Copyright & Information

Fear To Tread

First published in 1953

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Michael Gilbert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
0755105109	9780755105106	Print
0755131894	9780755131891	Kindle
0755132262	9780755132263	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Born in Lincolnshire, England, Michael Francis Gilbert graduated in law from the University of London in 1937, shortly after which he first spent some time teaching at a prep-school which was followed by six years serving with the Royal Horse Artillery. During World War II he was captured following service in North Africa and Italy, and his prisoner-of-war experiences later leading to the writing of the acclaimed novel ‘Death in Captivity’ in 1952.

After the war, Gilbert worked as a solicitor in London, but his writing continued throughout his legal career and in addition to novels he wrote stage plays and scripts for radio and television. He is, however, best remembered for his novels, which have been described as witty and meticulously-plotted espionage and police procedural thrillers, but which exemplify realism.

HRF Keating stated that ‘Smallbone Deceased’ was amongst the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. “The plot,” wrote Keating, “is in every way as good as those of Agatha Christie at her best: as neatly dovetailed, as inherently complex yet retaining a decent credibility, and as full of cunningly-suggested red herrings.” It featured Chief Inspector Hazlerigg, who went on to appear in later novels and short stories, and another series was built around Patrick Petrella, a London based police constable (later promoted) who was fluent in four languages and had a love for both poetry and fine wine. Other memorable characters around which Gilbert built stories included Calder and Behrens. They are elderly but quite amiable agents, who are nonetheless ruthless and prepared to take on tasks too much at the dirty end of the business for their younger colleagues. They are brought out of retirement periodically upon receiving a bank statement containing a code.

Much of Michael Gilbert’s writing was done on the train as he travelled from home to his office in London: “I always take a latish train to work,” he explained in 1980, “and, of course, I go first class. I have no trouble in writing because I prepare a thorough synopsis beforehand.”. After retirement from the law, however, he nevertheless continued and also reviewed for ‘The Daily Telegraph’, as well as editing ‘The Oxford Book of Legal Anecdotes’.

Gilbert was appointed CBE in 1980. Generally regarded as ‘one of the elder statesmen of the British crime writing fraternity, he was a founder-member of the British Crime Writers’ Association and in 1988 he was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, before receiving the Lifetime ‘Anthony’ Achievement award at the 1990 Boucheron in London.

Michael Gilbert died in 2006, aged ninety three, and was survived by his wife and their two sons and five daughters.

Quote

“It may also be true that there have been changes for the worse in the national attitude to wrong-doing and that a man who steals does not incur the same measure of public reprobation which he would have done in the past . . .”

SOUTH OF THE RIVER. AN UNCALCULATED INSPIRATION

When Wilfred Wetherall learned that the boys called him “Wellington” Wetherall he was not displeased. He was an admirer of the Duke, and he had no doubt that it was his references to this hero in the course of his history lessons that had planted the idea. A headmaster had to have a nickname. It could have been a good deal worse.

There were physical resemblances, too, in the bony structure of his face, the jut of his nose, the spare frame and forward bending carriage. It finished there. Nobody, not even Wetherall himself, imagined that he had the Wellingtonian character, useful though it would have been in the daily difficulties which beset the headmaster of an understaffed, over-populated secondary school for boys in the south-east of London.

The room in which he was sitting did not much resemble the traditional headmaster’s study. It was almost without adornment. The walls were painted (as were the walls throughout the school), the bottom half in pastel green, the top half in primrose, with a horizontal dividing band of dark green. These were the colours which the consultant psychologist to the School Planning Committee, had stated to be most conducive to study and relaxation. After six years’ practice, Mr. Wetherall found himself able to ignore their message. The floor was covered with dark linoleum. The furniture and fittings were those of a managing director who did not believe in frills.

The modern, iron-framed windows looked bleakly north and east; but there was compensation for this in the skyline of distant masts and cranes where the river swung south, into Lime-house Reach.

Mr. Wetherall replaced on the table a letter he had been reading, and sighed. It was a thing he often found himself doing. The letter was from a Mr. Turvey who considered (with an optimism which, in Mr. Wetherall’s view, bordered on lunacy) that his son might have a chance of a university scholarship.

They were swing doors which, in the first innocent youth of his associations with the school board, he had managed to get installed to cut off the end of the passage and so afford a little privacy to his study and the administration office on the other side of the corridor.

“I won’t sit down,” said Mr. Croke, “because I shan’t be a minute. It’s Mr. Barlow.”

