In the Teeth of the Evidence (23 page)

    Yet nobody came to Mr Budd but the navvies and the young loungers and the men who plied their trade beneath the naphtha-flares in Wilton Street.

    And why could not Mr Budd also have burst out into marble and electricity and swum to fortune on the rising tide?

    The reason is very distressing, and, as it fortunately has no bearing on the story, shall be told with merciful brevity.

    Mr Budd had a younger brother, Richard, whom he had promised his mother to look after. In happier days Mr Budd had owned a flourishing business in their native town of Northampton, and Richard had been a bank clerk. Richard had got into bad ways (poor Mr Budd blamed himself dreadfully for this). There had been a sad affair with a girl, and a horrid series of affairs with bookmakers, and then Richard had tried to mend bad with worse by taking money from the bank. You need to be very much more skilful than Richard to juggle successfully with bank ledgers.

    The bank manager was a hard man of the old school: he prosecuted. Mr Budd paid the bank and the bookmakers, and saw the girl through her trouble while Richard was in prison, and paid for their fares to Australia when he came out, and gave them something to start life on.

    But it took all the profits of the hairdressing business, and he couldn’t face all the people in Northampton any more, who had known him all his life. So he had run to vast London, the refuge of all who shrink from the eyes of their neighbours, and bought this little shop in Pimlico, which had done fairly well, until the new fashion which did so much for other hairdressing businesses killed it for lack of capital.

    That is why Mr Budd’s eye was so painfully fascinated by headlines with money in then.

    He put the newspaper down, and as he did so, caught sight of his own reflection in the glass and smiled, for he was not without a sense of humour. He did not look quite the man to catch a brutal murderer single-handed. He was well on in the middle forties – a trifle paunchy, with fluffy pale hair, getting a trifle thin on top (partly hereditary, partly worry, that was), five feet six at most, and soft-handed, as a hairdresser must be.

    Even razor in hand, he would hardly be a match for William Strickland, height six feet one or two, who had so ferociously battered his old aunt to death, so butcherly hacked her limb from limb, so horribly disposed of her remains in the copper. Shaking his head dubiously, Mr Budd advanced to the door, to cast a forlorn eye at the busy establishment over the way, and nearly ran into a bulky customer who dived in rather precipitately.

    ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ murmured Mr Budd, fearful of alienating ninepence; ‘just stepping out for a breath of fresh air, sir. Shave, sir?’

    The large man tore off his overcoat without waiting for Mr Budd’s obsequious hands.

    ‘Are you prepared to die?’ he demanded abruptly.

    The question chimed in so alarmingly with Mr Budd’s thoughts about murder that for a moment it quite threw him off his professional balance.

    ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he stammered, and in the same moment decided that the man must be a preacher of some kind. He looked rather like it, with his odd, light eyes, his bush of fiery hair and short, jutting chin-beard. Perhaps he even wanted a subscription. That would be hard, when Mr Budd had already set him down as ninepence, or, with tip, possibly even a shilling.

    ‘Do you do dyeing?’ said the man impatiently.

    ‘Oh!’ said Mr Budd, relieved, ‘yes, sir, certainly, sir.’

    A stroke of luck, this. Dyeing meant quite a big sum – his mind soared to seven-and-sixpence.

    ‘Good,’ said the man, sitting down and allowing Mr Budd to put an apron about his neck. (He was safely gathered in now – he could hardly dart away down the street with a couple of yards of white cotton flapping from his shoulders.)

    ‘Fact is,’ said the man, ‘my young lady doesn’t like red hair. She says it’s conspicuous. The other young ladies in her firm make jokes about it. So, as she’s a good bit younger than I am, you see, I like to oblige her, and I was thinking perhaps it could be changed into something quieter, what? Dark brown, now – that’s the colour she has a fancy to. What do
you
say?’

    It occurred to Mr Budd that the young ladies might consider this abrupt change of coat even funnier than the original colour, but in the interests of business he agreed that dark brown would be very becoming and a great deal less noticeable than red. Besides, very likely there was no young lady. A woman, he knew, will say frankly that she wants different coloured hair for a change, or just to try, or because she fancies it would suit her, but if a man is going to do a silly thing he prefers, if possible, to shuffle the responsibility on to someone else.

