by Gil North
His spirit sank. The street had never been so empty and deserted, his customers so few as this afternoon. They joined against him even in advance of Cluff.
He fled for the shelter of his shop, to be welcomed only by Margaret’s sneering grin. He looked about for Jean, and he remembered. He remembered Jean hurrying away from him in the street. That Margaret still remained filled him with astonishment.
He sat behind his desk in his dispensary, what little courage he retained seeping away because of Jean. Cluff with Jean in the street outside the shop yesterday morning, Cluff with Jean again while Greensleeve lunched, confident and assertive, in false security. Jean a third time, going where? After Cluff, if she hadn’t come face to face with her employer, to tell Cluff at last what she knew.
He tried to pull himself together, the victim of his own cowardice. He had nothing to fear, nothing that the law could punish him for. He thought that, of the two alternatives, the punishment of the law would be preferable, less severe, more merciful, than the never-ending punishment of Gunnarshaw. He could not forget Cluff. What was Cluff interested in? What mystery was there about murder in a town like Gunnarshaw? He couldn’t forget Jean. Jean and Cluff. Any policeman in the country but Cluff would have had the case finished in a day, Carter safely under lock and key, the evidence marshalled in the unlikely event of Carter failing to confess. They’d known it, all of them, everyone in Gunnarshaw. They’d been certain, as Greensleeve was certain, of Carter’s guilt. Only Cluff stood out and they followed Cluff like sheep a shepherd, veering to Cluff’s lead, weather-cocks at the mercy of every breeze.
Could he abdicate so easily? Was it inescapable even yet? He passed Margaret in the shop, ignoring her, as if she wasn’t there. He wore his hat and his coat this time. He stared at Gunnarshaw, brought to a halt on the pavement by Gunnarshaw’s contrariness. Traffic flowed in the roadway. People passed him. He couldn’t distinguish, from what he saw, between this afternoon and any other. Even the man at the fruit-stall had his back turned, filling a brown-paper bag with apples for a woman engaged in conversation with the stall-holder’s wife. For a heart-leaping moment Greensleeve thought the girl coming towards him was Jean, a chit of a girl, a third of his age.
A voice addressed him by name. He took a grip on himself and turned to Inspector Mole, in his dark-blue, belted coat and his flat police cap, the silver of his rank on his shoulders. Mole smiled, suitably humble, respectful as always. If Mole didn’t know, why should anyone know? Wasn’t there a chance still? His sins, Greensleeve told himself, didn’t include the ultimate sin. How could he rely on his own assessment of the actions of the unpredictable Cluff? Who knew, with Cluff, what the man was thinking, whether he had facts to support his blundering, or no facts at all? The man was a charlatan, a poseur, acting the part he happened to look, the bluff countryman, the man of the dales. Inside there was nothing, no ability, no brain, only an emptiness he spent his days trying to conceal.
“I’m looking for the Sergeant,” Mole said pleasantly.
“The Sergeant,” Greensleeve repeated, the tone of his words striking an answering spark from Mole.
“You’ve not seen him by any chance?” Mole asked, clearly expecting a negative reply.
“He was here,” Greensleeve said, recalling that he was Greensleeve, with authority in Gunnarshaw and the power of position over men like Mole and Cluff. He added, boldly, “He’s been here for most of the day. He was here yesterday. No doubt he’ll be here again tomorrow.”
“Always to be found,” Mole said, “except when he’s wanted.”
“I think sometimes,” Greensleeve told the Inspector, “the High Street’s his natural environment. He gives me the impression that he grows in the High Street, that he’s stood in the High Street for so long he’s struck roots.”
Mole’s features moved expressively, agreeing with the chemist, indicating his inability to keep Cluff in order and his resentment because of it. His manner asked, as intelligibly as if he had said it, “What can you do with a man like that?”
“It’s a small town,” Greensleeve remarked.
“You’re right, Mr. Greensleeve.”
