Ngaio Marsh - Clutch of Constables

Troy went out into the street. The church bells had stopped ringing and the town was quiet. So quiet that she quite jumped when some distance away a motor-cycle engine started up explosively. It belched and puttered with a now familiar diminuendo into the distance and into silence.

“But I suppose,” Troy thought, “all these infernal machines sound exactly alike.”

-3-

Evening was now advanced in Tollardwark. The Market Square had filled with shadow and only the top of St Crispin’s tower caught a fugitive glint of day. Footsteps sounded loud and hollow in the darkling streets and the voices of the few people who were abroad underlined rather than diminished the sense of emptiness. Some of the shop-windows had all-night lamps in them but most were unlit and their contents hard to distinguish.

Troy loved to be in a strange town at nightfall. She would have chosen always to arrive, anywhere, at dusk. None of the other passengers was in sight and she supposed they had gone back to the Zodiac . Except Caley Bard, perhaps, who might still be taking out his sight-seeing in The Northumberland Arms, which glowed with classic geniality behind its red-curtained windows. The church windows also glowed: with kaleidoscopic richness.

She crossed the square, went through the lychgate up a short path and entered the west porch. There were the usual notices about parish meetings and restoration funds and the usual collection boxes. When she passed into the church itself she saw that it was beautiful: a soaring place with a feeling of certainty and aliveness not always to be found in churches.

They were saying compline by candlelight to a tiny congregation amongst whom Troy spotted the backs of Miss Rickerby-Carrick’s and Mr Lazenby’s heads. As she slipped into a pew at the rear of the nave, a disembodied alto voice admonished its handful of listeners.

“Be sober, be vigilant:” said the lonely voice, “because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour.”

She waited until almost the end and then slipped away as unobtrusively as she had come. “If it were all true,” she thought, “and if the devil really was out and about in the streets of Tollardwark! What a thing that would be to be sure!”

She chose to return down a different street from the one she had come up by. It was very narrow, indeed an alleyway rather than a street, and roughly cobbled. She saw a glimmer of The River at the bottom and knew she couldn’t lose her way. At first she passed between old adjoining houses, one or two of them being half-timbered with overhanging upper stories. There was an echo, here, she thought, of her own steps. After a minute or two she stopped to listen. The other footfall stopped too but was it an echo or was someone else abroad in the alley? She looked behind her but it was now quite dark and she could see nobody. So she went on again, walking a little faster, and the echo, if it had been an echo, did not follow her.

Perhaps this was because the houses had thinned out and there were open places on either side as if buildings had been demolished. The alley seemed unconscionably long. The moon rose. Instead of being one of general darkness the picture was now, Troy thought, set out in ink and luminous paint: it glittered with light and swam with shadows and through it the river ran like quicksilver. The downhill slope was steep and Troy walked still faster. She made out the ramshackle shape of a house or shed at the bottom where the alley ended in another lane that stretched along the river-front.

The footfalls began again, some way behind her now but coming nearer and certainly not an echo.

Her way might have been uphill rather than down so senselessly hard-fetched was her heartbeat.

She had reminded herself of Mr Tillottson’s injunction and had resisted an impulse to break into a run when she came to the building at the bottom of the alley. As she did this two persons moved out of the shadow into her path. Troy caught back her breath in a single cry.

“Gee, Mrs Alleyn, is that you?” Miss Hewson said. “Earl, it’s Mrs Alleyn!”

“Why, so it is,” agreed her brother. “So it is. Hallo, there, Mrs Alleyn. Kind of murky down here, isn’t it? I guess the progressive elements in Tollardwark haven’t caught up with street-lighting. Still in the linkman phase.”

“Golly,” Troy said, “you made me jump.”

They broke into an apology. If they had known it was Troy they would have hailed her as she approached. Miss Hewson herself was nervous in the dark and wouldn’t stir without Brother. Miss Hewson, Mr Hewson said, was a crazy hunter after old-time souvenirs and this place looked like it was some kind of trash shop and yard and nothing would do but they must try and peer in at the windows. And, interjected his sister, they had made out a number of delectable objects. The cutest kind of work-box on legs. Heaps of portfolios. And then—it was the darndest thing—their flashlamp had gone dead on them.

“It’s old pictures,” Miss Hewson cried, “that I just can’t keep my hands off, Mrs Alleyn. Prints. Illustrations from Victorian publications. Those cute little girls with kittens and nosegays? Military pieces? Know what I mean?”

“Sis makes screens,” Mr Hewson explained tolerantly. “Real pretty, too. I guess, back home, she’s gotten to be famous for her screens.”

“Listen to you!” his sister exclaimed, “talking about my screens to Mrs Alleyn!” Troy, whose heart had stopped behaving like a water-ram, said she too admired Victorian screens and reminded the Hewsons that they would be able to explore Tollardwark on the return trip.

“I guess Sis ‘ll be heading for this antique joint,” Mr Hewson said, “before we’re tied up. Come on, now, girls, why don’t we go?”

He had taken their arms when the footsteps broke out again, quite near at hand. Mr Hewson swung his ladies round to face them. An invisible man strode towards them through the dark: a set of pale garments and shoes without face or hands. Miss Hewson let out a sharp little scream but Troy exclaimed: “Dr Natouche!”

“I am so sorry,” the great voice boomed. “I have alarmed you. I would have called out back there before the moon rose but did not know if you were a stranger or not. I waited for you to get away from me. Then, just now, I heard your voice. I am so very sorry.”

“No harm done I guess, Doctor,” Mr Hewson said stiffly.

“Of course not,” Troy said. “I was in the same case as you, Dr Natouche. I wondered about calling out and then thought you might be an affronted local inhabitant or a sinister prowler.”

Dr Natouche had produced a pocket torch no bigger than a giant pencil. “The moon has risen,” he said, “but it’s dark down here.” The light darted about like a firefly and for a moment a name flashed out: “Jno. Bagg: licensed dealer,” on a small dilapidated sign above a door.

“Well,” Miss Hewson said to her brother. “C’mon. Let’s go.

He took her arm again and turned invitingly to Troy. “We can’t walk four-abreast,” Troy said. “You two lead the way.”

They did so and she fell in beside Dr Natouche.

The bottom lane turned out to be treacherous underfoot. Some kind of slippery lichen or river-weed had crept over the cobblestones. Miss Hewson slithered, clung to her brother and let out a yelp that flushed a company of ducks who raised their own rumpus and left indignantly by water.

The Hewsons exclaimed upon the vagaries of nature and stumbled on. Troy slipped and was stayed up expertly by Dr Natouche.

“I think perhaps you should take my arm,” he said. “My shoes seem to be unaffected. We have chosen a bad way home.”

His arm felt professional: steady and very hard. He moved with perfect ease as his forefathers might have moved, Troy thought, barefoot across some unimaginable landscape. When she slipped, as she did once or twice, his hand closed for a moment about her forearm and she saw his long fingers pressed into the white sleeve.