Fear to Tread (13 page)

Inspector Clark was beyond comment. To gain time he wrote down Leicester Square on the corner of his blotting pad. “Perhaps you would describe the men again – the ones who you state attacked you.”

Mr. Wetherall described them again.

“Have you any idea why they should have attacked you?”

“Well, they took my wallet.”

“Yes. Any other idea?”

Mr. Wetherall’s mind stalled at this question, like a tired horse at a high fence. It had taken him an hour when he had talked about it to Todd the night before. How could he begin to explain it all over again to this large, angry, person?

“I—yes—” he said. “I did think that there might have been other reasons, but they’re rather complicated ones. I don’t want to waste your time.”

Inspector Clark sighed. The expression on his face was more eloquent than speech. If, said his expression, fools get muddled up in matters they don’t understand, and if their warped minds invent tortuous reasons to explain their imbecile conduct, then it was his unhappy duty to listen to them. That was the sort of work he was paid for. The job for which he drew his inadequate salary.

No treatment could have been better calculated to provoke Mr. Wetherall’s familiar spirit.

“Well,” he said more cheerfully, “if you’re really sure you’ve got time for it, I
will
tell you about it.”

It proved easier a second time, and in ten minutes he had reproduced, with very few omissions, the story of his doings during the previous week.

Mr. Wetherall had not been instructing classes for twenty years for nothing and one thing was apparent to him as he spoke. His audience might have started cold but it was warming up. The interruptions became fewer and fewer and the inspector’s careful parade of indifference became more and more perfunctory. At the end he was listening with more than interest. There was an undercurrent of stronger feeling.

“So it seemed to me,” Mr. Wetherall concluded “although there isn’t any direct proof, I know – this part is really only guess work – but it did seem possible that the men who assaulted me were—”

A curious thing occurred at this point. He had been intending to finish the sentence by saying “—were part of the crowd who run this food racket.” Instead, at the last moment, and for no reason at all he changed it: “—were part of the crowd who murdered Sergeant Donovan’s wife.”

If he had produced a hand grenade, extracted the pin from it, and dropped it casually into the wastepaper basket, the effect could hardly have been more remarkable.

Inspector Clark jumped to his feet, turned extremely red, glared down at Mr. Wetherall, opened his mouth as if to say something, shut it again, and sat down with an effort at self-mastery that was so obvious as to be almost ludicrous.

Then he said, in a choked voice: “Will you kindly leave Sergeant Donovan out of this?”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Wetherall. “As a matter of fact I didn’t mean to mention Sergeant Donovan at all, but he happens to be a friend of mine—”

“I don’t want to hear anything about Sergeant Donovan.”

“Oh, all right,” said Mr. Wetherall. “It was just a thought. Let’s all forget about it, shall we?”

Before the inspector could say anything further there was a knock on the door and a sergeant came in and put a note on the desk. The inspector read the note, snorted, and said to Mr. Wetherall: “It looks as if we might have something for you soon. You said that one of those men called the other ‘Sailor’? “

“Yes.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Well, as sure as I could be in the circumstances. There was quite a lot going on.”

The inspector looked at him with distaste.

“You realise,” he said, “that if we arrest these men yours is going to be almost the only evidence.”

“The waiter in that night-club ought to be able to identify them.”

“He might identify two men who called for you. That won’t prove that they were the ones who assaulted you.”

“No—” said Mr. Wetherall, doubtfully. His head was aching, and he was disliking Inspector Clark more and more every moment. “There was a girl too.”

“A prostitute?”

“Yes – well, I’m afraid she probably was, but she seemed a kind creature.”

“I’m afraid her identification wouldn’t carry very much weight.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Mr. Wetherall, suddenly feeling he had had enough. “Perhaps it would and perhaps it wouldn’t. But I can’t help feeling that if you would concentrate a bit more on helping and a bit less on making difficulties, we should get on faster.”

“My duty is to assess the evidence, and see if there is a case on which we can act.”

“Then assess it. Don’t act as counsel for the defence.”

“I don’t think we need trouble you any more at the moment,” said Inspector Clark, standing up.

