A Voice Like Velvet

by Donald Henderson

  ‘Er …’

  ‘But,’ went on the inspector, smiling, still himself, ‘I would, of course, have waited.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Bisham got out, overloudly this time, as if his voice had been glued before and was now suddenly unstuck.

  ‘And I daresay you know why I’ve come,’ Mr Hood said next, and dropped his eyes to the parcel.

  Mr Bisham dropped his eyes too.

  He heard somebody say excitedly:

  ‘There, Doris! Over there!… That’s Ernest Bisham, the announcer …!’

  Deeply sad, he lifted his eyes again; but to see, astoundingly, the Inspector suddenly and calmly pass across the parcel, and to hear him say, even more astoundingly:

  ‘But I felt it important to return you your very valuable property, Mr Bisham, for—er—Russia; and to say you’ve nothing further to worry about—we’ve got Leeman safely under lock and key, and I’ve got a very strong kind of feeling,’ he seemed to be suggesting, ‘we shan’t have any more trouble with the Man In The Mask?’

  Their eyes met.

  Yes, there was something exceedingly whimsical about the Inspector’s eyes, wasn’t there? Particularly when he went on to say: ‘Ah, I’m not saying Leeman was the Man In The Mask’; and when he got to his feet and said, with little better than schoolboy artifice:

  ‘But where are my manners, Mr Bisham! I’ve taken the very great liberty of bringing along an admirer of yours who very much wanted to meet you! May I present—Mrs Hood?’

  It was an electric moment, perhaps the most electric and exotic of his life.

  Yet, as their two secret minds remained sealed and inarticulate, it also seemed to be the most outwardly ordinary and simple moment, Mrs Hood, wearing a feathery hat, blushing and saying shyly: ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Bisham, I’m sure …!’ and the Inspector’s laugh. He laughed and declared: ‘Why, my dear, I daresay Mr Bisham doesn’t find his job nearly so glamorous as some others, say, the Man In The Mask, eh, Mr Bisham? A job’s just a job, as I soon found out myself—once you’ve found out all you wanted to about it?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Everything’s so much a question of proof,’ was the Inspector’s obscure concluding remark. ‘Well, my dear,’ he said, ‘we mustn’t make Mr Bisham late! There are twenty million people waiting, so I believe, not to mention a very charming lady I recently had the pleasure to meet …!’

  Mr Bisham walked up to the news room in a daze. The parcel was in his hand and his mind was trying to concentrate on Mr Leveson and the Dorchester. Realizing that there would be time enough for that until midnight, he tried to focus his bewildered mind onto realities. Words came back. ‘Everything’s so much a question of proof.’ And: ‘I’m not saying Leeman was the Man In The Mask!’ A voice (his own) told him: ‘There goes … no policeman—but a patriot!’ It said: ‘He thinks more of Russia than a Sudbury or a Stewker! Than a reward or a conviction!’

  Another voice said:

  ‘Truly our British policemen are wonderful!’

  That patriot’s sole return was to have brought a moment’s exotic happiness to his wife. Indeed, to two wives. And to a child who wasn’t born yet. One day she might walk up these very stairs.

  Even the news room seemed a Paradise tonight, and the Duty Editor St Peter himself at the Pearly Gate!

  In the studio, waiting to play a recording of ‘An American Soldier’s First Visit to Piccadilly’, Jonas Wintle found Ernest Bisham in the friendliest of moods, notwithstanding an unpleasant bruise on the left side of his forehead. It was clearly the time to tackle him about the possibility of becoming an announcer, surely one of the most colourful of professions, and very fitting for a newly married man.

  And in a drawing-room down in Surrey, amongst the pine trees there, was another Paradise. For Marjorie had just told Bess she thought she had reached her nearest approach to earthly happiness. She agreed with Bess that Ernest was, perhaps, inclined to be a little stolid, even dull, but he was the man of her dreams.

  If ever her happiness could reach a higher level, it could only be at such moments as when Big Ben chimed the hour, and she waited, as she was waiting now, to hear the voice like velvet she knew so well, saying that it was the nine o’clock news—and saying who it was reading it!

