Friday

I

Basingstoke’s young friend, whose name was Bland, sat up late on Thursday night, making notes on the story that had been told to him. He went to sleep and woke up thinking about it on Friday morning. He thought about it while he washed, brushed his teeth and ate a breakfast of toast, marmalade and coffee. Then he washed up, meditating on questions of literary forgery and murder. He reflected with pleasure on the fortunate circumstance that he had taken this week for his summer holiday. It had been spent partly in the Courts and partly in the theatre (he maintained that one could learn a great deal about criminal psychology by watching a good actor); and now his holiday allowed him to visit the public library and return, within half an hour, with a copy of the standard edition of Passion and Repentance, and two or three books of criticism which mentioned it. The sunlight shone through the glass skylight and brightened one half of the room; the other half was permanently in the shade.

Bland read first of all the critics’ view of the book, which he found in general unenlightening. They praised, or disparaged, imagery and metre – “vivid” and “unhealthy” were words much used – but admirers and detractors were singularly uninformative about the subject of the poems. “He writes with power, and a frankness many will deprecate as unseemly, of his own marriage,” wrote the Victorian, R H Hutton; while a modern critic observed that “The poems express continually and monotonously, in metaphors restricted but powerful, the warring of Puritanism and sensuality in the poet’s complicated nature. It is of no particular poetic relevance to remark that these sonnets obviously had their origin in the author’s married life; and although human curiosity makes it inevitable that we should wonder just what facets of Rawlings’ marriage drove him to rid his bosom of such perilous stuff, it would be both idle and impertinent to carry these speculations into uncomfortable detail.” It might be impertinent, Bland thought with some irritation, but could hardly be called idle just at this moment of time. He turned to the book, and read the first poem in the series:

 

Adam to Eve: “This breast hard as an apple,

These slim, straight thighs, are built from dung and dirt.

The vitriol sucked from each tautened nipple

Runs in the veins of all whom life has hurt.

What is man born to but a long denying,

Who one day says, I will be good forever

And in an hour feels on him like a fever

The dark desire that leads to loss and sighing?”

And Eve to Adam: “Enter my strong arms,

Rest there at peace, and close those guilt-dazed eyes

That long have seen mirages of content.

Sleep, sleep; absorb my image and my scent,

Receive this benison of love that warms

The spirit to a human Paradise.”

 

Poetry was at any time less congenial reading to the young man than accounts of famous trials, and he began to think the interpretation of poetry no less complicated. He read this first sonnet three times, and then made no more of it than that the poet considered love as something desirable but wicked, and that the female principle (represented by “Eve”) lured men away from good towards evil. He sighed a little, and read on. In an hour he had finished the little book, and methodically began to make notes on it.

The notes, however, were really no more than an extension of Basingstoke’s remarks on the previous evening. The first twenty sonnets might be called passionate and the next repentant, he reflected, although the repentance itself was both self-pitying and in itself highly passionate. It did seem, however, that the first twenty poems celebrated “sin” with a good deal of zest, in obscure metaphors, and that the last twenty expressed regret for sinning. When Bland had got as far as this with his notes, he put down his pencil in despair. Perhaps he was altogether wrong in thinking that there was some connection between the text of this book and the case. Or perhaps, after all, as Basingstoke had suggested, there was a secret attached to one particular copy. He ruffled the pages absently, and they opened at the twentieth sonnet – the halfway point, and the culmination of the poems of “Passion”:

 

Out of the sighs and anguish beauty comes.

Or is it beauty? Can we give the name

To what’s begot in stealth and sin and shame,

To lute of Lucifer and devil’s drums?

Look then upon this face, unearthly fair,

And radiant with everlasting wrong,

And wonder at what makes a poet’s song,

Grieve at the heavy burden humans share.

For all, all share it: this small errant son,

The germ of darkness and ecstatic joy,

That tender mother cradling her boy,

And most of all this lover of the sun.

Who stretches arms to woman, not to God,

Makes for his back a ripe and eager rod.

 

As he read and re-read these lines they changed from almost meaningless rhetoric into words weighty with a meaning that clarified the whole case: they joined with the other sonnets and the drawing on Jebb’s blotter and the theft of copies of the book and with many other facts to make a picture that was not complete, but was within its limits clear. He sat for a little while with his fair head above the book, thinking of what he had been told, and of what he had read. Then he consulted a date and some details in an old Who’s Who, and an illustration in another book on his shelf. It seemed that these were what he had expected, for he nodded. He wandered aimlessly round the great room, rubbing his finger on the tops of books as if to assure himself that they were not dusty, pulling straight the counterpane on his bed. Then he slapped his hand on the table, said “Of course,” picked up a trilby hat and almost ran out of the dungeon room, slamming the door after him. In the street he jumped on to a moving bus, changed on to another, and booked a fare to Blackheath.

 

II

Vicky woke with a bad taste in her mouth, and a feeling that something was wretchedly wrong. She saw that she had overslept. The time was half-past nine. In her misery and self-absorption on the previous night she had forgotten to set the alarm.

