John Rhode - The Paddington Mystery

‘Good evening, Mr Boost,’ said Harold politely. ‘So you’re back again?’

The man made no reply, but stood looking at him malevolently. He was tall and thin, with a pronounced stoop, sharply-cut features and a curiously intense look in his eyes. He wore an untidy-looking tweed suit but the most striking thing about him was an enormous red scarf, which did duty both as a collar and tie, and an equally pretentious red handkerchief, a good half of which protruded from the side pocket of his coat. He was obviously not the sort of person to disguise his political convictions.

This individual regarded Harold for some moments in silence. Then he suddenly turned and led the way into the shop, beckoning to Harold to follow him. He closed the door behind them, then, for the first time, spoke.

‘What did you do it for, comrade?’ he asked, in a surprisingly deep voice, that seemed to come from some strange vocal organs concealed within his narrow chest.

Harold turned upon him indignantly. ‘What the devil do you mean?’ he replied angrily. ‘You seem to know all about it. Haven’t you heard that the police found that I had nothing to do with it? I shouldn’t wonder if you knew more about it than I do.’

‘Damn the police!’ exclaimed Mr Boost. ‘They’re only the servants of a tyrannical capitalism. The first thing we shall do will be to discard them and set up Red Guards who’ll know their business instead. Police, indeed! Why, they had the sauce to come to me in Leicester where I was doing a lot of business and badger the life out of me. Where was I that night? Did I know the man who had been found dead in my house? Showed me his photograph and description and cross-questioned me till I told them what I thought of them. I wouldn’t give a curse for anything the police might think.’

Harold smiled. He recalled a remark of Inspector Hanslet. ‘Boost? Oh, yes, we know all about him. He’s harmless enough, but we’ll have him looked up, though, for all that.’ But he refrained from repeating it to his landlord.

‘What your idea was I don’t know and I don’t want to know,’ continued Mr Boost. ‘You seem to have scrambled out of it, and I suppose that’s all you care about. But you can’t expect me to thank you for bringing every silly fool in London to gape round this place. I thought you wanted to lie low when you came here.’

He went into the back room, still grumbling, and Harold, seeing the futility of trying to persuade him of his innocence, took the opportunity of going up to his own rooms. He spent the evening trying to write, and then at last, giving up the task in despair, went to bed and slept fitfully, dreaming impossible dreams in which the dead man, Boost, Professor Priestley and a host of minor characters came and went, mocking him, scorning him for the outcast he was.

At nine o’clock Mrs Clapton, from Number 15 over the way, thundered at his door, as was her custom. When he had first come to Riverside Gardens he had engaged her to come in for an hour every morning to tidy the place up. The Paddington Mystery, as the headlines had called it, had raised her to the seventh heaven of delight. In an incautious moment Inspector Hanslet had called upon her to ask a few questions, and had only succeeded in escaping after an hour of breathless volubility which had left his head in an aching whirl. Since that moment she had regaled her neighbours and all whom she could prevail upon to listen to her with a torrent of eloquence. As the only person besides the central figure who had access to the scene of the discovery, she poured forth in an unceasing stream the little she knew and the enormous volume of what she conjectured.

But this morning Harold was in no mood to listen to her theories or her remarkably frank comments. He put on a dressing-gown and let her in, then returned again to bed, leaving her the run of the sitting-room. For her regulation hour she busied herself in moving the furniture about, then, after making several unsuccessful attempts to engage Harold in conversation through the closed door, she departed, firmly convinced that her employer had something discreditable to conceal. ‘It’s hawful the life that young man leads,’ she was wont to whisper. ‘I’ve seen him go in with girls after dark—you mark my words, there’s somethink be’ind it all!’

Harold waited for the door to bang behind her, then wearily made up his mind to get up. He was half dressed, when once more a loud and insistent knocking on the door disturbed his train of thought.

With a muttered imprecation he went down stairs, to find Boost standing on his doorstep.

Harold frowned. He and his landlord had always got on pretty well hitherto. Boost had never abandoned the hope of converting his tenant to the doctrines of Communism, and had called upon him at all sorts of hours for that purpose. The man’s energy and ferocity had amused him; he had regarded him as a harmless crank whose proper field of action was surely Soviet Russia. But now he had other things to think of, and was in no mood for a lecture upon the iniquities of the bourgeois and the advantages of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

‘Good morning, Mr Boost,’ he said coldly. ‘What can I do for you? I’m going out as soon as I’ve finished dressing.’

‘You and I’ve got to have a word first,’ replied Mr Boost truculently. ‘There’s a question or two to which I want an answer.’

Harold shrugged his shoulders and led the way upstairs. He might as well hear what the man had to say and get it over.

Mr Boost settled himself in Harold’s best chair and plunged into his subject without delay. ‘Look here!’ he said sharply. ‘I want to know what your game was the other night.’

Harold sighed wearily. ‘Oh, Lord, you know all about that!’ he exclaimed. ‘I suppose you read the papers?’

‘Yes, I read them right enough,’ replied Mr Boost. ‘I don’t want to pry into your affairs so long as they don’t concern me. When they do, I’m going to have the truth. What happened to my bale of goods, I’d like to know?’

Harold stared at him in amazement. ‘Your bale of goods?’ he repeated. ‘What the devil are you talking about? What bale of goods?’

Mr Boost regarded him suspiciously. ‘I reckon you know more about it than I do,’ he said. ‘Especially as it happens I’ve never seen it.’

‘Look here, Mr Boost. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ replied Harold, now thoroughly roused. ‘I haven’t got anything of yours, you can search the place if you like. And when you’ve finished I’ll trouble you to clear out and leave me in peace.’

Mr Boost laughed scornfully. ‘Oh, I don’t suppose you’ve got it here,’ he said. ‘But it’s like this. I’m not such a fool as to believe that a man comes and dies in these rooms without your knowing something about it. And when a bale of goods of mine disappears on the same night, I can’t help thinking that you know something about that, too.’

‘How do you know it disappeared that night?’ enquired Harold sharply.

‘Did you see it leaning up against my door under the porch when you came home that night?’ replied Mr Boost aggressively. ‘Or were you too beastly drunk to notice anything?’

Harold paused a moment. ‘I won’t swear about when I first came in,’ he said. ‘It was nearly pitch dark, you know. But I know jolly well that there was nothing there when I came back with the police. Someone would have seen it if there had been. And there wasn’t anything there when I went out that evening.’

‘Of course there wasn’t,’ replied Mr Boost testily. ‘It hadn’t been delivered then. Well, I’ll have to tell you what happened, I suppose. You get my stuff back from your pals, and I won’t ask any questions. That’s fair.’