J. Farjeon - Detective Ben

‘Gawd, talk abart talkin’!’ muttered Ben.

‘But am I right?’ insisted Mr Sutcliffe.

‘This time,’ admitted Ben, ‘but p’r’aps yer won’t be nex’ !’

‘Well, we’ll wait till the nex’ comes, and meanwhile I will satisfy your curiosity this time. A lamp is useless without those glass globe things. Last night your lamp didn’t have one. This morning I have brought one, so it has.’

‘Oh! Well, wot’s wrong with drawin’ the curtains?’

‘Draw them and see.’

‘Would you like to draw ’em for me?’

‘I should dislike it intensely. I have already been on my feet for a long time for this early hour. I never walk or work unless I have to, and—you may as well know it at once—there is only one person in the world I take orders from, and even she occasionally makes me do more than I think is strictly good for me.’ He stared at the carpet contemplatively. ‘It was she who asked me to come in and wake you.’

‘Yer mean, Miss Warren?’

‘There is only one “she” here.’

‘Well, wot ’ave I bin woke for? Breakfust?’

‘But not, for you, in bed.’

‘Oh!’ It occurred to Ben that Harry Lynch was not asserting himself sufficiently, and he frowned. ‘Well, I git up when I want to, see?’

‘Really?’ murmured Mr Sutcliffe, raising his faint eyebrows. ‘Really? But that is most interesting. Only I am going to guess that you will be very, very wise, Mr Lynch, and will want to get up now .’

‘Why?’

‘Because what Miss Warren wants comes before what you or I want, and what she will want this morning at a quarter-past eight precisely is your presence. I assure you, our wishes, where separate from hers, are Also Rans.’ He sighed. ‘Also Rans. Dear old phrase. I still bet sometimes on paper. Last week I made £170. I think I must bet again today and lose it. Having so much money is rather taxing. Well, Mr Lynch, in a quarter of an hour. The second door on your left. The first is the bathroom.’

He turned to go, but paused at the door.

‘And, by the way, Mr Lynch,’ he added, ‘if that is not your natural colour, I think I should wash.’

This time he did not lock the door after leaving the room. He left the way clear to the bathroom.

But before going to the bathroom to lighten his hue, Ben went to the window and drew aside the heavy curtains. The longed-for daylight that would have mitigated the suffocating atmosphere was blocked out by ironic boards. Now Ben understood the utter darkness and silence of the place.

Were all the windows in the flat blocked up?

The bathroom window was. He scrubbed by artificial light, and the passage by which he walked from his bedroom to the bathroom was illuminated by a soft glow of electricity from the hall beyond. No wonder the atmosphere was atmospherically as well as spiritually heavy!

‘If that bloke’s ’ad five months o’ this without no sun,’ thought Ben, ‘corse ’e’s barmy!’

The unusual ablutions over, he returned to his bedroom and wondered how long he had been out of it. He possessed no watch and he had heard no striking clock, and he was not good at guessing time. It was not going to be easy to hit a quarter-past eight.

‘Say I was in the bedroom at four past,’ he tried to work it out. ‘Orl right. That’s four past. Then say it took me three minutes fer each ’and and a couple fer the ’ead, and then one more when I dropped the soap. Well, that’d mike it—well, whatever it’d be, wouldn’t it, so wot is it?’

He gave it up.

But help was at hand. The door suddenly opened and Mr Sutcliffe’s head came round the crack.

‘Fourteen past,’ announced the head. ‘She likes punctuality.’

Then the head disappeared. Mr Sutcliffe was a tired young man, but he possessed a languid nippiness.

At exactly a quarter-past eight, Ben knocked at the second door on the left. Miss Warren’s voice, richly sleepy, bade him come in.

She was in bed. She wore a deep blue dressing-jacket and a deep blue boudoir cap. The boudoir cap reclined luxuriously against a soft pillow with lace edges, and she radiated an atmosphere of heavy, confident attraction. If there was any confusion, it was not on her side.

‘Don’t be bashful, Mr Lynch,’ she remarked with a faint smile, after a short silence.

‘Eh? ’Oo’s bashful?’ retorted Ben.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve evidently mistaken your expression,’ she answered. ‘Never mind, we’ll soon know each other better. Of course, we’ll have to do something about your clothes. How did you sleep?’

‘Not so bad.’

‘And you needn’t be polite, either. I like to know all my guests are thinking, though I can generally guess without being told. What are your complaints?’

‘Well,’ said Ben, ‘fer one thing, I ain’t uster sleepin’ with me door locked.’

‘And for another thing?’

‘Bein’ spied on! I bar that!’

‘Who has been spying on you, Mr Lynch?’

‘I expeck you know as well as me. The bloke in the next room. ’Ow’d you like it if some ’un sent searchlights through peepholes onter you ?’

‘He will do it!’ smiled Miss Warren. ‘I’ll speak to him about it. But the locked door—well, we’ll see. And is that everything?’

‘No,’ replied Ben, refusing to be rushed. He was quite sure Harry Lynch would not have permitted it. ‘I like a bit of air.’

‘I see. The windows are worrying you, too?’

‘Tork abart suffercatin’!’

‘And how about the arrangement of this room? Do you think the bed would be better against another wall? And is the colour-scheme satisfactory? And your shaving-water—what time would you like it brought?’ She was still smiling, but a quality that made Ben wary had entered her voice. Ben’s difficulty was in finding a common denominator between what he felt and what Harry Lynch would have felt. He was struggling with the difficulty now as Helen Warren continued, ‘Now, listen to me, Mr Lynch. I am going to admit at once that I find you a most unusual person, and that, when I have found out a little more about you—and I take no chances, you know—I think you will prove the very man for the difficult job you’ve been engaged for. Because of that I am ready to put up with your—peculiarities, shall we call them?—and as I like novel sensations I am even ready to enjoy certain of them. But while you are in this flat you will not question the rules of this flat—when your own sense cannot supply any reason—and you will keep to the rules of this flat. Now, is that quite clear?’

Ben returned her steady gaze for a little while without replying. ‘She’s watchin’ me,’ he thought, ‘to see ’ow I’m tikin’ it. So ’ow ’ave I gotter tike it?’

Conscious that the moment was a crucial one, he wished some invisible person could have been standing by to advise him. That dead detective, for instance, whose job Ben was carrying on— he would have known how to deal with this dangerous, soul-searching woman! Yes, and she was searching her new recruit’s soul now, all right … Then, all at once, the new recruit remembered something.

Once, on a cannibal island, he had been taken for a god by the natives. He had maintained the convenient but uncomfortable illusion, actually using it for the betterment of the island before effecting his escape, by periodically pretending to himself that he was a god. Only by yielding to the part was he able to understand and act the part. Now he would have to yield, when in doubt, to the part of Harry Lynch, to discover how he would behave.

The mental gymnastics of slipping into the skin of a crook and potential murderer were less attractive than those of entering the more ethereal surfaces of a deity. The latter gave you a sort of a glow, like. The former gave you a sort of a shudder, like. ‘Yer can’t git away from it,’ reflected Ben. ‘I fair ’ates blood!’ But it was for the blood of a dead detective he would now be assuming that red was his favourite colour, and that thought would sustain him.