The Otterbury Incident

by C. Day Lewis

  5. Black Sunday

  Sharp at ten o’clock on Sunday morning, I turned in at the alley which leads to Ted’s back door. Otterbury is an ancient town, and there are a lot of these old-fashioned covered alleyways on the main street, leading round to the backs of the houses or shops there. Ted and his sister live in a flat above her bookshop, which of course is shut on Sundays.

  Toppy and Peter Butts arrived the next minute. We were in the sitting-room, discussing what should be done with the rest of the money, after we had given Nick the amount for the window. Obviously it would have to be spent on something which all the boys and girls who had helped to collect it could share, and this made things difficult. Peter Butts suggested an outing and picnic the next day, which as you remember was our half-term holiday. But the trouble was that many of us would already be going out with our people, or have made some other plans – anyway 14s. would not go a long way. I was keen on starting a magazine just then, and suggested we should put the money towards buying a second-hand cyclostyling machine and form the gang into a newspaper company. However, nobody thought much of this idea. Toppy, who seemed bored with the whole business, said why not just distribute the balance of the money among the people who had collected it. At this Ted, who had been rather silent and thoughtful, said:

  ‘I don’t think we ought to use the money on ourselves at all. We raised it for charity, I mean, and it’d be like taking it under false – false –’

  ‘False pretences?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘False pretences my foot!’ said Peter. ‘We worked for it, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yes, but we weren’t supposed to be working for our own benefit.’

  ‘Well, you’d better start giving back the money to the people who contributed it, then,’ jeered Toppy. ‘What a hope!’

  ‘Ted’s crazy! Give it back?’ said Peter.

  ‘I never said anything about giving it back. I just think we ought to give it to some charity. Why don’t we ask Rickie?’

  ‘Oh, come off it! What’s it to do with him?’

  I thought Ted was being rather priggish, but I felt I had to back him up.

  ‘We might get into a row if we pocket the money,’ I argued. ‘Hundreds of people in Otterbury know about it by now. It’s a sensation in the town. My mother told me everyone was talking: she said most people thought it was a jolly good show, but there were some pretty indignant about it – I mean, when they found out what NYAF really meant. Well, these indignant folk might make things hot for us if it came out we’d spent some of the money on ourselves. But they can’t object if it’s given to charity.’

  ‘Oh, you’re just windy,’ said Peter. ‘They can’t do anything to us.’

  ‘If you think I stood up and made a fool of myself in front of half of Otterbury, selling curling-tongs, just to give away the money to buy calico night-shirts for the poor benighted heathen in Africa, you’ve another think coming,’ said Toppy.

  Well, there it was. We had reached a deadlock. We were still wrangling when the bell rang. It was Nick: he explained he couldn’t get here before because his aunt had given him some job to do in the house. Ted told him that the money for repairing the window had been collected all right, and you should have seen Nick’s face – he looked like a criminal who has had a reprieve at the eleventh hour: it made me feel that all our planning and work had been really worthwhile. Ted called his sister. She came in, took a key out of a pigeon-hole in the bureau, opened one of the big drawers, and put the wooden box on the table. Then Ted put his key in the lock of the box, turned it, opened the lid.

  The rest of us were sitting round the table. Ted’s sister had her hand on the door-knob – she’s an excellent woman and never butts in where she isn’t wanted.

  ‘Come on,’ said Toppy, ‘dish it out.’

  Ted was standing there, staring into the box, absolutely rigid, as if it contained a nest of tarantulas or a Gorgon’s head. He went white as paper, then a deep flush gradually spread all over his face. The room was suddenly dead silent; the first sound of the Abbey bells ringing up for morning service crashed into this silence like a bomb.

  ‘What’s the matter, Ted?’ asked Rose Marshall.

  Ted’s voice was almost inaudible as he muttered, ‘It’s not there’; but it broke the spell, and we were all crowding round him, staring into the box, then scrabbling amongst its contents – stones and old nails and screws and rusty hinges.

