by Zenith Brown
At the door the boy looked out, then leaned his towhead back.
“Don’t let ’em go prying into Kathleen’s affairs, will you, sir? She ain’t done nothink—truly she ain’t, sir.”
He disappeared quickly. Mr. Pinkerton extricated himself, a frozen inch at a time, from under the covers. If Jo, he thought, a little depressed, assumed that he could keep the mills of the great organization in the Embankment from functioning as easily as he could the salt mills of the sea, he had got an erroneous idea of the capacities of all three. He looked at his watch. It was almost seven thirty then. What Inspector Bull didn’t know already about the affairs of the girl Kathleen, Mr. Pinkerton reflected, he would know before the fat gilt little quarterboys had struck three very many times again.
“For our time is a shadow that passeth,” it said behind them, on the steeple; and if anybody was adept with shadows it was the people at Scotland Yard. One thing, however, Mr. Pinkerton decided, as he poured the hot water into his frigid crockery basin. Not Scotland Yard, nor Inspector Bull, nor hell itself would get a word out of him about Kathleen’s affairs . . . plural or singular. He washed his face vigorously, shaved off the sparse grey stubble of his spare grey chin and dressed as quickly as he could, put on his spectacles, and scurried downstairs.
Inspector Bull was not only in the dining room, he was actually eating. A large plate of bacon and eggs was—or had been—in front of him. As Mr. Pinkerton came in he was washing down the final remnants of it with a cup of tea strong enough to electro-plate an ordinary human gullet with crystals of precipitated tannic acid, and munching the last piece of cold toast from the rack and the last bit of marmalade from the dish. He pushed back his plate and looked at the man sitting opposite him. Mr. Pinkerton started. It was the man he’d seen Bull talking with in Watchbell Street.
Bull nodded and pushed out a chair as Mr. Pinkerton came up, but did not introduce the other man. Whether he took it for granted they’d met, Mr. Pinkerton did not know. He did know, of course, that the English are rather odd about such matters. Bull was ordinarily so, not that sometimes Mr. Pinkerton found himself forgetting he was actually English, until he did something like light his cigarette and throw away the match without so much as noticing that somebody next to him hadn’t got either a match or a cigarette, and badly wanted both.
“So he’d got another one,” Bull was saying.
“In the car park just below Cinque Ports Street. They stopped him, of course, in the undercliff drive. He said he was a traveller in vacuum cleaners coming from Dover along to Hastings, where he’d got to be for an eight-o’clock call this morning. He’d got a machine in the back and nothing else, so they didn’t suspect anything amiss. Hastings didn’t pick him up. I expect he hit the London road—What about the car out front?”
“That’s in the name of Donald McPherson,” Inspector Bull said, “They’ll check up on that.”
He poured the last few drops of tea from the pot, and water from the hot-water jug, diluted the dark substance resulting with a bit of milk, took the iron out of it with a large spoonful of sugar, and gulped it down.
“Too bad,” he said. “I thought we’d run him to cover. Keep a sharp eye out.”
The man nodded, got up and went out.
“Has . . . Mr. McPherson disappeared?” Mr. Pinkerton asked tentatively, settling himself to his own bacon, eggs, toast, tea and marmalade.
Bull looked at him with sober eyes. “Did you happen to talk to him?” he asked.
Mr. Pinkerton nodded.
“Or rather he talked to me. He said he used to be a Pinkerton’s man, in the States and Canada.”
“He did?” Bull asked. Mr. Pinkerton thought he looked a little surprised, and was himself a little pleased. He thought for a moment of going on and telling Bull it was McPherson who had introduced the deaf and dumb gentleman to Mrs. Humpage and told her he couldn’t speak so that she must look after him very well. As a matter of fact, looking back on it, Mr. Pinkerton realized he perhaps shouldn’t have noticed their coming together if he hadn’t just happened to notice the helpless way the man stood, watching their faces, not understanding until McPherson tapped his pocket. Then he understood at once, took out his note case and gave Mrs. Humpage a ten-pound note. She had nodded and put it in her green japanned strong box, Mr. Pinkerton remembered, and told Mr. McPherson to never fear, she’d look after him for a week. It seemed a bit staggering to Mr. Pinkerton, who was only paying three guineas for a week, not counting fires and coffee, but of course he had full possession of his senses, such as they were, and that no doubt made the difference.
