"If he killed himself," Ida said, "he was driven to it. I heard what the girl said, and I know this it wasn't him that left the ticket here."
"Good God!" Mr. Corkery said. "What do you mean? You oughtn't to talk like that. It's dangerous."
He swallowed nervously and the Adam's apple bobbed up and down under the skin of his scrawny neck.
"It's dangerous all right," Ida said, watching the thin sixteen-year-old body shrink by in its black cotton dress, hearing the clink, clink, clink of a glass on a tray carried by an unsteady hand, "but who to's another matter."
"Let's go out in the sun," Mr. Corkery said. "It's not so warm here." He hadn't got an undershirt on, or a tie; he shivered a little in his cricket shirt and blazer.
"I've got to think," Ida repeated.
"I shouldn't get mixed up in anything, Ida. He wasn't anything to you."
"He wasn't anything to anyone, that's the trouble,"
Ida said. She dug down into her deepest mind, the plane of memories, instincts, hopes, and brought up from them the only philosophy she lived by. "I like fair play," she said. She felt better when she'd said that and added with terrible lightheartedness: "An eye for an eye, Phil. Will you stick by me?"
The Adam's apple bobbed. A draught from which all the sun had been sifted swung through the revolving door and Mr. Corkery felt it on his bony breast.
He said: "I don't know what's given you the idea, Ida, but I'm for law and order. I'll stick by you." His daring went to his head. He put a hand on her knee.
"I'd do anything for you, Ida."
"There's only one thing to do after what she told me," Ida said.
"What's that?"
"The police."
Ida blew in to the police station with a laugh to this man and a wave of the hand to that. She didn't know them from Adam. She was cheerful and determined, and she carried Phil along in her wake.
"I want to see the inspector," she told the sergeant at the desk.
"He's busy, ma'am, what was it you wanted to see him about?"
"I can wait," Ida said, sitting down between the police capes. "Sit down, Phil." She grinned at them all with brassy assurance. "Pubs don't open till six," she said. "Phil and I haven't anything to do till then."
"What was it you wanted to see him about, ma'am?"
"Suicide," Ida said, "right under your noses and you call it natural death."
The sergeant stared at her, and Ida stared back.
Her large clear eyes (a spot of drink now and then didn't affect them) told nothing, gave away no secrets.
Camaraderie, good nature, cheeriness, fell like shutters before a plate-glass window. You could only guess at the goods behind: sound old-fashioned hall-marked goods, justice, an eye for an eye, law and order, capital punishment, a bit of fun now and then, nothing nasty, nothing shady, nothing you'd be ashamed to own, nothing mysterious.
"You aren't pulling my leg, are you?" the sergeant said.
"Not this time, Sarge."
He passed through a door and shut it behind him, and Ida settled herself more firmly on the bench, made herself at home. "Bit stuffy in here, boys," she said.
"What about opening another window?" and obediently they opened one.
The sergeant called to her from the door. "You can go in," he said.
"Come on, Phil," Ida said, and bore him with her into the tiny cramped official room, which smelt of French polish and fish glue.
"And so," the inspector said, "you wanted to tell me about a suicide, Mrs....?" He had tried to hide a tin of fruit drops behind a telephone and a manuscript book.
"Arnold, Ida Arnold. I thought it might be your line, Inspector," she said with heavy sarcasm.
"This your husband?"
"Oh, no, a friend. I wanted a witness, that's all."
"And who is it you're concerned about, Mrs.
Arnold?"
"Hale's the name, Fred Hale. I beg your pardon.
Charles Hale."
"We know all about Hale, Mrs. Arnold. He died quite naturally."
"Oh, no," Ida said, "you don't know all. You don't know he was with me, two hours before he was found."
"You weren't at the inquest?"
"I didn't know it was him till I saw his picture."
"And why do you think there's anything wrong?"
"Listen," Ida said. "He was with me and he was scared about something. We were at the Palace Pier.
I had to have a wash and brush up, but he didn't want me to leave him. I was only away five minutes and he'd gone. Where'd he gone to? You say he went and had lunch at Snow's and then went on down the pier to the shelter in Hove. You think he just gave me the slip, but it wasn't Fred I mean Hale who had lunch at Snow's and left that card. I've just seen the waitress. Hale didn't like Bass he wouldn't drink Bass but the man at Snow's sent out for a bottle."
"That's nothing," the inspector said. "It was a hot day. He was feeling bad too. He got tired of doing all the things he'd got to do. I wouldn't be surprised if he cheated and got someone else to go into Snow's."
"The girl won't say a thing about him. She knows but she won't say."
"I can think of an explanation easily enough, Mrs.
Arnold. The man may have left a card on condition she didn't say anything."
"It's not that. She's scared. Someone's scared her.
Maybe the same person who drove Fred... And there are other things."
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Arnold. It's just a waste of time getting fussed like this. You see, there was a postmortem. The medical evidence shows without any doubt that he died naturally. He had a bad heart. The medical name for it is myocarditis. I'd call it just heat and crowds and exertion and a weak heart."
"Could I see the report?"
"It wouldn't be usual."
"I was a friend of his, you see," Ida said softly.
"I'd like to be satisfied."
"Well, to put your mind at rest, I'll stretch a point.
It's here now on my desk."
Ida read it carefully. "This doctor," she said, "he knows his stuff?"
"He's a first-class doctor."
"It seems clear, doesn't it?" Ida said. She began to read it all over again. "They do go into details, don't they? Why, I wouldn't know more about him if I'd married him. Appendix scar, supernumerary nipples, whatever they are, suffered from wind I do that myself on a bank holiday. It's almost disrespectful, isn't it? He wouldn't have liked this." She brooded over the report with easy kindliness. "Varicose veins.
Poor old Fred. What's this mean about the liver?"
"Drank too much, that's all."
"I wouldn't be surprised. Poor Fred. So he had ingrowing toe nails. It doesn't seem right to know that."
"You were a great friend of his?"
"Well, we only knew each other that day. But I liked him. He was a real gentleman. If I hadn't been a bit lit this wouldn't have happened." She blew out her bust. "He wouldn't have come to any harm with me."
"Have you quite finished with the report, Mrs.
Arnold?"
"He does mention everything, this doctor of yours, doesn't he? Bruises, superficial, whatever that means, on the arms. What do you think of that, Inspector?"
"Nothing at all. Bank holiday crowds, that's all.
Pushed here and there."
"Oh, come off it," Ida said, "come off it." Her tongue flared up. "Be human. Were you out on bank holiday? Where do you find a crowd like that?
Brighton's big enough, isn't it? It's not a tube lift. I was here. I know."
The inspector said stubbornly: "You've got fancies, Mrs. Arnold,"
"So the police won't do a thing? You won't question that girl in Snow's?"
"The case is closed, Mrs. Arnold, And even if it had been suicide, why open old wounds?"
"Someone drove him... maybe it wasn't suicide at all... maybe..."
"I've told you, Mrs. Arnold, the case is closed."
"That's what you think," Ida said. She rose to her feet j she summoned Phil with a jerk of the chin. "Not half, it isn't," she said. "I'll be seeing you." She looked back from the door at the elderly man behind the desk and threatened him with her ruthless vitality. "Or maybe not," she said. "I can manage this my own way. I don't need your police." (The constables in the outer room stirred uneasily--somebody laughed--somebody dropped a tin of boot polish.) "I've got my friends."