The Methods of Sergeant Cluff

by Gil North

In the street Cluff panted, to Barker, “Thank God there’s been no rain to mean anything. If only he’s true to character—”

  Barker hadn’t the slightest idea what he meant.

  The chemist’s shop was dark. The shops on either side of it were dark, the doors in the High Street, except those of the public-houses, closed. Cluff plunged, without slackening his pace, into a narrow tunnel piercing the line of frontages. He emerged into an open alley not much wider than the tunnel, between cottages that had somehow survived up to the present the planners’ mania for destruction. He raced into the road behind the High Street, a few yards along it, and round the corner by the cobbler’s, pounding on the setts up to the gate of Greensleeve’s yard. He tugged and pulled at the gate.

  He said, “It’s bolted on the inside.”

  He made his hands into a stirrup. He hoisted Barker to the top of the gate and Barker hung, silhouetted in the dark, black against a lesser black. The constable vanished, landing with a gasp. Bolts jarred. Cluff hurled himself impatiently at the gate, forcing the leaves inwards. Barker staggered back, almost knocked off his feet.

  A torch flashed.

  “He didn’t,” Cluff said with relief. “He didn’t!”

  The car had gone but the yard hadn’t been swilled or swept. Cluff, on his knees, scrabbled at the cracked concrete, his nose to the ground, cursing at Clive to stand away, urging Barker to hold the torch closer.

  Chapter VII

  “Has he been there all night?” Margaret asked Jean.

  Greensleeve’s two remaining assistants came up the High Street together, the street not crowded but comfortably filled with men and women on their way to work, the morning grey and dull like yesterday, the rain still threatening. The clock in the church tower showed a minute or two before nine.

  “Why don’t you tell him?” Margaret pleaded.

  The younger girl objected uncertainly, “But it can’t matter. How could it matter? I can’t go to him with a thing like that—”

  “She’s been murdered.”

  “What would he think of me?” Jean muttered, her eyes on Cluff.

  “Worse if you don’t.”

  “It can’t have anything to do with it. It can’t!”

  “You don’t know.”

  “If I was wrong—”

  “You weren’t wrong.”

  “I must have been.”

  “He’s no better than anyone else,” Margaret said. She wasn’t looking at Cluff but at Greensleeve’s name above the door of the shop. “I’ve worked for him longer than Jane did. Has he ever paid any attention to me, or to you?”

  “Why don’t you like him?”

  “Do you?”

  “We work there.”

  “Have you seen his wife lately?”

  “It’s nothing to do with Jane’s death.”

  “She’s never in the town, is she? Do they ever go out together? Would you think he was married at all if you didn’t know?”

  Cluff’s hands were thrust into the pockets of his coat. His hat was pulled forward over his eyes. He had Clive with him.

  Margaret said, “He doesn’t deserve shielding,” not referring to Cluff.

  “Couldn’t I have made a mistake?”

  “You’re frightened.”

  “It isn’t that. Our jobs—”

  “Greensleeve doesn’t run this town, if he thinks so.”

  “I’d never get another.”

  “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  Greensleeve’s car appeared on the road by the church. Margaret had her hand on Jean’s arm, pulling her gently past the chemist’s door in the direction of Cluff, farther away by the fruit-stall in his favourite spot.

  The car swung perilously across the roadway, without warning to following traffic. Brakes squealed. A horn blew angrily. The car halted on the setts, its nose pointed at the pavement.

  Greensleeve got out. Cluff remained still, his eyes on the flags at his feet, not looking either up the street or down, or at the windows he was facing. He took no notice either of Margaret and Jean, or of Greensleeve. He stood there, big and solid, conspicuous. Greensleeve couldn’t ignore him, any more than could the other pedestrians. Everyone in the vicinity was aware of Cluff, the sense of awareness transmitted from one person to another. They left him alone this morning, as they had done yesterday, not trespassing on his remoteness.

  Greensleeve stepped forward, cutting Margaret and Jean off from Cluff. They stopped and the expression on Greensleeve’s face was difficult to interpret. He glanced over his shoulder at Cluff and when he looked back at the two girls he was smiling. Jean wriggled free from Margaret’s grip. She began to cross the pavement in front of Greensleeve. He passed her in the entrance to his shop and inserted a key in the lock. He carried himself straight, with his shoulders pulled back, and Jean thought that he looked just as well as the day before, less preoccupied than for some time past, pleased with himself. He looked round before he went into the shop. He remarked, “The Sergeant’s like a horse. I do believe he can go to sleep on his feet.” He laughed. “He’s stood there so many times and for so long there’s quite a hollow in the kerb.” Cluff seemed to be in a world of his own, unconnected with the world about him.

  Greensleeve wound up the blind that covered the glass panel in the door. He reversed an advertisement card hanging from the top of the door frame, replacing the word “Closed” by “Open.” He said, about Cluff, “He’d be better off doing the work he’s paid for.”

  Jean’s head turned. She could still see Cluff through the glass in the door. Her own manner had something in it of Cluff’s apartness. Like the Sergeant she had forgotten where she was.

  “Jean,” Greensleeve interrupted her thoughts, but mildly.

