PIKE looked at his watch. The hands stood at half an hour after midnight. He looked at Jeffson. He said:
‘About time we were hearing whether the patrols have got anyone, isn’t it?’
Jeffson nodded and crossed the room with heavy tread to the corner where, upon a small and rickety table, the official telephone stood. He picked up the receiver and asked for a number. Pike walked over to the window, edged his way behind a parlour table and stood looking out into the dark, cold night. He drummed with his finger tips upon the glass. Behind him in the warm, brightly lighted little room Constable Birch was striving to master a November cough and Jeffson was holding a muttered conversation with his telephone. Pike went on staring into the darkness. He did not turn until, with the click of a replaced receiver, Jeffson spoke once more in his normal voice.
‘They’ve got three,’ said Jeffson.
Pike wheeled, nearly knocking over the little table. ‘Where are they?’
‘One,’ said Jeffson, ‘down at the police hut by the station and two on the way here now. What shall I do, sir? Tell ’em to get the one from the station up here as well?’
Pike nodded. Once more silence fell. Constable Birch mastered his cough. Jeffson sat upon the edge of the official table and swung massive legs. Pike turned again to the window.
It seemed nearly as many hours, but it was actually ten minutes, before there came the sound of footsteps upon the road outside. Jeffson nodded at Constable Birch, who, putting on his helmet, left the room. They heard his heavy tread in the passage and then, simultaneously with the sound of the front door opening, the click of the gate latch and a tramping upon the path.
Pike and Jeffson waited. There entered to them three Special Constables and two others. The senior of the Special Constables reported. He was a small and stout and excited man. Jeffson handled him well and got rid of him and his two henchmen with admirable speed. The two prisoners were left standing in the middle of the room. Again Jeffson and Pike sat behind the official table, and again Constable Birch sat by the door nursing his helmet.
The prisoners were a tall and dishevelled young man, not quite steady on his feet—Percy Godly—and a small, untidy, nervous and yet truculent person in a black felt hat, enormous horn-rimmed spectacles and a very short-coated and hairy suit.
Godly, swaying gently, rather as a young sapling sways in a light breeze, seemed content to sway. The other, if one could tell by his sudden and instantly repressed movements and his tight-clenched mouth from which the lips seemed completely to have disappeared, was only restraining speech, and hot speech, with the greatest difficulty.
‘Sergeant Jeffson!’ Pike was smoothly official. ‘Do you know these men?’
Jeffson nodded. He indicated first the swayer. ‘That’s young Mr Godly,’ said Jeffson, ‘the other gentleman—I’m afraid I don’t know his name—is something to do with the film business.’
‘My name,’ said the small man in horn-rimmed spectacles, using a voice surprisingly deep and phenomenally fierce, ‘is Spring, Wilfred Spring, and I’d like to know what the hell—’
‘Half a minute, sir, half a minute!’ said Jeffson. Pike smiled a pleasant smile.
‘Sit down, Mr Spring,’ he said. ‘Constable, give Mr Spring a chair.’
Spring exploded. Beneath the shadowing spectacles his dark, clever, somewhat weasley face seemed to grow thinner and darker with his anger.
‘I don’t want your damn chairs,’ he said. ‘All I want to know is what the hell—’
‘Excuse me, sir!’ Pike was smooth. ‘You’ve said that before. If you wait a moment I’ll tell you. Are you resident in Holmdale?’
Spring seemed on the verge of another outburst, then controlled himself with a visible effort.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘14 Collingwood Road.’
‘And this other gentleman?’ Pike looked at Jeffson.
‘Mr Godly,’ Jeffson said, ‘lives with his father, Mr Emanuel Godly, just outside the city at Links Corner.’
‘Qui’ ri’!’ said Mr Godly affably. ‘Absolooly ri’!’ He smiled largely upon the room. The effort seemed to unbalance him, and the sway turned into a stagger.
‘Sorry!’ said Mr Godly.
Constable Birch, displaying initiative, rose and took a chair from a corner and thrust it neatly against Mr Godly’s legs from behind and so had him neatly seated.
‘Good!’ said Mr Godly.
‘Look here!’ burst out Spring. ‘I mean to say, damn it all!’