The deaf and dumb gentleman was extra trouble too, because dinner the evening before was the only meal he’d taken in the dining room. Even his tea had been sent up, and had come down with nothing touched, Mr. Pinkerton had noticed at least once, except the cakes, most of which were visible in the two bulging sides of Jo’s mouth. But, the more Mr. Pinkerton thought about it, the less eager he became to tell his tawny large friend sitting there opposite him, polishing off Mr. Pinkerton’s toast, marmalade and tea. Perhaps, he thought, if he kept something of that sort in reserve, so to speak, he could come out with it in case he were pushed to the wall in the matter of Kathleen—figuratively, of course.
Then he realized that he should never have so much as thought of Kathleen. People who called themselves scientists were, Mr. Pinkerton knew, in the habit of denying the existence of what they called thought transference. But from long association with the Inspector, Mr. Pinkerton also knew they were dead wrong. It couldn’t possibly always be coincidence that the instant an idea popped into his mind that he wanted to keep concealed, it didn’t take Bull more than five seconds, as a rule, to have it out, pinned to the table in front of him, dissecting its wriggling, reluctant heart for all the world as if it were his, not Mr. Pinkerton’s.
“This girl Kathleen, now, Mr. Pinkerton,” Inspector Bull said placidly. “You’ve seen her about, I expect.”
Mr. Pinkerton put his fork in his egg and spurted the yolk all over his plate. He nodded, quite speechless for a moment.
“What’s she like, would you say?”
“She’s a very nice girl,” Mr. Pinkerton said stoutly. He lowered his gaze then. Bull hadn’t, of course, said she wasn’t; and furthermore, he was locking at him with an oddly puzzled and slightly hurt expression in his mild blue eyes that made the little man feel like a dirty dog. After all, the Inspector was his friend, in fact virtually his only friend . . . and he was simply doing his duty.
“Is it true she wasn’t about much last evening—as much as usual, I mean?”
“She turned down my bed as usual,” Mr. Pinkerton said, trying to be as matter-of-fact about it as he could. The mere fact of having anybody turn down his bed beside himself was of course in itself not usual. He even used to turn down Inspector Bull’s, when the Inspector was his wife’s star lodger in Golders Green; not when he was just a raw countryman from Wiltshire but after he took off his uniform and became a member of the Criminal Investigation Department. He had also polished Inspector Bull’s boots, taken up his morning kipper and stony-cold toast and cleaned his tub after he had left for the glamorous life of tracking down criminals. Sometimes even now, when Mrs. Bull wasn’t about. Crissie, the Bulls’ cook-general, kindly allowed him to polish the Inspector’s boots. Once, in doing so, he had found a bit of dried blood and cotton wool wedged into a tiny nail hole in the heel, which was how Inspector Bull had brought the murderers of the curate of St. Botolph’s-Within to book in the saloon parlour of the Bald Hind at Inchington-under-the-Sea. That, of course, was neither here nor there, Mr. Pinkerton thought, shrinking under the childlike blue gaze fixed tranquilly on him over his much depleted breakfast.
“Would it have occurred to you.” Inspector Bull asked guilelessly, “that she recognized Sir Lionel Atwater, and was trying to keep out of sight?”
When Mr. Pinkerton answered, as soon as he could, he himself was quite convinced that he did
not sound convincing. “It most certainly would not, Inspector,” he managed to get out.
“You’ve not seen her since she learned you were connected with the police?”
The large man’s voice was most imperturbable.
“No—but that doesn’t signify,” Mr. Pinkerton replied. “Jo fetches my water in the morning. The girl doesn’t. I dare say she’s up doing my room at this moment.”
“No,” Bull said. “She’s down with a chill. Mrs. Humpage is making her stay in bed.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Pinkerton.
