The Journeying Boy (30 page)

Now he rang the bell of a small flat in Hampstead. The house was retired and shabby, and its conversion into a dwelling adequate for several households had been carried out uncompromisingly on the cheap. A seedy retired major, Cadover speculated, who had felt a powerful urge to raise the price of a crate or two of whisky. The door opened before him. ‘Does Mr Standage live here?’ he inquired.

For a decayed sporty major, if such there was to be, was not yet visible; Cadover found himself regarding, in a gloom not very convenient for precise observation, a sombrely dressed woman in late middle age, who appeared to look back at him with completely expressionless eyes. ‘I am Mrs Standage,’ she said; ‘and I live alone. Will you come in?’ She let him past and closed the door. ‘This way, please.’ And she led the way into a room on the left.

Here it was darker still and Cadover waited for his conductress to turn on the light. But the lady – she was emphatically that, and the more evidently in being a person from whom all other species of emphasis had drained away long ago – merely motioned to a chair and herself sat down with a straight back which seemed to speak uncompromisingly of a merely business occasion. ‘I think I ought to tell you at once,’ she said, ‘that I have had an offer. An offer from a clergyman.’

Cadover, who was weary, had for a moment a confused impulse to offer congratulations, as if what had been confessed to him was the prospect of some imminent matrimonial success. His perception of the folly of this left him just presence of mind to repeat, ‘A clergyman?’

‘For use in his parish hall. And I should, of course, be very pleased to think of the instrument as being employed for what would be, virtually, purposes of piety. Two of my uncles were archdeacons.’ Mrs Standage paused, but not from any consciousness of irrelevance. ‘Unfortunately the offer he was able to make was far from meeting my mind in the matter. Perhaps you would care to try the touch and tone.’

Glancing round the room, Cadover saw that what was being offered to him was the species of instrument known as a baby grand. ‘It looks very nice,’ he said politically. ‘But I have not, as a matter of fact, come to buy a piano. I must explain to you that I am–’

‘Then it’s the rug.’ Mrs Standage, who kept her eyes fixed somewhat unnervingly over her visitor’s left shoulder, spoke with a shade of chagrin. ‘Unfortunately, it is already sold – as was to be expected, I’m afraid. So fine a Persian rug would scarcely remain on – on the market long. But if a small Aubusson carpet would suit your needs equally well–’ Here she broke off, as if aware of salesmanship of a somewhat too precipitate order. ‘You may wonder why I should be anxious to dispose of things of such excellent quality – heirlooms, as they might be called. The fact is that I have had somewhat to contract my living quarters of late, and I am above all things fond of
space
. This is the sole reason for my having decided to part with something here and there.’

‘I see.’ Cadover barely did see, for the dusk was now deepening rapidly. But the room in which he sat, in addition to being faded, seemed already singularly bare; and by his head he could just detect a square patch on the wall from which a picture must recently have vanished. He was in the presence, in fact, of dire poverty in one of its most distressing forms. ‘But you must understand,’ he said gently, ‘that I have not come to buy anything you still have to sell. I am a detective-inspector of the police, and I have come to make inquiries about something you have already sold. I mean the shot-gun which you advertised about a week ago.’

Mrs Standage bowed, and it could be seen that a faint spot of colour had risen to her cheek. ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said stiffly. ‘The misunderstanding was due entirely to my own carelessness. And any questions you have to ask I shall, of course, answer if I can. I hope I have not been culpable. It did cross my mind that formalities unknown to me might attend the – the disposal of firearms. The gun belonged to my late husband.’

‘Quite so.’ Cadover was infinitely soothing. ‘But I don’t think you will find us raising any questions of that sort.’

‘It was taking up room.’ Mrs Standage appeared to feel this a little tenuous and to cast about in her mind. ‘And falling over. It made me decidedly nervous. I was not assured that the mechanism was entirely safe. So it appeared best to sell the weapon and be rid of it.’

‘You acted very wisely, ma’am. Firearms can be extremely dangerous to those unfamiliar with them.’ Cadover paused on this vacuous sentiment and then plunged decisively. ‘And the gun suited the boy?’

‘The gun suited the boy very well. He was delighted with it. It pleased me to feel that my husband’s old companion was going to give such pleasure.’

For almost the first time in the cinema affair, Cadover felt a strong leap of hope within him. ‘And the offer made – um – met your mind in the matter?’

