Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm

by Gil North

  “What did I tell you?” Mrs. Toogood sobbed. “Didn’t I say all along?—”

  They waited in the yard. Voices hummed about them, people moving in and out of their houses in the night.

  Cluff put his handkerchief over his mouth and nostrils. He blundered into the scullery, out of it into the living-room, from there to the passage. He groped for the lock on the front door. He found it and pulled the door open, taking gulps of pure air, while a draught surged past him. The lower floor cleared gradually of gas, but it was thick on the stairs, slow in dispersing.

  Cluff went back to the yard.

  “You can come in now,” he said to Mole.

  “Thank you,” the Inspector replied, with sarcasm. “It’s kind of you to invite me.” He turned to the constable. “Keep people out down here, Thomas,” he ordered.

  Cluff was at the bottom of the stairs. He pressed a light-switch and mounted quickly. The three doors on the landing were all closed. Cluff pushed open the one nearest to the stairhead and knew at once that he had found the source of the gas. He stumbled across the room in the light shining from the landing and got the curtains drawn back and the window up. He leaned dizzily over the sill. His brain cleared and he could hear a tiny, hissing sound.

  Cluff staggered back to the door and put the light on. A pipe, bent at the top, with a tap on its arm, stuck through the floor on the hearth of the fireplace. Cluff twisted the tap with his fingers and it moved stiffly. The hissing stopped.

  “Are you all right?” Mole said, from the landing.

  Mole stared about him at a room like hundreds of other rooms in Gunnarshaw. In the corner, a fireplace, its grate, which had probably never held a fire since the house was built, black-leaded. A double-bed, for which there was just space, was squashed close to the fireplace. An upright chair stood on one side of the bed. At the foot of the bed, hardly separated from it, a dressing-table. A wardrobe by the window. The wallpaper had a glaring, flowered design. Linoleum covered the floor, relieved by runners of carpet on either side of the bed and in front of the dressing-table.

  Mole bent to look more carefully at the gas-tap. “They must have had a gas-fire once,” he said.

  Cluff was at the bed.

  “Is she dead?” Mole asked. “It’s lucky the window wasn’t quite closed at the top and that the doors don’t fit properly. The whole concern might have gone up.”

  On the side away from the fireplace the covers on the bed were smooth, flat. They were moulded into a hump where the body lay on the other edge. She was turned on her side, her hair long and silky, her face younger looking than Mole had expected. Her features were calm and compassionate. Mole decided they wore an expression of pity, as if she was sorry, not merely for herself, but for the world as well.

  Her clothes were on the chair beside her head, a brassière dangling from the chair-back, a vest with shoulder-straps of pink ribbon, a slip, a pair of knickers, elastic round the waist and legs.

  Mole’s eyes wandered farther. A brush and comb lay on a glass tray on the dressing-table, together with a jar containing hair-grips. There was nothing else he could see except a lavender-bag, of faded blue velvet, hanging from one of the uprights of the mirror.

  Mole said, “You’d have thought she would have left a note. But they don’t always. What are you doing?” he added.

  The Sergeant was folding back the bed-covers. He felt the dead woman’s head gently with the tips of his fingers. She had on a nightdress of some thin stuff, not transparent, but not too thick to hide the shape of her breast. The point of her nipple pricked against the cloth.

  “She doesn’t look her age,” Sergeant Cluff said.

  “Nearly as old as me,” Inspector Mole muttered. “Or you. Was she a friend of yours? Most people in Gunnarshaw seem to be.”

  “When you’ve been here as long as I have,” Cluff said, “you’ll know people like I do.”

  “It’s not difficult,” said the Inspector, “in a town this size.”

  “I was born not far away,” Cluff said. “Even as a boy I used to come in with my father every market-day.”

  The Sergeant stooped over the bed, sniffing at the woman’s mouth.

  “Can’t you leave that sort of thing to the doctor?” Mole demanded.

  He watched Cluff turn the tap on the gas-pipe backwards and forwards.