He did not offer to shake hands. Mr. Wetherall fumed his way out into the street.

It was half-past twelve and the sun was out. When he had recovered his equanimity, it occurred to him that he might get some lunch before going back to school.

In spite of his aches his mind was tolerably clear, and as he sat at the cafe table, awkwardly ladling soup into his mouth with his left hand, he was hammering out a proposition.

Sergeant Donovan had been engaged in cases to do with food stealing. His wife had been attacked and (though possibly accidentally) killed. Sergeant Donovan hinted that he knew who was responsible, but he had not passed on the information to his superiors. Now he, Wilfred Wetherall, had almost certainly run into the same crowd – or a branch of the same crowd – and had got into trouble. Yet any suggestion that the two cases were connected was anathema to the police. Or was anathema to Inspector Clark – who might not be the highest court of appeal.

It did not make sense.

And yet, in another way, it did.

“Cottage pie, mashed potatoes, anything that doesn’t need cutting up,” he said to the waitress.

“You hurt your hand?”

“It was trodden on by an elephant,” said Mr. Wetherall. The girl rewarded him with a smile, and he suddenly felt better.

His good humour stayed with him until he got back to the school and found Colonel Bond there.

The first disconcerting thing about the colonel’s behaviour was that he made absolutely no reference to Mr. Wetherall’s appearance. Even allowing for the tidying-up process which he had undergone in hospital that morning, it was, as he was aware, remarkable.

However, if the colonel was going to play at not noticing anything, it was hardly Mr. Wetherall’s place to bring the matter up.

They discussed staff discipline and the revised time-table for the coming term and the difficulty of obtaining reliable charladies at reasonable prices – reasonable, that is to say, so far as the pockets of the Education Committee were concerned.

At the end of it, and as he was on the point of leaving, the colonel said, with ponderous casualness: “I hear you had some trouble in the West End last night.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall guardedly. “Yes, I did.”

“Robbery, I suppose?”

“I’m afraid so, sir. I lost my wallet.”

“Extraordinary,” said the colonel. “I’ve been living in the West End for twenty years, and no one has ever taken my wallet.”

“You must have been lucky.”

“Just a question of—er—keeping one’s wits about one,” said the colonel. “These chaps will always take advantage of you if—if they see half a chance.”

Whilst he had been speaking, he had been edging towards the door, and before Mr. Wetherall could think of any suitable reply, he had gone.

Mr. Wetherall sat staring after him.

Five minutes later Peggy came in.

“Well, you’ve done it this time,” she announced.

“Done what?”

“Got ‘em all talking about you.”

“And just what,” said Mr. Wetherall, “are they saying?”

“It goes by age-groups. The younger ones say that you got lit up and took on three policemen outside the Wandsworth Tube. But Sammy won’t have that – and he’s got a lot of supporters.”

“Sammy?”

“He says you got your face caught in Tower Bridge when they were winding it up.”

“I see.”

“The bigger ones say you went on a spree in the West End and got beaten up by a gang in Soho.”

“They do, do they,” said Mr. Wetherall thoughtfully.

The telephone rang.

“West End Central Police Station. Is that Mr. Wetherall?” said a woman’s voice. “One moment please.” Then a man’s voice. “Superintendent Huth here, Mr. Wetherall. Could you come over here as quickly as possible, sir. I’ve got Inspector Clark with me here. We have two men we hope you may be able to identify.”

“Yes – I think I could.”

“I’ll send a car for you.”

“All right,” said Mr. Wetherall. “But for heaven’s sake don’t send it to the school, or you really will start something.”

“I’ll tell them to pick you up at the corner of the road,” said Superintendent Huth.

The police had done their work well and fairly. The room seemed to be full of large men with reddish hair and open-air complexions and thinner men with white faces and black hair.

Despite the competition, Mr. Wetherall picked out the two men as soon as he came into the room, and he saw from their expressions that they knew him and knew that he had recognised them. The red-haired man looked indifferent. The young one had a calculating look in his eyes which Mr. Wetherall found disquieting.

“Just line up there,” said Superintendent Huth. “Now Mr. Wetherall. Would you have a good look at them all. Do you see anyone you know?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall. He indicated the two men.

