Patricia Wentworth - The Case of William Smith

Miss Silver coughed.

‘I find that a little fanciful.’

He smiled.

‘How many frightened people have you had in this room?’

Her eyes dwelt on him for a moment.

‘A good many.’

He nodded.

‘Well, I wouldn’t mind betting that very few of them went away as frightened as they came.’

Her needles clicked, the pale blue wool revolved. She said,

‘I think you have something on your mind. What is it?’

He did not speak at once, but leaned back, looking at her. No one could have suited her room better – the small neat features, the rather pale smooth skin, washed twice a day with soap and water, belonged to a period when a lady did not use make-up and even powder was considered ‘fast’. Her hair conformed more to the Edwardian than the Victorian age, being banked up in a fringe like the late Queen Alexandra’s and coiled neatly at the back, the whole controlled by an invisible net. During the years he had known her Frank had not observed that she had any more grey hairs than the few which he remembered to have been there at their first meeting, nor did she seem to be older in any other way. She might have stepped out of any family group at the end of the last century or at the beginning of this. It was her practice to wear a summer silk in the winter evenings. The current garment, of the type sold by pushing saleswomen to elderly ladies who are not very much interested in dress, was of a boiled spinach colour with an orange pattern of dots and dashes which suggested Morse. It came modestly to the ankles and revealed black woollen stockings and glacé shoes with beaded toes. The V-neck had been rendered high by the insertion of a net front with a boned collar. The pince-nez, used only for fine print, was looped to the bosom of the dress by a gold bar brooch set with pearls, and the base of the V was decorated by Miss Silver’s favourite ornament, a rose carved in black bog oak with an Irish pearl at its heart. Since the January evening was cold, a black velvet coatee reinforced the thin silk of the dress. It was a cherished garment – so comfortable, so warm – but it must be confessed that its better days were definitely past and gone, and that it was now a mere relic. No self-consciousness on that score, however, disturbed Miss Silver’s appreciation of its comfort.

With no need to keep her eyes upon her knitting, she smiled at Frank, maintained her affectionate regard, and waited for him to speak. When he did so, it was in an odd doubtful tone.

‘I’ve run up against something – I don’t quite know what.’

Miss Silver pulled on her ball of pale blue wool.

‘It is disturbing you?’

‘I suppose it is. The fact is, I don’t know whether there’s anything in it or not. There might be nothing – or something. I don’t know quite what to do, or whether I ought to do anything at all.’

‘Perhaps you would feel clearer about it if you were to put conjectures on the subject into words. If you would care to tell me about it – ’

He laughed a little.

‘I’ve come here on purpose, and you know it.’

Miss Silver coughed with the faintest hint of reproof.

‘Then, my dear Frank, suppose you begin.’

He said, ‘There’s probably nothing in it, but I’d like to get it off my chest. About a week ago I was coming along Selby Street, which is a respectable suburban road on the way out to Hampstead, when a man came out of a house on my left and walked along in front of me. I saw him with the open door of the house behind him. He had fair hair, and the light caught it. Anyone else could have seen him too. That’s one of the points – anyone could have seen what I did. After the door was shut and he was out in the street visibility wasn’t too good. It was a thickish night with rain in the air, but we were coming up to a lamp-post and I could see him ahead of me – perhaps twenty feet away, perhaps a little more. Then all of a sudden there was someone else, and I don’t know where he came from – out of one of the other houses – out of a cut between the houses – out of somebody’s porch – I don’t know. The first I saw of him, he was there between me and the light, closing up on the first man. All I can swear to is that he was wearing a raincoat and some kind of a hat. Then in a flash he swung up his arm and brought it down again. The first man dropped, I ran up, and the fellow who had hit him ran away. I lost him almost at once. As soon as you got away from the lamp-post you couldn’t see a thing. I went back to the man on the pavement, and he’d had a pretty lucky escape – hit over the head with something hard enough to break it if it had been the sort that breaks easily. He told me himself that it was tough. His hat had taken the worst of it.’

Miss Silver listened attentively, but made no comment.

Frank leaned forward.

‘Well, he was a bit dazed and shaken. I took him round to the police station and they gave him a cup of tea, and then I took him home to Tattlecombe’s Toy Bazaar, where he is an assistant temporarily in charge. He had been visiting his employer in Selby Street, where he has been laid up after a road accident. I expect you wonder what all this is about – and here it is. The chap said his name was William Smith, but it isn’t. I’d seen him before and I recognized him. I told him so, and he told me that he came out of a German hospital in ’42 as William Smith, and that was as much as he knew. He hadn’t got any past, and he naturally wanted to know who I thought he was.’

Miss Silver’s needles clicked.

‘And who do you think he is?’

‘That’s the bother of it – I can’t get any farther than Bill. You know how it is, everybody using Christian names – I don’t suppose I ever heard his surname.’ He told her about the party at the Luxe. ‘And you can take it from me that’s the sort of crowd where he belonged, and that quite definitely you wouldn’t expect to find him assisting in a suburban toy bazaar. He told me himself that he wasn’t the William Smith whose identity disc he had somehow acquired. This man came from Stepney, and Bill went down there to make enquiries. Only relative, a sister, had moved away during the blitz and been lost sight of, but the neighbours all laughed at the idea of his being their William Smith. They were thorough-paced Cockneys and were proud of it, and they despised what they called his B.B.C. accent.’

Miss Silver looked at him across her knitting.

‘A curious story, Frank.’

‘Yes, but you’ve only heard half of it. I met the chap again on Thursday night. I’d been dining out, and I was coming home, when I saw William Smith in a bus queue at the Marble Arch. I went up and asked him how he was, and he said he was all right, but something else had happened earlier that evening. He’d been to see his employer again. Coming back, he was standing in a crowd on an island waiting for the lights to change, when, he says, someone jabbed him in the back with a stick. He lost his footing and would have fallen under a bus if the man next to him hadn’t grabbed him. By the time he’d got steadied up enough to look, the lights had changed, everyone was streaming away, and there wasn’t anyone who seemed as if they could have done it. I asked him if he was going to report the incident to the police, and he said no – he couldn’t see what they could do.’ He paused, and added, ‘I gave him your address.’

Miss Silver coughed.

‘My dear Frank!’

‘Well, I thought you might be interested. That’s not all, you know. I’ve given you the last incident for what it’s worth, but two rather uncomfortable points emerge from what I’ve come across myself. Here’s the first. After William Smith dropped and I was running up, the man who had hit him was going to hit him again. That’s all wrong, you know. The chap was down and out – very completely out. If the motive was robbery, the thief ought to have been going through his pockets. Well, I don’t think the motive was robbery – I think it was murder. He’d got what looked like a stick, but it must have been something a good deal more lethal – probably a length of lead piping – and he was going to polish him off, and another blow like the first on a head with a paving stone under it would have polished him off. The fellow was so intent on what he was doing that he couldn’t have known I was there until I started to run, and even then he as near as a toucher took the time for that second blow. I shouted, and he lost his nerve and made off across the road.’