The Clocks

‘Not properly,’ said Ted. ‘We never seemed to hit anything.’

‘Anyway, you do have a bit of fun with that hose sometimes,’ said Colin, ‘and then Mrs Hemming comes along and complains?’

‘She’s always complaining,’ said Bill.

‘You ever get through her fence?’

‘Not through that wire here,’ said Ted, unguardedly.

‘But you do get through into her garden sometimes, is that right? How do you do it?’

‘Well, you can get through the fence-into Miss Pebmarsh’s garden. Then a little way down to the right you can push through the hedge into Mrs Hemming’s garden. There’s a hole there in the wire.’

‘Can’t you shut up, you fool?’ said Bill.

‘I suppose you’ve done a bit of hunting about for clues since the murder?’ said Hardcastle.

The boys looked at each other.

‘When you came back from the cinema and heard what had happened, I bet you went through the fence into the garden of 19 and had a jolly good look round.’

‘Well-’ Bill paused cautiously. 

‘It’s always possible,’ said Hardcastle seriously, ‘that you may have found something that we missed. If you have-er-a collection I should be much obliged if you would show it to me.’

Bill made up his mind.

‘Get ’em, Ted,’ he said.

Ted departed obediently at a run.

‘I’m afraid we haven’t got anything really good,’ admitted Bill. ‘We only-sort of pretended.’

He looked at Hardcastle anxiously.

‘I quite understand,’ said the inspector. ‘Most of police work is like that. A lot of disappointments.’

Bill looked relieved.

Ted returned at a run. He passed over a grubby knotted handkerchief which chinked. Hardcastle unknotted it, with a boy on either side of him, and spread out the contents.

There was the handle off a cup, a fragment of willow pattern china, a broken trowel, a rusty fork, a coin, a clothes-peg, a bit of iridescent glass and half a pair of scissors.

‘An interesting lot,’ said the inspector solemnly.

He took pity on the eager faces of the boys and picked up the piece of glass.

‘I’ll take this. It may just possibly tie up with something.’

Colin had picked up the coin and was examining it. 

‘It’s not English,’ said Ted.

‘No,’ said Colin. ‘It’s not English.’ He looked across at Hardcastle. ‘We might perhaps take this, too,’ he suggested.

‘Don’t say a word about this to anyone,’ said Hardcastle in a conspiratorial fashion.

The boys promised delightedly that they wouldn’t.

Chapter 11

‘Ramsay,’ said Colin, thoughtfully.

‘What about him?’

‘I like the sound of him, that’s all. He travels abroad-at a moment’s notice. His wife says he’s a construction engineer, but that’s all she seems to know about him.’

‘She’s a nice woman,’ said Hardcastle.

‘Yes-and not a very happy one.’

‘Tired, that’s all. Kidsare tiring.’

‘I think it’s more than that.’

‘Surely the sort of person you want wouldn’t be burdened with a wife and two sons,’ Hardcastle said sceptically.

‘You never know,’ said Colin. ‘You’d be surprised what some of the boys do for camouflage. A hard-up widow with a couple of kids might be willing to come to an arrangement.’ 

‘I shouldn’t have thought she was that kind,’ said Hardcastle primly.

‘I don’t mean living in sin, my dear fellow. I mean that she’d agree to be Mrs Ramsay and supply a background. Naturally, he’d spin her a yarn of the right kind. He’d be doing a spot of espionage, say, on our side. All highly patriotic.’

Hardcastle shook his head.

‘You live in a strange world, Colin,’ he said.

‘Yes we do. I think, you know, I’ll have to get out of it one day…One begins to forget what is what and who is who. Half of these people work for both sides and in the end they don’t know themselves which side they are really on. Standards get gummed up-Oh, well-let’s get on with things.’

‘We’d better do the McNaughtons,’ said Hardcastle, pausing at the gates of 63. ‘A bit of his garden touches 19-same as Bland.’

‘What do you know about the McNaughtons?’

‘Not much-they came here about a year ago. Elderly couple-retired professor, I believe. He gardens.’

The front garden had rose bushes in it and a thick bed of autumn crocus under the windows.

A cheerful young woman in a brightly flowered overall opened the door to them and said:

‘You want?-Yes?’ 

Hardcastle murmured, ‘The foreign help at last,’ and handed her his card.

‘Police,’ said the young woman. She took a step or two back and looked at Hardcastle as though he were the Fiend in person.

‘Mrs McNaughton,’ said Hardcastle.

‘Mrs McNaughton is here.’

She led them into the sitting-room, which overlooked the back garden. It was empty.

‘She up the stairs is,’ said the no-longer cheerful young woman. She went out into the hall and called, ‘Mrs McNaughton-Mrs McNaughton.’

A voice far away said, ‘Yes. What is it, Gretel?’

‘It is the police-two police. I put them in sitting-room.’

There was a faint scurrying noise upstairs and the words ‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear, what next?’ floated down. Then there was a patter of feet and presently Mrs McNaughton entered the room with a worried expression on her face. There was, Hardcastle decided quite soon, usually a worried expression on Mrs McNaughton’s face.