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

when he said, “I call George Bernard Pugh.”
Surely he’d covered George’s part of the story in his synopsis. But the
Scotsman was standing beside the witness box, waiting for him. “Take the book
in your right hand,” he said.
                 “Your
name is George Bernard Pugh and you’re the manager of the Newsham Cinema,” the coroner said.
                 “Yes.”
He could swear to that.
                 “And
Mrs. Lilian Pugh was your mother.”
                 “Yes,
she was,” George said proudly, almost challengingly.
                 “She
owned the Newsham , didn’t she? Did she own any
others?”
                 The
coroner was putting him at his ease by chatting. “She used to own the Granby
and the Picton , she and my father,” he said. “But
they closed in the sixties. The Granby closed last. That was just by where she
was living. There were two cinemas there, and not enough audience for either.”
He was babbling; he wished the coroner would stop him with a question.
                 “Your
father isn’t alive now, is he?”
                 “No,
he died seven years ago. The strain of knowing the cinemas would have to close
killed him. That made my mother determined to keep the Newsham open. She was the business side of the marriage, you see.”
                 “Quite
right,” the coroner said approvingly. “Quite right. Did your mother always live in Princes Avenue?”
                 “No,
she moved there after my father’s death.” She’d said she had sold the house
because she couldn’t cope with it, but he had known she wanted the money to put
into the Newsham , though he’d never let her realize.
                 “And
did you often visit her there? Did you visit her on the night of sixth August?”
                 “Yes,
I did.” The jurymen were beginning to look away from him, dreading naked grief.
But he felt that the coroner would lead him skillfully around that. He would be
able to get back to the Newsham soon.
                 “I
visited my mother, Mrs. Lilian Pugh, on the night of sixth August,” the coroner
said. That’s odd, George thought: I didn’t see you there. It took him a moment
to notice the tape recorder to which the coroner was confiding information.
                 “At
about what time did you leave? Midnight. Did you
happen to notice whether the front window of the flat was open?”
                 “Yes.
She often left it open a little in summer. Rex guarded it during the night.”
                 “Rex
was your mother’s dog. When I left at midnight the front window was open a
little, comma.” By now George felt wholly detached from the proceedings. “Your
mother wasn’t afraid of intruders?”
                 “She
said not.” But he had been, on her behalf. Alice and he had had no room for his
mother, but that hadn’t made it easier to think of her on Princes Avenue, among
the gangs and burglaries and racial confrontations.
                 The
questions continued, and the echoes. Yes, his mother had had a couple of heart
attacks—nothing serious, the doctor had said, provided she took it easy. No,
she hadn’t seemed unwell that night. Silently he remembered her saying, “Good
night now, dear,” turning carefully back toward the lighted hall, supporting
herself with a hand on the doorknob, glancing back to make sure he was safe on
his bicycle. He felt Edmund gazing intently at him—as if, he thought angrily,
he had written the script.
                 “Do
you know of anyone who might have had a grudge against your mother’s dog?”
                 “No, nobody.” The police had asked him that.
                 “She
would have told me,” he said.
                 “Thank
you very much, Mr. Pugh.”
                 Was
that