Ben on the Job

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  Sounds at last! But not the sounds Ben was listening for. The kitchen door opened, and Mrs Kenton came along the passage. She was getting restive, too? Her steps did not click like her daughter’s. More of a shuffle, like. They shuffled past the parlour door to the front door, and then stopped. What was she doing? Jest standin’ there, waitin’? Meanin’ ter git ’er word in fust?

  Hallo! The bell! Maudie wouldn’t ring! Not unless she’d fergot ’er key? But Ben had not heard that informative clicking along the pavement. Of course, the fog might have something to do with that. He listened to the front door opening.

  ‘Is Miss Kenton back yet?’

  Ben’s heart descended into his boots with a thump at the unwelcome, familiar voice!

  ‘You’re early!’ came Mrs Kenton’s retort.

  ‘She’s not back, then?’

  ‘When you say a time, I should think you’d stick to it!’

  ‘Isn’t she usually back by now?’

  The sergeant was walking right through her, and she gave up evasion.

  ‘Yes, she is. I expect she’s been delayed.’

  ‘You’ve had no message?’

  ‘Message? What do you mean? What would a message be about?’

  In the little pause that followed the parrot opened an eye, failed to sense drama, and reclosed it. The sergeant spoke again.

  ‘I’ll come in, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘I do mind! I’m busy getting lunch!’

  ‘Just the same, as your daughter isn’t here, I’d like a few words with you instead.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to tell you!’

  ‘No? Well, ma’am, perhaps not, but you see I’ve got something to tell you!’

  ‘Oh, what?’

  ‘Your daughter isn’t at Woolworth’s.’

  ‘That’s nonsense! She must be, if she isn’t here—’

  ‘I’m telling you that she isn’t. She hasn’t been there all the morning, and we’re needing to get into touch with her. So with your permission, ma’am, I’ll step in and we’ll continue our conversation inside.’

  13

  Parlour Tricks

  Ben never knew whether Mrs Kenton brought the policemen—there were two of them—into the parlour, or whether the sergeant came in on his own initiative while his unwilling hostess was intending to lead him into the kitchen. Subsequent events gave some indication of the former theory. But by whatever process, here they all were in the parlour—the sergeant, the constable, Mrs Kenton and Ben. With one notable difference, however. Whereas the first three were visible, the last was not.

  In sudden emergencies, his life-score of which ran well into four figures, Ben was never without a temporary solution. ‘Yer not done till yer dead’ was his motto, and aided by this optimistic philosophy he never gave up hope. Another man might have stood frozen while the parlour door opened to admit his doom. When the police entered now, however, the only living thing they saw besides themselves and Mrs Kenton was the parrot.

  Ben had not sought sanctuary this time beneath the table. He was behind a long, heavy, maroon window-curtain, which he had pulled right across the window as he had slid behind it. On a sunny day this would have been immediately noticeable, but the yellow fog was itself a curtain which had already necessitated the switching on of the electric light for the room’s illumination. So the dreaded comment was not made—perhaps Mrs Kenton assumed Ben had pulled the curtain across to shut out the ugly pea-soup prospect?—and the conversation begun on the front doorstep was now resumed. It was the sergeant who resumed it.

  ‘I don’t suppose your daughter mentioned to you that she was not going to Woolworth’s this morning?’ he began.

  ‘Wouldn’t I have known about it if she had?’ interrupted Mrs Kenton.

  ‘Quite so—’

  ‘How do you know she didn’t do so?’

  ‘Please let me ask the questions. We know because we called there.’

  ‘That was a nice thing to do!’

  ‘You must agree it was necessary. I want you to tell me whether she said anything to you before she left this morning that may help us to trace her movements?’

  ‘If she did, of course I have to repeat it?’

  ‘I should like to get this clear, ma’am. Your daughter is missing. You don’t know where she is—is that correct?’

  ‘Haven’t I told you?’

  ‘But you’re not anxious? You’ve no interest in trying to find out what has happened to her?’