“I can’t find it in me to blame him,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I have never been able to see the faintest glimmerings of sense in it myself.”

“Why not tell him that as the atom has been split once already it is most unlikely to be split again in our lifetime. Then if that doesn’t work I’ll have a word with him.”

“It would be useless, I suppose, trying to persuade him that the differential calculus has no connection whatever with nuclear physics?”

Mr. Wetherall resumed his contemplation of the skyline. There was something romantic, he thought, about masts along a tideway.

Miss Donovan came in from the administration office across the passage. It should perhaps be made clear that the administration office was an even smaller room than Mr. Wetherall’s study and had been originally designed – the matter was uncertain – either as a very small extra staff-room or a very large cloak-room. Miss Donovan was simply Peggy; who was the sister of Sammy and of Patsy Donovan, and who Mr. Wetherall had known, on and off, since she was a slum child of five. She was now seventeen and looked neat, competent and twenty.

“What’s wrong with the return?” Mr. Wetherall was cautious. He knew the power of returns. “Have we shown more milk than we drank, or drunk more milk than we showed – incidentally that’s rather a good example of the difference between the aorist and perfect tense, isn’t it.” Mr. Wetherall made a note for his grammar class.

“Adjustment. But now they want them showed – shown, I mean – in two separate lots. ‘Milk served’ and ‘Milk drunk’.”

“What the devil,” said Mr. Wetherall, “do they think we do with it? Throw it at each other.”

“Show the totals as the same in both headings. If they don’t like it, it’s up to them to object. If they object perhaps we shall see what they’re getting at.”

“I’d like to see them. Schools Area Finals. That’s tomorrow afternoon, isn’t it. Where’s it to be this time?”

“That’s that rather dim place north of the Elephant, isn’t it?” Mr. Wetherall made another note on his desk pad. “Is Sammy still in?”

“He surely is,” said Miss Donovan. “Seven and under. He had to sweat off four ounces to make the weight.”

“Who—oh, Mrs. Ambler. How are you? Your husband—I’m sorry to hear that. Laryngitis? He does seem to have bad luck, doesn’t he? No, of course he can’t turn up if he’s feeling bad. I’ll manage somehow.”

“Though why,” he added, having rung off, “these things always happen to Mr. Ambler on Tuesday morning is more than I can make out. I suppose I’ll have to take his class myself. I really couldn’t know less about it.”

He became aware that Miss Donovan was still with him. “Is there anything else, Peggy?”

“Hullo, what’s this?” He came out of the clouds with a jerk. A thing to do with boys could be important.

“He’s been in trouble with you lately, I know, Mr. Wetherall. But it isn’t really his fault. It’s that new master. He was quite all right with Mr. Rollinson, but—”

“Look here,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I can’t have this special pleading. If Sammy gets sent up for anything, I shall hear about it from him. Besides I haven’t seen him here for some time.”

Left to himself Mr. Wetherall picked up his pen, started to write such a letter as would deflate, without irritating Mr. Turvey, then put his pen down again and looked out of the window.

It was a boy of fifteen. The hair which might, in Miss Donovan, have been described, at a pinch, as auburn was here unblushing carrot.

It should be explained that (unlike our great public schools in which, having paid a great deal more money, a boy is privileged to be beaten by almost anybody older than himself) in most state schools, the headmaster enjoys a monopoly of this form of punishment. If a form-master wished for a boy to be so dealt with he entered his name and offence in a book and sent the boy with the book to the headmaster; who attended to the matter and recorded the result in a further column. These rather incongruous civil service trappings did nothing to allay Mr. Wetherall’s distaste for the barbaric rite which followed.

“Well, sir,” Donovan charged his lungs with a deep breath, “Mr. Pelley said something wasn’t cricket and someone asked him what it meant and he said that cricket was the most important game in a school and if you said a thing wasn’t cricket you meant that it wasn’t done and I said cricket wasn’t the most important game in this school by half boxing was and he said that in any decent school cricket was the game that mattered and I said well cricket’s a cissy game what’s the good of being able to play cricket if a chap came up in the street and tried to take your girlfriend away and then,” concluded the narrator putting his finger unerringly on the real heart of the offence, “people laughed.”

