The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays (12 page)

HARRIS
: Just a minute. Have you got a search warrant?
(
HOLMES
pauses
.)

FOOT
: Yes.

HARRIS
: Can I see it?

FOOT
: I can’t put my hand to it at the moment.

HARRIS
: (
incredulous
) You can’t
find
your search warrant!

FOOT
: (
smoothly
) I had it about my person when I came in. I may have dropped it. Have a look round, Holmes.
(
THELMA
rises to her feet with a broad enchanted smile
.)

THELMA
:
Not
——

FOOT
: (
screams
)
Be quiet!
(
THELMA
sits down
.
HARRIS
will not
.)

HARRIS
: Now look here——

FOOT
: Can I see your television licence?
(
HARRIS
freezes with his mouth open. After a long moment he closes it
.)

HARRIS
: (
vaguely
) Er, it must be about … somewhere …

FOOT
: Good. While you’re looking for your television licence, Holmes will look for the search warrant.
(
HARRIS
sits down thoughtfully
.)
(
To
HOLMES
) It could have blown about a bit or slipped down under the floorboards.

HOLMES
: Right, sir. (
HOLMES
begins to crawl around the room
.)

MOTHER
: Is it all right for me to practise?
(
FOOT
ignores her. He stands looking down smugly at
HARRIS
.)

FOOT
: Yes, I expect you’re wondering what gave you away.

HARRIS
: (
wanly
) Was it one of those detector vans?
(
But
FOOT
is already on the move
.)

FOOT
: Well, I’ll tell you. It’s a simple tale—no hot tips from Interpol, no days and nights of keeping watch in the rain, no trouser turn-ups hoovered by Forensics or undercover agents selling the
Evening News
in Chinatown—no!—just a plain ordinary copper on his beat! Yes!—the PC is still the best tool the Yard has got!——
(
HOLMES
is behind him, on his hands and knees
.)

HOLMES
: Excuse me, sir.

FOOT
: (
irritated
) Not in here;
around
.

HOLMES
: (
getting to his feet
) Yes, sir. Is this anything, sir? (
He
hands
FOOT
a .22 lead slug which he has found on the floor
.
FOOT
accepts it unheedingly; he is already talking
,
HOLMES
leaves the room
.)

FOOT
: He’s not one of your TV heroes, young Holmes—he’s just a young man doing his job and doing it well—sometimes not seeing his kids—Dean, five, and Sharon, three—for days on end—often getting home after his wife’s asleep and back on the beat before she wakes—tireless, methodical,
eagle-eyed—always ready with a friendly word for the old lag crossing the road or sixpence for the old lady trying to go straight——
(
HOLMES
has re-entered the room and has been dogging
FOOT
’s footsteps, waiting for an opportunity to speak, which he now deduces, wrongly, has presented itself
.)

HOLMES
: To tell you the truth, sir, I’m not absolutely sure what a search warrant looks like …
(
But
FOOT
marches on, round the right-angle of the room, while
HOLMES
plods stolidly on and out without changing course. As
FOOT
moves he is weighing and jiggling in his hand the lead slug, and he has been becoming more aware of its presence there
.)

FOOT
: Yes, that’s the sort of metal that has brought you to book.
(
FOOT
absently examines the object in his hand. He seems surprised at finding it there
.)
When Holmes got back to the station and described to me the scene he had witnessed through your window, I realized he had stumbled on something even bigger than even …
(
He tails off, and whirls on them, holding up the metal slug
.) Do any of you know what this is?
(
THELMA
holds up her hand
.)
Well?
(
THELMA
gets up and takes the slug out of
FOOT
’
s hand
.)

THELMA
: It’s a lead slug from a .22 calibre pistol. Thank you.
(
She tosses the slug into the metal bin wherein it makes the appropriate sound
.) A hundred and fifty. (
She returns to her seat
.
FOOT
walks over to the metal bin and peers into it. He bends and takes out a handful of lead slugs and lets them fall back. He stoops again and comes up with the broken halves of the porcelain container that had held the slugs and acted as the
counterweight to the light fitting. He regards the basket of fruit. He drops the debris back into the bin. He addresses himself to
THELMA
.)

FOOT
: It is my duty to tell you that I am not satisfied with your reply.

THELMA
: What was the question?

FOOT
: That is hardly the point.

THELMA
: Ask me another.

FOOT
: Very well. Why did it take you so long to answer the door?

THELMA
: The furniture was piled up against it.

FOOT
: (
sneeringly
) Really? Expecting visitors, Mrs. Harris?

THELMA
: On the contrary.

FOOT
: In my experience your conduct usually indicates that visitors are expected.

THELMA
: I am prepared to defend myself against any logician you care to produce.

FOOT
: (
snaps
) Do you often stack the furniture up against the door?

THELMA
: Yes. Is that a crime?