  “It wasn’t turned on accidentally,” Mole said.

  “I was making sure,” Cluff replied.

  “She did it herself,” Mole stated.

  “Why?” Caleb Cluff asked. “Why?”

  “How do I know why?” the Inspector exclaimed. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’ll be something for you to find out, a nice change from petty thefts and amateur attempts at burglary. I can’t see that it matters.”

  Chapter III

  Mole and Cluff waited for the surgeon. They killed time by going through the house together. The wardrobe in the bedroom held a man’s suit and one of the drawers in the dressing-table contained a man’s underwear, vests and pants and stockings, a couple of shirts.

  “No children?” Mole asked.

  “No,” Cluff told him.

  “She left it a bit late, didn’t she?” Mole said.

  The second bedroom, overlooking Balaclava Street, was furnished but sterile, as though no one ever slept in it. The bathroom into which the third bedroom had been converted offered nothing. Downstairs the front parlour smelt musty and showed no indication that it was ever used, unless on special occasions or at times such as Christmas.

  In the living-room the rain blew through the smashed window. There were cold ashes in the grate. The room was clean, tidy, crockery stacked neatly away in the cupboards, everything as it should be, bearing the stamp of a careful housewife. Newspapers and some copies of a women’s magazine were lumped together in a rack near the hearth. The mantelpiece held a clock and two vases. A handbag on the side-board contained a purse and a few oddments, a handkerchief, a folder with five one-pound notes and three ten-shilling ones.

  “It’s not often you find a woman who doesn’t use powder and lipstick,” Mole remarked, noting the lack of cosmetics.

  “She wasn’t any the worse for that,” Cluff said.

  “There’s nothing to get excited about,” Mole replied.

  The police surgeon arrived. He made entries on a form he held in his hand.

  The surgeon said, “Amy Wright. Born Snowden, you say?”

  Cluff nodded.

  “Married,” the surgeon wrote. He paused. “Where’s her husband then?”

  Neither Cluff nor Mole enlightened him.

  “Well,” the surgeon said, “someone’ll have to identify her formally. I can get the details later.” He looked down his nose. “You can never tell,” he said. “Especially at the menopause.”

  “You didn’t know her,” Cluff said.

  The doctor closed his bag with a snap: “She can be moved now, so far as I’m concerned. A foregone conclusion.”

  “The post-mortem?” Cluff said.

  “Naturally. We have to go through the motions. Tomorrow, when I get the coroner’s order.”

  The doctor laughed: “There’s nothing to worry about, Cluff. This case isn’t going to get you promotion.”

  Chapter IV

  Caleb Cluff lay on his back, arms on the pillow behind his head, staring at the sloping roof of his bedroom. Early winter light crept through the dormer window, which had a broad, cushioned sill. His bed was big, to accommodate his bigness. The counterpane rose in a hill over his large belly. The floor was of dark, oak boards, resting on the oak beams of the room beneath, strewn with sheepskin rugs, the fleeces intact. Books filled shelves fixed round the walls. When he turned his head he could see through the window, pastures rising steeply to a plantation of firs. The cottage was too far from the road to be disturbed by the sound of traf
fic. The only noises he ever heard were the hoot of an owl, the shriek of a hare as a fox leapt on it, the cries of the peewits, the occasional far-off bleat of a sheep on the fells, his hens clucking in their run.

  The sneck on his door rattled and lifted. His cat, whose name was Jenet, came leaping for his bed, clawing the covers, plumping its heavy body on his legs. Clive entered more sedately, one of a succession of Clives. The dogs on his father’s farm had all been Clive and the bitches were always Lassie. The Sergeant was no less conservative than the rest of his family, no innovator, disinclined for change, a man who clung to the old ways. Clive squatted beside the bed and rested his head on its edge, gazing soulfully from brown eyes.

  A tray descended on the bedside table. A brown teapot, a jug, a sugar-bowl, a cup and saucer stood on it. The woman who put it down was a woman of girth, with great cornucopias of breasts. She waddled on short, sturdy legs. Her cheeks glowed, like Cluff’s cheeks. She smelt of new milk and cream, of warm kitchens scented with fresh bread and baking cakes.

