The Tiger In the Smoke (8 page)

Amanda hesitated. ‘I never knew Martin, of course. Was he a wild person?'

‘Martin?' Sam put his head back and crowed aloud. ‘Oh, a dasher. A lively, dashing, smashing sort of a lad. But we don't want to talk about him, poor fellow, do we?' There were sudden tears in the twinkling eyes. ‘Oh lord, no. That's done. That's over. My old Queen's going to be happy with a grand chap. She's going to have a good steady sensible manly sort of a husband.' He fixed the visitor with a solemn stare. ‘A grand chap,' he declared. ‘One of the best. And when I'm talking I know what I mean. A straight, clean fighter.'

This last was clearly the highest praise he could bestow. He hesitated, glanced at the door and back again, and his very head shone with exasperation.

‘But if he's
not
flat on his back under a bar table, why the hell doesn't he ring oop?' he said.

—

IT IS NOT
easy to tell when enmity first begins, when that force which is part fear, part rivalry, and part the frank urge for survival first springs, but it was on that freezing walk that Charlie Luke caught the first wind of the man who of all his many quarries was to become the chief enemy of his life.

As Amanda had guessed, at that time he was chiefly angry with himself. He was the best of policemen, which is to say that he never for one moment assumed that he was judge or jury, warder or hangman. He saw himself as the shepherd dog does; until he had rounded him up the malefactor was his private responsibility, to be protected as well as cornered. His job was first to locate him and then to bring him in alive, so the fact that he had ignored the terror which he had seen so plainly in the pale face above the grotesque moustache, and had sent Duds Morrison out alone to die, made him furious. It had been a professional slip of the worst kind and he hated himself for making it.

Yet behind his self-criticism there was something more. Just then he had presentiment, a warning from some experience-born sixth sense, that he was about to encounter something rare and dangerous. The whiff of tiger crept to him through the fog.

The walk itself was an experience. Without old Avril, who knew his parish blindfold, they might never have achieved it. The fog was now at its worst, rolling up from the river dense as a featherbed. It hung between street lamp and street lamp in blinding and abominable folds, and since in that area the architecture is all much alike and the streets are arranged in a series of graceful curves in which it is easy to walk in a circle in sunlight, the mile from the rectory to Crumb Street might well have been a maze. However, the Canon plunged into it with complete confidence, walking very fast.

As he strode behind his uncle, Mr Campion eyed the somewhat picturesque figure with affection. Canon Avril's coat in particular was remarkable, and even famous in its own small way. It might have been designed by Phil May, for it brushed its wearer's boots and was fastened by a double row of bone buttons, each as large as a small saucer, which ran down in a double line to well below its owner's knees. Moreover, since it appeared to be cut from a shepherd's plaid carpet, it had acquired with the years the complete mould of the old man's form, even to the bulge in his right-hand jacket pocket where he carried his tobacco tin, and he marched along inside it as if it had been a shell.

The story about it that Campion knew was that it was often in pawn. Uncle Hubert was notoriously unsafe with money, so Miss Warburton, a pleasant spinster who lived in one of the glebe cottages and devoted herself to the church, had, since his wife's death, taken complete charge of his private expenditure. She allowed him so much loose change every Saturday, placing the money in the brass box on his study mantelshelf, and she was absolutely adamant. If he overspent in the early part of the week, penniless he remained until pay-day.

Financially embarrassed parishioners from the poor streets behind the shops knew all this as well as he did, and whenever possible confined their importunities to the week-end, but when, as must sometimes happen, some vital need arose at a moment's notice, there was still just one other way. On these occasions the Canon's coat was carried through the square in daylight over the arm of the borrower to the little pop-shop on the corner, and old Mr Hertz paid out forty-three shillings and sixpence on it. It was not worth the money. The Jew never forbore to say so. Thus the whole performance was a penance as well as a relief. Only the old and trusted availed themselves of it, and then only in exceptional circumstances, so that, in certain circles, ‘it'll be a case of the Canon's coat' had become a phrase denoting the end of the tether in money matters.

