Ben on the Job Page 6

  ‘This door’s yours.’

  Maudie’s voice brought him down from the ceiling.

  ‘Oh, this ’un?’

  She shoved it open, entered a small bedroom before him, and then turned for his comment.

  ‘It’s nice,’ he lied.

  ‘I’m glad you think so,’ replied Maudie. ‘I call it the Black Hole of Calcutta.’

  ‘I never bin there.’

  ‘Or to school, p’r’aps?’

  ‘Oh, yus, I bin ter school—whenever they was watchin’!—but yer don’t learn so much from the corner.’

  She gave a short laugh, and then frowned at herself, as though it were against her policy to be amused.

  ‘Would you like to tell me something?’ she asked.

  ‘If I git somethink back fer it,’ he replied.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I ain’t flirtin’.’

  ‘You’d get something else if you were! Are you a fool, or aren’t you?’

  ‘You ain’t!’

  ‘Thanks, but sometimes I wonder. If I weren’t a fool, would I still be living here, do you suppose?’

  Ben nodded, and decided to take the question seriously to see whether it led anywhere. No let-up for him just yet. Maudie, with her arms akimbo in the middle of the room, and that watchful, purposeful look in her eyes, seemed too full of conversational possibilities.

  ‘Wotcher doin’ it for?’ he asked. ‘A good-looker like you?’

  ‘Yes, you’d say I had looks, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Venus ain’t in it. ’Ow’s that fer schoolin’?’

  ‘We can leave Venus out of it, but I’ll say I’m as good as some of them film stars—’

  ‘Corse yer are, missie. And I’ll bet my pal Oscar’s told yer that!’

  The mention of Oscar changed her expression.

  ‘Yes! Let’s talk about Oscar!’

  ‘I wanter tork abart a lot o’ things!’

  ‘Do you? Well, one at a time’s my motto. What’s all this about? Tell me! I don’t like mysteries, except in books!’

  ‘Wotcher want me ter tell yer?’ inquired Ben innocently. ‘Yer don’t mean as I know more abart ’im than you do?’

  She considered the question, studying him as she did so. ‘She don’t know everythink,’ Ben decided; ‘but she don’t like ter admit it.’ Her answer, when it came, was a good one.

  ‘How can I tell you that until you tell me what you do know?’

  ‘Ah! There’s somethink in that!’

  ‘There’s a lot in that.’ She pressed her advantage. ‘So suppose you talk first? Where is he?’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘And why’s he gone off suddenly like this—’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Without a word to me? And if you say “Ah” again I’ll take that jug and pour it over you! You say you know what I’ve done for him, p’r’aps you do and p’r’aps you don’t, but I wonder! I mean, all of it, including even three days ago, at that night club, where I was photographed in—’

  She stopped short.

  ‘In what?’ asked Ben.

  ‘If you can’t finish it, tell me why I should?’ she retorted.

  From below came her mother’s voice, floating complainingly up the stairs.

  ‘Maudie! Where did you put the marge? Have we run out? I can’t find any—do come down and help!’

  Maudie swore under her breath. ‘I suppose I’ll have to,’ she muttered in exasperation. ‘There’ll be no rest till I do! There never is when mother’s around!’

  ‘Would we ’ave ter tike ’er ter the pickchers?’ inquired Ben.

  ‘Pictures! You didn’t mean that about the pictures?’

  ‘Well, I’ve give yer the hinvite.’

  ‘It’s an idea.’

  ‘And I’m washin’ me neck fer yer, though I carn’t see the sense when yer sittin’ in the dark.’

  ‘Maudie! Do come!’

  Once more the complaining voice floated up, now closer, suggesting that in another minute Mrs Kenton would be floating up herself.

  ‘Coming! Give us a moment!’ Maudie shouted back. ‘Goodness, you’d think the house was on fire!’

  She turned to Ben.

  ‘Okay, Eric—it’s a date!’

  She turned and departed, running heavily down the stairs. How blessedly quiet the room now seemed!

