Free Ramsey Campbell - 1976 - The Doll Who Ate His Mother by Ramsey Campbell Page A

please,” a man said, very Scottish,
and went to look after the sobbing woman.
                 The
ceiling of the court was low. Ranks of benches and long tables stepped down on
three sides of the room. Following the other witnesses to the furthest set of
benches, George glimpsed Edmund leaning from the front bench opposite the
coroner’s dais to greet him. He walked by, unheeding.
                 Ruby
pressed close to him on the bench. “Who’s that lumberjack?” she demanded,
nodding at Edmund. “Does he know you?”
                 “Just someone who’s writing up the case.” Half the people in
Edmund’s set of benches must be reporters: a full house. Well, they had their
job to do.
                 “He
wants to hear what happened, does he? I’ll tell him. Your
poor mother.” She dabbed hastily at her smudged mascara, thick as makeup
in an early film. “I’ll never forget her face as long as I live. That terrible expression. Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be
saying all this to you, you poor boy.”
                 She
hadn’t disturbed him particularly—too theatrical. Overhead, a chair scraped,
and loud, flat footsteps crossed the ceiling. Fat mushrooms full of light
sprouted from pale splashes on the ceiling. The splashes of light vanished; the
lamps hung dead in sunlight. George watched Edmund glancing rapidly about,
snapping up details like a camera.
                 Last
night, walking home, George had remembered whom Edmund reminded him of: the man
from the London cinema chain who had come to see him
six years ago. The man had been staying with friends; he’d admired George’s
efficiency in running the Newsham with so little
help, he’d said. George was the man they needed to run their new London cinema.
But Olivia was happy in her first year at school, and Mark wanted to go to that
school; George’s wife, Alice, hated big cities, except for her birthplace,
Liverpool; most important, the Newsham was the only
cinema his mother now owned. The man had understood none of this. Leaving, he’d
glared back as if George had wronged him deliberately. Beneath all Edmund’s
protestations of sympathy, George suspected, lay the same lack of feeling.
                 “Stand
up, please,” the Scotsman ordered.
                 George
jumped up, startled. The rest followed him. After a pause the coroner strode in
behind the jury and onto his dais: a good dramatic entrance. The Scotsman began
to read from a card: “All manner of persons having anything to do at this
court, before the Queen’s Coroner for the county of Merseyside, touching the
deaths of Lilian Pugh and Thomas Eric Hardy, draw near and give your attendance.”
Surely he’d rehearsed it often enough not to need the script, George
thought—but the thought didn’t dam the flood of shock he’d felt at the sound of
his mother’s name.
                 Everyone
else was sitting down; George joined them. The Scotsman was leading the jury in
the oath. “I swear by Almighty God—”
                 “I swur by Almighty God—” Only the front row of four men
was responding, translating his Scottish accent into Liverpudlian .
When he’d finished he began again with the back row. George almost expected all
eight to go through a final rehearsal. But the coroner was speaking.
                 “We
have first to consider the death of Mrs. Lilian Pugh, nee Stanley, of 20
Princes Avenue. This is a very sad and tragic case, of a kind I have never met
before. The police are investigating the circumstances. We are concerned only
to determine the cause of the lady’s death. At about four o’clock on the
morning of seventh August, it appears that Mrs. Pugh surprised an intruder in
an act of extreme cruelty to her dog.”
                 His
quiet voice continued. It was like the synopsis at the beginning of a serial
episode. George was bewildered