It was six o’clock when Margaret Haddow started to cook the supper. She put potatoes into a basin, ran water over them and started to peel them.
Aged twenty-four, small, inconspicuously pleasant to look at, she had a vitality that made her attractive, and slightly less simplicity than, at a first meeting, might have been supposed. She was wearing grey slacks and a scarlet sweater and had a cigarette at the corner of her mouth.
Peeling the potatoes, she hummed quietly. The tune she hummed was unrecognisable and it is unlikely that she even knew that she was humming. Probably nothing was in her mind at that moment but the thought of the shepherd’s pie that she was just starting to make. Perhaps she was thinking that the kitchen felt cold after the well-warmed sitting-room.
But that particular moment, when her potato-peeler was ripping down the side of the second potato and her humming was sounding tunelessly in the small kitchen, was the last moment that evening when thoughts that grew out of her normal life had any room in Margaret’s mind.
It was at that moment, just outside the kitchen window, beginning with a few heavy splashes, then turning all at once into a torrent, that something that sounded like the lash of a rainstorm was suddenly released against the glass. But the torrent was all against one window and on to one window-sill. Big drops, bright where they caught the light from the kitchen, spangled the dark square of the window-pane.
Startled, Margaret paused and looked round. As she did so, something ice-cold fell on the nape of her neck. It slid down between her shoulder blades, inside her red sweater. With a gasp and a shudder she jumped aside. As another drop fell she looked up. Through a crack in the ceiling that she had never noticed was there, water was oozing, gathering into another large, dirt-discoloured drop, quivering, preparing to fall.
Seeing where it splashed on the floor, Margaret took a bucket from one of the cupboards and put it on the spot. Another drop and another, each gathering a little more quickly than the last, fell into the bucket. Standing back, watching them fall, Margaret raised a hand to thrust it in bewilderment through her hair. As the hand came level with her face, she felt a freezing drop fall on the back of it.
The second crack oozed water faster than the first. But by the time that she had found a basin to place under it, the first was running freely. Outside the window it was still pouring down. Every instant the force of the stream inside increased. The bucket would not take long to fill.
Suddenly she spun on her heel, pulled open the kitchen door and went running out into the hall.
As she groped for the light-switch, she realised that the whole house was full of the sound of water.
She turned on the light. In this house the flats were not self-contained. All the tenants used the passage in which she was standing. This was the ground floor. The front door was straight before her. From one corner of the ceiling water was spouting, making an increasing puddle on the green linoleum.
Running upstairs, Margaret started calling, “Is anyone there?”
She thumped on each of the doors of the first floor flat.
There was no answer.
She tried the handle of the sitting-room. It was unlocked, as Paul Wragge’s rooms usually were, but the room inside was in darkness. Water was spouting somewhere in the room and from the kitchen beyond she could hear a swirling and splashing.
It was the same on the top floor, except that all the doors were locked and that it sounded as if it were raining everywhere. Turning, she ran downstairs again.
She was almost down to the ground floor when she heard a voice calling, “Mrs. Haddow! Mrs. Haddow!”
A long, pale face with pince-nez and carefully brushed, scanty grey hair was peering up at her over the banisters.
“Mrs. Haddow, whatever shall we do?” It was the tenant from the basement. He was a borough councillor, Chairman of the Baths and Cemeteries Committee, and his name was Ferdinand Shew. “It’s come through in my basement in three different places and soon everything’s going to be soaked. Soaked! Whatever shall we do?”
“I think the tank in the roof must have burst,” she said.
“Oh dear,” he said, “oh dear!” His eyes, of a yellowish brown, which might have been cat-like had they not been so vague, were full of apprehension. “Is Mr. Wragge in?”
“No, nor’s Mr. Boyle, and he’s left his flat all locked up, so we can’t go up to the loft to see if there’s anything we could turn off.”
“How like him. How like him always to be inconsiderate!”
“D’you know where the main tap is, Mr. Shew?”
“No—no, I don’t. But come downstairs, Mrs. Haddow, come down to my basement and see how terrible it is. If it goes on, everything’s going to be ruined.”
She went downstairs with him to the fussily, lacily over-furnished flat where the councillor lived with his housekeeper, Miss Pattison.
Standing in his small hall, a tall, drooping figure in bedroom slippers, he flapped his hands at the runnels of water down his walls, at the pools at his feet. He had placed buckets and basins to catch as much as he could, but the pools were extending over the floor.
