by Colin Watson
“That ought to be a lot easier,” Kebble daringly remarked, “than having to pick from all the people in Chalmsbury who haven’t been sent to prison for things they did commit.”
A tiny spot of pink appeared in the centre of Grope’s vast dewlap. For a moment Kebble thought his visitor was going to look at the clock. He hastened to placate him. “You’ve an idea there, Walter. Somebody wanting to get his own back. A bit unbalanced, maybe.”
Grope condescended to expand his theory. The wilful destruction of one monument and the marring of another indicated vengefulness, he thought, of a special kind. Both the commemorated gentlemen had been magistrates. Did not this fact lend strength to his suggestion that the perpetrator was the brooding victim of a miscarriage of justice ? In that case, it was to be expected that the object of the next outrage—if there were one—would be part of the same pattern. The representation of a magistrate, or another memorial to one. Was Kebble still with him? Yes; well, then.
The only targets of such a kind that survived in the town—and Grope had given the matter exhaustive consideration—were the portrait of Mrs Courtney-Snell in W.V.S. uniform that hung in the reading room of the public library (Kebble mentally rubbed his hands at the thought of the eclipse of this Gorgonian image) and the noted Chipchase tenor bell presented to St Luke’s Church by William Chipchase, canning merchant, three years previously.
“Those are what we’ll have to watch now,” counselled Grope. “If he picks on one of those we’ll know for certain the fellow’s an ex-convict. That should give the police a very useful lead.”
“You’ve taken the brewers off your list then, Walter?”
“Ah”—Grope raised a finger—“just a minute. You might think I was joking about that the other week. Being flippant, perhaps?”
“Not at all, old chap.”
“No. Well listen. There does happen to be one other way of looking at this business. It might be the law that this man wants to get even with: we’ve considered that. Or it might”—Grope lowered his voice—“it might be that he’s got a down on temperance!”
Kebble looked shocked.
Grope leaned forward very slightly in his chair. “Take the drinking fountain, now. Temperance—a perfect model of temperance. And now poor Arnold Berry. A magistrate, I grant you. But sobriety itself.”
The editor pondered this paradox.
Grope sat back again and folded his hands. “It’s quite simple,” he said. “Whatever gets blown up next will tell us who the...”—his eye flickered to Leaper—“the miscreant is. The portrait or the bell: gaolbird. But a dairy or the Salvation Army barracks, or something of that kind: seek out the son of Bacchus.”
“What a field that would offer,” murmured Kebble.
This time Mr Grope really did look up at the clock. And he said: “Ah, well...”
Chapter Five
Mr Grope was not the only one who sought a connection between the two explosions. Leonard Leaper also gave the matter thought. His reasoning was conditioned by regular absorption of radiation from the Daily Sun.
This vital journal, the joining of whose staff was Leaper’s idea of ultimate beatitude, had taught him that any two consecutive events that displayed the slightest similarity were a series. So he knew that what had disturbed Chalmsbury was a succession of crimes that promised the indefinite recurrence in headlines of phrases like ‘strikes again’. This was satisfactory for, like all true devotees of the Daily Sun, Leaper cherished continuity and liked life’s amazements to conform to established definitions.
Thus, although he would have dismissed as futile the subtle theorizing of Grope, he quickly spotted and approved the coincidence of both explosions having been set off on the same night of the week. The third, he was sure, would take place on a Tuesday also.
Tonight, perhaps: why not?
He had therefore prepared himself, if not for a probe, at least for a vigil.
Chalmsbury was not a large town and he calculated that an unobtrusive patrol of a few of its streets after midnight might easily enable him to catch sight of the dynamiter in time to stalk him to his objective. Optimism was another quality Leaper had acquired from the Daily Sun.
Before leaving his lodgings he dressed in dark flannels, a shirt and jersey of deep blue, and black plimsolls. He looked like a junior cat burglar.
His appearance was remarked upon as soon as he entered the Bay Tree snack bar in St Luke’s Square where he intended to while away the time until it closed at eleven.
“I like your sleuthing set, Len.”
He glowered at the round-faced girl who was shuffling along one of the table benches to make room for him. She giggled. “Where’s the apashy hat?”
With great forbearance Leaper sat beside her and stirred the coffee he had collected at the counter. “I’m on a job,” he announced.
“What, for the paper?” The girls eyes widened. “Is that why you’re dressed up?”
“Gets cold towards morning.” The casual tone bespoke veteran status in nocturnal news-gathering.
“What is it you’re going to do? Tell me, Len.”
“Depends.”
“Are you on a story?” She pronounced the word as if naming a forbidden ecstasy.
He sipped his coffee and reflected that journalism’s drudgery and humiliations had their occasional reward. He even permitted himself momentary enjoyment of a favourite vision: his nonchalant acceptance of a girl’s All, eagerly bestowed in tribute to his having secured one of those scoops of the year that were featured every fortnight or so in the Daily Sun.
