Colin Watson - Bump in the Night

He thought over his gleanings of the past couple of days: the readily offered accounts, guesses and insinuations, the terse police reports, the photographs and lists of times. They all boiled down to very little, perhaps no more than a series of eccentric pranks that had set off a chain reaction of parochial gossip.

Why, then, had Hessledine thought the affair worthy of special inquiries by an officer unconnected with the Chalmsbury Force? He had certainly not ordered them in response to representations by nervous civic dignitaries of whom he had said: “One end’s so like t’other it’s a wonder that when they take their hats off they’re not run in for indecent exposure.”

To only one confidence had he made Purbright partner. There had lately been reported missing from Flaxborough’s Civil Defence training centre a quantity of explosives quite large enough to account for the incidents to date, with a handsome reserve for encores. “There may be no connection,” the Chief Constable had said, “but the coincidence is far from happy.”

He had not laboured the point. There was no need. Purbright was well aware that the leading light in the Tuesday evening demolition and heavy rescue course at Flaxborough was Chief Inspector Larch.

Purbright leaned out of the window and let fall a small and manly droplet of C.I.D. saliva upon the third of the basement steps below. The tiny smack it made was quite audible: sound was carried by the summer air as though it were strung with infinitely fine wires (later in the afternoon one would think to see them, glinting in the heat).

Larch, though...it was absurd. Each Tuesday he left for Flaxborough long before dusk and did not return until the following morning. All three bombs had exploded in public places; it seemed inconceivable that they could have been set in position during daylight.

What object could Larch have, anyway? He certainly gave the impression of being anti-social, but not to a maniacal degree.

A car came slowly along the street and stopped immediately below. It was a large, old-fashioned car. Through its retracted sunshine roof Purbright saw the driver lean forward and switch off the ignition. He got out of the car and entered the house. This, Purbright guessed, was his fellow lodger and doubtless a harbinger of lunch. He carefully made his way downstairs.

Mrs Crispin made introductions with the air of springing a joyous surprise. Then she stood back, beaming expectantly at each in turn. Purbright wondered if he were supposed to embrace this new blood brother, but Payne, accustomed to his landlady’s transports, merely held out a hand and winked.

As soon as they were alone, however, he produced a minor surprise of his own “I must say. Inspector, that you don’t look a bit like a policeman.”

Purbright looked up from his soup analysis. “And who says I am a policeman?”

“Mrs Crispin. She’s very proud to have acquired you.”

“Indeed.”

“You mean no one is supposed to know?”

“It really doesn’t matter. I’m only a little disconcerted to find that one arrives in front of oneself, as it were. The communications system in this town must be excellent.”

“First-rate,” Payne agreed.

“And yet there are some things—quite well known facts, in all probability—that one simply cannot find out.”

Payne raised his brows. “Really? But are you sure you’ve asked the right people? Even the most obliging can’t help if they don’t know the answers. The trouble with Chalmsbury is that no one wishes to seem unobliging. You’ll always be given some sort of information, but the odds are that it will be wildly misleading.”

“I see what you mean,” Purbright said, “but I can’t say that I draw much encouragement from it.”

“Perhaps I can be more helpful. You are, I presume, following some specific line of inquiry here?”

“After a fashion.”

“Police Probe Mystery Blasts?”

Purbright winced. “You really must not draw me into any indiscretions, Mr Payne.”

“Indiscretions are currency in this town, Inspector. One is traded for another. You must be prepared to start somewhere.”

“Is that my cue to ask whether I may trust you?”

“Nothing so banal. But as we are to share one of Mrs Crispin’s cabinet puddings—today being Tuesday—we might as well recognize the bond of common tribulation and peril.”

Purbright smiled. “Very well. Your guess—if it was only a guess—was perfectly correct. Blasts are what I probe.”

Payne ate a while in silence. Then he said: “You will have heard already, or noticed yourself, that there is a pattern about these things.”

“A regularity.”

“That is so. Cabinet pudding is not the only feature peculiar to Tuesdays.”

“One Tuesday, the second one, produced nothing.”

“Why, I wonder.”

“The gap may not be significant. Perhaps there happened to be no opportunity.”

“Or perhaps our bombardier was otherwise engaged—detained, even.”

“Quite.” Purbright poured water for them both. “And what is your occupation, Mr Payne? No one,” he added, “intercepted me on the stairs to tell me.”

“I am a shopkeeper.”

“How odd,” said Purbright after appearing to give the reply some thought.

“Odd?”

“I’m sorry: I didn’t mean to sound rude, but the term shopkeeper is so seldom used now. Scarcely ever by shop-keepers themselves. They seem to consider it derogatory and prefer to be known as provision merchants or shoe repairers or confectioners.”

“In that case I suppose I should claim to be a jeweller. It’s a pretentious description, though, for one who merely wraps up manufactured articles and passes them over a counter.”

“Is that all that’s entailed?”

“Virtually. I keep a shop: that’s the sum of it. A parasitic existence, but it harms no one.”

“You may not appreciate,” said Purbright, “how precious that apparently negative virtue has become in these days.”

Payne smiled and they talked of other things until the arrival of the cabinet pudding.

Where would the fourth bomb explode?

No one doubted that a bomb would go off. And Tuesday having been established as ‘fuse-day’ in the public mind by the phrase-coiners of Fleet Street, location was all that remained to be guessed.

Chief Inspector Larch grudgingly ordered special measures. Day duties were reduced to a minimum so that as many men as possible might be switched to patrolling after dark. They were told to concentrate on the main town area and to pay particular attention to such obtrusive features as statues. The chief inspector expressed regret that his Civil Defence duties in Flaxborough precluded his personal supervision of the precautions. He emphasised, however, that were he to find on his return that they had failed in their object, the life of his menials would cease to be worth bloody well living.

There was one serious flaw in Larch’s plan. He had failed to realize that a considerable number of citizens would regard the occasion as a treat rather than an ordeal. So when all the carefully saved policemen were dispatched upon their appointed beats at lighting-up time they entered upon streets already crowded as if for a carnival. The closing of the pubs not only added to the number of spectators but instilled a recklessly jocular mood. There were shouts of “When’s the rocket going up?” and one group in Great Market began chanting, “Ten, nine, eight, seven...” The policemen, who had been led to expect that the town would soon be deserted save for themselves and the prowling dynamiter, whose apprehending would therefore be a simple matter of challenge and chase, instead found themselves jostled, ironically hailed, and pushed by sheer weight of numbers from the path of duty. A hundred saboteurs, they bitterly reflected, could have concealed themselves in such a throng.