by Cyril Hare
“What I need,” he said to himself as he groped his way along the pavement, “is a drink.” It came to him with surprise that it was a long time since he had had one. There was something monastic about the atmosphere of Marsett Bay that seemed to inhibit his thirst. Perhaps it was because he had so far not found anybody there he particularly wanted to drink with. Whatever the reason, he felt that by now it was decidedly overdue.
At the corner of the High Street, he hesitated. Just across the way was the White Hart. It would be, he knew, crowded with the bright young things of the Control, and in his present mood he did not want to see any more of his fellow government servants. The Crown, further down the road, would not be much better. Where else was there? He remembered that down an alley-way somewhere on his left, he had noticed a little pub bearing the sign of the Gamecock. (Was cock-fighting still practised in these parts, he wondered?) It occurred to him that this might be worth trying, if he could find it in the black-out. A quiet local, with its own faithful clientele, the kind of place where a casual visitor would be left severely alone, regarded with suspicion by the regulars. In his present mood, that was exactly what Pettigrew wanted.
Ten minutes later, he was sitting in a corner of a dimly lit bar parlour, absorbing a pint of weak war-time beer and thankfully reflecting that there was nobody within sight who took the smallest interest in him or was in the least likely to throw a word in his direction. He was about half-way through his tankard when he became aware that the light had suddenly become noticeably dimmer. Looking up, he found that he was in the shadow of a very tall, very broad figure that was advancing towards him from the bar. He registered the fact without any particular interest and was just putting his can to his lips again when a voice said, “Fancy meeting you here, Mr. Pettigrew!”
“Hell!” said Pettigrew under his breath as he reluctantly lowered his drink. Was he never to escape from the Control? Neither the voice nor the figure, however, seemed to belong to any of his Marsett Bay acquaintances, though both were vaguely familiar. Then the light caught the pointed tip of a long dark moustache and he exclaimed with pleasure as well as surprise, “Inspector Mallett, of all people! What on earth are you doing here?”
Mallett did not reply to the question at once. Instead, he produced from somewhere under his left armpit a small, wiry man with a very long nose, and said, “This is Detective-Inspector Jellaby, of the County Constabulary, sir. We’ll come and sit by you, if you’ve no objection.”
“Objection? Of course not!” said Pettigrew, who a moment before had been rejoicing in his solitude. His acquaintance with Inspector Mallett, of New Scotland Yard, was confined to a brief and tragic episode in his life, but he had then formed a great admiration for the beefy man with a nimble brain and he was unaffectedly pleased to see him again.
“This is the last place I expected to meet you,” he went on, when they were all settled. “Either my reading of the newspapers has been deplorably lax, or there has been no crime of note in this part of the world. Don’t tell me that there is really a plot to murder the Pin Controller.”
“Really a plot to murder Mr. Palafox?” Mallett repeated with the innocent gravity with which he always received the most unlikely propositions. “I can’t say that I have heard of any such thing. You haven’t come across anything, I hope, sir, that makes you suspect——”
“No, no, of course not. I was only talking nonsense. It’s a habit that’s sadly catching in this place, I’m afraid. I have the misfortune to share lodgings with a writer of detective stories, which is rather unsettling to the imagination.”
“Quite so, sir. No, I haven’t come on anything of that kind. I’ve been taken off my usual work at the Yard to—to poke my nose into matters up here generally.”
“I see. I had no idea that the Control could be an object of interest to Scotland Yard.”
“I don’t think I mentioned the Control, Mr. Pettigrew,” said Mallett cautiously.
“But you did mention the name of the Controller, and I’m hanged if I can see why you should bother to find that out unless——”
The end of the sentence was drowned in a rumble of genial laughter from Mallett.
“You had me there, sir,” he confessed. “I ought to have known better. You must let me order you another pint for that.”
“I suppose,” said Pettigrew, when the fresh drinks had been brought, “you can’t tell me what the affairs you are interested in amount to?”
He was conscious that Inspector Jellaby was looking down his long nose in a disapproving manner, but Mallett did not seem disturbed by the question. He took a long drink, carefully wiped his moustaches and appeared to meditate before he replied.
“Your position here, sir, is that of legal adviser to the Control?”
“Quite right.”
“And you have, of course, no connection, past or present, with the trade?”
“The pin trade? I don’t know the first thing about it.”
“Exactly. I don’t know if you realize, Mr. Pettigrew, quite how singular you are in that respect, so far as the Control is concerned.”
“Am I? I’m afraid I never gave any great thought to the matter. Naturally, I took it for granted that it was largely staffed by experts. It’s not my pigeon, really.”
“Just so. And the experts, of course, are drawn from the trade. Above a certain level, the great majority of the workers here are in peace-time employed by the firms who have to be governed in war by the Control. It’s inevitable, really. They are the only people who could do the job.”