To do him justice, Avril knew exactly what he was about. He had no illusions and possessed in his own queer way a quality of blazing common sense. Almost always he had to redeem the pledge himself. He did not set up as a charitable institution and was in no respect sentimental, but he was humble, he had charity, and he had friends.

Moreover, in common with many Christians of this classic type, he felt sincerely safer and more at ease when he had given away all he had, like a man passing a ball in a game. In his case the result appeared to be a strange material freedom. He walked, as it were, on the water. The compulsion which demanded his small possessions gave him in return Miss Warburton. It was a splendid exchange.

He took his nephew and Charlie Luke to Crumb Street by a series of short-cuts, while they followed him with their fingers crossed. They came upon their goal unexpectedly. A last spurt through a pitch dark mews brought them into the heart of its murky length, not a stone's throw from the police station. Here he paused and looked around at them.

‘Now, where is this poor fellow?'

‘Pump Path,' said Luke promptly. ‘Up here on the right, past The Feathers.'

Once out of the wilderness of plinth and portico he knew his own manor as well as any man alive, and he led them swiftly down the dark pavement beside the shuttered shops. It was no night for strolling and there were few people about, but the inevitable group of the under-entertained were lounging round a dark entrance beside the Four Feathers public house. This tavern was of the lesser gin-palace type. It leered at them through the mist, flaunting offhandedly a drab gaiety of tile and trademark, while all along the brass rail which bordered the frosted glass diapering of the saloon window, a row of half heads, grotesquely bisected, were turned to peer at them curiously as they swept by.

As they brushed through the group a gleam of silver appeared in the alley's dark mouth and a constable saluted as he recognized Luke.

‘The trouble's at the other end, sir, near the Bourne Avenue entrance. You'll need a torch. It's very thick in there.'

Luke had already produced one. It had a yellow silk sock tied over it and gave a fairly penetrating beam, but even so progress was difficult.

The stone way was very worn and sloped sharply from each side to an open gutter in the centre, while the high walls which lined it leaned together, their dark surfaces blank as cliffs.

‘What a place to die in!' The Chief spoke with disgust.

‘Or to live in, of course.' Mr Campion's light voice sounded affable. He had just reached the end of the wall and had come upon a crooked wooden fence which would have appeared self-consciously rustic in a Sussex village. Some little way behind it the square of a small window shone orange in the mist.

‘Back garden of thirty-seven Grove Road,' said Luke over his shoulder. ‘Last of its kind. (Hands off our beauty spots.) There used to be a row of 'em here, but they've all been built over, except that one which is kept tidy by the caretaker of the solicitor's office. It's quite a sight in the summer. Four marigolds in a fancy flowerpot. The old man has nuisance-by-cats on the brain. Goes down to the station to complain every Friday. I wonder if he heard anything tonight. Look out, there's a bit of a bend here somewhere … Ah.'

The torch beam turned and, following it, they came upon the scene of the trouble. It was a dramatic picture. Some resourceful policeman had unearthed one of the old naphtha flares which are the only real answer to fog. Like a livid plume, it spat and hissed above the heads of a knot of men in the chasm, its vigorous smoke trail mingling with the other vapours, making Rembrandtesque clouds above them.

‘Chief?' The brisk voice of Sergeant Picot came to them hollowly as his chunky silhouette detached itself from the dark mass.

‘Wotcher, George.' Luke was ferociously cheerful as usual. ‘What have you got there?'

‘Quite enough, sir. Can you get by? There's not much room. The doctor's here.' This last was clearly in the nature of a friendly warning. They advanced cautiously, the little crowd parting for them.

Duds had died in a hole. In a narrow angle where two walls met there was a space perhaps a foot wide and eighteen inches deep, and into this the body was crammed in a sitting position, the legs drawn up, the chin on the breast. It seemed impossible that any human being should take up so little space. He sat, a heap of unwanted rubbish, and the red shadow which spread out over his sports coat like a bib had crept over his hands and onto the stones. He looked very small and negligible, scarcely even horrible, in the circle of dark heads about him.

