by James Wilson
We did pass a couple of poor little farms close to the outskirts of the town, but at one, though the door was open, we got no reply; and at the other a toothless old man shook his fist from an upstairs window, calling:
‘Be off with you, before I set the dogs on you: I’ll have no gypsies on my land!’
I was beginning to think we might have to turn back, and spend the night by the side of the road, with no shelter for poor Tankard, and nothing for him to eat except the dirty grass on the verge, when I felt Jessop stiffen at my side, and heard him mutter:
‘Let’s try there.’
‘Where?’
He pointed down the road, where, a couple of hundred yards ahead of us, an empty dray was turning in at a large gateway. I screwed up my eyes to read what was written on the side, and just had time to make out Divot’s Dairy before it disappeared from view.
‘What good will that do us?’ I asked. ‘There won’t be anywhere for us to camp there.’
‘No, but at least the entrance will be wide enough for us to get through, and they may have a stable to spare for poor Tankard, and a yard where we can leave the van, while we go off and avail ourselves of Langley Mill’s doubtless princely hospitality.’ He gave me an odd sidelong look, his mouth twisted into a sly grimace. ‘Don’t you think clean sheets and a hot bath might put you in a fitter state to go looking for Mary Wilson tomorrow? Don’t want her to think we’re gypsies, do we?’
It was such a novel suggestion that it took me a moment to grasp it. Then I said:
‘Yes, that does sound very appealing.’
We found the owner – a plump, egg-faced man stuffed into a brown work-coat that was too small for him – sitting in his frowsty office, puzzling over a ledger. He was not unfriendly, but so slow-witted that Jessop had to explain what we wanted three times over. Once he had understood it, however, and agreed a price with us, he seemed quite taken with the idea, and insisted on coming out himself to show us where we might put the van, and which stall we could use for Tankard. The gate, he said, would be locked at seven o’clock, but opened again at four a.m. – which (tapping his nose, and grinning complacently at his own roguishness) I trust is early enough to suit, gentlemen, and means you won’t be kept waiting in the morning.
We packed a couple of bags apiece, and then – having canvassed Mr. Divot’s advice on the best place to stay – set out to find the Midland Hotel. It turned out to be a squat, square building, as charmless and functional as a waterworks; but the manager was welcoming enough, and the rooms clean and comfortable. I was worried that the proximity of the station might disturb Jessop; but when I asked him he merely shook his head and said:
‘You can’t avoid having a machine for a neighbour in a place like this; and a railway engine’s no worse than any other.’
*
It was too late, we thought, to do anything productive that evening: Mary Wilson, wherever she lived, would almost certainly be at home now, and very unlikely to stir out again before morning – and even if she did, and by some outlandish accident we saw her, I was far too dishevelled and travel-weary to speak to her. So after taking it in turns to luxuriate in the promised bath, and eating a passable meal in the hotel dining-room, we fixed when we should meet in the morning, and then closeted ourselves – for the first time in more than two weeks – in our own bedrooms.
After so long on the road, I was quite unprepared for the stuffiness of the room and the hiss-clank-thud of the trains. As a result, tired as I was, I lay awake for more than an hour, trying to devise some strategy for the next day. In the end, I only managed to inveigle myself to sleep with the anodyne assurance a nurse gives to a distraught child: there, there, don’t you fret: everything’ll come right in the morning, just you wait and see.
After breakfast, having agreed to extend our stay at least one day more, Jessop and I decided to go our separate ways, and then meet again in the evening to pool what we had learned. He donned his red kerchief, a Tyrolean felt hat and an old jacket plucked from the hotchpotch of clothes he called his ‘travelling wardrobe’, and set off in search of miners’ clubs and the workingmen’s institute. I, for my part – conscious that, however unlikely it was, I must still be prepared for the possibility of happening upon Mary Wilson in the street – settled for a more sober get-up: my battered but still respectable tweed suit, spruced up by the addition of a stiff collar and a tie. Then, tugging on my overcoat, I ventured out into Langley Mill.
