by Gerald Kersh
“Oh please, have one with me.”
“No, no! Well, a small one. You’re very kind. . . . Yes, crime. Robberies, murders – the black-out sets the stage for robberies and murders.”
The barmaid whom Tooth had called Baby said, as she put down two drinks: “Are you still on about murders?”
Mr. Wainewright, paying her, said: “You look out. This gentleman is right. You can’t be too careful. What’s to stop anybody following you home in the dark and sticking a knife in you?”
The thick-set man said: “Exactly, sir. Exactly.”
“I don’t go home. I’ve got no home,” said the barmaid. “I live here. You and your murders!”
“Yes, but you go out sometimes,” said the thick-set man.
“Only on Tuesday,” said the barmaid, with a tired laugh. “If you want to stick a knife in me, you’d better wait till Tuesday.” She pushed Mr. Wainewright’s change across the bar and served another customer.
“Tuesday,” said Mr. Wainewright.
The thick-set man was pleased with his idea. He said: “I’m a man who is as it were professionally interested in crime.” He looked sideways and laughed.
“Oh, indeed?” said Mr. Wainewright.
“As a writer,” said the thick-set man, suddenly grave. “My name is Munday Marsh. You may have come across one or two of my little efforts in the Roger Bradshaw Detective Library.” He cleared his throat and waited. Mr. Wainewright said:
“Oh yes, yes I have indeed!”
“I hate to have this drink with you because I can’t return it. . . . No, no – not again! You’re very good! As I was saying. Assume there is a sort of Jack the Ripper; a murderer without motive – the most difficult sort of killer to catch. The lights are out in this great city. The streets are dark. Dark, and swarming with all kinds of men from everywhere. Now say a woman – Blondie there, for instance——”
“She is called Baby,” said Mr. Wainewright.
“Baby. Baby is found dead, killed with a common kitchen knife. There are thousands of kitchen knives. I’ve got half a dozen at home myself. Say I kill Baby with such a knife. All I need is nerve. I walk past her, stab suddenly, and walk on, leaving the knife in the wound. If necessary I turn back as the lady falls and ask ‘What’s the trouble?’ Do you get the idea? I simply kill, and walk coolly on. Who could swear to me in this black-out, even if anyone saw me? Eh?”
“What a clever man you must be!” exclaimed Mr. Wainewright.
Jacket, who could see his face, saw that the scanty eyebrows arched upwards, and observed a strange light in the colourless eyes.
“Of course,” Mr. Wainewright continued, thoughtfully, “you’d use – in your story, I mean – any sort of knife. Something anyone could get anywhere. A common French cook’s knife, say: a strong knife with a point. Um?”
“Any knife,” said the writer who called himself Munday Marsh. “Anything. You don’t wait to get your victim alone. No. All you need is nerve, sir, nerve! A quick, accurate stab, and walk calmly on your way. I’d write that story, only I can see no means of catching my murderer.”
The barmaid heard the last word and said: “My God, why is everybody so morbid? Murder, murder, murder – war, war, war. What’s the matter with you? You got a kink or something?”
“Wait and see,” said Mr. Wainewright. “I’m not so kinky as you think.”
Jacket, still watching, saw Mr. Wainewright’s pale and amorphous mouth bend and stretch until it made a dry smile. For the first time he saw Mr. Wainewright’s teeth. He did not like that smile.
The barmaid raised her eyes to the painted ceiling with languid scorn. Jacket observed that she looked downward quickly. Then he heard the whup-whup-whup of the swinging door, and noticed that Mr. Wainewright was gone.
* * * * *
A week passed. John Jacket was eating and drinking at the bar of the “Duchess of Douro” before one o’clock in the afternoon, the day being Wednesday.
“How’s life?” he asked the barmaid.
“So-so,” she said.
“Doing anything exciting?”
She hesitated, and said: “I ran into a friend of yours last night.”
“A friend? Of mine?”
“That little man. What’s his name? A little man. You remember! That funny little man. Old Murders – I forget what he calls himself. The one that gets himself up like a gangster. Used to go about in a bowler hat. Talks about murders. What is his name?”
“You mean Wainewright?”
“That’s it, Wainewright.”
