Bland Beginning (24 page)

“Wait a minute,” Nugent said faintly. The Inspector swung round, glared at him, and then said to the detective-sergeant, “Get out.” When the door had closed he sat on the edge of his desk with his face inches away from Nugent’s, and said, “Your boys took that copy of
Passion and Repentance
off Shelton, didn’t they?” Nugent nodded. “And you were responsible for the other thefts from public libraries and private houses, weren’t you?” He nodded again. The Inspector’s voice was not loud, but bitter. “All right. You’re not a great reader. Who were you working for?”

“Jacobs,” said Nugent. Inspector Wrax stared at him. “A bookseller – Jonathan Jacobs. Keeps a shop out at Blackheath.”

Inspector Wrax walked slowly round his desk and sat down behind it. “If you’re codding me, Nugent, you’ll be in worse trouble than you are.”

“I’m telling the truth, Inspector.” There could be no doubt of the man’s earnestness. “Some of my boys knew this Jacobs from years ago. Sometimes he’s come in on screwing a joint, see, but they didn’t like him too much because he was a bit milky.”

“He hasn’t got a record,” the Inspector said sharply, and Nugent waved a hand in a nervous gesture.

“Not in this country, maybe. This boy of mine knew him in the Cape a matter of twenty years back. He was a queer cove then, by all accounts, always spouting books, and when he came over here he gave up the game and opened a shop – a bookshop.”

“Was it a cover for something?”

With disgust Nugent said, “From what I heard, he ran it straight. I never heard his name, though, till this boy of mine said he wanted us to do a little job for him. It was easy as kiss your hand – knocking off a book from a private house – and he could easily have done it himself; only he was too milky. Anyway, we did it, and I passed over the book myself. Only time I saw him. We did a few more jobs for him afterwards, houses and public libraries. Queer they were, because it was always the same book.”

“
Passion and Repentance
?”

Nugent nodded again. “I don’t know about the passion,” he said, “but I’m bloody well repenting now.”

“Did he tell you what he wanted them for?”

“He said he had a crazy rich old gentleman who wanted to make a corner in them. Sounded to me like he was sprucing, but it was none of my business.”

“He never gave you a hint who he was acting for?”

“Not a smell. I only met him the once. After that he telephoned, gave me the dope, and we went to work. There was nothing to it. Like taking chocolates from a baby.”

“What about the copy you took from Shelton?”

Nugent clicked his teeth. “Somebody slipped up there. It was a copy of one of these books that had come up for sale. Jacobs got on the wire and said he wanted it all done legal – send along one of the boys and buy it for up to a hundred nicker, which should cover it easy. But it didn’t. Then Jacobs told me he was going to make a bigger offer. That was no good, so he told me to get it any way I liked. I did that, and he had it Tuesday evening.”

So when Jacobs was talking to that half-smart Basingstoke and the Rawlings girl, the Inspector thought, he was stringing them along good and proper. “What else?”

“That’s all there is. I don’t know more than a baby what it was all about, or anything about this Jebb and Cobb you’re talking about.”

The Inspector pressed the bell again. When the sergeant came he said, “Take him away.”

“What’s the charge, Inspector?”

“Grievous bodily harm.”

“But, look here –” Nugent said, and the Inspector gave him a hard stare.

“What do you want, Nugent, jam on it? I told you I’d see what I could do with Shelton, and I will. You can thank your lucky stars I’m a man of my word.”

“I want to see my solicitor,” Nugent said, in a kind of wail.

“See who you like, but if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay in jail. It’s going to be the safest place for you in the next few days.”

The Inspector rang through to Sergeant Thynne, who had no more news. “How did you get on with Nugent?” the Sergeant asked.

“He was a half-smart bastard,” the Inspector said amiably. “I’m going down to Jacobs’ bookshop at Blackheath. I’ll be surprised if I don’t add him to the bag.”

But the Inspector was surprised.

When the Inspector let them go, the two young men returned to Central London. Bland seemed uncommonly cheerful, while Basingstoke was sunk in a profound gloom. In the railway carriage, Bland asked what his friend was doing with himself. “I’m going to old Jebb’s funeral,” Basingstoke said. “Ruth Cleverly asked if I’d like to be there, and I feel in a kind of way that I should. And tomorrow I’ve half-promised to go down to Millingham and see Vicky’s uncle. I don’t think I shall, though.” He sighed. “I’m sick of this business.”

