Kitabı oku: «Death at the Bar», sayfa 2

CHAPTER 2
Advance by Watchman

The bottle was a small one and as Sebastian Parish had remarked it was conspicuously labelled. The word ‘POISON’ in scarlet on a white ground ran diagonally across on an attached label. It struck a note of interjection and alarm and focused the attention of the five men. Few who read that warning escape a sudden jolt of the imagination.

Parish said, ‘Mr Watchman thinks you are a public danger, Abel. He’s afraid we’ll all be poisoned.’

‘I’m afraid he’ll poison himself,’ said Watchman.

‘Who, sir? Me?’ asked Abel. ‘Not a bit of it. I be mortal cautious sort of chap when it comes to this manner of murderous tipple, Mr Watchman.’

‘I hope you are,’ said Cubitt from the dart board.

‘You’re not going to leave it on the mantelshelf, father?’ asked Will.

‘No fear of that, sonny. I’ll stow it away careful.’

‘You’d much better get rid of it altogether,’ said Watchman. ‘Don’t put it away somewhere. You’ll forget all about it and some day someone will take a sniff at it to find out what it is. Let me take it back to the chemist at Illington. I’d very much like to have a word with that gentleman.’

‘Lord love you,’ said Abel, opening his eyes very wide, ‘us’ve not finished with they bowldacious varmints yet, my sonnies. If so be they’ve got a squeak left in ’em us’ll give ’em another powerful whiff and finish ‘em off.’

‘At least,’ said Cubitt, throwing a dart into double-twenty, ‘at least you might put it out of reach.’

‘Mr Cubitt has a poison-phobia,’ said Watchman.

‘A what, sir?’

‘Never mind about that,’ said Cubitt. ‘I should have thought anybody might boggle at prussic acid.’

‘Don’t fret yourselves, gentlemen,’ said Abel. ‘Thurr’ll be none of this brew served out at the Feathers Tap.’

He mounted the settle and taking the bottle from the mantelpiece pushed it into the top shelf of a double cupboard in the corner of the ingle-nook. He then pulled off the old gloves he wore, threw them on the fire, and turned the key.

‘Nobody can call me a careless man,’ he said. ‘I’m all for looking after myself. Thurr’s my first-aid box in thurr, ready to hand, and if any of the chaps cuts themselves with a mucky fish-knife or any other infectious trifle of that sort, they gets a swill of iodine in scratch. Makes ’em squirm a bit and none the worse for that. I learnt that in the war, my sonnies. I was a surgeon’s orderly and I know the mighty powers thurr be in drugs.’

He stared at the glass door. The label ‘POISON’ still showed, slightly distorted, in the darkness of the little cupboard.

‘Safe enough thurr,’ said Abel and went over to the bar.

With the arrival of the Pomeroys the private bar took on its customary aspect for a summer’s evening. They both went behind the counters. Abel sat facing the Private and on Cubitt’s order drew pints of draught beer for the company. A game of darts was started in the Public.

The man in the settle had not moved, but now Watchman saw his hand reach out for his pint. He saw the callouses, the chipped nails, the coarsened joints of the fingers. Watchman got up, stretched himself, grimaced at Parish, and crossed the room to the settle.

The light shone full in the face of the stranger. The skin of his face was brown, but Watchman thought it had only recently acquired this colour. His hair stood up in white bristles, his forehead was garnished with bumps that shone in the lamplight. The eyes under the bleached lashes seemed almost without colour. From the nostrils to the corners of the mouth ran grooves that lent emphasis to the fall of the lips. Without raising his head the man looked up at Watchman, and the shadow of a smile seemed to visit his face. He got up and made as if to go to the door, but Watchman stopped him.

‘May I introduce myself?’ asked Watchman.

The man smiled more broadly. ‘They are false teeth,’ thought Watchman, and he added: ‘We have met already this evening, but we didn’t exchange names. Mine is Luke Watchman.’

‘I gathered as much from your conversation,’ said the man. He paused for a moment and then said: ‘Mine is Legge.’

‘I’m afraid I sounded uncivil,’ said Watchman. ‘I hope you’ll allow me a little motorists’ licence. One always abuses the other man, doesn’t one?’

