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  At this point both disputants realised, with embarrassment, that they were not alone.

  Standing quietly in the shadow, under one of the trees, was a tall figure in cape and helmet.

  ‘Good night,’ said Sue with tremendous emphasis.

  She stalked away up the road, and turned in at the white gate, visible at the far end. The gate swung shut with a click. The door opened, a light came on in the front room. Tim watched. The cloaked figure watched.

  ‘Turning cold,’ said Tim, at last.

  ‘Afraid it is, sir,’ said Constable Queen, stepping out on to the road. He was a big, blond, red-faced, serious young man.

  Tim pulled out a cigarette, lit it and, after a moment’s thought, offered one to Constable Queen, who took it, said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ in a noncommittal way, and put it away in his top pocket.

  ‘Nice and quiet round here.’

  ‘It certainly is, sir.’

  ‘You wouldn’t describe Brimberley as a hot-bed of crime.’

  Constable Queen laughed tolerantly. ‘Dogs without licences, and bicycles without lights,’ he said. ‘That’s our main excitement. Still and all, you never know.’

  ‘I hope you’re not expecting trouble.’

  ‘What I’ve found about trouble,’ said Constable Queen after a pause for thought, ‘is that you never do expect it – until after it’s happened – if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more,’ said Tim.

  The constable seemed to be in no hurry to move on. Probably he would smoke the cigarette as soon as he was alone.

  ‘Well, good night.’

  ‘Good night, sir.’

  Tim turned on his heel, and walked up to the corner. A right-hand turn would have taken him back along the main road, towards his mother’s house.

  He turned to the left and strode off into the darkness.

  II

  General Sir Hubert Palling, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., D.S.O., T.D., a member of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen at Arms, Colonel Commandant of the Deeside Light Infantry, and grandfather of Sue, was over eighty, but hardly looked more than sixty. He had kept his figure and his wits and had every intention of living to ninety or beyond.

  Longevity, in his view, belonged to a soldier as of right. There was no such thing as dying in middle age. You might die young, either in some operation of war or in one of those violent sports which are part of the preparation of an officer for war. Or you might survive this period of active service and still more active sport, in which case you were practically booked for a long and useful old age.

  Despite the honour of knighthood and the gold braid on his ceremonial uniform, General Palling kept no car and no full-time servant, inside or outside his house. He drank little, and smoked not at all. And whilst he weeded his own flower-beds or helped with the washing-up in the evening, or walked in the rain to the bus stop, he did sometimes chuckle to himself over the comforting thought that he still had his wind and his waistline; whilst his contemporaries and his juniors, more opulent and more sedentary, had long since gone to their account – at seventy – at sixty – at fifty.

  Why, good heavens, he had read in the papers of a business man of forty-five who had collapsed and died in his office, apparently as the result of walking up two flights of steps. At forty-five a man should be in the very prime of his life, ready to spend fifteen hours in the saddle and a night, in his greatcoat, under the stars.

  Naturally he never voiced these opinions, even to a close friend, like Liz Artside, in whose drawing-room he was at the moment sitting. It would have sounded like complacency. But the thought was there.

  Sad to say, as Mrs. Artside bustled in and out with her coffee making and the General sat perched in the wheel-back chair with padded arms beside the fire, they were bickering; about poetry.

  The General could see no good thing beyond Tennyson. Mrs. Artside had more catholic tastes.

  ‘Well, then, what about Columbus?’

  ‘Did he write something called Columbus? Move the atlas and I’ll put the tray on the table beside you.’

  ‘Were you at Salamanca? No? We fronted there the learning of all Spain. All their cosmogonies, their astronomies. Guesswork, they guessed it; but the golden guess is morning-star to the full round of truth! Isn’t that splendid. Browning and better.’

  ‘Browning and water.’

  ‘Trust a woman to be wise after the event. If I’d said it was Browning you’d have gone into ecstasies.’

  ‘I never go into ecstasies,’ said Mrs. Artside, standing a full coffee-pot carefully down on the Benares tray. ‘I agree that it sounds a little better than his usual drip. Birds in the high hall garden when twilight was falling, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud, Maud crying and calling.’

