Number Nineteen: Ben’s Last Case

‘See that, Marmerduke?’ said Ben. ‘’E’s ’ad enuf! So’ve I!’

He turned away from the window, and now taking one of the candlesticks and the box of matches in case he needed them, he adventured farther afield. The wooden landing outside the bedroom was uncarpeted, and so were the stairs that invited Ben grimly down to the next floor, but before accepting the invitation he poked his head into another room on the floor he was on, and found it completely empty.

Now he began to descend the stairs. The stained wallpaper was peeling off the walls, and one bit curled at him as he passed it and touched his nose. He decided not to go quite so fast. He made a breeze.

The next floor was more spacious, though definitely not palatial, and there were four rooms, a cupboard, and a bathroom. Three of the rooms were empty, the other had a bed, a stool and a disconnected gas fire. The gas fire stood in the centre of the floor and looked self-conscious and unhappy. The floor was uncarpeted. There was a damp patch in one corner which Ben hoped was water, but he did not investigate. The bathroom had a rusty yellow bathtub with two taps, only one of which would turn on. The cupboard had a broom that swooped out at Ben and shot him back in one bound to the head of the next staircase.

‘’Ow I ’ates cubberds,’ he muttered. ‘When I ’ave my ’ouse built there won’t be none!’

Halfway down the next flight he paused at a thought.

‘Did Mr Smith and ’is friend cart me up orl these stairs? They’d of saived a bit o’ work if they’d kep’ me at the bottom! Barmy, Marmerduke, wern’t they?’

At the bottom he found himself on the ground floor, and a sense of disappointment pervaded him when he noticed that still further stairs led to a basement. As with cupboards, so with basements; none would figure in Ben’s dream house. The hall was wide, and the rooms opening into it were larger than those on the upper floors, but again only one had any furniture in it—a back room the window of which looked on to the roof where the cat had sat. There was a couch in this room which almost suggested comfort. So did an armchair. This appearance may have been partly due to the fact that they stood on the best carpet Ben had so far come across, but a gate-legged table with a blue china vase upon it helped, and so did a bookcase in a corner. If there were no flowers in the vase or books in the bookcase, these omissions did not entirely destroy the comparative homeliness of these two items. The window overlooking the view of the low roof had long maroon curtains, now half-drawn … Something funny about that roof. What was it? Just it being so low? Couldn’t be more than four or five feet of headroom, you’d think. Wunner wot it had been used for? Wot abart a squint?

But when Ben began to draw the long maroon curtain more aside, his mind was abruptly switched away from the roof and he forgot all about it. Behind the bottom of the curtain was another vase, broken into four pieces, and as he had disarranged the curtain’s folds one of the pieces had come rolling out. Something else also slid across the little space of polished boards between the wall and the edge of the carpet. A hammer.

‘Narsty,’ thought Ben.

Then he rounded on himself.

‘Why is it narsty?’ he demanded, aloud. ‘Anybody can break a vase, carn’t they, Marmerduke?’

It was on the hammer, however, that his eyes were riveted as he spoke. Suddenly, against his will, he bent down to get a closer view of the part you hit with. Some little threads were sticking to it. It wouldn’t be hair—would it?

He turned and left the room. The hall seemed to have grown immeasurably darker during the short time that had elapsed since he had left it. He did not stop walking until he had reached the front door. He wanted to get as far away from that hammer as he could.

He found himself opening the front door. He could not have said just why he was doing it. He had not made any conscious decision to leave, for he had worked all that out already; and a hammer with hair on it was merely one small incident in a series of which the beginning was a back with a knife in it. Probably it was because he needed a bit of air. Yes, that must be it. The air that came at him as he stood in the doorway was cool and refreshing. Nice. Sort of eased down your prickles. And where he stood was midway between outside and inside, without actually being in either. Wouldn’t mind staying here for ever!

His momentary contentment did not last. In Ben’s experience contentment rarely did. It was ended by two eyes gleaming at him out of the gloaming, and he could not readjust his focus swiftly enough to make out at once whether the eyes were just before him or across the street. Were they Mr Smith’s eyes, and was he standing on the opposite pavement, watching? No, they weren’t Mr Smith’s eyes. You’d hardly spot them so clearly all that distance, and besides, his eyes weren’t green …

The eyes loomed suddenly closer, and a dark sleek body flashed past him into the house. He flashed back after it, closed the door, and sat down on the ground. Now facing him again, and purring hard, sat the black cat he had first seen on the low roof at the back.

‘Nah, listen,’ said Ben, seriously. ‘I don’t mind cats, pertickler if they’re strays, so I’ll fergive yer this time—but any more dirty tricks like that, and aht yer go! Got that, Sammy? Okay! Then come along and keep me company dahn in the bisement.’

The basement looked completely dark as he stood at the top of the final flight, and he decided that this time he would need his candle. He lit it first match, which is pretty good when your hand isn’t steady; and now the shadows he so cordially detested began. What he couldn’t understand, as his own shadow wobbled and shifted around him, was what use they were. Light, okay, but why shadders?

And why stone steps? All the others had been wood. Of course, some wooden stairs creaked, and plenty had creaked up above, but once you knew which ones they were you could give ’em a miss, and they didn’t go clang-clang like these stone ones were doing. Lummy, he sounded like the whole British Army!

Sammy, on the other hand, slithered down ahead of him without a sound.

And now began the most unpleasant part of the whole unpleasant tour. With no light beyond that of the flickering candle, and with his shadow—or, rather, Marmaduke’s—now darting all over the place as its unwilling owner jerked his way from spot to spot, poked his head in doorways, and swung round at every sound, real or imagined, Ben checked up on the kitchen and scullery and larder (a bit disappointing, the larder, but it contained enough to go on with) and cupboards. In the scullery he found the beetle population, and left them hurriedly in control.