“Look, it’ll get into the sitting-room soon,” he said, “and then it’ll ruin things, ruin them. I wonder what we can do. I wonder, if you took a mop and I took another, whether perhaps we could stem it. And my poor Miss Pattison’s in bed with bronchitis, you know. I’ve been spending the afternoon so peacefully, reading to her.”
Margaret replied, “I’ve my own puddles to think about.”
“But look how it’s pouring down! And I can’t disturb poor Miss Pattison. Just look at it!”
“Isn’t there a main tap somewhere down here?” she asked. “There usually is in the basement.”
“There is a tap of some sort in the coal-cellar,” he said. “D’you think that’d be it? I’ve never turned it on or off, that I can remember, but perhaps I might try. We couldn’t make things any worse, could we?”
“Not much,” Margaret agreed.
“Very well, I’ll try.” He disappeared through one of the doors.
In a moment he was back.
“There,” he said, looking round hopefully at the water that poured with ever increasing force. “Is that any better?”
“It wouldn’t get better for some time,” Margaret said.
“How awful it is,” he said, “how truly awful.”
“The next thing,” Margaret said, “is to try to get hold of a plumber. D’you know one? I’ll go for him—though with the thousands of burst pipes there probably are everywhere, I don’t suppose we’ll be able to get one.”
“Why doesn’t Mr. Boyle come home, or Mr. Wragge, or your husband?” moaned Mr. Shew. “Look, Mrs. Haddow, here’s a cloth. D’you think you could start mopping up? Look, if you could mop up over there, so that it doesn’t spread into the sitting-room …”
She said briskly, “Michael won’t be home for another couple of hours. And I’m going for a plumber.”
“Oh no, I’ll go for a plumber.” He thrust the cloth into her hand. “I couldn’t dream of letting you go out at this time of night. I’ll go at once. And if only you’d mop up a little … You know, it really is like Mr. Boyle to leave things locked up. He’s always inconsiderate. And I’m always doing little things to oblige him, but he’s most rude and unappreciative—most.”
“His place must be in a far worse state than ours.” She had stooped and was mopping at the edge of a pool, but it was growing far faster than she could diminish it.
“Perhaps we might be able to get in upstairs somehow,” he said, standing watching her. “Suppose I go up and try.” Suddenly he gave a giggle. “You know, this is really very amusing. I dare say if we could see ourselves … Now, I think I’ll just go up and see if I can get in upstairs somehow. I think that’s the best thing to do.”
She watched him go, then with an irritated gesture, flung down the mop and followed him.
He was saying, “ ‘If seven maids with seven mops …’ D’you know, Mrs. Haddow, I think it’s coming through in your sitting-room too?”
He was right.
“And it’s just occurred to me,” he went on, “that we ought to turn off the lights, or they’ll be going anyhow. Just a minute, I’ve got a torch downstairs. I’ll fetch it. There!” Suddenly the hall was in darkness. “I knew that would happen. Just a moment. I’ll get my torch.”
He disappeared down the stairs again.
When he returned at last with the torch, Margaret said, “I wish you’d go for that plumber.”
“I’m going, I’m going immediately.” He started up the stairs.
Muttering, “It’s no good whatever,” she followed him.
Though Margaret had left all the lights on the staircase burning, it was dark now all the way up. The sound of water pouring through the house was like rain in a forest. The torch cut into the darkness with a long cone of light. They went on up the stairs.
They were almost at the top landing when Mr. Shew exclaimed, “That was my bell ringing. Didn’t you hear it?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” she said.
“I’m sure it was,” he said. “Someone at the door. I’d better go down, or Miss Pattison will be getting out of bed to answer it. I can’t allow that. It might set her back seriously. You can’t think how inconvenient for me it is when she’s ill in bed.”
Taking the torch with him, he plunged down into the darkness.
Margaret sighed. She stayed where she was, about three steps from the top of the staircase. Her feet were cold inside her soaked slippers. Her hands, encountering dampness whatever they touched, were numb.
There was something uncanny about standing there in that drenched darkness. She started shivering, and it was not all because of the cold. The darkness was so deep, the spouting of all that water around her so unnatural. After about five minutes it was suddenly too much for her. She turned and ran downstairs.