“I see,” said Mr. Wetherall. (Curse Pelley and his old school tie). “It doesn’t seem perhaps a very serious offence” (got to back the man up all the same, very young) “but it was certainly impertinent. I think, in the circumstances, I’m going to set you enough work to keep you busy after school, during sport time. Tomorrow’s a games day—”

“What—oh, it’s the boxing tomorrow, isn’t it?” Considering the nature of the offence, it would have been very fitting to deprive the boy of his boxing, but he knew himself to be incapable of such chilly logic. “Very well, on Thursday then.” He made a note in the book. He was quite aware that he was being weak. “And look here,” he said. “I don’t want any more of this. You’re coming up here a lot too much. You’re growing up now. You’ve got to think before you say silly things. Next time you’ll get hurt—”

It was a warm October day and even the brick and mortar of S.E.17 responded grudgingly to the ancient magic. The South Borough Secondary School for Boys is in the middle of the quadrilateral formed by the Old Kent Road, the New Kent Road, the Camberwell Road and Peckham High Street. It is a square half-mile which is almost indescribable because it lacks the first element of description, which is character. It is made up of two or three hundred streets of uninspiring houses; seven churches and twenty-seven chapels; two very small open spaces, created by some bygone town planning enthusiasm and a dozen larger ones opened up by the German Air Force, but even these are subdued to the general pattern of uneasy neatness; the rubble is stamped flat, the yellow bricks are piled into neat heaps. It is an area which lies in the middle of things greater than itself but takes nothing from them. The Old Vic Theatre on the north, the Oval cricket ground on the west, the roaring goods yards of Bricklayers Arms and Crossways and the passenger stations at Waterloo and London Bridge. In this depressing arena, the only arteries of life are the High Streets, where the blood flows red from chain store to chain store; where the social centre is the butcher’s queue and the spiritual temple is the Gaudeon Super Cinema. Away from the High Street the splashes of colour are pubs, late and lonely flowerings in reds and greens and golds.

Mr. Wetherall made his way to the Old Kent Road and boarded a No. 53 bus, going south. Twenty minutes later he got off at the stop after Deptford Broadway. He was on the fringes of Blackheath. Not Blackheath proper, which lies at the top of the hill, around the open space, but near enough to it to put it on his note-paper. Postally Brinkman Road was in Blackheath, if spiritually in Deptford.

The Wetheralls leased the top floor of No. 20. The house, which had suffered sub-division in the thirties, was owned by a doctor, and though he was twenty years retired from active practice, a faintly antiseptic smell still clung to the lower floors. Above the doctor lived two Japanese. Above the Japanese, the Wetheralls.

Immediately Mr. Wetherall got home, he knew that something was amiss. Alice Wetherall was in the kitchen, her hands folded and her lips pursed.

“It’s too bad,” she said. “Major Francis’ food parcel hasn’t arrived.”

“You know how regular he’s been. When it was a week late I began to wonder. I wrote to the railway on Friday. This came this morning.”

It was hardly a letter. A printed memorandum. “Unable to trace the package in question – was there any proof of posting? Admit no responsibility.”

“It doesn’t look very helpful,” admitted Mr. Wetherall. “I might ask Major Francis next time I write. It’s rather awkward, though. Supposing he had decided not—”

“By those railways. Didn’t you see that bit in the paper last Sunday. No. It was the Sunday before. About all the parcels they were losing. Food parcels chiefly, and cigarettes. Why should they be allowed to? What do we—what do we pay our fares for?”

“Never mind,” he said. “I expect we can manage. We’ll have a meal or two out for a change. Why don’t we go to Luigi’s tonight?”

“Now don’t you fuss,” said Mrs. Wetherall, more cheerfully. She had, of course, been fussing herself, but like most women, found instant solace if she could accuse someone else of it. “It’s the principle of the thing that upset me. It’s our parcel. Why should they be allowed to steal it? Can’t we do anything about it, now they’re nationalised?”

Instead of attempting to unravel this tangled piece of logic, Mr. Wetherall said he would ring the police immediately after lunch.

He knew that he was not at his best on the telephone. He was very slightly deaf, and was apt to get flustered. The sergeant in charge of the station was plainly neutral. He was not obstructive, nor was he helpful. He took particulars. He spelt Mr. Wetherall’s name wrong, then got it right, then got the address wrong. He, also, wanted to know if there was any proof that the parcel had been dispatched, and when Mr. Wetherall had to admit that there was not, he lost most of his remaining interest. He said he would do what he could. He added that he was afraid there was a lot of pilfering on the railways.

