Behind the garage the surface of the snow was unbroken, save for one double line of footprints leading towards the back quarters. Treading carefully to one side of them, Petrella followed. They led him to the kitchen door, which was shut.
He pressed, and with a click the door swung open. His torch showed him that the metal cup retaining the flange of the lock was hanging by a single screw. The slightest pressure unseated it and allowed the door to open.
He tried the light switch. The light came on all right. The kitchen was empty and had the tidy look of a room that was not in use. The stove was out, and the house was as cold as a mausoleum. He turned the light off and relied on his torch.
The dining-room was a little warmer, with the lingering heat of the electric fire that had been turned on for their benefit earlier in the evening. He looked around him. There were two obvious places for the household silver. A sideboard with drawers and a big oak corner cupboard. Covering his hand carefully with a handkerchief, Petrella opened the cupboard. It was empty. As also was the sideboard.
Petrella left the house, pulling the backdoor shut behind him, and made his way to the police station.
‘Have you got any way of tracing Mr. Hazel?’ he asked.
Sergeant Rampole studied the list. ‘Touring,’ he said. ‘That’s a fat lot of use. And he’s new round here. So he hasn’t had time to make a lot of friends.’ He scratched his head. ‘He’s a solicitor, isn’t he? We could look him up in the list and find his office. They might know where he’s gone.’
‘Of course,’ said Petrella. ‘I’ll do that in the morning.’ He was angry with himself for not thinking of such an obvious solution. There must be something wrong with him. He came to the conclusion that he was tired.
‘There’s another thing,’ he said. ‘What’s the name of the little man we use to take off locks—Protheroe—could you get hold of him and ask him to put a new lock on the backdoor of The Firs?’
The Sergeant looked surprised. ‘Some trouble down there?’
‘That’s just it,’ said Petrella. ‘I don’t know.’
That night, for the first time for as long as he could remember, he slept badly. A face kept coming between him and his rest. A strong, sardonic face. The eyes seemed to be laughing at him, but the mouth was hard.
Next morning he located, without difficulty, the New Square firm of Marsham, Pratt, & Bailliwick of which Mr. Hazel was the senior partner; but such information as he got was vague and unhelpful.
‘He never leaves any address when he goes on holiday,’ said the junior partner, a cheerful young man with an H.A.C. tie and a rather less conventional style of dress than would have been tolerated in Lincoln’s Inn before the war. ‘If he does, he says we shall all be ringing him up with damned silly questions about his clients. And we should, too.’
Petrella thanked him politely, and withdrew.
That was Christmas Eve. As he came out into Chancery Lane the snow was coming down again, thick, slow-falling, enduring flakes, dropping from a steel-grey sky on to a blanched and shrinking world.
When he got back to the Station, Sergeant Rampole reported that Protheroe had duly fixed a new lock on the backdoor of The Firs. Protheroe didn’t think that the old lock had been forced; it had just got like that.
‘Some people,’ said Sergeant Rampole, ‘bloody well deserve to have their houses burgled.’ When Petrella didn’t answer, he looked up. The younger man was standing in front of the charge-room stove, his eyes shut. ‘You all right?’ said the Sergeant.
‘Funny,’ said Petrella. ‘I blacked out for a moment. I expect it was coming in here out of the cold.’
‘If I was you, I’d take a hot whisky and go to bed.’
‘Can’t do that,’ said Petrella. ‘Too much to do. I’ll be all right.’
There was, in fact, work. He had a couple of visits to make immediately after lunch, in the residential area south of Helenwood Common. He didn’t seem to have any appetite, so he lunched off a cup of strong tea, and then he set out. The snow had stopped falling and the clouds had cleared away. With their passing, some of his depression had gone too, and he felt a sort of delusive light-headedness.
As he came out from his second visit, he saw the man. Petrella was half hidden by the doorway of the house he was in, and was certain he had not been seen. The man was on the opposite pavement, walking slowly. Hungrily Petrella studied his face. There was no doubt about it. It was his host of the previous evening; walking easily, despite his bulk, and with something of the swing of one who had once been an athlete.
