The Clocks (19 page)

I felt a sharp pain in my shoulder. I had been wrong. There
was
a neighbour here, all right, a very useful neighbour if the neighbour had only been able to speak. I had been leaning against the post of No. 20, and the same large orange cat I had seen before was sitting on the gatepost. I stopped and exchanged a few words with him, first detaching his playful claw from my shoulder.

“If cats could speak,” I offered him as a conversational opening.

The orange cat opened his mouth, gave a loud melodious miaow.

“I know you can,” I said. “I know you can speak just as well as I can. But you're not speaking my language. Were you sitting here that day? Did you see who went into that house or came out of it? Do you know all about what happened? I wouldn't put it past you, puss.”

The cat took my remark in poor part. He turned his back on me and began to switch his tail.

“I'm sorry, your Majesty,” I said.

He gave me a cold look over his shoulder and started industriously to wash himself. Neighbours, I reflected bitterly! There was no doubt about it, neighbours were in short supply in Wilbraham Crescent. What I wanted—what Hardcastle wanted—was some nice gossipy, prying, peering old lady with time hanging heavy on her hands. Always hoping to look out and see something scandalous. The trouble is that that kind of old lady seems to have died out nowadays. They are all sitting grouped together in Old Ladies' Homes with every comfort for the aged, or crowding up hospitals where beds are needed urgently for the really sick. The lame and the halt and the old didn't live in their own houses anymore, attended by a faithful domestic or by some half-witted poor relation glad of a good home. It was a serious setback to criminal investigation.

I looked across the road. Why couldn't there be any neighbours there? Why couldn't there be a neat row of houses facing me instead of that great, inhuman-looking concrete block. A kind of human beehive, no doubt, tenanted by worker bees who were out all day and only came back in the evening to wash their smalls or make up their faces and go out to meet their young men. By contrast with
the inhumanity of that block of flats I began almost to have a kindly feeling for the faded Victorian gentility of Wilbraham Crescent.

My eye was caught by a flash of light somewhere halfway up the building. It puzzled me. I stared up. Yes, there it came again. An open window and someone looking through it. A face slightly obliterated by something that was being held up to it. The flash of light came again. I dropped a hand into my pocket. I keep a good many things in my pockets, things that may be useful. You'd be surprised at what is useful sometimes. A little adhesive tape. A few quite innocent-looking instruments which are quite capable of opening most locked doors, a tin of grey powder labelled something which it isn't and an insufflator to use with it, and one or two other little gadgets which most people wouldn't recognize for what they are. Amongst other things I had a pocket bird watcher. Not a high-powered one but just good enough to be useful. I took this out and raised it to my eye.

There was a child at the window. I could see a long plait of hair lying over one shoulder. She had a pair of small opera glasses and she was studying me with what might have been flattering attention. As there was nothing else for her to look at, however, it might not be as flattering as it seemed. At that moment, however, there was another midday distraction in Wilbraham Crescent.

A very old Rolls-Royce came with dignity along the road driven by a very elderly chauffeur. He looked dignified but rather disgusted with life. He passed me with the solemnity of a whole procession of cars. My child observer, I noticed, was now training her opera glasses on him. I stood there, thinking.

It is always my belief that if you wait long enough, you're bound to have
some
stroke of luck. Something that you can't count
upon and that you would never have thought of, but which just
happens.
Was it possible that this might be mine? Looking up again at the big square block, I noted carefully the position of the particular window I was interested in, counting from it to each end and up from the ground. Third floor. Then I walked along the street till I came to the entrance to the block of flats. It had a wide carriagedrive sweeping round the block with neatly spaced flower beds at strategic positions in the grass.

It's always well, I find, to go through all the motions, so I stepped off the carriage drive towards the block, looked up over my head as though startled, bent down to the grass, pretended to hunt about and finally straightened up, apparently transferring something from my hand to my pocket. Then I walked round the block until I came to the entrance.