When Mr. Wetherall was on the point of leaving the house (it would, in many ways, have been easier to have his lunch at a restaurant near the school, but with his wife in her present condition he liked to get back as often as he could) he remembered their plans for the evening.

“I’d better meet you at Luigi’s,” he said. “I’ll have to go straight there. Ambler’s ill again, and I’ve got to take his drawing-class this afternoon. That’ll mean putting off my specials until after tea, so I shall be late anyway. I’ll see you there at seven.”

“Why,” said Mr. Wetherall, surprised. “We’ve always liked the food there so much. Do you want something a bit more classy?”

“Silly,” said his wife. “It’s only that I heard the other day – I think it was Mrs. Ormerod. She was saying that Mrs. Lewis told her – something about the food not being quite clean.”

“I’d rather believe my own eyes,” said Mr. Wetherall mildly, “than something Mrs. Ormerod said to Mrs. Lewis.”

“Luigi’s let it be, then. If you observe so much as a single cockroach in the minestrone, we can always go on somewhere else.”

III

There are people who cannot draw. Mr. Wetherall was one of them. In a way this was odd, because he had a good appreciation of line and an eye for the beauty in unlikely places. It was his execution which was hopeless. He often wished that the training he had received, a scrupulously careful training which had covered every conceivable subject from Bible study to eurythmics, had dealt with this important matter. For he was convinced that it was important. For one thing, the boys enjoyed it, and that was half the battle in any school subject. Futhermore he was certain, in an instinctive way, that it did them good.

His usual solution to the problem was to announce that the hour would be devoted to free inspiration, then to allot a suitable subject – (the choice was not easy. He still remembered some of the unfortunate results when he had asked the senior class to exercise its imagination on the subject of a Pig in a Poke) – and leave them to it.

That afternoon, after some thought, he selected “A Street Accident” and retired to the master’s desk to correct history papers.

For half an hour there was silence, broken only by some hard breathing, the scrape of feet, and the squeak of pencils. Red crayon seemed to be in demand. At the end of this time Mr. Wetherall climbed to his feet and toured the class-room to give an interim judgement on the results.

In the back row, somewhat to his surprise, he found a boy with an untouched sheet of drawing paper in front of him. It was Crowdy, a quiet creature, whom he liked; according to Mr. Ambler, something of an artist.

“I was just wondering, sir,” said Crowdy, with a blush, “what a car would look like upside-down.”

Crowdy looked up with faint scorn and said: “I didn’t mean resting on its back, sir. I meant the moment it hit the road, after being turned over. Why, the wheels might still be spinning – like this.”

He picked up the pencil and quickly drew four or five lines. Thinking it over afterwards, Mr. Wetherall was prepared to swear that it was not more than five. And in front of his eyes an accident was born. He could see at once what must have happened. The car, cornering too fast on a greasy road, had turned, first on to its side and then right over. He could see by the crumpling of the coachwork and the distortion of the body how powerful the impact must have been. The drawing was foreshortened and the nearest wheel, unnaturally large, was spinning; it was actually spinning in front of Mr. Wetherall’s eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I see what you mean. I should go on with that. It looks very promising.”

He walked back to his desk aware that, in a small way, the thing might have happened which every schoolmaster dreams will happen to him. That he may be privileged to act midwife at the birth of genius; to watch the infant Keats scratching his fingers through his hair and his nib through his first halting sonnet; to listen to the stubby, chilblain-covered fingers of the young Beethoven stumbling along the octave. It is the most intoxicating thought a schoolmaster can have. Mr. Wetherall felt partially intoxicated as he went back to his desk.

He made one more round, towards the end of the hour, and commended several of the more dashing efforts. They were none of them lacking in incident. In one a fire brigade had become involved with a squadron of tanks. In another a lady had been cut completely in two. Crowdy had blocked in a little background, but had done nothing much else to his sketch. It was entirely in hard pencil, in line, with no shading at all.

“Cleanly sir, you went to the heart of the matter,” he found himself saying as he collected the drawings and dismissed the class.

It was a poem by James Kirkup in some paper or literary magazine. Mr. Wetherall had a good visual memory, if he cared to use it. Sometimes for a bet, he would read once, and then repeat, a whole paragraph of prose. More often it was scraps of verse that stayed in his mind.

That was right. That was absolutely right. No hesitation. No fumbling. “An uncalculated inspiration.” Come to think of it the poem was not really about drawing. It was a description of a famous surgeon, in the theatre, performing a difficult operation. But the simile was just. As Mr. Wetherall looked at the clean lines of the sketch he felt an inner certainty that the hand which had drawn them must one day claim recognition.