  ‘That’s right, try to get me all tied up!’ exclaimed Mrs Kenton. ‘I see what you’re getting at, but why should I be anxious? My daughter is a grown woman, and she can look after herself, and she goes her own way. I’ve nothing to do with whatever you’re calling here about—’

  ‘You mentioned that you were getting lunch. Were you getting it for her, as well as for yourself?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just the two of you? If we went in the kitchen I suppose we’d find—’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course I was getting hers, too!’

  ‘Then, when she did not return, and you are told she did not go to Woolworth’s, you would naturally want to know the reason, I take it, and would ask yourself whether she had said anything to you in the morning to explain her absence. Not,’ the sergeant added, somewhat ironically, ‘because you were anxious, but because of the inconvenience she had caused you by making you prepare for a meal she had not come home to eat.’

  ‘She certainly didn’t say anything to me in the morning before she left, whatever she may have said to anybody else!’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who else?’ A short, pregnant silence occurred before the sergeant continued: ‘If you have your lunch in the kitchen, would we find places laid there for only two?’

  Behind the window curtain Ben’s forehead grew damper. Now for it! How was Mrs Kenton going to get past that one? He learned a moment later. Answering shrilly, Mrs Kenton cried:

  ‘All right, all right, all right! If you want the truth, you shall have it, and but for others whose doings are nothing to do with me, and don’t you forget that, you should have had it from the start! Mothers are supposed to look after their daughters, I suppose, if you’re married ask your wife, only I hope your daughter’s less trouble than mine is! It was her made me take that lodger you’re inquiring about who’s gone, he was her friend, not mine, though I’m not saying she ever knew he was as bad as he was, and when he sends another man here what am I to do? I said only an hour ago I’d wash my hands of the whole affair, “Have it out with Maudie the moment she comes back,” I said, and that’s what I would have done if you hadn’t come back first! And just because she isn’t here to talk to you, and as if I haven’t got enough on my mind, you try to put all the blame on to me—’ Her voice rose, hysterically. ‘On me, when I’ve done nothing at all, nothing whatever—’

  ‘Stop! That’s enough!’ interrupted the sergeant, sharply. ‘Where’s this other man? Is he here?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Answer quick, please!’

  ‘You can see he’s not—’

  ‘In the house? Try the kitchen, Jones—’

  ‘He’s not there!’

  ‘We’ll look for ourselves, if you’ve no objection!’

  ‘Look where you like, you won’t find him down here. Upstairs most likely—yes, and I hope you do find him!’

  The policemen were out of the room as she spoke, and in a confusion of sounds Ben heard their hurrying feet, and Mrs Kenton’s heavy breathing, and the tattoo of his own heart. Well, it was now or never, wasn’t it? They would soon have searched the kitchen and the bedrooms, and then they would be back in the parlour for a more intensive search here. But in spite of the urgency of the moment Ben waited for a second or two in the hope of hearing Mrs Kenton’s steps following the policemen out. He listened for them in vain. All he heard was her breathing.

  All right! She’d have to have it. The heavy maroon curtain move
d convulsively, the movement followed by the protesting squeak of a window suddenly thrust up. Mrs Kenton shrieked. She went on shrieking, and while she shrieked Ben hurled himself out into the fog, tripping over indecipherable objects, jumping into others, hitting walls, bouncing off on to railings, and generally disturbing everything in the immediate universe. And when at last it seemed that he had found a region free of entanglements and Mrs Kenton’s shrieks were mere faint echoes, a hand descended heavily on his shoulder.

  ‘Now, then, what’s all this?’ cried a voice at the other end of the law’s long arm.

  There were rare moments when Ben revealed a capacity that made him wonder whether he had not really been born for better things. Such a moment came now. Expert wriggler though he was, the grip on his shoulder was too firm to squirm out of in his breathless condition, and he had to depend on strategy. The strategy took the form of assumed delight.

  ‘A copper! Thank Gawd,’ he gasped. ‘Did yer ’ear that screamin’?’

  ‘Yes, and I was just—’

  ‘Don’t stop ter tork! The sergeant and the constable—they’re arter Blake in there, and there’s hothers, too, and they’re murderin’ the old lady. I was sent aht fer hextra ’elp—yer wanted inside, quick!’

