Striding Folly (8 page)

    ‘Morning, officer,’ said the gentleman, as he came abreast with him.

    ‘Morning, sir,’ said the policeman.

    ‘You’re off duty early,’ pursued Peter, who wanted somebody to talk to. ‘Come in and have a drink.’

    This offer re-awakened all the official suspicion.

    ‘Not just now, sir, thank you,’ replied the policeman guardedly.

    ‘Yes, now. That’s the point.’ Peter tossed away his cigarette-end. It described a fiery arc in the air and shot out a little train of sparks as it struck the pavement. ‘I’ve got a son.’

    ‘Oh, ah!’ said the policeman, relieved by this innocent confidence. ‘Your first, eh?’

    ‘And last, if I know anything about it.’

    ‘That’s what my brother says, every time,’ said the policeman. ‘Never no more, he says. He’s got eleven. Well, sir, good luck to it. I see how you’re situated, I and thank you kindly, but after what the sergeant said I dunno as I better. Though if I was to die this moment, not a drop ’as passed me lips since me supper beer.’

    Peter put his head on one side and considered this.

    ‘The sergeant said you were drunk?’

    ‘He did, sir.’

    ‘And you were not?’

    ‘No, sir. I saw everything just the same as I told him, though what’s become of it now is more than I can say. But drunk I was not, sir, no more than you are yourself.’

    ‘Then,’ said Peter, ‘as Mr Joseph Surface remarked to Lady Teazle, what is troubling you is the consciousness of your own innocence. He insinuated that you had looked on the wine when it was red – you’d better come in and make it so. You’ll feel better.’

    The policeman hesitated.

    ‘Well, sir, I dunno. Fact is, I’ve had a bit of a shock.’

    ‘So’ve I,’ said Peter. ‘Come in for God’s sake and keep me company.’

    ‘Well, sir—’ said the policeman again. He mounted the steps slowly.

    The logs in the hall chimney were glowing a deep red through their ashes. Peter raked them apart, so that the young flame shot up between them. ‘Sit down,’ he said; ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’

    The policeman sat down, removed his helmet, and stared about him, trying to remember who occupied the big house at the corner of the square. The engraved coat of arms upon the great silver bowl on the chimney-piece told him nothing, even though it was repeated in colour upon the backs of two tapestried chairs: three white mice skipping upon a black ground. Peter, returning quietly from the shadows beneath the stair, caught him as he traced the outlines with a thick finger.

    ‘A student of heraldry?’ he said. ‘Seventeenth-century work and not very graceful. You’re new to this beat, aren’t you? My name’s Wimsey.’

    He put down a tray on the table.

    ‘If you’d rather have beer or whisky, say so. These bottles are only a concession to my mood.’

    The policeman eyed the long necks and bulging silver-wrapped corks with curiosity. ‘Champagne?’ he said. ‘Never tasted it, sir. But I’d like to try the stuff.’

    ‘You’ll find it thin,’ said Peter, ‘but if you drink enough of it, you’ll tell me the story of your life.’ The cork popped and the wine frothed out into the wide glasses.

    ‘Well!’ said the policeman. ‘Here’s to your good lady, sir, and the new young gentleman. Long life and all the best. A bit in the nature of cider, ain’t it, sir?’

    ‘Just a trifle. Give me your opinion after the third glass, if you can put up with it so long. And thanks for your good wishes. You a married man?’

    ‘Not yet, sir. Hoping to be when I get promotion. If only the sergeant – but that’s neither here nor there. You been married long, sir, if I may ask.’

    ‘Just over a year.’

    ‘Ah! and do you find it comfortable, sir?’

    Peter laughed.

    ‘I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours wondering why, when I’d had the blazing luck to get on to a perfectly good thing, I should be fool enough to risk the whole show on a damned silly experiment.’

    The policeman nodded sympathetically.

    ‘I see what you mean, sir. Seems to me, life’s like that. If you don’t take risks, you get nowhere. If you do, things may go wrong, and then where are you? And ’alf the time, when things happen, they happen first, before you can even think about ’em.’

    ‘Quite right,’ said Peter, and filled the glasses again. He found the policeman soothing. True to his class and training, he turned naturally in moments of emotion to the company of the common man. Indeed, when the recent domestic crisis had threatened to destroy his nerve, he had headed for the butler’s pantry with the swift instinct of the homing pigeon. There, they had treated him with great humanity, and allowed him to clean the silver.

    With a mind oddly clarified by champagne and lack of sleep, he watched the constable’s reaction to Pol Roger 1926. The first glass had produced a philosophy of life; the second produced a name – Alfred Burt – and a further hint of some mysterious grievance against the station sergeant; the third glass, as prophesied, produced the story.

    ‘You were right, sir’ (said the policeman) ‘when you spotted I was new to the beat. I only come on it at the beginning of the week, and that accounts for me not being acquainted with you, sir, nor with most of the residents about here. Jessop, now, he knows everybody and so did Pinker – but he’s been took off to another division. You’d remember Pinker – big chap, make two o’ me, with a sandy moustache. Yes, I thought you would.

