periscope. The man held the gun.

  From the lawn came a shrill cry, and a clatter of noise. Both C and the man with the gun looked towards the lawn. Near to the point where the four steps descended into the sunken garden, a black and white cat had pounced upon and caught a large pigeon. The pigeon attempted to escape. It fluttered its wings and uttered a piercing cry. The cat was on its back. The fierce fluttering of wings startled the cat. It released the pigeon, which broke from it with a flurry of feathers. Running in a lop-sided manner, the pigeon beat its wings furiously. It left the ground. The cat sprang. Its paws raked the round body of the bird. With a more violent pulsation of its wings, the pigeon managed to remain in the air. Raising itself so that it danced on its hind legs, the cat clawed upwards, striking the pigeon even as it was struck on the nose by a battering wing. This frightened the cat. It dropped onto all fours in a manner that suggested that it might be about to retreat, but its dewclaw caught in a pewter ring that was fastened round one of the legs of the bird, so that the bird was dragged down on top of the cat. Frightened, the cat jumped round and pinned the pigeon to the ground with its paws. It put its mouth down to the pigeon’s neck. The pigeon fluttered only feebly. Taking one of its wings into its mouth, the cat started to drag its victim over the grass. As it passed out of sight, obscured by the south corner of the house, the pigeon was still struggling.

  The man with the gun moved away from the dining-room window. Still clutching his periscope, C went to the front of the garage, his shoulders hunched under the low roof, and sat with his back against the wall. He sat with his legs drawn up before him, his arms crossed over his knees, and his chin resting on his wrists. One end of the periscope rested against the side of his head.

  “Get out of this bloody set-up. Go south. You don’t stand a dog’s chance here. Talk about snakes.…”

  After a lapse of time, he placed the periscope by his right-hand side and moved crabwise to take in a view through the window.

  No break showed in the clouds. Under a dull sky, the road showed dull. On the opposite side of the road could be seen railings with sharp spears pointing upwards and walls crowned with shards of broken bottles, guarding private property and the premises of small breweries, greenhouses, or vivisection clinics. Almost opposite the garage stood a café with lighted windows. The windows of the café were filled with all kinds of goods. Through one of the windows could be seen a small square table on which a red and white patterned cloth had been spread. Through the other window could be seen a man with folded arms, standing and looking across the road at the house.

  C licked his lips. Turning his head away from the window, he leant sideways and picked up his home-made periscope. He thrust it through the hole in the bottom left corner of the window, adjusting it so that the top of the periscope was free of the top of the roof, and could look over it towards the south-east side of the house.

  By peering along the line of his wrist, C could see in the bottom mirror of the periscope the reflection of what was visible in the top mirror. This gave him a limited but clear view into the small bow window that formed one of the two windows of Mr. Mary’s wife’s bedroom.

  “My God, there she is! You’re in luck.…”

  Seated in the bow window, head bowed and fists clenched over her eyes, was the woman with tawny hair. She still wore the brown tweed coat. Her shoulders shook. Presently she removed one of her fists from her eyes to feel into a pocket concealed from C’s line of sight. As it moved, the fist stretched into a long stalk of flesh, returning to its normal shape after it had passed over a flaw in one of the periscope mirrors. The flaw distorted the body of the woman, elongating and blurring her. Producing a small handkerchief, she mopped at her eyes and at her nose, while her shoulders continued to heave. A strand of her hair fell down across her neck. She was within about two and a half metres of the eye of the periscope.

  “Huh, have a good weep! You might have been weeping for me instead of a miserable.… Hello! Here comes Smiling Boy!”

  Behind the woman, a man in dark suiting appeare
d. He spoke to her. He placed a hand on her shoulder. She shook her shoulder away. He spread his hands. His lips could be seen opening and shutting. He smiled. Suddenly she turned her head towards him. She had high cheek-bones. The skin moved across the cheek-bones as her mouth opened and closed. The lips of both faces moved at once. The man was frowning now. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were red; they could be seen as again he advanced towards her and again she turned away, trying to shake her shoulders from his clutch.