In the light of day, it seemed less desolate and menacing than it had the previous night. The morning was not bright, exactly, but the strengthening sun, filtered through a dense, ever-present shroud of smoke, produced a shadowless silver sheen so brilliant that it hurt your eyes to look at it. Daytime, it was obvious, was what the place was made for, and the moment when it came into its own. Everywhere you looked there was an exhilarating bustle of horses and wagons and hand-carts, interspersed here and there by a snorting steam- or motor-lorry, and with a constant thread of people braiding its way through the centre and around the edges. A few of the men stumbled along like worn-out work-horses, and one or two of the children were pinched and wide-eyed with hunger, but most of the people looked cheerful enough, and at least adequately clothed and fed. The same variety was visible in the buildings, with squalid little alleys crammed with hovels giving way to streets of modest bay-windowed villas, and even the occasional larger house – square, and comfortably settled in a pleasant garden behind a laurel or a monkey-puzzle tree – where, with some effort of the imagination, I could almost visualize Mary Wilson living.
And then, after I had been pacing back and forth for a couple of hours, I thought I spotted her. I was hovering in front of the post office at the time, debating whether I should go inside and enquire after her there; and, having more or less concluded that it was almost certainly pointless, given how little information I had, and might even appear suspicious, I had begun to turn away. As I did so, I half-saw something out of the corner of my eye that immediately drew me back again: a young woman in a pearl-grey dress and a feathered hat emerging from the entrance. By the time I had swivelled round and brought her into focus she was already hurrying away from me on the opposite side of the street; and I managed to catch no more than a glimpse of a pale cheek and a strand of black hair before the ineluctable logic of geometry reduced her to a back-view.
Don’t forget Alice Dangerfield, I cautioned myself. But – though of course I had never seen Mary Wilson absolutely clearly – in my mind I had frequently taken out and burnished the few images of her I did retain, and this woman’s gait and figure seemed to match them far better than Miss Dangerfield’s had done. While it had obviously been a foolish fantasy, moreover, to imagine that Mary Wilson might really have just turned up unannounced to visit me at home, I had solid grounds for linking her with Langley Mill, and supposing I might find her here.
I set off in pursuit, increasing my pace when I had to breast a sudden surge of people, and easing it again as soon as they were past, so as to avoid the risk of coming up too close behind her and making her look round. After a couple of hundred yards or so she suddenly turned right. I hurried to the corner, and was just in time to see her disappearing through a doorway in the middle of a parade of modest little shops and public houses. There was something surreptitious in the quick, darting way she moved; and when I came up to the place I realized why: above the entrance, in discreet gold lettering on a black board, was painted: J. Hawker. Pawnbroker.
I pressed myself to the wall, then gingerly craned my neck until I was able to peer inside. Beyond the usual display of clocks and cheap jewellery and boxes of cutlery in the window, I could just see a dimly lit room no bigger than a small parlour. At the back, behind a cluttered counter, stood a bald man in a black suit, watching attentively as the woman drew something from a bag. I could not tell what it was; but I saw him examine it through an eye-glass, before sorrowfully shaking his head. The woman started to gesticulate angrily, shifting her weig
ht from one foot to the other like a thwarted child. I held my breath, willing her to move enough to give me a clear view of her. But before she could, the man suddenly responded by pocketing his eye-glass and looking up – forcing me to shrink back against the wall to avoid being seen.
I was conscious there were footsteps approaching me along the street; but so absorbed was I in watching the entrance to the pawnbroker’s, and wondering who might emerge from it, that I paid them no attention until they were almost upon me. Then, all at once, I heard them stop, and a voice saying:
‘Why, if it isn’t my fugitive!’
I spun round, and found myself looking at a thin, heavily bearded man with the sharp eyes of a consumptive. I had seen him before, I knew, and not too long ago – but where? Not at home, I was sure of it. Perhaps he was someone we had met on our way here – and yet when I tried to connect him in my mind with Jessop, and our experiences together over the last two weeks, he seemed to spring away like a repelled magnet, as if he didn’t belong there.
