Nightmare

by Lynn Brock

  ‘In Guildford,’ replied Mr Knayle. ‘You know Guildford, Whalley—’

  ‘I used to know it.’

  ‘Well, the Prossips are living in a road called Burford Avenue—perhaps you know it. The shed was in a lane off the road. The unfortunate girl kept her car there.’

  ‘Good,’ said Mr Ridgeway. ‘Well, then, she was murdered in a shed in a lane off a road called Burford Avenue in Guildford. Who murdered her?’

  ‘Oh, well,’ expostulated Mr Knayle. ‘I can’t tell you that. But as I say, the extraordinary thing—’

  ‘When was she murdered?’

  ‘The evening before last—some time round half-past seven, they seem to think. Of course, when I—’

  ‘Wait now. Don’t jump. She was murdered with a hammer, and you saw the hammer. When did you see the hammer?’

  ‘Oh, much later—about one o’clock that night.’

  ‘So you were in a lane off Burford Avenue in Guildford at one o’clock that night. And you saw the hammer lying outside a shed, and the Prossip girl was in the shed, murdered. Well?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a matter for facetiousness, Ridgeway,’ protested Mr Knayle severely. ‘It’s really a most shocking business. After all, you knew the poor girl—well, you knew her by sight.’

  ‘I did,’ said Mr Ridgeway dryly. ‘And now that I think of it, I always thought she was the sort of person someone would murder with a hammer.’

  ‘I didn’t know that the Prossips were living in Guildford,’ said Whalley after a silence.

  ‘Oh?’ said Mr Knayle. ‘I thought I had told you. Yes. They’ve been living there since they left Rockwood. Oh—by the way—you weren’t in Guildford last week, were you?’

  ‘I?’ Whalley repeated in surprise. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Oh, I thought I saw you one night—curiously enough—coming out of the very lane where this thing happened.’

  Whalley shook his head. ‘I see you’re wearing glasses now.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve got some little trouble. Nothing at all serious; but I’ve got to wear these confounded things. They make me feel like a professor of phrenology.’

  ‘What I want to know, Knayle,’ demanded Mr Ridgeway from his little area, ‘is, what were you doing in this lane at one o’clock in the morning? It seems devilish fishy to me, the whole business. You were there, and the Prossip girl was there—dead or alive, I’m not clear yet which—and now you say Whalley was there. Was I there?’

  ‘Oh don’t be an ass, Ridgeway,’ said Mr Knayle a little acidly. He opened his newspaper and began to re-read the account of the murder, endeavouring to find the thread of his narrative; but Mr Ridgeway’s hall door shut and Whalley had already reached the garden gate. There was nothing to do but shut up the newspaper and go back to a second cup of coffee which was now undrinkable.

  His extraordinary adventure had gone quite flat; Ridgeway’s tomfoolery had turned it into the silliest of jokes. There had been nothing at all extraordinary about it. The whole thing had happened in a perfectly ordinary and uninteresting sequence. He had seen Prossip home because there had been no other taxi, and Mrs Prossip had asked him to go round to the shed and he had gone and seen the hammer. He hadn’t even found the hammer. He had simply seen it and left it there. Not only that—but it had been stupid of him to leave it there and not guess that there was something wrong. He had known that Marjory Prossip had not come home and that Mrs Prossip had been anxious about her for several hours. Anyone with a spark of intelligence, seeing a hammer lying near the shed, would have guessed that there was something wrong. And he had simply left it there—with the result that the murder hadn’t been discovered until ten hours later. The police would want to know why he had left the hammer lying there and given the murderer another ten hours, instead of telling the Prossips that he had found a hammer lying outside the shed—or doing something of some sort about the hammer. Everybody would want to know. He had had no extraordinary adventure. He had simply done something infernally stupid.

  And yet Mr Knayle’s adventure had appeared to him the most extraordinary when he had jumped up from his breakfast-table with the intention of going down to tell Ridgeway about it. He was a little upset because his story had fallen flat and he groped about for justification of the impulse which had sent him hurrying out in search of someone to tell it to. He was still sure that there had been something extraordinary in his adventure and after a little time he decided that the extraordinary thing about it was, not that he had seen the hammer, but that it was he who had seen the hammer. He had gone up to Guildford—a hundred and twenty miles away—and by an extraordinary chance had—well, very nearly discovered the murdered body of someone who had lived in the same flat with him in Rockwood.

