‘All right, Miss.’
He grinned again and walked carefully down the steep leads to the gutter and along towards Mr Christopher’s room. Lying down on the sun-warmed surface he leaned as far over as he dared. The window was uncurtained and the sun was bright. Moreover the light was on.
What he saw so surprised Constable Harris that he gave a loud yell, lost his grip and began to slither over the edge. He flailed wildly. Just in the nick of time, he was braked and suspended in space by a firm hand gripping the back of his tunic.
Miss Parkes had leapt the ledge and run down the roof with the lightness of a bird. As the constable hung over the edge, gasping, she threw all her weight back to balance him but she was not heavy or strong enough to drag him back.
‘Well, this is a pickle, isn’t it?’ she remarked in the same voice she would have used to a child who had come in dripping with mud. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Tommy.’ Harris tried not to look down to the flagstones of the yard, where Mrs Witherspoon was even now emerging from the water-closet. They were hard stones, unyielding. He tried not to think of what he would look like after he had met them from this height. Head first. The grip which was holding him did not slacken and the voice was as smooth as milk.
‘Tommy, you will have to save yourself. I’m not strong enough to drag you up by main force. And if you struggle you’ll send us both over. Do you understand?’
‘Yes!’
‘Now, you will reach back with your right hand. Like that—yes, slowly, don’t make a sudden move. Don’t look down. Look straight ahead. Another six inches and you will do it. Good. That’s the gutter. Have you got a good grip?’
Tommy Harris had a grip on the gutter which would deform steel. The rim cut into his hand and he clutched tighter.
‘Right-ho.’
‘Good. Now, reach back with the other hand,
His left hand found the metal and clung with simian strength.
‘Good. Now I am going to let go and get back into the skylight.’
He made an inarticulate cry which might have been, ‘No,’ choked and called, ‘Don’t let go of me!’
‘I am going to let go and you are going to lie still and cling. Keep your arms straight and you can’t fall. I will get your feet and drag you inside.’ The voice was cool and held great authority. Some of her calm was creeping into his mind. He took a deep breath.
‘Good. You’re brave, Tommy my lad. I’ll count three, then all you have to do is hang on like fury and I can bring you safely inside. All right?’
He nodded. His mouth had dried to the consistency of coal.
‘One, two, three.’ Her grip relaxed, very carefully, and he heard her scramble back inside. For what seemed like endless ages he clung to the gutter. Then two hands closed on his ankles like pincers and he was dragged slowly and inexorably up the roof.
‘Let go now, Tommy. I’ve got half of you and I’m not going to let the rest fall,’ he heard her say and he struggled to believe in her enough to be able to let go. The drag on his knees and thighs grew stronger.
‘Let go, Tommy,’ she coaxed. He tried to unlatch his hands and couldn’t.
Above and behind him, he heard Miss Parkes sigh.
‘Let go at once!’ she yelled and hauled with all her force. Constable Harris was inside the window and collapsing into Miss Parkes’s arms before he knew what had happened.
‘There,’ she said, setting him on his feet and dusting down his tunic. ‘That was very brave. You don’t have any head for heights, do you?’
‘And you do.’ He gazed at her, open-mouthed and rumpled. ‘You’re . . . I know where I’ve seen you before!’
Miss Parkes stepped away from his touch as though she might contaminate him, her face blank with what looked like pain.
‘Yes, you must have seen me at the trial,’ she said sadly. ‘I thought that you were too young.’
‘When did they let you out, Miss Parkes?’ he asked, suddenly awkward and faltering. ‘I mean, yes, I remember the papers. They had a field day with the murder of your . . .’
‘My husband,’ she said in a remote, cold voice. The brown eyes which had looked on him almost with love, certainly with regard and compassion, were now as cold and hard as pebbles. ‘I was released from prison last year and I have been acting in some small roles. I am presently understudying Juliet’s nurse.’
‘But you were a trapeze artiste; the Flying Fantoccini, that was the name.’
Constable Harris, suddenly aware that he had hurt his rescuer deeply and unfairly, was dissolved in confusion. He took her hand, feeling the callouses, noticing now her light, easy stance and the strength of her arms.
‘I don’t care about that old case,’ he said, blushing pink. ‘Thank you, Miss Parkes. You saved my life.’
She returned the pressure of the hand slightly and then released herself. ‘What did you see through the window that sent you off the roof?’ she asked to change the subject. ‘Is Mr Christopher there?’
‘He’s there,’ said Constable Harris, recalled to duty. ‘Oh, he’s there all right. Excuse me, Miss Parkes. I gotta call the station. There’s a nasty mess in there and it’s gotta be cleared away.’
Detective Inspector John—‘Call me Jack, everyone does’— Robinson arrived at the boarding house in Brunswick Street in a police vehicle which had seen better years, thus dead-heating the small and fussy police surgeon. Doctor Johnson had been called out from a golf game at the eleventh hole. He had been playing for the captain’s medal and exhibited the expected chagrin of a man who had been forced to abandon a two-stroke lead and a chance of being stood drinks by the club’s most notorious miser.
‘Well, what have you got for me?’ he snapped.
Jack Robinson shrugged. ‘I know as much about it as you do, Doctor. Sergeant Grossmith is in charge. Ah, here he is,’ said Robinson with relief, as the small doctor swelled with wrath. ‘Hello, Terry, what’s afoot?’
Sergeant Terence Grossmith was huge. His expanse of blue tunic was as wide as a tent. He had thinning brown hair and large, limpid brown eyes, which seemed to hold an expression of such placid benevolence that hardened criminals had occasionally found themselves confessing to him out of a sense of sheer incongruity. His local knowledge was legendary. He had been born and raised in Brunswick Street and he knew every respectable tradesman, greengrocer, tinsmith, landlady and thief; every small-time crim and shill and lady of light repute in the place; every corner, hidey-hole, sly-grog shop and repository for stolen goods in the length of that notorious street. He loved the place. He had never sought promotion, because it would take him away from it.
Robinson liked Grossmith. Usually he knew not only who had done the crime but where they lived and whose brother they were by the time the detective inspector arrived. Now, however, this paragon among sergeants seemed puzzled. He was rubbing a hamlike hand through his sparse hair and frowning.
‘Funny case, sir, and funny people,’ he said dubiously. I don’t know what to think.’
‘But it’s murder?’
‘Oh, yes, sir, it’s murder all right. Sure as eggs. This way, Doctor. The boys will have had the door down by now.’
‘Why your benighted department can’t wait to call me out until they’ve got a real corpse I don’t know.’ The doctor’s voice sizzled with outrage. ‘If you can’t open the door how do you know there’s a murder? Have you dragged me away on a Sunday from a very good golf match because of something that someone saw through a keyhole?’
The sergeant looked down on the tubby doctor from his six-foot height and said calmly, ‘No, sir, my man looked through the window and perishingly near fell off the roof. The door’s bolted on the inside, but it’s murder all right. There’s blood leaking through the ceiling of the room below. And the constable said that the room is a mess. Ah,’ he added, as a crash and splinter from above offended the Sunday quiet. ‘There we are. This way, Doctor. Sir.’
Doctor Johnson stalked up the steps and into a hallway festooned with theatrical posters, then took the stairs beyond, following the large figure of Sergeant Grossmith. Robinson walked behind. As always at the start of a
