The Moving Toyshop (24 page)

“Listen, Gervase, this is ridiculous. you’ve just proved he couldn’t have—”

“I wish you wouldn’t moan so,” said Fen in exasperation. “Sharman killed Emilia Tardy.
Sharman killed Emilia Tardy.”

“All right All right. You’ve just disproved it yourself. Don’t let that worry you.”

“Oh, my dear paws,” said Fen. “Of course you’re too unintelligent to see how it was done. Anyway, we must go now and meet Barnaby and his army at Sharman’s house. Sally, you’d better not come. Remember, the man’s killed two people already.”

“I’m coming,” Sally answered promptly.

Fen smiled at her. “Bring out the irons,” he said. 
“‘He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tiptoe when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispin
…’
No, perhaps not that exactly. Come along.”

George Sharman lived in Great King Street, which is a cheap residential road near Oxford Station. The house which he inhabited (along with a daily slut who came to cook his meals and make a pretence of cleaning) stood a little apart from the rest of the row, and boasted something in the way of a garden; if some barren rhododendron bushes, a great deal of rank grass, several cabbages, and two exuberant but unproductive apple-trees can be dignified with that name. It was small, and constructed of grey stone with a white facing at the front; on the wooden porch, green paint flaked and blistered. Its name was ‘The Haven’. The slut, after a day occupied mainly with drinking stout and reading a novelette in the sitting-room, returned to her own house at eight o’clock. So when Fen, Wilkes, Sally, and Mr. Hoskins encountered Mr. Barnaby at the end of the road, Mr. Sharman was presumably its only occupant.

Mr. Barnaby was full of bizarre strategies. He was holding a large street-map under a lamp and studying it intently but without much evident comprehension.

“They’re
all 
here, my dear Anthony,” he told Mr. Hoskins. “Quite fiery and aggressive with spirituous liquors. Positively
every
way of escape is guarded by some desperado of a Blue.”

“Of course, there’s every possibility that he’s gone already,” Fen said. “But I’m taking no chances. Wilkes, will you stay well in the background with Sally?” Wilkes, brandishing his umbrella, nodded, and Fen was so taken aback at this immediate acquiescence that he forgot for a moment what he was going to say. Then, pulling himself together: “Mr. Barnaby, you’ve got someone on the back gate?”

“Oh, but of
course.”

“Good. Mr. Hoskins, stay here and help Mr. Barnaby. Richard, the front gate’s yours. I shall go in and interview the gentleman, if he’s there.”

“Too like the
Somme,”
Mr. Barnaby murmured. “The Eve of Battle, by Burne-Jones.”

They all went, feeling a little foolish, to take up their positions. Rain was falling again, and the reflections of the street lamps gained intensity and precision on the wet black road. No one was about. A sound of muffled altercation from some way away suggested that Mr. Barnaby’s recruits were dissatisfied with some feature of the campaign. Cadogan stood by a telegraph pole, and putting his ear to it, listened to the singing of the wires. Analysing his feelings, he found that he was less excited than curious. After all, they had everything on their side.

Fen walked briskly up the short asphalt path which led to the door. Seeing a notice requiring him to knock and ring, he knocked and rang. He waited; knocked again; rang again; and eventually, receiving no answer, walked out of sight round the side of the house, where he might be presumed to be entering burglariously by a window. The rain increased in volume, and Cadogan turned up his coat collar. Mr. Barnaby could be heard discoursing to Mr. Hoskins on some subject unconnected with the present business. Two, three minutes went by without incident. And then, abruptly, the reverberation of a shot came from the house—a violent detonation accompanied by a sharp gash of flame in one of the darkened rooms. Immediately Fen’s voice was heard shouting, but the words were indistinct, and Cadogan, his muscles tight and his heart pounding, hesitated where to go and what to do. Finally he stumbled over the wet muddy lawn in the direction in which Fen had gone; that left the front gate unguarded, but along the road, in either direction, there were guards. Rounding the corner of the house, he was aware out of the corner of his eye of a dark figure slipping through the bushes on the other side, and gave a shout of warning. Almost simultaneously Fen dropped from a nearby window, cursing in several languages, and waved him back to his post.

