Maurice Procter - Murder Somewhere in This City

But when he was leaving the office just before noon he met Devery.

“Glad to see you back, sir,” the young man said. He offered his hand hesitantly-there was now a vast difference in their ranks-and Martineau took it.

“How are things with you?” he asked.

“Oh, I just keep on keeping on.”

“That’s the spirit. You do a good job, Devery. I’ve watched you. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t get a bit of promotion one of these fine days.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Devery. But his superior thought that the sparkle had gone out of him. Tragedy had sobered him. He had grown up. Ah well, he would get over his unhappiness in time. Time helped.

Martineau strolled to the bus terminus. The meeting with Devery had brought a return of his depressed mood. Both of them had avoided mentioning either Silver Steele or Starling. Too carefully they had kept away from the subject of dead people.

Dead. Starling’s body would already have gone the way of all murderers’ bodies: buried in quicklime in a nameless grave, according to the ancient and relentless custom of the law.

The chief inspector shrugged under his overcoat, trying to throw off the irk of returning melancholy. He started to cross Lacy Street. The wintry sun was shining, and there was a happy hustle of people and traffic.

Starling had said that Martineau would be the Chief of Police in Hell by the time he-Starling-got there. That had been just one more mistake in a short but mistaken life. It was Starling who would now be showing his credentials to the Prince of Darkness. What saving graces had he? Courage, no doubt, and loyalty of a sort. And on the devil’s side a host of sins, deadly and otherwise.

“Well, we’re none of us so marvelous,” said Martineau.

He stopped on the corner. He did not want to take his depression home just yet. He needed company, masculine company; football talk, gossip, jokes.

“I’ll have a drink. Just one,” he decided.

He walked along to the Stag’s Head and entered. For a while he did not find the company he sought. He stood alone at the bar and drank two half pints of beer, and the laughing and droning groups of men around him made him feel set apart. He stared into his beer and argued against his own mood. “What’s the matter with you, man?” he asked himself. “You’ve got your promotion, so what the deuce have you got to worry about?”

That was it. In a way he had profited by Starling’s death. That was the thing which worried him.

Gus Hawkins entered the bar and saw him.

“Hello hello,” said the bookmaker, approaching and offering his hand. “You better?”

Martineau nodded as he took the hand. “And you?”

“Yes, I’m all right. A bit of a headache sometimes, that’s all. It was a right good swing I stopped. What’re you drinking?”

“Beer. I’ll get ’em. What’s yours?”

“Beer? Nonsense. I owe you a decent drink. You got my money back. George, two double White Labels, please.” Martineau accepted the whiskey. He raised his glass silently.

“Cheers,” said Gus. “Absent friends. Your pal Starling. He’ll be a long way from the land of the living now.”

Martineau drank three-quarters of his whiskey. “I’m afraid so,” he said.

“Little you care, eh?”

“I don’t give a damn.”

“Me neither. He might have killed me. What a business! I wonder how old Purchas likes it at Dartmoor. Seven years in that place! Serves him right. You take pity on a man and give him a job, and he stabs you in the back.”

“He did well to get off with seven,” said Martineau.

“He sure did. Have another?”

“Yes. I’ll get ’em.”

“Oh no you won’t,” said Gus vigorously. “Two more of the same, George.”

Martineau looked at his watch. “Excuse me, I’ll be back,” he said. He sought a telephone, and dialed his home number. “I won’t be in to lunch,” he said. “I’m staying in town.”

“Oh, I’ve just put the halibut on!” cried Julia. “Can’t you come home?”

“Sorry, no,” he said. “I’ll have the halibut for my tea.”

“Where are you lunching?”

“Nowhere. I’m not hungry.”

“You’ll be ill again! You’re drinking, I suppose. Who with?”

“I’m with Gus Hawkins. We have a lot of things to talk about.”

“A lot of things to talk about with a bookmaker? Harry Martineau, you come home at once!”

“No. Not yet,” he said. “Good-by.”

He put down the receiver and returned to the bar. More trouble. But he was not going home to sit staring at the fire all afternoon. He had done too much of that lately.

He returned to Gus, but two minutes later a voice paged him on the hotel intercom. There was a loudspeaker above the bar.

“Mr. Martineau,” said the voice. “Mr. Martineau, wanted on the telephone.”

That was Julia, he knew. She had guessed where he was. Anyone else but Julia would have asked for Chief Inspector Martineau, but she would not want to have his rank shouted up and down a hotel. That was sensible, he had to admit.

“Aren’t you going to the phone?” asked Gus in surprise.

“No,” said Martineau.

“That sounds like domestic evasion,” said Gus. “Dearie me, these wives!” Then he grinned. “I got rid of mine, you know.”

The manner of the announcement made Martineau raise his eyebrows, but Gus was not abashed. He laughed.

“Gentlemen don’t talk about their wives, eh?” he said. “But they talk disrespectfully about bags and trollops, don’t they? My wife is one of those. I found that out. There was the late Mr. Starling and a few more. Oh, I was upset, but I got over it. I give her something to live on. More than she’s worth. Some day she’ll start living with some fellow, and then I’ll get completely rid of her. A queer woman is like a queer horse. You can’t cure ’em. The only thing to do is get shut of ’em.”

“Did you have trouble?” Martineau asked, in spite of a desire to seem uninterested.

“A little,” said Gus, with a slight growl in his voice. “She had about as much pride as a spaniel bitch. She wept and begged. But I knew too much. I couldn’t live with it. So she went.”

“And are you happy?”

“As the day is long,” said Gus, looking at his whiskey before he swallowed it.

At half past one Gus went into the grill for a meal. Martineau declined the invitation to go with him, and remained at the bar. Gloom drank with him. That, and the shade of the man who had been executed that day. He was not superstitious, but he wryly reflected that if hatred could bring an elemental soul back to the physical world to haunt a man, then the specter of Don Starling was due to arrive at any moment.

At three o’clock Martineau decided to return to Headquarters. To go home smelling of whiskey immediately after closing time was bad tactics. It would be better to spend an hour at the office, and then go home to tea like a worker.

He went into the C.I.D. and picked up the new file of the Police Gazette and took it into his office. Whatever work he would be doing, administrative or otherwise, it was as well for him to know what was going on in the criminal world. The office was pleasantly warm. It would be a comfortable work place, he decided. He browsed through the file for half an hour. Nobody disturbed him. He began to feel sleepy.

He thought it would be a good thing for him to have a brief slumber. If he went home and fell asleep in front of the fire, Julia would say that he had been drinking heavily, and he would have to admit that she was right. He could sleep here in the office. Half an hour would do. He would not sleep longer than that.