“They have another girl in for the day.”
Mr. Pinkerton said “Oh,” again.
“But I’ve seen her insurance book, of course,” Inspector Bull went on, in his placid way. “Her last employment was as scullery maid at Atwater House, in Buckinghamshire.”
Mr. Pinkerton put down his fork, and wiped the yellow egg off his trembling lips.
“Mrs. Humpage doesn’t know why she left,” Bull went on, quite as if he had not noticed the little man’s agitation. “She had an excellent letter of recommendation from Lady Atwater, as well as from Lady Atwater’s cook. Wouldn’t it seem strange to you, under the circumstances, that she shouldn’t at least curtsey to her former employer?”
Mr. Pinkerton said nothing. He would have preferred to immerse himself in the business of drinking his tea, but the heavy china, with an old angel in blue on either side of it, clattered so astonishingly against his teeth that he thought better of it, after one attempt, and simply sat there blinking.
“Unless, of course,” Bull went on, “the recommendation was forged, on a bit of paper stolen from Lady Atwater’s writing table. That happens quite frequently.”
Mr. Pinkerton started to deny it indignantly, and thought better of that too. He blinked again and said nothing.
Bull pushed his chair back. “The inquest will be held here, this afternoon,” he said.
Mr. Pinkerton, who normally enjoyed an inquest second only to the late Mrs. Pinkerton’s enjoyment of a funeral or a wedding—of someone she had never heard of in the first instance and someone she had only read about in the society gossip columns in the second—sat looking unhappily down at his plate.
“If you’ve finished, you might come along with me.” Bull said.
He waited while the little man went up to his room and came back, turning up the collar of his grey overcoat, his face under his brown bowler rather troubled. Another maid, a woman of fifty or so, was making up his bed. Bull was right, of course. It wasn’t that Mr. Pinkerton minded, particularly, the way the new maid had picked up his rose-coloured pyjamas and looked at them, and then at him, though Kathleen had said she thought they were ever so pretty, and that the colour suited him ever so well. It was the mere fact of her being there in his room. It meant so clearly that Kathleen had lost confidence in him, that she was afraid to see him. Though it might easily be, of course, that she had got a chill, coming down those steep cold steps in her bare feet to close the panel behind the young man.
Mr. Pinkerton tried to brighten up as he felt Inspector Bull looking at him; but he was glad all the same that Bull hadn’t asked him what the trouble was, as he sometimes did.
CHAPTER 8
In Watchbell Street the wind caught them full in the face. It was all Mr. Pinkerton could manage, to keep in the wake of the Inspector, holding his hat, trying to keep his overcoat from wrapping about his legs. Watchbell Street was quite empty. The wind and rain bowled frantically along its flinty roadway, and tore the branches of the old trees in Church Yard as they came to the Square, past the rows of stuccoed houses that Mr. Pinkerton knew were under the timber and plaster exteriors—so assiduously imitated in the long rows of jerry-built dwellings stretching out from London in dreary monotony for mile after mile, at five shillings down and five shillings a week, for a nation of Methuselahs to own, eventually, as they sank into the grave, the houses having long since preceded them.
As they came into view of the grim old castle above the Gun Garden, Mr. Pinkerton saw the blue lantern of the Police Station, next to the Wesleyan Sunday School. He followed Inspector Bull through the gate along the walk and inside.
Inspector Kirtin nodded to them and pushed a sheaf of papers across the desk to Bull. He picked them up and read them, chewing the end of his tawny mustache thoughtfully from time to time. At last he gave them back.
“I’d better get the C. O., on the phone. I expect,” he said.
