sat rigid, her eyes staring, her cheeks pale, the knuckles of her tightly clenched hands showing white in her lap. Then came steps, and then the front-door bell.
Neither had to look out of the window to feel convinced it was a police car.
The bell rang again, followed this time by the sound of the knocker. Mrs Wilby got up from her chair, steadied herself at a little table beside it, and then walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.
‘This is the finish,’ decided Ben. ‘Well, when yer on the hend o’ the rope, it’s quick!’
He heard the front door open. Mug he’d been to take that pound note. What help was it going to be that Bushy Brows had all the others? Bushy Brows had vanished and would never be heard of again, and if Ben mentioned him to the police they’d say he’d made him up. Corse they would! That was what murderers did, wasn’t it? Made somebody up! And here were the policemen who wouldn’t believe him, here in the hall just the other side of the drawing-room door, He could hear their voices, though not their words. He was glad she had closed the door, but it wouldn’t stay closed for long. In a moment it would open, and then … Yus, he ought never to of took that note—and he ought never to of took that cab! That fair made him the mug of mugs, because of course the police would get on to the taximan, and was the taximan going to forget he’d received a clean new one-pound note from a bloke like Ben? If he didn’t have the note on him he’d know who he passed it on to, and seeing Mr Wilby probably got it from the bank where he worked you could bet it would be easy pie to trace the number …
Why didn’t the door open, and get it over? Ben’s eyes were glued on it, but it remained shut. Was they still torkin’? He listened, but now he could hear nothing. Lummy, that was queer, wasn’t it? Where’d they gone?
A minute went by. Then another. Unable to bear it any longer he tiptoed to the door. Not a sound came from the hall, and after a moment of hesitation he turned the handle and softly opened the door an inch. Peering cautiously through the crack he saw that the hall was empty, but faintly-heard voices sounded behind a door on the other side of the hall.
‘She’s took ’em in there fust,’ he decided, ‘ter ’ear wot they say, and then they’ll come along ter me, and good-bye, Ben!’
A few feet to the left of his projecting nose was the front door, and he nearly succumbed to its temptation, but two reasons dissuaded him from a dash for liberty, and as he closed the drawing-room door again and returned to his seat he could not have told you which of the reasons had been the dominant. One was the police car outside. There would probably still be the driver in it, in which case he’d be caught before he’d begun, and would be self-convicted. He had already had one example that afternoon of the trouble you could get into by running away before you were charged. Of course, there might be nobody in the car (he did not go to the window to look, lest temptation should return, or his own face be seen), but even so they’d probably catch him in the end, with all their clues, and then ask, ‘If you were innocent why did you bunk?’
The second reason that had brought him back into the room was, perhaps, less explainable—but there it was, you couldn’t get away from it. Mrs Wilby must have known that, by leaving him alone, he would have his chance. So—well, she’d sort of trusted him like not to take it. Unless—another thought suddenly intruded—she had meant him to take it? Had she led the police into the room across the hall to give him this opportunity to escape? Well, even so, he couldn’t work it. He’d got a lot more to let her know, and he couldn’t do that from five miles off.
Four or five minutes must have gone by before he heard sounds in the hall again, and at last the door opened. To his surprise, only Mrs Wilby came in, and she only stayed for an instant. She gave him a quick glance, revealing nothing by her expression, took a handkerchief from the table beside the chair she had been sitting in, and then left him once more to himself.
‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he thought. ‘Wozzat mean?’
Another period of waiting had to be endured. It lasted about as long as the first. Then the door across the hall opened, the fact revealed by the renewed audibility of the voices—one was saying, ‘Very well, Mrs Wilby—in half an hour’—footsteps moved towards the front door, and the front door opened and closed.
Ben listened in surprised relief to the sound of the departing police car, and the sound had not died away before Mrs Wilby returned to him. She looked pale, but composed.
‘Well—they’ve gone,’ she said.
‘Yus. I ’eard,’ answered Ben. ‘Why didn’t yer bring ’em in ’ere?’
‘Did you want me to?’
‘Gawd, no!’
‘Then I expect that’s why I didn’t. You’ve got some more to tell me, haven’t you?’
He nodded. ‘Tha’s a fack!’
‘I want to hear it—and of course you will want to hear what the police said. I didn’t mention you—’
‘Go on!’
‘Surely you must realise they’d have come in here if I had?’
‘Yus, only I thort p’r’aps you’d menshuned me but jest said I’d come and gorn, like?’
‘I see. Yes, I could have done that. And if you had gone I might have mentioned you. I came back in the middle of our interview to find out whether you were still here or not.’
‘Oh! Not fer yer ’ankerchiff?’
‘That was just my excuse. Tell me, why didn’t you go?’
‘There was a police car ahtside, wasn’t there?’
‘Nobody was in it.’
‘Oh! Well, I didn’t know that.’
‘You could have seen from the window.’
‘I dessay, but—well, there was hother reasons, too. If I’d done a bunk, yer might of thort, “’E done it arter orl, or ’e wouldn’t of bunked.” That’s wot the pleece’d of thort, any’ow, so it seemed it’d be best ter stay ’ere—you ’avin’ trusted me, like.’
In spite of the distress she was controlling, she smiled faintly.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Eh? Ben.’
‘Just Ben?’
‘Nobody never troubles abart the other part.’
‘Then I won’t either. Yes, I do trust you, and perhaps I rather need somebody I can trust at this moment. I—I’m grateful that you caught me before I—before I left the house just now.’ He noticed that her eyes wandered for an instant to her suitcase, which she had put down on the floor beside the table when they had first entered the drawing-room. ‘Before you tell me what you have to say, would you like to hear what the police said?’
‘Yus, mum.’
‘They said somebody had ’phoned from a public ’phonebox, telling them to go to a house in Norgate Road where they would find a—a dead man. Do you know who that was?’
‘It was me, mum.’
‘I guessed so.’
‘Did they guess?’
‘How could they, if you didn’t tell them?’
‘Tha’s right. Funny wot silly questions yer arsks sometimes when yer mind’s goin’ rahnd. But if yer’d brort ’em