by Colin Watson
“Shrimp,” Henry said, tersely.
Janice leaned forward, short-sightedly scrutinized a row of four or five little jars, then slid one across. Without acknowledgment, Henry picked it up and gouged out some of the contents. Janice neither ate nor drank anything herself.
The room was very cold. A smell of wet plaster pervaded it.
“And what are you after, then?” Henry spoke with his mouth full. He didn’t look up from his plate.
Purbright resolved at that moment to be neither devious nor tactful. The tea chest was exceedingly uncomfortable.
“I understand you are a client of the Handclasp House matrimonial bureau.”
“I was,” replied Henry with neither hesitation nor, apparently, concern. “But I got fixed up.”
Janice blushed happily.
“At first shot?” Purbright did his best to sound rude and was fairly successful
“No.”
“How many?”
“I don’t see what the hell it’s got to do with you, but it so happens there were two others. One had been looking ten years for somebody to put her into a book. I put her on the next bloody bus. Then there was some bint who wanted to bear a beautiful child without taking her knickers off. God, this damn country’s full of walking middle-class fantasies. It’s got no loins any more.”
Henry glared at the loaf and Janice hastily began sawing it.
“Did either of your earlier, er, applicants happen to be called Reckitt?” Purbright asked. “Or Bannister?”
“Tomato and pilchard,” said Henry, after brief consideration. Janice got busy among the jars.
“Names!” cried Henry, as soon as he had recharged his mouth. “Why should I remember names? The only decent book written in the last fifty years hadn’t a single name in it from cover to cover. This labelling obsession is a sign of literary castration. I’m a writer, man! A professional writer, not the compiler of a telephone directory.”
Henry’s pronunciation of the word “writer”, Purbright noted, was the most aggressive instance of his general affection of a West Fading accent. He hurled forth the diphthong like the bleat of an agonized sheep.
“All the same, sir,” Purbright said, “I should be glad if you would belabour your memory and see whether Reckitt or Bannister occurs to you.”
“Never heard of either of them. Who are they, anyway?”
“They are—or were—two of your fellow subscribers to that matrimonial agency. A Miss Martha Reckitt and a Mrs Bannister. Both women now appear to be missing.”
“Well I haven’t lost them.” Henry passed a large white mug to Janice, who hastened to fill it with tea and hand it back. He tasted the tea, held it out for more sugar, then continued to take small sips while he read an item in the New Statesman that had been propped between his plate and a jar of jam.
“You say you are a professional writer?”
“That’s right.” Henry didn’t look up.
“In that case, perhaps you wouldn’t mind obliging me with a sample.”
“What, of urine?”
Janice giggled admiringly.
“No, sir. I was thinking not so much in terms of original composition as of a simple specimen of handwriting. I’d settle for ‘The fox jumped over the lazy dog,’ for instance.”
“Or ‘The inquisitive copper vanished up his own arsehole?’ ”
Purbright nodded blandly. “That would do just as nicely, sir.” He strolled to the table, unscrewing the cap of his pen. The pen and a blank page torn from his notebook he placed beside Henry’s elbow.
Henry stared at them. He looked less confident.
“What’s the idea, anyway?”
“To use an old cliché, I am asking you to help us eliminate you from our inquiries.”
“You mean I’m suspected of something?”
“It does so happen that you bear some resemblance to a man who has been seen in the company of one of the women we’re concerned about.”
“But that’s bloody ridiculous.”
“You never associate with women?”
Henry screwed up his eyes in exasperation. “Look, I’m a wri-i-iter, inspector. Of course I associate, as you call it. Connect up. Charge the battery. Absorb. I’ve got to feed my own parturition. Don’t you see? It’s like a furnace. No. No—a kiln. To get the white heat for beautiful porcelain, I’ve got to stoke, stoke, stoke it all the time. With people. All sorts of people. I don’t have to be fussy like you, with your elimina-a-tions and your associa-a-tions. They just have to be real, and struggling, and smelling of the world’s gut!”
There was a pause during which Purbright fancied he could hear the word “gut” echoing in the room’s cold, huge-throated chimney. What he was afterwards to admit ashamedly to himself had been sheer malice provoked the observation that broke the silence.
“I think John Buchan’s stuff is awfully good, don’t you?”
With a choking noise, Henry Rusk seized the pen and held it poised. For fully a minute he gazed at the blank paper. Within the beard his mouth made fitful little movements. Then at last he groaned and began to write.
It was not until Purbright was well clear of the Old Rectory that he took one hand from the wheel, fished the paper out of his left hand pocket and glanced down to see what was on it.
The single line of writing was in a wavery, rather childish hand, not very easy to read.
It was: “The fox jumped over the lazy dog.”