Then his practical sense asserted itself. Crowdy would be sixteen at the end of the summer. The next step was therefore important. After some thought and a hunt through a well-used address book, Mr. Wetherall took up his pen and wrote:

“I’ve got a boy here who looks as if he might be useful to you. I’m no art expert, as you know, but he draws a neat, clean line and has lots of self-confidence. He’s leaving here in July. Would your people like to take him on? The only thing is, I’m afraid there’s no question of apprenticeship. His family have got no money at all, so he’ll have to be paid something, even when he’s learning. I expect he can run errands and pour out the tea. How’s Wright getting on? Best wishes to your wife and family.”

The letter was addressed to the Managing Director of Lithography and Artists Services Ltd. It was on occasions such as this that Mr. Wetherall, who was an inverted snob of a not uncommon type, was thankful that he had been at Oxford and had made, and kept, a few useful friends.

After tea, which was brought in by Miss Donovan – her heart was kind, but her taste in pastries was more flamboyant than Mr. Wetherall’s – and after dealing with the not unjustified complaints of Mr. Edgecumb that the Examination Sub-Committee had introduced Elementary Physics into the curriculum whilst the Finance Sub-Committee had allowed no expenditure of any sort on equipment, and after devoting an hour to the special coaching of four candidates for future University Scholarships, and after reading and signing fifteen papers produced by Miss Donovan, Mr. Wetherall sat back in his chair, looked at the clock which now said half-past six, and sighed once more.

He was wondering, and not for the first time, whether he was really suited to his job. He liked boys. He enjoyed teaching, particularly the teaching of the less precise subjects, like history and English. On the other hand he found the routine of administration and management increasingly distasteful. Committees terrified him.

Having allowed plenty of time, he naturally picked up a bus at once, and arrived at Deptford Broadway with ten minutes to spare. All its lights were blazing, but Luigi’s had a deserted look, and when he got inside he saw that only one of the tables was occupied by a depressed-looking couple who were talking in whispers. Three months before, at that hour, the place would have been crowded.

Mr. Wetherall sat down at his usual table, opposite the service door, and picked up the handwritten menu. So far as he could judge the food was as varied and attractive as ever. At that moment Luigi came through the door. His name, actually, was Castelbonato but the South Bank called him Luigi on the same principle that led them to call all German waiters Fritz and all French hairdressers Alphonse. His family had been in England for two generations. His turn of phrase was still apt to be foreign, particularly when he was excited, but his accent was purest cockney.

“What’s up, Luigi? Have you been frightening the customers away?” Then he saw the look on the little man’s face and felt sorry for him.

The couple at the other table signalled their bill. Luigi went over to them. When he came back he did a thing he had never done before and which, in a trained restaurateur, gave a little indication of how upset he was. He sat down in the chair opposite Mr. Wetherall.

“You can have what you like,” he said. “Chicken – duck – I’m shutting up tomorrow.”

“No customers.” Luigi waved his hand round the empty room. The bright lights. The clean cloths. The fresh flowers.

“They bin saying my food’s dirty. They bin coming along here making a fuss. Fortnight ago they come along and find a dead beetle in my ravioli. In my ravioli. Who would be likely to put such filth in, I ask you, them or me? They throw it in my face. A whole plateful—”

“Do not ask who. Ask why. I’m tell you. I used to take food from them. There’s no secret. Bacon and sugar. All took it, you understand. I wasn’t the only one. If we couldn’t get it other place, we had to get it from them. Then I wanted to stop, you understand?”

“They asked too much. Bacon and sugar and butter and tinned meat are good, but they are not good at five and six, six and seven shillings a pound. You can reckon it up for yourself, Mr. Wetherall, you know what I charge. In the West End, perhaps. That’s West End prices. Not here. So I said I must stop. Then they warned me—”

Luigi suddenly cut off the torrent of his speech, and Mr. Wetherall at last got the chance to say: “Who are these people you’re talking about, Luigi?”

Luigi was not listening. He had his head half turned, and in the silence that followed they both heard, beyond the service door, the outer door of the kitchen open and shut softly.

At that moment Mrs. Wetherall arrived, five minutes late and full of insincere apologies.

They had, as Luigi had promised, an excellent dinner, but Mr. Wetherall did not find himself enjoying it.

