by Colin Watson
“I suppose,” Worple said, “that the chief asked if you knew anything that might be helpful when he came in this morning?”
“He didn’t, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh!”
“He merely tried, in the clumsiest possible manner, to persuade me to condemn myself out of my own mouth.”
Worple shook his head sadly. “I do wish he wouldn’t take that line, sir. He doesn’t mean to be offensive, but people aren’t to know that.”
“It must be very trying for you, sergeant.”
“I wouldn’t say that exactly, sir. It’s just that I don’t like to see policemen getting a name for being unintelligent. Not all of us are stupid, you know.”
As if to prove this contention, Worple scraped his thumbnail over a portion of the framework and prised off a sticky fragment. “Adhesive tape,” he remarked. “Now the forensic people could probably tell us a lot from that.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Where it was made. What batch it was in. Name of the chemist it was sent to. When. All that. Yes.” He looked a little longer at the piece of tape, then rolled it into a ball between finger and thumb and flicked it away.
“Should you have done that?” inquired Hoole.
“The chief would never bother with it, sir. He takes a very straightforward attitude.”
“He spurns empiricism?” ventured the optician.
“Mr Larch spurns everything, sir.”
The sergeant put an arm through his load of scrap brass and slung it to his shoulder. He opened the shop door and looked up at the bracket from which the sign had been suspended.
“There’s something I find a bit puzzling,” said Worple. “I had to borrow a pair of steps to fetch this thing down. It must have been, oh, eight or nine feet above the pavement. Now how do you reckon our chap reached it?”
“Reached it?”
“To stick his bomb on it, sir. You saw me indicate a piece of adhesive tape. Adhere means to stick. That’s how it was done, you know.”
“A tall gentleman perhaps?”
Worple shook his head. “An ingenious theory, sir, but I can’t call to mind anyone hereabouts who’s over seven feet tall.”
“True.”
The sergeant considered the bracket a little longer, then asked: “Do you happen to know who occupies the premises immediately above your shop, sir?”
“Of course. They’re mine.”
“Somebody could have reached over from that window.”
“I suppose he could—provided he had first got into my consulting room.”
“Would that have been possible, sir?”
“Perfectly. The place isn’t burglar-proof. There’s a door and a window at the back. Probably open now. I don’t know.”
Worple looked at Hoole reprovingly. “Might I take a look at them?”
Amidst the anarchy of the optician’s back room, the sergeant examined what was visible of the door and the window behind piles of cartons and loose packing. He reported that neither was fastened.
“Very insecure premises, if I may say so, Mr Hoole.”
“Yes, but who would want to pinch a set of sight-testing charts, my dear fellow?”
Worple pondered this briefly.
“Perhaps another optician, sir? One not quite so well established.”
Chapter Eight
Reluctantly, Mr Grope admitted to Mr Kebble that Outrage Three had foxed him.
“There’s no rhyme or reason in it,” he complained. “Now if that Hoole man were Temperance...” Grope gloomily wagged his head. “He’s not even on the bench.”
“There go both your theories then, Walter. Hard lines, old chap.” Kebble voiced his sympathy with a briskness that Grope found distasteful. “It’s all very well for you,” he grumbled. “Newspapers aren’t concerned with right and wrong. But I like to get the moral flavour settled.”
“Nothing moral about blowing things up, surely?”
“You can’t tell for certain. That memorial and the statue, now: I’d have said those affairs were downright wicked. But now the wind’s changed a bit, as you might say. The eye-glass fellow’s a rum character. The police are over at his place now. Did you know?”
“Yes, I sent Harry across to get a picture. Oh, by the way...” The editor turned and reached down a filing tray marked ‘MEMS’. He selected a sheet of paper which he passed to Grope. “Poetry’s your department, Walter. What do you make of that?”
Grope held the paper at arm’s length, tucked in his chin and focused down the line of his nose as if taking aim along a harpoon. He read slowly and aloud:
In Memoriam. July 1st
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
Doth ask a drink divine;
There’ll be that dark parade
Of tassels and of coaches soon—
It’s easy as a sign...
“Well,” said Kebble, “does that mean anything to you?”
“No. Except that it’s not proper poetry and it doesn’t seem right for an ‘In Memoriam’.”
“You only think that because it’s not one of yours. Walter.”
There was some justice in Kebble’s taunt. Mr Grope naturally resented trespass upon those local fields of poesy he had made his own. One was the souvenir trade. The other was the ‘Mems’ section of the Chalmsbury Chronicle’s small advertisement pages.
Each week there appeared some three columns of rhymed manifestos commemorative of deaths in previous years. A regular reader of these would soon have detected that most of them consisted of permutations of a limited number of standard couplets. Thus, in a single issue the lament: ‘Oh, Father dear, you’re missed by all; e’en though your picture’s on the wall’ might appear five or six times. But whereas in one case it would be followed by ‘We never heard you say goodbye; but you had gone, and God knows why,’ another panegyric would proceed with ‘You’d had enough, you needed rest; so never mind, you were one of the best.’