Between the two upper floors there was a half-landing. It was as she reached this that Margaret fell. She did not hurt herself much. Had her weight been flung to the left, the fall might have been a serious one, but it was flung to the right, and instead of toppling down the rest of the flight, she merely bruised her shoulder against the door of a cupboard that opened on to the small landing. Sliding to the floor in front of it, she felt a gush of water full in her face.
The ice-cold water made her disregard the question of how much she was hurt. Scrambling to her feet, she dashed the water from her eyes and hurried on downwards. Ferdinand Shew was back in the hall, putting a package on the shelf by the front door.
“I don’t want to complain,” he said in a voice shrill with exasperation. “I don’t like to disoblige anybody. But that man Boyle has no sense of proportion in the way he imposes on one. He has no thought for others at all. I’ve just taken in a bottle of whisky for him. Whisky! And he’d had the impertinence to tell them at the shop to take it round to my door because he knew he wouldn’t be there to take it in himself. I take his laundry in for him every Friday and put it on the shelf there. Every afternoon of my life I take in his loaf of bread. Why, I should like to know, why should I have to come upstairs every afternoon with his loaf of bread? And I pay for all those things too. I’ve just paid nearly five pounds for this whisky. I don’t mean he doesn’t pay me back—he does, of course—but it’s so selfish of him, so utterly selfish, to assume he can make use of me like that. And then he leaves his door locked and doesn’t come home just when he might be useful.”
“Mr. Shew, are you going for that plumber?” Margaret asked; rubbing the shoulder that had hit the door.
“I’m going,” he said, “immediately, immediately.”
“If you don’t, I will.”
“I’m going, I’m going.”
But before it was possible for him to go in search of a plumber, he had to put on a mackintosh and cap and find his umbrella, though the evening outside the house was fine. Margaret went halfway down the stairs into his basement to make sure that he actually set off. The floor of his little hall was a-swim now. His lights, however, were still burning.
Looking up at her, he tittered.
“You look just like the boy who stood on the burning deck,” he said. “I wonder, while I’m gone, couldn’t you just try mopping up a little? Just a little. Just to stop it spreading into the sitting-room.”
Wearily she came downstairs and picked up the mop.
It was as she came into the light that Ferdinand Shew, giving a shrill cry, snatched up one of her hands and exclaimed, “Why, look, Mrs. Haddow, you’ve hurt yourself!”
“I fell,” she said, “but I didn’t hurt myself much.”
“But you’re bleeding.”
Margaret pulled her hand away from him and looked at it.
“And on your trousers,” he said, pointing.
“But I didn’t feel anything,” Margaret said.
Yet there was blood on her hands and a long red stain down the side of her slacks.
“I’m not hurt,” she said. “There’s nothing, not a scratch. I bruised my shoulder, but …”
She stopped. She lifted her eyes. Slowly they sought those of the councillor.
“Do you think … ?” she began.
He was still looking at her hand, at the narrow line of red that was drying round the edge of her fingernail.
“Do you think perhaps,” she said, “that we ought to go and see … ?”
But she stopped again. There was a curious constriction about her mouth.
“I fell,” she managed to say in a whisper, “on that half-landing.”
“I’ll go for the plumber and the police,” Councillor Shew said when they had seen what the cupboard on the half-landing contained.
At last he seemed in a hurry.
Reminding Margaret that she was not alone in the house—there was Miss Patdson in the basement—he gave her the torch and darted off down the slushy pavement. Margaret went to her sitting-room. Water was pouring into it, the carpet soaking up the pools. The light was still on there, but her gaze saw nothing of the spoiled and streaming walls. As she perched uneasily on the arm of an easy chair, the sensation that gripped her was unlike anything that she had ever experienced. Mr. Shew had told her that for safety she ought to turn off the lights, but nothing, no command, no caution, could have made her reach for the switch.
But she had been sitting there only a few minutes when the light above her head went out. Water came trickling down the cord itself.
Suddenly there was a tearing sound and a crash. Margaret leapt about a yard from where she was sitting. A lump of the ceiling had fallen just beside her chair. As she fled to the doorway, another heavy chunk of plaster came down. Margaret leant against the doorpost. She stuffed her fingers into her mouth, bit into them, almost choked herself with them, while her whole body shuddered.
Gradually the danger of the scream that had almost burst from her receded. All at once she was steady, decided, certain of what she wanted to do.