‘Don’t you remember?’ he said, smiling at my perplexity. ‘We were going to run away to sea, as I recall, the pair of us.’
‘Of course!’ I said, suddenly seeing again a glimpse of moonlit downland, and feeling the first cold spits of rain on my cheeks. ‘Sussex. A month or so ago. You showed me the way to the village.’
He laughed. ‘I failed, then, in my civic duty. Should have taken you to the police, and I let you go instead. But you shan’t escape so easily this time. I’m not letting you out of my sight until you’ve given me a full account of yourself. And if I’m not entirely satisfied, why then’ – stretching out a hand, and turning an invisible key with it – ‘it’s off to the cells with you.’
I knew he must be joking; and yet there was a kind of wild-eyed intensity in his expression that left a tiny pocket of unease in the pit of my stomach. What made it infinitely worse was the thought that at any second Mary Wilson might appear, and I might find myself having to explain what I was doing here to both of them simultaneously.
‘It’s really nothing particularly sensational, I’m afraid,’ I said, with what, even to me, sounded like an uncertain laugh. I started to move away, hoping to draw him into step beside me; but he reached out and grabbed my arm:
‘Hold on, there, not so fast. I think I’m beginning to see.’ He nodded towards the pawnbroker’s window. ‘Not content with murdering your wife, you’ve decided to take up burglary, is that it?’
I couldn’t run: it would be tantamount to admitting that I really was a criminal. I tried to invent some convincing subterfuge, but my brain seemed paralysed. Finally, in desperation, I blurted:
‘Please – there’s a woman in there. She’ll be coming out directly, and I don’t want her to see me when she does.’
‘Ah, so that’s the way the land lies. But you still want to be able to see her, is that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, and follow her?’
‘Only if she’s the person I’m looking for.’
He nodded. Then – in a sudden rush, as if the idea had only just struck him – he said:
‘Not a detective yourself, by any chance, are you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, this is all damned mysterious. But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt – for the moment.’ He pointed to the end of the street. ‘We’ll wait down there. If it turns out it is your woman, we’ll follow her together. If it isn’t, you’ll come and have a drink with me, and tell me the whole story. Agreed?’
I could hear the tick of the seconds beating away in my ears. Reluctantly I nodded.
He nudged my elbow. ‘Come on, then.’
We set off down the street, but had gone no more than ten yards when we heard the ting of the pawnbroker’s door behind us. Stopping in unison, we peered back cautiously – just in time to see the woman stepping out into the road, clutching her bag. She hesitated a moment; then, seeming to sense our presence, she glanced in our direction – giving me, for the first time, a look at her face.
Damn, I thought. And, in the same instant: Thank heaven.
I could see how I had been deceived: she was much the same age as Mary Wilson, and had the same luminously pale complexion. But her chin was rounder, her features heavier – and her eyebrows, far from being thick and charcoal-black, were so light as to be almost invisible.
‘Well?’ asked the bearded man.
‘No. The person I’m looking for is rather more delicate –’
‘I dare say she would be.’
‘And darker-haired.’
The woman – wondering, I suppose, why two strange men should take such an obvious interest in her, and no doubt reaching the inevitable conclusion – scowled fiercely, and scurried away in the opposite direction. My companion watched her for a few seconds, then stepped back into the middle of the road, scanning the buildings on either side.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘We have a choice, it seems. The Black Lion or the Dewdrop.’
We chose the Dewdrop, largely because it seemed to be the emptier of the two. It was small, but bright and pleasant, with a cheerful smell of beer and smoke and furniture polish. We settled ourselves at a table in the corner, and my companion went to the bar to order our drinks – glancing back at me every few seconds, as if he still thought I might try to make a bolt for it. When he returned, carrying a brandy for me and a bottle of stout for himself, he said:
‘I’m Davey Riddick, by the way.’
‘How do you do?’
