Maurice Procter - Murder Somewhere in This City

Bill talked a lot that morning. Because of his connection, through Gus Hawkins, with yesterday’s crime, his friends were interested in what he had to say. But at eleven forty-five he got up to go home. His Sunday dinner would be on the table at twelve noon, and he did not want to be late for the best meal of the week.

On his way out of the club he paused at the bar and quietly asked the steward a question.

“It’s a good job you didn’t ask me five minutes since,” the steward told him. “They’ve just been through on the phone. Moorcock is off. They’ve changed it to Fly Holler.”

“What’s up wi’ the Moorcock?” Bill wanted to know.

“That’s what I said, but I were told I’d fare better if I ast no questions,” the steward replied. “Are you going to the Fly?”

Bill looked through a window at a patch of sky. “I’ll see how I feel when I’ve had me dinner,” he said. “I might go, if it keeps fine.”

After dinner he was still undecided, but he made up his mind quickly when Mrs. Bragg suggested going out to tea and spending the evening at the home of her sister. The sister’s husband was a teetotaler whom Bill despised.

“No, I’m not going,” he said flatly. “I’ve got a bit o’ business on. You go, an’ I’ll call for yer tonight. My word, it’s time I were off. I’ll be late.”

So he went to Fly Hollow, which was a place named by gamblers, being about a mile away from the moorland hamlet of Fly End. He alighted from a cross-country bus at the little cluster of gray stone houses, and soon he was out of the place, walking along a narrow lane between banks of dark moor grass topped by low drystone walls. On both sides of the road were dark sloping fields, so poor that they made only the roughest of grazing for sheep.

He had walked about a quarter of a mile when he heard a motor vehicle coming along behind him. He looked round and saw that it was a taxi, with only one passenger. He was enjoying his walk and the air was bracing, but he was never a man who would walk when he could ride. He guessed that the taxi would be going to the gaming school, so he gave the hitch-hiker’s sign.

The taxi stopped, and Bill observed that it was a Silverline, and that the passenger was Lolly Jakes. He was mildly surprised, because Lolly was a poor man like himself, and he usually went to the gaming rendezvous in a bus.

Lolly’s smile of greeting was rather sour as he made room for Bill in the taxi. Just now, he wanted to have nothing to do with anybody who was connected with Gus Hawkins. But neither did he want to incur the dislike of any such person. He had decided, reluctantly, that it was better to bear Bill’s company and have him be grateful for a free ride than to have him annoyed by being left to walk.

Bill thought nothing of Lolly’s lack of cordiality. He knew that he took up a lot of room in a taxi, and people usually winced when he sat down beside them. “How are yer, Lolly?” he asked. “You at Doncaster yesterday?”

“Yer. I went,” said Lolly.

“Who’d yer go with?”

“The Duke of Edinburgh and his party.”

Bill grinned, not at all offended. “How’d you go on?” he asked. He did not really want to know. He was just making conversation.

At Doncaster Lolly had worked out an imaginary list of winning bets in case the police caught him in possession of his share of the stolen money. He had memorized the list until he had almost come to believe it himself. Now he nearly said: “Five winners,” but stopped himself in time. He did not want Bill Bragg to be gossiping enviously about him, or even thinking about him at all.

“I didn’t do so bad,” he said.

To Bill, the brief half-surly answer was natural enough. Sometimes fellows bragged about their winnings, sometimes they had reasons for not letting anybody know they’d had a win. It occurred to him that a shiftless character like Lolly might owe money to several men who would be at the gaming school. If they heard that he had been lucky at the races they would demand repayment.

“We didn’t get any racing yesterday,” said Bill heavily. “The murder, yer know.”

“Aye, I heard,” said Lolly, trying to be casual.

“We was on our way,” Bill continued, “but the coppers looked out for us and turned us back when we was halfway there. They didn’t make no mistake. Picked us out of a proper procession of motors. The cops can gen’rally find yer when they want yer.”

“Yers,” Lolly agreed, though he did not like the last remark at all. This talk of murder and the police was depressing him. If it went on, it would ruin his day.

Bill thought that he was receiving willing attention. He warmed to his subject. Opening his huge hands he said: “See these? If I could get hold o’ one a-them murderers he wouldn’t live ter stand trial. I’d throttle the sod.”

In spite of his size and his immense strength, his expression-if it could be called an expression-was like that of a small boy trying to be fierce. But Lolly was not studying his face: be was listening to the very real anger in the rough growling voice.

“I’d like ter take all the four of ’em an’ pull the’r necks out like cock chickens at Chris’mus,” said Bill. “Cicely were one o’ the nicest, straightest lasses in Granchester. An’ young Colin is a real good lad.”

Lolly swallowed rather noisily. “It makes yer feel that way,” he admitted, and inwardly he also fumed with anger against the man who had actually killed Cicely Wainwright. But for that, he thought, everything would have been lovely: nothing at all to worry about. But murder… The police never gave up on a murder.

“Pickin’ on a young filly like that!” Bill went on. “Gus should a-sent me wi’ the money. I’d a-showed ’em. I’d a paralyzed ’em.”

Lolly looked sidelong at those hands with fingers like bananas and shuddered slightly. Surreptitiously he felt in his pocket to make sure that his razor was readily accessible. It was a purely nervous move, because he knew that Bill could never be subtle enough to make an indirect accusation. Bill did not suspect him.

The taxi stopped at a place where there were no banks on each side of the road. The rough grass verge gave the driver room enough to reverse his vehicle and turn back to Fly End. The passengers alighted, and Lolly paid the fare. He graciously waved an acknowledgment of the driver’s thanks for the tip, and followed Bill over the drywall onto the open moorland.

The two men climbed gradually as they walked over the rough ground, making their way around a hill which was shaped like a flattish cone. As they went they were observed by a man who sat in the heather at the apex of the cone. He might have been there to enjoy the fresh air and the view. He had a pair of binoculars.

On the other side of the hill, Bill and Lolly came to an outcrop of huge black rocks, a common enough feature in that district. Near the rocks there was another “crow,” who knew them and spoke to them. They went among the rocks and entered a little grassy hollow. In the center of the hollow there was a large patch of black peat hag, trodden hard and flat.

There were about sixty men in the hollow, and they were standing two or three deep in an irregular ring around the patch of trodden ground. There was as wide an assortment of types as might be seen at any other sporting event. There were pale mill workers and muscular miners. There was a farmer or two, and some ruddy, horny-handed men who looked like outdoors laborers. There were butchers, bakers and bookmakers. There were dressy men and men in cloth caps with colored kerchiefs tied round their necks.

Doug Savage, pot-landlord of the Prodigal Son Inn, was there. Laurie Lovett was there, and so was Clogger Roach. Three inveterate gamblers.