She went into the kitchen. Rummaging through a drawer, using the torch, she picked out a knife with a long, thin, flexible blade. She went upstairs. Before she came to the half-landing, she was trembling again, but she managed to pass the closed cupboard door and went on to the door of Mr. Boyle’s sitting-room, slid the point of the knife in beside the spring lock and did her best to break into his flat.
Because the door was only an old attic door, fitting very loosely, she succeeded.
Mr. Boyle’s sitting-room was not as wet as might have been expected. The floor was swimming, but it was through the kitchen ceiling that most of the water was pouring down. Following the beam of the torch, she picked her way amongst the chairs, ashtrays and newspapers into the kitchen. Here she found an untidy litter of about three days’ dirty dishes. There was food on the table, a half-empty bottle of milk, a butter-dish, some rashers of bacon, a loaf of sliced bread in a paper wrapper, a jar of marmalade. Everything was drenched in water. The most concentrated stream came from a crack at one corner of the trap-door that led up into the loft.
When she saw that, Margaret gave up. She did not know what deluge might fall upon her if she moved the trap-door. But the expedition had at least distracted her. For a few minutes she had almost forgotten that she shared a solitude with that battered thing in the landing cupboard.
When Mr. Shew returned, coming up from the basement and tapping on the door of her bedroom, where she had taken refuge because as yet no water was leaking into it, he told her that the police would be there immediately, the plumber shortly.
“Mr. Shew,” Margaret said, standing steaming in front of the gas fire, “have you ever seen that—that man upstairs before?”
“Never in my life.”
“I have.”
His eyebrows popped up above the rims of his pince-nez.
She nodded grimly. “Yes, going upstairs with Mrs. Wragge.”
“What, before … ?”
“Yes, before she left Mr. Wragge.”
“Of course, of course.” There was an excited gleam in the yellowish eyes. “Well, the police will see to that, no doubt.”
“Mr. Shew …” She was speaking slowly, thinking between the words. “When I went upstairs the first time … the lights were still on… . I’m sure… . I’m absolutely certain … there wasn’t any blood on the landing then.”
He seated himself on a chair. His mackintosh draped itself in stiff folds around him. “You say you’re absolutely sure?”
“Absolutely sure,” she said. “The water was spouting hard just above it, and I looked down at the mess it was making on the floor, and I know there wasn’t any blood there.”
“Indeed! That’s very interesting.” He gave his little giggle, “Playing detectives! Oh dear, if you and I could see ourselves.”
“But that means,” she went on, “that he could only just have been put there. I mean, if he’d been there any time, the blood would have dried, it wouldn’t have trickled out under the door. So someone must have been in the house only just before the water started running. It was just six o’clock when I went into the kitchen to cook the supper and had to stop because of the water coming in.”
“I know what you’re going to say!” he cried. “I know, I know!” He jerked himself forward to the edge of the chair. “You’re going to say that it’s always at six in the evening that Mr. Wragge goes to work.”
She was nodding when they heard feet tramping on the pavement outside, and a rapping on the front door that echoed through the house.
From the time when Superintendent Cust appeared, accompanied by a sergeant, nothing in the house seemed quite so sinister. There was still the darkness, the drumming water, the tomb-like smell of wet plaster, the puddles on the floor. Upstairs in a cupboard there was still the body of a man with his head battered in. But Superintendent Cust had a square face with brown, rubbery skin. He had a square, heavy body and square-tipped, heavy hands. And he had a way of pulling his features together in a bunch with one hand and speaking through the fingers in a voice so smothered by them that it sounded as if he were suffering from a dreadful cold. His presence brought reassurance.
“Good heavens,” he said, “why didn’t you tell us we needed umbrellas?”
“It’s upstairs, Superintendent,” Mr. Shew said, “in an upstairs cupboard.”
“Of course it’s upstairs. What is it, a burst tank?”
“I mean, the corpse is upstairs—the dead man.”
“Oh yes, that. Why don’t you turn the main tap off?”
“I’ve done so. This water is what had already collected in the walls and ceilings. There was no one at home in either of the top floor flats when the pipe, or the tank, or whatever it is burst, so the upper floors had time to become completely flooded before Mrs. Haddow and I were aware of anything amiss.”
“Never seen anything like it,” Mr. Cust said. He pulled nose, cheeks and chin together into a handful and looked round at the sergeant. “Maybe you could do something about it, Bill,” he suggested.
