It's Murder at St. Basket's (14 page)

I knew I ought to be able to do it. The English were pretty trusting, so it would be easier than in America. But to tell the truth, thinking about it made me nervous. The most I'd ever stolen back in the States was a pen set worth eighty-nine cents. I've never stolen anything big, because I'd never done it for the money, only to do something bad. The idea of stealing stuff worth ten or twenty dollars worried me. Because, of course, I'd have to sell it to somebody, and you'd only get half price or something for anything you stole.

It was too late to steal anything that night; the shops were mostly closed. So I went back to the waiting room in Victoria Station, and lay down on one of the benches there. I was a little
worried
about Jaggers. He could have called the police and given out my description, and said I was a runaway or something, but I didn't think he would—it was too risky for them to have the police come poking around. What worried me more was that they'd take David away from St. Basket's and hide him someplace else. Or just kill him and bury him. I just didn't know
what
they were liable to do.

I didn't have much luck sleeping. The lights were on, and people kept coming and going, and of course there were train noises and truck noises and so forth. I'd doze off and then wake up, and doze off again. There was a drinking fountain there, and every time I woke up I'd get some water, and that usually helped me go back to sleep again.

Finally it got to be morning. I felt sort of dirty and cramped in my muscles, but not too bad, considering. I went into the loo and washed my face and combed my hair with my fingers. When you're shoplifting, the main thing is not to look like a juvenile delinquent, but like any ordinary kid who could buy anything in the shop if he asked his mother for it. I had a cup of tea, too. I was pretty hungry, and I would have liked to buy a bun, but I figured I'd better save my money. It's funny how you could get to miss even that cold St. Basket's toast. Then I went over to the tube entrance, where they had a big map of London posted on the wall.

My plan was to head for a place called the Burlington Arcade. It's a little covered street for pedestrians only, running off Piccadilly, which is one of London's big shopping streets. The stores along the Burlington Arcade are small and fancy. You can get a lot of expensive stuff there—silverware and jewelry, and expensive sweaters and so forth.

I found it on the map. It seemed like about a half hour's walk from Victoria Station, so I set out. I walked past Buckingham Palace, where I'd seen the changing of the guard when my parents had brought me over in August, and through the Green Park and then along Piccadilly, and suddenly I was there.

Up till then I'd been pretty calm, but now that I had to actually do it, I began to get nervous. I turned into the arcade, and began to stroll slowly along, from time to time stopping to look in the windows, like any kid would do. There were a lot of things to choose from, all of them worth a lot of money. It was kind of nice strolling along there, clean and sort of cozy with the roof over the street, if I hadn't been so nervous. I went up one side of the street, and then down the other; and about halfway down I saw what I wanted—a cutlery store specializing in knives and binoculars and stuff like that. They had a whole row of Swiss Army jackknives in the
window,
going from little two-bladers up to big fat ones that had scissors and folding spoons and stuff like that, all red with little crosses in them, which is the symbol for Switzerland. The big ones cost over five pounds. I figured I could easily sell one for a couple of pounds, which would be enough to get me as far as Dover. Once I got there I figured I'd have some chance to sneak onto the boat. Sneaking on a boat was bound to be easier than sneaking onto a train, and once you were on it, they weren't going to stop and make you get off. The big thing was getting across the Channel. I could hitchhike to Paris if I had to.

But the first thing was the jackknife. It made me pretty nervous to think about stealing it. I wished I didn't have to do it.

But there wasn't any way out of it. I took a look inside the store through the window. It was pretty small, which was going to make it harder to swipe the knife. For shoplifting, you need a big store with lots of crowds around. There wasn't anybody in this store at all. I realized that I'd probably be better off at one of the big department stores like Harrod's, and I started to turn around and go away, when a customer went into the knife store. I knew it was now or never. He went over and said something to the clerk. I went in. The clerk looked at me, and went on talking to the customer. The knives were all lined up in the glass case. I stood there staring down at them. After a couple of minutes the customer went out, and the clerk walked over to me. Trying to act as natural as I could, I said, “How much are those knives? The big ones?” The English think that all American kids are spoiled and have lots of money. He'd know I was American by my voice, and he wouldn't think it was funny that I'd have lots of money to spend.

