Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper

by Donald Henderson

She hadn’t said a word more about his note, and had been far too tactful to go and hoik it out of the letter-box, what breeding was there, eh? The room was pleasantly fuggy from the night before, and the fire was not quite out. It smelt of burnt wood. Miss Mason put on one light and sat opposite him in her usual chair. He felt as if they two could simply sit there, not saying anything, for a million years. It was queer. It was natural. He no longer said: ‘Am I balmy?’

  It seemed perfectly natural, after a little while, to be discussing love and marriage with her, and how things which happened suddenly and crazily were always ‘right.’ Other people wouldn’t believe it, if you told them. They’d giggle, embarrassed, wanting to believe you, and half believing you, but crying: ‘Oh—nuts! Hark at you!’

  ‘It’s what makes life so interesting,’ was one remark Miss Mason made.

  Another remark she made was that she thought love was all-forgiving, if it was the right kind of love.

  ‘There,’ feared Mr Bowling, ‘I don’t think I can agree with you. But not because I don’t want to, God knows!’

  ‘Well, it is so with me.’

  ‘There might be some things,’ he suggested, ‘which are too serious for mortal consideration. I can’t see even you forgiving everything, Miss Mason. I wish I could.’

  ‘Such as?’ she asked quietly.

  But he dared not say.

  ‘I just wanted to write you,’ he said. ‘And I awfully wanted to see you just once more. I’m very lucky.’

  ‘It’s I who am lucky,’ she said.

  They sat quietly, and he knew quite well that she loved him, and had as good as accepted him—except for the dreadful snag which she did not yet know. How can she marry me, he told himself, once she has read my letter? It was all very well to theorise about forgiving a man everything. Yes, everything but that one thing.

  ‘I must not keep you any longer,’ he said, and stood up. He forgot his parcel, but neither noticed it.

  She stood up.

  ‘Shall I see you again?’ she said.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said quietly, and turned away. He was afraid to take her hand. He ought not to touch her.

  She was saying that she hadn’t expected love.

  ‘I’m grateful,’ she murmured, not to him, but to the crucifix, and he had the idea she would be praying soon after he had gone.

  When he said goodbye, it was as if he knew he would never see her again. But she said:

  ‘I’m not going to say goodbye.’ And he was again uplifted.

  ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘You must read my letter, before you decide anything.’ He smiled: ‘I’m so afraid that when I call again—you will be gone?’

  Again, he thought:

  ‘She won’t be gone …! I believe she knows now …! she understands now …!’

  Breathlessly, his heart started to sing, with the waking birds. He walked a long way, as far as the river, and then back, arriving back at the Heights feeling inwardly crowded with joy and hope, and striding out of the lift on the fifth floor and with springy step going to his flat door.

  Where he stopped dead.

  Like an icy hand, something touched his heart, and he felt his blood go chilly.

  Two men stood there, at his door; but it wasn’t so much at them that he looked, as at the thing held in the hand of one of them: a brown felt hat.

  His pending doom took the shape of a tottering house in his brain. The world had been getting so right, it had seemed; but the world was made of cards: and even as it fell a straight-looking man walked forward holding handcuffs, and saying: ‘Mr Bowling, is it? I’m Chief Inspector Smart, from Scotland Yard. This is Detective Inspector Chase.’ And they both said in frightful chorus:

  ‘Is this your hat?’

  … Mr Bowling told himself that he had not gone pale, and that if ever his public school manner could be an advantage, that time was surely now.

  He must act as he had never acted in his life before.

  ‘By jove,’ he said sleekly, ‘hat? By jove, but it looks like it, old man, let’s have a look …! But I’m forgetting my manners, won’t you come in?’

  ‘We will,’ commented Chief Inspector Smart in rather sepulchral tones.

  Mr Bowling decided it was best not to whistle Hot Sock Roleson, in case it should be construed as overacting. Cards must now be played with the very greatest care. Every sentence he allowed himself to make, must have that wealth of pre-thought which time and conditions made possible.

  ‘Well, now,’ he said sombrely, having led the way to the sitting room. ‘Let’s have a look at it, what?’

  ‘Biffed your head,’ wondered the Chief Inspector, and Mr Bowling, affecting to be startled, said, what, oh, that, yes, nasty tumble, bally blackout—and gave a bit of a laugh. ‘Been out?’ was another thing Smart rather wondered, glancing at his watch.