‘Entirely so. I had rung up my solicitor, an old friend with whom my husband used to go rough shooting, and he suggested a fair price.’

‘I see. And that figure was–?’

‘Thirty pounds.’

‘The purchaser gave you that?’

Mrs Standage’s curiously absent eyes appeared for a moment to waver. Then she smoothed out a fold in her dress. ‘He gave me,’ she said, ‘thirty-seven pounds ten shillings. I had to bear in mind that solicitors are conservatively inclined. They don’t quite realize how everything goes up and up.’ For a moment Mrs Standage’s voice wavered as her eyes had done. ‘And they
do
go up and up, as I have some occasion to know.’

‘I am glad that you made a fair bargain. There might have been some danger of the gun’s being too heavy for the lad. Perhaps its being just right persuaded the purchaser not to hesitate.’

‘That was precisely the way of it. I know, as I have said, little of such things. But my husband was a small man – a
very
slightly built man, although full of fire and courage – and his gun was in consequence a light one. That was why the Captain bought it at once.’

‘He was an Army man?’ Cadover leant forward in his eagerness. ‘His name was–?’

‘He told me his name, of course – and his late regiment as well. But – do you know? – they have entirely slipped my memory.’

‘My dear ma’am, this, I must tell you, is a matter of the utmost gravity. It is essential that I should learn this man’s name at once. Did he not write out a cheque? Did he sign any sort of receipt?’

‘Neither, I fear.’ Mrs Standage was visibly distressed, and Cadover was convinced that it was not her intention to attempt any form of concealment. ‘He was entirely a gentleman, and no record of the transaction appeared to be necessary. He paid me in cash.’

‘I see. Now, in such a substantial sum there were no doubt Bank of England notes? Five-pound notes, for example?’

‘He had only pound notes – Treasury notes, are they called? I remember his remarking that people are so reluctant to take larger notes nowadays – because of the Germans having forged so many, I think he said – that he never carried them.’

‘That is most unfortunate.’ And Cadover heartily cursed this further example of the dead man’s circumspection. ‘It means that, almost certainly, the money cannot be traced. Will you please make some effort to recall his name?’

Mrs Standage made a nervous gesture with her hands. ‘I am ashamed to be so stupid,’ she said. ‘But it was so common-place and unmemorable a name! And, indeed, so was the young man himself – although entirely a gentleman, as I have said. Or was it
because
he was entirely a gentleman? There are so many ways in which a gentleman
should
be unnoticeable.’

‘No doubt.’ Cadover successfully concealed more than faint exasperation at this speculative social dictum. ‘Well, what about the boy? Was he called anything?’

‘Certainly. His name was Humphrey. And he addressed his companion as “sir”. I conjectured that their relationship was that of pupil and tutor.’

‘I think your conjecture was entirely accurate. But I should be better pleased to have the fellow’s surname – better pleased by a long way.’

For several seconds Mrs Standage was silent. ‘Do you know,’ she said at length, ‘that I think it had something to do with rivers or boats?’

‘That is something – indeed, it’s a great deal. He wasn’t just Captain Rivers, by any chance – Captain Peter Rivers?’

Mrs Standage shook her head. ‘Decidedly not.’

‘Or Captain Banks?’

‘Not that either.’

‘Shipton… Shipway… Seaman?’

‘None of these.’

‘Steer
?’ Cadover was irrationally hopeful. ‘Captain Peter Steer?’

Mrs Standage oddly hesitated. ‘No,’ she said presently; ‘his name was
not
Steer either. No doubt it will recur to me in time.’

‘Well, for the moment let us take up another point. Did these two simply walk away with the gun?’

‘No. They had some engagement that would have made that course inconvenient. The Captain asked if he might use my telephone, and he rang for a messenger, who came and collected the gun shortly after they had left.’

‘I see.’ For a moment Cadover gloomily confronted the blank wall that again seemed to have raised itself between him and his quarry. It was now almost dark in Mrs Standage’s drawing-room. No doubt the lady’s reluctance to turn on the light arose from a wish to conceal from her visitor the extent to which it had recently been depleted through the agency of public advertisements. But – perhaps under the influence of disappointment – Cadover’s sense of delicacy in this matter had worn a trifle thin. He rose, switched on the light himself, and advanced upon the depressed gentlewoman before him, holding out a copy of the police photograph of the dead man. ‘Will you be so good,’ he asked, ‘as to tell me if this is the person who bought your gun?’