“Five pounds, tenpence,” he said.

“Could I see one, please?”

He took it out of the case, and handed it to me. I picked it up in my hand and held it. It was big and heavy and felt good, and I wanted it. If I ever got out of this, I decided, some day I'd buy one for myself to keep. The clerk stood there, drumming on the glass counter top with his fingers. I guess he figured even though I was a rich, spoiled American kid, I wasn't likely to buy a knife for five quid, and he wished I'd go away and stop wasting his time. I had to stall until some other customer came in and got his attention, so I began slowly opening the blades one at a time, looking them over carefully, and then shutting them up again. And I'd pretty nearly gotten down to the last blade, when a woman came in. The clerk went over to her. I twisted around a bit, so I was facing the door with my back to the clerk and the customer. I heard her ask
something
about some big shears they had on display. I edged toward the door, and took a casual look around at the clerk. He was bending over, getting something out of the case. I took two quick steps and I was out of the shop, the jackknife in my hand. But just as the door swung shut behind me I heard the clerk shout, “Oy, you!” and I began to run down the Burlington Arcade, jamming the jackknife in my pocket as I went.

CHAPTER
11

T
HEY CAUGHT ME
at the corner, where the Burlington Arcade runs into Piccadilly. If I'd had a little luck I might have gotten away; it's pretty hard to catch somebody running along a crowded street, especially in London, where once you get off the main avenues like Piccadilly, you're into little streets that wind around and have lots of turnings, like a maze; and if I'd had another couple of minutes I could have swung up into the back streets behind Piccadilly and easily got lost. But I didn't have any luck, because there was a bobby lounging along Piccadilly just as I tore out of the Burlington Arcade. He took one look at me running and the store clerk racing along behind, and he just shot out his hand and grabbed the back of my collar as I went by, and I came to a screaming halt.

Of course they found the jackknife first thing, so they took me to the police station, and made me sit down at a table, and then they asked me what my name was.

But I didn't dare tell them. If you're an American living in London for longer than three months you have to register with the police. They'd know I was American from the way I talked, and once they had my name, all they'd have to do was check the records, and find out I was from St. Basket's. The last thing I wanted was to go back there: Jaggers would kill me for sure. “I can't tell you, Sir.”

“American, is it?”

“Yes, Sir.” I planned to be as polite as I could.

“All right then, laddie, let's have the name.”

“I can't tell you, Sir.”

He shook his head wearily, reached across the table and grabbed at the front of my blazer. Of course I'd completely forgotten about that emblem. “St. Basket's School, is it? Shouldn't be hard to find you out, now should it, lad?”

But I still wouldn't tell them, because I didn't want them to call the school and say they'd found me. That would have Jaggers coming down for me. I figured I had a better chance of escape with the cops.

They put me in the police car and we started off through London toward Hampstead. I just sat there in the back with the policeman, staring out the windows, feeling as sick and scared as I'd ever been in my life. My face was covered with cold sweat and I kept feeling that I was
going
to throw up, even though I hadn't had anything to eat but that cup of tea. I didn't know what Jaggers and the Grimes would do with me, but at the least, Jaggers was going to beat the devil out of me, and not just with a birch, but with his fists. If they had to, I knew that they'd kill me. Once somebody's killed one person, they'll always kill another one to keep from getting caught.

I tried to make myself think of something, but I couldn't. When you're scared like that your mind just goes blank, and you can't put anything together. All that would come to me was to somehow convince the Grimes that I didn't know anything about David Choudhry or his brother, or if I did, that I wouldn't say anything. I thought maybe that if I begged and pleaded, maybe they would just put me on a plane for New York, and wire my father that I'd been expelled and to pick me up at Kennedy Airport. Maybe if they knew I was going to be in the States, they would figure I couldn't squeal. But in my heart I didn't know how I was going to convince them of that. So I just sat there, numb and scared, staring out at the people thronging along the street and praying that we'd have a car accident or anything that would stop us from getting closer and closer to Tanza Road.

