between the door and the waiting family, gently shooing the shifting crowd along if it became too stagnant, and hypnotising it into pretending to an indifference as monumental as his own.
“God!” said Duckett, as he parked his car. The constable permitted himself a fleeting grin on the side of his face which was turned towards them and away from the public view. “Has Grocott gone off his head and started bringing in all the tickney lot?”
“No, sir, this one brought himself. Claims he has important information.”
“So he got a load aboard before the pubs closed, and brought half the town along as well,” Duckett diagnosed disgustedly, and eyed the composed and dignified children, who looked back at him calmly, as though they had no doubts at all as to who was the alien and the savage. They were not full-blooded gipsies, they had not the soft, mysterious Indian features, the melting eyes, the delicate bones, but something in a coarser grain, olive and wild and sinewy, with a bloom of dirt. “What are they?” said Duckett gruffly. “Lays?”
“No, sir, Creaveys.”
“What’s the difference? Nobody knows who’s married to whom or which kids belong to which parents, anyhow. If you’re a Creavey you are a Lay.”
He stalked into the station, and pounded up three flights of stairs to his own office, with George at his heels. Grocott was at the door before he had time to be called.
“All right,” said Duckett, “let’s have it. That’s Joe Creavey’s pony, isn’t it?”
Joe was the Creavey (or Lay) who was almost no trouble; an occasional blind when business in wool rags and old iron was booming, and just once, with ample provocation, a determined assault with an ash-plant on his wife, but no major sins were recorded against him. He fed his kids, minded his own business without unduly annoying other people about it, and was unmistakably a happy and well-adjusted man.
“Yes, sir. Joe’s below with Lockyer. He came in just over an hour ago, saying he’d got important evidence in the Armiger case.”
Joe was well known in the seedier outer districts of Comerbourne, where he made regular rounds with his pony-cart, collecting rags and scrap, and a good many residents automatically saved their cast-off clothes for him. It was worth making regular use of him, because he would take away for you all kinds of awkward and unmarketable rubbish on which the Cleansing Department tended to frown if it was put out for their attentions; though what he afterwards did with some of the items no one cared to inquire. On this particular morning he had been round the shabby-genteel corner of town which housed Mrs. Harkness, and in addition to collecting the contents of her rag-bag he had thoughtfully lifted the lid of her dustbin in case there should be anything salvageable there. People often put old shoes in dustbins, sometimes in a state which Joe regarded as merely part-worn. He didn’t find shoes this time, he found gloves, and the gloves were aged but expensive leather gauntlets, with woven tapes stitched inside, lettered L.A. He took them instinctively, and only afterwards did he examine them closely, when he was pulled in at one of the suburban pubs and had his first pint inside him. It was then he found that the palm and the fingers of the right glove were stained and stiffened with something dark and crusted, and the left carried a few similar dark-brown stains here and there in its frayed leather. Joe knew who lodged with Mrs. Harkness, she was one of his regular clients; he knew what the initials L.A. stood for; and he knew, or was convinced that he knew, what had saturated and ruined those gloves, and why they were stuffed into the dustbin. He knew his duty, too; the police must be told. But his route to the station had taken him through four more bars before it triumphantly delivered him, and if there was anyone left in Comerbourne who didn’t yet know that Leslie Armiger had murdered his father and Joe Creavey had the proof of it, he must have been going about for the last couple of hours with his ears plugged.
“Blabbed it all over town, and pretty well brought a procession with him. He isn’t exactly drunk, not by his standard, but well away. Do you want him?”
“No,” said Duckett, “let him stew for a bit. I want the gloves, and I think I want young Armiger, too. If there’s nothing in this, now’s the time to talk to him, before we’re sure there’s nothing in it. But let’s have a look at these first.”
The gloves were produced, they lay on the desk with palms upturned, displaying the reddish-black, encrusted smears that certainly looked uncommonly like blood.
“Well, what do you think it is, Gorge?”
“Creosote, for one thing,” said George promptly, sniffing at the stiffened fingers, “but that doesn’t say it’s all creosote.”
“No, traces of roofing paint, too. Johnson had better run them up to the lab., and we’ll see.”
“You’re not thinking of keeping Joe overnight, are you?” asked Grocott.
“Eh? Keep him overnight? What, and dump all that tribe of kids into the receiving home when there’s no need? The Children’s Officer would murder me! All right, George, you be off and fetch the boy along.”
George made the best of a job he never liked, approaching the manager’s office discreetly without getting anyone to announce him, and making the summons sound as much like a request as he could; all the same, Leslie, coming up in haste from the warehouse, paled and froze at the sight of him. Once he had grasped the idea it wasn’t so bad; colour came back into his face and a defiant hardness into his eyes, and he went out by George’s side with a composed countenance and an easy stride, as though an old friend had called him. They had to cross either the shop or the yard, and George hoped he was right in choosing the yard, where Leslie was better known and better understood.
Nobody was deceived, of course, they’d be muttering and wondering the rest of the day; but a van-driver caught Leslie’s eye and cocked up a thumb at him and grinned, and one of the packers walked deliberately across their path so that he could offer a crumpled cigarette packet in passing. The boy looked harassed rather than cheered, but he smiled all the same, and accepted the offering; and with the first deep drag the pinched lines round his mouth relaxed. He sat beside George in the car, drawing deep, steadying breaths, and trying too hard to prepare himself.
“Mr. Felse,” he said in a constrained voice, as George slowed at the traffic lights, “could you do something for me? I should be very grateful if you’d go and see my wife for me.”
“You’ll be seeing her yourself in an hour or so,” said George equably. “Won’t you?”
“Shall I?”
“That depends on what you’ve done, so only you know the answer.”