Margaret remarked, “When the plumber comes, I suppose he’ll think it’s his job to investigate the murder.”
Mr. Cust’s eyes came round to her. “You the lady who found the body?”
“We both found the body,” Mr. Shew said quickly. “It was Mrs. Haddow who slipped in the blood, thus drawing our attention to the fact that there was a body there.”
A crash reverberated in the darkness.
“Some more of my ceiling coming down,” Margaret said.
“All right,” Mr. Cust said. “Well, let’s go along up and look at him.”
On the way up the stairs he leant towards Margaret and whispered, “Who is the old boy?”
“He’s Councillor Shew,” she answered, “Chairman of the Baths and Cemeteries Committee.”
He gave a muffled whistle.
He gave another whistle when he saw the body.
“That’s dead, that is,” he said, and after a minute or two, during which his massive hindquarters had concealed most of the cupboard, he added, “Not very long either. Not more than half an hour or so, I should guess.”
Mrs. Shew began, “Mrs. Haddow and I have deduced …”
But the superintendent went straight on, “Who lives in this flat up here?”
“A man called Boyle,” Mr. Shew said. “I believe he deals in electrical apparatus of some sort.”
“And down there?”
“A man called Wragge. He’s a sub-editor on the Gazette.”
“Oh, works at night, I suppose.”
“Yes, he goes out every evening about six o’clock.”
“Out now?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Cust went up the stairs to Boyle’s flat. He tried all the doors. Finding them locked, he came down to the first floor, tried the handle of the door nearest to him, found that it would open and went in. Margaret and Mr. Shew could hear him moving about inside and caught an occasional glimpse of his light as he flashed it from side to side.
After a moment he called to them, “You said he was out.”
“Yes,” Margaret said.
“Well, come and have a look here.” Mr. Cust’s voice came from the bedroom.
As they approached he flashed his torch at the bed. It picked out the haggard face and limp black hair of the man who was lying across it, the counterpane crumpled under him. His arms were flung out on either side, one knee was drawn up, the foot, in a sock through which most of a toe protruded, resting on the edge of the bed. His mouth hung open. Through it he wasdrawing slow, snorting breaths, while his chest rose and fell laboriously.
“That him?” Mr. Cust asked.
Margaret nodded.
“He often like this?”
“Since his wife left him about three months ago, pretty often.”
“And before that too,” Mr. Shew said.
Mr. Cust gave some directions to the sergeant. A quantity of cold water that was pouring uselessly through the house was deflected for the purpose of sobering up the journalist. It took time. Even when he had been roused, Paul Wragge’s brain seemed to be in a cloud. Recently, whenever Margaret had met him, he had seemed to be in a cloud.
Mr. Cust stood and watched him. When Paul Wragge was sitting up, his head drooping on to his chest, his back a sagging curve, Mr. Cust said, “Been in all day, Mr. Wragge?”
The third time he asked the question he received an answer of sorts.
“Been in? Been—in? I don’t know what you’re … Look here, what the hell’s happening?” Paul Wragge’s eyes shifted, wincing, from one face to another. “Where’s all this water coming from? Why don’t you turn it off?”
“This gentleman says he has turned it off,” Mr. Cust said. “Now, Mr. Wragge, how long have you been in?”
“You’re the police,” Paul Wragge said.
“That’s right.”
“I’ve been in all day.”
“Had any visitors?”
“What’s the matter with you? What the hell’s happening? Why are you asking questions? Isn’t a man allowed to get drunk in his own home any more?” Wragge’s hands were kneading at his temples.
“If you don’t mind,” Mr. Cust said, “there’s something I’d like to show you.”
He put a hand under Paul Wragge’s elbow.
He allowed himself to be helped to his feet. He allowed himself, though he walked staggeringly, to be led out on to the landing and up the stairs. He looked where the superintendent’s torch pointed.
Margaret had been trying to keep her nerves in order to deal with this moment. But in her imaginings nothing had been so shocking as what actually happened.
Paul Wragge laughed.
“Whoever would think,” he said in a drawling voice, “that a thing like that could happen to one twice in a life-time?”
Mr. Cust waited. Paul Wragge merely stood there, staring down.
Mr. Cust said, “Have you ever seen this man before, Mr. Wragge?”