  But no—that was not quite it. Mr Knayle’s mind groped on and suddenly rounded a rather startling corner. That maid of the Prossips … His visit to Guildford had obliterated Agatha Judd as completely as it had obliterated his dining-room carpet. But now he remembered that that girl who had been the Prossips’ maid had been murdered. Hopgood came in just then to say that the car was outside and Mr Knayle raised abstracted eyes from his newspaper.

  ‘You know, Hopgood, this is rather an extraordinary affair—this about Miss Prossip.’

  ‘Extraordinary, sir?’

  ‘I mean—well, it’s only a few weeks ago that that girl—that maid of the Prossips—was murdered. I only thought of that just now.’

  ‘It is a bit queer, sir,’ Hopgood agreed. ‘That very thought came into my own head when I was reading about it. I was saying to Chidgey just now that it was a bit strange. A funny thing that you should have been in Guildford when it happened, sir—’

  ‘Funny?’ repeated Mr Knayle sharply. ‘Why funny?’

  ‘Oh, well, I don’t mean funny, sir, of course—’

  ‘I don’t think it’s funny at all.’

  Hopgood, however, continued to look as if he thought it funny.

  ‘I forgot to tell you, sir, that that police-inspector called here yesterday wanting to see Chidgey.’

  ‘Oh, confound him,’ snapped Mr Knayle testily, picking up his newspaper and putting it down again.

  ‘I told him that Chidgey had gone up to Guildford with you, sir. I hope that was right.’

  ‘Right? Of course.’ Mr Knayle’s tone became elaborately casual. ‘Er—tell Chidgey I want to see him, will you?’

  Chidgey’s hands became a little fidgety when he realised what the guv’nor wanted to see him about. But he was able to account satisfactorily for his last afternoon in Guildford. He had felt a bit seedy and thought that he was in for a go of ’flu. Mr Knayle had said that he wouldn’t want the car that day, so he had gone to bed and stayed there until the following morning. The people at his lodgings, he was sure, would be able to say that he hadn’t stirred out after one o’clock.

  This was a relief.

  Mr Knayle hadn’t really thought for a moment that because Chidgey had assaulted Mr Prossip he had also beaten Mr Prossip’s daughter to death with a hammer. That idea was, of course, ridiculous. Still, Chidgey had already been suspected of battering someone to death—and that someone had been the Prossips’ maid. It was certainly a bit awkward that Chidgey should have been in Guildford and had that row with Prossip. And Hopgood had looked mysterious in that idiotic, owlish way of his. It had seemed to Mr Knayle just as well to find out where Chidgey had been that evening; he had had quite enough trouble about Chidgey and told him so.

  ‘What does this confounded police-inspector want to see you about?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ replied Chidgey nervously. His face had grown steadily whiter and thinner during the interview and his hands refused to keep still. Mr Knayle eyed them over his glasses and found himself on the very point of saying, ‘Blast you, why can’t you keep your hands quiet?’

  ‘Has Mr Whalley put his car in the garage yet?’ he asked, picking up his newspaper again.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Look af
ter it for him, will you? I shan’t take the car out this morning. It’s too foggy. That will do.’

  Mr Knayle went off to see his dentist about his new plate and in the fog was nearly run over by a confectioner’s van, the driver of which shouted a most objectionable remark at him. When he tried to tell the dentist about a most extraordinary experience which he had had in Guildford the dentist kept saying: ‘Heh. Wid-ah,’ and he had to give it up. At the club everyone was talking gloomily about some rather alarming rioting which had taken place in Dunpool on the preceding day. Six thousand unemployed had overwhelmed the police, set a factory on fire and invaded the City Council Hall. When at length he succeeded in telling how he had found the hammer a man whom he disliked extremely said: ‘Well, I think you showed uncommon presence of mind, Knayle.’ He lunched alone at a small table in a remote corner and no one seemed to care whether he did or not. His waiter, who was wondering whether he was going to win ten bob on the three-thirty, forgot him several times and it was necessary to speak rather sharply about the condition of the cruets.