At most times of the day I should think there was a porter here, but between the sacred hour of one and two the entrance hall was empty. There was a bell with a large sign above it, saying PORTER, but I did not ring it. There was an automatic lift and I went to it and pressed a button for the third floor. After that I had to check things pretty carefully.

It looks simple enough from the outside to place one particular room, but the inside of a building is confusing. However, I've had a good deal of practice at that sort of thing in my time, and I was fairly sure that I'd got the right door. The number on it, for better or worse, was No. 77. “Well,” I thought, “sevens are lucky. Here goes.” I pressed the bell and stood back to await events.

I
had to wait just a minute or two, then the door opened.

A big blonde Nordic girl with a flushed face and wearing gaycoloured clothing looked at me inquiringly. Her hands had been hastily wiped but there were traces of flour on them and there was a slight smear of flour on her nose so it was easy for me to guess what she had been doing.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but you have a little girl here, I think. She dropped something out of the window.”

She smiled at me encouragingly. The English language was not as yet her strong point.

“I am sorry—what you say?”

“A child here—a little girl.”

“Yes, yes.” She nodded.

“Dropped something—out of the window.”

Here I did a little gesticulation.

“I picked it up and brought it here.”

I held out an open hand. In it was a silver fruit knife. She looked at it without recognition.

“I do not think—I have not seen….”

“You're busy cooking,” I said sympathetically.

“Yes, yes, I cook. That is so.” She nodded vigorously.

“I don't want to disturb you,” I said. “If you let me just take it to her.”

“Excuse?”

My meaning seemed to come to her. She led the way across the hall and opened a door. It led into a pleasant sitting room. By the window a couch had been drawn up and on it there was a child of about nine or ten years old, with a leg done up in plaster.

“This gentleman, he say you—you drop….”

At this moment, rather fortunately, a strong smell of burning came from the kitchen. My guide uttered an exclamation of dismay.

“Excuse, please excuse.”

“You go along,” I said heartily. “I can manage this.”

She fled with alacrity. I entered the room, shut the door behind me and came across to the couch.

“How d'you do?” I said.

The child said, “How d'you do?” and proceeded to sum me up with a long, penetrating glance that almost unnerved me. She was rather a plain child with straight mousy hair arranged in two plaits. She had a bulging forehead, a sharp chin and a pair of very intelligent grey eyes.

“I'm Colin Lamb,” I said. “What's your name?”

She gave me the information promptly.

“Geraldine Mary Alexandra Brown.”

“Dear me,” I said, “that's quite a bit of a name. What do they call you?”

“Geraldine. Sometimes Gerry, but I don't like that. And Daddy doesn't approve of abbreviations.”

One of the great advantages of dealing with children is that they have their own logic. Anyone of adult years would at once have asked me what I wanted. Geraldine was quite ready to enter into conversation without resorting to foolish questions. She was alone and bored and the onset of any kind of visitor was an agreeable novelty. Until I proved myself a dull and unamusing fellow, she would be quite ready to converse.

“Your daddy's out, I suppose,” I said.

She replied with the same promptness and fullness of detail which she had already shown.

“Cartinghaven Engineering Works, Beaverbridge,” she said. “It's fourteen and three-quarter miles from here exactly.”

“And your mother?”

“Mummy's dead,” said Geraldine, with no diminution of cheerfulness. “She died when I was a baby two months old. She was in a plane coming from France. It crashed. Everyone was killed.”

She spoke with a certain satisfaction and I perceived that to a child, if her mother
is
dead, it reflects a certain kudos if she has been killed in a complete and devastating accident.

“I see,” I said. “So you have—” I looked towards the door.

“That's Ingrid. She comes from Norway. She's only been here a fortnight. She doesn't know any English to speak of yet. I'm teaching her English.”

“And she is teaching you Norwegian?”

“Not very much,” said Geraldine.

“Do you like her?”

“Yes. She's all right. The things she cooks are rather odd sometimes. Do you know, she likes eating raw fish.”

“I've eaten raw fish in Norway,” I said. “It's very good sometimes.”

Geraldine looked extremely doubtful about that.

