‘In that case, why waste time looking?’
‘Lummy, yer got ter look ter see yer carn’t see, ain’t yer? Where’s yer muvver?’
‘Still in the kitchen,’ answered Maudie, discovering that she was meeting her match in back chat. ‘I’ve left her to it, and if you ask me, she’s happier there than here and we’ll get on better without her. Now, then let’s straighten things out.’ Her greenish eyes hardened. ‘Someone’s been murdered, you say?’
‘Yus,’ answered Ben.
‘Who?’
‘We’ll leave that.’
‘Oh? Why?’
‘P’r’aps I prefers ter arsk the questions!’
‘We don’t get all we prefer in this world, smartie!’
‘That goes fer both of us!’
She took a breath, and started again.
‘All right. Someone’s been murdered, and we’re leaving who it is and who did it. We’re getting on like a house on fire, aren’t we? Is it anybody I know?’
‘’Oo?’
‘God! The one who’s been murdered!’
‘Well, yer might of meant the one ’oo murdered ’im—’
‘Him?’
‘Eh?’
‘I’ve got the sex, anyhow.’
‘Yer thort it might be an ’er?’
‘If you want the truth, I did think it might be.’
She looked annoyed with herself the next moment and Ben made a note of it.
‘Wich ’er?’ he asked.
‘Nothing doing, Eric!’ she retorted.
‘Ain’t there? Well, ’ow can I tell yer if yer right afore I knows ’oo yer torkin’ abart?’
‘You’ve already told me I’m right by letting me know it’s a man, you born idiot! Or aren’t you? I think I’ve asked you that one before!’
‘I ain’t no idjit, miss,’ replied Ben, against his own conviction, ‘but I’ll give yer that one. I didn’t mean ter let on it wasn’t a woman, and you didn’t mean ter let on yer thort it might be. Well, that’s fifty-fifty, ain’t it? Wot abart gettin’ aht the slate and keepin’ the score?’
‘I can’t make you out.’
‘I’ve ’eard that one afore terday, so don’t try. The way I look at it is, once people can mike heachother aht, they’re finished. Best go on as we are, miss, and we’ll do fine. Nah, then—this bloke wot’s bin done in. Yer arsked me if ’e was anybody yer knoo. Orl right. ’Oo do yer know?’
‘The list wouldn’t take a month of Sundays, would it?’
‘It wouldn’t, not if yer was ter keep the nummer dahn like ter blokes yer got ter know through my pal Oscar Blake.’
Her eyes narrowed. He saw that he had scored again. He guessed that, whereas she had been thinking of some definite woman before, now she was thinking of some definite man, and with more chance of being right, this time. He would have given a sack of buns, buns full of currants, for a picture of the man in her mind at that moment.
But Maudie, in spite of her own limitations, was shrewd enough to watch her step after its preliminary stumbles, and like Ben was beginning to profit by experience. Before answering she went through a little performance for which Ben in secret took off his hat to her. It was the only way he could ever take off his hat, because in public he never had one. She went quickly to the door, which was ajar, looked out into the tiny passage, exclaimed, ‘Ah, there’s my handkerchief!’—it was in her hand—stooped to the floor, returned into the parlour, and closed the door. Then she moved casually towards the window, looking like a dark ghost, for the light had not been switched on again and now the door was closed no light came from the passage, yawned as she adjusted the torn net curtain against the panes—there were no other curtains—and returned to the chair she had been sitting in. It was an over-elaborate performance, possibly as much to impress her guest as to achieve any other object; but apparently it impressed the parrot even more, for suddenly the bird woke up and screeched, ‘Bloody good!’ and then went to sleep again. It may, of course, have been applauding some incident in a dream.
‘Now, listen,’ said Maudie, after they had both got over the parrot’s effort to unnerve them. ‘You may be a fool, I still can’t say, but I’m not, and you’re not going to get anything more out of me than you already know—if you really know anything, and I’m still not sure about that!—until I know just what the position is. You seem to think you’re fixed up here for good and that we couldn’t turn you out if we wanted to, but we could, and then you’d lose whatever you’ve come here for, which is another thing I’m waiting to hear.’