“We’ve been expecting an arrest.”
Mole shrugged.
“That’s his car,” the chemist said and Mole scowled at the car, its age and its dilapidation an insult to the uniform he wore.
“Come in for a while,” the chemist invited.
“You’re going out.”
“It’s not important. If you want Cluff this is the place to wait for him.”
Mole said, “You wouldn’t think Gunnarshaw had a police-station, would you?”
The Inspector put his cap on Greensleeve’s desk. He said, man-to-man, to Greensleeve sitting across from him, “It’s not a nice thing to be involved in, even so remotely as you are.”
“I’d help if I could,” Greensleeve said. “The Sergeant’s methods are his own.” He waited and Mole kept silent. “He’s had his successes,” the chemist added.
“One,” Mole corrected, morosely. “A chance in a million.”
“He’s grown up in these parts.”
“He doesn’t let us forget it.” Mole implied that if Cluff’s birth was any advantage it wasn’t to the police.
Greensleeve drummed on the desk with his fingers: “You haven’t heard anything from Superintendent Patterson?”
“Not me.”
“I’ve been in touch with him,” Greensleeve admitted.
“It might help,” Mole replied, misunderstanding the chemist.
“I gather Cluff’s well thought of at Headquarters.”
Mole turned on his seat. The dispensary door was open. He could see through the shop and the glass panel of the shop door, into the High Street. “I’m wasting your time,” he said.
Greensleeve motioned him back into the chair: “The town’s full of rumour.”
“I’ve always said, there’s no smoke without fire.”
“The Sergeant doesn’t think so, evidently.”
Mole’s scowl spread farther over his face.
“I shouldn’t ask—” Greensleeve began.
“In your position, Mr. Greensleeve—” Mole protested.
“He’s seen Carter, of course.”
Mole nodded.
“But not detained him?”
Mole made a motion of denial.
“No doubt the Sergeant knows what he’s doing,” Green-
sleeve tried. “Perhaps, at least, Carter helped?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Surely—The boy knew her well.”
“He’s not saying anything.”
“Indeed?”
Mole looked at the chemist, taken aback by his eager tone.
Greensleeve added quickly, “It’s not good for the town—”
Mole said, subsiding, “Between ourselves, the boy’s
neither alibi nor excuse.”
“Alibi?”
“We know approximately when she died.” He had Greensleeve’s interest. “After nine,” he continued. “Nearer to ten o’clock,” determined to consolidate himself with a man of influence.
“You won’t be arresting me then,” Greensleeve smiled. “I was at home by that time.”
Mole looked shocked, as if the joke was in bad taste. He said, “Really, Mr. Greensleeve—” indicating his belief that the heavens would fall before any such eventuality occurred.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you,” Mole said. He hesitated, so that Greensleeve shouldn’t underestimate the value of his revelation. “But you won’t pass it on. She was pregnant.”
It was Greensleeve’s turn to look shocked: “You astonish me.”
“You can’t tell what they’re like these days,” Mole said. “Even the best of them.” He paused. “I’ve two daughters of my own.”
Greensleeve said, “The father?”
“There’s only one candidate for my money.”
“Carter?”
“We haven’t heard of anyone else she was mixed up with.”
“Can’t Carter—?”
Mole succeeded this time in getting to his feet without interruption.
Greensleeve elaborated, “Wasn’t he likely to have known? He wouldn’t let her alone. If there’d been anyone else—”
“I don’t think so.”
Greensleeve came round the desk: “You won’t wait for the Sergeant?”
“I’ll go back to the station.”
“Is there any message I can—?”
Mole said, “We can’t expect you to do our work for us, Mr. Greensleeve.”
Greensleeve, still in his hat and coat, went with him into the shop. Mole looked hard at Margaret, who returned his look without flinching. The Inspector opened his mouth and thought better of the question he had been going to ask. In the street, where Margaret couldn’t hear them, he told Greensleeve, “I wondered for a moment if she knew anything.”