Mrs Standage did not move, and she appeared to ignore what was presented to her. When she spoke, it was very slowly. ‘I am afraid, sir, that I cannot be of further help to you.’

‘I realize that you have done your best. But please look at this carefully.’

‘It is useless, sir. I must bid you good night.’ And with even more dignity than she had yet shown, Mrs Standage rose and smoothed her dress about her.

‘Useless–?’ Cadover looked squarely at the lady, and the indignation that was in his tone died away upon his lips. For he saw that the woman who stood before him was blind. This was the explanation of the obstinately darkened room, and of what had seemed the absent gaze over his shoulder.

‘I gather that you now realize my disability?’ And Mrs Standage smiled faintly. ‘And you will realize that I can give no description of persons who have never been visible to me. Let me show you out. I have – just at present – no servant in the house.’

There seemed nothing to say. Cadover stuffed the useless photograph into his pocket and walked behind his entertainer. His tread, he uneasily noted, was loud upon bare wood. Somewhere in the house an Aubusson carpet might remain. But from this room any floor-covering had disappeared – inch by inch, as it were, through the attenuated digestive system of the blind owner. With the help of the personal column of
The Times
she would nibble her way through what remaining possessions she commanded. And after that? Well, she might end up by being badgered by just such a conscientious constable as Cadover had once been for hawking matches in the streets.

Mrs Standage’s shabby front door was opening before him. He was suddenly resolved not to let his commiseration and embarrassment stand in the way of a final effort. ‘You say that the fellow’s name calls up in your mind associations of rivers and boats. Well, what
are
your associations with such things?’

‘It is difficult to say. I have never had anything in particular to do with them. It is an odd thing to have come into my head.’

‘There must have been some associative process at work.’ Cadover was obstinate. ‘You sold him’ – he barely hesitated – ‘your husband’s gun. Did your husband have anything to do with rivers and boats?’

‘I don’t think he did.’ Mrs Standage’s voice was strained and weary. ‘And you make me feel it was wrong, indelicate, avaricious, to sell–’

‘Nonsense, ma’am!’ Cadover felt that to be brusque was to be kindly here. ‘You must keep going – keep your end up – as you can. I admire you for it.’

‘Thank you.’ The voice in the near-darkness beside him trembled. ‘And my husband, I say, had little to do with boats and rivers – or little since before I knew him, in his Cambridge days.’

‘He rowed at Cambridge?’

‘No. He was too light to row. But he coxed his college eight.’ Mrs Standage paused. ‘And that is it,’ she said quietly. ‘The name of the man I sold the gun to was Captain Cox.’

Captain Peter Cox
. He was not in the London telephone directory. Although presumably a soldier, he was not, and had never been, in the Regular Army – and this, it seemed would mean an indefinite number of hours’ delay in getting anything about him out of the War Office. He had, at least in his own name, made no booking of a sleeping-berth or the like between London and Ireland. He belonged to no London club. He had not recently been in any London hospital… Cadover, doggedly intent on beating to it, if only by an insignificant interval of time, the machine which would undoubtedly now disclose the dead man’s history, found himself once more working into the night. At half past ten he was brought news that a certain Cyril Bolderwood was a substantial landowner at a place called Killyboffin in the west of Ireland. This opened a new line and what looked like a definitive one. Here was almost certainly the man whose name Captain Peter Cox, not many days before being shot in the Metrodrome Cinema, had confided to his pocket diary. And he was on the telephone… Cadover, haunted, as he had been from the start, by a feeling that in this obscure affair time was not to waste, let his hand hover over the instrument on his desk. But caution stayed him. Do that and – as he had discovered more than once – you can never tell what you may be giving away to whom. The case was beginning to move, and when that happens the first essential is that the movement should be controlled. Very obscurely, an imperfect pattern was forming itself in Cadover’s mind – and cardinal in this was a notion of the species of crime into which his investigation had started to wind. And now there was no question of his holding everything within his own hand; of his plodding round on his own ex-constable’s feet to peer at every point for himself. A whole posse was working under him. And other instruments of public order and security – robust infants merely godfathered by the venerable sage represented by Scotland Yard – must be asked if they had anything to say… At midnight Cadover went to get himself a cup of coffee.