Colin Watson - Bump in the Night

Worple shut his mouth, swallowed, and looked across at Biggadyke. The dark, blood-laden face was puckered in thought. The powerful shoulders were hunched and one hand was occupied in smoothing expensive suiting over a thigh like a young hog.

Suddenly, Biggadyke slapped his leg (Worple almost expected a squeal to result) and gave Larch a triumphant leer. “Tuesdays. They were all Tuesdays, weren’t they? Well, I’m out of town every Tuesday night. You can ask the missus. Anyway, you should know that yourself, boy. It’s club night over at Flax. I stay on at a pal’s place afterwards. Bert Smiles. He’ll tell you.”

At the familiarity of ‘boy’ Larch frowned and glanced to see if Worple had noticed, but the sergeant’s expression remained blank.

“Oh well, sir,” he said heartily, “that seems absolutely satisfactory. You could hardly be in two places at once, could you?”

“Hardly,” Biggadyke agreed. His tone conveyed the controlled surprise of a man who learns that he has just said the right thing.

“And if it should ever be necessary to check your statement, sir,” said Larch, drawing a pad of paper towards him, “the club is...”

“The Trade and Haulage, St Anne’s Place.”

“Thank you, sir.” Larch made a note. “And this Mr Smiles?”

“Herbert Smiles, Derwentvale, Pawley Road. Councillor Smiles, he is.”

Larch nodded and wrote. “Of course, we shan’t trouble the gentleman unless it really can’t be avoided. You understand that, sir?”

“Oh, Bert wouldn’t mind. I once stood...” Biggadyke realized just in time that mention of bail would not be apposite in the present circumstances, even though Mr Smiles had, in fact, narrowly escaped conviction. He therefore substituted, with clumsy jocularity, “...stood in for him at a wedding.” The laughter with which he capped this extemporization sounded like an assault on stubborn nasal mucus.

Worple shivered. But he felt almost sure by now that the large, apoplectic-looking, unlovable Mr Biggadyke was not the malefactor they sought.

Chapter Seven

The afternoon sunshine poured into St Luke’s Square and gilded the canvas awnings of the market booths. Buying and selling seemed suspended. Jacketless stallholders stood talking to one another or leaned against the timber uprights and sipped from big mugs of tea. The turmoil of market day had burned itself out. Those who ambled still between the rows of booths glanced without interest at the diminished mounds of fruit, the wilting lettuces, and the few remaining honeycombs, dressed chickens, milk cheeses, saucers of shellfish and other delicacies that once would have been drastically marked down ‘to clear’ at this time of day but which now could be carted off in the backs of shooting brakes to enjoy refrigerated immortality.

Only one man had refused to succumb to the general apathy.

He was a giant clad in greasy flannels and sweat-stained singlet who writhed and slithered around the inner circumference of the crowd he had collected with hoarse promises to bend a six-inch nail into an ‘S’ between his teeth. Clasping ham-sized hands, bound with clouts, before his mouth, he reached the climax of his exercise in a series of leaping convulsions that sent such quantities of blood to his upper parts that his great rigid neck looked like an inverted fire bucket. Then, panting hard and licking his thumb a great many times, he unwrapped layer after layer of cloth from his fist and triumphantly held aloft a nail-turned-meat-hook.

“And would any gentleman,” he challenged his listless spectators, “care to straighten it out again ? Eh ? Eh ? Would you, sir?”

Leonard Leaper, to his intense embarrassment, found the transformed nail lying heavy in his hand. He smiled weakly, shook his head, and offered it back. But the giant, his breath regained, had jumped three feet out of Leaper’s reach and was now holding up a small box in one hand and with the other was scornfully indicating the unwilling nail-bearer.

“Shall I tell you something?” he yelled. He tossed his head and hanks of sweaty hair flapped back across his scalp like razor strops. “Shall I?” He gazed slowly round the circle of sulky but expectant faces. He crouched, still pointing at Leaper, and reverently laid the little box on the ground before him. He closed his eyes.

“This lad,” he whispered throatily, “lacks the greatest gift of providence. Strength. Power.” He flexed his own gnarled oaks and went on: “The Egyptians had the secret. Oh, yes. Yes. They knew about the life-giving fluid that flows down from the cortical thorax, into the spine—here”—he jabbed a finger into the small of his back—“up to the brain and down, down again to the reproductive system.” He looked very satisfied with this itinerary, but did not open his eyes. After a moment’s silence, however, he did open his mouth and expelled the word “DOCTORS!” with a violence that sent the nearest of his audience staggering backward.

The giant rose to his feet, repeated “Doctors!” in an only slightly less stentorian tone, and went on: “...sit up there in Harley Street, taking hundreds of guineas for telling people just what I tell you now. That fluid from the cortical thorax...”—he spun round and pointed down at the box—“the Egyptians knew, oh, yes...that fluid”—he scanned the crowd until his eyes fell on Leaper again—“is dissipated at your peril! Once the level falls below here”—he snapped a hand round to between his shoulder blades—“the spinal passages begin to dry up, the cerebellum shrinks, the muscles atrophy...” Hunching his shoulders, he began slowly advancing upon the luckless Leaper. “Headaches!” he cried, slapping his own temples. “Liver!” He groped amidst his guts. “Stomach!” Four inches of vermilion tongue lolled out over his chin. “Constipation, backache, bad breath, sleeplessness, dizzy spells, pain behind the eyes, catarrh, bad teeth...” The dreadful recital, illustrated with gestures of increasing ferocity, brought foam welling from the corners of his mouth. Then, with dramatic suddenness, the catalogue ceased. Leaper felt upon his shoulder a fatherly pressure, as if a rhinoceros had leaned upon it. “Give it up, boy!” he heard. “For your own sake. Give it up!”

Leaper tore himself from the giant’s grasp, ducked and pushed his way out of the crowd. He was too agitated to notice that Cornelius Payne, who had been standing nearby, helped him to escape by opening up a passage.

“Very humiliating for you,” said Payne when they were clear.

Leaper looked up at him and blushed. “What did he have to pick on me for?” he murmured.

“He very unkindly used you as a sort of advertisement, I think. ‘Before Taking’, you know.”

“I couldn’t see what he was getting at.” Leaper kept his face down as they walked slowly away.

“Huckster’s cant, Mr Leaper,” Payne assured him. “Don’t take any notice of it.”

Leaper glanced at him doubtfully. “I do get headaches sometimes,” he confided.

“Who doesn’t?”

“Are they really something to do with that...that fluid stuff he was talking about?”

Payne grinned. “My dear Mr Leaper, you may take my word that everything uttered by that preposterous acrobat was sheer unadulterated piffle. It was, honestly.”

Leaper remained silent a while but when again he looked up his pinched features had brightened perceptibly. The novel and gratifying experience of hearing himself addressed, without irony, as ‘Mister’ was beginning to register. Here, he reflected, was someone who would never, never call him ‘Kebble’s boy’.

“I say, do you know anything about medicine and that?” His uncomfortable enthralment by cortical thoracic fluid was at an end, but he saw that Payne’s face was of the distinguished, handsome, slightly sad sort that he associated with great surgeons. Perhaps he could be persuaded to talk of miracle drugs and wonder treatments (Leaper was currently worrying a good deal about what he fancied to be signs of impending hairiness of the palms).