“How did you manage to run into him, Baby?”
“It was a funny thing. You know Tuesday’s my day off. I generally go to see my sister. She lives near High Road, Tottenham. I left here about eleven in the morning and there was little what’s-his-name. Wainewright. I walked along Charing Cross Road to get the tram at the end of Tottenham Court Road – you like to stretch your legs on a nice morning like yesterday, don’t you?”
“Well?”
“I walk to Hampstead Road, and there he is again.”
“Wainewright?”
“Yes. Well, I pay no attention, I catch my tram, I go to my sister’s and spend the afternoon, and we go to the pictures. We get the tram back and go to the Dominion. And when we get out, there he is again!”
“Wainewright?”
“That’s right. There he is. So my sister says: ‘A nice night like this – let’s walk a bit. I’ll walk back with you.’ So we walk back here. Well, when we get to the National Gallery, we wait for the lights to change before we cross the road – there he is again.”
“There Wainewright is again?”
“Uh-huh. So I say to him: ‘Hallo.’ And he says ‘Hallo’, and walks off again along Charing Cross Road. It was almost as if he was following us.”
“That’s funny,” said John Jacket.
“Coincidence, I dare say. But he’s a funny little man. Do you like him, Mr. Jacket?”
“No, Baby, I can’t say I do.”
“Well,” said the barmaid, reluctantly, “he seems to be all right. But somehow or other I don’t seem to like him very much myself. What’s the matter? What’re you thinking about, all of a sudden?”
“Nothing, Baby, just nothing.” Jacket finished his drink, and said: “He was outside here. He was at the tram-stop in Hampstead Road. He was at the Dominion. And then he was here again. Is that right?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Nothing. When’s your next day off?”
“Tuesday.”
“Are you going to your sister’s again?”
“I generally do,” said Baby, turning away to serve a soldier.
“What time d’you get out?” asked Jacket, when she returned.
“About eleven or so. Why?”
“I just wondered. And you get back before the pub closes, I suppose? Before half-past eleven, I mean. Eh?”
“We’ve got to be in before twelve o’clock, you know,” said Baby. “Why do you ask?”
“Curiosity. Your movements fascinate me,” said Jacket.
Then the lunch-hour rush began to come into the “Duchess of Douro”, and Jacket went out.
He went to see Chief Inspector Dark. “Listen, Dark,” he said, “you know me.”
“Well?” said the chief inspector.
“You know I’m not crazy.”
Chief Inspector Dark pursed his lips and said: “Well?”
“You remember that crazy little man Wainewright, the witness in the Tooth case?”
“Well?”
“I think he’s getting to be dangerous.”
“How?”
“You remember how he kept confessing to the killing of Tooth?”
“Well?”
“Well, Dark, I believe he really did do it.”
“Well?” said Chief Inspector Dark.
“If I were you I’d keep an eye on Wainewright.”
“Why?”
&nb
sp; “Because I believe that Wainewright’s gone really mad, dangerously mad at last, Dark.”
“What makes you think so?”
Having explained why he thought so, Jacket concluded: “Wainewright’s feelings are hurt. He is determined to make you believe, at any cost.”
“Look,” said Chief Inspector Dark. “With one thing and another I’m rushed off my feet. I’m short-handed, and I’m busy. Is this all you’ve got to say?”
“Keep an eye on Wainewright,” said Jacket. “He’s after the barmaid, Baby, at the ‘Duchess of Douro’.”
“Following her about? So would I, if I wasn’t a married man, and had time to spare,” said Dark. “Keep an eye on Wainewright yourself. I don’t think there’s anything to it. I’m short-handed, and I’m busy, Jacket. Will you take a hint?”
Jacket said: “Oh well, I can’t blame you for not seeing my point.”
“Much obliged,” said Dark. “See you some other time.”
Jacket left, grinding his teeth. I’ll keep close to Baby myself, he said to himself, as he waited for a taxi in Whitehall. I’ll show them. I’ll make Dark feel small!
But on the following Sunday, Mr. Chamberlain announced that England was at war with Germany, and ten days passed before John Jacket had time to think of Baby and of Mr. Wainewright.
By then, something had happened.
