Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm

by Gil North

  “I know what kind.”

  “He couldn’t do without women. I can tell you that about him. I’m not surprised his wife wasn’t enough.”

  “For some men a wife’s never enough,” Cluff said. “Did you know her?”

  “Mutton dressed up as lamb,” the girl said. “Cradle-snatcher! They never get past it, do they?”

  “Careful,” the Sergeant warned, leaning over the counter. “You couldn’t hold a candle to her.”

  The girl’s words tumbled over each other.

  She said, “He came in here a lot when I first knew him and he never made a pass at me then. Come to think of it, I didn’t see him with anyone else either.”

  She paused.

  “It’s funny,” she continued. “After he got married, that’s when it started.”

  In her excitement she leaned on the counter too. Cluff could smell the sourness of her breath. Her breasts were squeezed together on the wood and her flesh quivered above the neckline of her sweater.

  The girl whispered, “I don’t know where he went these last weeks. But he went somewhere. Not in Gunnarshaw. Somewhere else.”

  Cluff looked round the dingy café, his gorge rising at its staleness.

  “A cup of tea?” the girl asked. “On the house.”

  “Remember what I said,” Cluff told her. “Wherever you come from—get back there.”

  She watched him leave and he almost collided in the doorway with a young man in overalls, a cap on his head.

  The young man said, “Have they caught up with you at last, Maisie?”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” Maisie replied. “Or of anybody like him.”

  “About tonight—” the young man murmured.

  “You’re the same as all the others,” Maisie said, laughing.

  At the police-station Inspector Mole said cleverly: “I’m glad to see you, Cluff. It is Cluff, isn’t it? Forgive me, but you’re so much of a stranger here. So you’ve condescended to pay us a visit?”

  “What do they allow him to live out in the country for?” Inspector Mole asked himself. “The fellow does as he likes.”

  The Inspector had only recently been promoted and transferred to Gunnarshaw. If the police division was large he considered the town itself too small for opportunity. He wasn’t quite sure of his standing with his superiors and his uncertainty rankled.

  “I should have joined a borough force,” Mole thought. “It’s a wonder I’m not still a village constable.”

  “Wright,” said Cluff’s voice, breaking into the Inspector’s meditations. “Is there any news of Wright?”

  To add to his other troubles Inspector Mole suffered both from indigestion and from a shrewish wife. “Let me see,” he considered. “Oh yes, we had a death last night, didn’t we?”

  “What’s the dog for?” the Inspector snapped. “To track Wright down with?”

  Clive backed behind Cluff, snarling.

  Mole, answering Cluff’s question, said more quickly, “No, there isn’t. He hasn’t come back. At least, not when the man in Balaclava Street was last relieved.”

  Constable Barker was on the desk. Cluff came out of the Inspector’s office, Clive close to him.

  “Good dog,” the constable said to Clive. “Good boy. Here then. Here!”

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant,” Barker said, stroking Clive’s head. “I’ve seen you talking to her in the street. Did you know her well?”

  “No more than anybody else,” Cluff replied, gruffly.

  “It’s a shame,” Barker said.

  He was a young man, smooth-cheeked, with a big heart. He liked his fellow-men. He came from a happy home and he wasn’t old enough yet to have lost his illusions.

  “It doesn’t seem right,” Barker continued. “She could hardly have expected to get married at her age, but she did. What did she go and kill herself for?”

  “Because she’d got married?” Cluff suggested.

  “Surely not,” Barker said. He was newly engaged himself. He added, “She’d everything to live for.”

  The Sergeant shook his head, despairing of understanding in Barker. He asked: “Nothing in from the surgeon?”

  “Not yet,” Barker replied, his mind questing. “Of course it couldn’t be murder. Not in Gunnarshaw. But what’s happened to her husband?”

  Inspector Mole’s voice broke in from behind them: “Don’t be a fool, Barker. No more than you have to be.”

  The outer door closed behind Cluff.