‘You ’ave ’eard,’ Ben reminded her. ‘’Ave yer fergot that note I brort from our pal Oscar? I expeck yer know ’im well enough ter know ’is ’andwritin’? I’m ’ere becos’ ’e’s comin’ back and ’e wants ter see me. I knows that much, any’ow, and so do you.’
‘Do you know why he wants to see you?’
‘’E’s got some big gime on. You’ve played with ’im afore, so that oughtn’t ter be no noos!’
‘What’s the game this time?’
‘Ah, I dunno orl of it—tha’s wot I’m ’ere ter waite for.’
‘How much do you know?’
‘I wasn’t ter say nuffin’. “Arsk no questions,” sez that bit o’ paiper. But if yer was ter send me orf and the pleece watchin’ this ’ouse copped me, they’d put me through it and I’d ’ave ter tell ’em wot I was ’ere for, and then they’d go on watchin’ and cop Oscar, and they’d put ’im through it, and ’e’d ’ave ter tell ’em wot ’e was ’ere for, and orl ’e knoo abart you, and seein’ it’s a murder caise—well, ’ow do yer s’pose yer’d come aht o’ that? In the witness-box, if it wasn’t in the dock?’
Maudie jumped up, and then sat down again.
‘You’re just trying to frighten me!’ she muttered.
‘I’m jest tellin’ yer wot’s called the facks,’ Ben replied.
‘Well, one fact is that I haven’t murdered anybody!’
‘I ain’t sayin’ yer ’ave—’
‘All right, then—’
‘There’s sich a thing as a hackersessory—’
‘Damfool!’
Was he getting her on the hop? He plunged on, speaking sepulchrally:
‘Or knowin’ abart it withaht ackturelly doin’ of it, or even bein’ there when it was done, they can git yer fer that if yer was in the know like—’
‘But I don’t know!’ she exclaimed.
‘Do yer know Norgate Road, miss?’
Her dim figure became rigid, as it had become at his first mention of the murder, but he could not decide whether she knew it or not.
‘Or Drewet Road?’
There was no mistake this time. Once more she leapt up from her chair, and it almost went over.
There was a sound in the passage, and the door opened. It was Mrs Kenton.
‘What, in the dark? Has he gone?’
She switched on the light.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked sharply.
‘He’s not gone, and he’s not going,’ answered Maudie. ‘Where’s the brandy?’
10
Concerning Two Others
And so Ben stayed, and spent the night at No. 46, Jewel Street, SE, but before following his further disturbing history let us follow the course of two other characters connected with the strange network of events in which Ben had been caught up after the inconsiderate itching of his thumbs. Both these characters he had already met, though one only for a very brief moment. This was the man into whom he had bumped, and who presumably had dropped the jemmy.
After that incident, a little incident with big consequences, the man, to borrow Ben’s phraseology, had bounced up as though made of rubber and vanished into the mist. His course for a while was vague and indeterminate. Like Ben he was running away; but, unlike Ben, only his own fancies were following him, and so he might have been running away from himself. Having no prescribed direction, or coordination to adhere to one had it been prescribed, he followed th
e natural instinct of the blind and travelled round in wide circles. His need for the time being was just movement. The fact that this was not getting him anywhere did not seem to matter, because he had no notion where he wanted to get. Indeed, in the complete chaos of his condition, such a place did not appear to exist.
Once he did stop. A seat grew into his misty vision, and breathless he sank down upon it. But only for a moment. He found its immovability nauseating. Was he going to be sick? So up he jumped again, and continued his aimless wandering.
The next time he stopped was at the top of a street. He stared, bewildered. He had been walking for twenty years, quite that, and here he was, almost back where he had started from! Was he dreaming?
Dreaming? The idea grew. When men are ill, or drunk, or worried, they hatch grotesque fancies! Even this curling mist was taking strange shapes—writhing snakes, coiling ropes, funeral wreaths. If you could see things that were not there, you might do things that were not done? For example, it seemed as if he were walking down the street, but he could not be, because that would be an act of sheer lunacy!…
And then he found he was. And then he found himself outside the house he had hoped to be a dream. Dim behind the wreathing mist, it looked like one! But, perhaps, inside!… He went inside. He came out again. Presently, after another twenty years, he stopped running.