‘You’d every excuse,’ mumbled Legge, ‘every excuse.’ He scarcely moved his lips. His teeth seemed too large for his mouth. He looked sideways at Watchman, picked up a magazine from the settle, and flipped it open, holding it before his face.

Watchman felt vaguely irritated. He had struck no sort of response from the man and he was not accustomed to falling flat. Obviously, Legge merely wished to be rid of him and this state of affairs piqued Watchman’s vanity. He sat on the edge of the table, and for the second time that evening offered his cigarette-case to Legge.

‘No thanks – pipe.’

‘I’d no idea I should find you here,’ said Watchman, and noticed uncomfortably that his own voice sounded disproportionately cordial, ‘although you did tell me you were bound for Ottercombe. It’s a good pub, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Legge hurriedly. ‘Very good.’

‘Are you making a long visit?’

‘I live here,’ said Legge.

He pulled out his pipe and began to fill it. His fingers moved clumsily and he had an air of rather ridiculous concentration. Watchman felt marooned on the edge of the table. He saw that Parish was listening with a maddening grin, and he fancied that Cubitt’s ears were cocked. ‘Damn it,’ he thought, ‘I will not be put out of countenance by the brute. He shall like me.’ But he could think of nothing to say and Mr Legge had begun to read his magazine.

From beyond the bar came the sound of raucous applause. Someone yelled: ‘Double seventeen and we’m beat the Bakery.’

Norman Cubitt pulled out his darts and paused for a moment. He looked from Watchman to Parish. It struck him that there was a strong family resemblance between these cousins, a resemblance of character rather than physique. Each in his way, thought Cubitt, was a vain man. In Parish one recognized the ingenuous vanity of the actor. Off the stage he wooed applause with only less assiduity than he commanded it when he faced an audience. Watchman was more subtle. Watchman must have the attention and respect of every new acquaintance, but he played for it without seeming to do so. He would take endless trouble with a complete stranger when he seemed to take none. ‘But he’s getting no change out of Legge,’ thought Cubitt maliciously. And with a faint smile he turned back to the dart board.

Watchman saw the smile. He took a pull at his tankard and tried again.

‘Are you one of the dart experts?’ he asked. Legge looked up vaguely and Watchman had to repeat his question.

‘I play a little,’ said Legge.

Cubitt hurled his last dart at the board and joined the others.

‘He plays like the devil himself,’ he said. ‘Last night I took him on, 101 down. I never even started. He threw fifty, one, and the fifty again.’

‘I was fortunate that time,’ said Mr Legge with rather more animation.

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Cubitt. ‘You’re merely odiously accurate.’

‘Well,’ said Watchman, ‘I’ll lay you ten bob you can’t do it again, Mr Legge.’

‘You’ve lost,’ said Cubitt.

‘Aye, he’s a proper masterpiece is Mr Legge,’ said old Abel.

Sebastian Parish came across from the ingle-nook. He looked down good-humouredly at Legge. ‘Nobody,’ thought Cubitt, ‘has any right to be as good-looking as Seb.’

‘What’s all this?’ asked Parish.

‘I’ve offered to bet Mr Legge ten bob he can’t throw fifty, one, and fifty.’

‘You’ve lost,’ said Parish.

‘This is monstrous,’ cried Watchman. ‘Do you take me, Mr Legge?’

Legge shot a glance at him. The voices of the players beyond the partition had quietened for the moment. Will Pomeroy had joined his father at the private bar. Cubitt and Parish and the two Pomeroys waited in silence for Legge’s reply. He made a curious grimace, pursing his lips and screwing up his eyes. As if in reply, Watchman used that KC’s trick of his and took the tip of his nose between thumb and forefinger. Cubitt, who watched them curiously, was visited by the fantastic notion that some sort of signal had passed between them.

Legge rose slowly to his feet.

‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Certainly, Mr Watchman. I take you on.’

II

Legge moved, with a slovenly dragging of his boots, into a position in front of the board. He pulled out the three darts and looked at them.