  Inspector Mole, addressing the room at large, stated flatly, “Sometimes I think he’s off his rocker. I wish I had him under me. I’d show him a thing or two.” He wrinkled his nose. “That damned dog of his! The place stinks.”

  “You wouldn’t find a dog like that anywhere,” Constable Barker said, in Clive’s defence.

  “That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard you say since I got here,” Mole told Barker.

  Chapter VI

  “It’s you again, is it?” Mrs. Toogood at number thirty-one Balaclava Street said.

  “Jack’s working,” Mrs. Toogood added. “She’d have been lying there yet if I’d listened to him. Aren’t you coming in? Bring the dog. I don’t mind dogs.”

  The door slammed to. Cluff went along the passage. He made himself comfortable in Mr. Toogood’s chair. The rain ran down the window. He could see the backyard through the rain, a green-painted door to the lavatory, another green-painted door to the coal-place. The blank rear wall of number thirty-three’s lavatory and coal-place divided its yard from this one. A low gate led into the back street. Across the street was another yard, identical in all respects.

  “I’ll make a cup of tea,” Mrs. Toogood said from the scullery. “Your grandmother’s dead, isn’t she?”

  “My grandmother?” Cluff repeated, surprised.

  “When I was a lass,” Mrs. Toogood said, “she’d a stall in the market on Saturdays. We used to buy butter and eggs from her. Old Mrs. Cluff of Cluff’s Head.”

  “My brother John’s got the farm now,” Cluff said.

  “Queer,” commented Mrs. Toogood. “You always looked more of a farmer than he does. What did you join the police for?” She came into the room carrying a teapot. “Still,” she said, “you’re not so far off.”

  Mrs. Toogood reached over the Sergeant’s shoulder to a cupboard in the wall.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “I can manage.”

  She gave him a cup, filled to the brim.

  “Just a minute. I’ll find something for the dog,” she said.

  “Don’t bother,” Cluff told her.

  “It’s no bother.”

  She was disappearing back into the scullery: “There’s always some scraps left. I used to keep them for her dog.”

  Mrs. Toogood returned with a plate and put it on the floor in front of Clive.

  “All right,” Cluff said. “It’s for you, Clive.”

  His hostess opened a tin and held it out.

  “Have a biscuit,” she invited. “Home-made.”

  She settled herself in a chair across the hearth from Cluff, cup and saucer in her hand.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” she confided, “it’s been a shock to me.”

  “I’d forgotten the dog,” Cluff said. “Of course, she had one.”

  “Not everyone’s cup of tea,” Mrs. Toogood remarked, referring to Amy Wright’s dog.

  “A little dog,” Cluff mused. “A terrier.”

  “Spoilt,” Mrs. Toogood said. “You know how it is with old maids. A yapping, bad-tempered little beast. Not that I didn’t get on with it. I did.”

  “A Yorkshire terrier.”

  “After she got married—” Mrs. Toogood said. “That dog hated him. It barked its head off every time he came in.”

  “You’d have thou
ght it would have got used to him.”

  “Not it. They were at daggers drawn, those two. It bit him more than once. I’ve seen him put his foot to it when she wasn’t looking.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “She was heart-broken, poor thing. If she’d been sure, it would have been something. But she wasn’t. It vanished a few days ago. Just like that. Into thin air.”

  “A dog she’d had for years? She treated it like a child.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him to have had something to do with it,” Mrs. Toogood said, darkly.

  Clive ate noisily. The fire roared up the chimney. It was hot in the room.

  “You know,” Mrs. Toogood said, “she’s lived next door to me nearly all her life. We were close. She’d no one else to turn to, poor soul. An only child, left all on her own.”

  “I know,” Cluff said.

  “If she’d needed to work. If she’d been able to work. But after her father died there was her mother, bedridden, lingering on. When her mother went she was too old. It’s tragic. She gave the best years of her life to her mother. She couldn’t help it. She never had a chance to live like the rest of us.”

  “I know,” Cluff repeated. “I know.”