  THE END

  THE ALARM BELL

  HE put on his old mackintosh because it was early and a bit chill, though not chill enough for an overcoat. In any case, he hadn’t got much of an overcoat; also, in any case, it looked as if it might turn to rain presently—it usually did nowadays. He put his huge hands into the oddly small pockets of his rather shapeless mackintosh and went out as usual into dingy Shepherd’s Bush. There were no signs of any shepherds, or of any bushes, but there were a few trees knocking around and he’d often thought it would make a fairly nice walk if he made a detour and cut through the green to work round by that way. But as a matter of fact he never had made such a detour before, because he had never been early before. He liked to read with his breakfast (well, he liked to read all the time, really—a spot of Shakespeare or something)—and he felt it was quite bad enough having to go to work at all, without leaving too early and going in for detours. Prolonging the agony, so to speak!

  He gave a sort of chuckling grunt at the thought of all the tedious work which was involved in living, a sort of cynical brmph! and feeling good-humoured all the same, decided to make the detour for once, and so he went slowly and silently past the Shepherd’s Bush Palace, the barrack-like pub at the far corner there, with no name on it, and across the green. The green was more brown than green from people sitting on it last summer, but there were plenty of autumn leaves and bare-looking trees, and dogs were up to their larks and trying to kid themselves they were in the heart of the country.

  He moved lightly and silently for such a huge man, and his enormous hands were out of sight deep in his little mackintosh pockets right up to the thick, hairy wrists. He went on towards his work and on the way came to the dreary little street of red houses—‘family houses’, he always thought of such dwellings—which the milkman hadn’t reached yet, and where one or two collarless figures were leaving once again for collarless destinations. There was the tumbling, waking noise of London, and there was the smell of distant trains (the District line) and the rattle of them, and then very suddenly the bell went off.

  Trrrrrrrr.

  It came from the small house with the dirty green blinds. He’d been deep, deep in thought (as anyone was entitled to be—there was such a vast amount to think about in life), but without knowing what it was he was thinking about so deeply (as anyone was entitled to do), and what with the insistent suddenness of the bell, he got deeper and deeper yet in thought; people often did that, in the street or anywhere else—actors or composers, for instance, though he was neither—that was how people got run over by a bus. All the same, what with the bell and the unusual morning detour, who can say but that the Randall family might not still be alive today? But the bell of their family alarm clock had gone off, and clearly at the psychological moment, and the next thing he saw of his hands was when they were softly sliding up the unlatched window—people really ought to go in for latches and locks more than they did.

  He was a huge, quiet man in a mackintosh, and he stood there at the strange window in the strange, empty street. He softly pushed aside the faded green blind and stared in. It was practically pitch-dark in there.

  He didn’t, of course, know who was in, if anyone, or who lived here, or anything, any more than he knew when a policeman or somebody might not come along the street. He didn’t know there was a family living here, but he supposed there must be someone, since an alarm clock had gone off to wake someone up and send that someone off to work once more. Alarm clocks did go off freakishly, to be sure; they were temperamental things, and if you wound them up carefully and set them for seven o’clock tomorrow, quite likely, if they felt like it, they mightn’t go off until next Palm Sunday in the middle of the afternoon.
That was why his eyes were trying to pierce the depth of gloom in the room, to see if there was someone who ought to be getting up to go to work.

  Well, if there was, they wouldn’t have to go to work today—they wouldn’t have to go to work at all any more! How lovely for them! It was to be hoped they said their prayers properly last night, after setting the alarm bell.

  He slipped silently into the dark room and quietly dropped the blind back to the window behind him so that he was shielded from the street again. The room smelt fuggy and cheap and suddenly he heard someone breathing. It was all at once intensely exciting. His huge hands started to grope, gently. They had been hanging down, waiting. But they started to grope towards the breathing. He ran his hands along, it was a long, thin mound and it felt like a man—fairly young, the throat was.