“She is trying to make a treacle tart today,” she said.

“That sounds good.”

“Umm—yes, I like treacle tart.” She added politely, “Have you come to lunch?”

“Not exactly. As a matter of fact I was passing down below out there, and I think you dropped something out of the window.”

“Me?”

“Yes.” I advanced the silver fruit knife.

Geraldine looked at it, at first suspiciously and then with signs of approval.

“It's rather nice,” she said. “What is it?”

“It's a fruit knife.”

I opened it.

“Oh, I see. You mean you can peel apples with it and things like that.”

“Yes.”

Geraldine sighed.

“It's not mine. I didn't drop it. What made you think I did?”

“Well, you were looking out of the window, and….”

“I look out of the window most of the time,” said Geraldine. “I fell down and broke my leg, you see.”

“Hard luck.”

“Yes, wasn't it. I didn't break it in a very interesting way,
though. I was getting out of a bus and it went on suddenly. It hurt rather at first and it ached a bit, but it doesn't now.”

“Must be rather dull for you,” I said.

“Yes, it is. But Daddy brings me things. Plasticine, you know, and books and crayons and jigsaw puzzles and things like that, but you get tired of
doing
things, so I spend a lot of time looking out of the window with these.”

She produced with enormous pride a small pair of opera glasses.

“May I look?” I said.

I took them from her, adjusted them to my eyes and looked out of the window.

“They're jolly good,” I said appreciatively.

They were indeed, excellent. Geraldine's daddy, if it had been he who supplied them, had not spared expense. It was astonishing how clearly you could see No. 19, Wilbraham Crescent and its neighbouring houses. I handed them back to her.

“They're excellent,” I said. “First-class.”

“They're proper ones,” said Geraldine, with pride. “Not just for babies and pretending.”

“No … I can see that.”

“I keep a little book,” said Geraldine.

She showed me.

“I write down things in it and the times. It's like trainspotting,” she added. “I've got a cousin called Dick and he does trainspotting. We do motorcar numbers too. You know, you start at one and see how far you can get.”

“It's rather a good sport,” I said.

“Yes, it is. Unfortunately there aren't many cars come down this road so I've rather given that up for the time being.”

“I suppose you must know all about those houses down there, who lives in them and all that sort of thing.”

I threw it out casually enough but Geraldine was quick to respond.

“Oh, yes. Of course I don't know their real names, so I have to give them names of my own.”

“That must be rather fun,” I said.

“That's the Marchioness of Carrabas down there,” said Geraldine, pointing. “That one with all the untidy trees. You know, like Puss In Boots. She has masses and masses of cats.”

“I was talking to one just now,” I said, “an orange one.”

“Yes, I saw you,” said Geraldine.

“You must be very sharp,” I said. “I don't expect you miss much, do you?”

Geraldine smiled in a pleased way. Ingrid opened the door and came in breathless.

“You are all right, yes?”

“We're quite all right,” said Geraldine firmly. “You needn't worry, Ingrid.”

She nodded violently and pantomimed with her hands.

“You go back, you cook.”

“Very well, I go. It is nice that you have a visitor.”

“She gets nervous when she cooks,” explained Geraldine, “when she's trying anything new, I mean. And sometimes we have meals very late because of that. I'm glad you've come. It's nice to have someone to distract you, then you don't think about being hungry.”

“Tell me more about the people in the houses there,” I said, “and what you see. Who lives in the next house—the neat one?”

“Oh, there's a blind woman there. She's quite blind and yet she walks just as well as though she could see. The porter told me that. Harry. He's very nice, Harry is. He tells me a lot of things. He told me about the murder.”

“The murder?” I said, sounding suitably astonished.

Geraldine nodded. Her eyes shone with importance at the information she was about to convey.

“There was a murder in that house. I practically
saw
it.”

“How very interesting.”

“Yes, isn't it? I've never seen a murder before. I mean I've never seen a place where a murder happened.”

“What did you—er—see?”

“Well, there wasn't very much going on just then. You know, it's rather an empty time of day. The exciting thing was when somebody came rushing out of the house screaming. And then of course I knew something must have happened.”

