The railway station was set high on a hill. The area beyond the forecourt, on which Humphries now stood facing the city, fell away steeply. Any traveller to the centre of Durham who could not afford a cab or who preferred Shanks’s pony had two choices. Either he followed the main road as it looped downward, echoing the path of the railway overhead, or he took a short cut which branched off this road from a kind of lookout point about two hundred yards to the left. This path made a zigzag course down several flights of steps overshadowed by trees and shrubs. An individual walking from the station at night might prefer to take the better lit route by the road but the stepped path was safe enough by day.
Constable Humphries moved off, watching the two men as they headed down the road, each of them keeping to a stretch of pavement in a law-abiding manner. The group of artisans and the female hands were straggling across the road, the women noisily oblivious to the carriages which would shortly be rolling downhill. Humphries was very glad that there were other people on foot. They helped to hide his presence.
The first man he’d seen, the one with the hat, was in advance of the hatless one. Neither looked behind him. Both were walking with a sense of purpose. And, as Humphries had half feared and expected, each proceeded to pick a different path towards Durham. The individual with hat and bag didn’t hesitate but turned off at the lookout point and went down the steeper route. A few seconds after him the other man, the hatless and bagless one, continued down the curve of the roadside with scarcely a glance at the first who was already out of sight down the steps. This split seemed to confirm that neither had anything to do with the other.
But it presented Constable Humphries with an acute dilemma. Which should he follow? The one who’d chosen the short cut or the one who was taking the road? He had only a matter of seconds to resolve the problem or face the possibility of losing both of them.
Humphries put on speed to overtake the working men and women who were dawdling on foot. He attempted to put himself in the mind of a detective like Great Scotland Yard’s Inspector Traynor. How would a proper detective think this through?
Both suspects had alighted from the Newcastle train, both fitted the description of Anthony Smight. It was the first, though, who had given Humphries that tell-tale tremor of intuition. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat as if he felt the need to conceal his face. He was carrying an anonymous little bag, which somehow added to his suspicious air. And, most conclusive of all, he had turned aside for the short cut into Durham, down a path that wasn’t signposted or named in any way. That decision indicated a familiarity with the city, which was certainly what Smight had.
All this passed through Humphries’ mind during the brief time it took him to reach the lookout point and the beginning of the stepped descent. Taking a final view of the back of the second man, who was striding round the curve of the road, the policeman thudded down the first flight of steps. Behind him he heard the chatter and laughter of the women as they too chose this shorter route.
Constable Humphries estimated that his quarry was only a matter of seconds in front of him but, because of the zigzag nature of the steps and the overhanging tree branches, it was possible to see no more than a few yards ahead. He was conscious too that he was in pursuit of a very dangerous individual – ‘If you see this man do not accost him’ – one who might lash out if he believed someone was after him. So Humphries kept darting his eyes among the shadows on either side of the path. He was quite reassured to hear the women clattering down behind him.
But he saw no one until he emerged at the bottom of the final flight of steps and into a jumbled area of terraced housing dominated by the new church of St Godric’s. There, about a hundred and fifty yards ahead of Humphries, was his man! Unmistakable in the wide-brimmed hat, the little bag swinging at his side, the purposeful stride.
Anthony Smight turned into North Road and Humphries’ task became both easier and more difficult. Easier because there was less likelihood of Smight spotting anyone on his tail, more difficult because it was by now midday and, North Road being a main thoroughfare, it was full of carts and carriages and passers-by. Humphries had to get closer to his quarry or run the risk of losing him in the crowd. He walked faster, keeping his gaze fixed on the top of Smight’s hat. Fortunately the murderous doctor was so intent on his own purposes that, without looking back once, he passed among the idling window-gazers and the shop-workers buying their dinner from the costers’ barrows. He smoothly skirted draymen sliding barrels into the vault of a pub and avoided a cluster of argumentative, besuited men coming down the steps of the Miners’ Institute.
Humphries wished that he could lay eyes on a uniformed policeman. He felt isolated in his pursuit of Smight and, had he seen one of his fellows, he would have alerted him. It would have taken only a moment of explanation since the whole force had been shown the picture of Smight and knew what was what. The uniform could have reported back to the police-house while Humphries continued his chase. But there was not a police uniform in the entire stretch of North Road.
So the constable in civvy clothing pursued the tall man with his bag and hat into the start of Silver Street and across the river by Framwellgate. This was a smarter part of town. Humphries began to wonder where his quarry was going. Surely a fugitive like Anthony Smight should be haunting the less reputable areas of the city? And Humphries suffered his first twinge of doubt. Was he on the trail of the right man? What had happened to the other one, the one who went walking on down the station road?
Then Humphries was reassured when he saw Smight turn aside and enter a chemist’s near the marketplace. Reassured, because he knew that Smight might be seeking to purchase supplies of opium or laudanum. This area of the city was sometimes allotted as his beat and Constable Humphries was on nodding terms with the chemist, whose name FRED’K W. PASCAL was emblazoned in a gilded arc across the plate-glass window. Humphries kept his distance, looking in a ladies’ dress-shop before he realized the incongruity of standing before a golden sign for WOMENSWEAR. So he shifted a few yards further to study a gentleman’s outfitter’s. All the time, though, he kept his eyes on the door to Pascal’s.
He waited a long time, almost a quarter of an hour by his pocket-watch. Bert Humphries wondered whether Smight was committing some outrage inside the chemist’s. Had he attacked Frederick W. Pascal in his frantic search for drugs? Had he left the unfortunate apothecary bleeding behind his counter while he made his escape through a back door? But that could hardly be, because during this anxious quarter of an hour several other customers had come and gone through the door of FRED’K W. PASCAL. None of them appeared to have been witness to any horrors.
Unable to stand the suspense any longer, Humphries was on the point of going into Pascal’s himself, when the tall man emerged. He was still wearing his hat and carrying his little bag. He turned, not down towards where Humphries was standing outside the outfitter’s, but up along Saddler Street.
Humphries moved fast. He darted into the chemist’s. Frederick Pascal was not lying bleeding or dead on the floor. He was up on tiptoe replacing a jar on an upper shelf. He finished what he was doing and turned round with a what-can-I-do-for-you-sir? air.
‘Mr Pascal, it’s me. Constable Humphries.’
‘So it is, Constable. I didn’t recognize you out of uniform. Day off?’
‘No. I am on duty,’ said Humphries, conscious that with every passing second his quarry was striding further up Saddler Street. ‘The man who just left, the one with the hat, what did he buy?’
The chemist, a short man with deep-set eyes, scratched his head.