  It was soon over. It was tame. It wasn’t a bit exciting. The young man, if that was what it was, slumped back in the bed and certainly wasn’t breathing now. But then, suddenly, it was exciting again. Very. Hang it, there was another person in the bed! She suddenly shot up and let out a shrill:

  ‘Who’s there? Is someone there?’ in tones of terror and alarm. Then she started to shriek: ‘Bob—?’ But fortunately she was near, and he soon put a stop to that. All the same, she had plenty of kick in her, and before he had finished with her he heard a distinct and expressive thud on the floor above his head, like a person just hopping quickly out of bed.

  He didn’t know it, of course, but it was Mr Randall, head of the house.

  Mr Randall sat on the edge of his untidy bed staring at his pale, flabby feet. He slept in his day shirt and his white hair stood up on end. He looked tasty! Old and muscular, tattooed, and with white bristles all over his chin and fag ends all over the bed-table. He stared at his feet, but he was really trying to see through them, and through the floor, down to Vera and Bob. He thought she’d let out a yell of alarm, but on second thought she and Bob had only been married a week, it was probably just that. And she was always yelling at Bob anyway, apart from that; why the silly boy ever went and married such a creature, goodness only knew. But there you were; he was a Randall, and they never did know how to pick a woman! Widowerhood was by far the best; the last two years had been sheer heaven—he could smoke in bed again!

  ‘You all right down there?’ he called down vaguely, and vaguely wondered about burglars. But nobody called out again and she never said anything more, so he supposed it was marriage larks. And then he did hear some sort of movement down there somewhere—it sounded as if it was coming from Uncle George’s room. Scuffling about or something. Let’s hope somebody would have energy to bring up a spot of tea.

  Mr Randall lit another fag and went on sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting to hear a step on the stairs which ought to mean tea.

  He thought about Uncle George down there and wondered if that lazy man was thinking about him in connection with a cup of tea.

  Uncle George wasn’t! He was thinking about something much more pressing!

  When the alarm clock by his bed had gone off, he first started thinking it was an alarm bell of some kind and meant some awful sort of danger. This was because he wasn’t properly awake and had been horribly drunk last night again. First of all he thought the bell meant fire, and then his befuddled and drowsy brain decided it meant approaching murder. He tossed and turned in his semi-sleep, flinging his scraggy arms about, his blue-striped pyjamas buttonless about the chest, hating bells and, of course, murder; and his brain started up that conversation he’d had with a drunken crony about how it was that strangely queer tragedies sometimes happened to people for no apparent reason.

  Why did certain things happen, things which one could never explain? For instance, in the blitzes, you heard about whole families who were wiped out overnight—and never a hint that they’d deserved it, or anything like that. And then the film, The Bridge of San Luis Rey—those people, just happening to be on it when it bust like that? What was the reason for that?

  Uncle George then suddenly woke up. There had been a cry of some sort a moment or two ago, and he thought with rising resentment that it was Vera expecting him to get the tea again.

  He got up, on an impulse, intending not to get the tea today—well, not at first (he had to remember he never paid any rent)—but to bawl at Vera through her door. Why shouldn’t she get it? Or Bob? Or Sid, the lodger in the basement?—he was one of the family now, even if he was a sardine salesman and told interminable stories which everyone had heard before.

  He thought angrily about Vera and buttonless pyjamas and sardines, and went to his door. He opened it, and then he stood there transfixed.

  He saw the most incredibly horrible sight he had ever seen in his life. There were two eyes looking at him out of a huge mackintosh. But that wasn’t all. While the eyes were looking at him (thin, trembling him), two enormous hands belonging to, and coming out of, the mackintosh, via two hairy wrists, had got Sid. They were dropping Sid, as if just about bored with him now, and Sid was grey and had newly arranged white eyeballs instead of eyes, and his tongue (which had talked so much) was bleeding on the wrong side of his teeth. It was like a huge, terrifying cat dropping one little mouse because it has suddenly seen a nice, long, trembling, thin one that has lost even the power to squeak.