“He’s out,” he announced rather obviously. “And he’s got a gun. The other side.” They ran back again, dipping and stumbling in the darkness. Someone in the house next door flung open the window and said: “Anything the matter?” but they ignored him, and by the time he had got on a hat and coat and arrived outside, almost everyone was gone.

Cadogan was never able to sort out the exact details of the fiasco which followed. It is to be remembered that Mr. Barnaby’s army was not wholly sober; that in the darkness it was not easy to distinguish friend from foe, with the result that Mr. Barnaby was set upon until his distinctive wails revealed the mistake; and that everyone, under the erroneous impression that the quarry was in sight, deserted his post at the crucial moment and joined in a fruitless general beating to and fro. It was soon apparent that Sharman had made his way through a gap in the fence at the back of the garden into an alley beyond; and Fen, unbelievably enraged, sent two under­graduates back to the house in case they were mistaken, dispatched Mr. Barnaby (now plaintive with physical injury) and the rest in the direction of the station, and himself, with Cadogan, Mr. Hoskins, Sally, and Wilkes, set off along the only other possible escape route, the road which leads out to the suburb of Botley.

“He wanted to create a diversion,” said Fen, “and, by God, he succeeded. Put not your trust in princes, etcetera… Keep an eye out on either side, everyone, and for God’s sake remember he’s 
armed
…
”
He subsided into a sort of dull complaining, very distressing to listen to.

“Unless he’s quite mad he won’t have gone to the station,” Cadogan ventured.

“No,” said Fen, a little mollified. That’s why I sent the others there. They’re so tight they couldn’t corner a tortoise in a rabbit-hutch… Sally, I really think you ought to go back.”

“Me? No fear. Anyway, I’ve got Dr. Wilkes to look after me.”

“You see?” said Wilkes complacently.

“The vanity of the old,” said Fen. “I suppose you realize, Wilkes, that you ought to be ending your life in ripe contemptation, and not gadding about protecting young girls?”

“You unchivalrous hound,” said Wilkes, and this so abashed Fen that for a short while he was quite silent.

This road, unlike Great King Street, was a busy one, and at several points they had difficulty in forcing their way through the ambuscades of damp umbrellas. The brightly-lighted buses, their radiators steaming beneath the rain, lumbered by. The gutters gurgled and streamed with water. A policeman, caped and imperious, stood at a crossroads directing traffic, but of Mr. Sharman there was no visible sign.

“Oh, damn,” said Fen. We’re never going to find him, you know. He may have gone in anywhere. God rot Barnaby and his minions for making a mess of things.”

But Sally was taking matters into her own hands. She ran into the road, narrowly missing a taxi on the way, and approached the policeman.

“Hullo, Bob,” she said.

“Why, ’ullo, Sally,” he answered. “Gawd, what a night. You oughtn’t ter talk ter me when I’m on point duty, yer know.”

“I’m looking for a man, Bob.”

“When weren’t yer?” said Bob, winking. He beckoned a lorry across.

“Oh, funny, aren’t you?” said Sally. “No, really, Bob, this is serious. He must have come up here. Weedy, undersized chap, with rabbity teeth; very muffled up.”

“Ah, yes, I saw ’im, not more’n a minute ago. ’E was nearly crushed to a pudding, crossin’ against signals.”

“Where did he go?”

“Into the flicks,” said Bob, jerking his head in the appropriate direction. “’Ardly your type, though, I should ’ave thought.”

But Sally was by this time returning to the others, flushed and victorious. “He’s gone into the Colossal,” she told them.

“Good for you,” said Fen. “It’s nice to know there’s someone in this party besides me who’s got a little
nous.”
He glared malevolently at Wilkes. “Well, come on.”

The Colossal (which lay less than a hundred yards ahead of them) is one of the smallest and most disreputable cinemas ever contrived. It is also, from the mechanical aspect, primitive to the point of seeming the first successful experiment of the cinematograph’s inventor. The usherettes are listless and the commissionaire old, confused, and prone to organize small, unnecessary queues of patrons when any number of seats are available. Very ancient films are shown, liable to every ill that celluloid is heir to, from incessant crackling through to total dislocation, and matters are not improved by an operator who, apart from being constantly intoxicated, seems only imperfectly acquainted with the mechanics of his craft. The Colossal is also a great haunt of couples in an advanced condition of amorous delight, and is frequented by the rowdiest section of under­graduates for the sheer joy of seeing things go wrong.