    ‘Well, sir, as I was saying, me knowing the district in a general way, but not, so to speak, like the palm o’ me ’and, might account for me making a bit of a fool of myself, but it don’t account for me seeing what I did see. See it I did, and not drunk nor nothing like it. And as for making a mistake in the number, well, that might happen to anybody. All the same, sir, 13 was the number I see, plain as the nose on your face.’

    ‘You can’t put it stronger than that,’ said Peter, whose nose was of a kind difficult to overlook.

    ‘You know Merriman’s End, sir?’

    ‘I think I do. Isn’t it a long cul-de-sac running somewhere at the back of South Audley Street, with a row of houses on one side and a high wall on the other?’

    ‘That’s right, sir. Tall, narrow houses they are, all alike, with deep porches and pillars to them.’

    ‘Yes. Like an escape from the worst square in Pimlico. Horrible. Fortunately, I believe the street was never finished, or we should have had another row of the monstrosities on the opposite side. This house is pure eighteenth century. How does it strike you?’

    P.C. Burt contemplated the wide hall – the Adam fireplace and panelling with their graceful shallow mouldings, the pedimented doorways, the high round-headed window lighting hall and gallery, the noble proportions of the stair. He sought for a phrase.

    ‘It’s a gentleman’s house,’ he pronounced at length. ‘Room to breathe, if you see what I mean. Seems like you couldn’t act vulgar in it.’ He shook his head. ‘Mind you, I wouldn’t call it cosy. It ain’t the place I’d choose to sit down to a kipper in me shirtsleeves. But it’s got class. I never thought about it before, but now you mention it I see what’s wrong with them other houses in Merriman’s End. They’re sort of squeezed-like. I been into more’n one o’ them tonight, and that’s what they are; they’re squeezed. But I was going to tell you about that.’

    ‘Just upon midnight it was’ (pursued the policeman) ‘when I turns into Merriman’s End in the ordinary course of my dooties. I’d got pretty near down toward the far end, when I see a fellow lurking about in a suspicious way under the wall. There’s back gates there, you know, sir, leading into some gardens, and this chap was hanging about inside one of the gateways. A rough-looking fellow, in a baggy old coat – might a’ been a tramp off the Embankment. I turned my light on him – that street’s not very well lit, and it’s a dark night – but I couldn’t see much of his face, because he had on a ragged old hat and a big scarf round his neck. I thought he was up to no good, and I was just about to ask him what he was doing there, when I hear a most awful yell come out o’ one o’ them houses opposite. Ghastly it was, sir. “Help!” it said. “Murder! help!”, fit to freeze your marrow.’

    ‘Man’s voice or woman’s?’

    ‘Man’s, sir. I think. More of a roaring kind of yell, if you take my meaning. I says, “Hullo! What’s up there? Which house is it?” The chap says nothing, but he points, and him and me runs across together. Just as we gets to the house, there’s a noise like as if someone was being strangled just inside, and a thump, as it might be something falling against the door.’

    ‘Good God!’ said Peter.

    ‘I gives a shout and rings the bell. “Hoy!” I says. “What’s up here?” and then I knocked on the door. There’s no answer, so I rings and knocks again. Then the chap who was with me, he pushed open the letter-flap and squints through it.’

    ‘Was there a light in the house?’

    ‘It was all dark, sir, except the fanlight over the door. That was lit up bright, and when I looks up, I see the number of the house – number 13, painted plain as you like on the transom. Well, this chap peers in, and all of a sudden he gives a kind of gurgle and falls back. “Here!” I says, “what’s amiss? Let me have a look.” So I puts me eye to the flap and I looks in.’

    P.C. Burt paused and drew a long breath. Peter cut the wire of the second bottle.

    ‘Now, sir,’ said the policeman, ‘believe me or believe me not, I was as sober at that moment as I am now. I can tell you everything I see in that house, same as if it was wrote up there on that wall. Not as it was a great lot, because the flap wasn’t all that wide but by squinnying a bit, I could make shift to see right across the hall and a piece on both sides and part way up the stairs. And here’s what I see, and you take notice of every word, on account of what come after.’

    He took another gulp of the Pol Roger to loosen his tongue and continued:

    ‘There was the floor of the hall. I could see that very plain. All black and white squares it was, like marble, and it stretched back a good long way. About half-way along, on the left, was the staircase, with a red carpet, and the figure of a white naked woman at the foot, carrying a big pot of blue and yellow flowers. In the wall next the stairs there was an open door, and a room all lit up. I could just see the end of a table, with a lot of glass and silver on it. Between that door and the front door there was a big black cabinet, shiny, with gold figures painted on it, like them things they had at the Exhibition. Right at the back of the hall there was a place like a conservatory, but I couldn’t see what was in it, only it looked very gay. There was a door on the right, and that was open, too. A very pretty drawing-room, by what I could see of it, with pale blue paper and pictures on the walls. There were pictures in the hall, too, and a table on the right with a copper bowl, like as it might be for visitors’ cards to be put in. Now, I see all that, sir, and I put it to you, if it hadn’t a’ been there, how could I describe so plain?’