  She started and flushed. Without meeting his eyes she went through the dispensary to the cloakroom at the back.

  “What do you talk about?” Greensleeve wanted to know from Margaret.

  She looked at him insolently and went after Jean. He stood for a while by one of the counters, beating a tattoo with his fingers on the glass.

  In the street it became quieter, too early yet for housewives on their morning shopping expeditions. The people on the pavements had thinned, by this time being indoors at their desks or mooning in the shops, bored, waiting for customers. The entrances and the pavements had been swept, the night’s film of dust flicked from the window displays, perishables brought out of refrigerators and arranged for sale on their slabs. The town had a somnolent air, half returned, after the business of waking, to sleep. It hugged itself close against the cold wind, relaxed in semi-hibernation, its circulation slow.

  At the police-station Constable Barker, in his plain clothes, stopped watching the street door. If he’d got out of bed two feet taller because of his unexpected elevation to the post of Cluff’s assistant, his elation had evaporated. He left a chair placed near an electric fire and began to move across the outer office. Mole’s voice halted him. Mole said silkily, “And where do you think you’re off to?”

  “Perhaps the Sergeant’s been in already.”

  “What! Didn’t he leave you any instructions?”

  “He must be in the town somewhere.”

  “I shouldn’t rely on it. He’s just as likely to be at that cottage of his.”

  Barker shook his head.

  Mole said, “It’d take more than a mere murder to make Cluff get a move on.”

  “He’s not there. I’ve rung through.”

  “Ought we to send out a search-party?”

  “I’ll find him.”

  “What happened last night?”

  “He went home.”

  “Is that all?”

  Barker, embarrassed, held his lips firmly together.

  “All right,” Mole said, after a pause. “If you’ve nothing else
to do why don’t you see Carter?”

  “I haven’t been told—”

  “I only hope,” Mole wished, “it’ll stop where it has done. Another murder would be too much when he’s only got this far with the first one.”

  “There’s no proof—”

  “This is Gunnarshaw. There aren’t so many to choose from.”

  Greensleeve prowled his shop restlessly, the more restlessly as the morning dragged by. He couldn’t settle in the dispensary. He found himself missing, as he hadn’t done until now, Jane Trundle’s presence. A gap yawned between himself and his two assistants. He couldn’t feel anything in common with them. He suspected Margaret of digging the gap and Jean of helping her. He hadn’t noticed them much while Jane had been there to brighten his days. He couldn’t achieve a familiarity with them out of the blue, however much he felt a need to talk.

  He paced between the counters, eyeing Jean in charge of the cosmetics, looking out of the other corners of his eyes at Margaret with the patent medicines and baby foods. The outer door drew him like a magnet. As often as he drifted away from it he drifted back. The arrangement of the windows didn’t satisfy him. He kept opening and shutting the hatches in the screens that separated the windows from the shop. He altered the position of an article here, of another there. He fiddled with the cardboard props of advertisement cut-outs. He knew very well that Cluff was a few steps away. Cluff had taken on an air of permanency.

  Back in the dispensary he heard a knock at the yard door. He looked through the window and motioned the man who had cleaned his car to come in.

  The man asked, “Is there anything for me this morning?”

  Greensleeve shook his head: “I haven’t paid you yet.”

  “Didn’t I do a good job?”

  The chemist groped in his trousers’ pocket for change. He couldn’t find any. He got out his wallet and selected a ten-shilling note. The man’s eyebrows lifted and he snatched at the note before it occurred to Greensleeve to alter his mind. The man offered, “Anytime.”

  He paused on his way out. He advised, “You want to be more careful. You forgot to bolt the gate last night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Anybody could have got in.”

  “Nonsense!” Greensleeve said. “I remember distinctly. I came back through the shop after I’d got the car out.”

  “It’d be easier to have a lock fixed so you could shut the gate from outside.”

  “In any case, it’s been left open before.” The chemist thought of something. He pushed past his visitor into the passage. He went into the yard and walked over to the gate.

  “There’s nothing to see,” the man said, at his heels.

  Greensleeve shrugged it off: “You must have been dreaming.”

  “I’m in, aren’t I?”

  “One of the girls—”

  “Somebody climbed over, that’s a fact,” the man added, pointing to the shallow scar of a shoe-toe scraped on the paint.

  “Nothing’s been touched.”

  “A kid after a ball, maybe.”

  “It could have been.”

  “There’s some queer goings-on in Gunnarshaw these days.”

  “It happens in all kinds of places.”

  “We’re still different. Caleb Cluff doesn’t happen every-

  where.”

  “I wouldn’t call that a cause for congratulation.”

  “He seems interested—”

  “What in?”

  “This shop for one. I suppose he’s still at the front?”

  “You’ve seen him then?”

  “I like to keep an eye on him if I can. He’s got a habit of coming up quietly behind a chap when you don’t know he’s there.”

  “You make too much of him. There’s nothing extraordinary about Cluff, unless it’s his lack of intelligence.”

  “I watched him yesterday when he left here. He—”

  “Left here!” Greensleeve echoed sharply.

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “He was in to see me, certainly.”