There was a slight pause, then the journalist replied, “I’ll tell you something. I’ll tell you something that happened to me years ago. I was a reporter. My first job. I was nineteen. I’d been sent along to the local morgue to get some details about a suicide. The sergeant in charge was awfully bright and breezy, chatted along, told me—”
“Mr. Wragge, have you ever seen this man before?”
“—told me all the gory details I wanted. Then suddenly he whipped the cover off one of the corpses. A girl, quite young. She’d got nice, fair hair. And her throat had been cut from ear to ear. He did it just to see me be sick or faint. Nice chap! I didn’t do either.”
“Have you seen this man before?” Mr. Cust repeated.
Though water was splashing all over him, Paul Wragge showed no desire to move.
“No,” he said.
“Would you swear to that?”
“My bell!” Mr. Shew cried suddenly. “My door bell—didn’t you hear it? The plumber!” He pelted down into the darkness.
“My God, what a lot of water!” Paul Wragge muttered. “Yes, I’d swear to it.”
Mr. Cust said, “I hear your wife left you three months ago.”
“Yes,” Paul Wragge answered.
Thickly through his lingers came Mr. Cust’s next question, “What was the name of the man for whom she left you?”
Paul Wragge’s answer was something very short, very obscene. Margaret turned quickly and went downstairs. She stood in her own hall, fighting off a horrible nausea.
After standing there for a minute or two, she went to the door of the basement and called down, “Mr. Shew, I’m going to make some tea.”
“Oh, that’s really kind of you, Mrs. Haddow, very kind.” He came pounding to the foot of the staircase. “If you really wouldn’t mind. It is such a good idea in the circumstances.”
Out of the shadows the plumber appeared and stood at Mr. Shew’s elbow. He was a small man with a grudging voice and a felt hat tipped so steeply over his face that little of it showed but a drooping moustache.
“You got the main tap turned full on,” he said.
“On?” Mr. Shew said. “I turned it off.”
“On,” the plumber said.
“Off!” Mr. Shew cried.
“You may a meant to turn it off,” the plumber said, “but you turned it on. I turned it off. Now I’ll go up and take a look in the loft.”
“The top flat’s locked,” Mr. Shew said. “You can’t get in.”
“It’s all right,” Margaret said. “I know how to get in. Come on, I’ll show you.”
She had to repeat the performance of breaking into Mr. Boyle’s flat under the eye of Mr. Cust, who went in with her and the plumber and stood watching while the legs of the plumber disappeared into the roof. Then he started roaming round the flat. Margaret went downstairs again. She fetched the electric kettle from the kitchen and plugged it into the switch in the bedroom. She fetched the rest of the tea-things on a tray and set the tray down on the floor, squatting on the floor herself, as close to the gas fire as she could without being singed. The kettle came to the boil, and she made the tea, pouring out a cup for herself, sitting there with both hands nursing the hot cup. She kept chewing at her lip, pursuing a thought that dodged round the edges of her mind, but would not let her grasp it.
Presently there was a discreet knock at the door. The councillor put his head round it.
“Ah,” he said, “tea!” He came in. “I really think the water isn’t flowing quite so heavily, Mrs. Haddow.”
She agreed, pouring out tea for him.
“The plumber says it’s all turned off now, but the walls and ceilings will take at least an hour to empty. Mrs. Haddow, you’ll never tell anyone, will you—anyone—about my turning the tap the wrong way?”
She smiled absently, pouring out more tea for herself.
“Though of course it wouldn’t have made much difference, would it?” he said. “Most of the damage must have been done already, don’t you think? Listen—I really think it’s getting less every moment. It seems the main pipe burst. The plumber’s seeing to it.”
Margaret spoke abruptly. “Are they going to arrest Mr. Wragge?”
“Well, it does look rather like it, doesn’t it? Of course, I don’t know. But I should think they’d take him along to the police station for questioning.” He eyed her thoughtfully. “Do you—er— happen to know anything about Mr. Wragge’s unfortunate private affairs?”
“Only what he poured out on Michael and me one evening when he was a bit, but not frightfully, drunk.”
“Did he say anything about the—er—the other man?”
“There wasn’t one.”
“Dear me, dear me.” Mr. Shew stirred his tea and sipped a little, those vague cat’s eyes of his behind the pince-nez dwelling on her face.
“You see,” Margaret said in an uncertain voice, as if it were rather hard for her to understand what she was saying herself, “it seemed to be just that that was so awful for him. I mean, that she’d just gone away because she couldn’t stand living with him. She just left him and went back to her old job.”