  The man in dark suiting grasped her firmly now, although she struggled. He appeared to be shouting, although no sound reached C. The woman raised her fists, one of which clutched a handkerchief, above her head, and brought them down on her knees. Then she slumped forward with her forehead pressed against the window, making a white outline against it. Again her fists were raised to her eyes, and her eyes buried behind her knuckles, out of sight. The man in dark suiting shook his head and disappeared. The woman gave no indication that she knew he had gone from behind her.

  C’s arm was beginning to ache. He brought his regard away from the periscope mirror. Handling the instrument carefully, he pulled it in through the window; thrusting his right hand, which had been exposed, under his left armpit for warmth, he noted that it had grown appreciably duller outside. Only the fact that the woman with the tawny hair had been so close to the window had allowed him to see her clearly.

  Pushing the peaked cap onto the back of his head, he stared out of the window. Street lights had come on while he was gazing through the periscope. The road looked drab. A motor hearse drove slowly down the street; above the cab, a neon sign flashed on and off forming a single word, Diggers. The hearse’s tires were deflating slowly. When the hearse had passed, a man began to cross the road towards the café opposite. He moved fast. C recognized him at once. It was the man in the dark suiting.

  The man in the dark suiting crossed the road in a certain number of strides. As he did so, the intensity of light falling on him varied greatly. When C first saw him, stepping from the pavement that was not visible from the inside of the garage window, his left shoulder was clearly illuminated by the light falling from a street light that C knew to be situated on the other side of the front of the house, between the house and a brown side gate in the wall beyond the house.

  As the man in the dark suiting got further from this source, the street lighting tended to light the back of his left shoulder rather than the arm of it, growing fainter at the same time. A second street light, down the road in the opposite direction, beyond the east corner of the property, lit the man’s suit with a pale illumination that served merely to distinguish the right side of his body from the dark of the street he was crossing. The lights from the windows of G. F. Watt’s café lit the front of him increasingly, bathing his outline and the line of his jaw until, from C’s viewpoint, the effect of the two more distant street lamps was nugatory.

  As he entered the café door, the man was celarly visible under the lights. He walked into the café. The door hung open behind him. He walked to the counter, and the view of him was obscured by a pile of packaged goods arranged in the window.

  Removing his right hand from his left armpit, C picked up his periscope and thrust one end of it through the hole he had made in the bottom left corner of the window. It had been summer when he had begun to hide in the loft, and the aperture had then admitted warm air. He adjusted the periscope and squatted by it, but looked over it and not through it.

  Presently, the man in the dark suiting was seen turning away from the counter. Behind the counter, G. F. Watt leant forward with both arms on the counter and hands clasped, watching his customer leave. The customer came through the door of the café into the comparative darkness of the street. As he came, he tucked a small pink carton into one of his jacket pockets. While he was crossing the road, nearing the point where C would no longer be able to see him, C put his eye to the lower mirror of the periscope.

  In the arrangement of mirrors, the man in the dark suiting became visible in attenuated form. A flaw in one of the mirrors rendered him very tall and thin, while a blurry effect covered his head, so that he appeared to have a sharp face covered with flesh-coloured fur. The side of the house was represented obliquely, with the distortion of perspective. The long legs of the man climbed up two steep stone steps. The man vanished through a slot in the brickwork.

  “If he poisons her, I’ll be in there after him. I will. Poor little kitten in there with that snake of a man!”

  C was about to bring the periscope from the hole in the garage window, and had already leant back from the window in order to do so, when a movement in the arrangement of mirrors caught his eye. He bent his head to the instrument again.

  In the steep perspective of brick visible through the arrangement of mirrors were several niches, the nearer niches being wider than the further niches. A distant and narrow niche could be interpreted by a skilled observer as a brown side gate set in the wall on the far side of the house. Through this niche or slot was stepping a man in a ragged jacket. Because a street lamp stood between the watcher and the ragged man, his face was clearly visible as he looked across the road.

