John Rhode - Invisible Weapons

‘There’s no objection to my asking him a few questions, I suppose?’

‘None at all, sir. But whether you’ll be able to make any sense of what he tells you is another thing. I’ll bring him along in here, if you like, sir.’

Cload went off in the direction of the cells, to reappear a few minutes later with the errant Alfie. The latter was a man of middle height, apparently in the early forties, with a round and rather childlike face. Beneath a tangled shock of red hair was a pair of deep-set blue eyes which seemed to be inhabited by some demon of restlessness. Without invitation he sat down in the nearest chair and scrutinised Jimmy keenly.

‘You don’t come from these parts, master,’ he said confidently.

‘All right, let him be, sergeant,’ said Jimmy. ‘No, I don’t, Alfie, you’re quite right. But I dare say we shall manage to get on all right together in spite of that. Have a cigarette?’

Alfie took the proffered case, emptied it into his hand, and put all the cigarettes but one into the pocket of his tattered coat. ‘I knew you was a gentleman as soon as I set eyes on you,’ he said complacently. ‘And the sergeant, who’s another, will give me a match, I dare say.’

The sergeant having provided the necessary light, Jimmy began his interrogation. ‘Tell us the story of your old coat, Alfie,’ he said encouragingly.

Alfie chuckled as though at the memory of some pleasant interlude. ‘Ah, he was a good one in his time, he was,’ he said. ‘For nigh on twenty years I’d worn him, wet or fine, rain or sun. But all things come to an end, as my old mother says. He was getting as full of holes as a length of rabbit netting, and that’s a fact.’

‘So you thought it time to get rid of him?’ Jimmy suggested.

‘Well, maybe I wouldn’t have parted with him just yet. He’d been a good friend to me, master. But I wanted a fag that badly that I’d have given the cove the very boots off my feet for one.’

‘Who was this cove and where did you meet him?’

‘The night afore last it was. I was walking along down by Weaver’s Bridge and it must have been after hours, because the Shant was closed and I couldn’t get anybody to open the door to me.’

‘Weaver’s Bridge is outside the town, sir,’ Cload explained. ‘It’s about a mile and a half round by the road but rather less if you go up Gunthorpe Road and cut through Mark Farm. There’s a beerhouse there which is always known as the Shant, though its proper name is The Prince of Wales, and closing time in this division is half-past ten, at this time of year, sir.’

Jimmy nodded. ‘Carry on, Alfie,’ he said. ‘You were taking an evening stroll round about Weaver’s Bridge. Is that when you met the cove?’

‘That’s how it was. He comes along towards me smoking a fag, so I says to him, “Good-evening, merry chum,” just like that. “Good-evening, merry chum, it’d be a fine bright night if the moon hadn’t gone to bed with his wife. And perhaps you’ve got a fag or two to spare for a poor man who’s got four little kiddies and not a crust among them.”’

‘And what did the cove say to that?’ Jimmy asked.

Again Alfie chuckled. ‘He didn’t say nothing, and that was the joke of it. Maybe I’d startled him a bit, for it was main dark and he couldn’t see me under the shadow of the hedge, like. He takes one of them dratted flashlamp things out of his pocket and turns it on to me. “Oh it’s you, Alfie, is it?” he says.’

‘He knew you, then?’

The reply displayed the pride of a famous man. ‘There aren’t many folk in these parts who don’t know Alfie Prince.’

‘And did you know him?’

‘How should I know him in the dark? “I’ll give you a packet of fags, Alfie,” he said. “But I want that old coat of yours in exchange, and I’ll give you half a crown into the bargain.” And that’s how it happened, as true as there are angels playing on their harps up above us. The cove went off a-humming of a tune and wearing my old coat, and that’s the last I’ve seen of him.’

‘What did you do then, Alfie?’

‘Why, I got the fags, and funny-tasting things they was. So I come through Farmer Hawkworth’s land and settled down for the night in that field of grass at the end of Gunthorpe Road.’

‘You mean the field that’s for sale in building plots, I suppose?’

‘That’s it. I know of a corner alongside that brick wall at the end. But I missed my old coat, for all that I got them fags and half a crown in my pocket.’

Jimmy nodded to Cload, who thereupon escorted Alfie back to the cell. ‘What did you make of him, sir?’ the sergeant asked on his return.

‘I agree with you that he’s not quite all there. You can tell that by the way he talks. But I’m pretty certain that he didn’t invent that story about his old coat. It’s too circumstantial for that. I’d very much like to know who it was that he met and why he wanted Alfie’s old coat. You know Colonel Exbury pretty well, I expect?’

‘Oh yes, sir, I’ve always got on very well with the colonel.’

‘Then I wish you’d ring him up and ask him if Alfie was wearing his old coat when he came to his house yesterday.’

Cload put the call through and reported the result. ‘The colonel says that Alfie wasn’t wearing the coat, sir. He noticed that particularly for he’d never seen him without it before.’

‘Then Alfie’s story may be true. If so, he spent Friday night within a few yards of the doctor’s house. He said something about his mother. Is she still alive?’

‘Oh yes, sir. She’s a very respectable woman who keeps a little ham and beef shop in Middle Street. Alfie lodges with her when it suits him, but as often as not he sleeps out somewhere, especially in the summer.’

‘She might be able to tell us something about Alfie’s movements on Friday and Saturday. Better get one of your men to go and have a chat with her, sergeant. Linton was on duty last night up at the doctor’s house, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s right, sir. He was relieved by one of the other chaps this morning.’

‘Then he won’t come to the surface again until this afternoon. I’m going up Gunthorpe Road to have a look round, and I’ll be back here before lunch time.’

Jimmy left the police station and went to the doctor’s house. But he did not enter the gate, merely glancing down the carriage-way, noticing that the garage doors were shut and that no car stood in front of them. Then he went on for a few yards until he reached a convenient gap in the hedge bordering the building plot. He passed through this to find himself in a field of standing grass. It was immediately obvious to him that he was not the first to pass that way. The tall grass was trodden down into a track which led along the inside of the hedge until it reached the wall, on the other side of of which was the doctor’s carriage-way. And at the end of this track, in the corner formed by the hedge and the wall, lay a discarded garment. And at the sight of it Jimmy came to a sudden stand. It was a very old army greatcoat, easily recognisable as such, though it was stained and rent in countless places.

Very gingerly Jimmy picked it up. Beneath it lay five cigarette ends which Jimmy collected, packed in a piece of paper, and put in his pocket. Then he noticed a second track at right angles to the first, running along the inside of the wall. He followed this track to find that it ended abruptly fifty-three paces from the hedge.

He returned to the point where he had found the coat, laid it down, and left the field by the gap in the hedge. Then he walked to the drive gate of the doctor’s house and paced fifty-three yards down the carriage-way. The end of this fifty-third pace brought him exactly opposite the cloakroom window.