  ‘Blake? Did you say Blake—’

  ‘Gawd, this is when yer want ter ’ear the fust time! ’E’s got a gun—lummy, there’s a shot! ’E’s used it!’

  For an instant the heavy hand on Ben’s shoulder relaxed. It was all he needed. Before the constable had realised his Waterloo, ten yards of London fog separated them, and he had lost both Ben and his chance of promotion.

  14

  Back in Drewet Road

  The fog was not as thick in Drewet Road as it was in Jewel Street, but it was a cheerless prospect at which Ada Wilby gazed as she sat at one of her drawing-room windows after a solitary lunch. She hardly saw the depressing yellowed view, however, for her mind was far beyond it, dwelling on other times and places. It was a very tired mind, and a very confused one. She found it difficult to know what she thought, and what she felt. Anger mingled with reproach, grief with fear, and she seemed to have lost herself as well as her husband. Dismayed by a sense of loneliness, she needed to talk. But there was no one to talk to.

  She was in this mood when she became conscious of a movement in the yellowed back garden, and she shortened her focus to discover what it was. Bending forward she watched the movement, till a blur became a vague, approaching figure, which as it drew cautiously closer materialised into that of a man. Alarm was followed by recognition. This was the strange little fellow who on the previous day had brought her the first news of her husband’s death, and whom she had engaged to try and solve its mystery. In spite of the queer appeal he had made to her, she had wondered whether she would ever see him again. Now here he was, to dispel her doubts, returning in a way which, although unusual, probably suited the necessity of the role she had allotted him. For, after all, it was hardly likely he would come to the front door, and he might consider it in their mutual interest to avoid being seen by a maid at the back.

  This, precisely, had been Ben’s reasoning when, after a trying and groping journey, he had found himself back in Drewet Road.

  There was a narrow balcony outside the drawing-room window, with a narrow iron stairway running down to the garden beside the high dividing wall. Leaving her chair, she opened the window and beckoned. The figure below did not immediately respond. He slithered against the wall and waited while a faint streak of light came from below the balcony. ‘Daisy in the pantry!’ thought Mrs Wilby. In a few moments the streak vanished, and the unorthodox visitor leapt catlike up the stairway. Reaching the open window, he breathed conspiratorially, ‘Orl right ter come in, mum?’ Mrs Wilby nodded, and he slid into the room.

  They made an odd, ill-assorted couple, Mrs Wilby in her smart costume—only complete incapacity could cause her to neglect her appearance—and Ben in his patched and shiny suit, but the contrast was softened by the dimness of the drawing-room, for Mrs Wilby had not switched on the light, and as she softly closed the window behind her guest she made a shadowy silhouette against the panes.

  ‘The reason I come this way, mum,’ began Ben, in a whisper, ‘was ’cos I thort it best not ter be seen like.’

  ‘Yes, I guessed that was the reason,’ Mrs Wilby whispered back.

  ‘Wot abart bein’ ’eard? This is over the kitching, ain’t it?’

  ‘It is. Wait a moment!’ She reflected. ‘You’ve come to tell me something?’

  ‘Yus.’

  ‘Will it take more than a minute?’

  ‘Lummy, yus! See, we gotter work it aht!’

  ‘Is it very urgent—’

  ‘Hurgent?’

  ‘I mean, must it be this instant? Is it something I ought to know at once?’

  ‘Oh, I see! Yer got some’un comin’, and yer want me ter slip ahtside fer a bit—’

  ‘No, no,’ she interrupted, ‘but I was remembering that in about half an hour my maid will be out, and then we’d have the house to ourselves and wouldn’t have to be so quiet.’

  ‘I git yer,’ answered Ben. ‘But won’t the fog keep ’er ’ome?’

  ‘She’s got a boyfriend.’

  ‘Oh! Well, mum, wot I gotter tell yer ain’t immejit hurgent, if that’s wot yer call it, and p’r’aps now I’ve got ’ere it won’t mike no bones waitin’ a bit longer. Where shall I go, mum?’

  ‘You can stay here,’ she replied. ‘There’s a comfortable chair over there. If I hear the maid outside I’ll go to the door and see she doesn’t come in.’