As innocent-looking as a family cat, thought Petrella, and perhaps as dangerous.
He followed cautiously. The big man was in no hurry; and since this was Petrella’s home ground, and he knew every inch of it, he was able to anticipate his route, sidestep, circle round, and cut back in such a way that he kept on the heels of his quarry without ever seeming to follow him at all.
After about a quarter of an hour of this blindfold chess Petrella realized, with a prickle of excitement, where they were heading. It was the Clarendon Estate, the houses of the top Highsiders, the rich and the influential; big houses, each in its own half acre of garden and with its private back gate on to the heath.
The big man walked slowly up the approach. He made no attempt to disguise his interest. He might have been a benevolent tiger viewing a line of tethered goats. When he reached the end he stopped, tried a front gate, found it open, and walked in. As soon as he was out of sight Petrella pelted after him, his footsteps muffled in the piled snow. Apart from the two of them there was no one else in sight.
He reached the gate in time to see the big man disappearing round the corner of the house.
‘He can’t—!’ thought Petrella. ‘He can’t—not in broad daylight!’
A board caught his eye, almost hidden in the snow-capped hedge: to let furnished. Petrella stood undecided. The thing was to get under cover. But where? All the other houses looked horribly occupied. And the road was bare of cover. The solution suddenly occurred to him.
He opened the front gate, darted down the path, and dodged behind the line of laurel shrubbery that masked the point where the path turned round to the back of the house. It was not as thick as he could have wished, but it was better than nothing.
Three minutes. Five minutes. The silence of the late afternoon brooded over the snow.
Then, quite suddenly, the big man was there again. He had gone right round the house and was now moving, unhurried as ever, towards the spot where Petrella crouched. Unconsciously Petrella bent lower, and at that moment he knew he was slipping. There was nothing he could do about it. Not without grabbing one of the branches, and that would certainly give him away. He did the only thing possible. He let himself fall back, as softly and as slowly as he could, into the piled snow that filled the shallow dip behind him.
As he lay there, he heard the click of the front gate. And by the time he had rolled over, stumbled to his feet, and reached the end of the path, the roadway was empty.
***
Petrella himself retained little recollection of how he spent the rest of that day. Sergeant Rampole says that he came back to the Station, told him a long and involved story about having a fight in the snow with Father Christmas, and walked straight out of the room in the middle of the sentence without shutting the door. Mrs. Catt says that he came in looking like death, and she sent him to bed with a hot-water bottle. Later she took up his supper, found him fast asleep, and took it down again.
It was late the next morning when Petrella woke up. He had to think hard for a moment to remember that it was Christmas Day. He was bathed in sweat, but his head was a bit clearer. It was a beautiful day. The sun had come out, and was shining in glory on the fresh snow that had fallen during the night.
He felt curiously weak as he put on his clothes; and, although he had eaten nothing
for nearly twenty-four hours, he was not hungry. He was not due at the Station until after lunch, so he decided to go to church.
There was always a good congregation at the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, and on this fine Christmas morning the church was likely to be full. Ahead of Petrella two family parties, prayer books in hand, filled the pavement. As they turned into Rochester Road, a man fell in behind them.
Impossible to say where he had come from. One moment the pavement was empty, the next moment he was there.
***
Petrella felt himself going red. A moment later they had both turned in at the porch of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. His friend, Mr. Peggs, was there, solemn in suit of Sunday black. He handed Petrella a prayer book and a hymn book and said, ‘Not much room downstairs. Why don’t you grab yourself a seat in the gallery?’
Like many London churches, St. Peter and St. Paul had broad galleries across the back and two-thirds of the way down the sides; they were thrown open on festal occasions.
‘Get a good view from there,’ said Mr. Peggs.
Petrella hesitated. Through the glass doors he could see his quarry. He was being shown to a single empty seat, at the inner end of the sixth row. He said abruptly, ‘Could you get a note to the Reverend Freebone? Before the service starts?’