  The money had gone

  The money had gone. Not one halfpenny of the £5 8s. 6d. was to be found as we emptied the box on to the table and sifted through the junk.

  ‘It’s a practical joke – you’re pulling our legs, Ted,’ I said feebly. ‘Aren’t you?’ But I somehow knew this wasn’t it at all.

  ‘Rose, this is the wrong box. What did you do with the one I gave you to lock up last night?’ Ted asked.

  ‘That’s the box you gave me. Why, you saw me put it into the drawer yourself,’ she replied.

  ‘But it’s impossible. It was full of coins.’

  There was a bewildered silence. Then Toppy said, ‘Well, that solves the problem of what to do with the rest of the money.’

  Ted turned to Nick. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Nick. We had the money for you. But it’s gone. I don’t know what’s happened.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ replied Nick – and I must say he was taking it jolly well – ‘don’t worry. It can’t be helped.’

  There was another awkward pause.

  ‘Only one thing could have happened to the money,’ said Toppy. ‘It must have been stolen.’

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ exclaimed Rose. ‘I locked it up myself, last night, and the key of the drawer was just where I left it, in this pigeon-hole.’

  ‘Well, how did all this junk get into the box, then?’ asked Peter Butts.

  ‘It’s an absolute mystery.’

  We talked a bit more, but no one had the foggiest notion what could have happened. Well, that’s not quite true. The harm had been done, of course, when Toppy said it must have been stolen. And the rest of us knew it secretly, though we didn’t dare say it – knew, too, that nobody could have stolen the money except Ted or his sister.

  Rose said she was going to telephone Mr Richards. When she left the room, Toppy said,

  ‘We’ll have to have a General Meeting about this. As soon as possible. It’s serious. Come on, Peter.’

  ‘What time?’ asked Ted miserably.

  ‘We’ll let you know.’ Toppy went to the door, then turned and added, ‘You’ll be allowed to speak in your own defence.’

  Nick Yates walked right up to him and said, ‘If you’re suggesting that Ted stole it, I’ll fight you.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass. Fighting won’t pay for the window you broke.’

  ‘I don’t care – I’ll own up to my uncle about the window. But you’ve got no right to accuse Ted.’

  Nick Yates was fierce as a terrier. Talk about a snail coming out of its shell!

  ‘We’re not accusing anyone. Yet. Come on, Butts.’

  We heard their feet running down the stairs. Ted began to turn over the heap of junk on the table again, as though it might miraculously change back into silver and copper coins. Presently Rose came back; Rickie was with her. They both looked pretty worried.

  ‘Well, now, there must be some simple explanation,’ Rickie began. ‘Just tell us everything that happened from the moment you took charge of the money yesterday evening, Ted.’

  Ted had come straight home, and given the box to his sister to lock up. He’d not opened the box again: the key had been in his trouser pocket all night. There wasn’t a sign anywhere of the house having been broken into.

  ‘Did you talk to anyone on your way home? Tell anyone what you had in the box?’

  ‘No. Oh yes, I’d absolutely forgotten, sir. You know that chap, Johnny Sharp? Well, he and the man he’s always about with – the Wart, we call him – they were hanging around in the alleyway below, whe
n I got home. They asked me how much we’d collected for Nick Yates.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Well, nothing. I told them. And Johnny Sharp took the box –’

  ‘Oh, he did, did he?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean he stole it or anything. He just took it up in his hands, and shook it to hear the money rattle. Then he handed it to the Wart, and the Wart shook it, and gave it back to me. That’s all.’

  ‘You’re certain he gave you back the same box? Did you have your eye on it all the time?’

  ‘Not absolutely all the time, sir. Because the Wart was standing behind Johnny Sharp when he rattled the box. But it was only for a moment. And –’ Ted turned the box over and pointed to a cross scratched on the bottom of it – ‘you see that mark. I noticed it when the Prune first gave us the box. It must be the same one.’

