The Great Wash

by Gerald Kersh

  “They looked to me like cheap, thin copy-paper covered with algebra,” I said. “They conveyed nothing to me at all.”

  “Did they convey anything to you, George?” asked Halfacre.

  George Oaks said: “For crying out loud, Halfacre, don’t be a silly cow! Haven’t I already told you that Monty Cello was carrying some kind of information from Kurt Brevis, one of the most abstruse mathematical physicists on earth? If these bits of paper have any meaning in them at all, there can’t be more than half a dozen men in the world who could begin to get a glimmering of it—and one of these is a woman, Lise Meisner.”

  “That goes without saying,” said Chief Inspector Halfacre, turning back to me. “Well, you tell me you saw this man take these papers out of his money-belt, and he showed them to you, in your sitting-room. What did he do with them after that? Swallow them?”

  “He gave them to George,” I said.

  “Right you are, sir. . . . Well, George?”

  “I gave them back to him,” said George Oaks. “I told him that they had better be kept safe. He put them back in his belt.”

  Then I became afraid; not because Oaks found it necessary to lie, but because he was lying clumsily. Something like despair took possession of me. I remember that I tried, without hope, to create a diversion by beating at a wasp with the Chief Inspector’s hat. This wasp had been circling an inch or two above the back of Sergeant Bollard’s neck. The Sergeant picked the maimed insect off his collar, put it on the table, and flicked it away with a forefinger that moved like a released spring—one could almost hear it twang. Chief Inspector Halfacre said: “When I was training for the Finals in my younger days, d’you know how I used to perfect my left jab? By catching flies in mid-air. . . . Now come off it, George, old boy. Man comes to you and says, substantially, as follows: ‘George, between you and me, I am a notorious murderer, travelling with a snide passport, and in bodily fear of a certain party. I was in at the death of Dr. Brevis, who was badly wanted, all over the world. This Dr. Brevis was in possession of information which, in the hands of an unscrupulous person, might be worth hundreds of thousands. A certain party, or parties, who have got wise to my whereabouts, will stop at nothing to get hold of this information. In effect,’ this man says, ‘I might as well be walking about—like the anarchist that tried to blow up Greenwich Observatory—with a bottle of nitroglycerine strapped round my belly.’ Well?”

  “Well?” said Oaks.

  “And you are sitting there and telling me that, knowing the character of this man and the nature of the information he was carrying, you let him put the stuff back in his belt, and left him alone in the house?”

  “Who said I left him alone in the house?” asked Oaks.

  “I do. The number you called from wasn’t Mr. Kemp’s number. It was Hither Valley 365, name of Titmouse, the Piebald Horse.”

  Replenishing our glasses from the jar, George Oaks said: “Quite right. Naturally you checked the call. You didn’t think I’d be foolish enough to risk calling from the house, which resounds like the belly of an old violin, just when we’d lulled poor little Monty Cello into a feeling of security—did you, Halfacre?”

  “ ‘Poor little Monty Cello’, my foot! Bloody little murderer,” said Halfacre.

  “He was my guest,” I said, “under my roof——”

  “—Yes, sir. And he would have been the King’s guest under His Majesty’s roof, but that wouldn’t have saved him. . . . Go on, George; you nipped across to the Piebald Horse by Titmouse, to buy some beer just after closing time. I mean, the call was received after two-thirty, you see. You hung about the ‘Piebald Horse’ after hours, half an hour or more. . . . All right, don’t worry. I’m not after Mr. Titmouse’s licence. . . . As I was saying, George: you didn’t come back to the house here until after this man had tumbled down the well——”

  “—In the presence of four witnesses, Halfacre—Mrs. Rose, Barnes the gardener, Sir Peter Oversmith, and Major Chatterton,” said George Oaks. “In a manner of speaking, the very sight of Chatterton frightened him to death.”

  “Well, what then? . . . Why, George, you haul the body out of the well; and after that, if you please, believing that the dead man’s money-belt contains papers of world-wide importance, and being convinced that there is some immediate danger of their being got hold of by hook or by crook right here in the neighbourhood, you simply give the stuff for safekeeping to the poor old local constable, just like that! That’s your story, isn’t it, George?”