“Wouldn’t she have come to me? Besides, she’s had plenty of opportunity. The Sergeant’s been so prominent I almost began to believe he had us under special observation.”
“Your other assistant—”
“Jean?”
“That’s why I’m looking for Cluff. She came to the station a short time ago.”
“Jean did?”
“Oughtn’t she to be at work?”
“Hardly. How shall I put it—that we’ve severed our association?”
“Sacked?”
“She’s never been reliable. Whatever it is she wants, I’d be inclined not to accept at its face value—”
“I don’t know what she wants,” Mole said angrily. “She refused to talk to me. It had to be Sergeant Cluff or nothing.” He mimicked Jean’s voice.
“She’s still there?”
“She wouldn’t wait either.”
The clock in the church tower struck a quarter. “If you’ll excuse me,” Greensleeve said, pretending that the chime had jogged his memory.
“I shouldn’t have kept you,” Mole apologized, uncertain whether or not Greensleeve heard him.
Greensleeve banged the door of his car shut. He had some difficulty in finding his engine key and his hand trembled as he inserted it. Gears scraped and the engine stalled. He didn’t look up at Mole, on the pavement. The engine fired and the car backed, with a jerk, into the carriageway. Mole wagged his head in deprecation.
He had no real notion which direction to take. He wrenched the wheel, intent on getting out of Mole’s sight, tense with an urgency he did not know how to satisfy. Carter knew nothing. Jane had told Carter nothing. Cluff had nothing to go on except the mutual dislike he and Greensleeve had for one another, men by temperament at opposite poles, completely irreconcilable.
Somewhere from the dregs of memory Greensleeve dredged a recollection of Jean’s address. He swerved left and, after some distance, right, into the part of Gunnarshaw known, from the names of the streets, as Little Crimea, built after the war of the mid-eighteen-fifties.
He forced himself to dawdle along Sevastopol Road, watching the pavements, praying for a glimpse of Jean. A little group of women, with prams and dogs on leads, congregated round the gates of a primary school waiting for their elder offspring, sheltering under umbrellas. Past the school he saw no one except a woman or so, hurrying home from shopping, too shapeless and broad to attract his attention for more than an instant.
In the growing dark, with the gas-lamps not yet lit, he had difficulty in identifying his whereabouts, this section of the town unfamiliar to him except on paper in his capacity as councillor. Narrower streets branched off on both sides of the car, those on his right rising slightly, the ones on his left climbing steeply, but all unmade, muddy in the rain apart from the flagged sidewalks, weed-filled and stony. He strained for the letters on the white plates, fixed halfway up the corner houses. He almost missed Balaclava Street and he had to reverse in order to see up its length. He sat in the car. Some of the women he had passed earlier at the school straggled by, with the full tally of their children.
He felt naked in spite of the deserted road, the centre of an unseen scrutiny as he had been in the High Street, the carefully draped net over the windows here even better concealment for observers than the goods on show in the shops, giving watchers a clear field of vision, hiding them from him entirely. He could not delude himself, in any case, that his car would go unrecognized in a place where it had no right to be, or that his presence would not be reported in due course to Cluff.
He continued to wait, alternating between hope and fear, wondering whether it would be worth his while if he offered to withdraw the complaint about Cluff he had made to Patterson. The lamps on the kerbs lit up and he had to switch on his own lights. The windows of the houses about him, at their fronts, stayed dark.
His resolution broke. He crawled in low gear farther along Sevastopol Road, to its junction with another road. He went round the corner, his windscreen wipers scraping softly. Pools of dark lay in the road between the gas-lamps, the blacker for the glow of the lamps islanded in the night. His sidelights didn’t serve. The beams of his headlights cleft the darkness in front of him, putting the gas-lamps to shame.
He stamped on the brake. The steering-wheel hit him painfully in the chest. His head almost crashed against the windscreen as he was thrown forward. He caught at his breath, his eyes unbelieving. He couldn’t credit what he saw.