“You have seen these men before?”

“Yes.”

“Where was that?”

“Well – last night—in—I can’t remember the name of the street. In Soho. They are the two men who attacked me.”

“You’re quite sure?”

“Yes, quite sure. I saw them twice, once in the full light, and then in the street. I particularly noticed this one”—he pointed to the red-haired man—”had a tiny yellow spot in the iris of his left eye.”

Superintendent Huth moved across and looked into the red-headed man’s eye with the gravity of a West End occulist. A police sergeant with a notebook wrote down “The man identified had a yellow spot in his left eye” and looked gratified.

“And what about this one?”

Mr. Wetherall stared at the white faced man, who stared back.

“Yes,” he said. “There’s nothing in particular about this one, but it’s him all right.”

“You’re sure?”

“Oh, quite sure.”

“All right,” said Superintendent Huth. “The rest of you can go, and thank you very much. Would you come this way, Mr. Wetherall?”

He found himself in the superintendent’s office. The superintendent had a shock of white hair and a hard but mobile face. Mr. Wetherall liked the look of him. At the moment he was sitting at his desk with the tip of his tongue showing out of one corner of his mouth, writing. He wasn’t being rude. It was just that he had a lot to do and the moment for Mr. Wetherall’s further assistance had not yet come.

After a few minutes, Mr. Wetherall’s curiosity got the better of him.

“Who are those men?” he asked.

Superintendent Huth withdrew his tongue, placed one broad forefinger on the paper as if to pin down the thought he had been interrupted in penning, and said: “Hired bullies. The big one’s name is Whittaker. His friends call him Red. The thin one, I think, is Jackson. No one seems to know anything for certain about him except that he was in the Navy during the war and was dismissed the service for trying to kick a Maltese stoker to death.”

“A sailor?”

“That’s right. Sailor Jackson.”

“And they work together.”

“They and one or two others.”

“Would a man called Guardsman be one of the others?”

“Could be,” said the superintendent.

“And Prince?”

“Which Prince?”

“An ex-boxer, with one eye.”

“Again, could be. He’s in the same trade.” The superintendent looked, for a moment, as if he was going to go on writing. Then, instead, he laid his pen carefully in the pen-tray, tilted back his chair, and gave Mr. Wetherall a long stare.

“You seem to know a lot of these people,” he said.

“Well, you see,” said Mr. Wetherall, “I’m a schoolmaster. As a matter of fact I used to teach Prince. He was a horrible little boy.”

“He hasn’t gone uphill since. Did you teach the Guardsman too?”

“No. I met him in a cafe. Jock’s Pull-In near the Elephant.”

“Jock’s Pull-In?” said the superintendent. He looked as if he was going to say something about it, but changed his mind. “I suppose you meet a lot of types in your job. That’s really the only difference between us. You get ‘em young. We get ‘em afterwards.”

“Not all of them, I hope. By the way, what will happen about those two?”

Again the superintendent paused before answering. He was, thought Mr. Wetherall, being perfectly friendly but never, for one instant coming off his guard. Possibly all policemen were like that.

“It depends what the others make of them,” he said.

“The others?”

“We haven’t been able to find the girl, but there’s a busker called Higgins, and we’ve got the doorman and the waiter from the Minstrel Boy.”

“I see,” said Mr. Wetherall. “That’s quick work. They all saw the men in a good light. And they’re not the sort of faces it’s easy to forget.”

“It’s quite surprising,” said the superintendent, “what some people can forget if they give their mind to it.”

At this moment the door opened and Inspector Clark came in. He walked straight over to the desk.

“No go, sir, I’m afraid.”

“None of them?”

“None of them.”

Both men turned and looked at Mr. Wetherall who went first hot then cold.

“Do you mean,” he said, “that Higgins and those two men from the club – that they none of them recognise those two men?”

“That’s right,” said Clark shortly.

“No,” said the superintendent. “Not quite.” He got up from his chair and sat on the edge of his desk. “Mr. Wetherall said, ‘they none of them recognise the men.’ That’s not quite right.”