‘One moment, sir.’ Pike’s tone was noticeably curter. ‘At 9.30 this evening the body of another murdered person was discovered within the bounds of this town. Acting upon my instructions, delivered at about half-past eleven, the police detained everyone found within the town out-of-doors. I am naturally sorry to cause inconvenience, but I am sure you will agree with me that some such step as I took was absolutely essential in the interests of the public.’
Spring glared. The horn-rimmed spectacles slipped a little on his nose. He thrust them back into position with an impatient hand.
‘But, good God!’ he said, ‘you don’t suspect me of—’
‘Don’t go so fast, sir. Naturally I don’t suspect anybody. And yet to do my duty I suspect everybody. It is possible, you know, to do both.’
Pike looked hard at his indignant prisoner. The gaze of his brown eyes met and held the gaze of the other brown eyes behind the spectacles.
‘I am sure,’ said Pike, ‘that you will agree with me, Mr Spring, that personal inconvenience must be borne in these strange circumstances … May I suggest that you sit down?’
‘But blast it, tell me … Oh, all right!’ Mr Spring sat down so hard upon the chair which Constable Birch pushed forward that he almost rebounded from it.
‘Carefoo!’ said Mr Godly, raising an admonishing finger.
‘Jeffson,’ said Pike, ‘where did that Special report that Mr Spring was taken in?’
‘Junction,’ Jeffson said, ‘of Market Road and Collingwood Road. According to the report Mr Spring was coming up Market Road from Chaser’s Bridge—that’s the bridge over the Railway, sir—and he just got to the corner of Collingwood Road when the patrol stopped him. Just after twelve it was.’
‘The blighters,’ said Spring, ‘grabbed hold of me as if I was a criminal.’ He glared at Pike. ‘God alive, man! Can’t you hurry, I want to go home. I’ve just done a hard day’s work—a harder day’s work, I expect, than you’ve ever done in your life. I’ve been on the go ever since half-past four this morning, and I’m tired, damn tired! So would you damn well be! I’ve been on my feet the whole day. I’m directing a film in which we’re using half the blasted Air Force and as their own officers don’t seem to be able to tell the men what to do, I had to do it for them! Always the same story!’
‘Quite!’ said Pike. ‘I’ll try and see that you get back to your house as quickly as I can, Mr Spring. I’m afraid, however, that I shall first have to worry you with some questions. I can assure you, sir, that the more readily and more concisely you answer these questions, so to speak, the quicker you’ll be off home … Now then, Jeffson, please take notes of the questions and Mr Spring’s answers.’
‘Right, sir,’ Jeffson said. ‘Ready when you are.’
‘Now, Mr Spring, would you please tell me what you were doing when found by the patrol.’
‘Walking home.’
‘Where from?’
‘Garage.’
‘What garage is that, Mr Spring?’
‘Damn it, don’t let’s waste time! There’s only one garage in the place.’ Spring twitched about in his chair as if he would like to jump off it and wave frantic arms and legs. His spectacles kept slipping and the thrusts with which he jammed them back into place grew more and more savage.
Jeffson chipped in. He said to Pike:
‘That’s quite right, sir. There’s only one public garage in Holmdale. It’s down by Chaser’s Bridge.’
‘Thanks,’ Pike nodded. ‘Now, Mr Spring, what were you doing at the garage?’
‘What the bloody hell d’you think I was doing at the garage? Having coffee and cake? … I was putting my car away, of course. I keep my car there. It’s too big to go into the garage at the house. Besides, our other car is always in the house garage.’
‘I see. And am I to understand that you had come straight into Holmdale from outside and gone straight to the garage to put your car away and were walking directly home?’
‘You are.’
‘Where had you been outside Holmdale, Mr Spring?’
‘You must forgive me for saying so—I’m afraid I don’t know who you are—but it does seem to take you a very long time to get an idea into your head … I’d been working. I told you that. All day. And I’ve got to work all day tomorrow and I should be very, very much obliged if I could go home. If you’re looking for this lunatic who calls himself The Butcher, it’s not me, although I’m not at all sure I’m not beginning to sympathise with him.’
Pike smiled at that. ‘All right, sir. But we can’t help being slow, you know. We’ve got to be careful. I’m afraid I’m still not clear on this point. Where exactly do you work?’
The tight and somehow fish-like mouth of Mr Spring opened in amazement. He shut it again with a decisive click so loud as to betray the origin of his splendid teeth.