  Ben walked to a cracked mirror on the wall and gazed at his neck.

  ‘I can’t see nothink wrong with it,’ he said.

  So he went to the bed, lay down on it, and stared peacefully at the ceiling.

  7

  Conversation on a Doorstep

  Lying on the narrow little bed previously occupied by Oscar Blake—its dimensions were just sufficient for the smaller frame of its new occupant, but how Blake had managed to occupy it was something of a puzzle—Ben worked out a little sum. The sum that engaged him, however, was not corporal but temporal.

  It took fifteen minutes, he calculated, to prepare a meal. It took two minutes to wash a neck. That meant that he had thirteen minutes to lie on the bed and think of nothing but the ceiling. Wonderful! He had not enjoyed such luxury since his snooze in the taxicab.

  But unfortunately even the simplest sums do not always work out to rule, and the simple rule Ben had hoped to follow was ruined by both minor and major interferences. The minor interference was that the ceiling at 46, Jewel Street refused to oblige. It bore countless cracks and smudges and outlines and graduations of hue, but none of them would form into maps. This seemed unreasonable, because a map can be any shape, but there it was. Or, more correctly speaking, there it was not. No map would come, and instead he saw Questions. They streaked in shadowy writing from every dingy corner, and while some of them were trivial, like ‘Do parrots think?’ or ‘Could you mend holes in pockets with paper fasteners?’ others were disturbing like ‘Who was Mrs Wilby telephoning to?’ or ‘Did I leave my fingerprints on that photograph?’ These were the questions he wanted to be free of for thirteen minutes, but they wouldn’t let him alone.

  He was just wondering whether to try his device of escaping into a cave of cheese—you imagined the cave, and you imagined yourself going in, and if you imagined hard enough you could imagine the smell and the taste till all else was blotted out—when the major interference occurred. It was a loud rap on the front door, and it brought him bolt up into a sitting position.

  Of course, it might be anybody. Doubtless the Kentons had their ordinary circle of visitors. But there was something in that knock that spoke of trouble, and Ben listened with tense anxiety to the sounds that followed it—low murmurs, footsteps coming out of the front parlour into the hall, and then, after a little pause, the front door opening. And then, voices:

  ‘Good evening, miss.’ A man’s voice.

  ‘Good evening.’ Maudie’s.

  ‘I think you have a lodger here—’

  Ben’s heart gave a jump.

  ‘Of the name of Terry Jones?’

  ‘Terry Jones? Oh, no!’

  ‘That’s not your lodger’s name?’

  ‘No, sergeant, that’s not his name, we’ve never had a lodger of that name.’

  ‘But you have a lodger, I see.’

  She had fallen into the little trap. Ben knew that one.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Perhaps the name might be Oscar Blake?’

  ‘Oh, you mean another one—’

  ‘That’s as may be. Have you a lodger here of the name of Oscar Blake? I’m sorry to have to trouble you, but—’

  ‘I’m sure you are, you look heart-broken, but you’ve come at a most inconvenient moment, we’re just going to sit down to a meal. Doesn’t it matter if it gets cold?’

  Ben knew that one, too. Maudie, over her first panic, was fighting back, and trying to make time so she could think. Ben pictured the scene below. It was not difficult. Maudie striving behind her agitation to look composed, feigning indignation when she found this was not an occasion that could be helped by
vamping (for although policemen are human you can never vamp them on duty), and seeking for the right answers to bring to her overpainted lips. Unseen behind her, with nose plastered to door-crack, Mrs Kenton straining to gather what was happening in the hall. And, still on the doorstep, the police, probably a couple, determined to get the information they had come for.

  The voice continued:

  ‘We’ve called on a serious matter, miss, but there’ll be no need for your meal to get cold if you’ll answer my question. It’s not you we’re here to see. It’s Oscar Blake.’

  ‘Well, he’s not here for you to see.’

  ‘You mean, he’s not in?’

