Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm
Page 13
She turned away from the stairs and the Sergeant did not call her back.
Cluff remained at the bottom of the stairs. Flakes of plaster dropped from the ceiling as she moved across the space above it. The ceiling shook. It groaned. It hung in a curve more pronounced the nearer she got to its middle.
Laths splintered. The ceiling tore. She came through it in a cloud of dust. She landed with a crash on the stone floor.
Cluff knelt beside her. He wiped the sweat from her forehead with his handkerchief. He smoothed her hair back from her eyes. He pulled her clothes decently across her breasts and straightened her skirt over her shattered legs.
Policemen swarmed about him. They carried her out to the cars. Cluff walked beside her.
She said, “I wanted to kill myself.”
Chapter XXVI
Annie Croft asked, “Why don’t you come round to our house tonight? We can have a game of cards and a bite of supper.”
Caleb Cluff shook his head in refusal.
Annie buttoned her coat reluctantly. She tugged at her hat.
“You should have stayed on at Cluff’s Head,” she said.
“I’d rather be at home,” Caleb replied.
“You shouldn’t be living on your own,” Annie said. “I can’t fathom you.”
He sat in his chair for a long time after Annie had gone. Jenet purred on his knees. Clive, on the rug in front of the fire, shifted in his sleep.
The Sergeant stared into the flames. It got dark. He lit the oil-lamp.
A letter was propped against a vase on the mantelpiece. Before he sat down again he reached for the letter. The envelope was already open. He read Superintendent Patterson’s congratulations a second time. He crumpled envelope and letter in his hand and threw them on the fire, watching them burn.
His head nodded and he dozed, too overcome with lassitude to make the effort of going upstairs to bed.
The telephone rang. Clive stirred. The Sergeant let it ring, not sure that he wasn’t back where he’d started from, wondering whether the days between were real.
The telephone went on ringing.
The voice was the same as the voice that had called him out on the night he found Amy Wright dead in Balaclava Street.
“Caleb?” Mole asked, using more familiarity than in the past.
“Are you there?” Mole demanded. “Are you there?”
“I’m here,” the Sergeant answered.
Mole coughed.
“You were right about Amy—” Mole began.
“What!” Cluff exclaimed. It was too much to explain, with Wright dead and the affair finished.
“Though if ever a murder looked like suicide—” Mole continued.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cluff told him.
“You did a good job,” Mole said, the words sticking in his throat. “If it hadn’t been for you they’d have got away with it. With Cricklethwaite too.”
“Is that what you rang me up to say?” Cluff murmured wearily.
“Patterson told me to contact you.”
“Well?”
“No doubt of it this time.”
“Go on.”
“A clear case of murder, thank the Lord.”
“Where are you? At the station?”
“Patterson knows you’re still on leave. If you don’t feel like it—”
Cluff’s voice was bitter. “Leave!” he said. “What do I want with leave now?”
Inspector Mole laughed. “It’s one of the penalties of having a reputation,” he said. His laughter was insincere, with undertones of disappointment and envy.
“You’ve started something for yourself,” Mole added. “It never rains but it pours.”
No one answered him.
Inspector Mole’s eyes hardened. He slammed the receiver violently into its cradle. He stalked, offended, into the outer office.
“Is he coming?” Constable Barker inquired.
“What the devil!” Mole roared. “I’m not Cluff’s keeper. Don’t ask me about Cluff. You know him as well as I do.”
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