Close Quarters (17 page)

Hewlett, having disposed of a cubic foot of cake, opined that they were “turning.” He referred to the time-honoured custom by which two boys, on non-practice night, were allowed to visit the cathedral to prepare the music for the next day's service – a task which a grown-up would have thought particularly onerous, but which, for some reason, appealed to the mind of youth as a desirable privilege.

‘All right.' Halliday viewed with resignation his bloated and apathetic scripture class. Young Green would be asleep in a moment. Really, evening class was a mistake. ‘All right – we'll start. Second Kings, chapter twelve – dash it, though, we can't. I lent my Bible with all the notes in it to Brophy.'

‘It's in his locker,' screamed Hewlett, scenting a promising distraction. ‘Shall I get it for you?'

‘Sit down, boy, sit down. I can perfectly well get it myself. Why is it that all you boys keep your lockers in such a horrible mess? Brophy, for instance, appears to be making a collection of used blotting-paper.'

His head disappeared deeper into the locker, and the form settled once more into apathy.

The sound of the door opening caused Halliday to extricate himself. ‘Ah, it's you, Bird. You're late – nearly ten minutes late – not the early bird this time …'

The jest was received with a complacent laugh by the rest of the form, but got no response at all from Bird. And his face looked strangely white in the strong unshaded light. Halliday hurried forward.

‘What is it?' he said quietly.

‘It's Brophy,' said Bird. ‘He's fainted or something – I fell over him as I was coming through the precinct gate—'

‘All right – nothing to be upset about. It's probably the heat.' The evening had suddenly got oppressively close, he noticed. ‘You run up to Matron. Tell her to get a bed ready. And she'd better look after you, too, my lad, if you feel upset. Horner, go and fetch the headmaster. And the rest of you –
keep quiet.
'

The senior divinity class, feeling that the whole affair had been staged expressly for their benefit, sat gripped with pleasurable excitement. Hurrying steps across the court – Dr. Smallhorn's voice, quiet but perfectly audible, ‘Have you got a torch, Halliday?' The click of the precinct gate. And then – listen as they would – complete silence. The minutes ticked by. And then a rather horrible sound – the shuffling footsteps of people who carry a heavy weight. Still no sound of talking. The footsteps passed down the passage, and the silence became distinctly unpleasant.

‘We found him lying on the grass, just inside the gate,' said Dr. Smallhorn. ‘I'm very much afraid …' he left the sentence unfinished.

‘You've got a doctor, of course,' said the Dean.

‘The doctor's with him now,' said Halliday. ‘He didn't hold out much hope. The back of the skull is cracked, you see; just like—'

‘No,' said Dr. Smallhorn, so suddenly and fiercely that they all stared at him. ‘No – it can't be – it's just an accident, that's all. He fell and hit his head on the gate-post. I see it now. It's quite obvious. You mustn't think, just because Appledown—it's absurd—absurd even to imagine it. Why, he's only a child, you know, Inspector. Scarcely thirteen. Who in the world could want to hurt him?'

‘It is horrible,' said Trumpington. ‘And it makes one feel so helpless. I'd go over if there was anything I could do, but one would only be in the way.'

‘I suppose you realise,' said Prynne slowly, ‘that this lets out Parvin – he's the only single person in the whole Close who couldn't possibly—'

‘Don't.' Dr. Smallhorn turned on him quite savagely. ‘Don't keep saying that. What reason have you—what right have you—'

The telephone shrilled. The Dean picked up the receiver.

‘Yes. It's the Dean speaking. Who are you … oh, yes. Doctor. The inspector is here – he'll speak to you.'

Hazlerigg took the receiver and listened for a few minutes. He said nothing. He had not spoken since the interruption. ‘Very well,' he said at last, and rang off. Then he turned and looked at the five men, dispassionately, as if he was seeing them for the first time, and weighing them up before he spoke.

‘Brophy's dead,' he said at last. ‘I have just spoken to the police surgeon. He tells me that there is no question of accident. That boy was murdered.'

‘But if Parvin—' began Prynne.

‘Two murderers!' exclaimed Trumpington.

Dr. Smallhorn said nothing. Since Hazlerigg had spoken he seemed completely dazed.

