stairs. Then he looked round at Kemp with a wry smile. “Craik tried to gas himself but I think I’ve satisfied the police that it was a heart attack. Can you smell gas?”
“Now you come to mention it, yes.” Kemp looked hard at Rollison but said nothing until they reached the bedroom.
Craik was looking over his shoulder and, when he saw Kemp, he tried to get up.
“Don’t get up, Joe,” said Kemp. “And don’t worry—Mr Rollison has told everyone you had a heart attack.”
He closed the door.
Rollison disconnected the rubber tubing and coiled it round his fingers. The room was spotlessly clean but the wainscotting had been broken in several places and one stretch had recently been replaced by newer, lighter-brown wood. He looked at it thoughtfully, hearing Joe Craik’s voice as if from a long way off. The man talked in a monotonous, frightened undertone as Kemp pulled up another chair and sat beside him.
“I couldn’t bear it, Mr Kemp. The disgrace, the horrible disgrace!” He shuddered. “I’ve never been so much as inside a police-station before and to be charged with—with
“But you were released,” Kemp said.
“You—you don’t know the people around here, sir. They’ll say I did it. I daren’t show my face in church again— oh, why didn’t he let me do away with myself?”
He turned and looked at Rollison.
“Why didn’t you? What did you want to interfere for?” He tried to get to his feet. His eyes were filled with tears and his face was twisted like a baby’s, his lips were quivering. “A man’s got a right to do what he likes with his own life!”
Kemp said: “You’ll feel better soon, Joe. I’ll go and make you a cup of tea.”
“I—I won’t never be able to lift me head again,” moaned Craik. “I’d be better out of the way.”
“Do you want everyone to think you killed O’Hara?” demanded Rollison, as Kemp stood up.
“It wouldn’t make no difference to me, if I was dead!”
Rollison glanced at Kemp who nodded and went downstairs. Craik continued to stare into Rollison’s eyes, his own still watering and his body a-tremble. Rollison turned to the wall, went down on one knee and was touching the wainscotting when Craik gasped:
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Rollison pulled at the new piece of wainscotting; it came away easily. He groped inside the hole which lay revealed and touched smooth and cold. He drew out two bottles and stood up, holding one in each hand.
Craik rose unsteadily to his feet.
“Don’t—don’t tell the curate, Mr Rollison!” His voice seemed strangled. “Don’t tell ‘im!” His voice grew almost hysterical but could not be heard outside the room. “I—I never used to touch it, only since my wife died—I been so lonely. You don’t know what it is to be lonely, I don’t drink much, only a little drop now and again.”
“I won’t tell Kemp,” said Rollison, quietly. “What is it?” The bottles were clean and had no labels.
“Whisky,” said Craik. “You—you promise you won’t?”
“Yes,” said Rollison but made a mental reservation: “You’re all kinds of a damned fool, Craik. Not a soul would have believed you were innocent.” When Craik said nothing, Rollison went on sharply: “Why did you try to gas yourself?”
“I—I was so ashamed,” muttered Craik. “Me, a respectable man, a member o’ the church— you don’t know the disgrace, Mr Rollison. As soon as I come back, everyone started saying I was a sly one, why, two men come in and congratulated me on getting away with it!”
“Did you kill O’Hara?” asked Rollison, abruptly.
The man’s eyes widened in horror.
“Me!” He gasped. “No, no, Mr Rollison, I never killed him, I never killed a man in my life! He was a dirty tyke in some ways, always goin’ on at me, but I—”
“So you knew him,” murmured Rollison.
Apparently the shop was empty and the crowd had been moved on for there were only the sounds of chinking crockery downstairs. In the bedroom, the silence lengthened and Craik had gone very still.
At last, he said:
“I bought the whisky from him, Mr Rollison. That’s why he always had a rub at me. I didn’t know from one day to another when he was going to give me away, it was something awful. But—I never killed him! I didn’t even know I was going to see him that night!”
“Do the police know about your dealings with him?” asked Rollison.
Craik’s expression was answer enough.
“All right, I won’t tell them,” Rollison said but again he made a mental reservation he would not tell them unless it became important evidence. He listened but Kemp did not appear to be coming up. He unscrewed the cap of one bottle and smelt it. His face wrinkled.
“Great Scott! It’s poison!”
“It—it isn’t so good as it was,” muttered Craik. “But whisky’s hard to get, Mr Rollison. Don’t—don’t let the curate know, please!”
Kemp’s footsteps sounded on the stairs.