“Have you lost your sense of curiosity?”

Basingstoke looked out of the window and his scar twitched. “As I said last night, I feel that if it weren’t for my damned curiosity all this might not have happened.”

“You’re wrong there.” Bland shook decisively his well-brushed fair head. “It’s difficult philosophically to attribute a beginning to any happening –”

“Oh, philosophically. Do you think I’m talking about philosophy?”

“But in an immediate practical sense you only lighted, as you might say, a fuse which was already laid. Somebody had to light it some time, and it was a coincidence that it happened to be you. You might as well blame Shelton for buying the book.”

Basingstoke said, with a snort worthy of the Inspector, “Don’t you think I do that every day? I hope I never see that lumbering ape again. I hope I never see any of them again.” He turned his full face to Bland, and bent towards him, pointing to his scar. “This thing is a wretched disfigurement, isn’t it?”

Bland did not move away. “If you let it be.”

“There are times when I envy everybody who doesn’t carry about with them a mark like this, everybody who’s shaped to a fairly reasonable physical pattern. ‘Oh, why was I born with a different face?’ But I don’t think I should mind if I’d been
born
with a different face. It’s having it thrust on me that makes it hard to bear.”

Bland made no comment. He knew the story that Basingstoke had told to Victoria Rawlings. Presently he said, “That might be a theme for a novel. Comparison of the effects of physical and emotional maladjustment. Sometimes the most dangerous disfigurements are inside you – one can pay a great deal for presenting a perfectly harmonious front to the world.”

“What the devil do you mean by that?” Basingstoke stared at him curiously.

“I was suggesting a theme for a novel. Don’t you think the contrast might be worked up quite effectively? The battle between two men, one of them physically and the other mentally disfigured, for a woman. Which of them gets her?”

Basingstoke had his long legs stuck out, staring at them. “Not much doubt of that.”

“It depends which of them gives up,” Bland said with emphasis, and Basingstoke looked at him with renewed interest. “You understand, I’m talking about a novel.”

Still staring at his long legs, the scarred man said, “Do you think I should go down there tomorrow?”

“It sounds very interesting. In fact I should like to go myself. And I should like to meet Miss Cleverly. Couldn’t you take her along with you?”

“All right, all right. I don’t suppose old Rawlings will mind if you both come along with me.” He relapsed into his inspissated gloom, and then said, “How does this man Jacobs’ death affect it all? It seems to me like a jumble perpetrated by a homicidal maniac. Is that what you think?” Bland shook his head. “Do you mean to say that there’s some logical sequence in all this?”

“Given the murderer’s point of view, quite logical.”

“Well, I can’t see it,” said Basingstoke complainingly, but his friend did not enlighten him, and they hardly spoke again before they parted at Charing Cross.

Why had he come here? Basingstoke wondered, as he walked slowly among rows of marble urns and graves ornamented by white stone chips, to the spot in the middle distance where a small group of people was standing. Thinking half-consciously of the scene he had left that morning, the man hanging, horribly, in that small kitchen among the unwashed plates, he stopped and stood staring at a stone which commemorated the death of a boy of twelve. Underneath he read the words, “He rests in the bosom of the Lord.” Why do they accept it, he thought, as he joined the group standing with bowed heads round a brown box that was being lowered into a hole in the ground, why do people accept the fact of death with such unseemly and inhuman placidity, dreaming still that it is their sole link with an imaginary benevolence, instead of regarding it logically as the last indignity making us one with the kingdom of the pig and the dog. He lowered his own head dutifully, but took the opportunity to look round as stones and dirt rattled on the box, and saw with pleasure Ruth Cleverly’s small face, white and strained, and then with a shock of surprise noticed Anthony Shelton’s fair curls beside Blackburn’s elegant figure. When it was over he stepped across to Ruth and took her hand. The smile she gave him was a mockery of her usual gaiety.

“I’m very sorry to be late,” he said, but her hand waved his sorrow impatiently away. He followed the direction of her glance, to where men were filling up the hole in the ground. “It’s a poor end we come to, isn’t it?” he said.