Once more the inspector considered his audience gravely before speaking.

‘Parvin escaped this evening.' (Pollock gave a start of surprise.) ‘He asked to be allowed to go to the hospital to see his wife. Foolishly, perhaps, I consented. There were two policemen in the car and two more went into the hospital with him. The three of them were walking up the passage which leads to the room where his wife is being kept, when Parvin, as I understand it, simply jumped through an open door and slammed it behind him – and bolted it. In the few seconds before the door could be broken down he ran through a connecting door, climbed an interior staircase, and came out into the passage above. A nurse said later that she saw him crossing it, but mistook him for a patient. That was the last that was seen of him. Of course,' he finished cheerfully, ‘it won't be long before we have our hands on him again.'

‘Then he's at large!' exclaimed the Dean. ‘Good heavens, he may be lurking in the Close at this moment! You must give us a guard, Inspector—'

‘If he's in the Close,' said Hazlerigg grimly, ‘he won't get out of it.'

‘He must be mad, I suppose,' said Prynne.

Curiously enough this suggestion, which alarmed the others more than they would have cared to admit, seemed to afford Dr. Smallhorn a very slender ray of comfort. ‘That's it,' he said. ‘The man's mad, of course. I knew there could be no other reason for such a horrible, senseless, brutal thing.'

There was a great deal to do.

The least pleasant task the Dean naturally shouldered himself, as he had been quietly shouldering all the tiresome and unpleasant burdens in the Close for the last fourteen years. He called on Colonel Brophy, a widower, who lived in a big, rather empty house on the outskirts of Melchester. What the colonel said to him and what words he found for the colonel in that black hour will never be known, but it was well after midnight when Sergeant Brumfit heard the knock he had been listening for on the Close gate and hurried out with a torch.

‘I'm afraid I've kept you up,' said the Dean in a very quiet flat voice. ‘It has got rather close again, hasn't it? More thunder, coming, I think.'

‘Afraid so, sir.'

‘Good night, Brumfit.'

‘Good night, sir,' said Brumfit in a fatherly tone of voice. He thought the Dean looked very tired.

The Dean was tired, but he didn't go to bed. And for hour after hour a light shone out from the oriel floor window in the south corner, which was the Dean's private sitting-room and, in time of need, his private chapel.

After the necessary formalities had been completed Hazlerigg and Pollock walked back to the Bear together. Pollock was badly on his dignity. It was some time before Hazlerigg appeared to notice that anything was amiss; then he suddenly suspended an eloquent discourse on the futility of judging by appearances, and peered at his subordinate.

‘What's up, Sergeant? Swallowed a fish bone?'

‘There's nothing up with me, thank you,' said Pollock politely.

‘Then, if there's nothing wrong,' said Hazlerigg equally politely, ‘would you have the goodness to explain exactly why you are looking and walking like a constipated crab with tonsilitis.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Pollock stiffly, ‘I had no idea—'

‘Good Lord – of course.' The inspector slapped his leg softly. ‘You're fed up because I never told you about Parvin's escape. Gross lack of confidence in my subordinate, eh?'

Since that was precisely what had been annoying Pollock, he naturally hastened to deny it.

‘Of course not,' he said. ‘There's no reason why you should tell me any more than you want to—'

‘Don't be an owl,' snarled Hazlerigg. ‘There was just one excellent reason why I couldn't tell you of Parvin's escape. It never happened. As far as I know Parvin is safe and sound in Melchester police station, being tucked up and put to bed by Uncle Palfrey.'

‘Then, why—'

‘No, don't ask stupid questions. Work it out for yourself. Do it out loud if you think that'll help. It will be illuminating to see if your brain works as quickly as mine had to.'

Pollock gathered the scattered remnants of his wits. ‘I suppose,' he began slowly, ‘that you never had any doubt that the same person did both murders?'

‘No doubt at all – same man, same method, same weapon. The doctor saw both bodies – he thought so, too.'

‘Well, then, the second murder simply couldn't have been done by Parvin. Almost anybody else, but not Parvin. Therefore the murderer – the double-murderer – was somebody else in the Close. Somebody we hadn't even dreamed of.'