He put the glasses down carefully, took my hand, and waited for me to tell him my name. When I didn’t, he said:
‘And you?’
I was in a quandary. I still found it hard to imagine who or what he was, but his manner did not suggest a man of much natural reticence. At the very least, he was likely to be an incorrigible gossip – and, given the nakedness of his curiosity, was it not possible he might even turn out to be a journalist? The idea of my story being reduced, at best, to an amusing anecdote, and at worst to a newspaper article full of knowing hints about my sanity and proclivities, made me feel sick with dread.
‘Roper,’ I said finally.
‘Roper? Your parents didn’t think to christen you?’
‘They did. But my Christian name’s rather an embarrassment to me, I’m afraid.’
He nodded impatiently, as if he expected me to give it to him anyway.
‘Augustus,’ I said. That much, at least, was true enough. I was not obliged to add that, as a result, I used my second name instead.
‘Augustus Roper,’ he said, sitting down. ‘That has a good rough sound to it. Like sticking your fingers on a sack of spuds, and feeling the hard round knobbles inside.’ He saw my expression, and laughed. ‘Not the way you think of it, I dare say. But I’m a hungry man, Mr. Roper. Hungry for the queer awkward cross-grain of real life. And when I get a bit of it, even just a name, I can’t help relishing it.’
‘But surely’, I said, snatching gratefully at the opportunity to shift the conversation away from me at last, ‘it’s here all around you?’
‘I know. But six months I was starved of it. And that leaves a man feeling pretty famished, I can tell you.’ He coughed, holding the back of his hand to his mouth with a surprising womanish delicacy. ‘Angry, too. I mean, how many years has any of us got? Thirty? Forty? And then to find you’ve wasted half of one of them with people whose veins are full of rosewater.’
I laughed, despite myself. ‘Why didn’t you just leave them, if they were as irksome as that?’
‘I should have done. But they’d invited me to stay with them while I was finishing a book, and I was desperate to get it done. The house was meant to be a sort of artists’ community, you see: my host – a belletrist, as he was pleased to call himself; and his tubercular sister; and two lady novelists. We were all supposed to be painting, or writing novels. It was only after I’d been there a while that I realized their novels were draining the life out of mine. All that minute
analysis of what they felt about the colour of the wallpaper …’He shook his head. ‘I was dying of anaemia. So I started roaming the countryside, looking for blood. In fact’ – unfolding a finger and pointing it at me as he remembered – ‘that’s what I was doing the night we met.’
‘Well, you found it then, as I recall.’
He frowned for a moment, then nodded and smiled. ‘Oh, yes. The rabbits. But more to the point, I found you. You kept me going for at least a week. I spent hours afterwards wondering who you were, and what you were running from. So now’s your chance to satisfy me.’
It was inescapable; so, after fortifying myself with a sip of brandy, I told him – though in the simplest and most conventional terms, and leaving out any reference to my profession, or my imagined conversation with the dog, or my strange experience when I was burying the box. Riddick watched me closely, saying nothing – even at moments, such as when I was describing Elspeth’s death, that seemed to demand at least a minimal expression of sympathy. When I had finished, he nodded and said:
‘And what about this dark-haired beauty of yours?’
‘I’m not sure I should call her a beauty –’
‘This woman, then. Who brought you to Langley Mill?’
‘Ah, well that’s more difficult to explain.’
He gave a low growling laugh that dislodged something in his throat and made him cough again. ‘It always is, isn’t it?’ he said, dabbing the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief. ‘When the case concerns a man and a woman. Though I really don’t see why it should be. I mean, we’re all caught up in it, aren’t we? It’s just the old dance of life and death, that’s been going on since the beginning of time, and’ll still be going on at the end.’
I started to blush.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I don’t know about that. But I’ll tell you a funny thing. It’s only just occurred to me: if it hadn’t been for you, I’d probably never have met her.’
‘Really?’
I nodded. ‘Because you directed me to the village. And that’s where I found her. Sheltering in the church porch.’