A glance at his companion, however, dispelled hope of the dream’s imminent realization. Her eyes, engaged in another widening exercise, were fixed upon a new arrival. She shuffled her All towards Leaper, but not in tribute. It was to provide a seat for a young man wearing the splendid blazer of the Chalmsbury Co-operative Society Table Tennis Club.
Leaper moved to another bench. He drank very slowly a second and a third cup of coffee. No other girl spoke to him but he didn’t care. Apart from that one recurrent fantasy in which his anonymous admirer (“Grateful Reader” perhaps?) disrobed while gazing at his picture and by-line, he regarded females solely as the elemental material of news stories. What matter if they snubbed him now? They would be delivered in time to his notebook, if not as young objects of Serious Offences or maturer victims of lust and ligature, then at last as pathetic shop-lifting matrons who knew not What Had Come Over Them.
This misogynist mood strong upon him, Leaper left the Bay Tree half an hour earlier than he had intended. He joined the aimlessly circulating stream of citizens, most of whom had just been disgorged from the nine pubs in the square, and were in that state of alcoholic optimism that forbids abandonment of the streets in case innkeepers should of a sudden discover their clocks to be an hour fast and re-open their doors.
Gradually the crowd thinned until there remained only three or four happy and demonstrative discussion groups. In a shadowed doorway Leaper looked and listened until these, too, dispersed. Then he crossed the square just as the cold, greenish purple veil of the mercury lighting was whisked from the sky and the moon’s softer radiance flooded down.
Leaper halted by the corner of Friar Street and looked back. The tower of the parish church rode above the silvered roofs like a great stone horseman. It dwarfed even the most presumptuous buildings: the furniture repository that once had been a cinema, the four floors of Councillor Pointer’s wine and spirits warehouse, the window-slotted concrete slab with which a national insurance company had sought to impress the natives. These and the rest of the shops and public-houses and offices had lost their day-time identities. They looked as if they had bled to death. Picking a route at random, Leaper entered Friar Street and padded slowly as far as the next intersection. A clock struck the first quarter after midnight. He stood and peered along the gently curving street on his left. It was empty save for a large ragged dog that trailed fitfully from gutter to gutter. The dog rai
sed its snout on sensing Leaper’s arrival and loped away.
Leaper chose the right-hand road which led eventually to the quays above the town. He kept to its moon-shadowed side where the houses were tall and without front gardens. Further along, these gave way to newer houses and the symmetry of a council estate began to assert itself. He neither saw nor heard anything that encouraged exploration in that direction so he struck off through a narrow crescent, passed beneath a railway bridge and arrived at a junction of five roads.
At its hub was a small traffic island, planted with flowers. Five benches, each commanding a view along a road, had been provided on the island for the benefit of such aged persons as were spry or rash enough to scuttle across the surrounding speedway.
On one of the benches someone was sitting now. Leaper noticed him too late to conceal his own presence and was much mortified to see the man beckon to him. It was Barrington Hoole.
“You’re Kebble’s boy,” said Hoole, with the air of an entomologist naming a not very rare beetle. “Are you running away from your indentures?”
Leaper sniffed and looked sullen. “Beg pardon?”
The optician settled himself more comfortably against the back of the seat and studied him. “Off to sea, I suppose,” he observed amiably.
“I’m on a job.”
“Ah.” Hoole turned his gaze to a lighted window in a house on the opposite corner and began to hum softly. He seemed to have forgotten Kebble’s boy.
Leaper felt that he was being underestimated. His annoyance turned suddenly to boldness. “What,” he demanded, “are you doing out at this time, Mr Hoole?”
Hoole accepted the challenge without any sign of resentment. “My housekeeper’s on the prowl,” he said simply.
Leaper took several seconds to digest this. Then he wiped the end of his sharp nose with a nervous flick of knuckles and asked: “Do you mean she’s mixed up with this bomb business?”
“Of course not. She prowls at home, boy.” He looked closely at his watch. “I usually give her a couple of hours to tire herself out and get back to bed. I could lock my bedroom door, but that would just encourage her.”
“Does she prowl every night, Mr Hoole?”
“Good gracious, no. Once a month. Cyclical, you know.”
“Like a loony?” Leaper, instructed by the Daily Sun, was well aware of the moon’s influence upon those given to Striking Again.
“My housekeeper is perfectly sane,” Hoole corrected him. “It is simply that she is amorously tidal, so to speak. But tell me”—he lowered his head suddenly and looked over his pince-nez—“what is this job you say you are doing? Has Kebble sent you?”
Leaper was not sure how much he ought to say to this man with a plump, polished face, benign but watchful eyes, and the upsetting habit of following up every observation with a little whinnying sound at the back of his nose. But he saw that he would have to give some account of himself or risk a complaint reaching his employer; Hoole, after all, was a friend of Mr Kebble. And perhaps the unlikely behaviour of his housekeeper was the true reason for his sitting on a traffic island at midnight. At least he did not appear to be carrying an infernal machine.
“I just thought I’d have a look round,” Leaper said, “in case there was anything doing?”
“Doing?”
