The Journeying Boy

by Michael Innes

  ‘No doubt.’ Morton was slightly shocked. ‘Anyway, that’s all we have about ABC. But we also have something about DE. Another usherette is sure she noticed two people who must have come from DE. She noticed them because they came out in a bit of a hurry and almost caused a disturbance. They came out to the right – that is to say, not past ABC, but past a much longer line of seats, all occupied, on the other side. People sometimes come blundering out because they are feeling ill, and this usherette came forward in case it was anything like that. She shone a torch for them and then caught a glimpse of them in the light of an opening door. It was a boy and a girl.’

  ‘Children, does she mean?’

  ‘Not exactly. As a matter of fact, there’s something odd there. She is quite clear that the girl was about seventeen. But when I asked the age of the boy, she first said that he looked no more than twelve, but later corrected that and declared he might have been sixteen.’

  Cadover considered. ‘Well, it was only a momentary glimpse, and a conflicting impression of the sort might be quite possible. Did she notice anything about them in particular?’

  ‘It was the lad who was really in a hurry, she says. He was bustling out the girl, who was just bewildered and a little cross. Well, of course there was one attractive explanation of that. This lad, sitting perhaps in D, became aware that something horrid had happened on his left, and he decided to get his girl and himself clear of it. An adult, as we very well know, is apt to behave in just that way, and it would be very understandable in a boy. But, as it happens, there’s a big difficulty in taking that view. For the usherette is quite confident that those two young people pushed out before the big bang. They were clear of the auditorium before the girl in the picture is represented as letting off the bomb.’

  ‘The girl lets it off?’ Cadover frowned at his own irrelevance. ‘Of course, the lad may simply have tumbled to the fact that, although nothing nasty had actually happened on his left, something of the kind was working up. Not that that’s a likely explanation. The essence of the killing must have lain in sudden and unsuspected assault. Perhaps the film makes another big noise a bit earlier?’

  ‘Apparently it doesn’t. Even for a revolver with a silencer – which is a clumsy thing – there would be just the one chance. We must take it that the couple in DE left before either murder or hint of murder. In fact, it looks as if they are out of the picture. Whatever their reason for leaving early, it just doesn’t concern our affair.’ Morton hesitated. ‘Only the usherette noticed one other odd thing. I wonder if you could guess what it was?’

  Cadover shook his head, his expression indicating the conviction that the case stood in no need of conundrums arbitrarily added.

  ‘The lad she saw leaving had a bowler hat.’

  ‘Um.’ Cadover’s was a quintessentially noncommittal grunt.

  ‘So it almost looks as if the lad who appeared to leave DE was the same who arrived in company of the dead man to occupy BC.’

  ‘It is far from a safe assumption. And if the booking of ABC and DE respectively were indeed entirely independent it is also a difficult one.’

  Morton nodded glumly. ‘I suppose that’s so. But this usherette’s response – the one who showed the boy and girl out – corresponds oddly to that of the other – the one who showed a man and boy to BC.’

  ‘You mean that she felt there was something wrong about the boy?’

  ‘No, not that – although there is the odd fact of her being in doubt about his age. I mean that a bit of class-consciousness again came in. She was aware of the bowler hat as a manifesto – as saying, “My education costs papa at least two hundred a year”.’

  ‘Your manner of questioning usherettes must be extraordinarily skilful.’ Cadover spoke quite without irony. ‘But does this lead out anywhere?’

  ‘Only to this – that the usherette then went on to distinguish the girl as not coming out of at all the same drawer. Whatever the feminine equivalent of the bowler hat may be, the girl didn’t possess it. “A cheap little thing” – that’s what the usherette called her.’ And Morton shook his head. ‘It’s extraordinary how snobbish people are. But it’s a little stroke added to the picture – though whether to our picture one can’t say. We do know one thing we have to look for. If the two lads were not the same, and if the usherette’s nice social sense was not astray, we have to find and question a prosperous youth of problematical age who was giving some little shop-girl an afternoon at the pictures.’