“I am lamentably incurious about my fellows except where they concern me personally,” said Pettigrew. “I don’t talk shop with them or they with me. I don’t even know how most of the people I see every day earn their livings in civil life.”
“You stay at the Fernlea Residential Club, don’t you?” the inspector said. “Let me see . . . Edelman is advertisement manager to a big marketing company. Wood was head clerk to another firm in the same line. Rickaby is the nephew of the chairman of the largest exporters of pins in the world. Miss Clarke doesn’t seem to have any connection with the trade, so far as I can tell at present, but I’m not sure. Miss Brown is, of course, quite independent. That’s the lot, I think.”
“Phillips,” murmured Jellaby.
“That’s one man I do know about,” said Pettigrew. “He’s a solicitor’s clerk.”
“Of course,” Mallett agreed. “What was it I was telling you about his firm, Mr. Jellaby?”
“Amalgamation,” Jellaby observed.
“That was it. They carried through the merger of two rival trade associations just before the war. I don’t say that that is how Phillips comes to be here, but it seems likely.”
Pettigrew laughed.
“I was just thinking,” he said by way of explanation, “that you need hardly have bothered to ask me whether I had any links with the trade. You must have known the answer before you put the question.”
“Quite so, sir,” said Mallett gravely.
“Well, Inspector, to continue——”
“Well, to put it shortly, some of these people may find themselves in a position where their public duty and their private interest don’t entirely coincide. You follow me, sir?”
“Alas for human nature, I do!”
“Ninety-nine out of a hundred of them are perfectly honest, I have no doubt. But there is always the chance of the hundredth.”
“You are not telling me, Inspector, that you came all the way to this singularly uncomfortable spot on a chance.”
“It is a bit more definite than that,” Mallett admitted. “There have been certain things—leakages of information, breaches of the control and so forth that made us think that a look round here would be advisable. I can’t put it higher than that.”
“And I should be the last person to ask you to do so. Well, Inspector, you have at least given me a new interest in life at Marsett Bay, and for that alone I am very deeply in your debt. It�
��s time I was getting back. There is a look in the landlord’s eye that tells me he is about to call time. The worst of having police in the place is that it makes these fellows so confoundedly punctual. Good night. I don’t suppose I can be of any conceivable use to you, but if I should happen to run across anything in your line, I’ll let you know.”
“I shall be much obliged, sir. The police station here will always find me. Good night, sir. Oh by the way——”
“Yes?”
“What you said just now about a plot to murder the Controller. That was only a joke, I suppose, sir?”
“Sorry as I am to disappoint you, it was. And a very poor joke too, I’m afraid. Good night.”
Chapter 6
A QUESTION OF INSURANCE
Mallett’s presence at Marsett Bay and the matters that had brought him there did, as Pettigrew had said, add a new interest to his life at the Control, but for the next ten days after the encounter at the Gamecock he had little leisure to reflect upon it. A sudden spate of work descended on the legal adviser, which necessitated long and ever longer hours at the office, culminating in a flying visit to London where the question of the new amendments was threshed out at what in political circles are known as “the highest levels”. During this period he caught an occasional glimpse of Mallett in the streets of the town and once in the Controller’s office, which he happened to be entering just as the inspector was leaving. At all these encounters Mallett passed him by with no more than the slightest nod of recognition. Pettigrew understood without being told that he did not desire to have any undue attention called to himself in public. On his side, in spite of his vague promise of assistance, Pettigrew had no particular wish to interest himself in whatever skulduggery the inspector was investigating, even if he had the time to do so. It would certainly be dull and probably tiresome, he reflected. “Not my pigeon,” he repeated thankfully to himself, and plunged to work again.
At last, little by little, the pressure eased. The files of papers began to dwindle, swollen no longer by the reinforcements that for days past had overflowed his “In” tray. The telephone remained silent for hours together. Soon he was able to look across his desk to where Miss Brown, rather pale but unshaken by the crisis, patiently took down his interminable memoranda. Then a day came when, quite suddenly, it seemed, there was nothing left to do. The last draft was approved, the last letter signed, the last minute added to the last file. And Miss Brown, conscientious to the last, was positively saying, “Is there anything else you want me to do to-day, Mr. Pettigrew?”
Pettigrew yawned, stretched himself and cast incredulous eyes at his empty tray.
“Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing. There are moments when I feel that ‘nothing’ is the most beautiful word in the language, and this is certainly one of them. There’s at least an hour to go before we can decently leave the office and it looks like being one hour of complete and blessed idleness. I suppose, being young and strong, you have some knitting in your bag to occupy you. Personally, I propose to spend the time in meditation on the beauty of nothingness. Will you be good enough to wake me up at, say, half-past five?”
Pettigrew became aware that Miss Brown had not paid the least attention to what he had been saying. She was looking at her feet, clutching her writing pad firmly in one hand, and there was a slight flush on her cheeks.