“And I don’t wonder!”
“No, I suppose not,” she said, and sighed.
“Listen,” he said, “it is getting less, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
They sat there, gradually feeling warmer and drier. Bit by bit the swish of water lessened to the pattering of individual drops. Policemen went on walking about upstairs. Their voices sounded on the staircase. Mr. Shew started telling anecdotes.
Presently Superintendent Cust came down and asked Margaret if she had heard anyone leave the house before the water started. She told him that she had had the radio on. Mr. Cust asked Mr. Shew what he had been doing between half past five and six. The councillor said that he had been reading The Wind in the Willows to his housekeeper, Miss Pattison, who was ill in bed with bronchitis.
Mr. Cust left them and Mr. Shew went on with his anecdotes.
The deluge was almost at an end. It was only a drip-drip from corners and ceiling cracks, when Margaret heard the sound of a key turning in the front door.
She leapt towards it, calling out, “Michael!”
But the sergeant was there before her and when the door opened it was not Michael Haddow who stood there, but Philip Boyle.
He was a short man, slight and wiry, with stiff fair hair that stood up in a brush. His face was a rather red one, with bushy fair eyebrows, hard blue eyes and a small moustache. His manner, which had the assertiveness and suspiciousness of a man who never forgot his rights, was markedly uncordial. He was wearing a loose tweed overcoat of loud pattern and carried a dispatch-case.
Stepping inside, he started rubbing his shoes on the mat.
The sergeant said, “Shouldn’t bother with that if I was you. Place is in a worse mess than you can make it in. Who is he, miss?” He looked over his shoulder at Margaret.
“It’s Mr. Boyle, the top floor tenant,” she replied.
Philip Boyle stared at the sergeant. “What’s happened?” he demanded.
“Burst pipe,” the sergeant said. “Come along in, Mr. Boyle. The superintendent will be glad to see you.”
Philip Boyle looked past the man at Margaret.
“What’s happened?” he repeated sharply.
She shrugged her shoulders slightly and said nothing.
With a look of irritation on his face, Philip Boyle strode forward, and the sergeant, coming immediately after him, called up to Mr. Cust that the man from the top floor had just come in. Leaving Mr. Shew to a fourth cup of tea, Margaret followed them upstairs.
Someone had placed candles on the staircase and landings. In their soft light the devastation of the house had lost its menace, but the amount of destruction showed clearly.
Mr. Cust came to meet Philip Boyle. He greeted him, “A grim homecoming for you this evening, Mr. Boyle.”
“What is all this about?” Boyle’s voice was naturally harsh. “What’s happened? Does one have to have police in to deal with a burst pipe?”
The plumber sidled past them. “I’m here to deal with the burst pipe,” he said. “Joseph Loveday, Plumber and Practical Builder. There’s a hole in the main pipe up there big enough to stick your three fingers through.”
He went on downstairs.
Mr. Cust stood aside so that Philip Boyle could see into the cupboard.
“This is why we’re here, Mr. Boyle.”
In Margaret’s head at that moment there woke echoes of the laughter with which Paul Wragge had greeted the dead man. It was her impulse to plunge downstairs immediately. But suddenly she realised that Paul Wragge himself was standing beside her. He was a tall man whose wide shoulders should have been squarer than they were, whose fine-drawn features should never have been ravaged by the fiend-ridden imagination that possessed him.
As if she had some responsibility concerning him, Margaret stayed where she was.
But there was no laughter in Philip Boyle’s reaction to what he saw. He simply clutched the banisters and looked as if he wanted to be sick.
“Have you ever seen this man before?” the superintendent asked.
Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, Boyle wiped it over his mouth. He glanced down at the dead man once more and then away again.
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you know him?”
“I—I met him for a few moments once. I don’t know his name.”
“Where did you see him?”
Philip Boyle turned slightly so that his back was towards the landing below where Paul Wragge and Margaret were standing.
“In Mr. Wragge’s flat.”
Margaret glanced quickly at Paul Wragge. He made no movement.
Mr. Cust said, “Oh, in Mr. Wragge’s flat? How long ago?” “I forget.”
“Please try to remember.”
“I can’t. I just remember his face. Perhaps it was six months ago.”