  Mr Bowling said it was a bit early, but he had a lifelong habit of walking in the early mornings, if it wasn’t too wet, and he’d been down by the river.

  He stood holding the brown hat and saying, yes, it was his, he was sure. He tried it on and it fitted him perfectly. They’d wanted to put his name in it, at the shop, but he’d not waited.

  ‘I know,’ Smart said.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Bowling.

  ‘Henry Heath. We got the chap out of bed.’

  ‘Ah …!’

  ‘Lucky he had your address,’ Smart stood ponderously in the room and said. Detective Chase stared like a ferret.

  Nobody had mentioned murder yet, so Mr Bowling decided it would be in order to give a puzzled little laugh and say:

  ‘Well, now, I’m afraid I’m a bit in the dark, don’t you know? What is all this in aid of?’

  ‘You haven’t asked us where we found the hat,’ Smart said in a certain way. He gave a kind of glint at Chase.

  ‘Nor he has,’ said Chase.

  ‘Nor I have,’ said Mr Bowling, at just the right speed and tempo. ‘I’m waiting all ears for you to tell me.’

  The Belgian’s latchkey was heard in the door just as they told him.

  ‘Struth,’ said Mr Bowling quite perfectly. ‘You don’t say so—bust his neck? How frightful?’

  ‘H’m,’ said Chief Inspector Smart. He didn’t move from where he was, and went on to say he’d got a little job on, going round to all the flats, and there were nine hundred and three, finding out just where everyone was last night at, say, between ten and eleven.

  ‘That’s easy with me,’ Mr Bowling said, cleverly he thought, ‘I was right here! Or was I? Wait a minute … I know I had something to eat at the Coach and Horses in Notting Hill Gate, and then I went to see a … well, an acquaintance in Brook Green, Number Sixty-six, a Miss Mason. But as for exact times, I’m going to be perfectly honest and say I’m damn bad at them!’

  ‘H’m! All the same,’ Smart glinted at Chase ponderously, ‘I think we’d better go carefully into them, Mr Bowling, don’t you?’

  Mr Bowling said, oh, rather, to be sure, it was whatever the Inspector said, he didn’t know anything about routine matters. ‘But won’t you sit down?’ he invited them both, becoming aware of a very unpleasant sound of the Belgian in the kitchen there, evidently examining the broken glasses from the night before, another item he had forgotten. ‘Really,’ he thought, ‘I’m darn glad I’ve done with murder. If I get away with this, I shall take up something which doesn’t need such a bally head for detail.’ The Belgian kept rustling paper in there, and dropping bits of glass, and at any moment he expected her to come in and interrupt what the Inspector was now saying, which was that the late Mr Farthing seemed to have had quite a bit of a fight. ‘But we don’t think he was murdered there,’ Smart said, using that very uncomfortable word for the first time. ‘We think he was murdered some little time before he was put there.’

  ‘Oh?’ invited Mr Bowling gravely.

  ‘And that fake burglary was a very sorry affair,’ Smart said unflatteringly. ‘A proper
bungler, I should say!’ But, Smart said, ‘I don’t propose to bore you with details, Mr Bowling … Not just now.’

  ‘Ah …!’

  ‘It’s this time element,’ Smart said. ‘Since we can’t seem to get it quite straight, I wonder if you’d mind coming down to the Yard with me? Were you doing anything very special today?’

  Mr Bowling’s mouth had gone rather dry. Before he could say that his time today could be devoted entirely to the Inspector, the Belgian came in.

  He gave her a quick look, seeing what was in her hands.

  But it was only his breakfast.

  She layed it methodically as usual, showing not the slightest trace of surprise at seeing visitors, and leaving no indication whatever of what she had done with the broken glass.

  ‘Door panel gone?’ wondered Smart, next.

  ‘… Yes …’

  ‘But it’s easy to put your foot through them, I’m sure?’

  Then Smart said:

  ‘Well, now, you’ll be wanting your breakfast, Mr Bowling.’

  But, as the two men looked like staying while he ate it, Mr Bowling said breezily:

  ‘As a matter of fact I’m not a bit hungry.’