A dirty old woman in a shabby black dress peered at him. ‘You look done up, dearie,’ she said. ‘’Ow about a cup o’ tea?’
‘No,’ he muttered.
It surprised him to find he still had a voice. Even the old woman’s voice sounded unnatural. Like something out of a forgotten past.
‘Oh, I ain’t got the price’—she grinned—‘but I thought I could do with one, too. What ’ave you been up to?’
She laid a bony hand on his sleeve. He shook her off and fled again.
A cup of tea! It sounded good. He had not imagined that anything could ever seem good again—but that cup of tea did! He thought of it hard. Just a cup of tea. Yes, but you needed money for even that. He hadn’t any money. Or—had he? It occurred to him, with a frightening shock, that he did not know. He did not know if he had any money! He might have nothing, or fifty pounds! Come, that was funny! Here was his hand going into his pocket, and he did not know what he would find in it. Laugh! Laugh! He tried to, but no sound came.
His groping fingers touched only fluff and crumbs. No cup of tea for him! Then he thought of the obvious. Hadn’t he any other pockets? He had a feeling that something had been in one of them, something hard … No, it wasn’t there. But now his fingers touched other things. Coins. Coins! He brought them out, and something else with them. A train ticket.
The coins were sixpence and three coppers. The train ticket was Euston to Penridge. Single. Third class. 58s. 6d.
For a few moments he forgot the tea, thought only of the ticket. Penridge. Where was that? It must be some distance, if it cost 58s. 6d. to get there. Devon? No, that wouldn’t be Euston. Wales? The North?
‘Penridge,’ he muttered, and then repeated to himself, ‘Penridge—Penridge—Penridge.’ And here was a ticket to it. And at Euston he could find both the train and a cup of tea.
He found his way to Euston. After all, why not? He knew London. So why not? But with the mist in the streets and the greater mist in his mind, it seemed a miracle that he got there. Was something outside himself guiding him? Had he now yielded his initiative into other hands? Surely it must be so … Otherwise, could he be going to an unknown place called Penridge?
As he entered the sombreness of Euston station, a man—heavily built, with a crooked nose, high cheek-bones and thick eyebrows—moved towards him, then paused, as though vaguely surprised. Had he expected recognition? He received none. The new arrival faced him fully for a moment, then turned aside towards the buffet without any change of expression. The man with the heavy eyebrows blinked, rubbed his stubby chin, then smiled and followed, keeping his distance.
Unconscious of this, the new arrival entered the buffet, and ordered a cup of tea at the counter. He took it to a small table and sat down to drink it. The man with the thick eyebrows ordered a cup for himself, and carried it towards the same table. There was an unoccupied chair, and he walked up to it.
‘This engaged?’ he asked.
The other looked up quickly, shook his head, and then looked down again.
‘Thanks,’ said the man with the thick eyebrows.
But he did not sit down. With an odd smile he suddenly turned away, and walked back to the counter with his cup.
The man he had left so abruptly seemed worried by the incident, and gulping his tea down, left the table and ran out into the station. When he was well away, he turned and looked back at the door from which he had just come. The man with the thick eyebrows did not come out after him, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He did not know that the man had come out through another door, and was watching him from behind a luggage truck.
He moved to a porter.
‘When’s the next train to Penridge?’ he asked.
‘Penridge?’ replied the porter, as though he had never heard of it.
‘Yes. Is there one soon.’
The porter studied his interrogator, and decided after all to be informative.
‘In ten minutes,’ he said. ‘Platform 9.’
For a moment, the man hesitated. The definiteness of the words—in ten minutes—Platform 9—seemed to percolate to his muzzy brain. Then the hesitation passed, and he walked to the barrier of Platform 9.
The inspector clipped his ticket.
‘Front part of the train. Change at Applewold.’
He passed through, gripping his ticket tightly as though it were gold. To him it was, for if he lost it he only had three coppers with which to buy another. Three coppers and a railway ticket between him and—what?