  “What’s he think he’s up to?”

  The man with the ragged jacket crossed the road. He carried a small white jug in one hand, swinging it in a way that indicated it was empty. C observed him directly through the window of the garage and not through the periscope. As the man entered the café, G. F. Watt could be seen behind the counter, speaking to the man. Watt was obscured as he moved behind the counter, first by his customer and then by an arrangement of packaged goods in one of the windows. Then he could be seen going through a door behind the counter. Stuck to the door was a poster; the details on it could not be seen from the garage.

  The owner of the café presently reappeared with a white object that he passed over the counter to his customer. His customer turned away and walked out of the door to the café. The lights from the café shone strongly onto the road now. Little illumination was left in the sky. As the man in the ragged jacket crossed the road, he was observed to be carrying a small white jug of the kind generally used for milk. He carried the jug before him with care, steadying it with both hands. He crossed the road and disappeared from the range of C’s view.

  “Blighter! I know what he’s up to.”

  C did not attempt to follow the man’s further progress through the periscope. Holding the periscope firmly in in his right hand, he thrust it through the hole in the window, allowing his right hand to pass through also. By turning his wrist, he could adjust the instrument so that it assumed a vertical position and looked over the slope of the metal roof at a section of the house otherwise unavailable to scrutiny.

  After some manipulation, he looked through the arrangement of mirrors. Again he had the bow window on the first floor of the house under surveillance. The window was unlit from within. A radiance in the western sky, shining from the back of the house, rendered its details with dull clarity.

  In the bow window, the woman with the tawny hair was sitting. She appeared to stare out of the window. She wore a coat. Her arms protruded from the coat. She rested her fists under her high cheek-bones. Now and again her shoulders shook.

  C pushed the peaked cap back from his forehead with his left hand. Outside the window, his right hand grew cold.

  The woman in the bow window was observed to turn her head as if to listen to a sound behind her. Light came on in the room, very bright and sudden, silhouetting the woman and making features impossible to see. She turned her head away from the light.

  A man in dark suiting loomed behind her. His lips were moving as if he were talking to the woman. In his hand he carried a glass. One side of the glass gleamed with reflected light. The glass was about a quarter full of some grey liquid. Suddenly the glass became almost as tall as the man. It disappeared from the watcher’s view behind the woman’s back, and the woman’s head became attenuated, growing narrow and thin.

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sp; The man reached out his right hand and put it on the woman’s shoulder. The woman turned violently towards him, bringing her hands from her cheeks as she did so. It could be seen that the glass flew in an arc, changing shape as it did so. It was lost beyond the side of the arrangement of mirrors. C flicked his right wrist so that the periscope moved slightly. He saw that the man had stepped back so as almost to be concealed from sight by the bow window. His left shoulder and part of his head were hidden from inspection by the arrangement of mirrors by a curtain hanging in the window. He was brushing at the lapels of his dark suiting. Because the light was behind him, the expression on his face was impossible to see. He stepped forward and put out his right arm which blossomed to strange proportions in the flaw in the mirrors. He struck the woman across the face with his right hand. She threw up her arms and moved swiftly towards him. The man retreated. He became hidden by the side of the bow window. Momentarily, the woman’s hair made a long tawny spike as she moved into the room. Then she became hidden from view by the side of the window. Nothing could be seen in the window but light pouring through its panes and wallpaper of an indistinguishable pattern on a further wall.

  “Someone ought to do for him.”

  The bow window, pouring its light out into the side of the garden, trembled in the arrangement of mirrors. C grunted. Carefully, he brought in his wrist and his right hand clutching the periscope through the gap in the window at the front of the garage. He set the periscope down on the floor below the window. Sitting down beside it, he drew his knees up before him, resting his left hand on his knees and thrusting his right hand under his left armpit to warm.