SOUTH OF THE RIVER. THE USES OF LITHOGRAPHY

Next morning Mr. Wetherall asked Miss Donovan for her elder brother’s address.

He was on the point of expressing his surprise when his experience of the South Bank and its problems checked him. There could be reasons why Patsy Donovan and his young wife would have given up their house and gone back to live with one or other of their families; but Peggy might not want to discuss them.

Patsy was a detective-sergeant, attached for C.I.D. duties to Borough Police Station. Mr. Wetherall had known him, as a boy, in the mid ‘thirties, at the Battersea School at which he had been teaching. Battersea had been Mr. Wetherall’s first impact with the light-hearted, tough-minded, precocious young male who hangs out south of the river. When the wheels of circumstance had brought Mr. Wetherall to the South Borough Secondary School and Sergeant Donovan to the Borough Police Station they had improved this acquaintanceship. More than once they had been able to be useful to one another. It was nearly a year since they had last had occasion to meet.

“He’ll be asleep right now,” said Peggy. “He’ll be up by eleven. Should I ask him to come round—?”

As Peggy was on her way out she stopped for a moment at the door and said: “It’s some time since you seen Patsy last, isn’t it?”

“A doctor once told me that you change your blood and your character completely every seven years.”

“There now!” said Miss Donovan. “I’d better fetch you those milk returns and you can sign them up before you go.”

The Donovan house was one in a row of the oldest houses in the district, a miracle of eroded brick, decaying wood and blackened stone, a sepulchre, whitened daily by the power of Mrs. Donovan’s arm. Mr. Wetherall went round to the back and found the sergeant at breakfast in the kitchen. He was alone in the house, for his mother, though over sixty, still went out to do a morning’s work at a block of offices near the Elephant, and Mr. Donovan had long ago drunk himself into an expensive grave.

Mr. Wetherall got his first shock when Sergeant Donovan spoke, and another when he got up and the light fell on his face.

The voice was hard. The red-headed boy and the big, well-made, pleasant young man had both gone. In their place was this heavy, and somehow rather dangerous-looking person.

Mr. Wetherall was playing for time. He was wondering whether the new Sergeant Donovan could help him. Might it be better to temporise – something about Sammy or Peggy – anything would do. He was aware that the sergeant was looking at him steadily over his tea-cup.

In the end he said: “I came across something last night that I didn’t much like. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, but I felt it might help if I passed it on. It was at Luigi’s—”

It was difficult to say if Sergeant Donovan was interested or not. He sat very still whilst Mr. Wetherall was talking and at the end he said:

“Your idea about this, is it that someone’s been starting a whisper about Luigi’s food?”

“Anyone whose restaurant does bad, Mr. Wetherall, could think up a story like that. It’d be a sort of excuse, wouldn’t it?”

“But he said they actually came and pretended to find insects and dirt in his food. They made a fuss in public. That sort of thing—”

“He said that he used to get food from these people – black market stuff, I suppose. Then they put their prices up, and he couldn’t pay. So they said, if he didn’t pay they would drive him out of business.”

“Well now,” said Sergeant Donovan. “Who are ‘they’? Who are these people he’s talking about?”

“No. He just said ‘they’ and ‘them’. You could see he was nervous about them. In fact, if he hadn’t been so angry about it I don’t think he would have said anything.”

“I can believe that bit all right,” said Donovan, with rather a tight smile. “Did he actually say that it was black market food he’d been buying.”

“Not in so many words – I mean, I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law.”

“You won’t be asked to do that,” said the sergeant, reading Mr. Wetherall’s thoughts accurately. “It’s not Mister Luigi What’s-is-name you’ve got to worry about. He’s just the meat in the trap. He’s the worm on the hook. Once people like him start fooling round with funny stuff they always end up in trouble, one side or the other. It’s the people who supply the Luigis that I’d like to have a quiet word with. Or the people who supply them. Just a quiet word.”

As he spoke he moved across to the window, so that the light fell on a white line of scar which ran down, stretched and taut, from cheekbone to chin, so that for a moment, the jaw seemed to hang from it, like a puppet’s jaw on a thread. When the sergeant turned back into the room he spoke more mildly.

“So far as doing anything about this goes,” he said, “I’m ‘L’ Division. Luigi’s place in Deptford Broadway, that’s ‘R’.”

“Is it?” said Mr. Wetherall. The geography he had been taught had not included the frontiers of the London Police Authorities.