The reason for identical sentiments being expressed in relation to so many totally unconnected passings was that Mr Grope had been commissioned by the newspaper to produce a once-and-for-all selection of about thirty couplets to cover every contingency. These were numbered and set out in black-bordered leaflets that incorporated an order form (‘mark lines required here’) and were posted, like wireless licence reminders, to every household shown by the advertising manager’s records to have suffered a death twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six months previously. A four-year lack of response won subsequent immunity from canvass.
Most of the bereaved, in fact, were eagerly responsive. Mr Grope’s epitaphs were widely admired and a certain social distinction attached to the public proclamation of grief. Indeed, an element of competition had crept into the business. To commission a shorter ‘In Memoriam’ than a rival relative meant loss of face. The fear that Sister Edie and Family would spread themselves to ten lines prompted Brother Fred and All at Number Seven to order twelve. Then, quietly appraised of this state of affairs by the advertising manager, Daughter Marjorie and Little Norman would top the family score with fourteen.
Grope read again the message that compared so miserably with his own round, explicit verse.
“ ‘Drink divine’,” he repeated. “Sounds more like a brewer’s advertisement. You aren’t going to print it, are you?”
“Naturally. It’s paid for.”
“Who brought it in?”
“Nobody. It came this morning by post. No name or address, but there was a postal order. We don’t usually take them unless they’re signed, but this seems harmless enough. I just wanted to know if you knew the quotation. We don’t want to risk any double meanings.”
Grope tried hard to discover some undertone that would disqualify the blackleg rhymster but failed. He said again that he thought the piece inappropriate. Then something stirred in his memory. “And I think I know why,” he added quickly. “I believe it’s out of some song or other. That’s where I’ve heard it.”
“A hymn, perhaps,” suggested Kebble. He knew that the advertising manager would relinquish a pre-paid ‘mem’ as willingly as a leopard parting with a newly killed kid.
Grope shook his head. “A song,” he affirmed. “A ballad or something. Nothing religious.”
“Never mind; it doesn’t look as if it can do any harm.” Kebble slipped the sheet back into its tray.
Grope looked up at the ceiling. “It’ll come back to me,” he said. “I nearly had it just then.” He inflated his large grey cheeks and blew out air with a low, tuneless soughing noise. Kebble thought of graveyards.
A sniff announced the presence of Leaper. He came round the counter and strolled to his desk. The editor regarded him over his glasses. “What are you looking knowing about?” he asked.
Leaper turned. “Sir?”
Kebble fancied for a moment that he had seen Leaper smile. He sat upright with a look of alarm. The impression faded, however, and he relaxed. “All right, boy; have you something to write up?”
“A few pars.”
“Get on with them, then.”
Leaper sat before his typewriter, wound in a piece of copy paper and after five minutes’ reflection began to jab the keys. Grope looked up at the clock and said: “Ah, well.” He hated the noise of typing, Leaper’s above all: it sounded like sporadic small arms fire.
About half an hour after Grope’s departure, Leaper collected his copy and silently presented it to Kebble. As the editor read it through, an expression compounded of incredulity and horror overspread his face. “And what,” he hoarsely demanded at last, “is this supposed to be?”
“I thought it would be a good kick off for a sort of gossip feature,” explained Leaper, unabashed. “Like Tom Trenchant.” Mr Trenchant was the Daily Sun’s premier boudoir scourer. “Inside stuff,” Leaper added.
“You’ll have me inside if you persist in putting this kind of thing on paper. Take it away and burn it.”
Leaper stared. “Do you mean you’re spiking it, sir?”
Sighing, Kebble spread the sheets before him and motioned Leaper to his side. “You see, Leonard,” he said patiently, “on a local paper like ours we have to live with the people we write about. It does make a difference. Did you know that there are at least three shops here in Chalmsbury where you can still buy a horsewhip?”
“I’ve been careful about names.”
“Yes, I see you have. But I’m not sure that”—Kebble moved a finger quickly down the typescript—“yes, ‘socialite wife of police chief’—I’m not sure that identification is entirely ruled out there, old chap.”
“You could cut out ‘socialite’,” suggested Leaper.
Kebble shuddered. “I should have done that in any case. It isn’t the important point, though.” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “Let me put it this way. Chief Inspector Larch is a nice helpful fellow but a little on the dour side. I can’t imagine that he’d thank us for telling the town that his wife—how did you put it?—‘is to be seen at swank caravan parties, latest craze of the Chalmsbury Top Set’. What’s that, anyway? Sounds like teeth.”