Such a happening can lend a tone to the whole day. Her sense of injury was not decreased by the facts that the water ran lukewarm from the hot tap, and that the haddock for breakfast was almost cold. She made a poor breakfast, but sat on at the table reading the paper, and had just found an interesting item about the arrival in London of the King and Queen of Italy, with the handsome Prince of Piedmont, when the telephone rang in the hall. As she went to answer it, Edward popped his head out of the dispensary. She took off the receiver, heard Anthony’s voice and turned to Edward, who was hovering uneasily. “Oh – it’s for you, is it?” he said. “Didn’t know you were up. Come in and see me when you’ve finished, will you?” She nodded, and the baize door leading into his dispensary closed.

“Hullo,” she said.

“Hullo, is that you, Vicky? This is Anthony.” She made no reply to an observation so self-evident. “I just wondered how you were. If you got home all right, and all that.”

“Perfectly, thank you. I came by train.”

“Oh, that’s good. Jolly good. But I say, you should have waited for me, you know.”

“You were busy talking to Uncle Jack.”

“Oh, yes,” Anthony said with noticeable constraint, and offered no explanation of that mysterious conversation.

“How’s your head?” she asked, and he responded eagerly: “Much better, thanks. Taken off the bandage today. Bit of a swelling, but nothing really.” She almost heard a deep breath being taken, and then a kind of roar came out of the telephone. “I say, Vicky old girl, sorry about that spot of trouble we had. All my fault. Do forgive me. Can’t we meet and have a talk?”

She heard him with delight, but it would never do to show it. She said airily, “I’d really forgotten about it – you were being so silly.” It would never do to show him that she was anxious to see him. He could take her over to Uncle Jack’s tomorrow. “I’m awfully busy today. What are you doing tomorrow afternoon? I could see you then if you like.”

There was a stammer of dismay. “To-tomorrow afternoon. Well, as a matter of fact, Vicky, you see –”

“You’re busy?” she said sharply. “Don’t bother to explain.”

“No, it’s not – well, yes, I am busy but – it’s something I can’t put off. Tomorrow morning I could –”

“Don’t put yourself to any trouble on my account. Goodbye.” She banged down the receiver and, without giving herself a chance to consider what she had done, charged through the green-baize door where Edward was sitting, looking very worried indeed. “I’ve found the adrenaline,” he said.

“Oh, have you? That’s one trouble the less. Where was it?”

“That’s the extraordinary thing,” Edward said with gloomy triumph. “It wasn’t in the poisons cupboard. It was on the shelf among all the other things – not at all where it should have been. I can’t think how it got there.”

“Perhaps you put it there yourself by mistake,” she suggested, and he looked at her severely.

“Please don’t be flippant. It might be very serious if this bottle got into unauthorised hands. The action of adrenaline stimulates the heart, and if administered to somebody whose heart was weak –” He held up a small bottle, and shook his head gravely.

“I suppose you’ve handled that bottle thoroughly, so that there’s no chance of any finger-prints being found on it?” she said crossly. “Yes; I thought so. Can you remember how much was in it? Does any seem to be missing?”

“As a matter of fact,” Edward said reluctantly, “there doesn’t seem to be any missing at all.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“I don’t know.” Edward ran a hand through his thin hair. “Yes, I do. It’s all your fault.” She looked at him in surprise. “I’ve had one or two lapses of memory lately. They are quite brief and so far as I can discover I act in a perfectly rational manner during them, but they are none the less distressing. I attribute them to worry about the practice, aggravated by this affair in which you’ve got involved.”

“Nonsense,” said Vicky briskly. “Anyway, you say the adrenaline’s all there. Do you know what I should do about those lapses of memory, if I were you?” He looked at her enquiringly. “I should see a doctor.” She went off into peals of laughter.

“I’ve asked you before not to be flippant. I feel a strong sense of responsibility. After all, I am head of the family.”

“This branch of it.” He looked at her again with apparent lack of comprehension, and she said, “Uncle Jack’s the head of the family, if you want to use such phrases.” He was still staring at her when the telephone bell rang again, and she said hurriedly, “I’ll answer it.” The voice that spoke to her was not Anthony’s, but another that in its oily gratiness seemed unpleasantly familiar. After a moment she recognised it as that of Inspector Wrax.

“Miss Rawlings? I wonder if you can oblige me with a little information? Can you tell me the year of birth of the members of your family?”

“What?” She could not believe her ears.

With elaborate patience, the Inspector repeated, “The year of birth of the various members of your family. Your father died three years ago, I believe.”

“Yes.”

“That leaves, then, your mother, your brother and your-self; your uncle, and – I understand your uncle has a son.”

“Yes.”

“If you can give me this information it will save some routine enquiries, and I shall be most grateful to you. Are you there, Miss Rawlings?”

“What do you want to know for?”

The Inspector lubricated his voice a little. “It is purely a matter of routine. Of course, if you are unwilling to assist us –” He left the sentence in the air, and Vicky paused to consider.

“Why should I be?”

“Exactly,” the Inspector said heartily. “Why should you be?”

“My mother is fifty-four years old – that is, she was born in –”

“Eighteen-seventy,” the Inspector said. “Her maiden name was Muriel Parks, wasn’t it?”