  Cadover nodded. ‘I’m afraid,’ he said seriously, ‘that it opens what might be called a wide field of reference. One of the uses of prosperity is to entertain little shop-girls in that way… There is nothing else on the cinema side of the affair?’

  ‘Nothing at all, so far. And I doubt whether more will emerge. It’s already more than we might hope for.’

  ‘I agree with you. Now, what about this diary which was in a hip pocket and therefore missed? Can we make much of it?’

  ‘It’s most tiresomely new.’ Morton stood up and walked to a window. ‘One might guess that the dead man lost his diary something like a fortnight ago, that he then bought this new one, and that, anyway, he didn’t use such a thing very much. The first entry occurs a week last Tuesday and says, “Smith’s 7.30”. Is that right?’

  ‘Just that. It sounds like a dinner engagement.’

  ‘And with a pal who couldn’t have a less helpful name.’ Morton was drumming moodily on a window-pane. ‘“Robinson” wouldn’t be so hopeless by half.’

  ‘I don’t at all know about it’s being hopeless.’ Cadover had looked up sharply. ‘It might be the restaurant, might it not?’

  ‘Good lord – you’ve got something there! It’s the first real light we’ve struck, likely enough. Can you work the same trick with the other entries? The next is on Monday, isn’t it? Just the name “Bolderwood” followed by something odd that I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘It’s followed by “Hump” – just that. The way it’s arranged looks rather like the beginning of an address. We might do worse than look for somebody of the name of Bolderwood living at–’ Cadover shook his head. ‘Some English villages have precious queer names, but I doubt whether we’d find one called Hump.’

  ‘What about a house?’ Morton’s face brightened. ‘People give the most idiotic names to houses. Dash Bolderwood, Esqre, The Hump… What do you think of that?’

  ‘At the moment I think we’ll pass on. The next entry occurs yesterday. “N I police re guns etc.” – and immediately below “Light railway from Dundrane”.’

  ‘Well, Dundrane explains N I, because it’s a town in Northern Ireland. And seeing police about guns may not be as sinister as it sounds. If you travel to Eire by way of Northern Ireland and want to take dutiable objects in with you and out again you have to collect some sort of certificate from the Northern Ireland Police on the way.’ Morton sat down, well pleased with his own grasp here. ‘Again, it is the remoter parts of Ireland which are served by light railways, and it’s a reasonable inference that the dead man was proposing a trip there and had been making some inquiries about how to proceed. And, of course, there seems to be a tie-up with the final entry – that under today’s date. “Gun for boy 1.15” it reads, doesn’t it? The figures can scarcely represent a bore, or anything technical like that. They must be a time of day – and presumably not in the middle of the night. At a quarter past one this afternoon something was to be done about a gun for a boy. And if guns and the dead man were going to Ireland so presumably was the boy. And a boy was with the dead man in this cinema within an hour of that time. Now, you don’t hunt out a gun for a boy at one fifteen, or forward one, or pack one. That note of a precise time means an appointment – and, ten to one, an appointment to buy a gun. They bought a gun together – a shot-gun of some sort, one must presume – and then they came on here, and then the boy was a party to the man’s murder and to the concealment of his identity. It’s a most extraordinary picture.’

  Ca
dover as he listened to this efficient analysis was gloomily pacing the room. He paused before the Dürer. This one was a fantastic representation of the Assumption of the Magdalen. She was poised nude in air and appeared to be sprouting cherubs all over her like a Surinam toad. Down below a clerkly person raised a hand as if to study this phenomenon against the glare of the sun. Probably the clerkly person was blankly incredulous. But the world really is full of tall stories… ‘Yes,’ said Cadover; ‘it’s a most extraordinary picture.’

  ‘But gives us several lines.’

  ‘Quite so. They will have photographs of the dead man by now. I can try Smith’s. In the morning I can try the likely gunsmiths. Then there are possible bookings to Ireland by anyone with the initials PC. Then what about it being by a light railway from Dundrane that one reaches Mr Bolderwood of the Hump? As you say, there are several lines.’

