The Clocks

I went through a door at the end of the room into another room which was so full of cigar smoke that it was difficult to see anything at all. After my smarting eyes had cleared, I beheld the ample proportions of my chief sitting back in an aged, derelict grandfather chair, by the arm of which was an old-fashioned reading- or writing-desk on a swivel. 

Colonel Beck took off his spectacles, pushed aside the reading-desk on which was a vast tome and looked disapprovingly at me.

‘So it’s you at last?’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

‘Got anything?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Ah! Well, it won’t do, Colin, d’you hear? Won’t do. Crescents indeed!’

‘I still think,’ I began.

‘All right. You still think. But we can’t wait for ever while you’re thinking.’

‘I’ll admit it was only a hunch,’ I said.

‘No harm in that,’ said Colonel Beck.

He was a contradictory man.

‘Best jobs I’ve ever done have been hunches. Only this hunch of yours doesn’t seem to be working out. Finished with the pubs?’

‘Yes, sir. As I told you I’ve started on Crescents. Houses in crescents is what I mean.’

‘I didn’t suppose you meant bakers’ shops with French rolls in them, though, come to think of it, there’s no reason why not. Some of these places make an absolute fetish of producing French croissants that aren’t really French. Keep ’em in a deep freeze nowadays like everything else. That’s why nothing tastes of anything nowadays.’ 

I waited to see whether the old boy would enlarge upon this topic. It was a favourite one of his. But seeing that I was expecting him to do so, Colonel Beck refrained.

‘Wash out all round?’ he demanded.

‘Almost. I’ve still got a little way to go.’

‘You want more time, is that it?’

‘I want more time, yes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t want to move on to another place this minute. There’s been a kind of coincidence and it might-onlymight -mean something.’

‘Don’t waffle. Give me facts.’

‘Subject of investigation, Wilbraham Crescent.’

‘And you drew a blank! Or didn’t you?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Define yourself, define yourself, boy.’

‘The coincidence is that a man was murdered in Wilbraham Crescent.’

‘Who was murdered?’

‘As yet he’s unknown. Had a card with a name and address in his pocket, but that was bogus.’

‘Hm. Yes. Suggestive. Tie up in any way?’

‘I can’t see that it does, sir, but all the same…’

‘I know, I know. All the same…Well, what have you come for? Come for permission to go on nosing about Wilbraham Crescent-wherever that absurd-sounding place is?’ 

‘It’s a place called Crowdean. Ten miles from Portlebury.’

‘Yes, yes. Very good locality. But what are you here for? You don’t usually ask permission. You go your own pigheaded way, don’t you?’

‘That’s right, sir, I’m afraid I do.’

‘Well, then, what is it?’

‘There are a couple of people I want vetted.’

With a sigh Colonel Beck drew his reading-desk back into position, took a ball-pen from his pocket, blew on it and looked at me.

‘Well?’

‘House called Diana Lodge. Actually, 20, Wilbraham Crescent. Woman called Mrs Hemming and about eighteen cats live there.’

‘Diana? Hm,’ said Colonel Beck. ‘Moon goddess! Diana Lodge. Right. What does she do, this Mrs Hemming?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘she’s absorbed in her cats.’

‘Damned good cover, I dare say,’ said Beck appreciatively. ‘Certainly could be. Is that all?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s a man called Ramsay. Lives at 62, Wilbraham Crescent. Said to be a construction engineer, whatever that is. Goes abroad a good deal.’

‘I like the sound of that,’ said Colonel Beck. ‘I like the sound of that very much. You want to know about him, do you? All right.’ 

‘He’s got a wife,’ I said. ‘Quite a nice wife, and two obstreperous children-boys.’

‘Well, he might have,’ said Colonel Beck. ‘It has been known. You remember Pendleton? He had a wife and children. Very nice wife. Stupidest woman I’ve ever come across. No idea in her head that her husband wasn’t a pillar of respectability in oriental book dealing. Come to think of it, now I remember, Pendleton had a German wife as well, and a couple of daughters. And he also had a wife in Switzerland. I don’t know what the wives were-his private excesses or just camouflage. He’dsay of course that they were camouflage. Well, anyway, you want to know about Mr Ramsay. Anything else?’

‘I’m not sure. There’s a couple at 63. Retired professor. McNaughton by name. Scottish. Elderly. Spends his time gardening. No reason to think he and his wife are not all right-but-’

‘All right. We’ll check. We’ll put ’em through the machine to make sure. Whatare all these people, by the way?’

‘They’re people whose gardens verge on or touch the garden of the house where the murder was committed.’

‘Sounds like a French exercise,’ said Beck. ‘Where is the dead body of my uncle? In the garden of the cousin of my aunt. What about Number 19 itself?’ 

‘A blind woman, a former school teacher, lives there. She works in an institute for the blind and she’s been thoroughly investigated by the local police.’

‘Live by herself?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what is your idea about all these other people?’