Flickenflocker worked with the concentration and exalted patience of a biologist cutting a section, and as he worked he whistled little tunes. His whistle was a whisper: he drew in the air through his teeth, for he had been taught never to breathe on customers. At all times he seemed to be working out some problem of fabulous complexity – breathlessly following a fine thread through infinite mazes of thought. Occasionally he uttered a word or a mere noise, as if he had found something but was throwing it away … Tss! … Muhuh! … Tu-tu-tu! … Oh dear! Wainewright liked this strange, calm barber who demonstrated no urge to make conversation; whose shiny yellow hands, soft and light as a pair of blown-up rubber gloves, had touched the faces of so many men whose pictures had filled posters while their names topped bills.
For Flickenflocker’s was a theatrical establishment, or had been. A hundred photographs of forgotten and half-remembered actors hung on the walls. As small boys cut their names on desks and trees, actors and sportsmen pin their photographs to the walls of pubs and barbershops. Thus they leave a little something by means of which somebody may remember them … until the flies, in their turn, deface the likenesses which Time has almost wiped away; and the dustbins, which gape around the relics of little men like sharks in a bitter sea, close with a clang. Even in the grave nothing is completely lost as long as somebody can say: Lottie had a twenty-four-inch thigh; or Fruitcake bubble-danced; or J. J. Sullivan could have eaten Kid Fathers before breakfast. We hang about the necks of our to-morrows like hungry harlots about the necks of penniless sailors. So, for twenty-three years, singers, boxers, actors, six-day cyclists, tumblers, soubrettes, jugglers, dancers, wrestlers, clowns, ventriloquists and lion-tamers had given Flickenflocker their photographs – always with a half-shrug and a half-smile of affable indulgence. Flickenflocker hung up every one of them: he knew that the day always came when a man returned, if only to look at the wall and dig some illusion about himself out of the junk-heap of stale publicity.
They always came back to Flickenflocker, whose memory was reliable and unobtrusive as a Yale lock. One sidelong look at a profile opened a flap in his head and let out a name. After ten years he could glance at you, name you with matter-of-fact enthusiasm, and make appropriate casual chatter. As soon as the shop door closed and your heels hit the street he kicked the flap back and waited for the next customer … looked up, segregated; silent except for hisses, gulps, and monosyllables.
Yet Flickenflocker could talk. Now, while Pewter’s flat French razor chirped in the lather like a sparrow in snow and, on his left, the great hollow-ground blade of Kyropoulos sang Dzing-dzing! over the blue chin of a big man in a pearl-grey suit, Flickenflocker talked to Mr Wainewright.
The barber made conversation with the least distinguished of all his customers.
‘You’re the man of the moment, Mister Wainewright.’
‘Nonsense, Mister Flickenflocker.’
‘I can read the papers, thank God, Mister Wainewright. I’m not altogedder blind yet, God forbid. Hm!’
‘It’s all got nothing to do with me.’
‘No? Your worster enemies should be where that poor woman is now. In your hands is already a rope. A … a … a loop you can tie; you can tie a noose round her neck.’
‘It’s the Law, Mister Flickenflocker.’
‘You’re right there, Mister Wainewright. That’s what the law is for. That’s what we pay rates and taxes for. You want to kill somebody: right, go on. But afterwards don’t say: “Huxcuse me, I forgot myself.” Don’t say: “Once don’t count – give me just one more charnsh.” A huxcuse me ain’t enough – murder ain’t the hee-cups. Murderers get hung: good job too. Poor woman!’
‘But if she’s guilty?’
‘Mmmmyes, you’re right. But a woman’s got a lot to put up with. With a certain class of man a woman can put up with a lot, Mister Wainewright.’
‘But murder!’
‘Murder…. Mnyup. Still, in a temper…. I knew a baker, a gentleman. In … in … in the electric chair he’d of got up to give a lady his seat. So one day in a temper he put his friend in the oven. They found it out by trousers-buttons; by trousers-buttons they found it out. Afterwards, he was sorry. Still, I didn’t say it was right; only I don’t like hanging ladies. N-hah, mmmmyah! Well, you got nerve!’
‘Why? Why have I got nerve?’
‘Judge, juries: I’d be frightened out of my life.’
‘But why?’
‘They can make black white. White black they can make.’
‘I’ve nothing to fear: I can only tell the plain truth.’
‘And good luck to you! What class of people is a murderer? No class. A man in the prime of life, so she goes and kills. With scissors, eh? She kills her husband with scissors! It shows you. Scissors, pokers – if somebody wants to murder a person, hm! Daggers they can find in … in … in chocolate cakes, if they put their minds to it. Even a razor they can kill somebody with. Present company excepted. With a murderer, everything is a revolver. But what for? Why should she do it to her own husband?’
‘For love, I think, Mister Flickenflocker.’
‘Eeeeh! Love. People should settle down, with a home, and plenty children, with plenty work; happy they ought to be, people. If there’s an argument, so sometimes one gives way, sometimes another gives way. For peace in the house, you got to give way. It looks bad to fight in front of the kids. So in the end you have grandchildren. What do they mean, love? To kill a person for love? In a book they read such rubbish, Mister Wainewright. For hate, for money, for hunger kill a person. For your wife and children kill a person. But love? Never heard of such a thing.’
‘We’d better leave that to the judge and jury,’ said Wainewright, coldly.
‘We got no option,’ said Flickenflocker. ‘We got to leave it to the judgen-jury. Anyway, it didn’t have nothing to do with you, thank goodness.’
‘No?’ said Wainewright.
‘No,’ said Flickenflocker, easily.
‘It happened in my own house. I was in the next room. It does affect me a little bit,’ said Wainewright, frowning.
‘It’s all for the best I dessay,’ Flickenflocker picked up a pair of fine clippers. ‘Lots o’ people’ll want to live there now.’
‘More likely they’ll want to stay away from my house, Mister Flickenflocker.’
‘Don’t you believe it! If there was a body (God forbid) in every cupboard, people’d pay double to stay there. For every one that don’t like a murder, there’s ten that’d rather have a murder than a … a … a hot-water-bottle. Don’t you worry. I know people, so they’d give fifty pounds to have a murder in their place.’
‘Dry shampoo, please,’ said Wainewright.
Flickenflocker unscrewed the top of a bottle. ‘Curiosity,’ he said.
‘Hm?’
‘Curiosity. Were they open or shut?’
‘Were what?’
‘The scissors. The scissors the lady killed the gent with.’
‘Shut.’
‘It only shows you, eh? What can cut, can cut out lives from people. Psss! … Hwheee! Even a road – fall on it from a high roof, and where are you? … Scissors, eh? Temper, that’s what it is: temper. A stab and a cut, and there you are: you’ve hanged yourself.’
Wainewright did not want to talk any more. He was looking into the mirror. Two men, awaiting their turn, were exchanging whispers and looking in his direction. He knew what they were saying. That’s Wainewright, they were saying; that quite ordinary-looking man having the lavender shampoo is Wainewright, the Wainewright who has the house where Tooth was murdered by his wife.