  During lunch, however, he decided to go round to the garage on his way home and say a soothing word or two to Chidgey. Chidgey had looked rather like a small lost dog.

  2

  When Mr Ridgeway had arranged his scraped shoes before his sitting-room fire to dry, he stood looking down at them meditatively with his fine, tired eyes. They were a large, heavily-soled pair of shoes which he used for his early walks on the Downs in wet weather, and he was thinking about the noise they made on his little flight of steps when his charwoman, Mrs Dings, brought in his breakfast from the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve just heard a rather interesting bit of news, Mrs Dings,’ he said, turning.

  Mrs Dings sniffed. ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘Your friend Miss Prossip has been murdered.’

  ‘Murdered, sir?’ Mrs Dings put down her tray and sniffed three times rapidly. ‘Well, I never. Murdered? Well, that’s a queer thing.’

  There was only vivid interest in Mrs Dings’ battered little face; in her heart was a vague stirring of faith that in the end God always dealt with people as they deserved. She had complained to Miss Prossip one day in the garden that that Aggie called her ‘Sniffy’ when they met at the rubbish-bins, and Miss Prossip had treated her like dirt.

  ‘Well, I never. Don’t let your haddock get cold, sir. Well that is a queer thing. Why, it’s not a month ago since that Aggie was murdered.’

  ‘You think it’s a queer thing, Mrs Dings?’ Mr Ridgeway asked.

  ‘Well, you can’t deny of it, sir,’ replied Mrs Dings.

  Mr Ridgeway contemplated his charwoman’s little shiny, bumpy forehead for some moments before he turned again to the fire. Behind it lay the brain of a rabbit. But Mrs Dings had instantly made that connection and thought it a queer thing.

  Of late Mr Ridgeway had grown a little doubtful that things which appeared queer to him were really queer.

  Mrs Dings knew his little ways and had a lot to do before she went away at one o’clock with her half-crown. She left him looking at his boots and sniffed back to the kitchen. She knew that she sniffed. But she had always sniffed and it was a great help.

  3

  Very slowly Whalley went down the garden and crossed the road. His legs moved with the rigidity of steel stilts, yet they trembled and sagged with their hate and fury. All his body was an aching passion to turn and rush back to that little dapper mannikin with the newspaper and catch him by his little babbling throat and choke his life out. Ten yards in on the grass of the Downs the houses were mere blurs, hardly darker than the fog. He shook his fist towards them ragingly and whispered:

  ‘Mannikin. Mannikin.’

  The Irish terrier from number 48 came out of the fog, shied violently away from his gesture, and disappeared, uttering little rumbles of alarm. He laughed boisterously at its sudden swerve and went on muttering.

  ‘Mannikin. Mannikin. Puny Mannikin. Puny smirker—’

  As his feet strayed on his eyes glanced from side to side restlessly with an uneasy vigilance that in two days had already become habitual to them. For now it was always necessary to keep watch. Every bush and every tree on the Downs were familiar to him, seen in relation to other bushes and trees. But this morning there were no points of reference. The world was a small circle of wet grass capped by a dome of sightless silence that moved with him. A tree loomed up alone, and had never been seen before. He stopped, turned about, could not tell in what direction he faced or from which direction he had come, and broke into a hobbling trot until he reached a seat which he recognised at length by its broken back. The icy clamminess of its iron arm was safety. He stood holding on to it, panting from his short run, furious that he had yielded to panic. Had it been panic—or had he lost himself again? Was he standing by this broken seat, holding on to its arm and panting. Was it he—and did he know that it was he? What was there to tell him?

  Gradually his bewildered alarm allayed itself and he began to pace in narrow circles round the seat, unwilling to part from its anchorage. His eyes clung to its broken back, as to an established fact by which all other facts could be recovered and rearranged. All this about Knayle—that would all arrange itself in a clear, solving thought—cease to be a rain of dancing spots that ran together and made a little mannikin with a newspaper and then broke up into dancing spots again.