‘Good God!’ he said, and then: ‘Sorry! I’m a film producer. I’m at present working outside Holmdale at the Empire Studios in Enswood. You may have heard of the picture. It’s called “Death in the Air.” I’ve got half the Air Force out on the job—’
‘Yes. Yes. And you finished work at Enswood Studios, Mr Spring, at what time?’
‘I don’t clock off but I should say that when I finally got away it must have been about … let me see … I came home at a steady eighty and it’s about seventeen miles from Enswood … You can say I left Enswood at between twenty and ten to twelve, getting to the garage at about twelve and getting hauled in by your busybodies at just after midnight. I was going home, and, I might tell you, looking forward to a whisky and soda and some food.’
Pike nodded. ‘I see. Was there anyone in the garage, Mr Spring, when you put the car away? Any night porter or anything?’
Spring was silent for a moment. Behind the horn-rimmed spectacles his hot brown eyes were veiled under heavy lids. He said:
‘Can’t remember … Let me see … No, don’t think I saw anyone. I’ve got a special private lock-up there. All I did was just to ram the bus inside, lock the door and start off for home.’
‘I see. Did you happen to notice whether you passed anyone, Mr Spring, between your entrance to Holmdale from the main road and your arrival at the garage?’
‘Couldn’t say.’ Spring shrugged. The black felt hat which had been balanced on the back of his chair fell to the ground with a soft plop. ‘I wasn’t looking, of course.’
‘I shay,’ said Mr Godly, ‘I shay!’
‘Did anyone, Mr Spring,’ said Pike, ‘happen to see you leave the Studios at Enswood. I suppose there’s a gate-keeper there or someone?’
‘I shay,’ said Mr Godly indignantly, ‘the chap’s dropped hish hat. Hatsh on the floor. Shome one might have the deshenshy pick it up.’
‘Yes, there’s a gate-keeper,’ Spring said. He paused a moment. ‘Half a minute though, he wasn’t there tonight, I remember noticing, and the gates were open. I say, though—’
‘Well, that doesn’t matter, sir. There’s sure to have been someone on your staff about when you left the studio building.’
Spring laughed—an awkward little sound. ‘Funny thing, but I’m pretty certain there wasn’t now I come to think of it. I sent them all home about half an hour before I left myself. I was going with the others and I suddenly remembered some notes I had to make for the morning. I went back to my room and jotted them down … Now I come to think of it, I don’t suppose there was a soul saw me from the time my assistant went till I was pulled in by your men.’
‘I shay, ol’ chap,’ said Mr Godly, ‘I shay, d’you know your hatsh on the floor.’
Again Spring laughed. He was staring hard at Pike. ‘Makes it a bit awkward, doesn’t it? I mean the whole thing’s perfectly absurd …’ His tone was noticeably milder.
Pike leaned near to Jeffson and said something to him in a voice so low that it did not carry to any other ears in the room.
Jeffson nodded. ‘Yes, they did, sir. Nothing.’
Pike sat back in his chair again and once more looked at Spring.
‘If shome one,’ said Mr Godly suddenly, ‘doeshn’t pick that hat up, I’m going to. Can’t shtant hatsh on the floor. Get dushty.’
‘I think,’ said Pike, ‘that if you’d like to get along home now, Mr Spring, we could arrange it. No doubt we can get hold of you at any time if we want any further information.’
Behind their shields of glass and tortoise-shell Spring’s eyes for a moment looked astonished. But he said, after a moment’s pause: ‘Thanks … Thanks … Very good of you.’ He stood up—a short, cheeky little figure rather offensively sure of itself. He stooped and picked the black felt hat from the floor.
‘Thank God,’ said Mr Godly. ‘Can’t shtand sheeing hatsh on floor.’
Constable Birch opened the door. With a jerky, bouncing walk, Spring went to it. He paused on the threshold; half turned and flung a ‘Good-night’ over his shoulder.
There was a murmur in answer and he was gone.
‘You’re sure,’ Pike said to Jeffson, ‘that they went right over him?’
‘The Special assured me of that, sir. It’s written down in these notes here. They went through all his pockets. There’s nowhere he could be carrying a weapon.’ Jeffson’s jaw suddenly dropped. ‘Unless …’
‘The car, you mean?’ Pike said. ‘Tell you what: Send this man down to the garage now. He’d better knock up the watchman or whoever’s there and go over the car. He’ll have to do it without a warrant, but he should be able to if he’s sensible.’