  ‘I like that too,’ said the General loyally, ‘but this is scientific, if you follow me. “The compass, like an old friend, false at last”. That’s terrifically true. Whenever you really get lost, the first thing you begin to blame is your compass. I remember once, in South Africa, leading a column of all arms. Don’t know why I was leading it. Probably the junior officer available – he usually got told off for that sort of job. I suddenly looked at my compass and—are you worried about something?’

  ‘No. Not really. Go on.’

  ‘Something on your mind. I’ll tell you the rest of that story another time. It’s rather a good one. What’s up?’

  ‘Lots of little things,’ said Mrs. Artside. ‘Tim, chiefly.’

  ‘Hmp,’ said the General. ‘Yes. Kittle cattle, grown-up sons.’

  One of the pleasures of talking to Liz Artside was that there was no need for suppression or reticence. He could talk to her about grown-up sons without the fearful suspicion that she was being sorry for him because he had lost both of his own. The elder had died in France, in 1917, on the eve of his 21st birthday; the younger, having lost his own wife, Sue’s mother, in an air-raid in 1940, had pulled sufficient strings to get himself sent to North Africa where he had gone to his account in the messy fighting round Medjz-el-Bab, accompanied by a satisfactory number of Germans. Sue had been six at the time.

  ‘What’s Tim up to now?’

  ‘That’s one of the things I’d like to know,’ said Mrs. Artside. ‘He goes up to London every day, but I’ve no more idea than the man in the moon what he does when he gets there.’

  ‘What’s his job?’

  ‘That’s just it, I don’t know.’

  The General looked surprised.

  ‘With a war record like his,’ he said at last, ‘I should have thought he ought to be able to step into almost any job.’

  ‘Do you really think that?’

  ‘Of course he ought.’

  ‘I mean, Hubert,’ said Mrs. Artside gently, ‘do you really mean that you think he had a good war record.’

  ‘Got two M.C.’s. What more do you want?’

  ‘You’re evading the question.’

  If the General had had enough spare blood in his arteries, he would have blushed. He managed to look ruffled.

  ‘What a damned sharp woman you are. Did I sound sarcastic?’

  ‘A little.’

  ‘I must watch out for it. One of my prejudices. As you get older you collect prejudices. Like barnacles. Yes. All right. I have always been opposed to the idea of a corps d’élite. Special terms of service and special pay. That sort of thing. Of course, you can’t prevent some men being braver than others. Like dogs. It’s biological. But you don’t want to segregate the brave men and dress them up. Bad for them, and bad for the rest of the Army as well. You want to keep them in the regiment. In the Peninsula,’ (the General spoke exactly as if it had been one of his earlier campaigns), ‘we had picked men in every regiment. Light Companies, we called them – men who could be trusted out on their own to hold a strong point or make up a forlorn hope. You’d band them together, you see, for a job like that. But after it was over they went back to their regiments.’

  ‘In short,’ said
Liz, ‘you don’t approve of Special Service Units.’

  ‘Nothing against them personally. Very good chaps. It’s the idea I don’t like. The hardest job in war is done by the Infantry holding the line. No way out of it. Mud and frost and trench mortars and trench feet—’

  ‘I don’t think this last war was quite like that.’

  ‘Bound to have been. All wars are like that if you’re in the Infantry. That’s why I don’t think it’s right to take men out of it, and give ‘em a lot of publicity and train ‘em up for – for bag-snatching expeditions behind the lines. Just a point of view.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ said Mrs. Artside, ‘that you object to the idea of Special Service because it cheapens the rest of the Infantry, or because it doesn’t achieve its object or because it’s bad for the men in it.’

  ‘That’s what I like about you, Liz,’ said the General. ‘You’re the only woman I know who thinks like a man. First and second reasons – not the third. I don’t think it turns ‘em into crooks.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for that. Have another cup of coffee. I’ll have to make some more for Bob anyway.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me Cleeve was coming.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure myself. You know what Bob’s like. He usually comes to collect Rupert on choir nights, if he isn’t too busy.’