‘Getting a bit worn, Mr Pomeroy,’ said Legge. ‘The rings are loose.’

‘I’ve sent for a new set,’ said Abel. ‘They’ll be here tomorrow. Old lot can go into Public.’

Will Pomeroy left the public bar and joined his father. ‘Showing ’em how to do it, Bob?’ he asked.

‘There’s a bet on, sonny,’ said old Pomeroy.

‘Don’t make me nervous, Will,’ said Legge, with a grin.

He looked at the board, poised his first dart and, with a crisp movement of his hand flung it into the bullseye.

‘Fifty,’ said Will. ‘There you are, gentlemen! Fifty!’

‘Three-and-fourpence in pawn,’ said Watchman.

‘We’ll put it into the CLM. if it comes off, Will,’ said Legge.

‘What’s the CLM?’ demanded Watchman.

Will stared straight in front of him and said, ‘The Coombe Left Movement, Mr Watchman. We’re a branch of the South Devon Left, now.’

‘Oh Lord!’ said Watchman.

Legge threw his second dart. It seemed almost to drop from his hand, but he must have used a certain amount of force since it went home solidly into the top right-hand division.

‘And the one. Six-and-eight pence looking a bit off colour, Mr Watchman,’ said Abel Pomeroy.

‘He’s stymied himself for the other double twenty-five, though,’ said Watchman. ‘The first dart’s lying right across it.’

Legge raised his hand and, this time, took more deliberate aim. He threw from a greater height. For a fraction of a second the dart seemed to hang in his fingers before it sped downwards, athwart the first, into the narrow strip round the centre.

‘And fifty it is!’ said Will. ‘There you are. Fifty. Good for you, comrade.’

A little chorus went up from Parish, Cubitt and old Abel.

‘That man’s a wizard.’

‘Shouldn’t be allowed!’

‘You’m a proper masterpiece.’

‘Well done, Bob,’ added Will, as if determined to give the last word of praise.

Watchman laid a ten-shilling note on the table.

‘I congratulate you,’ he said.

Legge looked at the note.

‘Thank you, Mr Watchman,’ he said. ‘Another ten bob for the fighting fund, Will.’

‘Good enough, but it’s straightout generous to give it.’

Watchman sat down again on the table-edge.

‘All very nice,’ he said. ‘Does you credit, Mr Legge. I rather think another drink’s indicated. With me, if you please. Loser’s privilege.’

Will Pomeroy glanced uncomfortably at Legge. By Feathers etiquette, the winner of a bet at darts pays for the next round. There was a short silence broken by old Pomeroy who insisted that the next round should be on the house, and served the company with a potent dark ale, known to the Coombe as Treble Extra.

‘We’ll all play like Mr Legge with this inside us,’ said Parish.

‘Yes,’ agreed Watchman, looking into his tankard, ‘it’s a fighting fund in itself. A very pretty tipple indeed.’ He looked up at Legge.

‘Do you know any other tricks like that one, Mr Legge?’

‘I know a prettier one than that,’ said Legge quietly, ‘if you’ll assist me.’

‘I assist you?’

‘Yes. If you’ll stretch your hand out flat on the board I’ll outline it with darts.’

‘Really? You ought to be in the sawdust ring. No I don’t think I trust you enough for that, you know. One would need a little more of Mr Pomeroy’s Treble Extra.’

He stretched out his hand and looked at it.

‘And yet, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’d like to see you do it. Some other time. You know, Mr Legge, as a good Conservative, I feel I should deplore your gesture. Against whom is your fighting fund directed?’

But before Legge could speak, Will answered quickly, ‘Against the capitalist, Mr Watchman, and all his side.’

‘Really? So Mr Legge is also an ardent proletarian fan?’

‘Secretary and treasurer for the Coombe Left Movement.’

‘Secretary and treasurer,’ repeated Watchman. ‘Responsible jobs, aren’t they?’

‘Aye,’ said Will, ‘and it’s a responsible chap that’s taken ’em on for us.’

