‘And then,’ he had argued, ‘wot ’appens if the pleece do see this telegram? Do they tike the trine theirselves? Orl right! Say they do. Blake ain’t no mug, and it ain’t likely ’e’ll show ’iself to a bobby ’oo gits aht o’ the trine! ’E’ll proberly be ’idin’ somewhere, be’ind a trunk or somethink, and on’y come aht when ’e sees Eric!’
To this Mrs Wilby had responded that the police were not mugs, either, and that if they wanted to surprise a man they would hardly appear in uniform, but Ben still held out.
‘Blokes like Blake,’ he argued, ‘could smell a copper if yer put im in a piller-caise.’
And then, quite suddenly, Mrs Wilby had yielded her point, and had agreed that Ben should make the journey alone, and had provided the money for the return fare.
So here he was. With the question of the police still worrying him, like grit in your eye. And here was a policeman, just ahead of him, so there was still time to put the police wise if he wanted to!
He paused behind the policeman—well behind—and the policeman had no notion of the imaginary conversation that was going on in the mind of the individual in his rear.
‘Oi, copper!’
‘Hallo!’
‘I got somethink ter tell yer.’
‘Carry on.’
‘Yer know that chap wot was fahnd dead in the cellar yesterday in Norgate Road?’
‘What about it?’
‘Nummer 15.’
‘Is that all you’ve got to tell me?’
‘Well, there was two blokes fahnd ’im afore the pleece did, and one of ’em was a feller called Blake and the other was me, and a telergram come this arternoon to a gal ’e knows where I was stayin’ at a shop, not where I was stayin’ but where the telergram went, I bein’ Eric wot ’e calls me, and it sed …’
No, thanks!
Now finally giving up the idea of informing the police, Ben moved towards the ticket office. Someone, not a policeman, followed him, but he remained blissfully unconscious of this. He felt a little flustered, however, when he reached the ticket office and thrust four pound notes through the aperture with the rather hoarsely-delivered words, ‘Return ter Penridge.’ Mrs Wilby had looked up the cost in her ABC, and the amount had staggered him. Fancy payin’ orl that and ’avin’ nothink ter show fer yer money arterwards bar bein’ where yer’d got ter! It was beyond the region of Ben’s simple logic. On the rare occasions when he permitted himself the luxury of travelling otherwise than on foot it was usually no farther than to the nearest ground of a local football team. All he got back from his four pounds—or Mrs Wilby’s four pounds—was one shilling and twopence.
‘It don’t mike sense,’ he murmured as he turned away.
‘Don’t you want your ticket?’ called the clerk.
‘Lummy, yus, I pide enough fer it!’ replied Ben as he turned back and snatched it. Somebody approaching the spot ducked back as he did so.
He now had twenty-three minutes. What should he do with them? A cup of tea didn’t seem a bad idea, so he made for the buffet. So, well behind him, did the somebody who had ducked back. The tea cost threepence, reducing his one and twopence to elevenpence, but in addition to this he had nearly all of the five pounds Mrs Wilby had given him on the previous day. She had financed the expedition lavishly, and had Ben known he had a pursuer he would have assumed that his unusual wealth had become known and was attracting the underworld.
The tea warmed him, but when he discovered he had lingered over it and that his twenty-three minutes had diminished to thirteen, he wondered anxiously whether this preliminary luxury had cost him the desired corner seat. Annoyed with himself, for Ben did love a corner, he hurried to his platform. It was the same platform as that along which someone else had hurried exactly twenty-four hours earlier with similar ignorance that he was being followed, and history now repeated itself with new actors.