  ‘He’s a worker,’ said the General. ‘Always had the reputation for it. Even in his Army days. I’m only sorry he won’t be performing for us much longer.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Nothing’s up. But he’s sixty-four. As soon as anyone tumbles to it – always supposing they’ve got someone capable of counting up to sixty-four – they’ll be looking round for a bright young nincompoop to take his place.’ The General paused to consider the peculiar ways of county councils, and then added, ‘extraordinary how he’s grown on everybody. You’ll hear ‘em all saying now that he’s the best bet the county’s ever had – and so he might be. But that wasn’t the tune when he was elected seven – eight – years ago.’

  ‘He’s been Chairman for nine years.’

  ‘Nine, is it? How time goes past.’

  ‘It wasn’t exactly a popular appointment, was it?’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t,’ said the General. ‘”No experience”. “Brainless army has-been”. “Jobs for the boys”. So much balderdash. If anyone had taken the trouble to look up his record, they might have saved themselves blowing off a lot of hot air they had to swallow back afterwards.’

  ‘I don’t see that anyone could call Bob exactly inexperienced,’ agreed Mrs. Artside. ‘After all, he had a top Q job in the Rhine Army at Cologne when he was only—let me see—he can’t have been more than twenty-nine. He was sharing a house with Tom and me when—’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  Again something was left unsaid.

  After a pause the General added, ‘I’d like to see some of his critics trying to do Q to an Army group.’

  ‘Then when he retired from the War Office – he was Deputy Chief Constable in Liverpool – and he did that security job for the Home Office in this last war.’

  ‘I know,’ said the General. ‘I know. But the fact is, poor old Bob looks almost too like a soldier, and that prejudices people.’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ said Liz, ‘his face is his misfortune. If he was brown, with a hatchet jaw – or white faced, with keen grey eyes – everyone would realise what a tremendous person he was. As it is, he blows out that silly moustache at you, gives you a popping look from his great button eyes, and says “Hrrrmph” – and how can you help thinking, blimp in person! Wasn’t that the bell? I have to answer my own door to-night. Anna’s at the cinema.’

  The General sat and listened. He heard the front door open, and Mrs. Artside’s voice, and a man’s voice in reply; and something about Rupert, and ‘Sam can look after him’, and then the drawing-room door opened and Liz came back, followed by the Chairman of the county council.

  ‘Evening, General. It’s turned cold, hasn’t it.’ Then to Liz. ‘If the car takes Rupert home and comes back, you’ll have to put up with me for an hour. Do you think you can stand it? I’m in need of decent company. I’ve been spending the last two hours with a lot of old women who call themselves a committee. Is that for me? Thank you very much.’

  Bob Cleeve accepted the armchair and the coffee cup; lowered himself into the former and lifted the latter to his lips; drank and put it down.

  ‘Hrrrmph,’ he said genially.

  Chapter Two

  ANDANTE

  Berowne:

  ‘And I, forsooth, in love,

  I that have been Love’s whip?

  A very beadle to a humorous sigh,

  A critic, nay, a night watch constable.’

  ‘In theory,’ said Cleeve, ‘only policemen should be made Chief Constables. After all, they know how the British police system works. They’ve been in it since boyhood. It no longer has power to annoy them. So they’re the obvious choice.’

  ‘Then why not choose them,’ said Liz.

  ‘It’s a sore point. Shortage of suitable candidates.’

  ‘No officer class,’ said the General.

  ‘It would depend on what you meant by officers. In one sense all policemen are officers—’

  ‘I always call a policeman “officer” when I don’t know what else to call him,’ agreed Liz. ‘If I see he’s got three stripes, then I promote him to sergeant.’

  ‘You know perfectly well what I mean by an officer,’ said the General crossly.

  ‘In our case,’ said Cleeve, ‘no question arises. We’ve got a good one, who happens to be a policeman. I had dinner with him this evening.’

  ‘Tom Pearce is all right,’ agreed the General. ‘Does he run you, or do you run him?’