Legge turned away and moved into the ingle-nook. Watchman looked after him. Cubitt noticed that Watchman’s good humour seemed to be restored. Any one would have thought that he had won the bet and that it had been for a much larger sum. And for no reason in the world Cubitt felt that there had been a passage of arms between Legge and Watchman, and that Watchman had scored a hit.

‘What about you, Abel?’ Watchman asked abruptly. ‘Are you going to paint the Feathers red?’

‘Me sir? No. I don’t hold with Will’s revolutionary ideas and he knows it, but us’ve agreed to differ. Does no harm, I reckon, for these young chaps to meet every Friday and make believe they’re hashing up the laws and serving ’em out topsy-turvy – game in servants’ hall and prunes and rice for gentry. Our Will was always a great hand for make-believe from the time he learned to talk. Used to strut about taproom giving orders to the furniture. “I be as good as Squire, now,” he’d say in his little lad’s voice and I reckon he’s saying it yet.’

‘You’re blind to reason, father,’ said Will. ‘Blind-stupid and hidebound. Either you can’t see or you won’t. Us chaps are working for the good of all, not for ourselves.’

‘Right enough, sonny. A fine noble ideal, I don’t doubt, and when you’ve got us all toeing the line with no handicaps and nothing to run for –’

‘The good of the State to run for. Each man equal –’

‘And all coming in first. Damn’ queer sort of race.’

‘The old argument,’ said Legge from the fireplace, ‘and based as usual on a false analogy.’

‘Is it a false analogy?’ asked Watchman. ‘You propose to kill private enterprise –’

‘A chap,’ said Will Pomeroy, ‘will be as ambitious for the public good as he will for his own selfish aims. Give him the chance – that’s all. Teach him to think. The people –’

‘The people!’ interrupted Watchman, looking at Legge’s back. ‘What do you mean by the people? I suppose you mean that vast collection of individuals whose wages are below a certain sum and who are capable of being led by the nose when the right sort of humbug comes along.’

‘That’s no argument,’ began Will angrily. ‘That’s no more than a string of silly opinions.’

‘That’ll do, sonny,’ said Abel.

‘It’s all right, Abel,’ said Watchman, still looking at Legge. ‘I invited the discussion. No offence, I should like to hear what Mr Legge has to say about private enterprise. As treasurer –’

‘Wait a bit, Bob,’ said Will as Legge turned from the fireplace. ‘I don’t like the way you said that, Mr Watchman. Bob Legge here is well-respected in the Coombe. He’s not been long in these parts, ten months isn’t it, Bob? But we’ve learned to know him and we’ve learned to like him. Reckon we’ve showed we trust him, too, seeing the position we’ve given him.’

‘My dear Will,’ said Watchman delicately, ‘I don’t dispute it for a moment. I think Mr Legge has done remarkably well for himself, in ten months.’

Will’s face was scarlet under his thatch of fox-coloured hair. He moved forward and confronted Watchman, his tankard clenched in a great ham of a fist, his feet planted apart.

‘Shut up, now, Luke,’ said Sebastian Parish softly, and Cubitt murmured, ‘don’t heckle, Luke, you’re on a holiday.’

‘See here, Mr Watchman,’ said Will, ‘you can afford to sneer, can’t you, but I’d like to know –’

‘Will!’ Old Abel slapped the bar with an open hand. ‘That’s enough. You’m a grown chap, not a lad, and what’s more, the son of this house. Seems like I ought to give’ee light draught and lemonade till you learn to take a man’s pint like a man. If you can’t talk politics and hold your temper then you’ll not talk politics at all. ‘Be a job for you in Public here. ’Tend it.’

‘I’m sorry, Will,’ said Watchman. ‘Mr Legge is fortunate in his friend.’

Will Pomeroy stood and looked under his brows from Watchman to Legge. Legge shrugged his shoulders, muttered something about moving into the public bar, and went out. Will turned on Watchman.

‘There’s something behind all this,’ he said. ‘I want to know what the game is, Mr Watchman, and damme, I’m going to find out.’

‘Did I hear something about a game?’ said a woman’s voice. They all turned to look at the doorway. There they saw a short fat figure clad in a purple tweed skirt and a green jersey.

‘May I come in?’ asked the Hon. Violet Darragh.