‘’Ow abart you ’avin’ a go at ’em, Sammy?’ he suggested, before he closed the door.

But Sammy, with tail up, refused to take on the job.

All this while Ben had been anticipating the locked door, wondering whether he was ever coming to it, and he was beginning to believe that Mr Smith had invented it to frighten him when suddenly he found it before him. It was the very last door he had tried in the basement, along a narrow passage at the back that led to nowhere else. He thought it was just another cupboard, for he did not imagine that the basement space allowed for any more rooms, but the fact that it was locked suggested that it must be the room to which Mr Smith had referred. Ben gazed at it speculatively.

‘Wot’s on the other side, Sammy?’ he asked the cat at his strangely polished feet. As the cat made no response, he passed the enquiry on to the third of the party. ‘Orl right, let’s ’ear wot you’ve gotter say, Marmerduke? Wot’s in that there room? Storidge, ’e sed. Orl right, then. Wot’s bein’ stored?’

In the most refined voice Ben could muster—it was a pity the performance was wasted on a cat—Marmaduke replied:

‘Glass and silvah, wot?’

‘That’s ain’t a bad idea o’ yourn, Marmerduke,’ agreed Ben, ‘and p’r’aps they locked it up ’cos that other caretaiker ’ad a go at it? That would expline why they got rid of ’im.’

But somehow Ben did not believe that was the true reason.

‘And then they’d lock that in a cupboard, wouldn’t they? Not in a room?’

‘’Ow dew yew know it is not a cubbard, wot?’ answered Marmerduke.

‘’Cos ’e sed the locked door was the door of a room,’ Ben retorted. ‘Put that in yer side-whiskers and smoke it!’

‘Dew yew believe awl ’e sed?’ enquired Marmaduke, in no way perturbed.

‘No, I don’t, and that’s a fack,’ agreed Ben, ‘but nah yer can keep yer trap shut ’cos I’ve ’ad enuff o’ yer.’

He turned to go, for the larder called, but all at once he turned back, realising that he had omitted an obvious effort to get a glimpse of what the room contained. He put his eye to the key-hole.

At first he saw nothing but blackness. He thought this was due to a key on the other side, but the test of a matchstick disproved this theory, for the match went in the little aperture too fast and before he realised it he found that he had posted it. Lummy, wot a waste! He might need that match before he’d finished here! Still, it was gone, and there was no getting it back, so he’d just have one more squint, and then …

He kept his eye at the key-hole longer this time. Sometimes, when there’s no intruding key, the eye becomes acclimatised, and gradually things become a bit clearer. Yes, and weren’t they doing it now? Not much clearer, but just a bit. Wasn’t that the back of a chair? No. Yes. Well, might be. And wasn’t there a sort of shape beyond? Like a—like a—wot? It wouldn’t be a stacher, would it? Ben didn’t like stachers. If you looked at ’em too long you expected them to move! Gawd! This ’un was movin’!

A sudden ray of light, as from a torch, illuminated for an instant the floor at the moving statue’s feet. Then the ray went out. Ben tried not to feel sick. In that momentary shaft of light he had seen what lay on the other side of the door. It lay on the floor motionless, with arms outstretched.

6 (#ulink_785fe687-e89a-580f-b3c7-644111631d66)

Very Brief Respite (#ulink_785fe687-e89a-580f-b3c7-644111631d66)

No one, and Ben least of all, could have called Ben a brave man. ‘Some’ow I seems ter git through,’ he would have told you, ‘but it ain’t through not bein’ a cowwid, yer carn’t ’elp ’ow yer was born, well, can yer?’ The two kinds of people he admired most of all in this difficult world were those who could twirl china plates in opposite directions on the tips of billiard cues and those who stood firm before corpses.

Of course, sometimes you stood firm because the corpses mezzermised you and took away yer legs like. That kind of standing firm didn’t count. In fact, it truly was not standing firm at all, because since you usually ended on the floor you’d be more accurate to call it sitting plonk.

Now Ben sat plonk.

But he only sat for an instant. This was due to the circumstance that he sat plonk on the cat, which so upset them both that before either of them realised it they were both pelting up the basement stairs in sympathetic unison. The cat’s panic was again soundless, but Ben’s boots on the cold stone clanked more loudly than ever. This time it was the British Army in retreat.

Was the moving statue behind the locked door, now growing blessedly more and more distant, hearing the retreat? ‘’Ow fur,’ wondered Ben, for you can still think in a sort of a way while you run, ‘’ow fur does boots on stairs ’ave ter be from a door not ter be ’eard on t’other side?’ In the absence of definite knowledge, the only logical plan is to make it as fur as possible.

And as fur as possible, of course, was the top room from which Ben had started.

He and Sammy reached it in a dead heat. Lurching into the room which had once seemed a prison but which now seemed a sanctuary, Ben tottered to the bed and sank down on it. Sammy leapt beside him, and for a few seconds they comforted each other. Then, when speech became possible, Ben spoke to his companion.

‘Sammy,’ he said. ‘You and me’s friends. Once I shot a cat. Corse, not with a real gun, it was one o’ them hair-guns, and I didn’t mean ter ’it it, but I was never good at shootin’, and when I tries ter ’it a thing I misses and when I tries ter miss a thing, I ’its, and so I ’it that cat. And I wancher ter know I’m sorry.’

In some things, if not many, Ben was an optimist, and he convinced himself that Sammy understood.