  “Have you given up working?” the woman asked. “It’s past eight.”

  Her name was Annie Croft. She came five mornings a week from the nearby hamlet to look after the cottage.

  Cluff heard her feet on the wooden treads of the stairs. He sighed. He sat up and drank his tea, black and sweet. Clive’s nose twitched at the smell of frying bacon.

  The Sergeant got clumsily out of bed. His nightshirt billowed about him. He gazed into his mirror as he shaved. A round, strong-featured face, well jowled, with a bulldog look about it, gazed back. The crown of his head was bald. His dark hair, like a tonsure, was touched with silver. A determined nose jutted over tight lips.

  He dressed. Jenet did not move from the place he had vacated in the bed. Clive trailed him downstairs, keeping close, but not importunate.

  Cluff sat down in the chair by the fire, thoughtful, knowing his limitations. His hand stretched out to fondle the dog. He was grateful for the touch of Clive’s tongue on his fingers.

  “Aren’t you going to eat it?” a voice asked.

  Cluff looked up at Annie. His eyes wandered to the table where porridge steamed in a dish.

  “You’re not ill?” Annie demanded.

  Cluff breakfasted. Jenet, chased from his bed by Annie, rushed spitting down the stairs to lay claim to the chair by the fire.

  Cluff got out his car. Clive at his heels was quietly hopeful.

  Annie put her head out of the upstairs window. She shouted: “See you get to bed sooner tonight. You’re too old to be gadding about at all hours.”

  Cluff stood by the car. He hated the car but he had to have it since he insisted on living so far from Gunnarshaw. He would rather have walked into the town, but it took too long. He put his hand on the car door. If the car was old he preferred age to youth. He felt more at home in the past than in the present.

  He got into the car and sat there, not seeing anything. Clive stood in the porch, tense, his hopes fading. Suddenly Cluff whistled, galvanizing Clive into motion. The dog leapt for the seat beside the Sergeant and froze into stillness, afraid to be noticed again until the car was safely away.

  Cluff stopped in the High Street. He took his walking-stick from the car. He told Clive: “Stay!”

  The High Street was wide, a ribbon of tar macadam, bordered on each side by a wide belt of stone setts between it and the pavements. Stalls, selling fruit and vegetables, were pitched here and there on the setts. There was little traffic and hardly any people moving about. The sky was heavy, close to the earth. The shop windows were lit up. A poster outside the entrance to a news-agent’s shop screamed, in charcoal letters:

  Tragic death of Gunnarshaw woman

  At intervals along the lines of shops and offices and banks passages no wider than one man at a time could pass led off both sides of the High Street. They tunnelled the buildings and became tiny streets, cottages facing each other across gaps Cluff could have spanned with his arms extended. The W.C.s were separate at the ends of the rows of cottages and then the ginnels burrowed again under larger buildings before giving access to a road running parallel to the High Street.

  Cluff, wearing an ancient Burberry swollen over his waist, his stick a third leg, turned into one of the ginnels. Many of the cottages were empty, condemned for demolition, their windows broken. Some had been converted into warehouses and storerooms. In one an optimist had established a moneylending business, unsuccessful because the people of Gunnarshaw never borrowed. At the far end two men were idling with hammers, pretending to break down a wall.

  The words “Commission Agent” were painted in white on a window half-covered with sienna paint. Cluff pushed open the door beside the window without knocking, entering a cold, small room.

  A fat man looked up from a newspaper spread on a desk and groped hurriedly for a pile of slips, which he stuffed into his trousers’ pocket. He glanced at the Sergeant, grimacing sickly.

  “Wright,” Cluff said. “He runs for you. Where is he?”

  “Not now,” the fat man answered. “Not since you caught me last time. I only do business from the office now.”