Chapter Eight
There came to Miss Teatime a second letter by the same firm script as before, snug within its outer and inner envelopes and suggestive of dependable masculinity.
Again it was subscribed merely “4122 (R.N. retd.)” but its contents were more fulsome and, Miss Teatime dared to conclude, in warmer tone.
Dear Miss 347,
How can I describe my pleasure on receiving so prompt and friendly a reply to my little “overture”. As it was my very first attempt through the agency, you can guess how “chuffed” I was when it brought a result—your letter. People are not always very courteous in these selfish times and replies even to the sincerest inquiries cannot be relied upon. Still, you have proved that I do not need to despair altogether! Yes, as you have guessed, I am an “old salt” (though not all that old, I assure you!) and of course I was thrilled to hear that you, too, have a love of the Deep. We must have talks about that when, as I am bold enough to hope, we meet.
So you are a writer (I could tell that from your letter, of course). You make me quite envious. Old shipmates have often told me that I ought to put my experiences into a book, but I never seem to have the time. Which is a pity, because a close friend of mine happens to be a very influential Literary Agent. He holds several publishers “in the palm of his hand” and simply cannot get enough manuscripts—especially, he tells me, by women authors. We must see what
you
have hidden away there, mustn’t we? And antiques—there’s another coincidence! How I agree with what you say about “this world of the tawdry and second-rate”. My dear sister is always telling me that I spend too much of my “humble sufficiency” on the works of old craftsmen, but she does not understand the collector’s “mad joy in ancient graven things and trinkets fondly wrought”.
Please tell me that we may meet. A word, a word, and all will be arranged!!
So far, so jolly, jolly good, mused Miss Teatime, folding the letter away in her handbag.
She looked at her little silver dress watch. Half past nine. She decided against replying immediately to 4122. An impression of over eagerness would not be ladylike. Only a brief note was needed this time; it could go tomorrow.
She crossed the corridor into the resident’s lounge, collected the Daily Mail from a pile of papers on the central table, and sank with it into a big grey chair. Flaxborough mornings were very pleasant; nobody bothered one and there was nothing of that sense imparted by London hotels of having to keep one’s feet tucked out of the way of anxious, self-importan
t people.
Reading a newspaper here was rather like casually scanning dispatches from some mad, remote battlefield, so it was with surprise and amusement that Miss Teatime spotted a Flaxborough dateline over a modest, down-page paragraph.
The story was nothing much—something about police inquiries into the disappearance of a local widow and the possibility of connection with a previous, similar case—but just to see the name Flaxborough in a national paper now had a queerly personal significance.
An hour later Miss Teatime sauntered through the sunshine to the public library, in whose almost deserted reference room she added a few interesting snippets to what she knew about Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, besides finding time for a quick cruise through The Elements of Modern Seamanship.
It was just after midday when she left the library and made her way along Church Street to the lane where she had discovered, the day before, an altogether adorable inn.
This was The Saracen’s Head, a thatched, whitewashed building so old that either the weight of its thick walls had caused it to sink during the centuries or the lane had risen by a succession of resurfacings. Through whichever cause, the pavement was now level with the tops of its windows. To reach the door, one had to descend a flight of five steps, each hollowed by wear into the semblance of a shallow tureen.
The bar room was long and dim and its air held the coolness of old stone. Lamps gleamed in the corners farthest from the window. Their soft yellow light—implying, one felt, a comfortable independence of time—was reflected from the black knuckles and sinews of oak furniture.
As Miss Teatime entered, the landlord rose from the company of his only three customers and stepped behind the bar. He was a big, sorrowful looking man whose Fair Isle pullover was rucked in wavelets from an unsuccessfully belted paunch. The quartet had been playing dominoes and the landlord clicked face down on the counter the hand of half a dozen pieces that had been nestling in his left palm. As soon as he had measured out her double whisky and her change, he retrieved the dominoes by pressing upon them the flat of his hand, and went back to the game.
Miss Teatime took a seat at a nearby table and for a while looked on with a benevolent eye. At the next interlude for the recharging of glasses, she rose and approached with modest hesitation.
“I wonder if I might sit and watch you for a while? I’ve always wanted to see how this game is played.”
There was a murmur of slightly embarrassed but respectful assent, and two of the players hutched along their bench to make room for her.
She sat primly beside a man in blue serge whose smile of assurance was somewhat marred by a cast in one eye. This gave the feeling of there being someone behind her shoulder and with whom the man was in confidential communication. However, as play progressed the conversation warmed again and Miss Teatime soon found herself included.
She was impressed by the rapid calculation of which these people so obviously were capable. Their power of divination was perhaps even more remarkable. But most of all she marvelled at the way each could hold ten, twelve, fourteen “cards” in one perfectly secure palmful.
Two more games had been played and fresh drinks brought in. The ivory tablets swirled and rattled in another shuffle. Hands reached out to divide them.