  So that was a dead end. We talked and talked about it, but we didn’t seem to get an inch further. Presently I thought I’d better clear off. Nick came with me. We’d got to the end of the street before I realized that, in the general consternation, I’d left my cap behind. I told Nick to wait, and ran back to the Marshalls’ house. The back door was not locked, so I thought I’d go quietly up the stairs and fetch the cap without disturbing anyone. But then I heard Rose Marshall’s voice inside the sitting-room: she sounded angry. I couldn’t help overhearing a bit of the conversation – ‘You might as well suspect me of it,’ she was saying.

  ‘But, darling, who else could have taken it but Ted?’ That was Rickie’s voice, patient, kind, and reasonable, like he is when he’s explaining something in form to one of his less bright pupils. ‘After all, you’ve admitted it’s impossible that anyone could have broken into the flat. And it was a temptation, for any boy, to have all that money in his charge. You must see that.’

  ‘If you won’t believe Ted, I don’t want to have anything more to do with you,’ said Rose wildly. ‘I tell you, he wouldn’t do a thing like that.’ Her voice became sharp and cold. ‘Perhaps you’d like to call the police in and search the house.’

  I thought I’d better not listen any longer, so I charged up the rest of the stairs, making a clatter, knocked on the door, went in, and found my cap. Rose and Rickie were alone in the room. They both looked pretty furious. I stood not upon the order of my going, but went. Rejoining Nick, I told him what I’d overheard. He gave me an odd look.

  ‘D’you believe Ted took the money?’ he asked point-blank.

  ‘Well, it does look jolly suspicious, doesn’t it? I mean, who else could have?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. But I know he didn’t. And, even if he did, I’d stick up for him.’ Nick’s eyes were absolutely blazing. ‘What about you? What side are you on?’

  ‘Well, naturally you stick up for him because he started the scheme for collecting the money for you, and was decent about –’

  ‘I don’t care a bit about the money. I’m going to tell my uncle now about the window, and he can do what he likes. I’m asking you, are you on Ted’s side or not?’

  Nick seemed to have turned into quite a different person. It was incredible. They say a crisis brings out unexpected powers in you: it certainly did with Nick Yates.

  ‘I’ll stand by Ted,’ I replied, feeling a bit ashamed. ‘But what on earth can we do?’

  ‘Prove him innocent.’

  ‘What, just you and me? But it’s –’

  ‘You and me and anyone else who’ll come in on it. There’s going to be a meeting this afternoon. We’ll find out then.’

  ‘But Toppy and his lot are bound to be against Ted.’

  ‘Let them. We can do without them. But if Ted’s company turns against him I’ll lay them out, one by one.’

  ‘A fat lot of help that’ll be! Wait a minute, Nick, I’ve an idea. You know what Toppy’s like – enthusiastic about any new craze.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘We’d get him interested if we made a detective job of it – sort of Murder Game. Then the rest’d come in too.’

  ‘You’ve got something there.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do it to help Ted. But he’d do it just for the fun – bet you anything he would.’

  ‘But it isn’t a game,’ said Nick. ‘It’s serious.’

  ‘I know. We’ve got to make a game of it, though, at first anyway, if we’re to have Toppy working in with us. And we shall need everyone we can get.’

  By this time we had reached Nick’s house. He was looking rather pale; but he took a deep breath, nodded good-bye to me, and walked stoutly in …

  As I walked along to the Incident that afternoon, I was pondering a thought which had occurred to me at dinner. If Ted had in fact embezzled the funds, why should he protest so vigorously that Johnny Sharp and the Wart couldn’t have taken the money when they met him in the alley? Surely the natural thing, for a guilty person, is to try and fasten the guilt on someone else. Ted could easily have said they’d snatched the box from him and run off with it: it’d be his word against theirs, and they’re pretty fair crooks, to look at, anyway. Then Ted could have got rid of the box somewhere and kept the money. Only a half-wit, if he’d really stolen the money, would have proceeded to fill the box with old iron and wait for it to be discovered the next day.

  I put this argument at the meeting, after Ted had told his story. There were about fifteen of us there. Toppy had turned the meeting into a Court of Justice, which I thought was pretty cold-blooded of him: he was the Judge, and Peter Butts the prosecuting counsel. I said it was a farce, and the business was too serious to make a game out of it. But Toppy said it was not a game at all, as far as he was concerned, so I volunteered to be Counsel for the Defence.