Ben’s love of a corner was coupled with a love of solitude, which after all expresses the attitude of the majority of Britishers who travel by train, and he found the desired empty compartment in a coach far up the platform and near the engine. The expected sense of peace pervaded him as he opened the compartment door, entered, closed the door, and sank down in the corner next to it facing the engine. It was now three minutes past seven, and only nine minutes remained before the train would glide out of the station. Of course, plenty could happen in nine minutes. You could fall off a roof, bounce on a pavement, and find yourself on an operating table. Or you could run a couple of miles from a Chinaman. Or, saying you played for the Arsenal, you could score half a dozen goals. Bringing the possibilities nearer home, Scotland Yard could answer a 999 call, follow a clue, dispatch a police car to Euston, and produce a policeman with an enormous hand that would hoik Ben out of his comfortable seat. But although there was always one element in Ben’s composition ready to be resigned to anything, and therefore subconsciously expecting it, his mood at the beginning of these final nine minutes was beautifully peaceful. Heaven, surely must be something like this! Were there corner seats in Heaven? There must be, or how could it be Heaven. A corner seat—no one to talk to you, or to make you talk to them—a nice softness at your back—a pretty coloured picture of somewhere or other opposite, a picture seen hazily through half-closed lids—warm tea still winding its way pleasantly through one’s distant lower regions—sounds growing fainter—coloured picture growing dimmer—no yesterday—no tomorrow—only this tiny little moment that belonged completely to oneself and to nobody else—now not even the moment, because now there was nothing, nothing at all …
The dissolved coloured picture began to resolve again. The extinguished station sounds rediscovered their voices, soft and tremendously distant at first, then gradually growing louder and nearer and harsher. A shout. Somebody being ordered to stand away? A whistle, which conjured a vision of a guard’s green flag. Then, much closer, the unmistakable voice of the engine, and—at last!—that long-desired, soul-satisfying sense of movement.
The journey northwards had begun, and Ben opened his eyes wide with a sigh of contentment. And found himself staring into the eyes of Maudie Kenton.
18
Two in a Train
Oh, no! This couldn’t be! So Ben closed his eyes again, as he always did to give logic a second chance. But when he reopened them logic had refused to respond, and Maudie Kenton was still there.
‘Nice little surprise packet for you?’ she laughed.
‘Go on!’ answered Ben.
It was hardly adequate, but it takes a little time to get back into your stride. She laughed again.
‘We are going on, aren’t we?’ she said. ‘All the way to Cumberland. Don’t look so stunned! Not much of a compliment, I must say! You ought to be pleased.’
Ben shook his head, implying his total lack of comprehension.
‘I don’t git it,’ he said.
‘What don’t you get? It’s simple.’
‘I don’t git wotcher doin’ ’ere?’
‘Same as you, looks like. Going to Penridge.’
‘Yer mean, orl the way?’
‘Well, I’m not going to waste three pounds eighteen shillings and tenpence! There’s my suitcase on the rack.’ While Ben raised his eyes to the small, rather shabby suitcase above the coloured pictures she rattled on: ‘Wicked, what they stick you these days for fares! I nearly fainted! Where’s your luggage?’
‘Eh?’
‘Travelling a bit light, aren’t you? Or is your trunk in the van?’
Ben made an effort. ‘Look ’ere,’ he expostulated. ‘When are you goin’ ter start torkin’ sense?’
‘I am talking sense,’ she retorted, with a grin. He could not decide whether she really felt as gay as this, or whether she was putting it on. ‘If you’ve brought nothing with you I’ll have to lend you my second pair of pyjamas. How far is Penridge from Gretna Green? Any idea? We ought to get spliced to save a scandal!’
Ben counted ten slowly to himself, and then tried a
gain.
‘Nah, listen, miss,’ he said. ‘I dunno wot’s at the back of yer mind, but I’ll tell yer wot’s at the back o’ mine. It’s this ’ere. It ain’t goin’ ter ’elp matters if you git aht at Penridge staishun alongside o’ me!’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘I arsk yer!’
‘So what?’
‘I can tell yer wot! Git aht at the fust stop and go back ’ome!’
‘Thank you for nothing!’
‘It’s fer yer own good—’
‘How about your own good? But don’t let’s worry about anybody’s good for the moment. We’re both here, so let’s make the best of it. And after all, haven’t you forgotten something?’
‘Wot?’
‘Oscar Blake’s at the other end of our journey—’
‘I ain’t fergot that!’
‘But what you’ve forgotten is that I’ve known him longer than you have, and have more interest in him than you have, and that the telegram that is taking you to him was sent to me.
‘That’s fair enough,’ agreed Ben; ‘but the telegram didn’t say nothink abart you comin’ with me!’
‘No, but if I choose to come along, that’s my own business.’