  “I’ve thought about it, and thought,” Mrs. Toogood said. “A mother shouldn’t ask that of her daughter. Now look what’s happened.”

  Clive, replete, put his head on the fender and stared at the blazing coals.

  “You never get used to being alone,” Mrs. Toogood said. “She couldn’t stand it any longer.”

  Cluff twisted in his chair.

  “She’d no experience,” Mrs. Toogood said. “She couldn’t see what he was. I tried to tell her, but it doesn’t do to meddle. She didn’t speak to me for weeks.”

  “There’s no way to stop it,” Cluff said.

  “The older they are the harder they fall,” Mrs. Toogood said. “Over forty and as innocent as a babe in arms. What did she know about men?”

  The Sergeant was lost in thought. He gazed unblinking over Mrs. Toogood’s head, his eyes fixed on a picture hanging on the wall.

  Mrs. Toogood said, “That picture’s hers. She was clever with her hands. She had to do something to fill in her time.”

  Cluff started. “It’s good,” he managed.

  “She had money,” Mrs. Toogood said. “Her father saw to that. He worked his fingers to the bone for her mother and her. He killed himself providing for them. The house was hers too.”

  “Yes,” Cluff agreed.

  “Wright knew about it,” Mrs. Toogood said, wisely. “What else could he have been after?”

  “He came from the south with a firm of builders,” Cluff said. “He ought to have gone back with them when the job was over.”

  “Shiftless. Lazy,” said Mrs. Toogood. “He was breaking her heart. I’ve sat here in the evenings and listened to him shouting at her. For all she replied he might have been talking to himself. She never said a single word against him. It would have done her good if she had.”

  “I thought as much,” Cluff said.

  He did not seem pleased to have his suspicions confirmed. He sounded disappointed and defeated.

  He asked, “So you’re not surprised?”

  “No,” Mrs. Toogood replied. “I’m not surprised at any-

  thing.”

  “I’m looking for Wright,” Cluff said.

  “It’s three or four days since he was last here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Mrs. Toogood nodded.

  “I haven’t been much help, have I?” she asked. “But then, what is there to help with?”

  The Sergeant went back to the police-station.

  “Barker,” he said, “has anyone reported a dog missing?”

  “When?”

  “In the last couple of weeks.”

  Constable Barker searched his records.

  “Nothing here, Sergeant. Gunnarshaw isn’t big enough for a dog to get lost in.”

  Chapter VII

  The mortuary was near the slaughterhouse. It didn’t have a permanent keeper. A works’ foreman employed by the Council looked after it in addition to his other duties.

  Cluff drew up in front of the mortuary. A light shone through its open door into the gathering dusk. He got out of his car and went into an entrance hall separated by a partition from the rest of the building. A man sat on a wooden chair, huddled in an overcoat, with a scarf round his neck.

  The man said, “It’s perishing in here, Sergeant. I’m chilled to the marrow.”

  “Shut the door,” Cluff suggested.

  “Nay,” the man said. “I reckon nowt of closed doors in a place like this.”

  Cluff continued into the main room. It was brilliantly lit with unshaded bulbs, windowless. Water ran in a steady stream from a stainless tap into a very white porcelain sink fixed against the wall. Shelves contained bottles. The smell of disinfectant was strong.

  In the middle of the room, plenty of space all round it, a table, not of wood but of metal, was supported on a single, bright shaft. The shaft had wheels and levers so that the table could be raised or lowered, inclined this way or that. By the head of the table a smaller table held an array of knives and scalpels.

  The police surgeon, in a white coat splashed with spots of brown and stained in a larger patch where he had been bending, looked round when he heard Cluff come in. He moved aside.

  Amy Wright lay on the table, stark-naked. She seemed smaller to Cluff than when he had known her in life. He remembered meeting her in the streets, a little dowdy, her clothes unfashionable, her hair arranged in an out-of-date style. He remembered stopping and passing the time of day with her. He could see now the heightened colour on her face, feel again her uncertainty, hear her quick words, slurred together in her nervousness.