  ‘Good,’ said Smart at once. ‘Then shall we get down to the Yard? I know they’ll be very grateful indeed for your help down there?’ And he led the way out.

  The Belgian showed no surprise of any kind at all, and Mr Bowling was disconcerted to notice that Detective Chase remained behind.

  ‘They’re always very glad to give you a cup of tea at the Yard,’ Chief Inspector Smart was saying interestingly. ‘And maybe a sandwich, if the hanging about makes you peckish.’

  Mr Bowling, having been expensively educated to believe life was one long and riotous road of excitement and opportunity, had never thought he would be expected to spend the whole of it in a small green room with bars to the window, and a sort of grating which suggested that others could peep in, but you could not peep out. As hour succeeded hour, and he sat on the hard chair, or paced up and down, or rang the bell and asked a policeman for permission to send out for some more Gold Flake, his life flashed before him, as it was said to flash before the drowning. ‘And I am almost drowned,’ he had decided long since. They sent him in some stewed rabbit and carrots at one o’clock, and invited him to send out for some beer. But he was past alcohol. He was past food too, and didn’t touch it for a little time, eating it when it got cold only because he thought failure to do so might be part of the test against him. With the sadism of the Japanese, paper and pens in abundance was on the table there. But he knew: ‘I’ve made my confession—and I’m not making it again. B’rf—I’m going to fight!’ He stood with his hands deep in his trouser pockets and knew: ‘I’m in the toughest spot of my life!’ He also knew that to hang a man, you needed pretty good evidence; and before you could even arrest him.

  Well, there, God knew there must be plenty that their modern methods could find.

  They’d gone to Miss Mason’s. That was to check up the time. Smart had told him that soon after bringing him here. Hours ago. Months, years ago.

  The damn clock was striking three.

  ‘I suppose they think I’ll crack under this suspense,’ thought Mr Bowling.

  Resolutely, he paced up and down whistling Hot Sock Roleson.

  Not until four o’clock struck did the door open.

  ‘Now for it,’ thought Mr Bowling, and allowed himself to be conducted upstairs and into a well-carpeted room with two men and a roaring fire. He had just decided to indicate some reasonable and careful annoyance at being detained in this astounding manner, and for the entire day, simply because he had probably left his felt hat in the club one night, and Farthing had pinched it, when he was compelled to give a very slight start. His eyes fell on the nearest of the two men, who was about to leave the room. It was Chief Inspector Thwaite, from Knockholt.

  This was a bit of a jolt and he took in a breath. It was like when Mickey Mouse peeped cautiously at the trap and went: ‘Ar—ar?’ and stepped more gingerly and in the dark of the pantry.

  Nor did Mr Bowling trust Thwaite’s apparently genial manner, when he said:

  ‘We’ve met before, I think? The unfortunate death of Delius Nandle …’ and Mr Bowling noticed that he did not shake hands. He merely nodded, paused, and went out without speaking.

  Mr Bowling turned to face a personality which he saw at once was not one to play bad cards with.

  ‘Sit down, Mr Bowling,’ the personality said suavely, and his hand moved slightly.

  Tuning in, Mr Bowling thought. Whatever I say is being transcribed in the other room there.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, sitting and crossing his legs easily, and making a point of not smoking. ‘No, thanks,’ he declined. He was not going to do anything which might indicate nervous stress.

  The Superintendent thought:

  ‘Funny how they all refuse to smoke up here, so as to prove they’ve nothing to feel nervous about!’

  He sat back and smoked himself and said:

  ‘I’m sorry to have kept you so long, Bowling. But the fact is we’ve become rather interested in you.’ There was a pause.

  Mr Bowling glanced at the other, sideways. He saw a very intelligent oval face, rather pink, and sleek grey hair brushed smartly back. The eyes were like deep river water in mid-winter.

  ‘Typical copper,’ he thought cynically. ‘Why doesn’t he get on with it?’ His mood was turning black.

  ‘Flattered, I’m sure,’ he challenged, and then reined himself. He smiled. Silly to get annoyed …

  The Superintendent was looking down at some papers.

  ‘Here are all the replies you made to Inspector Smart this morning when you arrived.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Miss Mason was interviewed this morning.’

  ‘Ah …!’