Ben blinked, then answered: ‘Orl right, but ’ere’s somethink that’s my bizziness. Yer’ve follered me along ’ere, ain’t yer? Orl right. But wot I want ter know is—’oose side are yer on? See, when I know that, I’ll know ’ow ter treat yer!’
Maudie regarded Ben quizzically. ‘This is a rum business, however you look at it,’ she replied, ‘but as you’ve just said my point was fair, I’ll be fair in return and say yours is, too. I don’t trust many people any more than I expect them to trust me—how’s that for honest?—and I’m not going to pretend I can make you out, but from what I’ve seen of you both at my place and at Mrs Wilby’s I’ll say you seem to be straight, so here’s a straight answer. I’m on the side where my bread’s buttered, and you can work that one out for yourself!’
‘Give us a mo’ and I will,’ promised Ben.
‘Then you’ll be cleverer than me!’
But Ben shook his head. ‘It’s easy, miss, if yer knows wot yer aht for.’
‘How about explaining that?’
‘Wot I means is that if yer aht ter try and mike a bit more by the quick way yer’ll chum up with Blake agine, sayin’ ’e’ll ’ave yer, wich yer don’t know, and see if yer lucky—’
‘Is that your own little idea?’
‘I thort yer knoo better! Yer sed I was stright, and would it be stright ter go up ter meet Blake on Mrs Wilby’s ticket and then drop ’er?’
‘Sorry! Go on.’
‘Where was I? Oh, yus. Yer’ll do that—join up with Blake—or yer’ll say ter yerself like, “I’ve worked with Blake once and where’s it got me, dirty gimes don’t pay,” ’cos it was a dirty gime, wer’n’t it, yer carn’t git away from it, miss, and where it’s got yer is on the wrong side o’ the pleece, with the bloke yer was messin’ abart with dead, and ’is wife a widder, and so wot’s goin’ ter be next, and so yer’ll say, “It ain’t good enough, I’ve begun goin’ stright, and I’ll go on goin’ stright and I’ll drop aht at the fust stop and keep aht, or I’ll stay along and see if I can hend hup better’n I begun.” If yer git me?’
‘Sakes! Is this a sermon?’ asked Maudie.
‘Yer mean like wot they sez in church?’ replied Ben. ‘Lummy, fancy me a parson!’
‘Not so hard as you think! You’d get anyone tied up! But—let’s work this out! We’ve got all night, and it’s a new experience to talk this kind of stuff. You wouldn’t call it straight to double-cross Mrs Wilby?’
‘Would you?’
‘P’r’aps not. But I’m to double-cross Blake?’
‘Yer wouldn’t, not if yer got aht at the nex’ staishun.’
‘But I would if I stayed here and sided with you!’
‘In a way—yus,’ Ben agreed.
‘Well, then?’
‘If you can’t see it, I can’t show yer.’
‘Everything’s worth trying once.’
‘Okay. Do yer stand fer murder?’
‘I didn’t murder Mr Wilby!’
‘No, but we’re tryin’ ter find aht ’oo did, and Blake sez ’e knows. Would it matter ter double-cross a bloke like Blake ter git at the truth?’
She did not answer, but looked impressed. Encouraged, Ben went on:
‘And there’s another thing, miss. We know yer didn’t murder Mr Wilby, and that yer don’t know nothin’ abart it, lettin’ alone ’avin’ any concern in it, but do the pleece know it?’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked sharply.
‘Well, they’re wantin’ ter see yer, ain’t they—or ’ave they seen yer?’
She shook her head.
‘Then we can tike it they still want ter. We dunno jest why, but s’pose they’ve got on ter wot yer ’ave done, and s’pose they argies—’
‘Argies?’
‘Eh? That’s wot yer does when yer tries ter work things aht. S’pose they argies, “She was in with Blake—it was Blake got ’er ter go abart with Mr Wilby—she might of ’ad a quarrel with Mr Wilby, and arter a quarrel anythink might ’appen, so we gotter put ’er among the succerspects till we know she’s clear.” Do yer git wot I mean? It won’t be till we find aht ’oo did do it that yer’ll stop bein’ a succerspect. Sime as me.’
She looked at him with a kind of helpless admiration.
‘What beats me hollow,’ she said, ‘is where you picked up your sense!’
‘Along with fag-ends,’ he answered, with a wink.