“I – yes, I believe it was.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Yes, of course I know. But what can my mother’s maiden name have to do with this affair?”

“Nothing at all, very likely,” said the Inspector soothingly. “And your brother?”

“He was born in 1896 – he’s twenty-eight; and I was born four years later – I’m twenty-four this year. Uncle Jack is sixty-three – that means he was born in –”

“Eighteen-sixty-one.”

“Yes, that’s right. And his wife died ten years ago, just before the war began, when Philip was seven years old – so he was born in 1907.”

“That’s most helpful, Miss Rawlings. I’m very much obliged to you.” He rang off before she had time to ask the questions that were at the tip of her tongue. Edward’s head was poked round the baize door again. “Who was that?” he asked.

“The police inspector.” She stood with her hand on the black telephone, as if she were mesmerised.

“And what did he want?” Edward asked pettishly. When she told him he was more annoyed than astonished. “Really, I do call that unwarrantable. He’s prying into our private affairs. I trust you didn’t tell him.”

“Of course I did.”

“You should have left him to find it out for himself.” Edward fidgeted with a waistcoat button. “The whole thing is a calamity. People are looking at me in the street in a very peculiar way, and I can’t say that I blame them. What did he want with that information?”

Vicky took her hand off the telephone. She had suddenly remembered Anthony’s evasiveness. “How the devil should I know?”

 

III

The day was bright and warm when Basingstoke’s young friend got off his bus at Blackheath station and walked briskly up Peaceful Vale. Within two minutes he was away from the brisk grocery and greengrocery shops of the village. Quiet Georgian houses with decorous front gardens lined one side of the road, confronted by equally subdued and respectable shops. Bland stopped before one of these, which bore the name “Lewis” outside in lettering of faded gold; this shop was more unobtrusive, even, than the rest, for its front shutters were closed. He rapped tentatively upon the shutters and heard a faint and curious noise inside, which he presently identified as the miaowing of a cat. He walked down a narrow alleyway at the side of the shop, and stopped before a green door, which was a side entrance to the bookshop. Outside this door he noticed, with a faint feeling of surprise, two quart bottles of milk. The green door opened on to a back garden and a path led through the garden to what was presumably the door of the small house, which contained the bookshop. This door was open and from inside it the shadow of a man stretched out into the sunlit garden. The shadow, to be exact, was not that of a man, but of the lower half of a man, and it was cast, solid and seemingly permanent, with its vast legs extending down the asphalt path outside the door. The young man Bland stood with his hand on the latch of the green door, aware that there was something very wrong with this shadow, but unable to analyse his knowledge; until suddenly he realised that a man standing in a doorway, with the light behind him, does not throw the shadow of his feet but of his head, so that it should be an enormous head, and not enormous feet, visible outside this kitchen door. The man inside, then, was in some way defying the law of gravity, but as Bland came to that conclusion his attention was drawn from it by a sudden sharp pain in his left leg. He looked down, startled, to see a great blue Persian cat stretching against him, and staring up at him out of reflective amber eyes.

He pushed the cat down impatiently, and looked again towards the door: but now the shadow had disappeared. For a moment the space in the doorway was blank, and then it was filled by Basingstoke – a Basingstoke who held a clasp knife in his hand, and whose face was grey. He made a gesture to Bland, and the young man hurried across the garden. With a shudder, Basingstoke pointed inside the door and then stepped out into the garden, drawing into his lungs great gusts of air.

The room from which he had come was, as Bland had surmised, the kitchen. Unwashed dishes and plates lay in the sink; saucers were on the floor, but there was no milk in them; there was a strong and sickening smell of cats, and a buzz of flies; and sprawled over the stone floor of the kitchen was a body which the young man recognised from Basingstoke’s description as that of the bookseller, Jonathan Jacobs. A white cat was licking at his face. Bland pushed away the cat, controlled his feeling of nausea, and bent down to look more closely at the bookseller.

His face was purplish in colour, and his tongue hung out, swollen and discoloured. A thin but strong-looking piece of rope was strung round his neck. He was wearing old flannel trousers and a corded dressing gown. Looking up at the ceiling, Bland saw a hook, of the kind that is often used for hanging meat, with a small piece of rope coming down from it. The man had been hanging, then, and it was his shadow that had shown so grotesquely through the doorway; Basing-stoke (Bland remembered the clasp knife in his hand) had cut him down, standing on a chair to do it. It was this chair, presumably, that had been kicked away, Bland thought with a frown, when the bookseller hanged himself. At least there was no other chair in the kitchen. He bent down again by the bookseller, and his mouth made an O of surprise. He touched a small white patch by the man’s ear, and examined the cups, teapot, and dishes in the sink carefully. Then he walked down the passage and into the room at the back of the bookshop, staring at the floor all the time. In this room it seemed that he found what he had been looking for. He straightened up, went out of the house, and joined Basingstoke, who was sitting despondently in the garden.

“I came to see him as you suggested, and found him like that,” the tall man said. “It was awful. That damned kitchen was full of cats – all pawing at him. I think that was what really upset me. I couldn’t let him stay up there like that. I had to cut him down.”

