‘What fish?’
‘Well, if yer’d ordered it, it’d ’ave ter come.’
‘I’m not expecting anything, but don’t worry. Stay here and I’ll deal with whoever it is.’
‘Beggin’ yer pardon, mum,’ replied Ben; ‘but I think I better come with yer.’
‘Why?’
‘Jest in caise.’
‘In case of what?’
‘That’s wot I mean. We dunno. That’s when yer does things in caise, ain’t it?’
The bell rang again. Mrs Wilby looked perplexed.
‘It may be a policeman,’ she said.
‘If it is ’e won’t see me,’ promised Ben. ‘Wot I thort was I’d stay on the bisement stairs be’ind yer, and on’y pop aht if yer wanted any ’elp.’
‘I won’t need any help!’
‘Then I won’t pop aht.’
Having learned by now the moments when Ben won, she gave him best and left the room, followed guardedly by her visitor. Half-way down the basement staircase she felt, rather than heard, him breathe into her ear:
‘Better ’urry!’
‘I thought you believed in caution!’ she retorted nervily.
‘Yus, at fust,’ answered Ben; ‘but once yer’ve decided ter open a door yer wanter open it quick in caise ’ooever it is goes away afore yer finds aht ’oo, see, tht’s why yer doos it, and if yer laite yer’ve gotter go back and guess.’
‘You seem to have worked it out!’
‘There ain’t much I don’t know abart stairs and doors.’
‘Do you spend all your life at this sort of thing?’
‘Yer’ve sed it.’
He proved his knowlege by stopping at a bend eight stairs from the bottom while Mrs Wilby completed her descent. The back door was just in view from where Ben stood, and if it was a bobby behind it he could shinny back round the bend and listen, while if it was anyone dangerous, not to himself but to Mrs Wilby, he could leap the eight stairs and do his windmill act at the menace. This was to hit with all four limbs in rapid succession until they either won or lost.
He had told Mrs Wilby that he did not know who had rung the back door bell, and this was obviously true, but he had not told her that a very nasty possibility had entered his mind—namely, that the back door visitor might be Blake. If it were he certainly wanted to be by, whatever the subsequent consequences to himself. He always had a soft spot for people in trouble—a cynic or a psycho-analyst might have described this as a subconscious form of self-love—and for some reason which was quite beyond his comprehension he had developed a particularly soft spot for Mrs George Wilby. And in spite of the late Mr George Wilby’s naughtiness, it was rough luck on him losing her like this. Ben felt sure that, given time, they’d of made it up like.
For all of which reasons, the person outside the back door as Mrs Wilby opened it looked like having a warm reception should it turn out to be Oscar Blake.
But it was not Oscar Blake. Instead, a young woman with very light hair and very red lips stared at Mrs Wilby, while Mrs Wilby stared back. Ben, from his observation post, stared also, and with an interest just as intense. The eyes beneath the very light hair were not as hard as when he had first seen them at another door—a front door in Jewel Street. They were now uncertain and alarmed. But there was no mistaking that they were the eyes through which Maudie Kenton viewed her own particular and peculiar world.
The mutual gazing match only lasted two or three seconds. Whatever lay ahead of Maudie, and that was clearly unpredictable, she chose it to what lay behind her, and slipping suddenly inside she came to a second halt to consider the next step.
Ben’s admiration for Mrs Wilby increased as the tense moments ticked by. You could hear them ticking from an unseen clock in the unseen kitchen. You’d have thought she’d have started storming at the girl, wouldn’t you? Or ordered her out. Or fainted. Something, anyhow. But instead, what did she do? She moved to the open back door, now behind Maudie instead of in front of her, and quietly closed it, shutting out a fog-yellowed wall from view. Then she turned the key in the door and locked it. Then she spoke, and her voice was as quiet and controlled as her movements.
‘You’re Maud Kenton?’ she asked.
‘Yes—ma’am,’ answered Maudie.
The ‘ma’am’ came as an afterthought.
‘And have you something to tell me?’
Maudie did not answer at once. Her eyes travelled beyond the questioner to the stairs on which Ben stood. With her eyes still on Ben, she nodded, and Ben received an impression that what she had come here to tell was really for him.
