by Colin Watson
“Exactly!” replied Hoole admiringly. Mrs Courtney-Snell was not a National Health patient.
“Belladonna tincture,” added Mrs Courtney-Snell. “And I’m not to worry if I cannot focus properly for an hour or two afterwards. The effect is disturbing but temporary. Isn’t that so?”
“But how right you are! I can see that a mere occulist cannot pull any—ah—wool over your eyes, madam!”
Mrs Courtney-Snell condescendingly chuckled and settled back to enjoy a nice, long eye test.
In St Luke’s Square the point duty policeman strode up to Biggadyke’s car and wrenched open the door. At the sight of the collapsed driver he swallowed his wrath and sent the handiest intelligent looking citizen to telephone for an ambulance.
Biggadyke recovered consciousness before it arrived. He moaned a little, and swore a great deal. The policeman, bending down to make him as comfortable as possible on the pavement, surreptitiously sniffed his breath. It was innocent of alcohol.
“Mind you,” he confided later to a colleague who had arrived to help, “it could have been drugs. Perhaps they’ll know at the hospital when they take a look at him. I wish it had been the booze, though, like it was last time. He’d not have got away with it again.”
The second policeman shook his head. “Don’t be too sure of that, either. Big’s got the luck of the devil. When they chucked out that case at the Assizes it was like giving a life-saving medal to a bloke who’d done in his granny.”
“One thing; he didn’t actually kill anyone this time,” said the point duty man, and he stepped into the roadway to disperse once again the clot of inquisitive onlookers that threatened to dam what traffic could still trickle past Biggadyke’s corrugated car.
He was not to know that killing was the theme of some frank observations being made at that moment by Biggadyke himself as he lay in a small private ward of Chalmsbury General Hospital.
“There’s a certain little gentleman in this town, duckie,” he informed the plain young nurse whose cold fingers explored his wrist, “who’ll be coming in here soon after I leave. But, by God, you’ll have your work cut out to find his bloody pulse!”
The nurse frowned slightly and transferred her gaze from her watch to a corner of the ceiling. Her lips made tiny counting movements. Then she replaced Biggadyke’s hand on the sheet with the air of a shopper rejecting a fly-blown joint. After stooping to write on the chart clipped to the foot of the bed, she stepped to the door.
“When are you coming back to keep me warm, nurse?” Biggadyke, even in distress, was sensitive to a situation’s demands upon his virility.
The girl paused in the doorway, turned, and spoke for the first time since his arrival. “Please ring the bell if you wish to move your bowels.”
Chapter Two
The news of Stanley Biggadyke’s accident was borne to the Chalmsbury Chronicle office in Watergate Street by the commissionaire of the Rialto, Mr Walter Grope, in hope of some reciprocal favour, such as the publication of his Ode to St Luke’s Church.
Mr Grope had a large, harmless face like a feather bolster. So loose and widely dispersed were his features that he had difficulty in mustering them to bear witness to whatever emotion happened to possess him. His expression either was spread very thinly, like an inadequate scraping of butter over a huge teacake, or else clung in a piece to one spot.
When he smiled, which he did seldom and with reluctance, the smile wriggled painfully from the corner of his mouth, crawled a short way into the pale expanse of jowl, and there died. His frown, though more readily produced—for Mr Grope found life sad and perplexing—did not trespass beyond the very centre of his forehead. When he was surprised, his eyebrows arched like old and emaciated cats.
So long as none of these extremes seized him, his face registered blank bewilderment. He had only to stand for a moment by the kerb for some kindly woman to take his arm and try to escort him over the road. When he entered a shop he would be assumed immediately to be the seeker of a lost umbrella and assistants would shake their heads at him before he could utter a word.
Yet in spite of his appearance Mr Grope had one remarkable gift: the ability to rhyme at a tremendous rate. He practised by mentally adding complementary lines to the remarks he overheard while marshalling patrons into his cinema.
Thus: “It’s raining cats and dogs outside” (So spake brave Marmion e’er he died) or “Did you remember the toffees, dear?” (Quoth Lancelot to Guinevere) or “I liked that bit where Franchot Tone...” (Ruptured himself and made great moan).
This happy facility as a versifier enabled Grope to supplement the pittance he received from his employers. The arty-crafty trade, which flourished exceedingly in Chalmsbury, found him a great asset to poker-work production. Matchbox stands, trays for ladies’ combings, egg-timer brackets—these bore such masterpieces of Mr Grope’s as his Ode to the River Chal as It Passes Between the Watercress Beds and the Mighty Oil-seed Mill. To save the poker from growing cold too often the title had been condensed to Ode and only the first verse quoted:
The river winds and winds and winds
Through scenery of many kinds.
It passes townships and societies,
And cattle breeds of all varieties;
But even the river must surely stand still
To admire our fine cress and Henderson’s Mill!
Upon smaller articles such as stud boxes, napkin rings and egg cosy identity discs appeared neat and edifying little slogans of Mr Grope’s devising: No Knife Cuts Like a Sharp Word and Mother—Home’s Treasure and Remember Someone May Want to Use This After You.