    ‘Very well, then,’ said the customer, ‘go ahead. And I’m afraid the beard will have to go. My young lady doesn’t like beards.’

    ‘A great many young ladies don’t, sir,’ said Mr Budd. ‘They’re not so fashionable nowadays as they used to be. It’s very fortunate that you can stand a clean shave very well, sir. You have just the chin for it.’

    ‘Do you think so?’ said the man, examining himself a little anxiously. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

    ‘Will you have the moustache off as well, sir?’

    ‘Well, no – no, I think I’ll stick to that as long as I’m allowed to, what?’ He laughed loudly, and Mr Budd approvingly noted well-kept teeth and a gold stopping. The customer was obviously ready to spend money on his personal appearance.

    In fancy, Mr Budd saw this well-off and gentlemanly customer advising all his friends to visit ‘his man’ – ‘wonderful fellow – wonderful – round at the back of Victoria Station – you’d never find it by yourself – only a little place, but he knows what he’s about – I’ll write it down for you.’ It was imperative that there should be no fiasco. Hair-dyes were awkward things – there had been a case in the paper recently.

    ‘I see you have been using a tint before, sir,’ said Mr Budd with respect. ‘Could you tell me—?’

    ‘Eh?’ said the man. ‘Oh, yes – well, fact is, as I said, my fiancée’s a good bit younger than I am. As I expect you can see I began to go grey early – my father was just the same – all our family – so I had it touched up – streaky bits restored, you see. But she doesn’t take to the colour, so I thought, if I have to dye it at all, why not a colour she
does
fancy while we’re about it, what?’

    It is a common jest among the unthinking that hairdressers are garrulous. This is their wisdom. The hairdresser hears many secrets and very many lies. In his discretion he occupies his unruly tongue with the weather and the political situation, lest, restless with inaction, it plunges unbridled into a mad career of inconvenient candour.

    Lightly holding forth upon the caprices of the feminine mind, Mr Budd subjected his customer’s locks to the scrutiny of trained eye and fingers. Never – never in the process of nature could hair of that texture and quality have been red. It was naturally black hair, prematurely turned, as some black hair will turn, to a silvery grey. However that was none of his business. He elicited the information he really needed – the name of the dye formerly used, and noted that he would have to be careful. Some dyes do not mix kindly with other dyes.

    Chatting pleasantly, Mr Budd lathered his customer, removed the offending beard, and executed a vigorous shampoo, preliminary to the dyeing process. As he wielded the roaring drier, he reviewed Wimbledon, the Silk-tax and the Summer Time Bill – at that moment threatened with sudden strangulation – and passed naturally on to the Manchester murder.

    ‘The police seem to have given it up as a bad job,’ said the man.

    ‘Perhaps the reward will liven things up a bit,’ said Mr Budd, the thought being naturally uppermost in his mind.

    ‘Oh, there’s a reward, is there? I hadn’t seen that.’

    ‘It’s in tonight’s paper, sir. Maybe you’d like to have a look at it.’

    ‘Thanks, I should.’

    Mr Budd left the drier to blow the fiery bush of hair at its own wild will for a moment, while he fetched the
Evening Messenger
. The stranger read the paragraph carefully and Mr Budd, watching him in the glass, after the disquieting manner of his craft, saw him suddenly draw back his left hand, which was resting carelessly on the arm of the chair, and thrust it under the apron.

    But not before Mr Budd had seen it. Not before he had taken conscious note of the horny, misshapen thumb-nail. Many people had such an ugly mark, Mr Budd told himself hurriedly – there was his friend, Bert Webber, who had sliced the top of his thumb right off in a motor-cycle chain – his nail looked very much like that.

    The man glanced up, and the eyes of his reflection became fixed on Mr Budd’s face with a penetrating scrutiny – a horrid warning that the real eyes were steadfastly interrogating the reflection of Mr Budd.

    ‘Not but what,’ said Mr Budd, ‘the man is safe out of the country by now, I reckon. They’ve put it off too late.’