“So I saw,” said his friend, whose rosy cheeks and undisturbed manner presented a queer contrast to Basingstoke’s almost distraught appearance.

“There’s one consolation.” Basingstoke looked towards the open doorway. “At least this ends it.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s just as you said last night. He was the forger himself; obviously, and lied when he said he got the copies from Cobb. He knew the game was up.” His young friend looked at Basingstoke with an expression that suggested a certain disappointment in his companion’s mental powers, and said in his soft voice, “Oh, I don’t think so. I mean, I don’t think he committed suicide. It was rather a fragile rope, don’t you think? It might have broken under the strain of the drop.”

Basingstoke looked at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. “But – it didn’t break.”

“Because he was killed first, and then strung up there. When you hang yourself,” he explained, and Basingstoke flinched a little, “you kick away the chair and drop, imposing a sudden strain on the rope. This rope might have broken, and I don’t think he’d have used it when he had a good thick cord on his dressing gown. On the other hand, a murderer wouldn’t worry about the rope in the same way.” He smiled faintly, and added: “Or at least, not for the same reasons.”

Basingstoke gulped. His face was showing a healthier colour now. “That seems very fine-spun.”

Bland’s hair gleamed like metal in the sunlight. “My dear fellow, there’s no doubt about it. How long ago did you get here?”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

“Very well. He died this morning. He had drunk a cup of tea before committing suicide – the pot was still faintly warm, and so were the dregs in the cup. But he had put down no milk for the twelve cats he was so fond of. He had committed suicide before the arrival of the milkman, then – because the milk is outside the door now. Would one expect a suicide, that self-condemned man, to take his early morning cup of tea? Well, possibly. Just possibly. But would he be in such a hurry that he would leave his beloved cats unfed? Surely not.” He went on remorselessly. “And finally, surely he would not go so far as to shave in order to appear a presentable corpse? But Jacobs did shave this morning – there is a dab of cream just by his ear. No, no, my friend, he was killed in that little room behind his bookshop – there are signs of a struggle on the linoleum back there – and then dragged into the kitchen and strung up.”

Basingstoke looked at his friend with unfeigned admiration. “I say, you’re wonderfully quick. But why should anyone want to kill him?”

“I think I know why.”

Basingstoke laughed. “And you know who it was too, I suppose?”

Bland’s cherubic face was grave. “I think I know who it was.”

“Who?”

“The answer to that question may be inside, though I doubt it. But we ought to look.”

Basingstoke’s scar twitched. “I don’t much fancy going in again.” The young man made no reply, but stepped towards the kitchen door. Basingstoke followed unwillingly. They skirted the thing that lay on the floor, and Bland looked only cursorily at the bookshop and its little inner room. They went up a narrow flight of stairs into the three rooms on the first floor. One of them, obviously a lumber-room, was crammed with odds and ends of the bookseller’s stock. Another was a bathroom, and here Bland paused only long enough to point out the damp shaving brush. The third room had been the bookseller’s bedroom, and here Bland paused on the threshold. Basingstoke was about to enter and put his hand on the iron bedstead, when his friend checked him sharply.

“Don’t do that. If there was anything here, it has been taken. I don’t see any signs of disorder, but I’ll swear that this room has been searched, and there may be a crop of fingerprints. We’d better inform the police.” With a glance at his friend and a slight smile, Bland said, “I think we shall both of us be in for an unhappy half-hour – you for cutting down the body, and me for being here at all. You say the Inspector’s unpleasant?”

Basingstoke was given no chance to say what the Inspector was like, at that time, for as they walked out of the garden through the little green door they met him coming down the passage. He glared at them and said to Basingstoke, “What are you doing here?” but without waiting for an answer to that question, asked two more. “Where’s Jacobs? Why isn’t his shop open?” When Basingstoke told him what had happened, the Inspector stood staring at him as though he could not believe his ears. Then he went in and looked at the body. His expression was not pleasant. “What the devil did you cut him down for?” With savage mockery, he asked, “Did he make you feel sick? Well, let me tell you, you make me feel sick with your theories and conclusions. Who do you think had your precious book at the time you were telling Jacobs all about it?” He gave a kind of snarling snort. “He had it himself. What do you think of that, Mr Basingstoke?”

“Had it himself?”

“Those crooks who knocked out your friend Shelton were doing the job for Jacobs, and passed on the book to him afterwards. He certainly made a monkey out of you.”

“You mean to say that he deliberately put me on to the track of Cobb, knowing Cobb wasn’t the forger?”

Bland said quietly, “It’s because Jacobs knew the identity of the forger that he was murdered.”

Inspector Wrax’s hot eyes passed over Bland, and he said to Basingstoke, “What the devil’s this? Something out of Sunday school?”

“He’s a friend of mine. I’ve told him something about the case.”

“Oh, you have.” He addressed Bland for the first time, as he said, “And what makes you talk about murder, young man?” Bland told him and, to Basingstoke’s surprise, the Inspector listened. At the end of the recital he grunted, and said, “I suppose you call yourself an amateur detective?”

“No. I call myself a clerk on holiday.”

“And I suppose you think you’ve solved this case?”

