I asked Backhouse the news, and he said that the boiler had bust in the church school, causing the inkwells to freeze and a half-holiday to be given. But then the vicar, who had wanted the school kept open, had spied Tom Barley, who was the headmaster of the school, walking into the Fortune at two o'clock in the afternoon. Backhouse reckoned there'd be bother over this, but I was thinking of the dead men, and of Shillito, who I had to face the next morning. For the second time, I had failed to arrest Clegg. There was going to be a row all right, and a bigger one than that in prospect between the vicar and Tom Barley.
Chapter Fourteen
In the police office at nine the next morning, I was in the jakes draining off the remains of the beer from the night before when there came a fearful pounding at the door.
'Get a move on there!'
It was Shillito, just arrived in the office. In my agitation, I put the bung in sooner than I ought to have, and consequently pissed a few drops down my leg as I fastened up my fly. This annoyed me particularly, for I had on my good suit, of best blue worsted with turned-up trousers. I was also wearing my stiffest and deepest collar, which had been cricking my neck since seven in the morning. It was all on account of the wife's party to come that evening.
I glanced in the glass before quitting the jakes. I looked respectable enough, but I was no man for letting Shillito torment me. At any minute, he would want to see my notebook, and hear my account of the second encounter with Clegg.
When I stepped back into the office from the jakes, Shillito was writing at his desk, his big body all bundled up with the effort of it. With him in the office, I could not ask Wright to telephone through to Bowman for me. I had already tried to do so myself at eight-thirty, but the connection had been lost, and I doubted that Bowman would have been in the office at that sort of time in any case. Wright was saying, 'There ought to be a pound of tea maintained at all times.'
'Yes, but who's to maintain it?' said Constable Crawford, who was lounging at the mantelpiece, watching the fire smoke.
'Whoever finds the caddy short,' said Wright.
'But that's always me,' said Crawford. 'Whenever I go to make a pot of tea there's none left, and I have to go to the stores for more, which sets me back a tanner.'
'If you're the one who most often finds it empty,' said Constable Baker, who was leaning against the wall near the open door that gave on to the Chief's room (he wouldn't have been doing that if the Chief had been around), 'then that proves you must drink the most.'
'Let's have this right,' said Crawford, looking up from the smoking fire. 'You're saying that I never have the chance to drink tea on account of the large quantity of tea that I drink?'
'Yes,' said Baker. 'That puts it very nicely. But in my view the tea ought to be paid for out of the swear box.'
The two constables looked at Wright, who kept the swear box on his desk.
He was shaking his head, saying, 'I got the swear box up for the superannuation fund.'
Shillito looked up from his writing.
'Will you lot quit blathering and get down to some police work? Crawford,' he continued, pointing, 'fettle that fire instead of gawping at it.'
I knew that he was about to start in on me next, but he only eyed me for a moment, then rose smartly to his feet and stepped out of the door. Here was my chance to telephone Bowman. But no, there was a telegram form in Shillito's hand, which meant he'd only be gone for a moment. When Shillito wanted his business kept secret, he'd go out into the station, and give the form directly to the telegraph boy.
'What do you think, Jim?' said Crawford, who was now halfheartedly poking the fire in accordance with Shillito's instructions.
'Eh?' I said.
'Do you think the swear box should pay for the tea? Speaking as a regular contributor to the swear box—'
'—or a regular swearer, at any rate,' put in Baker.
But just at that moment Shillito returned, killing all amiability with his habitual order:
'Your notebook, Detective Stringer.'
The office fell silent as I picked it up from my desk, and passed it to him.
'I went to the Cape,' I said, 'but I did not arrest Clegg.'
My heart was galloping as I spoke, but I tried not to let him see it. This was the first time that I had crossed him in any serious way. He said nothing to my answer, making a show of reading the book for a space; but I could see the colour rising in his face.
He initialled the book and handed it back to me.
'I have sent you twice to bring in this man, and twice you have failed to do it, and for no good reason. Your book is once again full of this business of the - Club.'
I reached over to my desk, and handed him the photograph.
'This is the picture described in the book. It shows the Travelling Club. It was taken by Peters, who was murdered. I know for a fact that one of these men in the pictures has also been killed and another more than likely. One of 'em's Lee, who was done in the Lame Horse Murder - you might remember that. Burglary gone wrong. But everything points to all the blokes having met a very sorry end.'
Shillito had a dead look in his eyes; he was staring hard at the top button of my suit coat.
'I am placing you on report, Detective Stringer. I will speak to Chief Inspector Weatherill later today, with the recommendation that your application for promotion should proceed no further.'
'But the interview with Captain Fairclough is all arranged,' I said.
'One stroke of the pen will fix that,' said Shillito.
Suddenly, the end of my time in the police force came into clear view. I would not continue in any event if I did not achieve the promotion on Christmas Eve. Shillito spoke on. I hardly listened, but I saw in imagination the Gateshead Infant crossing the high level into Middlesbrough station, and the picture of it somehow reassured me. I was a railwayman through and through, where Shillito was not, even though he got his living from the railways. He hardly ever gave a glance to the traffic notices that were pinned up in the police office, and were meant to keep us in touch with the world out there on the lines. The Iron Roads held no romance for Ernest Shillito, and it was wrong that he should prosper in the North Eastern, and therefore he would not. I would win out over thin double-gutted bastard in the end, whatever setbacks there might be on the way.
Shillito was now mentioning a name that was for an instant unfamiliar: Williams. He held a telegram in his hand. Detective Sergeant Williams had been in communication - letter sent express overnight, written in haste - forgive scribble, but Williams most unsettled as a consequence of his interview with Detective Stringer. Stringer, it appeared, had a bee in his bonnet about a case long since solved and closed: the murder of George Lee. A very vicious individual of proven bad character, Sanderson, had been hanged for this, a point seemingly not taken by Stringer, who had appeared, all in all, a rather curious sort of fellow, if one detective sergeant might so put it to another ...
Williams, then, was a bigger bastard even than Shillito, for he presented himself as something else. Face to face, you'd take him for the whitest bloke that ever stepped, with his kindly manner and 'Do take the documents away with you, if you'd rather'.
'You are to return the files you took from the Middlesbrough office by the next post,' Shillito was saying, 'and then you are to go back to your normal duties.'