  And, indeed, that was exactly how it was. When Uncle George was ready to squeak, he found it impossible, on account of the intensely unpleasant pressure at his Adam’s Apple. And as the pressure increased still more, Uncle George saw Sid, dead, and then, through the open door there, Vera and Bob, dead. That was three. I’m the fourth, then, Uncle George thought, aghast, and also thought of the News of the World, Sunday—imagine missing it! His head began to swim, and his thoughts started to send a frantic, telepathic warning upstairs to the old man. But his head started to burst and something awful was happening to the strength in his knees.

  Old Mr Randall finished his latest fag and began to feel extremely irritated. What was the use of alarm clocks if folks just kept on wallowing in bed? He sat on the edge of the bed and looked like an angry old bull, for he had worked down at the docks all his life and was tough even if he was old. He decided that if he didn’t hear a creak on the stairs before very long he’d start bringing the house down. He could hear the milkman getting nearer and nearer with his bottles, so they couldn’t pretend there wasn’t any milk—that was an old one, that was.

  Mr Randall was just going to start roaring when he did hear a slight creak on the stairs. He felt a bit better tempered. Then there was a gentle knock on the door, which was unusual, and he growled, ‘Oh, come in,’ and turned away for his old dressing gown at the foot of the bed, in case Vera (who was a first class prude, considering the way she’d lived before she was married) made out she was shocked. Then, after hearing the door open softly, he was astounded to feel Vera’s hands getting at his throat from the back. Then, suddenly, they were too strong for Vera’s hands, there was a mass of hair at the wrists, and there was an unaccustomed smell of a mackintosh.

  He plunged violently up off the edge of the bed and heaved his assailant across to the opposite wall. But it didn’t do any good, there was iron here at his throat, and so he heaved and plunged back again and the table and lamp and fag ends fell to the floor with a crash. The brown room began to spin. The man in the mackintosh had worked his iron hands round to a frontal position, and the two gasping figures heaved desperately to and fro and fell out of the bedroom doorway and struggled frantically on the little landing there to the tune of approaching milk bottles. Then they started to tumble together down the narrow stairs, snapping the bannister rail. At the foot of the stairs, Mr Randall, who had had his day, was almost exhausted and breathless and had started to go a bit green.

  The man in the mackintosh finally dumped him by the back door and then hurriedly went through the little house to the front door. He let himself out and went into the street. Except for the milkman’s horse and cart, it was empty. There was no sign of the
milkman, so he leaned up against the fence to get his breath back. It had been pretty terrific. He stood taking in great gusts of air.

  The milkman had opened the back door in the way the Randall family always asked him to, and started to shove the milk bottles in. Then he saw Mr Randall.

  Then he saw Sid, the lodger.

  Then he saw Uncle George Randall.

  Then he saw Vera and Bob Randall.

  He went green as green and his mouth fell open and looked as if it would never shut again, any more than his eyes would.

  He raced round into the street. The only person he saw in the distance was a man in a mackintosh going off to work. He tore up to him and gasped out that five people had been strangled at Number Twenty-Two, the house with green blinds, and to fetch a policeman at once while he went back and watched the house. Then he ran back.

  The man in the mackintosh, startled, started to look for a policeman at once. He found one suddenly and agitatedly told him what the milkman had said. He gave the address of the house with green blinds and the policeman said cautiously, as if he never believed things straight off:

  ‘Murder?’ and moved away fairly quickly.

  The man in the mackintosh watched him go. He felt upset, disliking melodrama, except in fiction. He had started, curiously, to think about bells. Why bells? But there, why did you think about anything at any given moment? Bells.

  Good heavens, that reminded him, look at the time! What on earth was he doing this morning? He had made quite a detour. It was silly—he never would again. Quite apart from being late for work, imagine starting an already sordid day by being told by a milkman that a whole family had been wiped out overnight by a murderer! Why did such incredible things happen, he asked himself as he mingled with the crowd. Why, surely, only because madness was responsible for the ugliness and evil in this world. It was said the police had a positive theory that it was possible for a man to commit murder and not even know he’d done it. But surely that was going a bit far, even for madness!