  ‘No, he’s not.’

  ‘But you know him, I take it? He’s staying here?’

  She was caught again. She could not deny her knowledge of him now. Ben slipped from his bed, crept softly across the floor, and opening the door a crack emulated the behaviour of Mrs Kenton below.

  ‘No!’

  ‘He’s not staying here?’

  ‘Haven’t I just said so? So now can I get back to my meal?’

  ‘But he has been staying here.’

  ‘You seem to know!’

  ‘As a matter of fact, we do know. When did he leave?’

  ‘A week ago.’

  ‘A week ago?’

  ‘Do I have to say everything twice?’

  ‘I think I’d better remind you, miss, of what I said just now, and I’m not going to say this more than twice. We’re here on a serious matter, and if you don’t want to get involved yourself you’ll give us truthful answers. I don’t want to get you into trouble unnecessarily, so I’ll forget, if you like, your answer to my last question, and so will my constable. The question was, when did Oscar Blake leave this house? Let’s try it again. We’re going to remember your answer this time.’

  A short silence. Then:

  ‘Do I get into trouble for trying to help—I mean, for not giving personal information about our lodgers to anyone who asks? All right, all right, don’t fly off the handle …’

  It was Maudie who was flying off the handle, which is not a habit of policemen.

  ‘I know you’re the police, but have you the right to come and ask questions, I mean, where’s your authority, and do I get clapped into prison if I don’t care very much about answering questions about other people?’

  ‘You’re not forced to answer any questions here, but you will be if, through our failure to get the answers now, you are asked them again at a police station. But I’ll help you with this one, if you like. The man I’m inquiring about was here last night—’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘We have our methods. So, if it is true that he has left—’

  ‘It is true! He’s not here, I tell you. You can search the house, if you like!’

  Ben’s heart gave another leap. Idgit! Wot did she wanter go and say a thing like that for? P’r’aps it jest slipped aht, and she’s cussin’ ’erself hinside, sime as I am!

  ‘I’m not saying I won’t take your word for it—’

  (’Ooray!)

  ‘But it’s up to you to give me cause to believe you. When did he leave?’

  ‘Today.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘What time? How am I expected—oh, all right, it was after lunch, but I can’t tell you the exact minute like they do on the BBC!’

  ‘Did you see him go?’

  ‘If it’s of any interest, I did!’

  ‘And was that the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘You might have seen him later somewhere else?’

  ‘Where would that be?’

  ‘That’s what I’d be asking you.’

  ‘Then you’d be wasting your breath. Do you think I’ve got no work to do?’

  ‘No, you work at Woolworth’s, but you saw him leave this house after lunch, you tell me, so I suppose you came back here for lunch. Why did he leave?’

  ‘You seem to know everything!’

  ‘Has he got a room somewhere else?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘I should have thought you would, miss. Where are you forwarding his letters?’

  ‘If you mean what’s his present address I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Rather odd he didn’t leave it, isn’t it?’

  ‘There are plenty of odd people in the world—as you ought to know!’

  ‘I know all right. You saw him leave, you say. How did he leave?’

  ‘I don’t get that.’

  ‘Car? Taxi?’

  ‘Oh! No, he walked.’

  ‘I see. How did he manage about his trunk?’

  ‘Trunk?’

  ‘Did that go separately, or would he be coming back for it?’

  ‘He didn’t have a trunk.’

  ‘Oh, only small luggage, eh?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Which I suppose he carried in his hands?’

  ‘It would hardly be on his head.’

  ‘What luggage did he have? Bag? Suitcase? Could you describe it?’

  ‘Really, I must say! What can that matter?’

  ‘I am not asking anything that does not matter. If you don’t know, say so.’

  ‘No, I don’t know!’

  ‘Then you can’t tell me if he took away with him a dark-brown suitcase with the initials A.C.—or possibly A.O.—upon it. The letter C can quite easily be changed to look like an O.’

  There was a pause after this.