  ‘And,’ said the other, ‘she has signed a statement saying that you were with her from eight o’clock in the evening, until about twenty to eleven.’ Mr Bowling’s face gave a sudden very slight spasm. What?… ‘We have checked up that you could therefore have reached the Heights Squash Club by ten minutes to eleven, as you stated!’ He looked up. ‘I perhaps ought to apologise to you, by the way, for keeping you, but you must appreciate that you were vague about the times, and said you were in your flat between ten and eleven!’

  Mr Bowling grappled with his thoughts.

  ‘Well, er …’

  ‘We are all vague about something,’ commented the Superintendent. He looked at his watch.

  Mr Bowling, drugged, looked at his own watch, and filled in that strange pause by standing up.

  ‘You mean,’ he said ‘… I am free to go?’

  The clock on the mantelpiece ticked, and the Superintendent slowly got to his feet and walked round the large desk to the fireplace.

  ‘Yes,’ he said abruptly. ‘After I have said this: it is not easy to hang a man in this country.’ He said, staring at Bowling: ‘Do you know that?

  ‘I want you to remember something, Bowling. We have become interested in you. That means a great deal, at Scotland Yard—as many a free but guilty man knows! We are very interested in your previous address, for instance, Number Forty … what was it, for the moment it slips me. Thwaite is most interested in you, do you know that, and do you know that we three may one day meet again? Any day. Tomorrow. The day after. Next year.

  ‘The long arm of the law! And then, you were once in an insurance house, you had many clients … It was about the time your wife had been killed, that you knew a man called Mr Watson, of Fulham.’

  The shadows were falling once again, deepening the corners of the large room. London careered by outside, heading, whether you thought about it or not, towards the end of the war, and towards the appalling problems of peace. Mr Bowling felt as he had felt when a boy, and the master had reminded him coldly that he was a gentleman, and had better never forget it, and had even said he was never to behave like a butcher boy, t
hus destroying the notion that England was ever a nation of shopkeepers, it was not possible to make friends with those who ran shops—how much harder, then, to work for them? Where did the impoverished gentry find their friends, then? The Superintendent mentioned, coldly, the name of Mr Bowling’s old school: it seemed to Mr Bowling the hardest blow of all … he had been plucked out of that school, and its much-lauded advantages, and thrown into—what? Into the world at its rawest, and its most changing, a world which had less room for a gentleman than ever unless he had money and powerful relations; and it did seem to Mr Bowling that this was hard. He didn’t feel like thinking: ‘But character must rise above all this, and talent! A gentleman doesn’t murder, does he—he simply goes on the parish, if he has any sense of decency?’ He stood rather bent. He had a wish to be in a chapel, playing the organ alone. The sea would be tumbling about outside and the seagulls would be crying. He’d be walking along the ripples on the sand, with Miss Mason, who would have home-made cake ready for their tea. ‘This is nice,’ he’d say, like a child. ‘London, and war, are both far away!’ He wouldn’t yet say: ‘Very soon I must do some war work again.’

  ‘There will never be war,’ she might say, ‘when people stop forever forcing things! We aren’t meant to achieve very much in this world! Playing the organ well is quite enough?’

  ‘Yes,’ he’d say, pleased.

  … It came to him that the Superintendent was still addressing him, standing before the fire like a human Jehovah, and pointing a great arm at him across the room. The words, quiet and cold, lashed his shoulders, and burned into him. He felt an old and broken man, and the pain of the man writhing and screaming at the triangle could not have been greater. It was an aching, stinging sickness.

  There was a pause. Mr Bowling’s hands had gone clammy. There seemed to be nothing he could say. How could he explain? He kept his eyes down; it would hardly be cricket to show his sincerity now. Better to remain what he must appear—one more miserable but lucky man they couldn’t catch.

  Lucky?

  He turned and stumbled out of the room and down the stairs, out into the street, and into the welcome dusk.

  Lucky?

  He walked and walked, in his agony. As he walked he saw himself sinner and saint, finding them strangely the same; and he saw himself on his knees by the cold river water, not the Ganges, but the Thames; and as he bathed his hands, the water reddened; but his hands turned white. He thought only: ‘She’s saved me. But she won’t be there waiting for me, how can she be?’ He dared not go to see her.