“However, I’ll see if anything can be done. I might put a word in the right quarter. But my best advice to you, Mr. Wetherall, is to leave it alone. They’re not a nice crowd the people behind this. Not a nice crowd at all.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I’m sure if anything can be done you’ll do it.”

“Your brother – living at home. What’s happened to his wife? And what’s happened to him. He looks ten years older than when I saw him last – you must know what I mean. If you think,” he added with belated caution, “that it’s none of my business, say so. But I’ve known you all for a very long time, and if it’s just that he’s had a row with his wife, or something like that, and there’s anything I can do to help—”

“Good heavens,” said Wetherall stupidly. “I am sorry. I’d no idea. Of course, that explains it. What a pity. Such a nice girl.”

He found that Peggy was looking at him, in the steady way that her brother had done. He felt a growing sense of embarrassment.

“Silly of me,” he said, “jumping to conclusions. You must forgive me. What happened to her? It was very sudden, wasn’t it?”

“I don’t think there’s any reason I shouldn’t tell you about it. It was in the papers. You know they had one of the houses in Lower Marsh. Some men broke in one night. I expect they knew Patsy was away on duty. Doris was alone in the house. They tied her up and gagged her with a towel. They bust the home up. They didn’t take much. Just some papers and a little money.”

Peggy stopped, and Mr. Wetherall tried to say something, but failed. The truth was that the idea of violence frightened him. At second hand it made him feel rather sick.

“They tied the towel over her mouth too tight. She was suffocated. She was dead when Patsy got home to her.”

“How horrible. How absolutely horrible. Did they catch the people who did it?”

“Patsy says he knows who it was. But he can’t prove it. You know his job is something to do with stealing from the railways, and the long distance lorries—”

“If he knows,” said Mr. Wetherall, very much distressed. “If he knows, surely—”

“Knowing isn’t proving. There was one particular lot he was mixed up with. He didn’t say much about it. He’d been pretending to take bribes, and they thought he was bought and sold so they got talking a bit freely in front of him. What they did was meant as a sort of warning to him not to pass it on – they never meant to kill Doris.”

“I suppose it was,” said Peggy. She seemed unexcited about this aspect of it. For a moment Mr. Wetherall wondered if she might have been making the story up. He dismissed that thought. Nobody could have made up a thing like that.

“Has he told anyone about his suspicions?? If the police only knew, surely they could do something. It would give them a line to go on.”

“You’re not answering my question,” said Mr. Wetherall testily. “Did Patsy tell them what he suspected – what you’ve just told me?”

Mr. Wetherall could hardly fail to recognise it. He had heard it twice that morning. It was the red signal. It was the notice which said: “Keep Out. Trespassers will get hurt”. The dullest man, and Mr. Wetherall was far from dull, cannot live his life in south London without becoming aware of certain facts. He was not a romantic. He was well past the age when one considered crime to be an adventure, or a puzzle, or a joke. He recognised it for what it was; a pathological growth, bred of poverty, rooting and flourishing in the weak and diseased cells of the body. He had been to too many dingy police courts to speak a word for the adolescent victim in the dock, had attended too many tearful mornings after the brave nights before, to think of crime as anything but an affliction; something akin to cancer or insanity; something which, in a perfect world, would not exist, but in the present state of imperfection you had to deal with it as best you could.

He also knew that you could live among crime without being affected by it. There were plenty of doctors and parsons and schoolmasters who did it without a second thought. He himself knew a garage where a lot of things were done which had nothing to do with the repair of motor cars. He knew cafés which would not serve an unknown customer. He knew at least two receivers of stolen goods. But it stopped at knowledge.

Crime would not interfere with him, provided that he did not interfere with it. That was the limit of the sufferance.

In the end he said rather weakly: “All right, Peggy. I expect you’re right. Are you coming to the boxing?”

When he arrived home he was so unusually silent that his wife, after a number of unsuccessful efforts to obtain his attention, asked him what was the matter, and after some deliberation, he told her a certain amount.

“Not really, I suppose,” said Mr. Wetherall. “Except, if you see a thing going wrong, you ought to try and put it right.”

“It was an accident,” said Mrs. Wetherall. “Just the same as getting run over by a bus.”

“All right, I agree. But if you thought the bus driver had done it on purpose, surely you’d want him prosecuted.”

“If he really knew who these people were,” said Mrs. Wetherall, “and if he had any real proof against them, he’d have them arrested. He’s a policeman.”

