Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

‘About eleven or so. Why?’

‘I just wondered. And you get back before the pub closes, I suppose? Before half-past eleven, I mean. Eh?’

‘We’ve got to be in before twelve o’clock, you know,’ said Baby. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Curiosity. Your movements fascinate me,’ said Jacket.

Then the lunch-hour rush began to come into the ‘Duchess of Douro’, and Jacket went out.

He went to see Chief Inspector Dark. ‘Listen, Dark,’ he said, ‘you know me.’

‘Well?’ said the chief inspector.

‘You know I’m not crazy.’

Chief Inspector Dark pursed his lips and said: ‘Well?’

‘You remember that crazy little man Wainewright, the witness in the Tooth case?’

‘Well?’

‘I think he’s getting to be dangerous.’

‘How?’

‘You remember how he kept confessing to the killing of Tooth?’

‘Well?’

‘Well, Dark, I believe he really did do it.’

‘Well?’ said Chief Inspector Dark.

‘If I were you I’d keep an eye on Wainewright.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I believe that Wainewright’s gone really mad, dangerously mad at last, Dark.’

‘What makes you think so?’

Having explained why he thought so, Jacket concluded: ‘Wainewright’s feelings are hurt. He is determined to make you believe, at any cost.’

‘Look,’ said Chief Inspector Dark. ‘With one thing and another I’m rushed off my feet. I’m short-handed, and I’m busy. Is this all you’ve got to say?’

‘Keep an eye on Wainewright,’ said Jacket. ‘He’s after the barmaid, Baby, at the “Duchess of Douro”.’

‘Following her about? So would I, if I wasn’t a married man, and had time to spare,’ said Dark. ‘Keep an eye on Wainewright yourself. I don’t think there’s anything to it. I’m short-handed, and I’m busy, Jacket. Will you take a hint?’

Jacket said: ‘Oh well, I can’t blame you for not seeing my point.’

‘Much obliged,’ said Dark. ‘See you some other time.’

Jacket left, grinding his teeth. I’ll keep close to Baby myself, he said to himself, as he waited for a taxi in Whitehall. I’ll show them. I’ll make Dark feel small!

But on the following Sunday, Mr Chamberlain announced that England was at war with Germany, and ten days passed before John Jacket had time to think of Baby and of Mr Wainewright.

By then, something had happened.

It happened on the night of 5 September 1939. The Germans had destroyed the 7th Polish Division, and the French Army had engaged the Germans between the Rhine and the Moselle. U-boats had sunk British merchant ships. The blonde called Baby had her day off, and Mr Wainewright followed her. She did not leave until half-past five that day.

He had learned something of the technique of pursuit. Instinct had warned him to put on again his dark suit and his bowler hat. He wore, also, a grey overcoat. The blonde called Baby could be kept in sight without his being seen. Mr Wainewright knew how to play his cards. He saw her coming out of the side entrance of the ‘Duchess of Douro’, and kept her in sight: she wore a fur that resembled a silver fox, and a diminutive yellow hat. It was not difficult to keep her within your range of vision.

Mr Wainewright followed her to St Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and right, into Charing Cross Road. Something had happened to the current of life in the town. There was a new, uneasy swirl of dark-clothed civilians, like tea-leaves in a pot, together with a rush of men in khaki uniforms.

Baby walked on: she had to walk. Once she tried to stop a taxi, but the driver waved a vague hand and drove towards Whitehall. So she walked, until she caught her tram. Baby climbed to the upper deck to smoke a cigarette. Mr Wainewright sat below. When she got out, he got out. She disappeared into a little house beyond Seven Sisters corner. He waited.

As he waited he thought:

‘Nobody believes me. I’ve confessed to a murder. They throw me out. They laugh at me. They take me for a lunatic. To the police, I’m one of those madmen who go about confessing – saying they’ve committed crimes they haven’t committed. I killed Tooth, and I tell them so. But no! I’m crazy, they say. Good. I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her with a common knife. When the papers report it, I’ll mark it with a pencil and go along and confess again. Nobody will believe.’

The light was fading. Keeping his right eye on the ground-floor window of the house into which Baby had disappeared, Mr Wainewright stepped sideways into the road. He put his right hand under his coat and chuckled. Then he heard something coming. He hesitated, leapt backwards – saw that the truck had swerved into the middle of the street to miss him, and tried to jump back to the pavement.

But the driver, having seen his first leap in that treacherous autumnal light, spun back to the left-hand side of the road, and knocked Mr Wainewright down.

The light truck squealed to a standstill as its rear wheels came back to the surface of the road with a soft, sickening jolt. Somewhere a woman screamed, and a man shouted. A policeman came running, and as he ran he switched on the beam of an electric torch which waggled in front of him.

A few minutes later an ambulance came, with a high, flat clangor of bells. Mr Wainewright was carried away.

He was horribly crushed. But he also had a knife-wound. A long, wide, triangular cook’s knife – what they call a French knife – was embedded in his stomach.

The surgeon came to the conclusion that Mr Wainewright must have been carrying the knife in his inside breast pocket.

When, at last, Mr Wainewright opened his eyes he knew that he was dying. He did not know how he knew, but he knew. A cool hand was upon his left arm, and he could discern – in a big, shadowy place – a white coat and a white face.

‘I killed Sid Tooth,’ he said.

‘There, there,’ said a voice.

‘I tell you I killed Sid Tooth!’

‘That’s all right, there, there …’

Something pricked his left arm, hesitated, went in deep, and threw out a sort of cold dullness.

Pain receded, tingled, and went away.

Mr Wainewright said: ‘I swear I did it. Believe me, do please believe me – I did it!’

‘There, there, there,’ said a whisper.

Looking down at his blank, white, featureless face, the surgeon was reminded of the dial of a ruined clock, a mass-produced clock picked to bits by a spoiled child, and not worth repairing.

WE were loading bananas into the Claire Dodge at Puerto Pobre, when a feverish little fellow came aboard. Everyone stepped aside to let him pass – even the soldiers who guard the port with nickel-plated Remington rifles, and who go barefoot but wear polished leather leggings. They stood back from him because they believed that he was afflicted-of-God, mad; harmless but dangerous; best left alone.

All the time the naphtha flares were hissing, and from the hold came the reverberation of the roaring voice of the foreman of the gang down below crying: ‘Fruta! Fruta! FRUTA!’ The leader of the dock gang bellowed the same cry, throwing down stem after stem of brilliant green bananas. The occasion would be memorable for this, if for nothing else – the magnificence of the night, the bronze of the negro foreman shining under the flares, the jade green of that fruit, and the mixed odours of the waterfront. Out of one stem of bananas ran a hairy grey spider, which frightened the crew and broke the banana-chain, until a Nicaraguan boy, with a laugh, killed it with his foot. It was harmless, he said.

It was about then that the madman came aboard, unhindered, and asked me: ‘Bound for where?’