  “And what if it is?” said George Oaks.

  The Chief Inspector said: “Why, just this—it isn’t like you, George, that’s all. And I know you, old man; it doesn’t rhyme with you. If you genuinely believed that these here documents were in this dead man’s money-belt, I don’t see you letting that belt out of your sight. Now what I can see you doing, George, is this: deliberately letting that money-belt, etcetera, go, knowing full well that any important papers which it might have contained were safely stored elsewhere. I know you, old fellow; I know you of old.”

  “Very well, then,” said George Oaks, “in that case, you might as well credit me with something like average intelligence, mightn’t you, Halfacre? Put yourself in my place. Here is Major Chatterton and his friend, Sir Peter Oversmith. Chatterton is itching to open Monty Cello’s belt. In two minutes he will have his way, because Sir Peter is a Justice of the Peace, and a pig-headed old fool to quarrel with. The constable happens to be on the premises, getting ready to leave. This being the case, what would you do, Halfacre?”

  Halfacre said: “That’s easy. Say I am you, eh? All right. I say to myself: ‘I am a knowledgeable fellow, a Bachelor of Science, and all that. I have glanced at these papers, and they were so much Greek to me. What harm can there be, therefore, in letting Major Chatterton take a glance? I know that Chief Inspector Bob Halfacre is coming along around tea-time: therefore, if Sir Thingummybob, J.P., tries to come the acid, I can simply tell him that I refuse to relinquish the deceased’s documents to any but the highest authorised official.’ Well, George? . . .”

  “Reasonable enough,” said George Oaks. “But what if you, being me, took it into your head to act on intuition?”

  Halfacre said: “No, thank you. Plain common sense is good enough for me, if you don’t mind, George.”

  “Halfacre, there is common sense and common sense; and more often than not, in the last analysis, common sense is something esoteric. It involves something behind knowledge. That is why what you call common sense, in its most dazzling application, is unexplainable. Common sense involves the intuitive: that is to say, it relies upon that which it senses rather than sees, upon what it perceives rather than knows. Don’t you start getting rational with me, Halfacre! Ask yourself what happens in your mind when you take one look at a man and say to yourself: ‘There’s a bad ’un.’ Ask an experienced diagnostician how he chooses a specific disease from a mass of similar symptoms. Ask a Japanese expert to explain how he determines the sex of a new-hatched chick. Ask——”

  “—If you don’t mind, George, we’ll save all that for some nice long winter evening, some time in the New Year. Come back to the point. About letting these so-called important documents out of your hands: where was the common sense in that?”

  George Oaks said, slowly: “In the first place, Halfacre, I have at the back of my mind a suspicion so preposterous that I simply daren’t give voice to it yet.”

  “All right, then, don’t,” said Halfacre. “But I’ll tell you one thing, if you like. If you start making a case on that basis, the probability is that you’ll argue yourself into going nuts, doolally, stone staring crackers. Don’t do it.”

  “Just so. That is why I’m keeping my case to myself, Halfacre—so that, if I’m crazy, which I almost hope I am, I won’t altogether discredit myself like old Austin Crabbe.”

 
“God forbid,” said Halfacre. “But what makes you bring up poor old Austin Crabbe at this point, George? He was off his rocker, you know.”

  “You think he was, do you?”

  “Don’t you, George?”

  “No, I don’t, Halfacre. Austin Crabbe was on his rocker. Simply; his rocker didn’t happen to be your rocker. A monomaniac, I grant you; Austin Crabbe was that. But the fact that a man is a monomaniac doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s wrong, Halfacre. A fixed idea may turn out to be a very right idea, expressed before its time and without supporting evidence. You know that ironic Cockney saying: ‘You ain’t crazy, Bill—yer right, an’ all the world’s wrong’? That can be so. If it were not for monomaniacs, you’d still be swinging from a branch. You can heave it or sink it, leave it or drink it—I tell you that the time may yet come when you’ll remember Austin Crabbe in your prayers,” said George Oaks.