“When he was a boy, he always liked to handle things himself. Sammy’s the same. And Peggy, for that matter. It’s a Donovan habit.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t very happy about one thing. Peggy told me that her brother had got into the confidence of one of the gangs by pretending to take bribes. Well, that’s all right in theory, but in practice it must be a very fine line between pretending to take them, and actually taking them – if you see what I mean.”

“He pockets the money either way, you see. He may be saying, I’m only doing this to fool them, and sooner or later I’ll pay it over to the Police Orphanage, but—”

“I see what you mean,” said Mrs. Wetherall. “You think that’s why he daren’t tell anyone who they are—”

The Co-operative Hall, on the Walworth side of the Elephant had been built as a swimming bath. During the winter months the bath was boarded over and the space thus created became available for dances, gym displays and other feats of endurance. Or (with a small stage at one end and chairs) for theatrical performances, lectures, moots and revivalist meetings and (with tiers of benches round a movable ring) for boxing and all-in wrestling. In none of these transmogrifications did it really look like anything but a converted swimming bath. It might, Mr. Wetherall considered, have served as a working model for democracy, for it meant different things at different times and all its seats were equally hard.

He made his way there through the October fog which had come up from the river at dusk. In fog and in darkness the South Bank seemed more tolerable. Its outlines were softened. The lights from the shops and the naptha flares from the booths made brave splashes of light. The lamps behind the red curtains gave an impression of snugness to the inconvenient little houses.

The hall was packed. The South Borough Secondary School had two other boys beside Donovan in the Area Finals and Mr. Wetherall had meant to go round to the changing room and give them a last-minute word of encouragement. Then, because he had an understanding mind, he sat down in his seat. They would all, he realised, be going through agonies of nervousness, one’s first public boxing match was an ordeal beside which any future ordeal, from the dentist’s to the electric chair, must pale into insignificance. Anyway, their trainer, a competent and taciturn man, would be with them.

The master of ceremonies entered the ring. “Three rounds of two minutes – no applause during the rounds please – highest traditions of sportsmanship – no clinching, holding or gouging – best man win,” and two tiny boys entered the ring from opposite sides, one with a red sash round his waist, the other with a blue. For the allotted two minutes, and in the most spirited and creditable way, they did their best to destroy each other, and then the bell rang and they sank back into their corners. Mr. Wetherall was close enough to the ring to hear the nearest of the seconds, a grey-haired, earnest man in a sweater saying “Ride off his leads on your arms, and cross to the right side of his face,” and Blue Sash saying: “O.K. Mr. Braithwaite,” when the bell sounded again.

At the close of the bout Blue Sash was proclaimed winner, (though whether as a result of the advice he had received Mr. Wetherall was too inexpert to decide), and his supporters in the hall were threatening the stability of an entire section of the seating, when Mr. Wetherall became aware of his neighbour.

Parma Violet and after-shave lotion. Then his eyes took him in. Black hair, a white face, and a striking suit of clothes – bold pattern, thick cloth, rolled lapels, stuffed shoulders. A metal green tie. Pointed brown shoes. All the success signals. Looking again it occurred to Mr. Wetherall that he knew him. Pollock, Postgate, Partridge. It began with a P. He conducted a mental roll-call. Parry, Parsons, Price. That was more like it. Not Price, though. Prince!

He was so pleased at getting it that he spoke the name aloud. The man turned slowly, and seeing his full face, on which the flesh was beginning to hang, he realised that the man was older than he had first imagined – and also that he was blind in one eye.

Prince shot out a fat white hand, at the end of a thick wrist. Gold cuff links winked against silk shirt cuff. “How’s tricks? Been finding any dead kittens lately?”

This was a reference to a long-forgotten, and not very happy episode in Mr. Wetherall’s early teaching career at Battersea, and he laughed half-heartedly.

“That’s right,” said Prince. “Keep the little sods in order. Spare the rod and spoil the child. And between you and me—” Prince leaned forward and a bow wave of Parma Violet came ahead of him, “a little more stick in the schools and we shouldn’t have so much joovenile delinquency.”

“Oh, quite,” said Mr. Wetherall. “And what have you been doing since I saw you last?”

“In and out of the ring. You seen my eye? Lost that fighting. Mug’s game. Near as a nicker lost the other one too. Then I stopped. S’all right for boys and amachoors. Does ‘em good. Not professional, though. They know too much, these professional boys.”