Carter came from the door of a cheap café. The lights in the windows of the café went out, while Carter waited. A short, dumpy girl pulled the door to and bent to lock it. She joined Carter, putting an arm through Carter’s arm. They started to cross the road. Greensleeve rubbed his eyes. The light of a gas-lamp fell on them and he must be mistaken. They came into the path of his own headlights, cautiously, looking towards him, not quite sure that the car had really stopped, giving them time to get over. The car stood in the middle of the road, equidistant from either pavement.
They were hurrying now. Greensleeve worked the handle of his window frantically. He stuck his head out. He shouted, “Carter! Carter!” The couple stopped dead in their tracks.
“Why don’t you confess?” Greensleeve yelled. “You know you killed her. Why don’t you confess?”
The girl was pulling at Carter, trying to drag him away. In Greensleeve’s headlights the sap seemed to go out of Carter. He started to crumple, bonelessly, and the girl held him. Her mouth worked, encouraging or consoling him. He abandoned himself to her, stumbling blindly at her direction. She tugged harder, trying to increase their speed.
“They won’t hang you,” Greensleeve shouted. “It wasn’t your fault.”
They began to run, both Carter and the girl, out of the glare.
Greensleeve’s voice, high-pitched, screamed, “You’ve got to tell. You don’t want innocent people to suffer, do you? Clear your conscience. Find Cluff. Tell Cluff you killed her. Tell him! Tell him!”
He couldn’t see them. He couldn’t hear them. They’d gone. He was trembling in the driving-seat, unable to control his body. He scrabbled at the knot of his tie, pulling his collar open, gasping for breath. Doors on to the pavements had begun to open. People looked out, calling to each other from house to house, pointing.
He got the engine going. Somehow he turned his car in the road, going back the way he had come. He couldn’t go straight on. The road sloped upwards, coming to a dead end, blocked by a barrier of iron railings fencing off a recreation ground. The line of buildings on one side of him, except for the narrow gaps of footways, stretched continuous. He’d no option. He had to drive into Sevastopol Road again.
His brain whirled. Time meant nothing to him. He couldn’t remember how long it was since Jean had fl
ed from him in the High Street. He had to find her. He had to get to her before Cluff did.
He wasn’t stopped opposite the end of Balaclava Street, but a little farther down Sevastopol Road. The yards behind the even-numbered houses in Balaclava Street faced the backyards of the houses on one side of its neighbour, a paved track just wide enough for a coal-lorry between their respective walls.
His heart fluttered and began to pound. His throat dried. He attempted to swallow and couldn’t. The back street on which his eyes were glued had only a single lamp in the whole of its length. The lamp was more than enough. He couldn’t mistake the figure turning out of one of the yards, walking insolently down the slope.
His hand clutched the handle of the car door. The door swung partly open. He had one foot on the road. He was half-in and half-out of the car, stuck there, unable either to retreat or to advance, wanting to shout, to yell, the words piling in his gullet.
Tall, her heels tapped on the pavement in Sevastopol Road. She couldn’t miss seeing the car on the far side of the road, opposite the end of the back street. She ignored the car, carrying herself proudly.
Greensleeve sank back. Her hate of him was purposeless, irrational.
The shop at the corner of one of the side-streets along the road doubled as a sub-post office. A telephone kiosk reared beside the closed shop door. The light in the kiosk shone brightly through its glass panels. He could see her in the kiosk, in the light, bathed in the light, fully visible to her waist. She riffled the pages of a directory. She lifted the receiver. She had coins in one hand, a finger of the other hand ready on the dial. She held the receiver to her face. Her lips moved. While she talked she stared out of the kiosk, at the car. A man Greensleeve had never seen before appeared from nowhere. He walked to the telephone kiosk and stood where the light of the kiosk fell on him. He waited his turn, impatient.