‘Come upstairs,’ said Mrs Wilby, with sudden decision. ‘We’ll talk in the drawing-room.’
Up again! If any biographer of the future performed the surprising feat of writing Ben’s life-story, the item ‘Stairs’ in the index would occupy a considerable number of pages.
It was a silent procession that trooped up to the drawing-room. Mrs Wilby broke the journey in the hall by going to the front door to ensure that it was secure against any surprise visitation, as was the door below. When they were all in the drawing-room she motioned Maudie to a chair, and said: ‘Well?’
She had to repeat the word before Maudie answered, ‘I don’t know how I ought to begin.’ And again the girl’s eyes sought Ben’s.
(‘It’s me she wants,’ thought Ben.)
‘Why not begin by saying why you’ve come? Is anyone following you?’
‘I—don’t know.’
‘Try and know something presently, please,’ begged Mrs Wilby calmly. Ben was impressed by her calmness, but not deceived by it; he guessed what she must be controlling. ‘If anyone is following you, who would it be? A policeman?’
‘I—yes, it might be.’
‘Or, if not, a man named Blake?’
Maudie looked startled. Then she shot out a question of her own.
‘You know about Blake, then?’
‘I know what I have been told by …’ Mrs Wilby paused, and turned to Ben. ‘What am I supposed to call you? So far I know you as Ben and Eric Burns. Please tell me which I am to use?’
‘I’d like to know that, too,’ interposed Maudie, with a little more courage.
‘Well, it ain’t Eric Burns, that’s wot Blake mide up,’ replied Ben, ‘so yer can tike yer choice o’ wot’s left.’
Her normal reactions completely at sea, Mrs Wilby smiled, though only for an instant. Now turning back to Maudie, she went on:
‘I know what Ben has told me—’
But Maudie interposed again.
‘It’s him I’ve come to see. I guessed he might be here—it’s him I’ve got to tell something to.’
‘Yes, I have been gathering that,’ answered Mrs Wilby; ‘but as you are seeing him in my house you will hardly expect me to go out of the room while you and he have a heart-to-heart. Especially as I am quite sure that what you may have to tell him concerns me as well. And there is one other thing, Miss Kenton, which so far you and I have not mentioned, though I am not sure yet if this is the precise moment for it. Do I have to tell you what that is?’
Maudie flushed, and was silent.
‘Evidently not. I think what you have to tell Ben must be exceedingly important for you to have risked coming to my house. Don’t you agree?’
Still flushing, Maudie now responded: ‘It is important—and you’re behaving nicer than I thought.’
‘Thank you. Though I dare say you thought you might manage not to see me at all?’
‘That’s right, I hoped I wouldn’t. I meant to just inquire below if he was here.’
‘But my maid is out. That was unfortunate.’
All at once Maudie looked at Mrs Wilby directly.
‘I’m not so sure,’ she said. ‘Not now.’
‘Oh? Why not?’ queried Mrs Wilby, surprised.
‘Because p’r’aps I’ve got something to tell you, too,’ Maudie responded. ‘Yes, I expect I’d better. I expect it’d come out anyhow. If you wa
nt the truth, I’m all dizzy. Could I have a drink of water, do you think?’
‘Nothing stronger?’
‘Not on your life. I mean, no. I’ve had that!’
Mrs Wilby hesitated, then rose from her chair and left the room. Ben wondered what Mrs Wilby herself had been wondering. Was this a little ruse of Maudie’s to have a few moments with him alone? But, if so, she did not follow it up. When she spoke she said:
‘She seems okay.’
‘She is okay,’ answered Ben. ‘’Ow abart you?’
‘When I die, they’ll put me in an express to heaven,’ retorted Maudie. ‘You see!’
Mrs Wilby returned with the glass of water. Maudie gulped it down, and while she was doing so Ben remarked:
‘She wanted that, mum, it weren’t no trick. She didn’t tell me nothink!’
‘I wasn’t really worrying,’ returned Mrs Wilby. ‘I knew that if you had been told anything I needed to know while I was out of the room, you would have repeated it. There is a truthfulness about our friend Ben, Miss Kenton, which you and I might do well to copy—even though it’s a little embarrassing at times. Will it help you if I tell you that he has told me everything that happened during his visit to your house? At least, I think everything.’