  ‘I think I see I am right, miss,’ said the policeman.

  ‘Are you suggesting—?’ began Maudie.

  ‘Whatever I may be suggesting, it is no news to you, is it, that this is no social call?’

  ‘No, anyone can see that! And I’m not going to stand here any longer with the fog coming in answering a lot of questions, as if one of our lodgers was a common thief! I’m fed up with it!’

  ‘I have called on a matter much more serious than theft, and there would have been no need to stand here if you had asked me in. I am afraid I must now ask myself in. I should like a word or two with your mother, Mrs Kenton, and if I do require to search the house I have a warrant. Stand by at the front, Smith, and send Williams round to the back.’

  Then Ben heard the front door close, followed by a firm, heavy tread towards the parlour.

  8

  Vanishing Act

  History was repeating itself, although in an environment very different from the previous occasion in Drewet Road, and once more Ben found himself considering the idea of escape from police temporarily diverted to another room. To be discovered here in Jewel Street would probably be more disastrous than discovery in Drewet Road would have proved, for the situation he would now have to explain would be far more complicated. It was so complicated, indeed, that Ben had yet to work it out for himself. All he felt certain of at the moment was that should the police search the house and find him in Blake’s stead, he would be hauled off to the police station, and his chance of helping Mrs Wilby would be gone for ever.

  Why this desire to help Mrs Wilby persisted he could not say. He had never seen her before that afternoon, and she had never seen him, and they were as widely separated as the poles, yet a queer sort of sympathy seemed to have been established between them, and—well, there it was. We are moved in life by many things beyond our comprehension, and in Ben’s limited comprehension their number was legion.

  But escape this time seemed even more impossible than last, for while an already suspicious sergeant was in the house, presumably with his ear well cocked, constables were stationed at both back and front, and there was no conceivable way in a house joined on to its neighbours of slipping out sideways.

  This thought, flitting dismally through Ben’s brain as he still stood uncertainly by the bedroom door, produced another slightly more cheerful. If there were no side path from the front to the back of a house, as there could not be to a house in the middle of a solid terrace, the constabl
e deputed for duty in the rear would have to go to one or other end of the row to get round, and that would mean a bit of a walk—well, wouldn’t it, with no easy matter to find out which back fitted which front when you got there? It was unlikely that the constable could have got there yet, and saying there was a water-pipe …

  Ben slithered to the little back window, took a swift peep, and then swiftly withdrew. The water-pipe he wanted was not there, but the constable he did not want was! ‘’Ow the blazes?’ wondered Ben. ‘’As ’e jumped over the chimbley?’ Then the solution dawned, humiliating him by its simplicity. If you wished to pass from the front to the back of a house, why go out to do it when there was a way through the inside?

  Well, flight being barred, there was nothing to do but to wait and hope, and he waited and hoped for some three minutes, till sounds began again below and the interview with Mrs Kenton was presumably over. He listened anxiously for the direction of the footsteps, praying they would fade away towards the front door, but his prayer was not heard. Instead of fading away, the footsteps grew more distinct, and a complaining mutter from Mrs Kenton confirmed his fears. ‘He’s gone, we tell you, but if you insist on going up to see for yourself, I don’t suppose I can stop you!’

  ‘If he’s gone, there’s nothing for you to worry about,’ came the sergeant’s voice, ‘but there’s something I’ve not mentioned that makes me wonder.’

  ‘What’s that?’ It was Maudie’s sharp question.

  ‘I noticed in there you’d laid for three,’ replied the sergeant, already on the stairs.

  Ben should have learned by now the value, in extremity, of standing your ground, but in spite of the vast number of extremities he had been in he had never got used to them, and as the sergeant’s steps mounted higher and higher he suddenly dived into a cupboard. In the blackness, with his face pressed against a dust-choked coat, he heard the bedroom door pushed open. Then followed a few moments of silence, saving for the sound of somebody else’s footsteps accompanied by a faint rustle.

  The sergeant’s voice sounded again.