  ‘It’s a moot point,’ said Cleeve. ‘As Chairman of the county council, I’m automatically head of the Standing Joint Committee, and in theory the Standing Joint Committee superintends the county police. Actually all we do is appoint a good Chief Constable and let him rip.’

  ‘And Tom is a good one?’ asked Liz.

  ‘Yes,’ said Cleeve simply. ‘I think so. He’s unusually co-operative, I should say. And he’s not above asking for advice. When he’s got anything really in his hair he comes round to a meal and talks about it.’

  ‘And what is it in his hair just now?’

  Cleeve looked startled. Liz said, ‘Deduction. You told us he came to dinner with you to-night.’

  ‘Our chief headache at the moment,’ said Cleeve solemnly, ‘is grocers.’

  ‘Grocers generally?’

  ‘Well, grocers who happen to be county councillors. He’s got a big shop in Bramshott. Mind you, I’ve nothing against grocers. I know some very nice ones. But this one’s a particularly—a particularly grocerish sort of grocer.’

  ‘He keeps a lady in a cage, most cruelly all day, and makes her count and calls her Miss, until she fades away,’ suggested Liz.

  ‘What? Yes, that sort of thing. Well, this one’s moving heaven and earth to get the police to divert the traffic out of the Market Square, down a side street, and back along South Street. A sort of one-way traffic system. Every time we meet he’s got a fresh reason for it. Overcrowding, parking offences, congestion of pavements. This time he’d managed to tie it up with immorality amongst shop assistants.’

  ‘He sounds a persistent type,’ said Liz. ‘I suppose he’s got some reason for it.’

  ‘Of course he’s got a reason. His shop’s in South Street. His chief rival’s in the Market Square.’

  ‘Why don’t you make it plain that you’ve spotted what he’s up to and tell him to go to the devil?’

  ‘My dear Liz! That comes of living all your life in nice clean Army circles. I’ve no doubt that Bill, rest his soul, would have upped and kicked him in the pants. But this is the age of democracy. You can’t kick grocers in the pants anymore.’

  ‘Bill was the most reasonable person who ever lived,�
�� said Liz.

  ‘Of course he was. That was what made him an autocrat. Real autocrats are always reasonable.’

  ‘What nonsense you do talk,’ said Liz dreamily. (It was the real test, she thought. If people who had known and liked Bill talked about him she felt warm and happy. There was no twinge of the old pain. If any other sort of people discussed him, she felt edgy straight away.)

  ‘—war’s to blame for most things,’ she heard the General saying.

  ‘Such as which things?’

  ‘Crime. Violence. Read in the papers the other day, two youths, armed with knuckledusters, attacked an old lady of seventy. Robbed her of her life’s savings. Over two hundred pounds in notes. Kept them under her mattress.’

  ‘I hold no brief for youths with knuckledusters,’ said Liz, ‘but I can’t help feeling that some of the trouble is caused by the old ladies themselves. Why must they keep their life’s savings under their mattresses? I keep mine in the bank.’

  ‘I don’t agree that there’s been such an increase in crime since the war,’ said Cleeve. ‘Immediately after, perhaps. Bit of disorganisation then. But we’ve got over that. It isn’t a case of more crime. It’s different crime.’

  ‘Advance of science.’

  ‘No. I didn’t quite mean that. Crooks get more scientific. So do the police. That cancels itself out. I meant fashions in crime. Before the war it was all gangs. Robbery and violence and intimidation. A sort of backwash from across the Atlantic.’

  ‘I’m glad gangs have gone out,’ said Liz. ‘I never really cared for gangs. What is it now?’

  Cleeve paused for a moment before answering, and looked unusually serious. ‘I should say,’ he said, ‘that it’s the age of the solitary criminal. The one-man army. I’m not talking about murder. Murder’s always a solitary job. I mean, real criminals. Blackmailers, burglars, forgers, receivers and larcenists of all sorts from men who blow safes to men who live on handfuls of coppers extracted from telephone boxes—’

  ‘And you mean,’ said Liz, ‘that all these people work on their own.’