‘The best man I’ve got,’ Jeffson said.
The round, childlike face of Constable Birch warmed to a rich red flood of colour.
‘And now,’ said Pike, ‘what about this?’ He was looking at Mr Godly.
Mr Godly, still upon his chair, was, by this time, fast asleep. His head lolled so that his left cheek lay cosily upon his left shoulder. His mouth was wide open. He looked like a stupid but happy child.
Jeffson got up, took two heavy strides and stood over the sleeper. Jeffson’s finger and thumb, each as big as a sausage roll, clamped themselves upon Mr Godly’s right ear and twisted.
‘Wow!’ said Mr Godly, awake. ‘I shay, dam’ shilly thing to do.’
Jeffson went back to his chair.
‘Mr Godly,’ said Pike. His tone was very different from that which he had used to Wilfred Spring. It was the tone of a just but stern parent. ‘Mr Godly,’ he said, ‘I must ask you to pull yourself together. I want you to answer as best you can the questions I am going to ask you. Just a few simple questions. Do you understand?’
‘Not,’ said Mr Godly, ‘one little bit.’
‘I am going to ask you,’ said Pike, pausing long between each word, ‘to answer a few questions.’
‘’S not,’ said Mr Godly, ‘a bit of ewsh. Can’t ansher ’em.’ He smiled beautifully, first at Pike, then at Jeffson and lastly over his shoulder at Police Constable Birch.
Jeffson coughed. He said to Pike:
‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, the boy’s right himself. He’s been three parts canned all his time and now he’s right under, if you follow me.’
Pike’s mouth twitched to a half smile. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Best thing we can do is to keep it here till the morning. Got anywhere to put it?’
‘It’ll do anywhere,’ Jefferson said.
‘Isn’t it about time,’ Pike said, frowning, ‘that that other catch was up here?’
Jeffson looked at his watch. He pursed his lips and a little whistle came from them. ‘I should just say it was, sir.’ His glance travelled to the telephone and then, as if actuated by that glance, the telephone bell rang shrilly. He crossed to it in two strides and plucked off the receiver.
‘Hallo!’ he said. ‘Yes, Jeffson speaking … I was just going to ring you … Where is ’e? … What d’you say? Well, it doesn’t matter a damn who ’e is, ’e ought to have been up here by this time, even if ’e was the Archangel Gabriel … Eh! what’s that? I can’t hear you … And who the hell told you to do that? Oh! … All right!’
Jeffson slammed back the receiver on to its hook with a jar that might have broken it. He turned a frowning face to Pike.
‘Look here, sir,’ he said, ‘that third man was a doctor. Dr Reade. Practises ’ere. They’re just bringin’ him up ’ere when they get stopped by Colonel Grayling—’
‘Who the flop,’ said Pike, ‘is Colonel Grayling?’
‘Head of our branch of Specials. Colonel Grayling knows Dr Reade very well, as we all do in fact. Well, Colonel Grayling tells the patrol—who, very unfortunatelike, were Specials and not our men—it’s sheer foolishness to arrest Dr Reade and that you won’t want to see ’im. And then they go and loose him at once!’
Pike’s brows met together in a harsh, deep-cut frown. ‘Where’s this Reade live?’ he said.
‘Marrowbone Lane, sir. 172. Big house on the left at the Market Road end. Maybe you’ve seen it.’
‘Come on!’ Pike said. He nodded at Police Constable George Birch. ‘And you,’ he said, ‘look after that.’ He nodded again, this time towards Mr Godly, once more asleep.
It was ten minutes past one when the blue police Crossley pulled up outside No. 172 Marrowbone Lane. Pike switched off lights and engine.
‘This the place?’ he said.
‘That’s right, sir. Empty or all asleep by the looks of it.’
They stood at the gate looking through the darkness at the dim bulk of a low-built, verandahed house.
Pike leaned his elbows on the gate. ‘This Reade married?’
‘Yes.’ Jeffson dropped his voice. ‘But Mrs Reade’s away. Been away for some months now. Besides Dr Reade, there’s a housekeeper and a maidservant. Oh! and of course, there’s the dispenser; but I don’t think she sleeps in. She’s a Holmdale girl—Marjorie Williams.’