  Halfacre said: “Austin was all right. He was one of the best until he went barmy, and went and gassed himself.”

  “Gassed himself. Shall I tell you something? Austin Crabbe did not gas himself. He was murdered in cold blood.” Halfacre raised his eyebrows: George Oaks caught hold of his wrist and held his eyes with his keen, intent stare. “Austin Crabbe was foully murdered, Halfacre!”

  “No need to break my arm, George. All right, then, Crabbe was murdered. By whom?”

  “By Lord Kadmeel.”

  “With what motive?”

  “Either he knew too much, or suspected too much.”

  “You mean, about Lord Kadmeel?”

  “Yes. And as for his lulling himself—you and your common sense!—doesn’t your common sense tell you that the very last thing a man like Austin Crabbe does is, kill himself? Crabbe was a man with a big hate, Halfacre. Such men will do anything but kill themselves. In hate or in love, you don’t kill yourself—only in despair, when all desire ceases.”

  “Very well, then, George,” said Chief Inspector Halfacre smoothly. “Austin Crabbe didn’t kill himself; he was murdered. Let’s get back to the point. Why did you let Dr. Kurt Brevis’s papers off the premises and out of your sight?”

  George Oaks said: “Take certain facts in order. I think I know what I know. I know better than to tell you what I think I know, without first having convinced you, through material evidence, of the need for action. You couldn’t properly act on my suspicions, which are out of this world. Therefore, don’t you see, I create a situation in which you will be compelled to act.”

  “What situation?” asked the Chief Inspector. “You’ve told me that Monty Cello, deceased, is an alias of ‘Lippy’ Orsini; and you’ve told me that Dr. Kurt Brevis’s body may be exhumed at such-and-such a place. Well, where’s your situation?”

  “Yet to come,” said George Oaks calmly. “The proper authorities must pick up Monty Cello’s things between now and tomorrow, mustn’t they? As I see it, between now and then there is bound to be some attempt to burgle Albert’s house, and probably to get at the safe in the Hither Valley Hotel. This being the case, considering information already received from me, you’ll be bound to act, one way or another, won’t you?”

  “Right you are, George,” said Halfacre, “I’ll grant you that. Still, we haven’t got back round to my original point. You know Austin Crabbe, you tell me, and you say that it wasn’t in the nature of the man to kill himself: that was strong enough reason for you to come to a certain conclusion. All right, George, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I know you, d’you know; and I say that it isn’t in the nature of you to let Kurt Brevis’s documents out of your sight. See? . . . Well?”

  “Bait for a hook, Halfacre, bait for a hook!” cried George Oaks.

  “Oh no,” said the Chief Inspector. “I’m a bit of a fishing man myself, you know, in one way and another. . . . In the first place, there’s bait that’s much too heavy. You cast a fly to catch a trout; you don’t cast a trout to catch a fly. In the second place, where the hell’s your hook? Well?”

  “In the first place,” George Oaks replied, “this is a case of casting a trout to catch a whale. In the second place, you are the hook, Halfacre.”

  “That won’t do, George. It’s bad fishing. If it’s whales you’re after, your tackle’s too light. And your boat’s too small. Doesn’t it say something in the Bible, somewhere, that you can’t draw Leviathan out of the water with a hook in his jaw—Book of Job, I think? . . . Peter Piper went a-fishing for to catch a whale, and all the water he had got was in his mother’s pail . . . speaking of literature. But you’re not Peter Piper, George, and I happen to know that you’re a cunning hand with a rod; so when you come around to damn silly comparisons of that nature, I get more and more suspicious of you every moment. I know you, don’t forget, and I tell you, as sure as I sit here, you knew perfectly well that these documents of yours never left this house. Now then!”

  “Very well,” said George Oaks, “come to the Hither Valley and see.”

  “All right, so I will,” said Chief Inspector Halfacre. “Bollard, you wait here, and see to it that not so much as a fly comes in or out of the house while I’m gone.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Sergeant Bollard, closing his notebook.