“Well, yes—anything out of the way. Sort of.” The youth gestured helplessly.
Hoole leaned forward. “You believe you might meet our demolition expert: is that it?”
“I don’t know,” Leaper said, feeling suddenly apprehensive. Hoole’s glasses, gleaming in the moonlight, hid whatever expression lay in his eyes. All Leaper could see was the smooth, sustained smile.
“Mmm,” went Hoole, like a fat gnat. “Mmm...well, see you don’t get into trouble, boy.” He rose and pulled his waistcoat tidily over his paunch. “And don’t go leaning up against any statues, will you?”
Leaper watched him cross the pavement and stroll off along a road that would lead him into East Street. He was tempted at first to follow, but baulked at the thought of being lured into a second encounter that night with the bland, yet oddly intimidating Mr Hoole.
While he hesitated and listened to the gentle, unhurried footsteps of the departing optician he heard another sound. It was the click of a front gate latch.
Moving round the island, he looked along the radial streets. The first two were empty. The third also seemed so, but as he was about to turn away he thought he noticed a movement twenty or thirty yards along. He stared at the spot and soon saw, a little further away, a shape detach itself from the darkness of a wall, cross a patch of moonlit pavement, and merge into the shadow beyond.
Leaper launched himself gratefully into the role of the silent pursuer.
Adopting a crouching half-run and almost brushing the walls and fences that gave him cover, he reduced the distance between himself and the other traveller on the long, straight street until he was able to slacken pace and keep about twenty yards behind.
Whoever it was he followed seemed to be taking care to walk quietly, but rather in consideration of the hour than in fear of being observed. He maintained short, steady steps and did not glance behind or to either side. He was short, of slim build, and swung only one arm. Beneath the other was a narrow case or package of some kind. Leaper wondered if it were primed.
Almost at the end of the street, where it became a lane serving only a sewage farm and a rose nursery, the small, purposeful figure turned to the right. Leaper reached the corner just in time to see it disappear through a narrow opening between a hedge and a high corrugated iron fence.
Leaper knew this fence; it surrounded the yard and transport bays of the Chalmsbury Carriage Company. The entrance, though, was further along; the path taken by his quarry merely skirted the fence. He could not think where it might lead, unless it was to the canal that cut through the fields about quarter of a mile away. Leaper did not greatly care for canals. They ran lovers’ lanes a close second as the haunt of stranglers, slashers and assailants with staring eyes.
It was with slightly diminished enthusiasm, therefore, that he peeped round the hedge. The path, a cindered track bordered on one side by bushes and rank grass and flanked on the other by the iron fence, was deserted. He ventured a few yards along it and stopped to listen. A lorry engine rumbled spasmodically somewhere fairly close at hand; it probably was one being warmed up in the Carriage Company’s garage. He went on, glancing warily at the bushes on his left.
About a hundred yards from the road, the fence turned off at a right angle. Here the path appeared to end before a wooden barrier. When he came closer Leaper found this was a stile. He looked over into the meadow beyond. In its far corner a grey rectangular shape stood out against the darkness of a group of trees.
Leaper clambered over the stile and made his way through the clinging, dew-soaked grass towards what he soon distinguished as a large trailer caravan. Light shone through the two curtained windows on its nearer side.
He walked slowly round the caravan, like a diver seeking signs of life in a stranded submarine.
It had five windows in all and behind one of them the curtain was not quite fully drawn. He stooped and edged himself below it. There were voices inside the caravan, but Leaper could make out no words. The murmurous exchange seemed to be between only two people. As he listened, it became increasingly desultory and indistinct.
Crouched against the smooth panelling, Leaper grew cramped and dispirited. If the trail he had picked up with such high hope half an hour previously was to end in nothing more dramatic than a goodnight chat between two invisible occupants of a caravan—harmless holidaymakers, probably—he might as well have gone home to bed. Perhaps this was not the Bombing Terror’s night after all. Or could the person he had followed be a decoy, charged with drawing him away from the site chosen for number three in the outrage series? Not even Leaper’s self-esteem could persuade him of this possibility.
He made up his mind at l
ast that he would risk taking a look through the window. If he were spotted he could dash for cover in the copse at the foot of the field or else double back the way he had come and seek sanctuary in the Carriage Company’s yard, where a few drivers or mechanics were bound to be at hand.
He straightened up until his head was level with the small square of glass and a little to one side of it. Then slowly he craned forward. Through the inch-wide curtain parting there came first into view a broad shelf on which were bottles and two glasses. A handbag lay beside an ashtray in which a crumpled half cigarette smouldered.
As these things passed out of his narrow field of vision, a chair entered it. On the chair was a scarf. Then, quite suddenly, the scarf disappeared beneath something else. Leaper decided this to be a jacket or short coat. He waited. A long, dark, flapping shape hit the back of the chair and fell into a heap on the floor. Leaper frowned. Trousers, his mother had always impressed upon him, should be folded even were the heavens to fall. He watched to see if the owner of these trousers would regret his impetuosity and pick them up again.