Mr. Peggs looked at him for a moment, his eyes snapping with curiosity. ‘I’m meant to be on duty,’ he said. ‘I take it it’s important.’
‘Yes,’ said Petrella. ‘Most important.’ It seemed to him, at that moment, the most important thing in the whole world.
‘All right. I don’t suppose they’ll court-martial me.’
Petrella was already scribbling: He’s sitting in the sixth row, on the south side, at the inner end of the row. If you or any of the choir recognize him… What were they going to do? He had to know by the end of the service. Some action had to be taken. Find some way of letting me know. I shall be in the north gallery, near the front.
Petrella climbed the steep stone stair. The organ voluntary was reaching its climax as he slid into his seat. He peered over the parapet, felt unaccountably dizzy, and sat back hastily on his seat. The organ gave a final flourish, the big west doors swung open, and as the choir appeared, led by the People’s Warden with staff in hand, the strains of Adeste Fideles broke from the massed voices below.
As the boys walked in solemn procession towards the altar they passed within inches of the big man. No head—not even an eye—turned. But Petrella knew. It was as clear to him as if it had been shouted. As clear as when, during the course of the service, head after head turned up from the choir to where he sat, clinging with hot hands to the gallery parapet.
‘I’d better let him get outside,’ thought Petrella. ‘But he mustn’t get away again. I’ll walk to the end of the path, and tackle him as he comes out into the street. Always supposing I can get down those stairs. Something seems to have gone wrong with my legs.’ The whole scene below him had broken adrift, and was floating on the surges of the solemn organ music, now rising, now falling, now circling in stately dance around that central figure to which his eyes were fastened.
Petrella rose to his feet as the service finished, and tottered down the stairs. A man looked up at him curiously as he cannoned into him, but said nothing. Then he was outside and heading for the lich-gate.
‘I’ll do it here,’ he said. The stout oak gate-post was something to lean against in a reeling world, which suddenly steadied as he saw three figures walking together towards him, down the path. In the middle was the man he was waiting for. On his right, a tall grey-haired stranger, wearing glasses. On his left—Petrella blinked twice—Superintendent Haxtell.
‘There is Petrella,’ said Haxtell. ‘I thought I saw him lurking in the gallery. Let me introduce you. Mr. Hazel you know, I think. And this is Chief Superintendent Causton. He’s taking over Barstow’s job.’
The big man smiled. ‘I haven’t had time to make myself known,’ he said. ‘I’ve been here unofficially for some days, house-hunting. Mr. Hazel let me base myself on him.’
Petrella found himself shaking hands.
‘Sergeant Rampole gave me a bad report of you,’ said Haxtell. ‘He says you’ve been overworking. You don’t look awfully fit.’
‘I’ve got a car here,’ said Mr. Hazel. ‘Look here—I think we’d better give him a hand.’
The whole white world was rotating slowly round Petrella’s head. He felt a strong hand under each arm, and then he was in a car. ‘It’s very good of you,’ he said feebly.
‘Hazel owes you that, at least,’ said Chief Superintendent Causton, turning round from his seat by the driver. ‘It’s a small exchange for that handsome lock you put on his backdoor. Invitation to burglars, leaving his house in that condition.’
Mr. Hazel laughed. The Chief Superintendent smiled, too. It was a smile that implied, perhaps, more than it stated. Or so Petrella thought. But he was in no real condition at that moment for logical thinking.
The Carol Singers
Josephine Bell
Josephine Bell was the pen-name of Doris Bell Collier Ball (1897–1987). Born in Manchester, she studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, and became a doctor, marrying a fellow physician in 1923. Following her husband’s death, she started to publish detective stories. Murder in Hospital, her first book, made use of her medical knowledge, as did many of its successors. Death on the Borough Council introduced David Wintringham, who appeared in a dozen novels between 1937 and 1958.