And then suddenly something came to me from I don't know where in my brain, and I said, “Okay, I'll tell you. My name's Leslie Plainfìeld.”

“Blimey, now is it.”

“Yes, Sir. You can ring my father at his office and see. He works at Six Poultry Street.”

So they swung the car around and took me back to the station, and sat me back down at the same table. One of the bobbies went away and came back in about five minutes. “Yer guv'nor was just tickled pink when I told ‘im you've been ‘ad up for pinching pocketknives, laddie. ‘E's comin' round quick as ‘e can get ‘ere. You'll catch it ‘ot, I should judge by ‘is tone.”

So I waited and waited, and about a half hour later, Mr. Plainfìeld whipped into the room, and I stood up and said, “I'm sorry to be so much bother, Sir.”

“Quincy,” he said.

The bobby stepped forward. “This ‘ere yer lad, Sir?”

Mr. Plainfield stared at me for a moment. Then very slowly he nodded his head. “Yes, he's my boy.”

“‘Ated to trouble yer about it, Sir, but ‘e's pinched a pocketknife. If yer'll ‘ave a word with the sergeant I think ‘e might have a mind to overlook it this time.” Mr. Plainfield gave me a
tough
look; he wasn't very happy about any of it, but I was. Then he went into another room, and in a couple of minutes came out, and said, “We're off, then,” and we went out of the stationhouse and got into Mr. Plainfìeld's Mercedes. He started the motor and we drove off.

“All right, Christopher,” he said. “Let's have the tale.”

“Sir, I know you're still not going to believe this, but please, please, I'm begging you, can we go to your office and call up David Choudhry's father? It really is important, Sir, I'm not kidding you.”

I was almost crying, and he knew it, because of the way my voice was wobbling, and he said, more gently, “It's about David Choudhry's being ill, is it?”

“It's worse than that, Sir. They murdered his brother.”

He turned and stared at me quickly to see how crazy I looked, and then he looked back at the road. “All right, Christopher, we'll call Paris.”

It only took us ten minutes to get back to Mr. Plainfield's office. He got the switchboard operator to put the phone call through, and I sat there and waited. Oh boy, was I nervous—nervous that Mr. Choudhry wouldn't be there, or that he wouldn't believe me, or anything else. It seemed to take them hours to get the phone call through, although I guess it was only fifteen minutes. Finally Mr. Plainfìeld's phone rang, and the operator said she'd got Paris; and then Mr. Plainfield was talking.

“I say, I'm frightfully sorry to trouble you, but I've got a boy in my office named Christopher Quincy with some rather muddled story about your son David. I'm not quite in the picture, I'm afraid, but it's something about knowing where David's brother is. Am I making sense? Do you want to talk to him? Surely, I'll put him on.”

“Christopher,” Mr. Choudhry said, “what's happened?”

“David's really sick,” I said. “They've got him locked up in the old stable at St. Basket's. And I think he found out where his brother is bur—where he is.”

There was a silence. And then he said: “I'll charter a plane to London.”

So then he talked to Mr. Plainfìeld again, and we arranged to meet at 1:00 at South End Green. And at 12:45 Mr. Plainfìeld and I were parked in front of the Hampstead Classic in South End Green, and at 1:00 Mr. Choudhry drove up in a Rolls-Royce. Behind him were about six police cars. I got into one of the police cars, to show them where David was. The other cars drove off slowly, stationing themselves at various corners near the school, but out of sight, and I
guess
some of the bobbies went out on the Heath to cover that side, too, because I saw them there later. Then the one cop car with me in it drove up Tanza Road, with only Mr. Choudhry coming along behind. We pulled up at the school, and the cop and I got out. We'd hardly got through the front gate and onto the walk, when Miss Grime came out of the door.