“I wonder,” quickly said Miss Teatime, “if I...”
They looked at her.
“What I mean is, would it spoil your game terribly if I had a go? I think I can see how it’s played.”
There was a moment’s silence. The landlord glanced at the others. “All right,” he said. “You have a try, duck.” He slid a helping of cards towards her.
Happily, Miss Teatime began to pick them up and to build a little crescent shaped wall. “I haven’t quite such big hands as you gentlemen,” she explained.
“You just suit yourself, pet,” the cast-eyed man told her. “I’ll not look at them.” Oddly enough, that appeared to be exactly what he was doing at that moment, but Miss Teatime had been too well brought up to view uncharitably the afflictions of others.
“Right, then,” said the landlord. “Your drop, Jack.”
“Oh, there is one thing,” Miss Teatime announced, “that I really must insist upon.” She gave a nervous smile. “There can be no question of my not ‘taking my corner’, as I think you describe it. Pints—that’s right, isn’t it? And if I should win...oh, but that’s hardly likely!”
“Whisky it’ll be if you do,” gallantly asserted the landlord.
Miss Teatime blushed. “But just a single. Naturally.”
The play began.
Two hours later, when the irrefutable fact of closing time (The Saracen’s Head not being, after all, in another world) lay heavy upon the rest of the company, Miss Teatime was brighter than they by nine glasses of spirits. The mastery of dominoes, like that of anything else, simply called for a certain knack. She was pleased, but not arrogant at her success in having discovered it among her reserve talents.
The landlord climbed ponderously to his feet, stretched, and stood looming over them.
“Glasses, if you please,” he intoned.
“It’s not time yet,” said the man called Jack.
Miss Teatime smiled mischievously into her tenth glass of whisky. “Old crusty crutch!” she said. Jack laughed and nudged her.
“It’s three o’clock,” affirmed the landlord.
Miss Teatime ostentatiously consulted her dress watch. “Two minutes to,” she corrected.
The man with the odd vision stared at a vase of flowers in the window in order to see the clock on the wall of a building across the street. “That’s right,” he said. “Two minutes to go yet.” He turned and the landlord received, by proxy, as it were, the gaze of admiration intended for Miss Teatime.
“He’s mean with his bloody minutes, is old Fred,” declared the third customer. Jack noisily concurred and nudged Miss Teatime again.
She grinned, then suddenly adopted an expression of prim disapproval.
“My considered opinion of old Fred,” she said carefully, “is that he would twist the skin off a fart.”
In the C.I.D. room at Flaxborough Police Station, Inspector Purbright and his sergeant conferred. Neither felt that he had gathered anything useful, but the fleeting appearance, ten minutes before, of the Chief Constable in the doorway with his “Found those ladies yet?” could not be ignored. He had looked a bit like the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
“I’ll bet Spain’s been on to him,” Purbright said. “It’s from Spain that he gets the meat for those tree rats of his.”
Love, who had been twice bitten by Mr Chubb’s Yorkshire terriers, agreed. Any man who would knowingly supply provender for such creatures was quite capable of putting pressure on a chief constable.
Purbright glanced through the file, which now combined what information they had about both Miss Reckitt and Mrs Bannister. There were also five specimens of handwriting, none of which bore close resemblance to the three “Rex” letters, although the experts had expressed tantalizing doubts about Mr Rusk’s O’s and the T-crossing of Mr Rowley of Leicester Avenue.
“I’d like it to be Rusk,” Purbright admitted, “but I’m quite sure he’s in the clear. For one thing, the impersonation of charm is unquestionably beyond him. For another, he’s far too convinced of his literary professionalism to be able to pretend that he is a successful author, as women like Mrs Bannister would understand the term. Mr Rusk might invent a literary luncheon, but he most certainly would not invent the presence at it of J. B. Priestley.”
“You don’t think Rusk is a fraud, then?”
“My dear Sid, of course he’s a fraud. But not the kind we are looking for. It takes more than a fringe of whisker and some bowelly borrowings from D. H. Lawrence to make a real impostor—even if you chuck in the stage Yorkshire as well. There’s a sort of splendour about the phoneyness of a con man. It’s an apparatus that he’s spent years in building up and perfecting—an elaborate fair organ. Mr Rusk
couldn’t whittle a wooden flute.”
“When you put it like that,” said Love after an admiring pause, “I’m afraid my two blokes are out, too.”
“Rowley and...” Purbright turned back through his notes.
“And Singleton. The retired waterworks man.”
“That’s right. How did you get on?”
“Well, they didn’t seem very pleased to see me. Singleton wouldn’t come out of the garden. He was going up and down with a lawn mower all the time. I had to ask each question as he went by one way, and try and catch the answer when he passed on the way back.”