‘I on’y left aht wot I fergot,’ corroborated Ben.
‘So let us save repetition. I know it is you who have been about with my late husband. Well, now I have met you, I should know that, anyhow. I know that a man called Oscar Blake has been staying at your house, and that he is not staying there any longer. He seems to have disappeared since—yesterday afternoon. I know that you yourself disappeared this morning after breakfast, and that you did not turn up at Woolworth’s, where you work. I know that a policeman called to see Blake yesterday after he had gone, and that he called again to see you today, after you had gone. Is that enough to go on with?’
Maudie nodded.
‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘but one of the things you don’t know is that it wasn’t my idea to go about with your husband.’
‘You mean, it was his idea?’ asked Mrs Wilby. ‘You mean he started it?’
‘Well—yes—I suppose you’d say so.’
‘But you must know!’
‘What I mean is, he must have wanted it, but it was Oscar—it was Blake—who fixed it all up.’
Mrs Wilby shook her head.
‘I don’t think I understand that.’
‘Of course you don’t, not till I tell you,’ answered Maudie, growing red. ‘You see—well, I did it for money. All right, all right, I’m not white-washing myself, I’m telling you. I wasn’t interested in your husband. If you want the truth—and you said you wanted it—I didn’t care for him very much. In fact, not at all!’
‘I see.’ Mrs Wilby took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘He just paid you.’
‘No, Blake paid me. It was like this. Blake came to me one day and said he knew somebody who wanted a friend—that’s all, just a friend—and if I’d play it would be worth my while. So I played, and every time I went out with him—Mr Wilby—I got a nice little packet.’
‘Let me try and get this quite straight,’ interposed Mrs Wilby. ‘This man Blake introduced you to my husband, and then dropped out—so why did he go on paying you?’
‘Because he didn’t drop out. It was always Blake who fixed things up. If he was at the house he’d let me know there, and if he wasn’t, and he often wasn’t, then he’d—he’d leave a message at a shop we’d agreed on, or even write to me there saying he was away. One thing I had to do when he was away was to call at the shop twice a day to see if there was a letter.’ She paused. ‘And today—well, I’ll come to that in a moment. What I want to say first, though, is that Mr Wilby and I only went about together. I expect you know what I mean when I tell you that. I never brought him home—in fact, Mother never saw him—Blake said I wasn’t to let him know where I lived—and we never went to any hotel or anything.’ Suddenly a rather belated spark of independence kindled within her. ‘I’d have needed a damn sight more than I was getting for that! In fact, he could have sung for it!’
‘Thank you,’ responded Mrs Wilby, ‘for relieving my mind on that score so gracefully. The situation, then, was that the man Blake engaged you to give Mr Wilby a good time, but that you were strictly instructed not to go beyond getting drunk.’
‘We only did that once!’ flared Maudie. ‘And then I didn’t want to.’
‘We won’t go into it.’
‘No! But how did you know? That wasn’t in the papers! Or was it?’
‘I got to know quite a good deal, Miss Kenton. More than once I was ’phoned by a kind well-wisher who never gave his name. I am wondering whether that was your friend Mr Blake.’
‘No friend of mine, thank you! I’ve finished with him! I was a respectable girl before he got me into this, though I’m not asking you to believe it.’
‘My opinion can hardly matter to you. What more have you to tell me?’
Maudie frowned, then swung round in her chair and addressed Ben.
‘I expect you’ll want to know what happened to me this morning?’ she said.
‘Wot did?’ he asked. ‘You sed you was comin’ back ter lunch.’
‘I know I did.’
‘And then yer was goin’ ter tell me orl abart it.’
‘Yes, and I meant to.’
‘Why didn’t yer?’
‘Because I got the wind up. When I began thinking outside I felt I was getting into a jam, and then when I thought someone was following me that put the lid on. I went right round a block to test it, and the footsteps came round after me. So then I jumped on a passing bus, and then I got off the bus and jumped on to another. Call me silly if you like—after all, I’d done nothing the law could nab me for—but once funk gets you you’re done, and the funk got me this morning right and proper! I expect I’d been holding on to myself without knowing it, and all at once everything snapped. I don’t expect you to understand it.’