* * * * *
It happened on the night of September 5th, 1939. The Germans had destroyed the 7th Polish Division, and the French Army had engaged the Germans between the Rhine and the Moselle. U-boats had sunk British merchant ships. The blonde called Baby had her day off, and Mr. Wainewright followed her. She did not leave until half-past five that day.
He had learned something of the technique of pursuit. Instinct had warned him to put on again his dark suit and his bowler hat. He wore, also, a grey overcoat. The blonde called Baby could be kept in sight without his being seen. Mr. Wainewright knew how to play his cards. He saw her coming out of the side entrance of the “Duchess of Douro”, and kept her in sight: she wore a fur that resembled a silver fox, and a diminutive yellow hat. It was not difficult to keep her within your range of vision.
Mr. Wainewright followed her to St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and right, into Charing Cross Road. Something had happened to the current of life in the town. There was a new, uneasy swirl of dark-clothed civilians, like tea-leaves in a pot, together with a rush of men in khaki uniforms.
Baby walked on: she had to walk. Once she tried to stop a taxi, but the driver waved a vague hand and drove towards Whitehall. So she walked, until she caught her tram. Baby climbed to the upper deck to smoke a cigarette. Mr. Wainewright sat below. When she got out, he got out. She disappeared into a little house beyond Seven Sisters corner. He waited.
As he waited he thought:
“Nobody believes me. I’ve confessed to a murder. They throw me out. They laugh at me. They take me for a lunatic. To the police, I’m one of those madmen who go about confessing – saying they’ve committed crimes they haven’t committed. I killed Tooth, and I tell them so. But no! I’m crazy, they say. Good. I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her with a common knife. When the papers report it, I’ll mark it with a pencil and go along and confess again. Nobody will believe.”
The light was fading. Keeping his right eye on the ground-floor window of the house into which Baby had disappeared, Mr. Wainewright stepped sideways into the road. He put his right hand under his coat and chuckled. Then he heard something coming. He hesitated, leapt backwards – saw that the truck had swerved into the middle of the street to miss him, and tried to jump back to the pavement.
But the driver, having seen his first leap in that treacherous autumnal light, spun back to the left-hand side of the road, and knocked Mr. Wainewright down.
The light truck squealed to a standstill as its rear wheels came back to the surface of the road with a soft, sickening jolt. Somewhere a woman screamed, and a man shouted. A policeman came running, and as he ran he switched on the beam of an electric torch which waggled in front of him.
A few minutes later an ambulance came, with a high, flat clangor of bells. Mr. Wainewright was carried away.
He was horribly crushed. But he also had a knife-wound. A long, wide, triangular cook’s knife – what they call a French knife – was embedded in his stomach.
The surgeon came to the conclusion that Mr. Wainewright must have been carrying the knife in his inside breast pocket.
* * * * *
When, at last, Mr. Wainewright opened his eyes he knew that he was dying. He did not know how he knew, but he knew. A cool hand was upon his left arm, and he could discern – in a big, shadowy place – a white coat and a white face.
“I killed Sid Tooth,” he said.
“There, there,” said a voice.
“I tell you I killed Sid Tooth!”
“That’s all right, there, there . . .”
Something pricked his left arm, hesitated, went in deep, and threw out a sort of cold dullness.
Pain receded, tingled, and went away.
Mr. Wainewright said: “I swear I did it. Believe me, do please believe me – I did it!”
“There, there, there,” said a whisper.
Looking down at his blank, white, featureless face, the surgeon was reminded of the dial of a ruined clock, a mass-produced clock picked to bits by a spoiled child, and not worth repairing.
FLIGHT TO THE WORLD’S END
Peter John Gospel, a poet of independent fortune, and his wife Betty Lou were regaling a critic named Belcher with strawberries and cream at tea-time in World’s End Cottage, when the door-bell rang.
“Now who the devil’s this?” said Belcher, putting down his spoon.
“Some gypsy selling clothes-pegs,” said Gospel.
“Oh, but surely not at the front door,” said Betty Lou.
“Let me go and see,” said Gospel, and left the room.
Betty Lou said to Belcher: “Nobody just pops in. Everybody knows Peter John’s working. Who on earth——?”
