“Is it all right for me to come in?”
“Oh, yes,” said Rollison and Kemp joined him. “Don’t talk.” He said nothing more until they were halfway up the stairs. Then he looked round at Kemp with a wry smile. “Craik tried to gas himself but I think I’ve satisfied the police that it was a heart attack. Can you smell gas?”
“Now you come to mention it, yes.” Kemp looked hard at Rollison but said nothing until they reached the bedroom.
Craik was looking over his shoulder and, when he saw Kemp, he tried to get up.
“Don’t get up, Joe,” said Kemp. “And don’t worry—Mr Rollison has told everyone you had a heart attack.”
He closed the door.
Rollison disconnected the rubber tubing and coiled it round his fingers. The room was spotlessly clean but the wainscotting had been broken in several places and one stretch had recently been replaced by newer, lighter-brown wood. He looked at it thoughtfully, hearing Joe Craik’s voice as if from a long way off. The man talked in a monotonous, frightened undertone as Kemp pulled up another chair and sat beside him.
“I couldn’t bear it, Mr Kemp. The disgrace, the horrible disgrace!” He shuddered. “I’ve never been so much as inside a police-station before and to be charged with—with murder.”“
“But you were released,” Kemp said.
“You—you don’t know the people around here, sir. They’ll say I did it. I daren’t show my face in church again—oh, why didn’t he let me do away with myself?”
He turned and looked at Rollison.
“Why didn’t you? What did you want to interfere for?” He tried to get to his feet. His eyes were filled with tears and his face was twisted like a baby’s, his lips were quivering. “A man’s got a right to do what he likes with his own life!”
Kemp said: “You’ll feel better soon, Joe. I’ll go and make you a cup of tea.”
“I—I won’t never be able to lift me head again,” moaned Craik. “I’d be better out of the way.”
“Do you want everyone to think you killed O’Hara?” demanded Rollison, as Kemp stood up.
“It wouldn’t make no difference to me, if I was dead!”
Rollison glanced at Kemp who nodded and went downstairs. Craik continued to stare into Rollison’s eyes, his own still watering and his body a-tremble. Rollison turned to the wall, went down on one knee and was touching the wainscotting when Craik gasped:
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Rollison pulled at the new piece of wainscotting; it came away easily. He groped inside the hole which lay revealed and touched smooth and cold. He drew out two bottles and stood up, holding one in each hand.
Craik rose unsteadily to his feet.
“Don’t—don’t tell the curate, Mr Rollison!” His voice seemed strangled. “Don’t tell ‘im!” His voice grew almost hysterical but could not be heard outside the room. “I—I never used to touch it, only since my wife died—I been so lonely. You don’t know what it is to be lonely, I don’t drink much, only a little drop now and again.”
“I won’t tell Kemp,” said Rollison, quietly. “What is it?” The bottles were clean and had no labels.
“Whisky,” said Craik. “You—you promise you won’t?”
“Yes,” said Rollison but made a mental reservation: “You’re all kinds of a damned fool, Craik. Not a soul would have believed you were innocent.” When Craik said nothing, Rollison went on sharply: “Why did you try to gas yourself?”
“I—I was so ashamed,” muttered Craik. “Me, a respectable man, a member o’ the church— you don’t know the disgrace, Mr Rollison. As soon as I come back, everyone started saying I was a sly one, why, two men come in and congratulated me on getting away with it!”
“Did you kill O’Hara?” asked Rollison, abruptly.
The man’s eyes widened in horror.
“Me!” He gasped. “No, no, Mr Rollison, I never killed him, I never killed a man in my life! He was a dirty tyke in some ways, always goin’ on at me, but I—”
“So you knew him,” murmured Rollison.
Apparently the shop was empty and the crowd had been moved on for there were only the sounds of chinking crockery downstairs. In the bedroom, the silence lengthened and Craik had gone very still.
At last, he said:
“I bought the whisky from him, Mr Rollison. That’s why he always had a rub at me. I didn’t know from one day to another when he was going to give me away, it was something awful. But—I never killed him! I didn’t even know I was going to see him that night!”
“Do the police know about your dealings with him?” asked Rollison.
Craik’s expression was answer enough.
“All right, I won’t tell them,” Rollison said but again he made a mental reservation he would not tell them unless it became important evidence. He listened but Kemp did not appear to be coming up. He unscrewed the cap of one bottle and smelt it. His face wrinkled.
“Great Scott! It’s poison!”
“It—it isn’t so good as it was,” muttered Craik. “But whisky’s hard to get, Mr Rollison. Don’t—don’t let the curate know, please!”
Kemp’s footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Rollison replaced the bottles and the stretch of wainscotting and was standing up, empty-handed, when Kemp arrived with a tea-tray. He had brought three cups.
The tea seemed to revive Craik. He remained maudlin and apologetic and very humble. He said that he realised now that the suicide attempt had been wrong but he hadn’t thought he could stand the disgrace. Kemp jollied him, handling the situation, as he knew it, admirably. Half an hour later, Craik seemed a new man and Kemp rose to go.
“You’ll be all right, now, Joe, and I’ve a meeting at seven-thirty. Don’t come out tonight. But don’t talk a lot of nonsense about not coming to church!” He rested a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Are you coming, Rolly?”
“I’ll stay for half an hour,” said Rollison.
When Kemp had gone, Craik looked at him steadily.
Bill Ebbutt had disliked the little man’s face and that was understandable. Craik had a hang-dog look, as if he were ashamed of himself. It was meekness but not true humility. He would be anathema to a bluff, confident character like Ebbutt. Now, however, he took on a strange, unexpected dignity.
“I appreciate your help very much, Mr Rollison. I won’t forget it, either.”
Rollison smiled.
“That’s all right, Joe! It’s none of my business but, if you must drink in secret, don’t drink poison like that.” He took out the bottles again and tucked them into his pockets where they bulged noticeably. “If you must have a drink, I’ll send you a bottle of the real stuff.”
“Please don’t,” said Craik, quickly. “This has been a lesson to me, I must try to—”
“If you try to reform yourself in five minutes, you’ll slip back further than you were before,” said Rollison. “How long have you been buying this stuff from O’Hara?”
“About four months, I suppose,” said Craik.
“Who did you get it from before that?”
“Another Kelly,” said Craik. “I mean, another Irishman!”
“Do you know where they got it?”
“No, I—I didn’t ask questions,” said Craik and went on in a thin voice: “I knew I was doing wrong but I couldn’t get it no other way. I used to buy it in the West End but when it got short I couldn’t.”
“It’s your problem,” Rollison said. “I’m not your judge. Do you know anyone else who buys it?”
“No,” said Craik, emphatically. “No one knows about it.”
“Then why should they learn?” asked Rollison.
He smiled and left the room.
Someone was putting a piece of board up at the broken window. It was the policeman who appeared to inquire about Craik’s condition and said that two or three things had been stolen when a dozen people had burst into the shop.
“I think it was them kids,” the policeman said. “They take some handling!”