  ‘To be sure there are.’ And Morton looked at his watch and stood up – a man not dissatisfied. ‘The problem’s a tough one, but it can be worn down in time.’

  Cadover had risen too, and now he reached for his hat – his bowler hat. ‘Has it occurred to you,’ he asked abruptly, ‘that this crime may have no meaning in itself?’

  ‘In itself?’

  ‘Just that. It may be a mere clearing the ground for some other devilish thing – perhaps in a few hours’ time, perhaps tomorrow or the next day. I’ll make what speed I can. Good night.’

  6

  Dinner was over and the train still ran through sunshine. Double Summer Time – England’s last and most detestable contribution to civilization, Mr Thewless irritably thought – made the evening uneasy and unreal. The engine, a creature whose ancient pride had been to enter stations unblown and on the dot, now pursued with depressed but dogged wheezings a timetable hopelessly beyond its senescent powers. On either side the forlorn and dismal backs of terrace houses stretched like a tedious and inescapable discouraging argument; through their windows peered hideous vases, iron bedsteads, the plywood backs of showy dressing-tables being bought at eighteen pence a week. As a refined person, Mr Thewless felt guilty and glum as he ran this gauntlet. Those miles of brick concealed squalors at which he could only guess; they also concealed heroisms which he was unlikely to touch, Mr Thewless sat back and meditated the building of a better England. For the achieving of that, after all, how many people more talented and powerful than he must passionately care! And yet how slow, how painful every step that was being won! For his own part, he felt very helpless, very irrelevant. An usher, a comparatively expensive leader of privileged little bears… He looked at Humphrey Paxton, curled up on the seat opposite. And a new thought came to him. Perhaps that sense of his own irrelevance was no more than a discouragement whispered by the Devil – say, by way of protecting those dark satanic mills of his which here smoked on the horizon. Perhaps to set Humphrey straight was to set England straighter forty years on. For how much might a single able and imaginative man achieve!

  Mr Thewless frowned at himself, distrusting inflated notions, distrusting these wafts of emotion. He picked up The Times. It was true that he had read most of it already. But he would convince himself that he was mildly diverted by the fourth leader…

  At this moment the elderly lady put down her book and glanced rather nervously about her. Hitherto she had not spoken. But now she looked at Humphrey. ‘Have you got an exciting story?’ she asked.

  ‘Thank you; it is quite exciting here and there.’

  Mr Thewless stirred uneasily. Humphrey, he had noticed, was provided with a number of books of a suitable if slightly juvenile sort; these dealt with the heroic and surprising exploits of aeronauts in various quarters of the globe. But in addition to these the boy had others, and of these the only one that Mr Thewless had been able to survey was the book he was reading now. It was the late George Moore’s version of the erotic romance of Daphnis and Chloe. That Humphrey should inform himself from this volume – and even find it quite exciting here and there – Mr Thewless as an enlightened pedagogue judged not reprehensible. Nevertheless, he was not quite pleased. And now this amiable lady would perhaps peer at the book and be a little shocked.

  Sure enough, the lady peered. ‘The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe,’ she read aloud. ‘Ah, yes – I remember quite liking that. There are pirates, are there not? But I don’t remember if they are important in the story.’

  Humphrey, startled, mumbled some inaudible reply. The bearded man with pebble glasses appeared to consider joining in the conversation and to think better of it. The elderly lady tapped the volume on her lap. ‘Now, this really makes me quite nervous. In your book there is nothing that could actually happen to one. Is there?’

  At this Humphrey blushed a bright scarlet beneath his dark hair and mumbled more hopelessly than before.

  ‘For example, pirates are quite out of date. But this’ – and again the elderly lady tapped her book – ‘is a Secret Service novel. And quite a lot of it takes place in a train.’

  ‘I should have thought the Secret Service a bit out of date too.’ The bearded man spoke in an appropriately rumbling voice. ‘The sort of thing that is exciting in time of war.’

  ‘But I assure you that it is always going on!’ And the elderly lady nodded with surprising emphasis. ‘I have been told so by persons who are most well-informed. Only this April I met an extremely interesting woman at Bournemouth who had good reason to believe that an intimate friend of her brother’s was nothing less than a special agent of the Government! I confess that it is since that meeting that I have been inclined to read novels of this sort.’