This being Wednesday and his morning free from supervising the Rialto’s charwomen, Grope had walked abroad to contemplate man’s inhumanity to man and to think up rhymes afresh. Having witnessed the collision in St Luke’s Square and waited to see Biggadyke loaded into the ambulance he had retraced his steps as far as the cinema and crossed to the Chronicle office almost directly opposite.
Josiah Kebble, the paper’s spherical editor, looked up from his desk on hearing Grope enter through the swing door. Between Kebble and his readers there was no other barrier. He considered the sociability of this arrangement well worth the occasional inconvenience of an outraged complainant bursting in upon him and demanding what he had meant by something or other.
“There’s been an accident,” announced Grope.
“Has there now?” said Kebble. “That’s nice.” He regarded Grope with amiable expectation and rolled a pencil between his palms. This produced a rhythmic clicking as the pencil struck against a thick, old-fashioned signet ring.
“That Biggadyke man has just driven into a lorry over in the Square. He’s not dead, though.”
“Stan Biggadyke, you mean? The haulage bloke?”
Grope nodded ruminatively. He thought coke...soak...bespoke...
“Harry!” the editor called. A flimsy door opened in a cubicle-like contraption in one corner of the room and a pale, startled face was thrust forth. “Can you spare a minute, old chap?” Kebble inquired of it, then, neither receiving nor seeming to expect an answer, he added: “Just nip down to the Square. There’s been a smash.”
The face disappeared and a moment later Harry slouched sadly through the office and out into the street, listing beneath the burden of a camera the size of a meat safe.
“Can’t say I’m surprised, mind,” said Kebble. He glanced at the clock, “I don’t know, though. They’re hardly open yet.”
Grope, who had subsided thankfully into a chair, shook his head slowly. “It would have been a judgment,” he said, “if he’d been taken. But his sort stays on, you know. I often wonder about it.”
“A dreadful fellow, they tell me.” Kebble said this in a tone almost of admiration.
“Ah...” Grope pondered. “He used to bring young women into the three and sixes. Marched them up the stairs like a drover. Mrs Parget said she never tore tickets for the same ones twice.”
“Did he,
er...”
“There’s not a doubt of it. The usherettes got to be scared to use their torches. Think of that.”
Kebble thought of that.
“He’s not a patron any more,” Grope went on.
“Really?”
“No. It’s the television, I expect. Now there’s an immoral invention, if you like.”
The swing door thudded open and a lank-haired youth with nervous eyes and a red spike of a nose wheeled in a bicycle and propped it against the wall. “I’ve got a story, chief,” he announced, gangling up to Kebble.
“Don’t apply that loathsome expression to me, boy!” Kebble passed a hand through the daisy-white hair that sleeked straight back from his pink forehead and frowned like an abbot mistaken for a brothel keeper. “And next time you have occasion to ring me at the office please don’t say ‘Give me the desk.’ Muriel thought you were a firm of furniture removers. Now then, have you got those church services?”
The youth, who was called Leonard Leaper, looked unabashed. He struggled to extricate a large notebook from his jacket pocket and announced: “They’ve blown up the drinking fountain in the Jubilee Park.”
“What are you talking about? Who’s ‘they’?” Kebble gave a sidelong glance at Grope, a recognized authority on calamities, but drew no response.
“They? Well, somebody. The perpetrators.” Leaper looked pleased at this choice. “And every little bit of it’s gone. I’ve just been over to look. Some shrubs and things are down as well.” He thumbed hastily through his notebook. “I interviewed the park keeper. He’s married and has three children and he’s an old boy of the Alderson Road School. He served in the artillery during the first world war and is a prominent member of the Royal Anti...Anti...” Leaper paused and peered at his shorthand with disbelief.
“Anti-vivisection?” suggested Grope, hopefully.
Kebble leaned forward. “Never mind that, Leonard. What about the explosion, or whatever it was?”
The youth reluctantly disengaged himself from the puzzle of what the park keeper was a prominent member of and turned over a page. “The outrage,” he declared, “is thought to have taken place in the early hours of the morning. Mr Harding...”
“Harding?”
“Yes, the park keeper. Mr Harding said that while sleeping at his place of residence in East Street he was awakened by what sounded like a big gun going off. He thought no more of the incident until, on his arrival at the park just prior to taking up his duties at nine o’clock, he saw a jet of water rising from the ground in the spot hitherto occupied by the drinking fountain. Of this edifice, a well-known land mark in the town...”
“Hitherto,” Kebble interjected.
“...there was no trace.” Leaper snapped shut the notebook and bent down to conceal his flush of triumph in the business of removing his bicycle clips.
Kebble looked at Grope. “What a very extraordinary thing. Who would want to demolish a drinking fountain?”
“Brewers,” said Grope without hesitation. “They would do it. Any day of the week.”
Kebble turned to Leaper. “Have you been round to the police?” The youth shook his head and began putting his bicycle clips on again.