‘Lummy, I unnerstans it,’ said Ben sympathetically. ‘Yer starts runnin’, and it’s no good torkin’ ter yer legs! Wot ’appened then?’
‘I cooled down a bit when I knew I’d shaken whoever it was off—’
‘The fog’d ’elp yer—’
‘Of course. But I was already late for my job, and I couldn’t face a row, and more than that I didn’t want to risk going to Woolworth’s where the police might know I worked and be waiting for me, so I decided not to turn up there at all and to say I’d been taken ill when I turned up tomorrow. Yes, but that didn’t get me through today, did it? I was in a proper tangle, and I wanted time to work something out. So I just walked about like a fool and a lunatic, and couldn’t work out anything. I’ll say I was tired! Talk about a headache!… Well, nobody here’s going to worry about that, I expect! Not but that you haven’t taken it better than I thought you would, Mrs Wilby, I have to say that. Anyhow, when I found it was lunch time I got a bite somewhere, and perhaps that put back a little of my sense—what was I running away from?—I was daft!—and suddenly I thought of the tobacconist where I got messages and wondered if there’d be one. So I went there and inquired, and there was!’
Ben’s eyes opened wide.
‘Wot! From Blake?’
‘Yes. A telegram, but though it was addressed to me—well, of course, it had to be—the message was for you. It said—wait a moment.’ She opened a smart, red leather bag she carried—Mrs Wilby wondered whether Mr Wilby had bought it for her—and drew out the telegram. Then she read out: ‘“Tell Eric take 7.12 pm train Euston to Penridge change Applewold will meet Penridge station good and important news for all no time to lose so don’t fail.” And it’s signed O.B. There it is.’
She handed the pale pink form to Ben, and after he had read it he passed it on to Mrs Wilby. Meanwhile Maudie went on:
‘I didn’t know what to do at first. See, I wanted to drop it. But then I thought I’d better pass the message on, though it meant go
ing home to do it. But I couldn’t stay out for ever, could I? Anyway, I went back, and no one pounced on me outside the house as I’d expected they might, and found mother in a fair stew. She told me what had happened and how you’d left while the police were there, and she fair got my goat the way she went on, so I left her again as soon as I could, and somehow got a hunch you might have come here. Well, there wasn’t anywhere else I could look for you, was there? So I came along, and this time I was followed again, at least I think so, once you get that feeling everybody’s a policeman in disguise, but I didn’t make for here till I was pretty sure I’d shaken them off again—that is, if there was ever anyone to shake off!—and—well, now you know the lot!’
And having reached the end of her narration she suddenly became conscious that she had also reached the end of her mission, and jumped up; but only to sit down again nervously to await the next step. Mrs Wilby seemed no more certain of what the next step should be, and Ben found the eyes of both women upon him.
In his view, the next step was obvious. It was the seven-twelve from Euston.
17
What Happened at Euston
The hands of the large clock pointed to fourteen minutes to seven when Ben entered Euston station. This meant that he had twenty-six minutes for reflection before the seven-twelve began its journey into the unpredictable future, and he would rather have been without them. Once the journey had started there could be no change of decision, no turning back. The policy he had advocated in Mrs Wilby’s drawing-room would be set in motion with the train, and before he would have to stir again in either mind or body there would be not far short of a dozen hours of drowsy, uneventful comfort. Saying he got a corner seat. But before this temporary haven was reached these twenty-six minutes had to be endured, and he had to continue his wavering insistence that he was right.
Not that he had met with any violent opposition. Maudie indeed had hardly entered the discussion at all, sitting silent and deflated after her spate of words, and Mrs Wilby had not pressed her suggestion that Blake’s telegram should be handed to the police. Ben had expected that she would, and was surprised that she did not, for there was much to be said for the suggestion. This had become more and more obvious to him as he groped his way Eustonwards to continue his own detective duty. But if the police had been informed it would have involved bringing not only himself but Maudie under their notice, and he had no relish for this until it became quite definitely unavoidable.
Ben on the Job Page 14