Free Sleep and His Brother by Peter Dickinson

said Mrs. Dixon-Jones, thawing into artificial warmth. “Thomas, where’s Marilyn?”
    â€œDunno,” drawled a drifting child.
    â€œThey could easily find her if they wanted to,” complained Mrs. Dixon-Jones. “I’m afraid they don’t really get on with her. She had an unfortunate childhood, and it disturbs them.”
    Unfortunate! thought Pibble. The sly, dark, handsome face of the Paperham murderer drifted into his mind, black eyebrows meeting over the bridge of the nose. Sam something. Sam … The child had stopped. Slowly he turned, like flotsam rotating below wharves.
    â€œInna wood,” he said. Into the almost toneless voice had crept a hue of distaste. He began to turn away.
    â€œYou do that?” said Dr. Silver, glancing at Pibble from under his thrusting white brows.
    â€œI don’t know. I was thinking about the Paperham case.”
    â€œOh, you mustn’t do that,” snapped Mrs. Dixon-Jones. “It doesn’t do any good to anyone.”
    â€œBut it might this time,” said Dr. Silver. “We’ll walk up to the wood and practice our scoutcraft.”
    â€œAnd I’ll try to think pleasant thoughts,” said Pibble.
    â€œPlease do,” said Mrs. Dixon-Jones. “They have so little time, you know.”
    She turned and strutted back toward her office, head high.
    â€œThat’s a very good woman indeed,” sighed Dr. Silver. “They’re the worst sort.”
    It was impossible to tell which parts of this statement were ironic, if any. A different point struck Pibble as they reached the door.
    â€œNobody seems to have inquired whether I want to see Mr. Thanatos,” he said with deliberate stuffiness. Dr. Silver guffawed.
    â€œEverybody wants to see Mr. Thanatos,” he said. “It is one of the axioms of life. Look in your heart and you will know it is true.”
    â€œI’m afraid so,” said Pibble.

3
    O utside the house Pibble shivered again, but this time with ordinary cold. He wished he’d brought his overcoat; the apparent mildness of the morning, compared to the last icy fortnight, had turned out to be mere darkness, dismal after the kindly warmth of the house. He wondered what it cost to keep that huge space heated for its lizard-blooded inmates. The frightened child had even complained that it was too hot—or perhaps the heat was part of the nightmare. That dreary basement in Paperham, familiar four years ago from hundreds of gritty photographs, had been just the milieu for a paraffin stove to spill and flare. Had Sam … Sam—never mind now—put the blaze out and saved the children’s lives, presenting­ an ironic balance sheet to moral auditors?
    Dr. Silver, silent, led him slantwise across the weedy gravel, away from the drive, into the dozen tangled acres which the obstinacy of the Sospice blood had preserved from being smothered by rank upon rank of brick, bow-windowed, slate-roofed villas. Would Mr. Thanatos’ mad, selfish charity extend to levelling the tussocks of the lawn, and set the rakes going again where this year’s leaf fall lay fox-coloured on the blackish slime of last year’s? The garden was a long oval, following the ridge of the hill and covering the top quarter of its western slope. Dr. Silver stopped on a terrace constructed to take advantage of what must once have been a rural vista. In front of him suckers from the rose bed had grown to a savage barrier of briars, and behind him a row of Irish yews stood all uncorseted.
    Dr. Silver looked at his watch, sighed, and took a black cigar from the breast pocket of his dustcoat.
    â€œYou smoke?”
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    As he trimmed and prodded the poisonous-looking thing, he began to talk, so quietly that Pibble felt like a contact who has met his spy in the deserted park of a foreign capital.
    â€œI want to tell you about Thanassi,” he said. “We call him Mr. T.