‘You ought to be in Parliament, the way you can talk!’
‘That’s wot Churchill sed larst time I dined with ’im, but—well, it seemed a shime ter cut ’im aht.’
She took a little cigarette-case from her red leather handbag, and after extracting a cigarette and putting it between her highly-coloured lips held the case out to him. As he eyed the case—it was silver, and looked new—she remarked, with a rather twisted smile: ‘I guess your thought—it’s correct.’
‘Mr Wilby give it to yer?’ he said.
‘Only the case, so you needn’t worry about the cigarette. But p’r’aps you’d like to change your compartment?’
‘Why?’
‘Being seen with a girl like me!’
Taking the proffered cigarette, he replied: ‘’Ave I blimed yer? We’re born like we are, and it ain’t easy ter chinge. Lummy, I’ve tried orl me life, but I orlways come aht the sime!’
‘I say, you’ve worked out the lot, haven’t you?’
They puffed in silence for a minute while the train bore them on towards their strange goal. A young man with a weak chin came along the corridor, paused at the entrance, peered in, and then passed on.
Maudie gave a short laugh.
‘He’d have changed his compartment, if you hadn’t been here!’ she remarked.
‘Then I’ve sived yer from somethink,’ answered Ben.
‘Yes—I’m beginning to wonder how much you’re saving me from,’ she responded. ‘But now let me talk for a bit, because you’ve got something about me wrong. It’s my own fault, though—through something I said.’
‘Wot was that?’ he asked.
‘About which side my bread was buttered. That wasn’t the real reason I came—not this time. Or p’r’aps it would be more honest to say it wasn’t the whole reason. One reason was those inquisitive policemen you’ve just been talking about.’
‘Still callin’, are they?’
‘Yes, and I’m not keen to meet them till I know a bit more how things are.’
‘Yus, but—’
‘Whoa, didn’t you hear? I’m talking now! When I got back from Mrs Wilby’s, or just before I got back, more properly speaking, I saw a bobby coming away. I even heard him tell Mother that he’d call again later, and that if I returned in the meanwhile she was to keep me home. So what did little Maudie do? I’ve said you were good at
guessing, but you won’t guess this!’
‘I don’t need ter, as yer goin’ ter tell me.’
‘Yes, I’m telling you. I slipped round to the back, and I got our short steps out of the lean-to shed, and I put them on the roof of the shed, and I went up them and in through a back window. I may say I’ve done it before when I’ve come home late!’
‘Did yer Ma ketch yer?’
‘She didn’t, or I mightn’t be here. There’d have been the hell of a row, and when she knew I wasn’t staying she’d probably have run out into the street calling “Fire” or something! But she didn’t get the chance. I heard her below, waiting for me to come back through the front door, while I was busy packing my suitcase for my getaway. And when I’d done it I let it down to the shed roof by a rope, and then followed it down myself. Pretty smart work, don’t you think?’
‘I—dunno,’ murmured Ben.
‘Are you going to disappoint me?’
‘It was a smart gitaway, yus. On’y—I ain’t so sure abart the idea, see?’
‘You think it would have been smarter to have waited and let the police badger me?’
‘P’r’aps not. Not since this wasn’t the beginnin’ o’ maikin’ yerself scarce. But didn’t yer leave no note or nothink?’
‘What could I have said in it?’
‘Won’t she worry?’
‘Mother? About herself. Not about me!’
‘Oh! Well, wot abart Woolworth’s?’
‘I’ve got measles! Didn’t you know it?’
‘Yer need a doctor’s word fer that.’
‘Right again, as usual. But I’m not troubling about Woolworth’s. That’ll have to look after itself when the time comes. And as this is a real heart-to-heart, hadn’t I better tell you another reason I did what I did? You won’t believe it, but it’s a fact. This has got on my nerves proper! I don’t think I could sit down quiet, or sell paper and notebooks across a counter—not until I’ve seen this blasted thing through! You’re quite right, what you said. I knew it all before, but it’s helped, hearing you say it, too. Those short cuts to glory lead you bang into a wall! I’ve finished with Oscar Blake—I told you I had way back in Jewel Street, didn’t I?—God, already that seems a week ago!—and if I can help you to clean up this mess, I’m all for it!’
Ben on the Job Page 15