The young man’s smile was cherubic. “Yes.”

The Inspector glared at him. “Now, take my advice, sonny. I don’t say you’re not clever. You may be the original boy wonder, for all I know or care. But keep out of this.” He pointed a threatening finger. “I’ve got my plans laid, and I don’t want them messed up by a schoolboy amateur Sherlock.” His glance ranged to include Basingstoke. “By a couple of amateur Sherlocks. Understand?”

They said they understood.

 

IV

When Inspector Wrax put down the telephone after speaking to Victoria Rawlings, he had no idea of going to Blackheath. He sat at his desk and stared with his hot, dark eyes at a spot on the opposite wall. Then another telephone on his desk rang, and when he lifted the receiver he heard Sergeant Thynne’s voice, more squeaky than usual with excitement. “We’ve got Billy the Toff, sir. Picked him up in Limehouse.”

The Inspector took it calmly. “Good. Any news from Italy?”

“Give us a chance, sir.” That appeal was the Sergeant’s stock-in-trade. “Do you want Billy in now? He’s a pretty tough customer, and smart with it.”

“Oh, is he? Send him in.”

When the youngish man with the dark moustache was brought in, the Inspector was writing at his desk. He looked up and said, as though his visitor were paying a social call, “Ah, Nugent. I don’t think we’ve met before, but you’ve probably heard of me. My name’s Wrax.” Then he settled down again to writing in a notebook.

Equally conversationally, the man said, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

With a smile, Inspector Wrax said, “What would you say to robbery with violence?” The youngish man said nothing. “Doesn’t appeal to you? Then shall we say – accessory after the fact?” His voice did not change in tone as he said, “You’ve done it wrong this time, Nugent. You’re mixed up in murder.”

“Not me,” said Nugent confidently, and stroked his small moustache.

The Inspector looked at him steadily, and under the gaze of those strange eyes it seemed that Nugent’s confidence wilted just a little. “You’re a pretty smart boy, aren’t you? And you’ve got a nice little organisation. I’ve admired it from a distance for some time. Ever heard of a man named Jebb?”

“Saw a piece about him in the paper. Somebody knocked him on the head.”

“Somebody knocked him on the head,” Inspector Wrax echoed. “Ever hear of a man named Cobb? Somebody shot him,” he said in mimicry of Nugent’s tone. He smacked his hand on the table. “And you’re mixed up in it, Nugent.”

“You know that’s not true, Inspector. My boys had nothing to do with any of that.”

“What about the book you stole from Mr Shelton?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Or of Mr Rawlings either, I suppose? Or of a little book called Passion and Repentance?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nugent was looking much less happy.

“Shelton says you assaulted him – twice.”

“No.”

“Robbed him of a valuable book.”

“I’m not a reading man.” Nugent touched his moustache.

“You are smart,” said the Inspector admiringly. “I suppose you were more interested in his diamond ring.”

“We never took a ring off him,” Nugent cried. He stopped. The Inspector was showing his teeth in a laugh. He added sulkily, “Or anything else.”

Inspector Wrax was twisting a small piece of metal in his hands. He spoke persuasively. “Look here, Nugent. This won’t do you any good. Shelton recognised your photograph, and so did his girlfriend. They’ll identify you. You can’t wriggle out of it.”

“If I knew what you were talking about,” said Nugent, “which I don’t – I’d say it was a different thing from murder. Don’t see any connection.”

“You can take my word for it that there is a connection. Those books you pinched had something to do with the murder of two men. Just let me tell you the way it works out for you. You won’t mind me doing that, will you?” The smile on Inspector Wrax’s face was benevolent, but the dark eyes under his beautiful white hair were hot.

“Say what you like,” said Nugent. “It won’t hurt me. I’m keeping my mouth shut. I had nothing to do with any murder, and you can’t prove I had.”

“Perhaps not. But I’m telling you now, Nugent, that if you keep your mouth shut I’ll book you for accessory to murder as sure as my name’s Sam Wrax.” Nugent looked into the Inspector’s eyes, and then away. “And you know what they say about me – I never book a man on a charge without making it stick. Believe me, Nugent, I shan’t mind one little bit making it stick in your case. If a man’s against me – I break him. I think you’d be foolish to keep your mouth shut, but, of course, if you want to, that’s your privilege.” There was a sudden snap as the Inspector broke the piece of metal he had been twisting. He showed it to Nugent with a whimsical smile, and tossed it into a wastepaper basket.

“Well?” Nugent’s voice was slightly hoarse.

“Your other course would be to answer some questions. If you do that, I’ll do what I can for you. I make no promises, Nugent, but I’ll say this. If nothing fresh comes in, we’ll be able to forget the murder charge, and I might be able to induce Shelton to drop the other.”

The Inspector saw with interest that beads of perspiration had formed round Nugent’s moustache. The hand that came up to wipe them away was trembling slightly. He said, “I had nothing to do with any murder, and I’m not a nark. You’ll get nothing out of me.”