“A poor end and a sad one, for him.” She spoke without her usual brusqueness. “He had so little out of life. All he wanted was bound up with that book, and then somebody took it away. Like taking a toy from a child.”

He looked round at the mass of marble, and his shoulders gave a shrug that was almost a shiver. “I thought there might be no one you knew here, but I see I was wrong.”

“That snake,” Ruth Cleverly said bitterly, looking at the retreating back of Michael Blackburn. “Why was he here with Shelton?” They were standing alone by the grave now, and the men who were filling it in stared at them. Again Basingstoke felt inclined to shiver. “Shall we go?” he asked, and without answering she turned and they walked together down the formal and well-kept paths towards the neat iron gate. With his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slightly hunched, Basingstoke brooded over his own problems. “Do you believe that when we die we’re gone?” he asked, and pushed out his lips. “Pfft. Like a light.”

“Don’t know,” said Ruth Cleverly. “Never thought much about it. I suppose, like most people, I believe in – something.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “Anyway, I’d like to. Why?”

“I saw someone dead this morning. It started my mind moving in all sorts of queer ways.”

“What –” she began, and then they both became aware of the two tall figures standing at the gate. Anthony smiled awkwardly and shyly, but Blackburn nodded to Basingstoke and spoke, gently and apologetically, to Ruth: “My dear Miss Cleverly, I want to say how sorry I am for my outburst yesterday. I was overwrought, but it was really unpardonable. Do forgive me.”

With no change in her white-faced grimness, Ruth said almost absently, “That’s all right.” Then she added with a flicker of dislike, “Nice of you to come. I didn’t know you thought so much of Arthur.”

“I hope my presence may be taken as a token repentance for harsh words I’ve spoken in the past. But really it’s our young friend here” – his long hand rested on Anthony’s sleeve – “who’s chiefly responsible. I asked him to lunch, and it was his suggestion that we should come on here.”

Three pairs of eyes looked at Anthony – Blackburn’s benevolently, Basingstoke’s with awakened curiosity, and Ruth’s almost blankly. He blushed, and seemed to feel the need of explanation. “I don’t know – I just seemed to feel that – well, hang it all, it was all through me in a way that it happened, wasn’t it? I mean to say, if I hadn’t bought that thing to give to Vicky–” He left the sentence unfinished, and plunged on. “And I did see the chap – with you, Ruth – Miss Cleverly – the day before he died. I thought it was only decent – mark of respect and all that –” He lapsed into silence.

Somebody else, Basingstoke thought, with a feeling of guilt to expiate. He felt for the first time almost warmly towards Anthony, and quite forgot that a little while before he had called him a lumbering ape. “I was saying the same thing myself this morning, on my own account, to a young friend of mine who knows about this case – that I felt responsible in a way for these three deaths because I’d really started off the hunt. And if it’s any consolation to you, he said that I’d only lighted a fuse which was already laid.”

“What?” said Anthony.

“He meant that the roots of it all went back a long way,” Basingstoke said with some irritation.

Blackburn picked an imaginary piece of cotton off his elegant dark-blue suit. “Did you say – three deaths?”

Watching them all, Basingstoke said, “A man called Jacobs was found hanged this morning.” He learned nothing from their expressions, and added: “He was the bookseller who made you an offer for your copy of the book, Shelton. Miss Rawlings and I went to see him.”

“Good Lord, yes,” Anthony said. “The chap Cobb sold all those books to. What an extraordinary thing.”

Blackburn was stroking a long upper lip. “When you say he was found hanged, I take it you mean that he committed suicide. Doesn’t that seem to give grounds for thinking that he may have – ah – laid the fuse?”

“My young friend,” Basingstoke said slowly, “seemed to think that the death was made to look like suicide. That really he was murdered.”

“Your young friend seems ubiquitous,” Blackburn observed politely.

“Wrax believes it,” Basingstoke said with rather unwarranted boldness and watched them carefully as he added with spurious hesitation: “Wrax says that Jacobs was the man responsible for the book thefts.”

Anthony’s brows were bent together, as he tried doggedly to find his way through this maze. “But – why should anybody kill
him
? If he was responsible for it all?” Basingstoke made no reply, and the four of them stood silent by the cemetery gates in the hard sunlight.

“If we’re going to Lord’s today, my dear Anthony,” Blackburn said gently, “we’d better go.”