Luke squatted down on his heels and the constable brought the flare a step nearer. Picot bent towards his Chief.

‘One of our men found him at six-forty, but he may have been here an hour or more,' he murmured, his heavy-featured face catching the light from Luke's own torch. ‘This path isn't used very much, and anyway I doubt whether one would have seen him if one was hurrying by.'

‘Or stopped if one had. He's no wayside flower,' muttered Luke, getting up to make way for Mr Campion. ‘What was the exact time he left us this afternoon?'

‘Well after five, sir. I can't say for sure. I was hoping you'd have noticed. I came along as soon as I got the report, of course. We've had the photographer and made the survey. Here's the doctor, sir.'

The reminder was scarcely necessary. A steady grumble from the region of the Chief Inspector's elbow had been audible for some time. Now Luke turned his head towards it.

‘Funny how we always disturb you at your dinner, Doc,' he said mildly into the darkness. ‘I've got a parson just behind me. No offence. I only thought you'd like to know.'

The rumbling ceased abruptly and a clipped schoolmasterish voice remarked acidly: ‘Very good of you to bother about my immortal soul, Chief Inspector. I'm afraid I'd ceased to concern myself about yours. I've been waiting here for over half an hour, and of course any sort of examination in these circumstances is quite useless. If you'll have this sent along I'll do the P.M. at nine tomorrow.'

‘Righto.' Luke did not turn his head. ‘Just before you go, what is all that? Throat cut?'

‘The haemorrhage? Oh no. That's from the nose. That's nothing.'

‘Get away!' the D.D.C.I. sounded relieved. ‘It's natural, is it? Had a nose bleed and just sat down and died?'

‘Not unless by so doing he cracked himself over the head with sufficient force to fracture the vault.' The prim voice was smugly amused. ‘I think that, as you might so easily say yourself, Charles, someone has been “putting in the leather”. I have no intention of committing myself, but I should say that was done with a boot. We shall know in the morning.'

‘Can we wash his face?'

‘If it gives you any satisfaction. Good evening.' He trotted off and his plump figure was swallowed by the fog.

‘Steak and kidney pudding night,' murmured Luke, glancing after him. ‘I hope she's kept it hot for him. Can we get this face fit to look at, George?'

‘Here, sir?'

‘Yes, please. I've got someone to see it. Get on with it, old man, will you?' He broke off abruptly as Campion touched his shoulder. Old Avril had come into the circle of light and stood now bowed before all that remained of the wretched Duds. He was uncovered, his tufty untidy hair sticking up like rough grass on his fine head. He was wiping the blood very gently from the face with a great white handkerchief, performing the operation inexpertly but with a certain clumsy care which suggested to the minds of everybody present the same sort of operation performed on a child with a cold. He betrayed no trace of distaste or hesitation and Sergeant Picot for one was frankly scandalized. He made a faint noise in his throat like a startled pheasant and was on the point of intervening when Luke's hand bit into his arm. The Chief was very still. He stood poised, every sense alert, his eyes snapping and the great kite-shaped mass of his shoulders cut into the picture, lending it new drama.

The Canon continued his ministrations quietly and inexpertly, making a considerable mess of himself. It was clear that along with sin blood had no terrors for him.

‘There,' he said at last, apparently to the corpse, and he looked long at the now no longer horrible but dirty and infinitely pathetic face. Presently he pulled the lids down over the dull eyes.

‘Poor boy.' All the wastage of Duds' manhood was expressed and commiserated in unselfconscious regret.

As Avril took up the dead man's hands to fold them the jacket sleeves caught his attention and for the first time he became puzzled. He lifted the right arm and ran his hand up to the elbow.

‘Some light, please,' he commanded gently, and Luke's torch shone down for him at once. It fell on a neat leather patch on the elbow and on a smaller one nearer the cuff. It was good amateur work, an army batman's job.

‘Seen him before, sir?'

The old man did not answer. He finished his task, folded the hands, and rose. He leaned over to Luke.

‘I should like to talk to you.'

‘Very well, sir.'

‘Where are you taking this poor fellow? Can we go there?'