  My argument seemed to impress some of the Jury. I also said that, in English law, a man was held innocent until he was actually proved guilty, and the onus of proving guilt was on the Prosecution. I’d just finished my speech when Nick Yates turned up. He walked stiffly and looked very white – chastised, but not chastened, to coin an epigram. His uncle had given him a hell of a beating; and what had really upset Nick, we later discovered, he’d said he would sell Nick’s puppy to help pay for the broken window.

  However, Nick wasn’t downhearted now. He looked round the Court and said he’d lay out anyone who believed Ted had taken the money. The Prune, who had been visibly gloating over Ted’s downfall, told him he was just sucking up to Ted, and asked him to explain how the money could have disappeared if Ted hadn’t swiped it. The Officers of the Court then had to restrain Nick from knocking the Prune’s block off, which he showed every sign of being about to do. The proceedings looked like turning into a riot, so I got up again and asked the Judge for a remand until further evidence was collected. I said that Nick and I had the beginnings of a case against person or persons unknown.

  ‘How can you have a case against an unknown person?’ Peter Butts interrupted.

  I told him this was a usual police formula, as anyone but a moron like himself would know: we were going to turn ourselves into a detective agency, I went on, and run the real criminals to earth; it was the duty of members of the general public to assist our investigations. I noticed a gleam come into Toppy’s eye when I mentioned the word ‘detective’. Had he taken the bait, I wondered?

  Toppy – that is to say the Judge – arose. He granted a remand. Then, rather forgetting himself, he said two could play that game. All probability pointed to Ted as the culprit, and he proposed, since the Defence had challenged him to produce evidence proving Ted guilty, to do a bit of detection himself. He would be the CID; and if any amateur Sherlock Holmeses cared to fool about on the other side, that was their look-out.

  It was maddening. Nick and I had been hoist with our own petard. The old rivalry between Toppy and Ted had broken out again; and of course Toppy’s star was in the ascendant now. Almost everyone, I could see, would join him. I shall never forget how, when Toppy proclaimed that the Court was adjourned, people stood aside and made a lane for Ted to walk through, li
ke you do for someone to run the gauntlet; only it wasn’t wet towels and such-like, it was a lane of silence and suspicion. Ted had to walk through it: the boys just drew aside from him, as if he was contaminated, and let him go. I shall never forget the look on Ted’s face as he passed through this silent barrage of accusation. A line of poetry came into my head – ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us,’ and I remembered the poem is called ‘The Lost Leader’. And I shall never forget how Nick ran after Ted, and put his arm through Ted’s and walked away with him.

  The lost leader

  6. The Detectives Get to Work

  Nick’s gesture made a certain impression. Two others of Ted’s old company broke away from the crowd and followed – Charlie Muswell and young Wakeley. We went to Ted’s house and there we held a council of war. The worst snag was that we had so short a time to work in: there was only the rest of Sunday and the whole holiday on Monday, and then we should be back at the grindstone again. Ted said that of course he’d have to repay the money: but we knew this would mean his sister paying it, and she isn’t well off; and anyway, repaying it wouldn’t clear him of the guilt. But where was one to start with the investigation? The sum of £5 8s. 6d., in silver and coppers, had disappeared into thin air and been replaced by stones and scrap-iron. It was like having to investigate a miracle. We were all pretty gloomy as we sat round the table.

  I tried to get a grip on myself and remember how the great detectives set to work. ‘Don’t omit the smallest detail, however irrelevant it may seem,’ they always say when they are questioning witnesses. So I got Ted to repeat everything that had happened from the moment he set off home yesterday with the box until he handed it to his sister to lock up in the bureau drawer. When he got to the point where he’d been accosted by Johnny Sharp and the Wart, I stopped him.

  ‘Describe the appearance of these individuals,’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be daft; you know what they look like as well as I do,’ he said with a flash of his old spirit.