Pike put his hand to the latch of the gate, passed through and went up the path. His boot-soles rang out a brisk tattoo upon the frozen path. He made no effort to dull their sound. Jeffson followed. They came to the end of the path and three steps which brought them up to the verandah. They crossed the verandah and were at the door. There were two bells on it, one with ‘Night’ written above it in bold letters of brass. There was also a heavy iron knocker wrought like a snake. Pike set his thumb on the bell marked ‘Night.’ From somewhere within the house came to their ears a steady peal. He took his thumb away. They waited. After two minutes waiting, he once more pressed the bell. This time he held his thumb upon it. The pealing went on within, steady and insistent, but they could hear no other sound. Pike lowered his hand.
‘Knock!’ he said.
Jeffson knocked.
‘Knock harder!’ Pike said.
Jeffson knocked harder.
Pike pressed both bells … And then a light shone out above their heads and there came the sound of a window violently flung open and a voice which said:
‘What the devil’s all this row?’
Pike nudged Jeffson. Jeffson went back off the verandah and stood in the path looking upwards.
‘I’m Sergeant Jeffson,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we must trouble you to come downstairs and let us in.’
There was a muttering from the window, its words indistinguishable. Jeffson came back up the steps on to the verandah and stood beside Pike at the doorway. They heard movement within the house and then footsteps descending the stairs and coming along the hallway towards them. Bolts were drawn and there was the clanging of a safety chain. The door opened and the lantern above the door sprang into light.
‘Dr Reade?’ said Pike. He was looking at a thickly-built, broad-shouldered, man in the middle thirties, with a white heavy-jowled face under wiry and crisply curling jet-black hair. The black brows were a straight bar across his face and from under them bright almost black eyes darted flickering glances.
‘That’s me,’ said the man in the door. ‘What do you want?’
Pike put a foot across the threshold. For a moment it seemed that Reade was going to bar his entrance but almost at once he drew back.
‘Come in!’ he said.
Behind Pike came Jeffson. Reade moved away from them. They could hear him near them fumbling at the wall. There was the click of a switch and three wall lamps shed a soft gold glow over the hall. Pike looked about him. He said:
‘Can we talk here, sir?’
Reade’s eyes darted glances this way and that; everywhere except at the faces of his two visitors.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Better come into my surgery.’ He led the way to a door in the right-hand wall, opened it and stood while they passed through before him.
Jeffson, burly and blue-clad but helmetless, stood with his back to a fireplace in which there flickered an electric fire. Pike, in answer to unspoken invitation, sat in one of the red-leather armchairs. There was a small, square, oaken table in the centre of the room and upon the edge of this its owner sat himself. He looked from one of his visitors to the other, quickly and almost furtively.
‘We understand, sir,’ said Pike, ‘that you were taken up by one of the patrols this evening at some time after midnight. Mistakenly and against my orders—’
‘I’m not clear,’ said Reade, ‘exactly who you are.’ The dark head was bent until only the top of it was presented to Pike’s gaze. The deep voice was querulously angry.
‘I am from Scotland Yard, sir,’ Pike said. ‘At the present moment, I am, as you might say, in charge of the police activities.’ His tone was bland and there was a smile upon his mouth but his eyes did not smile. He paused a moment. At last, as if he could bear the silence no longer, Reade lifted his head. For the first time Pike saw his eyes; then spoke again: ‘I must inform you, sir, that at about nine-thirty this evening we were informed that another of these murders had taken place. Immediately I had verified this, I gave word to all the patrols that any persons found in the streets of this town should be held, pending investigation of their movements. Mistakenly and against my instructions, the patrol let you go. In these circumstances, Sergeant Jeffson and I came round to have a word with you and to ask you to explain to us where you had been this evening. This is a matter of form, of course, but, I am afraid, one which must, in the interest of the whole community, be carried out … I am sure that after a moment’s thought, Dr Reade, you’ll see the necessity of carrying out investigation like this, utterly irrespective of persons.’
‘Yes … Yes,’ Reade said. ‘Of course … Yes, I see.’ He raised his head, flinging it back with a movement almost theatrically defiant. ‘I suppose you want to ask me a lot of questions. Isn’t that the way you do it?’
