John Bingham - A Fragment of Fear

“Well, let’s have it then,” said the sergeant with surprising directness. “Let’s have the times and places, then we can pack it up for the moment.”

He went over to the table by the window, sat down briskly, and flipped open his notebook.

“At eleven-thirty, I was still talking to my future father-in-law.”

“Okay,” he said. “At eleven-thirty you were still with him.”

“At eleven-forty-five, I left him and walked down Kensington Church Street. At around midnight, or a bit before I was here.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here waiting around, making out a statement for some plain-clothes police officer. It took about an hour. Just before one o’clock I was with your officers at my house.”

“Not our officers. Kensington officers. We’re Scotland Yard.”

“Well, police officers.”

“Finding nothing and nobody?”

“Finding nothing and nobody.”

“And after that?” asked the superintendent, in his quiet voice. “After that, what?”

“After about one-thirty, nothing. I was in bed. But that covers the period, that covers me till one-thirty in the morning.”

“That’s right,” said the sergeant, looking up from his book. “That covers you till one-thirty in the morning, that’s okay, sir. That covers the gentleman till one-thirty in the morning,” repeated the sergeant, looking at the superintendent.

I should have let well alone, but I can never resist a crack. It’s probably the Irish streak in my blood, not the Dutch or the English.

“So you can go and see them and check up,” I said coldly. “Apart from a few minutes walking down Church Street when I was observed by two men you don’t think exist, you can go and see them. Ask them more questions, check the times again, get more signed statements, do what you damned well like.”

“We’ll do that thing,” said the sergeant, cheerfully. “We’ll do just that thing, sir.”

But I still couldn’t let well alone, because I was still resentful of their implications.

“Unless you think the plain-clothes officer in this station who took my statement was a figment of my imagination? Unless you think the uniformed officers who searched my flat at my request are non-existent?” I said sarcastically. “And the patrol car was a sort of ghost car? I’m going now,” I added. “I came here with goodwill, but I would have done better to stay away.”

The sergeant got up hurriedly from his chair, and moved to the door. His purpose might have been to open the door for me, but I knew it wasn’t. If anything, his object was to keep it closed.

“And at three o’clock this morning?” asked the superintendent quickly. “Say between one-thirty and three o’clock?”

“What’s three o’clock got to do with it, superintendent?”

“That’s about when she died-give a bit, take a bit, sir.”

“He’s been edging up to it, so as not to tax your memory too much at one and the same time,” said the sergeant.

You’re all right between eleven-thirty and one-thirty, now what about one-thirty to three o’clock? What about then?”

“I was in bed, in bed and probably asleep.”

“Anybody else in the flat, Mr. Compton?”

“No.”

“Anybody to support that statement?” asked the sergeant.

“Probably.”

“Name? And address, if you know it?”

I shook my head, and began to walk towards them, towards the door. I had come of my own accord, I could go of my own accord, unless they were going to arrest me on the spot and prefer a charge. I knew it, and they knew it. More important, they knew that I knew it.

“I don’t know the names and addresses. The witnesses I mean are the people who have got me under observation. Me and the flat. Day and night.”

“Oh, that lot,” said the sergeant.

The superintendent said gently:

“The ones who are persecuting you? The people whose voices you hear on the telephone, who type messages to you on your own typewriter, and try to attack you in the street?”

I nodded. I found myself unable to say more, and walked out without being obstructed in any way.

I think they were glad to be rid of me. At any rate for the moment.

Outside the light was failing now. I stood on the steps of the police station, breathing deeply, watching the traffic move slowly past, thinking about the man calling himself Sergeant Matthews, trying to discern somewhere some clue, and finding no answer.

I walked to the edge of the pavement, waiting for a gap in the traffic. Suddenly I saw what I thought might be an opportunity to nip across the road. A blue car was following a bus, with some distance in between. I believed I could make it, and took a step into the roadway, but the car was travelling faster than I had at first realised, and I stepped back and waited, and between the narrowing distance as the car closed up to the bus, I happened to glance at the corner of a side road some way up Earls Court Road.

It seemed to me that the men standing at the corner were looking in my direction. One was tall and wore drain-pipe trousers, and a short, dark, knee-length mackintosh-type coat. The other was of medium height and stockily built.

Then the traffic closed in. When it thinned again the corner was deserted except for a woman passing with a child.

I looked back at the police station, but I knew it was out of the question, I couldn’t go back in there and say I thought I had just seen the two men who had menaced me on my way back from Juliet’s home. I hesitated, but for no more than a few seconds.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t face them again.

I consoled myself with the thought that I was probably mistaken, and that it was two other men, but I knew it was lack of moral courage.

I could imagine the sergeant now saying, “Proper old persecution complex that one has, sir. Proper ripe one, that one is. Well, we get ’em all, don’t we, sir? We get ’em all, the short and the tall, and a few nuts thrown in for good measure.”

There was no question of going back.

All right, so the tired and over-worked superintendent and sergeant took a rugged, conventional view of me. Maybe they weren’t as tactful as they might have been.

But now I knew, in effect, what it was like to have no police force to which one could appeal.

Now I knew what it was like to have the jungle about you, as you walked along the dangerous paths, and you were on your own, and there were eyes upon you, and there was no police force to which you could run for protection.

I appreciate these things now, but at the time I nurtured harsh feelings.

I went back to the flat and washed, and the evening paper with poor Bunface’s picture on the front page was where I had left it, and I picked it up, and when I left the flat to call for Juliet I double mortice-locked the door.

In addition to the Yale-type lock I had a double mortice affair, though I had never used it. You turn the key twice in the mortice lock, and by and large it is burglar proof, short of cutting out the lock or battering down the door.

We went to Soho, to an Italian restaurant for dinner. One of the things which had surprised me was the calm way Juliet had accepted the news of the complaint laid against me by poor Bunface. I did not understand one of the simplest facts of life. If a woman loves you, then you are in the right if it is a question of simple, straightforward matters, and anybody who complains about you is a liar. There is no argument about it.

Juliet made no reference to anything of significance as we drove to Soho. This surprised and pleased me.

When we were seated in the restaurant I said: “Have you seen the evening papers? There was a murder quite near you.”