Her non-series books included the atmospheric The Port of London Murders (1938). Freeman Wills Crofts, a prominent detective novelist of the Golden Age, and fellow resident of Guildford, gave her encouragement, and in 1954 she was elected to membership of the Detection Club, of which Crofts was a founder member. In the previous year, she had supported John Creasey in founding the Crime Writers’ Association, which she chaired in 1959–60. Together with Julian Symons and Michael Gilbert, she edited the CWA’s first anthology, Butcher’s Dozen. Her interest in contemporary social issues is evident in much of her work, not least in this story.
***
Old Mrs. Fairlands stepped carefully off the low chair she had pulled close to the fireplace. She was very conscious of her eighty-one years every time she performed these mild acrobatics. Conscious of them and determined to have no humiliating, potentially dangerous mishap. But obstinate, in her persistent routine of dusting her own mantelpiece, where a great many, too many photographs and small ornaments daily gathered a film of greasy London dust.
Mrs. Fairlands lived in the ground floor flat of a converted house in a once fashionable row of early Victorian family homes. The house had been in her family for three generations before her, and she herself had been born and brought up there. In those faroff days of her childhood, the whole house was filled with a busy throng of people, from the top floor where the nurseries housed the noisiest and liveliest group, through the dignified, low-voiced activities of her parents and resident aunt on the first and ground floors, to the basement haunts of the domestic staff, the kitchens and the cellars.
Too many young men of the family had died in two world wars and too many young women had married and left the house to make its original use in the late 1940’s any longer possible. Mrs. Fairlands, long a widow, had inherited the property when the last of her brothers died. She had let it for a while, but even that failed. A conversion was the obvious answer. She was a vigorous seventy at the time, fully determined, since her only child, a married daughter, lived in the to her barbarous wastes of the Devon moors, to continue to live alone with her much-loved familiar possessions about her.
The conversion was a great success and was made without very much structural alteration to the house. The basement, which had an entrance by the former back door, was shut off and was let to a businessman who spent only three days a week in London and preferred not to
use an hotel. The original hall remained as a common entrance to the other three flats. The ground floor provided Mrs. Fairlands with three large rooms, one of which was divided into a kitchen and bathroom. Her own front door was the original dining room door from the hall. It led now into a narrow passage, also chopped off from the room that made the bathroom and kitchen. At the end of the passage two new doors led into the former morning room, her drawing room as she liked to call it, and her bedroom, which had been the study.
This drawing room of hers was at the front of the house, overlooking the road. It had a square bay window that gave her a good view of the main front door and the steps leading up to it, the narrow front garden, now a paved forecourt, and from the opposite window of the bay, the front door and steps of the house next door, divided from her by a low wall.
Mrs. Fairlands, with characteristic obstinacy, strength of character, integrity, or whatever other description her forceful personality drew from those about her, had lived in her flat for eleven years, telling everyone that it suited her perfectly and feeling, as the years went by, progressively more lonely, more deeply bored, and more consciously apprehensive. Her daily came for four hours three times a week. It was enough to keep the place in good order. On those days the admirable woman cooked Mrs. Fairlands a good solid English dinner, which she shared, and also constructed several more main meals that could be eaten cold or warmed up. But three half days of cleaning and cooking left four whole days in each week when Mrs. Fairlands must provide for herself or go out to the High Street to a restaurant. After her eightieth birthday she became more and more reluctant to make the effort. But every week she wrote to her daughter Dorothy to say how well she felt and how much she would detest leaving London, where she had lived all her life except when she was evacuated to Wiltshire in the second war.
She was sincere in writing thus. The letters were true as far as they went, but they did not go the whole distance. They did not say that it took Mrs. Fairlands nearly an hour to wash and dress in the morning. They did not say she was sometimes too tired to bother with supper and then had to get up in the night, feeling faint and thirsty, to heat herself some milk. They did not say that although she stuck to her routine of dusting the whole flat every morning, she never mounted her low chair without a secret terror that she might fall and break her hip and perhaps be unable to reach the heavy stick she kept beside her armchair to use as a signal to the flat above.
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