The Inspector pressed a bell on his desk and stood up. The corners of his mouth were drawn down, and his eyes were gleaming. “I’m charging you as accessory to the murder of Arthur Jebb, Nugent, and don’t look for any mercy from me, for by God you won’t get it.” Nugent wiped his face with his hand again. A detective-sergeant opened the door, and the Inspector made a violent gesture. “Take him away. Charge him as accessory to Jebb’s murder.” He turned his back.

“Wait a minute,” Nugent said faintly. The Inspector swung round, glared at him, and then said to the detective-sergeant, “Get out.” When the door had closed he sat on the edge of his desk with his face inches away from Nugent’s, and said, “Your boys took that copy of Passion and Repentance off Shelton, didn’t they?” Nugent nodded. “And you were responsible for the other thefts from public libraries and private houses, weren’t you?” He nodded again. The Inspector’s voice was not loud, but bitter. “All right. You’re not a great reader. Who were you working for?”

“Jacobs,” said Nugent. Inspector Wrax stared at him. “A bookseller – Jonathan Jacobs. Keeps a shop out at Blackheath.”

Inspector Wrax walked slowly round his desk and sat down behind it. “If you’re codding me, Nugent, you’ll be in worse trouble than you are.”

“I’m telling the truth, Inspector.” There could be no doubt of the man’s earnestness. “Some of my boys knew this Jacobs from years ago. Sometimes he’s come in on screwing a joint, see, but they didn’t like him too much because he was a bit milky.”

“He hasn’t got a record,” the Inspector said sharply, and Nugent waved a hand in a nervous gesture.

“Not in this country, maybe. This boy of mine knew him in the Cape a matter of twenty years back. He was a queer cove then, by all accounts, always spouting books, and when he came over here he gave up the game and opened a shop – a bookshop.”

“Was it a cover for something?”

With disgust Nugent said, “From what I heard, he ran it straight. I never heard his name, though, till this boy of mine said he wanted us to do a little job for him. It was easy as kiss your hand – knocking off a book from a private house – and he could easily have done it himself; only he was too milky. Anyway, we did it, and I passed over the book myself. Only time I saw him. We did a few more jobs for him afterwards, houses and public libraries. Queer they were, because it was always the same book.”

“Passion and Repentance?”

Nugent nodded again. “I don’t know about the passion,” he said, “but I’m bloody well repenting now.”

“Did he tell you what he wanted them for?”

“He said he had a crazy rich old gentleman who wanted to make a corner in them. Sounded to me like he was sprucing, but it was none of my business.”

“He never gave you a hint who he was acting for?”

“Not a smell. I only met him the once. After that he telephoned, gave me the dope, and we went to work. There was nothing to it. Like taking chocolates from a baby.”

“What about the copy you took from Shelton?”

Nugent clicked his teeth. “Somebody slipped up there. It was a copy of one of these books that had come up for sale. Jacobs got on the wire and said he wanted it all done legal – send along one of the boys and buy it for up to a hundred nicker, which should cover it easy. But it didn’t. Then Jacobs told me he was going to make a bigger offer. That was no good, so he told me to get it any way I liked. I did that, and he had it Tuesday evening.”

So when Jacobs was talking to that half-smart Basingstoke and the Rawlings girl, the Inspector thought, he was stringing them along good and proper. “What else?”

“That’s all there is. I don’t know more than a baby what it was all about, or anything about this Jebb and Cobb you’re talking about.”

The Inspector pressed the bell again. When the sergeant came he said, “Take him away.”

“What’s the charge, Inspector?”

“Grievous bodily harm.”

“But, look here –” Nugent said, and the Inspector gave him a hard stare.

“What do you want, Nugent, jam on it? I told you I’d see what I could do with Shelton, and I will. You can thank your lucky stars I’m a man of my word.”

“I want to see my solicitor,” Nugent said, in a kind of wail.

“See who you like, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay in jail. It’s going to be the safest place for you in the next few days.”

The Inspector rang through to Sergeant Thynne, who had no more news. “How did you get on with Nugent?” the Sergeant asked.

“He was a half-smart bastard,” the Inspector said amiably. “I’m going down to Jacobs’ bookshop at Blackheath. I’ll be surprised if I don’t add him to the bag.”

But the Inspector was surprised.

 

V

When the Inspector let them go, the two young men returned to Central London. Bland seemed uncommonly cheerful, while Basingstoke was sunk in a profound gloom. In the railway carriage, Bland asked what his friend was doing with himself. “I’m going to old Jebb’s funeral,” Basingstoke said. “Ruth Cleverly asked if I’d like to be there, and I feel in a kind of way that I should. And tomorrow I’ve half-promised to go down to Millingham and see Vicky’s uncle. I don’t think I shall, though.” He sighed. “I’m sick of this business.”

“Have you lost your sense of curiosity?”

Basingstoke looked out of the window and his scar twitched. “As I said last night, I feel that if it weren’t for my damned curiosity all this might not have happened.”

“You’re wrong there.” Bland shook decisively his well-brushed fair head. “It’s difficult philosophically to attribute a beginning to any happening –”

“Oh, philosophically. Do you think I’m talking about philosophy?”

“But in an immediate practical sense you only lighted, as you might say, a fuse which was already laid. Somebody had to light it some time, and it was a coincidence that it happened to be you. You might as well blame Shelton for buying the book.”