  “Getting on for two. I was just coming back to finish off. I’m not to a few minutes extra on a job for you, Mr. Greensleeve.”

  Cunning showed on the man’s face. He stole a glance at Greensleeve and allowed the seconds to pass. He said, “He came out from the shop.” He added, “I always thought you went for your dinner about that time.”

  “He’d no right—”

  “That wouldn’t stop Cluff.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Nay,” the man replied. “Cluff wouldn’t tell that to me.”

  Greensleeve was turning away.

  “He went into yon cobbler’s,” the man said. “He was in there quite a while.”

  Greensleeve stopped. He heard, “I wish I’d his job on his pay. He’s nowt to do except stroll about and chat with his cronies.”

  “You can sweep up if you want to.”

  “Right!”

  “I’ve some cases in the store. Get rid of them for me as well.”

  “Anything you like.” The man stopped Greensleeve in his tracks a second time: “It’s a proper spot for a murder this town is. Cluff won’t get away with it twice. He was nobbut lucky last time.”

  Greensleeve stalked into the shop, his step determined. Margaret’s eyes followed him to the front door. He hesitated briefly and then went through the door into the High Street, banging the door behind him, setting its bell, suspended from a spring, ringing. Margaret hurried from behind her counter. She peered through the glass door-panel. She said, “He’s going up to the Sergeant.”

  She heard Jean move uneasily. She added, “We don’t know what he’s telling him.”

  The chemist hadn’t troubled about either a hat or a coat. He came bustling along the pavement. The stall-holder saw him and sidled from one end of his stall to the other, nearer where Cluff continued to ignore everything. The stall-holder’s ears pricked. He turned his back to the pavement and began an urgent rearrangement of his piles of fruit.

  “What do you think you’ve been doing?” Greensleeve shouted, before he had come up to Cluff.

  He had to halt or run into Cluff. He said, without lowering his voice, “You’d no authority.”

  Cluff looked up, over the crown of Greensleeve’s head. He said quietly, “When?”

  The stall-holder abandoned pretence and listened openly.

  “I must have been at lunch.”

  “Oh, then.”

  Cluff moved a little away. His eyes met those of the stall-holder. They lit up with a brief spark of fire.

  “You take too much on yourself,” Greensleeve protested.

  Cluff fingered an apple. He picked it up and began to roll it in his hand.

  Greensleeve threatened, “I’ve friends on the County Council. I know the chairman of the Watch Committee.”

  Cluff looked bored.

  “You’d no warrant.”

  “I took the quickest way out for where I wanted to go,” Cluff said.

  “You’ve had too much rope in this town.”

  “You know what to do.”

  Greensleeve spluttered. He became suddenly conscious of the stall-holder near Cluff’s broad back. He might have had a large say in the affairs of Gunnarshaw but he knew he wasn’t popular with its humbler citizens. His own class didn’t always love him. The stall-holder grinned, enjoying his exchange with Cluff, leaving Greensleeve in no doubt about which side he supported.

  Cluff whistled softly to his dog. He began to saunter off, Clive behind him. “Wait!” Greensleeve said loudly. The stall-holder’s grin got broader, the stall-holder’s manner more contemptuous. The chemist swung round and stamped back to his shop. A passer-by asked the stall-holder, “What’s up?”

  “He wants tak
ing down a peg,” the stall-holder stated.

  “The Sergeant’s the man to do that.”

  “Greensleeve’s bitten off more than he can chew this time.”

  “It doesn’t pay to tangle with Cluff.”

  “You wait,” the stall-holder prophesied. “Caleb’ll show him.”

  “Steady on. It wasn’t him, was it?”

  The stall-holder said darkly, “If it wasn’t, he knows more than he’ll let on.”

  Greensleeve ignored Margaret. He walked up to Jean and accused her, “Why didn’t you let me know he came back when I was out yesterday?”

  Margaret smiled.

  “I was by myself,” Jean said.

  “You let him into the dispensary.”

  “He left the back way.” Jean hesitated, nervous. “He wasn’t here for long.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d hardly time to talk to him.”

  Greensleeve looked at the younger girl for what seemed to her a long time. “You’re telling the truth?” he said, and she nodded. His eyes narrowed. He added, “You’ve a pleasant job here. I pay you well,” and went into the dispensary, closing the door after him.

  He stood, thinking. Through the window he could see the man from the rag-merchant’s brushing the yard languidly, with longer intervals between each stroke. The chemist remembered the mockery in the stall-holder’s face, the innuendo he had imagined in the remarks of the man in the yard when they were discussing Cluff.

  He made up his mind. He searched quickly through the pages of a directory. He lifted the phone, dialled the exchange, and asked for the number he wanted.

  Margaret had her ear to the dispensary door. “He’s phoning,” she said to Jean.

  “Please,” Jean begged.

  “You’re a fine one to talk.”

  “I didn’t come back that night intentionally.”

  Margaret moved away from the dispensary door: “If you say so. You’d only be telling the Sergeant what he suspects already.”

  “How could he?”

  “Has he been standing out there for nothing?”

  Jean looked away.

  “He’ll find out,” Margaret said. “You know what they say about him in Gunnarshaw. He hears everything sooner or later.”