“And now, Mr. Boyle,” Mr. Cust said, bunching up his face in his fingers, “would you mind telling me where you were this afternoon between half past five and six?”
“Was—was that when it happened?”
“Where were you?”
“In my office, of course.”
“Was anyone with you?”
“My secretary, and George Lumley, my partner.”
“They’ll corroborate that?”
“Of course.”
“Would you please tell me where I can get in touch with them?”
Philip Boyle was just starting to give the name of his secretary when, from downstairs, the voice of the borough councillor rose up to them out of the darkness.
“Mr. Boyle,” Mr. Shew called, “I paid four pounds and seventy-nine pence for that whisky you had delivered this evening. You won’t forget it, will you? I paid four pounds and seventy-nine pence. It’s here on the shelf by the front door.”
Philip Boyle was continuing, “Her name’s Adela Burton and—”
But that was the moment when the thought that had been dodging on the outskirts of Margaret’s mind suddenly surrendered itself to the grip of her understanding.
“Don’t believe him!” she cried. “It isn’t true! He was here this afternoon. He was in his flat.”
She came running up the stairs.
He went on, “Miss Adela Burton, Seven Milbury Road—”
“It isn’t true!” Margaret cried again. “If she corroborates it, she’s in it too. He was here this afternoon.”
The superintendent took his hand away from his face, allowing his nose, cheeks and chin to settle back into their proper places.
“What’s this, Mrs. Haddow?” he asked. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“The bread,” she said, “the loaf of bread in his flat. It’s there in a paper wrapper that hasn’t been opened, on his kitchen table. But the baker’s van always calls in the afternoon and Mr. Shew takes the bread in for him and puts it on the shelf by the front door. But it isn’t there now, it’s in his flat on the kitchen table. He came in and picked it up and took it upstairs with him. It couldn’t have been done by the woman who cleans up for him. She hasn’t been here today. The place is full of dirty dishes. It must have been him!”
Philip Boyle’s face had turned a congested crimson. “That’s yesterday’s bread,” he said.
“Ask Mr. Shew,” Margaret retorted. “Didn’t he take a loaf in for you this afternoon and put it on the shelf, and is it there now?”
Philip Boyle swung his arm, aiming his fist at her face. But it never came near her. Mr. Cust caught it and forced it down to his side.
Releasing it, the superintendent said, “Your coat’s damp too, Mr. Boyle, and it hasn’t rained outside this evening.”
Two days later Superintendent Cust explained to the Haddows and to Ferdinand Shew the parts of the situation that they did not understand.
“Boyle met him in Wragge’s flat all right,” he told them, “but met him again later and got to know him pretty well. He’s a man called Winters. He lent Boyle money for his business. I don’t believe Boyle meant to kill him when he brought him to his flat that afternoon, but Winters was demanding his money back and Boyle lost his head and lashed out. He lashed out with a stool, a heavy wooden thing he’s got up there in his sitting-room. And then the water started coming through the ceiling, and Boyle realised he couldn’t do anything about it, as the main tap was in Mr. Shew’s basement, and he realised that if it went on it would soon bring somebody up. So he stowed the body in the cupboard and did a bolt. The water was spouting just outside the cupboard already, that’s how his coat got wet. He must have got out of the house only just before Mrs. Haddow started looking into things. He went back to his office and fixed up with his partner and secretary to fake that alibi for him. The partner would have been as much affected as Boyle if they’d had to produce the money, and it seems the secretary’s the partner’s mistress. Together with the fact that Winters once paid attention to Wragge’s wife, which Wragge was afraid to admit, he thought he’d got things all nice and safe. But he forgot that he’d picked up the loaf of bread. It was just one of those little automatic actions that so often give people away. It’s those, as often as not, that tell you all you need to know about them.”
“Well, I trust,” Mr. Shew said, “and so, I’m sure, does Mrs. Haddow, that such a thing never happens again. D’you know, we haven’t had a drop of water in the house for two days? Of course, we couldn’t turn it on again until the pipe was mended, and that night it froze again and it’s been frozen ever since. I don’t know when we shall be able to lead a normal life. And my poor Miss Pattison’s no better. Of course”—and he tittered—“it’s really very amusing in some ways. Here am I, Chairman of the Baths and Cemeteries Committee, and I can’t get a bath!”
“Perhaps you could get a coffin,” Mr. Cust suggested, bunching all his features together and laughing through his fingers.