Pike shrugged. ‘Well, sir, that’s as you like. You can either make a statement on which we may want to ask you questions afterwards or you can answer my questions as I put them to you without making any original statement at all.’
‘When I was stopped by the patrol,’ Reade began in a voice which seemed deliberately emotionless, ‘it was a few minutes after midnight. I was walking down Broad Walk coming in this direction. I’ve been overworked lately and suffering from insomnia. Tonight I went to bed just after dinner. I thought I could sleep tonight. I soon knew sleep was impossible unless I took drastic measures. So I went out for a walk. I daresay it was foolish of me and may seem incredible to you but my own state of mind had made me forget all about this … this Butcher business. I just went out as I would’ve done at any normal time in the same circumstances. I walked straight up Marrowbone Lane, round the Poultry Farm and back down Runborough Lane, across the Playing Fields and into the top of Broad Walk like that. I was half-way down Broad Walk when I was stopped … That’s all!’ He sat staring at Pike. The eyes, Pike thought, were covered with a hard, protective glaze through which a man could see nothing of feeling.
Pike pondered. ‘Tell me, sir,’ he said after a moment, his voice urbanity itself, ‘while you were on this walk how many people did you see before you met the patrol?’
Reade shook his head. ‘None.’ His mouth shut, after the word, in a hard, lipless line.
‘No one at all?’ Pike was insistent.
‘No one.’
‘And how long would you say the walk occupied, Dr Reade?’
The broad shoulders were lifted, somehow despairingly. ‘I can’t give you any accurate estimation. All I can swear to is that I was not out for less than an hour and not out for more than two.’
There ensued a long silence. Jeffson, shifting from one foot to the other, looked first at the doctor’s pallid defiance and then at the inscrutability of Pike. Jeffson knew what he would do, yet had a sinking suspicion that this would be wrong. A good man, Jeffson, and one knowing his own limitations. He waited, almost unbreathing, for what should happen. When it came it was so unexpected an anti-climax that he let out his breath in a long hissing whistle instantly repressed.
For Pike got to his feet and said:
‘Well, thank you very much, Dr Reade. I’m sorry to have had to disturb you.’ He looked round for his hat which lay upon a chair to the left of the door. He made for it. ‘We’ll be getting along, Jeffson,’ he said.
Reade sprang to his feet. ‘Look here!’ he said violently. ‘What I …’ And then once more closed his mouth into a tight line.
Pike stooped to pick up his hat; turned with it in his hand. ‘Yes, sir?’ He was suave.
‘Nothing,’ said Reade. ‘Nothing!’
Pike set his fingers to the door handle but dropped them as if struck by a sudden thought. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Just one more question. Is there anyone besides yourself, Dr Reade, sleeping in the house?’
There was a little movement of Reade’s bulk; a movement almost like the recoil from a light, sharp blow. ‘Housekeeper,’ he said. His lips hardly opened to emit the word.
Pike raised his eyebrows. ‘No one else?’
‘No.’ Reade shook his head.
Pike took his soft hat in both hands and began to knead the brim. He seemed, now, a personification of diffidence. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘whether we might have a few words with your housekeeper?’
Reade seemed to have grown bigger. As he stood, he looked taller, burlier, more self-assured. ‘What the devil for?’ he said.
‘Verification,’ said Pike. The hat brim twisted in his fingers. ‘I’m sure you’ll see, sir, that it may save you some unpleasantness, as you might say, and us, perhaps, some work, if we just saw whether we could get some nearer hint as to the time you left the house …’
‘Good God!’ said Reade. His tone was one of unleashed anger. ‘D’you want to wake the poor old woman up? She was in bed and asleep before I went to bed.’
‘Mrs Reade, sir,’ said Pike inconsequently, ‘is away, I understand?’
‘Thank God,’ Reade said, ‘she is!’ He came round the corner of the table and stood to face Pike, his hands, which were clenched into fists, thrust into his pockets.
Pike laid his hat upon the chair from which he had taken it. ‘I think, sir,’ he said, ‘it would be best if we saw the housekeeper. And by the way …’ He turned for an instant and his eyes met Jeffson’s.
It was much to Jeffson’s credit that he understood the unspoken message. He came forward from the fireplace. He said, heavily, looking at Reade:
‘Isn’t there a maid too?’