‘Correct so far.'

‘That somebody must have been very happy when we suspected Parvin. Very happy indeed. Then why did he go and spoil it all by murdering a harmless and helpless little boy – putting his own neck into danger again, and letting out Parvin? He must either have had a very strong reason – or else, he's mad.'

‘He's not mad,' said Hazlerigg..

‘Conceding that he's not mad, he must have realised the new risk he was running from now on. He would have to be doubly, trebly careful. But all of a sudden …'

‘Yes?'

‘All of a sudden he hears that he has had an amazing stroke of luck. Parvin has escaped. Far from exculpating Parvin the second murder has redoubled suspicion on the wretched verger. Once again the real murderer can go on his way unsuspected. He relaxes.'

‘Before God,' said Hazlerigg solemnly, ‘I hope he does relax, for if he doesn't make a mistake soon I don't think we shall catch him, and then Parvin will hang for the murder of Appledown – a murder he never committed.'

The second half, anyway, of Hazlerigg's prediction was immediately proved false. They found awaiting them a chastened Inspector Palfrey. Parvin had been left in the charge of Inspector Palfrey at the police station, and it afforded the inspector very little pleasure to have to tell Hazlerigg that his prisoner had committed suicide in the charge-room by cutting his throat with the station-sergeant's scissors.

So that it was very late indeed – long after midnight – when Pollock and Hazlerigg finally got back to their hotel. Every star was hidden, but the storm delayed and the night was oppressive with the undischarged artillery.

Pollock went straight to bed and tried to read himself to sleep with the seventh and dullest book of Wordsworth's
Excursion.
He read till the words danced in front of his eyes:

Memories – images …
That shall not die and cannot be destroyed.

He thought of Parvin.

Hazlerigg had no intention of going to bed. He knew – none better – that so far he had failed, failed all along the line, and the realisation combined unpleasantly with the heaviness of the night and forbade any thought of sleep. He had, as Pollock had once pointed out, proved to his own satisfaction that a number of prime suspects were innocent. He had shown who hadn't done the murder, but that was poor consolation. He had unearthed and exposed the rather pointless little manoeuvres of Vicar Choral Malthus. The most important discovery – the only important discovery – had been made by Trumpington and Prynne. Appledown the blackmailer! It was rather a staggering thought. And it supplied a strong motive, one of the oldest and strongest in the world. But the devil of it was it was a motive that would fit anyone. Canon Whyte's words came back to him – “two, and perhaps three more people in the Close are being victimised.” But who were they? Mickie, the organist, for one. Hazlerigg felt that this was a good guess. It explained Mickie's otherwise inexplicable agitation and his very dangerous secrecy. The thought of Canon Whyte brought Hazlerigg's mind back again to Parvin. Poor little Parvin – what a beautiful, watertight case they had worked out against him. And now it looked as if the case and the prisoner had gone west at one blow. It was black undisguised defeat.

And yet – and this was what maddened Hazlerigg – the whole answer was there, before his eyes, under his fingers. He knew it; he felt it. And for want of understanding he could not grasp it.

Three lives gone; first Appledown, and then that boy – and now Parvin. Who was going to be next? ‘There must be no more of it,' said Hazlerigg, and found he had spoken aloud.

With a deep sigh which was equal parts weariness and disillusionment, he pulled out every paper connected with the case, stacked them on the table, drew up his chair, and started all over again.

He didn't skimp his work, and the long hand had gone round twice before he had done. He had many qualities which went to the making of a good police officer, but one above all others – a quality which was destined to raise him afterwards to the heights of his profession. Concentration. Tireless, relentless, implacable concentration. And yet something more than that. Selective concentration. “The essence of all police work is sound elimination.” And here there was so much that was superfluous. Carefully he recalled the essentials, and above all the three points at which, as he had told Pollock, he had first glimpsed the possibility of a controlling mind. Mickie's ghost. And two voices. First the old, high tones of Mrs. Judd. “I've still got good hearing … I heard things … wicked things. Later that night. Much later. Footsteps creeping, doors creaking.” That was one voice. Then Prynne's precise tones. “I saw a light go on in his front room and his shadow jerking about on the blind.” There was a key there.