Outside the doors Fen marshalled his forces. “There’s no point in all of us going in,” he said. “And someone ought to keep an eye on this exit and the one round the comer. I hope he hasn’t gone in and come out again already, but we’ll have to risk that. Richard, and you, Mr. Hoskins, will you stay outside?”

He went in, accompanied by Sally and Wilkes, to buy the tickets. The commissionaire tried to make them queue, but they brushed him aside. Fortunately, the Colossal has no gallery, so there was no chance of their looking for Sharman in the wrong quarter.

Someone tore their tickets in two, and having performed this simple but destructive act, relapsed into apathy as they pushed through the swing-doors into a warm, vibrating darkness. The screen was for the moment occupied by the image of a door, which was slowly opening to admit the muzzle of a revolver, and this was immediately followed by the spectacle of a white-haired man writing at a desk. Invisible violins played a whole-tone chord,
tremolo,
in a high register, while muted trombones grunted in a diseased but foreboding manner underneath. This music rose to a violent
fortissimo
and was terminated abruptly by an explosion, at which the white-haired man fell forward on to his desk, his pen dropping from a nerveless hand. (“Dead,” said Fen sepulchrally.) At this crisis of affairs, however, they were diverted from attending to what subsequently occurred by being ushered to their seats.

The cinema was not very full. Immediately in front of them was a solid block of under­graduates, but the rest of the seats were sparsely occupied. Near them, a young woman who was showing a surprising length of leg lay stickily clutched in the embraces of a young man, apparently insensible to the alarming events being enacted for her benefit. Someone was asleep in the row in front. Even with nothing more than the illumination from the screen and from the small yellow lights at the side to help them, it should not be insuperably difficult to locate Mr. Sharman.

“Pa was a nice guy,” said the film. “Who’d want to kill him?”

Fen got up and meandered down the gangway. An usherette, anxious to be helpful, approached and indicated to him the whereabouts of the gentlemen’s lavatory. He ignored her and continued peering about him.

“OK, boys,” said the film. “Take him to the morgue. Now, Mrs. Hargben, do you know of anyone who had reason to dislike your husband?”

Fen was getting in the way of the people at the side. One man got up and said: “’Ere, sit darn, matey.” “Sit down yourself,” said someone else behind him. Fen ignored them both and returned to Sally and Wilkes. “I shall have to try the other side,” he told them.

“Right. Now we’ll see the Clancy dame,” said the film. “It’s a nasty business, chief. I don’t like it.” Two detectives were wiped off the screen and the hero and heroine, glueily kissing, substituted. There followed without pause a rocky prospect across which a number of cowboys were galloping, firing dementedly at some person or persons in front of them.

“Wrong reel!” sang the undergraduates delightfully. “Osbert’s drunk again!”

At this the screen (perhaps in sympathy) suffered a severe attack of delirium tremens, and finally went completely black, leaving the cinema in almost total darkness.

“Damn,” said Fen.

The under­graduates were rising in a body, forcibly expressing their intention of putting Osbert’s head in a bucket. Some of them actually rushed out at the back. The manager, a short, pudgy man in evening dress, appeared in front of the screen, bathed in an ill-chosen red spotlight which made him look like a vampire newly engorged with blood, and pleaded without much optimism for patience.

“A slight technical hitch,” he panted at them. “It will be remedied immediately. Keep your seats, ladies and gentlemen. Keep your seats, please.” But no one took the least notice of him. From the operator’s box came a sound of scuffling and yells.

“Keep your seats,” the manager repeated in futile desperation.

Fen, Wilkes, and Sally were all on their feet “We’re going to lose him in this mess,” said Fen. “Come on, we’d better get outside. If he saw us come in, he’s pretty certain to take this opportunity.” They pushed their way out. As they went, the film was suddenly superimposed on top of the manager, giving him a curiously spectral appearance.

“Listen, honey,” it said. “If they ask where you were last night, don’t say anything. It’s a frame, see?”

But outside the main doors there was nothing but the girl in the pay-box, the large and melancholy form of Mr. Hoskins, and the commissionaire, fingering his medals for want of better occupation.

“What’s happening?” asked Mr. Hoskins. “I heard an awful uproar.” He brushed the rain-water from his hair, which was now soaking.