“No, never mind. I’ll give them a call myself.” The editor stood and reached down a broad brimmed hat. “They might know something about Biggadyke by now.” He nodded cheerfully to Grope, trotted round the counter and went out.
The police station was an integral part of the municipal buildings in Fen Street. This extravagant edifice, architecturally a compound of Baroque and Victorian wash-house, had two entrances. The main doors, leading to the rating, borough engineer’s and town clerk’s departments and to the council chamber on the upper floor, was reached by a flight of steps flanked by glazed tile walls in green, brown and ochre. On alternate steps were cemented cast iron pots from which sprouted cast iron plants, painted green and all very lifelike, save one that had been broken in the past and now bore on its main stem a gaspipe jacket secured by half-inch bolts.
At the side of the building was a less imposing entrance, a brown door permanently latched back in a small lobby from which an echoing white-tiled corridor led to the rooms and cells and dun-varnished court where Chalmsbury’s contingent of the county police scurried at the bidding of Chief Inspector Hector Larch.
It was into the not very sympathetic ear of Larch that Kebble imparted Leaper’s news of the destruction of the drinking fountain in Jubilee Park.
The chief inspector was an exceptionally tall man with a pasty angular face cradled within the rampart of his great lower jaw. While Kebble talked, he sat upright at his desk and gazed fixedly at an inkwell. He offered no interruptions but breathed through tightly set teeth, making a regular hissing noise that gave the impression of dutiful patience being gradually expelled by the pressure of annoyance within.
When Kebble had finished. Larch looked at him and relaxed his mouth so that the hissing stopped. A cold smile replaced his frown and he spoke softly.
“You think the boy was telling the truth, or had someone been pulling his leg?” A faint lisp went with the smile.
“Oh, he’s cretinous but not a liar,” Kebble said, loyally. “Anyway, it should be simple enough to verify. I thought maybe you’d heard something already.”
“Some sort of explosion was reported during the night from...” Larch turned over some papers on the desk. “... from Holmwood. Ozzy Pointer rang up about it, apparently. We’ve not had time to look into it yet.”
“Well, that’s the direction. Beyond East Street.”
“Yes,” said Larch placidly. He adjusted the already neatly arranged documents before him and added: “I suppose you want to make what you’d call a story out of it. A drinking fountain...” He smirked contemptuously. “You must be hard up. Come on, then, if that’s what you want.”
Quite suddenly, Kebble found himself following Larch out of his office and along the corridor to the rear yard. Larch climbed into his car, started the engine and drove with expert rapidity through the narrow archway into Fen Street before glancing stonily to see if Kebble had managed to scramble aboard.
When they arrived at the park Kebble again suffered the disadvantage of short legs as he tried to match Larch’s striding progress between the bowling greens to where a group of curious and mostly elderly citizens had gathered around a jet of water.
Larch pushed brusquely into the ring. The damage was even more impressive than Leaper’s account had suggested. Of the fountain’s column, bowl, and graven inscription to the memory of the late Lieutenant-Colonel William Courtney-Snell, J.P., there remained no identifiable fragment. The surrounding concrete, now awash, was cracked and deeply pitted. Some of the shrubs that once had formed a semi-circular screen were now leafless, as though stripped by an overnight winter; others had been blasted into stumps bearing a few tatters of bark.
One wooden wall of a small bowls pavilion about twenty yards away had been plucked out and thrown across the path. A row of bowls lockers behind it had collapsed, spilling their contents. These lay now among the debris like cannon balls in a stormed gun emplacement.
Kebble, who had removed his outsize hat not in awe but to facilitate his squeezing his head between the chief inspector and a particularly stubborn bystander, gave a soft whistle. “An outrage if ever I saw one,” he remarked appreciatively.
The policeman grunted and gazed around over heads for someone who might profitably be questioned. At that moment Harding, the keeper, appeared through the park gates accompanied by a little man carrying a tool bag. Larch disengaged himself from the water-watchers and walked rapidly to meet them, followed by Kebble.
Harding halted before Larch and stared bitterly at the crowd. “A fine to-do-ment, this little old lot,” he observed. His companion set down his bag, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and nodded agreement. Harding indicated him and explained: “From the water department. He’s come to turn it off.”
Larch ignored the i
ntroduction and the plumber, after grinning querulously at Kebble and shuffling a bit, picked up the tools and took himself off towards a small brick building on the far side of the park.
“You’re Harding, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” replied the keeper guardedly; the chief inspector, he noticed, was looking airily over his head and he didn’t like it.
“Just what has been going on here?”
Harding glowered. “Well, you can see for yourself. The fountain’s gone. I don’t know anything else about it.”
“What were you doing during the night, Mr Harding?” Larch had the stance of an ascetic headmaster, listening abstractedly to the futile excuses of a boy caught chalking obscenities. But Harding was not to be intimidated. “Parachute jumping,” he retorted.
The corner of Larch’s mouth twitched but he continued to stare into space. “I really don’t think that sort of attitude will get us anywhere, Mr Harding,” he said gently, with his rustling lisp. “Just try and think, will you?”