  “Office!” repeated Caleb, gazing at the uncovered stone floor, spread with dirt, the peeling walls, the rusty fire-grate, the greasy brownstone sink into which a solitary tap wept slow tears.

  “It’s true,” the bookmaker insisted.

  “Wright,” Cluff said again. “I want Wright.”

  “He doesn’t work for me any more.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Look,” said the other. “I don’t know anything. As God’s my judge. It’s here, in the Stop Press. His wife—”

  “Tell me!”

  “If I could. I’d let you know if I could. That man! I treated him well. He wasn’t doing any business. He was setting up on his own when I thought he was working for me.”

  “Listen,” Cluff said. “I’d see him for days together. Then there’d be a gap. He wouldn’t be at any of his usual corners.”

  “Unreliable. I sacked him. He’d go off for two or three nights, nearly every week. On my money.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you remember, get in touch with me.”

  The fat man got up. His chair rocked perilously. He grabbed at it to prevent it from falling. He thrust his hand into his pocket, stuffing his papers farther down.

  “I wouldn’t hold out on you, Sergeant,” the fat man promised. “Try the caff across the street. He used to go in there a lot.”

  “Why don’t you do some honest work?” the Sergeant said, as he went out.

  “I’ll try to find out for you,” the fat man called eagerly. He wiped his brow with a soiled handkerchief. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “That’ll be the day,” came the Sergeant’s voice from the ginnel. “When you and me uphold the law together.”

  Chapter V

  Sergeant Cluff emerged into the High Street.

  A woman sweeping the entrance to a shop said, “Caleb.”

  “Dolly,” Sergeant Cluff replied.

  He stood on the edge of the setts, looking across the road. Clive’s nose pressed flat against the windscreen of his car. The Sergeant made a gesture at the dog. Clive dropped back on to the car seat.

  Cluff crossed the road to a cheap transport café, its windows fly-blown. He went in. The café was narrow, stretching back from the street, a counter, stained with the droppings of food, down one side. Rickety stools faced the counter. A line of tables, without cloths, each supplied with a vinegar bottle and two metal shakers for salt and pepper, occupied the opposite wall.

  There was a girl behind the counter. “What’ll it be?—” she began.

  She tossed back the mane of almost white hair that hung to her shoulders. Its roots on her forehead were darker, nearly black. She wore a tight swea
ter, moulding her breasts, which were low-slung in spite of their sponge supports. Her lips were red, matching her fingernails, but her face was greyish under its coating of powder. The folds on the skin of her neck, where the powder had not reached, showed traces of grime. Her hands were dirty. She watched Cluff through narrowed eyes, her nerves taut, backing against the shelves behind her. A newspaper lay on the counter. The girl let her eyes stray from the Sergeant to the paper and back again.

  “Well?” Cluff said.

  “Well what?” the girl demanded, with an effort at un-

  concern.

  Her eyes were red with lack of sleep, black, sunken half-circles under them. Her clothes kept her flesh together and Cluff guessed that, undressed, she would be shapeless. He said nothing.

  “What?” the girl asked. “What?”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “It’s nothing to do with me. You can’t blame me. I didn’t even know he was married. Not,” she added, sweetening the lie, “at first.”

  “Couldn’t you find someone else to go to bed with?” Cluff asked.

  “The bastard!” the girl said, wondering what she had escaped.

  “When I was young,” the Sergeant went on, “there weren’t any women like you in Gunnarshaw.”

  “I have to live,” the girl told him. “Don’t imagine I’m fond of a dump like this.”

  “Get out!” said Cluff. “When this is over, get out. Or I’ll put you somewhere you’ll find less pleasant.”

  She looked into the street, through the glass panel in the door. She couldn’t see anyone.

  “I’ll report you,” the girl murmured. “I haven’t done anything. You can’t threaten me.”

  “Wait and see,” Cluff said. “Where is he?”

  “He hasn’t been with me for weeks. You think I couldn’t find a man better than him?”

  “No money?” said Cluff.

  “I could have had him if I’d wanted. What kind of a girl do you think I am?”