“Who was screaming?”

“Just a woman. She was quite young, rather pretty really. She came out of the door and she screamed and she screamed. There was a young man coming along the road. She came out of the gate and sort of clutched him—like this.” She made a motion with her arms. She fixed me with a sudden glance. “He looked rather like you.”

“I must have a double,” I said lightly. “What happened next? This is very exciting.”

“Well, he sort of plumped her down. You know, on the ground there and then he went back into the house and the Emperor—that's the orange cat, I always call him the Emperor because he looks so proud—stopped washing himself and he looked quite
surprised, and then Miss Pikestaff came out of her house—that's the one there, Number 18—she came out and stood on the steps staring.”

“Miss Pikestaff?”

“I call her Miss Pikestaff because she's so plain. She's got a brother and she bullies him.”

“Go on,” I said with interest.

“And then all sorts of things happened. The man came out of the house again—are you sure it wasn't you?”

“I'm a very ordinary-looking chap,” I said modestly, “there are lots like me.”

“Yes, I suppose that's true,” said Geraldine, somewhat unflatteringly. “Well, anyway, this man, he went off down the road and telephoned from the call box down there. Presently police began arriving.” Her eyes sparkled. “Lots of police. And they took the dead body away in a sort of ambulance thing. Of course there were lots of people by that time, staring, you know. I saw Harry there, too. That's the porter from these flats. He told me about it afterwards.”

“Did he tell you who was murdered?”

“He just said it was a man. Nobody knew his name.”

“It's all very interesting,” I said.

I prayed fervently that Ingrid would not choose this moment to come in again with a delectable treacle tart or other delicacy.

“But go back a little, do. Tell me earlier. Did you see this man—the man who was murdered—did you see him arrive at the house?”

“No, I didn't. I suppose he must have been there all along.”

“You mean he lived there?”

“Oh, no, nobody lives there except Miss Pebmarsh.”

“So you know her real name?”

“Oh, yes, it was in the papers. About the murder. And the screaming girl was called Sheila Webb. Harry told me that the man who was murdered was called Mr. Curry. That's a funny name, isn't it, like the thing you eat. And there was a second murder, you know. Not the same day—later—in the telephone box down the road. I can see it from here, just, but I have to get my head right out of the window and turn it round. Of course I didn't really
see
it, because I mean if I'd known it was going to happen, I would have looked out. But, of course, I didn't know it was going to happen, so I didn't. There were a lot of people that morning just standing there in the street, looking at the house opposite. I think that's rather stupid, don't you?”

“Yes,” I said, “very stupid.”

Here Ingrid made her appearance once more.

“I come soon,” she said reassuringly. “I come very soon now.”

She departed again. Geraldine said:

“We don't really want her. She gets worried about meals. Of course this is the only one she has to cook except breakfast. Daddy goes down to the restaurant in the evening and he has something sent up for me from there. Just fish or something. Not a real dinner.” Her voice sounded wistful.

“What time do you usually have your lunch, Geraldine?”

“My dinner, you mean? This is my dinner. I don't have dinner in the evening, it's supper. Well, I really have my dinner at any time Ingrid happens to have cooked it. She's rather funny about time. She has to get breakfast ready at the right time because Daddy gets so cross, but midday dinner we have anytime. Sometimes we have it at twelve o'clock and sometimes I don't get it till two. Ingrid says
you don't have meals at a particular time, you just have them when they're ready.”

“Well, it's an easy idea,” I said. “What time did you have your lunch—dinner, I mean—on the day of the murder?”

“That was one of the twelve o'clock days. You see, Ingrid goes out that day. She goes to the cinema or to have her hair done and a Mrs. Perry comes and keeps me company. She's terrible, really. She pats one.”

“Pats one?” I said, slightly puzzled.

“You know, on the head. Says things like ‘dear little girlie.' She's not,” said Geraldine, “the kind of person you can have
any
proper conversation with. But she brings me sweets and that sort of thing.”