    The man laughed.

    ‘I reckon they have,’ he said. Mr Budd wondered whether many men with smashed left thumbs showed a gold left upper eye-tooth. Probably there were hundreds of people like that going about the country. Likewise with silver-grey hair (‘may dye same’) and aged about forty-three. Undoubtedly.

    Mr Budd folded up the drier and turned off the gas. Mechanically he took up a comb and drew it through the hair that never, never in the process of Nature had been that fiery red.

    There came back to him, with an accuracy which quite unnerved him, the exact number and extent of the brutal wounds inflicted upon the Manchester victim – an elderly lady, rather stout, she had been. Glaring through the door, Mr Budd noticed that his rival over the way had closed. The streets were full of people. How easy it would be—

    ‘Be as quick as you can, won’t you?’ said the man, a little impatiently, but pleasantly enough. ‘It’s getting late. I’m afraid it will keep you overtime.’

    ‘Not at all, sir,’ said Mr Budd. ‘It’s of no consequence – not the least.’

    No – if he tried to bolt out of the door, his terrible customer would leap upon him, drag him back, throttle his cries, and then with one frightful blow like the one he had smashed in his aunt’s skull with—

    Yet surely Mr Budd was in a position of advantage. A decided man would do it. He would be out in the street before the customer could disentangle himself from the chair. Mr Budd began to edge round towards the door.

    ‘What’s the matter?’ said the customer.

    ‘Just stepping out to look at the time, sir,’ said Mr Budd, meekly pausing. (Yet he might have done it then, if he only had the courage to make the first swift step that would give the game away.)

    ‘It’s five-and-twenty past eight,’ said the man, ‘by tonight’s broadcast. I’ll pay extra for the overtime.’

    ‘Not on any account,’ said Mr Budd. Too late now, he couldn’t make another effort. He vividly saw himself tripping on the threshold – falling – the terrible fist lifted to smash him into a pulp. Or perhaps, under the familiar white apron, the disfigured hand was actually clutching a pistol.

    Mr Budd retreated to the back of the shop, collecting his materials. If only he had been quicker – more like a detective in a book – he would have observed that thumb-nail, that tooth, put two and two together, and run out to give the alarm while the man’s beard was wet and soapy and his face buried in the towel. Or he could have dabbed lather in his eyes – nobody could possibly commit a murder or even run away down the street with his eyes full of soap.

    Even now – Mr Budd took down a bottle, shook his head and put it back on the shelf – even now, was it really too late? Why could he not take a bold course? He had only to open a razor, go quietly up behind the unsuspecting man and say in a firm, loud, convincing voice: ‘William Strickland, put up your hands. Your life is at my mercy. Stand up till I take your gun away. Now walk straight out to the nearest policeman.’ Surely, in his position, that was what Sherlock Holmes would do.

    But as Mr Budd returned with a little trayful of requirements, it was borne in upon him that he was not of the stuff of which great man-hunters are made. For he could not seriously see that attempt ‘coming off’. Because if he held the razor to the man’s throat and said: ‘Put up your hands,’ the man would probably merely catch him by the wrists and take the razor away. And greatly as Mr Budd feared his customer unarmed, he felt it would be a perfect crescendo of madness to put a razor into his hands.

    Or, supposing he said, ‘Put up your hands,’ and the man just said, ‘I won’t.’ What was he to do next? To cut his throat then and there would be murder, even if Mr Budd could possibly have brought himself to do such a thing. They could not remain there, fixed in one position, till the boy came to do out the shop in the morning.

    Perhaps the policeman would notice the light on and the door unfastened and come in? Then he would say, ‘I congratulate you, Mr Budd, on having captured a very dangerous criminal.’ But supposing the policeman didn’t happen to notice – and Mr Budd would have to stand all the time, and he would get exhausted and his attention would relax, and then—

    After all, Mr Budd wasn’t called upon to arrest the man himself. ‘Information leading to arrest’ – those were the words. He would be able to tell them the wanted man had been there, that he would now have dark brown hair and moustache and no beard. He might even shadow him when he left – he might—