Reade glared. He made a little movement as if his arms, the hands still fists, were coming out of their pockets. But what he did was to turn and take a pace and once more sit down upon the table. He said, answering Jeffson’s question but looking at Pike:
‘There was a maid. I discharged her last week. She was impertinent and unsatisfactory. My housekeeper’s been looking for another girl, but so far hasn’t got one. Therefore the only person in the house besides myself tonight is Mrs Flewin.’
‘I see, sir.’ Beneath the diffidence of Pike’s tone had come a subtle hardness. ‘Now, what I think’s best is if you take Sergeant Jeffson here and go and wake this Mrs Flewin and tell her you would be much obliged if she would come down and answer some questions which Sergeant Jeffson will put to her. If you would then, sir, come back here, we could have a further little chat ourselves while Sergeant Jeffson is talking to Mrs Flewin … Once more I must apologise for being so pestering, as you might say. But it can’t be helped.’
Reade stood motionless for a long moment. Four eyes watched him. ‘Oh! All right!’ he said at last. He swung himself off the table, passed Pike and went to the door. He set his hand to the door-knob and turned. ‘This way, Sergeant,’ he said. The accent upon the last word was heavily ironic as was the little bow which accompanied the words. Jeffson, unmoved, crossed like a silent and agile elephant to the door.
Pike, straining his ears to listen, heard the footsteps—Reade’s quick and light like a cat’s; Jeffson’s solid and ponderous yet quiet—go down the hall, turn left and begin the ascent of carpeted stairs.
When the sound of the footsteps had died away and been replaced, after a small bridge of silence, by a rat-tatting of knuckles against a door, Pike ceased to listen. He crossed the surgery and sat himself upon the table in the spot where Reade had been sitting. He pulled from a pocket of his blue suit an oilskin pouch and a new but pleasantly maturing pipe. He began to fill the pipe from the pouch. The filling was complete and the pouch rolled up and once more put away when he heard, following a broken murmur of voices, feet coming down the stairs—three pairs of feet this time: two leather-clad and softly ringing, the others soft and slipshod. He slipped off the table and crossed with light steps to the door. He waited, leaning against the door-jamb so that without obtruding himself into the passage he could yet see the foot of the stairs.
He saw the little procession. Reade first, and then an elderly and many-angled female wrapped in a dressing-gown of blue flannel, with curling pins clustered thick about a head whose raven blackness seemed too black. And lastly, Jeffson, blue-clad and silver-buttoned, heavy and apparently unmoved by humour or any other emotion. At the foot of the stairs the cortege halted. Opposite where it stood was a door. Reade reached out a hand and flung this open. The woman passed in first and then Jeffson already fumbling in left-hand breast pocket for pencil and notebook.
Pike drew back a little. Down the hall towards him Reade came with slow steps. By the time he got to his surgery, Pike was once more seated upon the table. He had the filled but unlighted pipe in his mouth and a box of matches in his hand.
‘Mind if I smoke in here, sir?’ he said.
Reade shook his head. ‘No!’ he said savagely. ‘You can do anything in here … After all, you’re a big noise, aren’t you?’
‘I try,’ Pike said with urbanity, ‘not to make one.’
Reade flung himself into a chair. He, too, pulled out pipe and tobacco. While he fumbled for matches, he said:
‘Well, Inspector or whatever you are, where’s these other questions of yours?’
Pike smiled, friendly enough. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that I’ll be worrying you. Not yet anyhow.’
Reade laughed; a short, barking sound. ‘Thought so,’ he said. ‘All you’re waiting for is for that hulking bobby to see what he can get out of old Flewin and keep me here in the meantime. What?’
Pike did not answer. There was no other sound in the room until, heralded by his footsteps, Jeffson came. He stood in the doorway, seeming to fill it. He looked at Pike and, in answer to Pike’s raised eyebrows, shook his head.
Once more Reade let out a harsh, barking laugh.
Pike got to his feet. ‘I think, sir,’ he said, ‘that that’ll be all … for tonight.’ He turned towards the door.
Reade sat where he was. ‘You’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘if I leave you to let yourselves out.’ There was a sneer in voice as well as words, but there was something else behind the sneer. As Jeffson said to Pike when the car started, its headlights cutting a white swathe down the blackness of Marrowbone Lane:
‘Seemed some’ow to me, sir, as if ’e was more scared than he liked to let on!’