  He thought, “I understood. I could have done something about it. I wanted to.”

  He stared and stared. The surgeon looked at him.

  Finally the surgeon said, “She can’t complain now if you want to get an eyeful.”

  “Weren’t there any other men in Gunnarshaw besides Wright?” Cluff thought.

  The surgeon coughed. Cluff stood quite still. He could hear the movements of the man he had spoken to in the entrance.

  The surgeon took a step forward.

  “I see the waste too,” the surgeon said. “I know as well as you do she couldn’t have had much of a life. I know, like you do, she’ll never have any compensation now, no reward for the past, no consolation, nothing to balance one side of her life against the other.”

  “She loved children,” Cluff said. “I’ve seen her leaning over prams pushed by mothers she knew, and the expression on her face—”

  “She was past childbearing,” the surgeon said. “You can’t make anything of it, Sergeant. There’s nothing to be made of it. Nothing except that she released the gas and lay down on the bed and closed her eyes.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Cluff said.

  “You have to believe it. I’ve finished with her. What’s left can be buried and forgotten. No one drugged her and left her on the bed. No one battered her into unconsciousness. There’s nothing in her stomach but the remains of her last meal. There’s nothing in her blood except what I knew there would be. She hasn’t a bruise or a mark from head to toe that’s of any significance. I’ve looked in her mouth and in her nostrils. I’ve examined her lungs. I know how she died. She died exactly as it appeared to Mole and you last night.”

  “Still—” Cluff began.

  “Even a suicide’s unusual in this town,” the surgeon continued. “But don’t let it get you down. Was it murder you hoped for, so that you could take the revenge she can’t take? She died by her own hand and you’ll have to let it rest there. That’s where you must leave it, Cluff.”
r />   “Good night,” the Sergeant said.

  He sat in his car. It was almost dark. The mills were emptying. Men and women flowed in a steady stream along the pavements, their shoes clattering, their voices raised.

  The street was empty again. Lamplight shone on the road. Clive huddled close to him. The night was cold, the rain stopped. A star showed through a gap in the clouds, which were drifting gently, breaking into wisps and rags. There was a hint of frost in the air.

  Cluff twisted the ignition key and tapped his foot on the accelerator. He depressed the clutch and put the car in gear. He released the brake and allowed the pedal to rise slowly from the floor. He drove towards the High Street, along which he had to go to reach his cottage.

  Out of the corner of his eye Cluff saw a man looking into the window of a shoe-shop, his back to the roadway, his shoulders hunched, his hands dug deep into his pockets. The car halted with a jerk, throwing Clive against the dashboard. Cluff looked out, one arm thrust through the sidescreen, ready to beckon, his mouth open to shout. The man turned away from the shop and walked off. It wasn’t Wright.

  The clock in the church tower at the top of the High Street struck six. The lights in the window of the shoe-shop went out. Two girls tapped past, arm-in-arm, laughing, talking animatedly. Their lips were reddened and their faces powdered, their clothes tight about their young bodies. They disappeared along the street, out of sight round a corner. A louder outburst of their voices floated back to Cluff.

  He started the car once more. He backed and turned. He followed the street into a wider road, away from the direction he had originally intended. The lamp-posts were farther apart. There was a break in the buildings where the road bulged into a semicircular cobbled expanse. He followed the edge of the half-circle to where a stone arch gave entrance to a dimly-lit tunnel.

  Through the arch an iron grille blocked the other end of the tunnel. Beyond the grille was a platform and, across two railway tracks, another with a square box of a waiting-room on it. Cluff went into a wooden-floored hall to his right, the pigeon-holes of a ticket-office on one side of him, a barrier on the other.

  A sort of box stood by the barrier. A man in uniform sat in the box, his head nodding forward on to his chest. A face bent to one of the pigeon-holes, looked through it, and vanished. The man in the box opened his eyes at the sound of Cluff’s feet and leaned out. Down the line an engine whistled, coming nearer.