foot in the place, as the sporty individual observed. Even Louey seemed in a festive mood. He had been out twice in the course of the evening and each time it had been drinks all round. It was communicative, that mood of Louey’s. For better or worse it affected the company in the bar. But now the clouds which had momentarily gathered about the gigantic brow had faded away, the sunshine had returned, the bar was its old happy self again…
Or it was till nine-thirty. Nine-thirty-three and a half, to be precise. At that exact moment a bulky figure in a fawn raincoat and a despairing trilby pushed through the swing-doors and looking neither to right nor left, shouldered its way across to the door opposite and disappeared again.
It was done so quickly that it might have been an optical illusion. Ferrety-face Artie had to shake his head to convince himself he wasn’t seeing things. The sporty individual, halfway down his eighth Scotch, screwed up his eyes in a search for assurance that he was stone-cold sober.
‘That bloke just now… it was him, washn’t it?’
Artie nodded absently and moved down towards the door, as though hopeful of hearing something above the din outside.
‘But whatsh he doing here… I thought Louey said it was OK?’
Artie waved him down with his hand and got still closer to the door. The whole bar held its breath in a sort of hushed watchfulness. In the comparative calm a tincased version of ‘Cherry Pink’ seemed to vibrate the plastic- topped tables with its singeing vehemence.
‘I don’t undershtand…’ burbled the sporty individual, ‘something’s going on, Artie… I don’t undershtand.’
Artie didn’t either, but there wasn’t very long to wait. At nine-thirty-seven, or a trifle before, the door reopened with a suddenness that nearly pinned Artie to the wall. Out waddled Peachey, red in the face. Out marched the bulky figure, his hand tucked affectionately under Peachey’s arm. Again no time was wasted. Again no looks were cast to right or to left. The brief procession headed forthrightly through the swing-doors and vanished like a dream, though in this case one part of the dream was left standing in the doorway by the bar. It was Big Louey. And his gold tooth wasn’t showing at all…
Outside Dutt was waiting in a police car. Peachey was bundled in and Gently gave an address to the driver which didn’t sound like Headquarters. A short drive brought them to a dark and empty street where but few lamps shone islands of radiance on the gleaming pavement. Dutt alighted and stood by the door.
‘Get out,’ ordered Gently to Peachey.
Peachey gulped and gave a frightened look up and down the street.
‘This isn’t the police station! I d-demand to be taken to the police station!’
‘Get out!’ snapped Gently and Peachey scuttled forth like a startled rabbit. Gently followed him and after tossing a word to the driver, slammed the door resoundingly behind them. He indicated the house by which they had stopped.
‘In there.’
‘B-but I’ve g-got rights… you c-can’t do this!’
Gently poked a steely finger into his plump back and Peachey forgot about his rights with great suddenness.
There was nothing alarming about the house, however. The door opened on a well-lit and comfortable- looking hall containing a hat-stand and an aspidistra on a side-table and the room into which Peachey was marshalled bore all the appurtenances of respectable boarding-house practice. Gently took off his hat and raincoat and hung them familiarly on the hat-stand.
‘See if Mrs Davis has got the tea on, will you?’ he said to Dutt, ‘and ask her if she’s got some biscuits… I like those shortbread ones we had the other night.’
Dutt departed and Gently joined Peachey in the lounge. Gently seemed in no hurry to begin business. An electric fire was glowing in the fireplace and, standing with his back to it, he slowly filled and lit his seasoned briar. Peachey watched every move with pathetic attention. Twice he seemed about to recall his flouted rights, but each time, catching Gently’s mild eye, he thought better of it. The horrid ordeal ended when Dutt re-appeared bearing the tea tray. There were three cups and Peachey was even indulged with two lumps of sugar.
‘And now…’ mused Gently, seating himself with his teacup, ‘now we can have our little chat in peace and comfort… can’t we, Peachey?’
‘You haven’t g-got no right!’ broke out the parrot-faced one unhopefully.
Gently clicked his tongue. ‘No right, Peachey? Why, we’re treating you like an old friend — bringing you to our nice cosy lodgings, instead of that bare old police station! Now sit yourself down on one of Mrs Davis’s best chairs, and try to be a bright lad… you need to be a bright lad, don’t you, Peachey?’
Peachey blinked and swallowed, then lowered himself into a chair. Gently drank a large mouthful of tea and set his cup down near the electric fire.
‘You’re here for a reason, Peachey. Two reasons, as a matter of fact. The unimportant reason is because there’s a pack of wolves down at Headquarters who would just love to tear a little boy like you into small pieces. The important reason is that I want to talk to you off the record — no charges, no taking it down, nothing being used in evidence. Anything you tell me here is in confidence and it won’t appear again till you’re ready to give it in a sworn statement… you get the idea?’
Peachey’s close-set eyes seemed to get closer together than ever. ‘I–I’m not going to m-make a statement… I don’t know nothing to make one about!’
Gently shook his head paternally. ‘Don’t say that, Peachey. You don’t know how useful that statement’s going to be. At a rough guess I should say it would make eighteen months’ difference to you, besides a slimming course with the pick and shovel. You wouldn’t be too handy with a pick and shovel, would you, Peachey?’
‘I don’t know what you’re t-talking about!’ Peachey gulped, his cup and saucer beginning to chatter.
‘Come, come, Peachey! You’re amongst friends. There’s no need to be bashful. Almost any time now we’re going to run you in for living on immoral earnings and I’m sure you know what that means. If you go before a beak, it’ll be six months in one of our more comfortable establishments; if you go up with an indictment, it’ll be two years with the pick-and-shovel boys.’
‘B-but it isn’t true!’
‘We’ve got the goods, Peachey.’
‘I’m a b-bookmaker’s clerk — you know I am!’
‘Six witnesses, Peachey, and two of them your neighbours in Sidlow Street.’
‘It’s a f-frame, I tell you!’
‘And three past convictions, all neatly filed at Central Records… no, Peachey. You’re due for a holiday. And just between us you’ll be lucky if it stops there, won’t you?’
The parrot-faced one put down his cup, which he was no longer in a condition to support. He made a pitiful effort to get out a cigarette, but the packet fell from his hands and its contents distributed about the floor. Dutt helped him pick them up. They got him lighted at the second attempt.
‘As I was saying,’ resumed Gently meditatively, ‘you’ll be lucky, won’t you? You’ll need all the goodwill that’s going if you’re not going to be roped in for complicity in the murder of Stephan Stratilesceul… did you know his name? At “Windy Tops”?’
He paused for artistic effect and Peachey shrank down in his chair several degrees.
‘Of course, it may be that in making a statement you would incriminate yourself… there’s always that to be thought about. We shall quite understand your keeping silent if you were in fact an accomplice…’
The goad was irresistible. Peachey squirmed as though it had galled him physically. ‘I didn’t know — I swear — it wasn’t nothing to do with me!’
‘Nothing to do with you? How can you, Peachey! When it was Frenchy who got him out to “Windy Tops” in the first place.’
‘I tell you I didn’t know… they didn’t say n-nothing!’
‘You mean they didn’t tell you they were going to kill him?’
Peachey sucked hard on a cigarette which was coming to pieces between his lips.
‘You might as well come clean, Peachey. It’s off the record.’
Peachey gulped and sucked, but he had dried up again.
Gently sighed. ‘Let me see if I can reconstruct it. They had a conference, didn’t they? Streifer had traced Stratilesceul to his lodgings in Blantyre Road, but he was rather at a loss to know how to deal with him. It wasn’t