Mr. Pinkerton wiped the steam off his steel-rimmed spectacles and waited. Inspector Kirtin, he noticed, was eyeing him, from time to time, with something that looked to him extraordinarily like astonished curiosity. Mr. Pinkerton shifted nervously. The Inspector did not speak to him, other than to comment with a freedom that rather shocked the little man upon the local weather. He then lapsed into silence, which was perfectly agreeable to Mr. Pinkerton, except that every time he looked up, Inspector Kirtin looked down, which was not agreeable at all. If he had known what the sandy-haired man was thinking, it would have been even less agreeable still, albeit rather flattering, in a grotesque and definitely cinematic fashion. For Inspector Kirtin had heard a great deal about the little grey man, in the last few hours—from Bull, from Mrs. Humpage, from Jo the potboy, and from the detective-sergeant that Bull had brought from town with him; and it was his entirely private opinion that the queer little bloke ought to be certified and in charge of the Master of Lunacy, not left to bat blindly about getting mixed up, from all he could make out, in the most unlikely lot of difficulties, from the purlieus of Limehouse to the Regency Palace in Brighton . . . to say nothing of the time he had been picked up at the foot of the Monument in Billingsgate with one hand full of prawns and the other covered with blood, which the detective-sergeant had told him about over a pewter pint of bitter just before they turned in at daybreak. He was, in fact, just on the point of mentioning it when Inspector Bull came back from the inner room, his heavy face set in troubled lines.
“You can go along, Pinkerton,” he said. “I’ve got to wait about a bit.”
Mr. Pinkerton got up.
“I’ll be along in about an hour,” Bull said, as he fumbled for the door knob. “Where does Mrs. Bruce live?”
Mr. Pinkerton, fumbling at the door a little longer, did not manage to get it open until he had heard Inspector Kirtin say,
“Just over the way in the cottage with the gables.”
Mr. Pinkerton closed the door carefully and drew his hat down against the wind, whistling among the slanting tombstones of the churchyard and through the flying buttresses that seemed too delicate to be much help to the sturdy square tower of the old church on the hilltop. He spotted the tiny Elizabethan cottage at once, with its carved timbers, gleaming white plaster and narrow leaded casements under the three peaked gables. It nestled with other houses like it round the old church square on the top of the little butte that had stood there, a stronghold of man against the elements from Saxon times, when the sea, now receded beyond Camber sands, had lashed against its base, and great forests, now destroyed to supply stout oak for its dwellings and its ships, had stretched down the weald from the north.
As he turned the corner by the lovely half-timbered house of St. Anthony of Padua, he saw a woman in a white mob-cap and black dress come out on the American lady’s doorstep, sweep it off with a few vigorous strokes of her broom and go back in again quickly. He had thought possibly, at first, of the idea of speaking to her, but he saw from the sharp suspicious glance she gave him as she closed the green door that he could spare his breath. There was nothing, however, to keep him from passing the house, and even looking in as he did so. Not that it did any good. The tiny ancient glass in their leaded diamonds, and drawn curtains too, made it possible to see only the merest glint of flame from an open fire reflected in one small pane.
As he rounded the corner in front of the church into Market Street he glanced back. The maid had come out again, and was watching him. He scurried a little faster do
wn the steep hill past the Town Hall into the High Street, and turned left along the already crowded thoroughfare past West Street, on to the Mint, and stopped. The murder of Sir Lionel Atwater was everywhere. From every little group of people he’d passed he’d heard a patch of the hushed excited commentary that was licking like the invaders’ flames through the tiny hilltop town. My husband says . . . my old lady heard . . . the greengrocer’s boy told me . . . the maid next door saw . . . It was the perfect pattern of village gossip.
At the corner where the old Mint used to be, at the bottom of Mermaid Passage, he stood a moment. The branch of his London bank was there. He felt in his pocket. Perhaps, he thought, he ought to have a bit more cash on hand than he’d got after paying Mrs. Humpage a week’s lodging in advance. Perhaps, among other things, if he crossed Jo the potboy’s small red palm with silver, his local position might be somewhat improved.
He slipped into the bank and closed the door quickly behind him, smack, he trusted, in the vinegary face of the late Mrs. Pinkerton’s bitter wraith that the very idea of extra cash must surely have conjured up . . . himself being a rabbity Aladdin, inadvertently rubbing his cheque-book lamp. He blinked his watery grey eyes, fumbled in his pocket, and brought his cheque-book out. At the table by the window he wrote a cheque for two pounds, stepped up to the counter, and stopped abruptly.