"Don't you know what people get who poke their noses?"
"Oh, I know," she said. "I know all right. I was with Fred the day you finished him."
"Talk sense," Dallow said. "Who the hell are you?"
"You ought to know. You followed us all the way up the front in that old Morris of yours." She smiled quite amiably at him. He wasn't her game. "It seems an age ago now, doesn't it?"
It was true all right it seemed an age.
"Have a drink," Ida said, "you may as well. An' where's Pinkie? He didn't seem to like the look of me tonight. What were you celebrating? Not what's happened to Mr. Drewitt? You won't have heard that."
"What do you mean?" Dallow said. The wind got up against the glass and the waitresses yawned.
"You'll see it in the morning papers. I don't want to spoil your fun. And of course you'll know it sooner than that if he talks."
"He's gone abroad."
"He's at the police station now," she said with complete confidence. "They brought him right back," she went elaborately on. "You ought to choose your solicitors better, men who can afford to take a holiday.
They've got him for fraud. Arrested him on the quay."
He watched her uneasily. He didn't believe her but all the same... "You know an awful lot," he said. "Do you sleep at night?"
"Do you?"
The big broken face had a kind of innocence about it. "Me?" he said. "I don't know a thing."
"It was a waste giving him all that money. He'd have run anyway and it didn't look good. When I got hold of Johnnie at the pier "
He stared at her with hopeless amazement. "You got hold of Johnnie? How the hell...?"
She said simply: "People like me." She took a drink and said: "His mother treated him shameful when he was a kid."
"Whose mother?"
"Johnnie's."
Dallow was impatient, puzzled, scared. "What the hell," he said, "do you know about Johnnie's mother?"
"What he told me," she said. She sat there completely at her ease, her big breasts ready for any secrets. She carried her air of compassion and comprehension about her like a rank cheap perfume. She said gently: "I got nothing against you. I like to be friendly. Bring over your lady friend."
He glanced quickly over his shoulder and back again. "I better not," he said. His voice fell. He too began automatically to confide: "Truth is, she's a jealous bitch."
"You don't say? And her old man...?"
"Oh, her old man," he said, "he's all right. What Billy doesn't see, he doesn't mind." He dropped his voice still lower. "And he can't see much he's blind."
"I didn't know that," she said.
"You wouldn't," he said. "Not from his pressing and ironing. He's got a wonderful hand with an iron," then broke suddenly off. "What the hell," he said, "did you mean you didn't know that? What did you know?"
"There isn't much," she said, "I've not picked up here and there. The neighbours always talk." She was barnacled with pieces of popular wisdom.
"Who's talking?" It was Judy now. She'd come across to them. "An' what 'ave they got to talk about?
Why, if I chose to put my tongue round some of their doings... But I wouldn't like to," Judy said. "I wouldn't like to." She looked vaguely round. "What has happened to those two?"
"Perhaps I scared them," Ida Arnold said.
"You scared them?" Dallow said. "That's rich.
Pinkie's not scared that easy."
"What I want to know is," Judy said, "what neighbours said what?"
Somebody was shooting at the range--when the door opened and a couple came in they could hear the shots one, two, three. "That'll be Pinkie," Dallow said. "He was always good with a gun."
"You better go an' see," Ida gently remarked, "that he doesn't do something desperate with his gun when he gets to know."
Dallow said: "You jump to things. We got no cause to be afraid of Mr. Drewitt."
"You gave him money, I suppose, for Something."
"Aw," he said, "Johnnie's been joking."
"Your friend Cubitt seemed to think..."
"Cubitt doesn't know a thing."
"Of course," she admitted, "he wasn't there, was he? That time, I mean. But you..." she said.
"Wouldn't twenty pounds be of use to you? After all you don't want to get into trouble.... Let Pinkie carry his own crimes."
"You make me sick," he said. "You think you know a lot and you don't know a thing." He said to Judy: "I'm goin' to have a drain. You want to keep your mouth shut or this polony..." He stretched a gesture, hopelessly he couldn't express what she mightn't put over on you. He went uneasily out, and the wind caught him, so that he had to grab at his old greasy hat and hold it on. Going down the steps to the Gents' was like going down into a ship's engine room in a storm. The whole place shook a little under his feet as the swell came up against the piles and drove on to break against the beach. He thought: I oughta warn Pinkie about Drewitt if it's true.... He had things on his mind, other things besides old Spicer.
He came up the ladder and looked down the deck Pinkie wasn't to be seen. He went on past the peep machines not in sight. It was someone else shooting at the booth.
He asked the man: "Seen Pinkie?"
"What's the game?" the man said. "You know I seen him. An* he's gone for a ride in the country with his girl for a freshener Hastings way. An* I suppose you want to know the time too. Well," the man said, "I'm swearing nothing. You can pitch on someone else for your phony alibis."
"You're crackers," Dallow said. He moved away; across the noisy sea the hour began to strike in Brighton churches; he counted one, two, three, four, and stopped. He was scared suppose it was true, suppose Pinkie knew, and it was that mad scheme... what the hell was taking anyone for a ride in the country at this hour, except to a roadhouse, and Pinkie didn't go to roadhouses. He said softly: "I won't stand for it," aloud--he was confused, he wished he hadn't drunk all that beer; she was a good kid. He remembered her in the kitchen, going to light the stove. And why not? he thought, staring gloomily out to sea; he was shaken by a sudden sentimental desire which Judy couldn't satisfy; for a paper with your breakfast and warm fires. He began to walk rapidly down the pier towards the turnstiles. There were things he wouldn't stand for.
He knew the Morris wouldn't be on the rank, but all the same he had to go and see for himself. Its absence was like a voice speaking quite plainly in his ear. " Suppose she kills herself... A pact may be murder, but they don't hang you for it." He stood there hopelessly, not knowing what to do. Beer clouded his brain; he passed a harassed hand across his face.
He said to the attendant: "You see that Morris go out?"
"Your friend and his girl took it," the man said, hobbling between a Talbot and an Austin. One leg was gammy; he moved it with a mechanism worked from his pocket, lurching with an air of enormous strain to pocket sixpence, to say: "It's a fine night"; he looked worn with the awful labour of the trivial act.
He said: "They're goin' up to Peacehaven for a drink.
Don't ask me why." Hand in pocket he pulled the hidden wire and made his unsteady and diagonal way towards a Ford. "The rain won't hold off long," his voice came back, and: "Thank you, sir," and then again the labour of movement as a Morris Oxford backed in, the pulling at the wire.
Dallow stood there hopelessly at a loss. There were buses.., but everything would be over long before a bus got in. Better to wash his hands of the whole thing ... after all he didn't know--in half an hour he might see the old car coming back past the Aquarium, Pinkie driving and the girl beside him, but he knew very well in his heart that it would never come, not with both of them, that way. The Boy had left too many signs behind him the message at the shooting range, at the car park; he wanted to be followed in good time, in his own time, to fit in with his story. The man came lurching back. He said: "I thought your friend seemed queer tonight. Sort of lit up." It was as if he were talking in the witness box, giving the evidence he was meant to give.