  “And I give you fair warning, George—if you’ve been withholding anything of any importance, I’d shop you if you were my own brother. Let’s go.”

  When we were at the garden gate, Halfacre excused himself and went back into the house. “Bathroom my eye!” George Oaks muttered. “He’s gone to tell Bollard to go over the house. No fool, Halfacre! And I like the look of Bollard too.”

  I answered bitterly: “No fool? He made you look like an absolute ass. Why not give him the papers and have done with it? As soon as he goes over Monty Cello’s things at the Hither Valley, Halfacre’s bound to come right back and shake the whole damned house through a sieve. And I can tell you this, George—before he does that I’ll simply tell him where those papers are.”

  “I beg you, Albert, don’t do that. I must admit that I underestimated Halfacre. Damn his eyes, he’s harder to side-track than a bulldozer. . . . I must be getting old. . . . Please have faith in me just for the present, Albert, old friend, please do. Something tells me I can’t be wrong, here.”

  Then Chief Inspector Halfacre rejoined us, whistling, and so we walked the long mile down the road to the Hither Valley Hotel. I remember that he bared his head, smiled at the sky, and, breathing deeply, swore that there was nothing so beautiful as the smell of hops mixed with wood-smoke. He paused once or twice to pick a few prematurely ripened blackberries, the largest of which he offered me; I took it and, in my angry preoccupation, put it in my trousers pocket.

  Part Six

  Mr. Syd must have been a fine figure of a man twenty years ago, and his face still has a certain delicacy of feature; but his powerful frame has taken on a little more weight than it can carry with perfect dignity, so that he tends to move like a man in a Christmas shopping rush balancing two armfuls of hastily wrapped parcels, the topmost of which, marked Fragile, is on the verge of overbalancing. I have seen him put out a Saturday night crowd at closing time simply by leaning against it. He is not given to the expression of strong emotion. For example: when Adolf Hitler shot Eva Braun and poisoned himself, and the countryside was buzzing with the news, all Syd said was: “Hitler never did have much sense of honour, did he?”

  But now, when I introduced Chief Inspector Halfacre and said that he had come to pick up the dead man’s property, Mr. Syd showed signs of helpless astonishment—just as if that Fragile parcel had at last toppled over to fall at his feet. He winced at the inaudible crash. “I don’t quite understand this,” he said. “You are from Scotland Yard, you say, sir?”

  “Here are my credentials, Mr. Syd,” said Halfacre. “I’ll have a look at those things, if it’s not too much trouble.”

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p; “I’m sorry,” said Syd, “but it seems as if the Brighthaven police were here a bit ahead of you.”

  “What the devil d’you mean?” cried George Oaks.

  “You shut up, George,” said Halfacre. “. . . What do you mean, Mr. Syd? How do you mean, ahead of me?”

  Syd took from his fob pocket a bit of paper, and handed it to the Chief Inspector, saying: “Naturally, I insisted on an official receipt. Here it is. The Constable Hobson came round, about half-past five or so, with a sergeant in uniform from Brighthaven and a detective in plain clothes, and asked me for the stuff old Hobson himself had left with me to be locked in my safe. Naturally, I handed it over. Of course, I asked to see some written authorisation.”

  Halfacre said: “Quite right. And they produced it? . . . I see. So you handed the stuff over, then.”

  “What else was I to do?”

  “Nothing, Mr. Syd. I see that the signature on this receipt says Noah Hobson. That’s the local constable, I take it. Happen to remember the names of the other two, by any chance?”

  “The plain-clothes man’s card said Bosworth. Old Hobson introduced the sergeant as Ayrton,” said Syd.

  “I see. Mind if I use your phone?”

  “Not at all. And would you like me to try and find Hobson for you?”

  “I’m sorry to trouble you, Mr. Syd, but I’d be much obliged if you’d do that.”

  Mr. Syd and Chief Inspector Halfacre left the dining-room in which we were sitting. As soon as the door was closed behind them George Oaks punched me in the chest, and whispered: “Albert, Albert, by the God, this is perfect! This is it!”