Basingstoke said, with a snort worthy of the Inspector, “Don’t you think I do that every day? I hope I never see that lumbering ape again. I hope I never see any of them again.” He turned his full face to Bland, and bent towards him, pointing to his scar. “This thing is a wretched disfigurement, isn’t it?”

Bland did not move away. “If you let it be.”

“There are times when I envy everybody who doesn’t carry about with them a mark like this, everybody who’s shaped to a fairly reasonable physical pattern. ‘Oh, why was I born with a different face?’ But I don’t think I should mind if I’d been born with a different face. It’s having it thrust on me that makes it hard to bear.”

Bland made no comment. He knew the story that Basingstoke had told to Victoria Rawlings. Presently he said, “That might be a theme for a novel. Comparison of the effects of physical and emotional maladjustment. Sometimes the most dangerous disfigurements are inside you – one can pay a great deal for presenting a perfectly harmonious front to the world.”

“What the devil do you mean by that?” Basingstoke stared at him curiously.

“I was suggesting a theme for a novel. Don’t you think the contrast might be worked up quite effectively? The battle between two men, one of them physically and the other mentally disfigured, for a woman. Which of them gets her?”

Basingstoke had his long legs stuck out, staring at them. “Not much doubt of that.”

“It depends which of them gives up,” Bland said with emphasis, and Basingstoke looked at him with renewed interest. “You understand, I’m talking about a novel.”

Still staring at his long legs, the scarred man said, “Do you think I should go down there tomorrow?”

“It sounds very interesting. In fact I should like to go myself. And I should like to meet Miss Cleverly. Couldn’t you take her along with you?”

“All right, all right. I don’t suppose old Rawlings will mind if you both come along with me.” He relapsed into his inspissated gloom, and then said, “How does this man Jacobs’ death affect it all? It seems to me like a jumble perpetrated by a homicidal maniac. Is that what you think?” Bland shook his head. “Do you mean to say that there’s some logical sequence in all this?”

“Given the murderer’s point of view, quite logical.”

“Well, I can’t see it,” said Basingstoke complainingly, but his friend did not enlighten him, and they hardly spoke again before they parted at Charing Cross.

 

Why had he come here? Basingstoke wondered, as he walked slowly among rows of marble urns and graves ornamented by white stone chips, to the spot in the middle distance where a small group of people was standing. Thinking half-consciously of the scene he had left that morning, the man hanging, horribly, in that small kitchen among the unwashed plates, he stopped and stood staring at a stone which commemorated the death of a boy of twelve. Underneath he read the words, “He rests in the bosom of the Lord.” Why do they accept it, he thought, as he joined the group standing with bowed heads round a brown box that was being lowered into a hole in the ground, why do people accept the fact of death with such unseemly and inhuman placidity, dreaming still that it is their sole link with an imaginary benevolence, instead of regarding it logically as the last indignity making us one with the kingdom of the pig and the dog. He lowered his own head dutifully, but took the opportunity to look round as stones and dirt rattled on the box, and saw with pleasure Ruth Cleverly’s small face, white and strained, and then with a shock of surprise noticed Anthony Shelton’s fair curls beside Blackburn’s elegant figure. When it was over he stepped across to Ruth and took her hand. The smile she gave him was a mockery of her usual gaiety.

“I’m very sorry to be late,” he said, but her hand waved his sorrow impatiently away. He followed the direction of her glance, to where men were filling up the hole in the ground. “It’s a poor end we come to, isn’t it?” he said.

“A poor end and a sad one, for him.” She spoke without her usual brusqueness. “He had so little out of life. All he wanted was bound up with that book, and then somebody took it away. Like taking a toy from a child.”

He looked round at the mass of marble, and his shoulders gave a shrug that was almost a shiver. “I thought there might be no one you knew here, but I see I was wrong.”

“That snake,” Ruth Cleverly said bitterly, looking at the retreating back of Michael Blackburn. “Why was he here with Shelton?” They were standing alone by the grave now, and the men who were filling it in stared at them. Again Basingstoke felt inclined to shiver. “Shall we go?” he asked, and without answering she turned and they walked together down the formal and well-kept paths towards the neat iron gate. With his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slightly hunched, Basingstoke brooded over his own problems. “Do you believe that when we die we’re gone?” he asked, and pushed out his lips. “Pfft. Like a light.”

“Don’t know,” said Ruth Cleverly. “Never thought much about it. I suppose, like most people, I believe in – something.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Anyway, I’d like to. Why?”

“I saw someone dead this morning. It started my mind moving in all sorts of queer ways.”

“What –” she began, and then they both became aware of the two tall figures standing at the gate. Anthony smiled awkwardly and shyly, but Blackburn nodded to Basingstoke and spoke, gently and apologetically, to Ruth: “My dear Miss Cleverly, I want to say how sorry I am for my outburst yesterday. I was overwrought, but it was really unpardonable. Do forgive me.”

With no change in her white-faced grimness, Ruth said almost absently, “That’s all right.” Then she added with a flicker of dislike, “Nice of you to come. I didn’t know you thought so much of Arthur.”