  Humphrey had tucked Daphnis and Chloe unobtrusively away and was looking at the elderly lady intently. ‘My name is Humphrey Paxton,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘And mine is Margaret Liberty.’ The elderly lady gave a brisk nod by way of completing the introduction. There was a smile of pleasure on her face.

  Mr Thewless’ uneasy feeling grew. He was aware of a mounting tension in his pupil. He was aware too of the stirring, once more, of just those alarming doubts and fantasies which he had promised himself to banish from his own mind.

  ‘Do you think,’ asked Humphrey, ‘that in things of that sort – spies and so on – truth is really stranger than fiction?’

  Miss Liberty shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t say that. I only say that things of that sort do happen, and that sometimes quite ordinary people – people like ourselves in this compartment – become mixed up in them. And that, of course, is why this book makes me a little nervous; one can never be quite sure – and particularly in trains.’

  From behind the shelter of The Times Mr Thewless cursed the woman heartily. For if Humphrey irrationally believed himself to be surrounded by blackmail and conspiracy what sort of talk could be more injurious than this? And Mr Thewless put down his newspaper. ‘I myself,’ he said firmly, ‘am quite sure – even during a railway journey. I have no inclination to believe that melodrama will leap out at me from between the pages of a novel. And, even if I were myself nervous, I would hesitate before doing anything to propagate the feeling.’

  Some little time before he got to the end of this speech, Mr Thewless became aware that it was not a success. For one thing – and even if the elderly lady called Miss Liberty had prattled foolishly – it was definitely uncivil. But also – and this was more important – it was untrue. Mr Thewless was himself substantially jittery. By what stages the feeling had grown again he could now scarcely say. But it was as if a sinister and improbable world really had escaped from Miss Liberty’s book. If the man with the beard and the pebble glasses had whipped off both these appearances and incontinently revealed himself as a beautiful adventuress toying with an automatic pistol, Mr Thewless would have been alarmed, certainly, but scarcely surprised.

  Miss Liberty smiled brightly. She had every appearance of one who is not easily snubbed. ‘What the writers of these books know so well how to contrive,’ she said, ‘is distrust. Who knows anything, really, about
anybody else? How often in our casual relationships with others we take their very identity for granted! I am taking it for granted now that this young man’s name is truly Humphrey Paxton – just as he is perhaps taking it for granted that mine is Margaret Liberty.’

  From across the compartment Mr Thewless heard Humphrey give his characteristic gasp. There was now a glitter – a positively frightening glitter – in the concentrated glance he was directing upon this cursed busybody. And suddenly he burst into speech. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘I mayn’t be Humphrey Paxton at all.’ He laughed queerly. ‘I may just be having somebody on.’

  The bearded man rumbled. ‘You’re not having me on, my boy. Do you know you have your pullover on inside-out? And there’s a tab that shows when you bend forward. It says “Humphrey Paxton” in neat red letters.’ And the bearded man chuckled, his eyes twinkling behind their massive lenses. ‘I’m quite satisfied as to who you are.’

  ‘But that is altogether primitive!’ With a kindled eye, Miss Liberty was protesting warmly. ‘If he is pretending to be Humphrey Paxton – other, I mean, than as a mere passing joke – of course his things will be appropriately labelled. And he will know a great deal about the real Humphrey Paxton, too. It would probably be quite difficult for anyone not knowing the Paxtons well to catch him out.’

  ‘That’s right – I’m thoroughly well up in my part.’ Humphrey was now leaning forward in mounting excitement. He swung round upon Mr Thewless. ‘Can you catch me out?’

  For a moment Mr Thewless was bereft of speech. For it was not the boy whom this detestable woman had unnerved; it was himself. This grotesque conversation, starting up out of nothing, had brought him face to face with that fantastic suspicion which – he realized it now – had been haunting the fringes of his mind for hours. Was this Humphrey Paxton?