“People are jolly glad to get into the Tom Trenchant column. And he doesn’t tone anything down.” Leaper paused and added: “Like I have.” He sensed that his employer lacked the Daily Sun’s admirable determination not to be gagged.
Kebble looked at him sharply. “Now what are you driving at?”
“Like I said, sir. I toned it down.”
“In what way? I don’t call a reference to...to ‘hairy-armed mystery playboy’ toning down.”
“Well, I didn’t write anything about her taking her clothes off.”
“What!”
Leaper shuffled. Then he looked Kebble in the eye and said defiantly: “I’m sorry now I hushed it up. Things like that ought to be exposed.”
Kebble opened his mouth, shut it, and began carefully tearing Leaper’s copy into small pieces. “Never,” he said, when the last had fluttered into the waste paper basket, “never do that again.” He breathed deeply and pondered the chance of Leaper’s ever appreciating the enormity of libel. The odds against, he decided, were astronomical.
“Leonard...just tell me what happened. I’d rather like to know.”
Leaper told him. By the time he had finished, Kebble was aglow and making little popping sounds. This disconcerted Leaper, who saw nothing amusing in a situation that his Fleet Street mentors would have treated with a proper blend of innuendo and self-righteousness.
“It’s all quite true, sir,” he protested.
Kebble raised a hand and pouted. “My dear boy, I don’t doubt it for a minute. Hilda Larch was always a little unpredictable. Like her mother.” He smiled fondly over his distended waistcoat, as if gazing down the years.
“You really don’t want me to write anything, then?”
The editor gave a start. “My God, no! Not a word in writing. Listen...”—he pointed to the machine room door and lowered his voice—“they’ve only to see a bit of paper with words on that somebody’s left about and they’ll set it. I have to watch them like a hawk. I think they come back at night, foraging. Haven’t you noticed the queer things that get in the paper sometimes? It was half a page of an old seed catalogue once. It had blown in from the street. The proof-reader should stop them, of course. But he’s too frightened. They’ve got him at their mercy in that little box of his.”
Leaper received the information in silence.
“So mind,” Kebble wound up, “don’t ever forget to clear your desk before you go home, or Bullock and his bloody crew’ll board it.”
That evening there was a meeting of the General Purposes Committee of Chalmsbury Town Council.
Councillor Pointer was in the chair and he awaited with some apprehension a question that he knew was going to be asked under ‘Any Other Business’.
It was Councillor Linnet, a truculent little man without teeth, who put it.
“Mr Chairman,” he began, the wind of public-spirited purpose whistling through his gums, “everybody in the town is getting very alarmed and anxious about all these explosions. They’re dastardly, Mr Chairman; there’s no question about that. Now what I want to know is what is being done in regard to putting whoever’s responsible under lock and key.”
The brief speech won a murmur of approval. At least six of the ten members present had already discussed the matter among themselves in the card room of the Mariners’ Club and decided on a vigorous joint bombardment of Chief Inspector Larch’s father-in-law.
Trying to assess the probable strength of his enemies as he glanced quickly round the chamber, Pointer saw that he had no chance of frustrating them with an outright refusal to accept Linnet’s question.
“I’m not sure,” he said carefully, “that this committee is competent to discuss the matter, is it? The detection of crime is the province of the police.”
Councillor Linnet was ready for this. “Come now, Mr Chairman,” he retorted, “public safety is involved in regard to this. We may not be a watch committee but we have every right to chivvy the police if we think they’re not being efficient in regard to protecting our rate-payers.”
“How do you know whether the police investigations are proceeding efficiently or otherwise?”
Linnet gave the ceiling a ‘hark-at-him’ grin. “We don’t need to have second sight to know that. There’s not been an arrest in regard to this business. And there should have been by now. I want to know what the police are doing.”
“The point with me, Mr Chairman,” put in a venerable gentleman with a white quiff and a dewlap, Alderman Haskell by name, “is that these terrible bombs, or whatever they are, are going off on public property. You’re quite right when you say it’s a job for the police; we all know that. But these aren’t what you might call private crimes. They’re a danger to everybody, like road subsidence and rickety buildings and all that sort of thing. We as a committee can’t just stand aside while the town’s being blown t
o bits.”
“We could,” suggested Councillor Pointer, “ask the police to let us have a report. Confidentially, of course. Would that...er?” He looked from face to face. Alderman Haskell nodded and one or two others looked blank but the Linnet faction rumbled scepticism and its leader returned to the attack.
“No, Mr Chairman, I don’t think it would. I have my reasons for saying that, mind, but I don’t want to go further in regard to them while the Press is here. I’m going to move that we go into closed committee.” Linnet looked across to where Mr Kebble was seated at a small table and made a not unfriendly grimace. Kebble acknowledged it with a wink and a curious two-fingered salutation from behind the shelter of his notebook.