“Nothing so banal. But as we are to share one of Mrs Crispin’s cabinet puddings—today being Tuesday—we might as well recognize the bond of common tribulation and peril.”
Purbright smiled. “Very well. Your guess—if it was only a guess—was perfectly correct. Blasts are what I probe.”
Payne ate a while in silence. Then he said: “You will have heard already, or noticed yourself, that there is a pattern about these things.”
“A regularity.”
“That is so. Cabinet pudding is not the only feature peculiar to Tuesdays.”
“One Tuesday, the second one, produced nothing.”
“Why, I wonder.”
“The gap may not be significant. Perhaps there happened to be no opportunity.”
“Or perhaps our bombardier was otherwise engaged—detained, even.”
“Quite.” Purbright poured water for them both. “And what is your occupation, Mr Payne? No one,” he added, “intercepted me on the stairs to tell me.”
“I am a shopkeeper.”
“How odd,” said Purbright after appearing to give the reply some thought.
“Odd?”
“I’m sorry: I didn’t mean to sound rude, but the term shopkeeper is so seldom used now. Scarcely ever by shop-keepers themselves. They seem to consider it derogatory and prefer to be known as provision merchants or shoe repairers or confectioners.”
“In that case I suppose I should claim to be a jeweller. It’s a pretentious description, though, for one who merely wraps up manufactured articles and passes them over a counter.”
“Is that all that’s entailed?”
“Virtually. I keep a shop: that’s the sum of it. A parasitic existence, but it harms no one.”
“You may not appreciate,” said Purbright, “how precious that apparently negative virtue has become in these days.”
Payne smiled and they talked of other things until the arrival of the cabinet pudding.
Where would the fourth bomb explode?
No one doubted that a bomb would go off. And Tuesday having been established as ‘fuse-day’ in the public mind by the phrase-coiners of Fleet Street, location was all that remained to be guessed.
Chief Inspector Larch grudgingly ordered special measures. Day duties were reduced to a minimum so that as many men as possible might be switched to patrolling after dark. They were told to concentrate on the main town area and to pay particular attention to such obtrusive features as statues. The chief inspector expressed regret that his Civil Defence duties in Flaxborough precluded his personal supervision of the precautions. He emphasised, however, that were he to find on his return that they had failed in their object, the life of his menials would cease to be worth bloody well living.
There was one serious flaw in Larch’s plan. He had failed to realize that a considerable number of citizens would regard the occasion as a treat rather than an ordeal. So when all the carefully saved policemen were dispatched upon their appointed beats at lighting-up time they entered upon streets already crowded as if for a carnival. The closing of the pubs not only added to the number of spectators but instilled a recklessly jocular mood. There were shouts of “When’s the rocket going up?” and one group in Great Market began chanting, “Ten, nine, eight, seven...” The policemen, who had been led to expect that the town would soon be deserted save for themselves and the prowling dynamiter, whose apprehending would therefore be a simple matter of challenge and chase, instead found themselves jostled, ironically hailed, and pushed by sheer weight of numbers from the path of duty. A hundred saboteurs, they bitterly reflected, could have concealed themselves in such a throng.
Shunning these scenes of excitement, with their flavour of an
Leonard Leaper had waged and won a short tussle with his conscience earlier in the evening. His first intention on changing into dark clothes and soft shoes had been the same as the week before: to discover, outwit and expose the criminal. Almost immediately, however, a sense of the unlikelihood of success flooded coldly over him and left him helplessly receptive to a much less creditable idea. The fact was that he had forgotten the revulsion that events in the caravan had initially aroused in him; it had been replaced by a lively desire to attend a second performance.
On arriving at the stile, he peered down the field. The windows of the caravan were dark. He cautiously approached through the grass. No sound came from inside. He tried to remember at what time he had arrived behind Mrs Larch the previous week. It must have been at least half an hour later than this—perhaps an hour, even. There was no need yet to conclude that his second excursion was to be fruitless.
Leaper walked slowly round the caravan, looking through the windows. There was still enough light in the western sky for him to distinguish the shape of objects inside: a chair, a small stove, the shelf on which he had seen the drinks and the handbag. Something was lying on the shelf now, something of about the shape and size of a boot box.
When he reached the forward end of the caravan, Leaper noticed a break in the window. His instinct for the dramatic told him that so small a hole—it was about four inches in diameter—in so large a pane of glass could have been caused only by a projectile. He received the daunting image of another secret observer, less fortunate than himself, spotted by the hairy-armed philanderer and promptly shot.
Leaper glanced nervously towards the stile. There was no one there. Realizing that his own figure would be visible in silhouette against the caravan’s light grey paintwork, he hurried away in the shortest line to the edge of the field.
He stood in the shelter of the corrugated steel fence and kept watch for arrivals by way of the stile. It was not a comfortable vigil. A rising mist soon drove off the lingering warmth of the day. The air became damp and the
