"I'm going," the Boy said.
She watched him with suspicion and distaste: the cobwebs had not all gone. "If you weren't so young," she said, "I'd call the police."
He said with the only flash of humour he ever showed: "I'd have an alibi."
"And as for you" the manageress turned on Rose "we'll talk about you later." She watched the Boy out of the room and said with disgust: "You're both too young for this sort of thing."
Too young that was the difficulty. Spicer hadn't solved that difficulty before he died. Too young to close her mouth with marriage, too young to stop the police putting her in the witness box, if it ever came to that.
To give evidence that why, to say that Hale had never left the card, that Spicer had left it, that he himself had come and felt for it under the cloth. She remembered even that detail. Spicer's death would add suspicion. He'd got to close her mouth one way or another: he had to have peace.
He slowly climbed the stairs to the bed sitting room at Billy's. He had the sense that he was losing grip, the telephone rang and rang, and as he lost grip he began to realise all the things he hadn't years enough to know. Cubitt came out of a downstairs room, his cheek was stuffed with apple, he had a broken penknife in his hand. "No," he said, "Spicer's not here. He's not back yet."
The Boy called down from the first landing. "Who wants Spicer?"
"She's rung off."
"Who was she?"
"I don't know. Some skirt of his. He's soft on a girl he sees at the Queen of Hearts. Where is Spicer, Pinkie?"
"He's dead. Colleoni's men killed him."
"God," Cubitt said. He shut the knife and spat the apple out. "I said we ought to lay off Brewer. What are we going to do?"
"Come up here," the Boy said. " Where's Dallow?"
"He's out."
The Boy led the way into the bed sitting room and turned on the single globe. He thought of Colleoni's room in the Cosmopolitan. But you had to begin somewhere. He said: "You've been eating on my bed again."
"It wasn't me, Pinkie. It was Dallow. Why, Pinkie, they've cut you up."
Again the Boy lied. "I gave them as good." But lying was a weakness. He wasn't used to lying. He said: "We needn't get worked up about Spicer. He was milky. It's a good thing he's dead. The girl at Snow's saw him leave the ticket. Well, when he's buried, no one's going to identify him. We might even have him cremated."
"You don't think the bogies?"
"I'm not afraid of the bogies. It's others who are nosing round."
"They can't get over what the doctors said."
"You know we killed him and the doctors knew he died natural. Work it out for yourself, I can't." He sat down on the bed and swept off Dallow's crumbs. u We're safer without Spicer."
"Maybe you know best, Pinkie. But what made Colleoni?"
"He was scared, I suppose, that we'd let Tate have it on the course. I want Mr. Drewitt fetched. I want him to fix me something. He's the only lawyer we can trust round here if we can trust him."
"What's the trouble, Pinkie? Anything serious?"
The Boy leant his head back against the brass bedpost. "Maybe I'll have to get married after all."
Cubitt suddenly bellowed with laughter, his large mouth wide, his teeth carious. Behind his head the blind was half drawn down, shutting out the night sky; leaving the chimney pots, black and phallic, palely smoking up into the moonlit air. The Boy was silent, watching Cubitt, listening to his laughter as if it were the world's contempt.
When Cubitt stopped he said: "Go on. Ring Mr.
Drewitt up. He's got to come round here," staring past Cubitt at the acorn gently tapping on the pane at the end of the blind cord, at the chimneys and the early summer night.
"He won't come here."
"He's got to come. I can't go out like this.' 9 He touched the marks on his neck where the razors had cut him. "I've got to get things fixed."
"You dog you," Cubitt said. "You're a young one at the game." The game: and the Boy's mind turned with curiosity and loathing to the small cheap readyfor-anyone face, the bottles catching the moonlight on the bin, and the word "burn,"
"burn," repeated. What did people mean by "the game"? He knew everything in theory, nothing in practice; he was only old with the knowledge of other people's lusts, those of strangers who wrote their desires on the walls in public lavatories. He knew the moves, he'd never played the game. "Maybe," he said, "it won't come to that. But fetch Mr. Drewitt. He knows."
Mr. Drewitt knew. You were certain of that at the first sight of him. He was a stranger to no wangle, twist, contradictory clause, ambiguous word. His yellow shaven middle-aged face was deeply lined with legal decisions. He carried a little brown leather portfolio and wore striped trousers which seemed a little too new for the rest of him. He came into the room with hollow joviality, a dockside manner; he had long pointed polished shoes which caught the light. Everything about him, from his breeziness to his morning coat, was brand-new, except himself and that had aged in many law courts, with many victories more damaging than defeats. He had acquired the habit of not listening: innumerable rebukes from the bench had taught him that. He was deprecating, discreet, sympathetic, and as tough as leather.
The Boy nodded to him without getting up, sitting on the bed. "Evening, Mr. Drewitt," and Mr. Drewitt smiled sympathetically, put his portfolio on the floor, and sat down on the hard chair by the dressing table.
"It's a lovely night," he said. "Oh, dear, oh, dear, you've been in the wars." The sympathy didn't belong; it could be peeled off his eyes like an auction ticket from an ancient flint instrument.
"It's not that I want to see you about," the Boy said.
"You needn't be scared. I just want information."
"No trouble, I hope?" Mr. Drewitt said.
"I want to avoid trouble. If I wanted to get married what'd I do?"
"Wait a few years," Mr. Drewitt said promptly, as if he were calling a hand in cards.
"Next week maybe," the Boy said.
"The trouble is," Mr. Drewitt thoughtfully remarked, "you're under age."
"That's why I've called you in."
"There are cases," Mr. Drewitt said, "of people who give their ages wrong. I'm not suggesting it, mind you. What age is the girl?"
"Sixteen."
"You're sure of that? Because if she was under sixteen you could be married in Canterbury Cathedral by the Archbishop himself, and it wouldn't be legal."
"That's all right," the Boy said. "But if we give our ages wrong, are we married all right legally?"
"Hard and fast."
"The police wouldn't be able to call the girl?"
"In evidence against you? Not without her consent.
Of course you'd have committed a misdemeanour. You could be sent to prison. And then there are other difficulties." Mr. Drewitt leant back against the washstand, his grey neat legal hair brushing the ewer and eyed the Boy.
"You know I pay," the Boy said.
"First," Mr. Drewitt said, "you've got to remember it takes time."
"It mustn't take long."
"Do you want to be married in a church?"
"Of course I don't," the Boy said. "This won't be a real marriage."
"Real enough."
"Not real like when the priest says it."
"Your religious feelings do you credit," Mr. Drewitt said. "This, I take it then, will be a civil marriage.
You could get a licence fifteen days' residence you qualify for that and one day's notice. As far as that's concerned you could be married the day after tomorrow in your own district. Then comes the next difficulty. A marriage of a minor's not easy."