He joined the stream of humanity that flowed past the waiting northbound train. It was a thin stream, and it grew thinner as he progressed and as the passengers chose their compartments, but he kept on till he came to the very front coach, next to the engine. There he found an empty carriage, and he entered it with the sense that he had achieved it with his final effort, and that what happened next had nothing to do with him.
He leaned back in a corner seat and closed his eyes. After a period in which he seemed to be neither awake nor asleep a voice caused him to open them.
‘Got a match, sir?’
He was surprised to find the platform still outside the window. The train had not yet started, and he could not believe that the porter had told him the platform less than ten minutes ago. The man who had just entered, he looked a sporting type, repeated his request.
‘Could you give me a match?’
The reply was a shake of the head, and after feeling in his pockets in the vain hope that he had a box himself, the newcomer grunted, allowed his unlit cigarette to dangle from his lips, and began to read an evening paper. Suddenly he gave an exclamation.
‘Hallo! It says here the police are expecting to make an arrest!’
No response.
‘The Penzance murder. Well, they’ve taken their time about it, but these fellers always get caught in the end. I wonder sometimes how they feel? I suppose it depends to some extent on what sort of chaps they are to begin with. Mistake some people make is to imagine they’re all the same.’ His unlit cigarette dropped from its insecure adhesion to his lips, and he just caught it before it fell to the ground. ‘Well fielded, what? Yes—now take that little jockey who killed his trainer—I mean, trainer of his horse Jersey Pants—last year at Newmarket—incidentally, I put my shirt on those pants so you might say I had a grudge against that trainer myself, ha, ha!—mild little feller, the jockey, last sort you’d say to become a killer, and compare him with—well, this Penzance bloke? Now, then. Deed’s done! Do these two chaps feel identical the moment after? You get me? How’d I feel? How’d you feel? Speaking for myself—hallo, we’re off!—funny if twenty or
thirty trains dashed away after the whistle and began leaping over bridges!—speaking for myself, I don’t think I’d do any dashing away after a murder, I think I’d take a swig of whisky and stay put to get it over—’
For the second time his useless cigarette slipped from its mooring, and this time he wasn’t so lucky and the cigarette dropped to the ground.
‘Blast! If I don’t get this thing lit, it’ll die on me!’
He picked the cigarette up and turned to his companion for sympathy, but he got none. The man in the corner had his eyes closed. Nice journey this was going to be! No smoke, and only a sleeping man to talk to. Disgustedly the loquacious one rose, and tiptoed from the compartment. He found a light and a better companion in a compartment three down the corridor. Rather an interesting chap. Big feller, with a broken nose. Been in the boxing game? And with heavy eyebrows …
The train increased speed. The man in the front carriage remained in his corner with his eyes still closed. How blessed it was to be alone again! He had tried not to hear the words of the chatterbox who had just left him. He did not want to hear anything but the voice of the train, or to feel anything but the rhythm of its smooth harmonious movement, or to see anything but the blackness of his closed lids. The trouble was that it did not remain just blackness permanently. He wanted the blackness to envelop everything for ever, blotting out the compartment, and the views he was passing through, and the globe and the universe, but periodically it became a mere background for phantom figures and sinister visions. Then, when he could (sometimes his eyelids stuck) he opened his eyes to seek comfort in the temporary security of the intimate little reality around him—luggage-racks, window-straps, coloured pictures of England’s beauty spots to which this train could convey contented people, cushioned seats on which lovers had sat, and would again. He tried to visualise the compartment through the eyes of lovers. Suddenly he did so, startlingly, for one of the lovers was himself. With a groan he closed his eyes again, and wooed the darkness.
Backwards and forwards. Where was escape?
He lost all count of time. The metropolitan fog faded away and natural gloaming took its place, itself to darken into night. Little incidents occurred of which he was only half aware. Had the train stopped just then? That rather loud voice, calling words he had not heard or could not remember—had it sounded from a platform outside or been hatched within his own ears? Had someone got in? Had someone got out? What, anyhow, was the object in knowing? There was nothing for him to do about it? Or about anything, beyond holding on to the comfort of his corner, a comfort needed physically as well as mentally after his long and fatiguing wandering. If only his head would stop throbbing. Was it his head throbbing? Or was it the engine?
Ben on the Job Page 8