Then the front door closed, and Peter John Gospel’s heavy, meditative tread sounded in the passage, together with a hesitant, metallic clumping; someone in hobnailed boots was trying to walk quietly.
“Who on earth can this be?” said Betty Lou.
Her husband came in blinking, bewildered and a little harassed, and said: “I say, Betty Lou, look – you deal with all this sort of thing, don’t you? There’s a young man here with a message of some sort. Would you mind dealing with it? Do come in, won’t you?” He stood aside and made way for a small broad-faced, round-eyed boy in a blue jersey and dark knickers and big boots, who stood clutching a little round cap and a bundle of yellow leaflets.
“What on earth do you want?” asked Betty Lou.
The boy blushed and said, looking up at Mr. Gospel: “From the vicar, sir. Just to give it to you, sir, please sir.”
Mr. Gospel took a yellow leaflet between finger and thumb, glanced at it, smiled faintly and passed it to Betty Lou, who raised her eyebrows and gave it to Mr. Belcher.
Belcher said: “Oh, ho! What have we here? The Arts, upon my soul! A church concert, Gospel, at St. Timothy’s Hall, and I’m a living sinner! The choir at St. Timothy’s Church will perform, believe me or believe me not; Miss Orchis Tweed will sing; Mr. Hatherley will impersonate Dickens’s characters; and God bless my soul, the Sixweston Dramatic Society propose to freeze our blood with a performance of The Monkey’s Paw, by W. W. Jacobs. Here’s richness!”
“Can I go now, sir, please sir?” asked the boy.
“Can he go now, sir, please sir?” said Mr. Belcher, with a sly smile at Mr. Gospel.
Gospel was in a good humour now. He shook his head and said, in a portentous voice: “This must be gone into, Belcher. Don’t you think so, Betty Lou?”
She, entering into the spirit of it, said: “Oh – definitely.” The boy blushed again.
“Sit down, youn
g man,” said Belcher.
“Anywhere, sir?”
“No, not anywhere, sir. Sit down there,” said Belcher, pointing to a chair covered with peach-coloured velvet. “Yes, sit on it, sit right on it. Now, young fellow, what do you mean by ringing a poet’s door-bell in the middle of the afternoon in order to hand him atrociously printed yellow leaflets – execrably printed, I may say, by . . . yes, Rugg and Son of Sixweston?”
The boy’s voice quivered as he answered: “I didn’t mean nothing, sir, please sir. Mr. Bond told me to, sir. The six best boys give ’em out from door to door, sir. One takes the New Road, one takes the Old Road, one takes the Main Way, one takes the Heath Road, mum, one takes the World’s End Way, and one takes the Martyr’s Way, mum, and we give ’em out from door to door. It’s about the church concert, mum.”
“Stop calling me mum, I am not your mum,” said Betty Lou.
“Yes, mum . . . I mean, yes mum,” said the boy, picking at his cap, “can I go now, sir, please sir?”
Mr. Belcher assumed a judicial manner and an air of doom. “Go? Go, does he say? A snivelling Jack Presbyter? Go? Ay, I promise you, you shall go, you rogue, forty cubits high like Haman! I see thee dancing on nothing; crop-headed, prick-eared knave! I see——”
“Don’t be such an idiot, Belcher,” said Betty Lou. She picked up Gospel’s plate of strawberries and cream and a spoon, gave them to the boy, and said: “There you are; don’t be a silly boy, the gentleman was only joking. Have some nice strawberries and cream. Here, look, let me put some more sugar on them. And now, eat it up.”
Wet-eyed, wet-nosed, the boy held the plate and sniffed. He wanted to use his handkerchief.
“I was only joking,” said Belcher, somewhat shamefaced. “Be a Briton! Don’t you like strawberries and cream with sugar?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said the boy, “I never tasted ’em.”
“Well, taste it now,” said Belcher exchanging glances with Gospel and Betty Lou.
“We are not supposed to, sir,” said the boy.
“Not supposed to what? Exactly what do you mean?” asked Betty Lou.
“Take things, mum, sweets and things, mum, from anybody else.”
“Anybody else but whom, for goodness’ sake?”