  Think—think … A clear thought. The mannikin and the hammer in the lane together. Just a cunning, smirking trick, that—not a blinding flame that turned to ice. Full of tricks, the mannikin—coming and going. But think and confuse him and talk about his glasses. That had been very clever—very quick. Only a very clever, subtle mind could have thought of that—a mind altogether different from Mannikin’s—keen and quick as rapier—dancing about Mannikin and confusing him.

  He lighted a cigarette and sat down, reassured. His anger had passed and left behind thoughts—two thoughts that did not slide and melt. Somehow Knayle had seen him in the lane—a danger so incredible that his mind still refused to deal with it as a reality. But this was a new anxiety that would gnaw and fret the hours to come. For now—for this little space in which he sat there, smoking safely in the fog—an old anxiety was gone. For countless centuries it had lived with him, a torment of doubt. But now he knew that he had left the hammer outside the shed.

  Had he meant to leave it there—or had he forgotten it? He would never know now.

  For the millionth time he strove to remember. It was all clear until he reached the turning of the lane and began to unwrap the brown paper. Her keys jingled—she was unlocking the padlock. And then nothing—until the subway at Guildford station. He had been dabbing his chin with his handkerchief when, suddenly, he had missed something.

  He hobbled up the lane again and unwrapped the brown paper, crouching against the wall. Her keys jingled … No—nothing. Ten million times he might crouch against the wall, but he would never know. Not he, but someone else, had turned the corner.

  But the hammer had been left—not carried through the streets. No need to worry about that.

  Botched again, though. Always a botch in the end. And now, always, that other one to watch—the one who stole away round the corner and forgot. Churn, churn, rattle and squeak and jingle—the good old faithful noise; but who would hold the steering wheel?

  And Knayle—little dapper, pop-eyed Knayle—suddenly dangerous. Puny but cunning, coming and going and watching and finding the hammer … Mad, mad—mad as a hatter. But he would have to be watched and thought about. Think about Knayle, not dancing spots falling like rain—

  Mr Ridgeway came out of the fog, wheezing, and halted by the seat while he refilled his pipe.

  ‘A bit too thick for me this morning. I shouldn’t stay out in it, Whalley, if I were you. What are you rubbing that eye for? Got something in it?’

  ‘Cigarette ash, I expect,’ Whalley replied without interest. When he had looked at the eye for a moment or two, Mr Ridgeway took o
ut a pocket-lens and examined it more attentively.

  ‘Umph,’ he said, putting away the lens. ‘You’ve got an ulcer there. Better get a shade over that eye and see an oculist at once.’

  ‘An ulcer?’ Whalley repeated sharply.

  ‘Yes. A fairly common symptom with your trouble. Well, I’ll get in, I think.’

  Mr Ridgeway was not greatly surprised when Whalley broke into a fit of hysterical sobbing. He smoked his pipe until the paroxysm had passed, and then went away, yawning. You got that sort of thing, too, very frequently in pernicious anæmia cases. And his chilblains were bad that morning.

  4

  Inspector Bride read the report of the Guildford murder at breakfast and immediately connected it with the murder in Abbey Road. The Abbey Road murder had given him a lot of trouble for nothing. Every clue had petered out, and he was beginning to feel rather fed-up with it. But the name Prossip awoke his interest. It seemed to him queer that Prossip should have been so intimately connected with two murders.

  Almost instantly he thought of Chidgey. He still didn’t think that there was anything in Chidgey, but he had never been quite satisfied about him. For one thing, one of the friends who had stated that he had seen Chidgey in the picture-house that night had since admitted that he hadn’t seen him and that he had said that he had seen him merely because Chidgey had asked him to do so. Inspector Bride had called at Mr Knayle’s flat to see Chidgey about this, but had been informed that Chidgey was away with Mr Knayle. He recollected now that Mr Knayle’s man had said that Mr Knayle had gone to Guildford, and it seemed to him queer that Chidgey should have been in Guildford at the time of a second murder connected with Prossip. Nothing in it probably, but he thought he’d take a stroll up towards Downview Road that afternoon and see if Chidgey had come back.

  5

  To his annoyance, when he arrived at his garage Mr Knayle found Inspector Bride there, notebook in hand and holding Chidgey imprisoned against a wall with his glassy stare.