Mr. Tovey grunted, and drew his chair up closer towards the fire. The weather could do what it liked, as long as it cleared up before the next morning. He certainly was not going out into it. He composed himself for his afternoon nap, from which he arose refreshed and eager for the lurid pages of his favourite Sunday paper. He studied this intently for some minutes, then turned animatedly to Mrs. Tovey.
“That brute what cut up the young woman he was walking out with is committed for trial at the Old Bailey,” he said.
“I reckoned he would be, the dirty brute,” replied Mrs. Tovey, who was almost as keen a criminologist as her husband. “And I’d see he didn’t get off, neither, if I was on the jury.”
Mr. Tovey turned and looked at her gravely. “ ’Tis all very well for you to talk like that,” he said reprovingly. “It’s a terrible thing to be on a jury when a man’s life depends on what you says. Nobody knows that better than I do, I’m sure.”
“Yes, I remember the state you was in that time,” replied Mrs. Tovey. “Dear, dear, best part of a week you was at it, and Ivy just born and all. What was the chap’s name? I remember he was a doctor who’d killed one of his patients by giving him a dose of something.”
“Morlandson, Dr. Morlandson,” said Mr. Tovey. “Lord, whenever I eats anything as disagrees with me I dreams of his face a-looking at us from the dock. Fair gave me the creeps, it did, for a long time after. We found him guilty, and I couldn’t help looking at him when the judge put on his black cap and sentenced him. Ugh!”
“But they didn’t ’ang ’im after all,” remarked Mrs. Tovey.
“No, he was reprieved, I don’t rightly know why. Because he’d been a big pot in his way, I suppose. Twenty years hard he got, though, and serve ’im right. This bloke I’m telling you about won’t get off so easy, though.”
Mr. Tovey returned to the perusal of his paper, and the evening wore on, the silence of the cosy kitchen broken only at intervals by the voice of Mr. Tovey, reading in a halting voice some more than usually spicy extract to his wife. Teatime came and went, and still Ivy made no appearance. It was nearly nine o’clock when Mr. Tovey referred to her absence. “I can’t think where that girl’s got to,” he said irritably. “She’s no call to be out all this time.”
“Ted’ll have taken her home to have a bite of supper,” returned Mrs. Tovey equably. “His father likes to have her round there, cheers him up, she does. She’ll be back before long, never you worry.”
The reply which sprang to Mr. Tovey’s lips was checked by the urgent ringing of the telephone bell in the shop, separated from the kitchen by a door kept locked on Sundays.
“Hullo! What’s that?” he enquired in a startled tone. Mrs. Tovey had already moved towards the door. “I’ll go and see,” she replied shortly. Her husband, listening intently, could hear her steps on the bare boards, the sudden cessation of the ringing as she took up the receiver, her voice as she answered, then a pause.
Then he heard her call him from the other room. “Somebody wants to speak to you, Jim.”
With a muttered objurgation he dragged himself from his chair and went into the shop. His wife handed him the instrument. “Hullo!” he said and for a moment stood listening.
“Yes, I’m James Tovey.” A long pause, while Mrs. Tovey vainly tried to make sense of the faint sounds which reached her ears. “What’s that? Oh! a man, you say, thank the Lord for that! I thought for the moment it might be my daughter, she’s out a bit late tonight. Yes! I’ll be along at once.”
He put back the receiver and turned to his wife. “That’s a rum show!” he exclaimed, not without a tremor of excitement in his voice. “St. Martha’s Hospital, that was. There’s a fellow been run over, and they can’t find out who he is. The only thing in his pocket is a bit of paper with my name an’ address on. Now, who the dickens can it be?”
“Why, young Alf, as likely as not,” replied Mrs. Tovey unemotionally. “Why ’e ’asn’t been run over afore, goin’ about as he does with his ’ead in the air, is more than I can make out.”
Alf was the youth employed by Mr. Tovey to deliver the purchases of such of his customers as did not prefer to carry them home wrapped up in newspaper. But Mr. Tovey shook his head at the suggestion.
“Not it! Young Alf lives down Camberwell way, and he’s not likely to be up this way of a Sunday. Give us my coat, missus, and I’ll go along and see who it is.”
Mr. Tovey struggled into his coat, and turned the collar well up over his ears. It was a most unpleasant evening to be out in, but, after all, it was worth it. His mind had been steeped in sensation all the afternoon, and now he was himself about to take a leading part in some thrilling tragedy. In imagination he could see the account in the next issue of the Paddington Clarion and Marylebone Recorder. Headlines first: “Fatal Accident. Man crushed to death by Motor Bus.” Then his own name: “The body was identified by Mr. Tovey, the well-known Fruit and Vegetable Merchant of Lisson Grove.” This was fame indeed!
He stood at the corner of Lisson Grove for a moment, eyeing the buses as they passed him. Through their streaming window panes he could see that they were all