  It was a very comfortable chair. Almost too comfortable, for it invited slumber, and even after a decision not to talk it is not socially correct to go to sleep when you are paying a lady a call. But perhaps, thought Ben, when he had tiptoed to this comfort, he might just close his eyes? After all, he wouldn’t be expected to sit and look at Mrs Wilby if he wasn’t talking to her, and she certainly wouldn’t want to sit and look at him! A couple of seconds of Ben was an eyeful. So he allowed his lids to drop, and the oppressive fog he had groped through melted into a rosy region inhabited by little white horses. You never knew what would come when you closed your lids. Sometimes it was nothing. Sometimes it was cheese. You never knew. But quite often it was white horses, and when he got white horses he liked watching them go round and round. They were pretty, you couldn’t get away from it.

  He thought he was still watching them, although in fact they had long departed, when Mrs Wilby’s voice opened his eyes and brought back the dimness of the drawing-room. He found her standing before his chair.

  ‘She’s gone,’ she said.

  ‘Eh?’ blinked Ben. ‘’Ave I bin asleep?’

  ‘Sound.’

  ‘Lummy—I ’ope I didn’t snore!’

  ‘I’d have woken you if you had! Come over to the fire. Now we’ll talk.’

  There was something comfortable and secure in the firelit gloom. Outside was trouble, but here—for the time being—there seemed none. No policemen. No hysterical women. Not even an unpredictable parrot. Of course, it wasn’t going to be no picnic giving Mrs Wilby his news if he told her about that picture of her husband and Maudie, but she had already proved she was not the sort of woman to go off the handle, whatever she was feeling like inside, and there was a friendliness about her that was as reassuring as surprising. Same as she had shown on the day before. Wunner why?

  ‘Well? Did you go to that address?’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘And who did you find there?’

  ‘The gall and ’er mother, like Blake said—’

  ‘Blake?’

  ‘Yus, that’s the feller ’oo was stayin’ there and ’oo give me the note—the feller I met—well, you know where. The note was signed O.B., and I found that meant Oscar Blake. Do you know anythink abart ’im?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘But you must have heard something about him,’ she said. ‘Tell me
! And about the Kentons—wasn’t that the name?’

  ‘Tha’s right. Mrs and Maudie—and a nice couple they are! Maudie works at Woolworth’s, and she’s been on some gime with Blake, but she didn’t know nothink abart the—abart wot ’appened yesterday, no more’n ’er mother did, and they was fair hupset when they read abart it this mornin’ in the paiper.’

  Mrs Wilby looked a little puzzled.

  ‘Didn’t you tell them, then?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ responded Ben. ‘See, if they wasn’t tellin’ me wot they knoo, I wasn’t tellin’ them nothink fer nothink. But I did drop a sorter ’int larst night, ter put the wind up ’em, arter the pleece ’ad called lookin’ fer Blake.’

  ‘What! Did the police call at Jewel Street?’ exclaimed Mrs Wilby.

  ‘Tha’s right, mum.’

  ‘Did they find you there?’

  ‘It was a narrer squeak, but I was jest too quick fer ’em.’

  ‘And I suppose they didn’t find Blake, either?’

  ‘No, mum.’

  ‘What did the Kentons say about him? To the police? Or don’t you know?’

  ‘Oh, I ’eard it. Corse, the sergeant pumps ’em proper, but orl ’e got was that Blake ’ad gorn, and that they didn’t know nothink abart ’im, and that ’e wasn’t comin’ back.’

  ‘What did they say about you?’

  ‘Nothink—not then. Well, arter they’d left and I’d come aht of ’idin’, we ’ad a lovin’ hevenin’, I don’t think! I couldn’t git no more aht of ’em than the pleece ’ad, and the on’y way I got ’em ter let me stay the night was by pertendin’ ter know more’n I did abart ’em and sayin’ that if I left it’d be fer the pleece staishun. Oh, yus, I fergot. There was somethink I got aht o’ Maudie afore we went ter bed. I arsked ’er—yer know, sort o’ cashel like—if she’d ever ’eard o’ Drewet Road. ’Ad she! You orter’ve seen ’er fice!’

  ‘She knew it?’

  ‘I’ll say she did!’