Free The Old Contemptibles by Martha Grimes Page A

report of the doctor. Something that would have to do with ingestion of a high dosage of barbiturates. Suicide.
    He looked from the doorstep as the drunk sat up and wailed, “Oh, GAWD.”
    Alex saw the two heads across the street turn in their direction and whispered to his neighbor to shut the hell up!
    He wasn’t, the man whose head snapped round, the typical park-bench drunk, Alex saw, as newspapers rustled and the coat fell away. He was wearing evening clothes—a wreck of a dinner jacket, the black bow tie partly wrapped round his ear, the collar open.
    “Been stood up, too, have you? I keep telling myself never to go to that fool’s parties. What sort of getup is that?” He was looking at Alex’s blazer and cap. “Pretty young to be hanging about the boozer, aren’t you? Got a fag? Or do you only snort the stuff?”
    Alex didn’t bother answering. He watched as the two policemen came down the steps. They lacked the purposefulness they’d have had if they’d been about to investigate the park.
     • • • 
    “But of course the boy must stay, Jane. He’s looking so peaked.”
    They had been sitting round the dinner table—his mother, his grandfather and stepgrandmother (whom he called “Grandmum” to irritate her), his Uncle George and Madeline Galloway, his mother’s sister.
    “Don’t you think so?” Genevieve Holdsworth’s question had been put to the table in general. “Alex really must get out of the city.”
    He had sat there, five years ago, alternately looking down at his plate and shifting his eyes to the black terrier beneath the table.
    “He doesn’t look peaked to me, and heaven knows not thin. Not with all that blood pudding he’s been putting away,” his mother had said with absolute assurance.
    She’d seen him reaching the horrible stuff down to the terrier. “No,” he’d said to Genevieve. “I have things to do.”
    They occupied a special plane, his mother and he. It wasn’t that there was no one else on that plane; he just didn’t know them. Alex wasn’t a Romantic: he’d trample a whole field of daffodils to get to a turf accountant. And he could certainly keep himself together for as long as it took to find out what had happened to his mum—
     • • • 
    “Damn it.” Rooting through his topcoat pockets, the man on the bench cursed until he managed to drag out a mashed-looking cigarette and an expensive-looking lighter. In the glow of the flame Alex saw he was middle-aged. Or at least twenty years older than Alex himself. . . . Police were still there, leaning against their car.
    “What’s going on? What the hell are the police over there for?”
    Alex wanted only to shut him up, to stop invading his privacy and keeping him from thinking his problem through.
    “What the devil are you doing sitting on a park bench at—” He wrenched his wrist and squinted down at what looked like a Rolex. “—one A.M. ? My name’s Maurice, incidentally.” His yawn was so drawn-out Alex thought he’d suck in all of the available oxygen. Maurice upended a leather-covered flask, shook it a bit, and sighed. “Not a glimmer.” He turned. “You’ve got a name, I expect?”
    “William. Smythe.” Alex pronounced it with a long i; it was the name of one of his particularly revolting schoolmates. “Well, good-bye.” Thank God the car was pulling away. But one uniformed copper was standing there still. Had they left anyone inside?
     • • • 
    He crossed the little rear garden, let himself in with the same key that opened the front door, and sat down at the kitchen table. Alex stared into the dark, which his eyes soon penetrated so that he could see the outlines of fridge and cooker. He could find his way round in here like a blind man, anyway. He heard nothing.
    Quietly, he pulled off his jacket, his cap and his shoes and slumped in the chair. Then he lay his head down on his folded hands. Afraid he’d doze off, he pulled his head up again, folded his