“Is anything the matter?” he asked.
She lifted her head and her brilliant blue eyes looked straight into his.
“Do you mind if I ask you something, Mr. Pettigrew?”
“No, of course not. Fire ahead.”
The question, when it came, surprised him.
“Do you know anything about insurance, Mr. Pettigrew?”
“Insurance? Well, I suppose so, although I’m no expert. But what kind of insurance do you mean? Fire, accident, marine, employer’s liability?”
“I meant, insuring one’s life. Do you think it’s a good thing to do?”
“A very sensible, prudent thing to do, if one has any dependents to consider. Of course, it’s impossible to advise unless one knows all the circumstances, but I should hardly have thought that you—I mean, I don’t want to pry into your personal affairs, but——”
Miss Brown’s gaze had wandered down to her shoes again.
“I have a little money of my own,” she murmured. “I could afford the premium quite well for, say, a thousand pounds. I’ve got some papers here which the company sent me, if you wouldn’t mind looking at them.”
“Certainly I will, if you wish. But that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. I meant, a single woman doesn’t usually——” He found it strangely difficult to put it into words. “Are you—are you proposing to get married, Miss Brown?”
Completely calm, Miss Brown replied, “I’m not quite sure yet, but I think I am.”
Really, Pettigrew thought, this young woman is uncannily matter of fact. It’s not natural.
“I should have thought,” he said in a tone which he could not prevent sounding a little peevish, “that it was rather more important to decide whether to get married than whether to get insured. Aren’t you putting the cart before the horse?”
Miss Brown smiled cheerfully. “I suppose I am, really,” she said. “Only the two things seem to hang together, somehow, and I thought you could give me some advice about insurance——”
“Whereas my advice on the other matter would not be worth listening to? I expect you are perfectly right there.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that!”
“None the less, you had a perfect right to mean it. It would be an impertinence on my part to give an opinion where it was not asked for. But since we have gone so far, perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling me who it is you are thinking of marrying. Should I be right in guessing that it was Mr. Phillips?”
“Yes.”
“I needn’t ask if he wants to marry you. Any doubt in the matter comes from your side.”
“Yes.”
“Well,” Pettigrew went on, beginning to be anxious to bring this embarrassing colloquy to an end, “you will have to make up your own mind whether or not you love him.”
“Oh, but I know I don’t love him,” Miss Brown replied as calmly as ever.
“Then why on earth——?”
“It’s rather difficult to explain, really,” she said, sitting down and regarding her writing pad as though to get inspiration from it. “You see, ever since Father died I’ve been alone, and I’m not used to it. And I’m not at all good with young men, at least the only young men I’ve met. And Mr. Phillips is very kind and—and sensible about things, and I know I could make him happy. I think it would be quite a good plan, really. Honoria—Miss Danville thinks so too.”
“Miss Danville!”
Miss Brown nodded. “She’s very keen on it,” she added.
“But my dear girl, you’re surely not going to tell me that you are depending on Miss Danville’s advice in a matter of this kind?” Remembering what had occurred the last time Miss Danville’s name had come up between them, he hastened to add, “I don’t mean that I have anything against her, of course, please don’t think that. But surely, a woman who has never even been married herself——”
“That’s just it,” was the reply. “She knows what it is not to be married. I don’t want to grow up to be like Miss Danville.”
Pettigrew passed his hands through his hair in despair.
“Of all the arguments for matrimony!” he groaned. “Anyway, why should you grow up to be like Miss Danville? You might equally well turn into something like Miss Clarke.”
“Do you think that would be any better?” she retorted, and their joint laughter relieved the tension.
“By the way,” Pettigrew observed a moment later, “was it on Miss Danville’s advice that you thought of insuring your life?”
“Oh, no. That was Mr. Phillips’s idea, entirely.”
“I see. . . . Before you had even accepted him?”
&n
bsp; “I’m afraid I rather let him take things for granted,” she replied demurely.
Pettigrew made no reply. His nose wrinkled in thought, he was idly drawing circles on his blotter. After a pause, Miss Brown got up.
“You haven’t told me yet,” she said reproachfully, “what you think about my insuring myself.”
“Haven’t I? We seem to have discussed so many things that I quite forgot where we began. Well, I’ll look through these papers of yours and tell you what I think about them. As for the question of principle, I absolutely decline to say anything until you and Miss Danville have settled your matrimonial future between you.”
“Very good, Mr. Pettigrew.”
The remainder of the hour’s idleness was spent in meditations rather less peaceful than those that Pettigrew had promised himself.
“This is nothing to do with me,” he told himself again and again. “Absolutely nothing. If this young woman chooses to make a fool of herself, it is her affair, exclusively and entirely. Merely because she happens to be thrown in my way, I absolutely refuse to let myself be jockeyed into the position of father confessor.”