“I hope my presence may be taken as a token repentance for harsh words I’ve spoken in the past. But really it’s our young friend here” – his long hand rested on Anthony’s sleeve – “who’s chiefly responsible. I asked him to lunch, and it was his suggestion that we should come on here.”

Three pairs of eyes looked at Anthony – Blackburn’s benevolently, Basingstoke’s with awakened curiosity, and Ruth’s almost blankly. He blushed, and seemed to feel the need of explanation. “I don’t know – I just seemed to feel that – well, hang it all, it was all through me in a way that it happened, wasn’t it? I mean to say, if I hadn’t bought that thing to give to Vicky–” He left the sentence unfinished, and plunged on. “And I did see the chap – with you, Ruth – Miss Cleverly – the day before he died. I thought it was only decent – mark of respect and all that –” He lapsed into silence.

Somebody else, Basingstoke thought, with a feeling of guilt to expiate. He felt for the first time almost warmly towards Anthony, and quite forgot that a little while before he had called him a lumbering ape. “I was saying the same thing myself this morning, on my own account, to a young friend of mine who knows about this case – that I felt responsible in a way for these three deaths because I’d really started off the hunt. And if it’s any consolation to you, he said that I’d only lighted a fuse which was already laid.”

“What?” said Anthony.

“He meant that the roots of it all went back a long way,” Basingstoke said with some irritation.

Blackburn picked an imaginary piece of cotton off his elegant dark-blue suit. “Did you say – three deaths?”

Watching them all, Basingstoke said, “A man called Jacobs was found hanged this morning.” He learned nothing from their expressions, and added: “He was the bookseller who made you an offer for your copy of the book, Shelton. Miss Rawlings and I went to see him.”

“Good Lord, yes,” Anthony said. “The chap Cobb sold all those books to. What an extraordinary thing.”

Blackburn was stroking a long upper lip. “When you say he was found hanged, I take it you mean that he committed suicide. Doesn’t that seem to give grounds for thinking that he may have – ah – laid the fuse?”

“My young friend,” Basingstoke said slowly, “seemed to think that the death was made to look like suicide. That really he was murdered.”

“Your young friend seems ubiquitous,” Blackburn observed politely.

“Wrax believes it,” Basingstoke said with rather unwarranted boldness and watched them carefully as he added with spurious hesitation: “Wrax says that Jacobs was the man responsible for the book thefts.”

Anthony’s brows were bent together, as he tried doggedly to find his way through this maze. “But – why should anybody kill him? If he was responsible for it all?” Basingstoke made no reply, and the four of them stood silent by the cemetery gates in the hard sunlight.

“If we’re going to Lord’s today, my dear Anthony,” Blackburn said gently, “we’d better go.”

The young man roused himself from a kind of stupor of thought. “I suppose we’d better. Can we give you a lift?” Ruth Cleverly shook her head, and the Bentley whirled away in a cloud of dust. When it had gone she said with decision, “That snake’s got something to do with it all.”

“Your feelings do you credit. It’s unpleasant to see him fawning round young Shelton. But I’m sure you’re wrong. He’s only an elderly dilettante with a penchant for youth.”

They walked along the road, like Mutt and Jeff. Her lower lip was thrust out rebelliously. “I’ve chucked my job. What do you think about that?” She did not wait for a reply, but added, “If I hadn’t chucked it, I think it would have chucked me. Henderson as good as told me they didn’t want anyone who mixed themselves up in such unsavoury affairs. I told them I was going to Arthur’s funeral, and left as and from this morning.”

“In that case, if you’ve no commitments, I can ask you to tea.”

“I don’t want anything to eat, but I’ll drink a cup of tea with you. I’m a fool to do it, though. The last cup of tea we had put me at the top of the list of police suspects.”

“I don’t think you are now.” They went into a genteel teashop, and sat down. Still with a vivid recollection of that scene at Blackheath, he said, “If this man Jacobs was murdered, I don’t think you’d have had the strength to lift him so that he was hanging. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Did you find him?”

“I cut him down.” He crumbled a scone. “Did old Rawlings ask you down to see him tomorrow?”

“Yes; when I saw him yesterday. But I don’t intend to go.” She took a piece of thin brown bread and butter and smeared jam on it.

“Why not come down with me?” She stared at him, and he turned his face away.

“Don’t do that,” she said sharply. She made a gesture towards his scar. “Don’t be so damned sensitive, shying away like a horse. Nobody will mind it, unless you make them.” She leaned over, touched it lightly with her fingers. “You’re a fool about it. Things like that don’t matter.”

His smile was crooked. “I wish I could believe you. A friend of mine told me the same thing this morning.”

“Your ubiquitous young friend,” she said in a parody of Blackburn’s mellifluous tones. She took another piece of bread and butter.

“He’s really quite remarkable. He thinks he knows who’s behind all this. He’ll be there tomorrow. Do come down. You can’t start looking for a job until Monday morning.”

“Will you promise not to turn away your face?”

He looked at her and felt a melting of the core of hardness inside him, the slow quiescence of the tiger of pride. “I promise,” he said. They laughed together.