FOOT
: (
furiously
) Will you stop trying to exploit my professional knowledge for your private ends!—I didn’t do twenty years of hard grind to have my brains picked by every ignorant layman who finds out I’m a copper!
(
HARRIS
has relapsed into a private brood, from which this outburst rouses him. He has decided to capitulate. He stands up
.)

HARRIS
: All right! Can we call off this game of cat and mouse?! I haven’t
got
a television licence—I kept meaning to get one but somehow …
(
FOOT
turns to him
.)

FOOT
: Then perhaps you have a diploma from the Royal College of Surgeons.

HARRIS
: (
taken aback
) I’m afraid not. I didn’t realize they were compulsory.

FOOT
: (
without punctuation
) I have reason to believe that within the last hour in this room you performed without anaesthetic an illegal operation on a bald nigger minstrel about five-foot-two or Pakistani and that is only the beginning!

HARRIS
: I deny it!

FOOT
: Furthermore, that this is a disorderly house!

HARRIS
:
That
I admit—Thelma, I’ve said if before and I’ll say it again——

THELMA
: (
shouting angrily
) Don’t you come that with me!—what with the dancing, the travelling, ironing your shirts, massaging your mother and starting all over every morning, I haven’t got time to wipe my nose!

HARRIS
: (
equally roused
)
That’s
what I want to talk to you about—sniff-sniff—it’s a disgusting habit in a woman——

THELMA
: (
shouting
) All right—so I’ve got a cold!—(
Turning to the world, which happens to be in the direction of
FOOT
)—Is that a crime?

FOOT
: (
hysterically
) I will not warn you again! (
He patrols furiously
.) The disorderliness I was referring to consists of immoral conduct—tarted-up harpies staggering about drunk to the wide, naked men in rubber garments hanging from the lampshade—Have you got a music licence? (
As he passes the gramophone
.)

HARRIS
: There is obviously a perfectly logical reason for everything.

FOOT
: There is, and I mean to make it stick! What was the nature of this operation? (
FOOT
finds himself staring at a line of single greasy footprints leading across the room. He hops along the trail, fascinated, until he reaches the door to
MOTHER’S
bath. He turns. Quietly
.) The D.P.P. is going to take a very poor view if you have been offering cut-price amputations to immigrants. (
HOLMES
enters excitedly with the ironing board
.)

HOLMES
: Sir!

FOOT
: That’s an ironing board.

HOLMES
: (
instantaneously demoralized
) Yes, sir.

FOOT
: What we’re looking for is a darkie short of a leg or two.

HOLMES
: (
retiring
) Right, sir.

MOTHER
: Is it all right for me to practise?

FOOT
: No, it is not all right! Ministry standards may be lax but we draw the line at Home Surgery to being in the little luxuries of life.

MOTHER
: I only practise on the tuba.

FOOT
: Tuba, femur, fibula—it takes more than a penchant for
rubber gloves to get a licence nowadays.

MOTHER
: The man’s quite mad.

FOOT
: That’s what they said at the station when I sent young Holmes to take a turn down Mafeking Villas, but everything I have heard about events here today convinces me that you are up to your neck in the Crippled Minstrel Caper!

THELMA
: Is that a dance?

HARRIS
: My wife and I are always on the look-out for novelty numbers. We’re prepared to go out on a limb if it’s not in a bad taste.

FOOT
: (
shouting him down
) Will you kindly stop interrupting while I am about to embark on my exegesis!! (
Pauses, he collects himself
.) The story begins about lunchtime today. The facts appear to be that shortly after two o’clock this afternoon, the talented though handicapped doyen of the Victoria Palace Happy Minstrel Troupe emerged from his dressing-room in blackface, and entered the sanctum of the box-office staff; whereupon, having broken his crutch over the heads of those good ladies, the intrepid uniped made off with the advance takings stuffed into the crocodile boot which, it goes without saying, he had surplus to his conventional requirements.

HARRIS
: It must have been a unique moment in the annals of crime.

FOOT
: Admittedly, the scene as I have described it is as yet my own reconstruction based on an eye-witness account of the man’s flight down nearby Ponsonby Place, where, it is my firm conjecture, Harris, he was driven off by accomplices in a fast car. They might have got away with it had it not been for an elderly lady residing at number seven, who, having nothing to do but sit by her window and watch the world go by, saw flash by in front of her eyes a bizarre and desperate figure. Being herself an old devotee of minstrel shows she recognized him at once for what he was. She was even able to glimpse his broken crutch, the sort of detail that speaks volumes to an experienced detective. By the time she had made her way to her front door, the street was deserted, save for one or two tell-tale coins on the pavement. Nevertheless, it was her report which enabled me to reconstruct the
sequence of events—though I am now inclined to modify the details inasmuch as the culprit may have been a genuine coloured man impersonating a minstrel in order to insinuate himself into the side door to the box office. These are just the broad strokes. My best man, Sergeant Potter, is at this moment checking the Victoria Palace end of the case and I am confidently expecting verification by telephone of my hypothesis. In any event I think you now understand why I am here.