The Clocks

CHAPTER 5

‘Mom!’ said Ernie Curtin, desisting for a moment from his occupation of running a small metal model up and down the window pane, accompanying it with a semi-zooming, semi-moaning noise intended to reproduce a rocket ship going through outer space on its way to Venus, ‘Mom, what d’you think?’

Mrs Curtin, a stern-faced woman who was busy washing up crockery in the sink, made no response.

‘Mom, there’s a police car drawn up outside our house.’

‘Don’t you tell no more of yer lies, Ernie,’ said Mrs Curtin as she banged cups and saucers down on the draining board. ‘You know what I’ve said to you about that before.’

‘I never,’ said Ernie virtuously. ‘And it’s a police car right enough, and there’s two men gettin’ out.’

Mrs Curtin wheeled round on her offspring.

‘What’ve you been doing now?’ she demanded. ‘Bringing us into disgrace, that’s what it is!’

‘Course I ain’t,’ said Ernie. ‘I ’aven’t done nothin’.’

‘It’s going with that Alf,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘Him and his gang. Gangs indeed! I’ve told you, and yer father’s told you, that gangs isn’t respectable. In the end there’s trouble. First it’ll be the juvenile court and then you’ll be sent to a remand home as likely as not. And I won’t have it, d’you hear?’

‘They’re comin’ up to the front door,’ Ernie announced.

Mrs Curtin abandoned the sink and joined her offspring at the window.

‘Well,’ she muttered.

At that moment the knocker was sounded. Wiping her hands quickly on the tea-towel, Mrs Curtin went out into the passage and opened the door. She looked with defiance and doubt at the two men on her doorstep.

‘Mrs Curtin?’ said the taller of the two, pleasantly.

‘That’s right,’ said Mrs Curtin.

‘May I come in a moment? I’m Detective Inspector Hardcastle.’

Mrs Curtin drew back rather unwillingly. She threw open a door and motioned the inspector inside. It was a very neat, clean little room and gave the impression of seldom being entered, which impression was entirely correct.

Ernie, drawn by curiosity, came down the passage from the kitchen and sidled inside the door.

‘Your son?’ said Detective Inspector Hardcastle.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Curtin, and added belligerently, ‘he’s a good boy, no matter what you say.’

‘I’m sure he is,’ said Detective Inspector Hardcastle, politely.

Some of the defiance in Mrs Curtin’s face relaxed.

‘I’ve come to ask you a few questions about 19, Wilbraham Crescent. You work there, I understand.’

‘Never said I didn’t,’ said Mrs Curtin, unable yet to shake off her previous mood.

‘For a Miss Millicent Pebmarsh.’

‘Yes, I work for Miss Pebmarsh. A very nice lady.’

‘Blind,’ said Detective Inspector Hardcastle.

‘Yes, poor soul. But you’d never know it. Wonderful the way she can put her hand on anything and find her way about. Goes out in the street, too, and over the crossings. She’s not one to make a fuss about things, not like some people I know.’

‘You work there in the mornings?’

‘That’s right. I come about half past nine to ten, and leave at twelve o’clock or when I’m finished.’ Then sharply, ‘You’re not saying as anything ’as been stolen, are you?’

‘Quite the reverse,’ said the inspector, thinking of four clocks.

Mrs Curtin looked at him uncomprehendingly.

‘What’s the trouble?’ she asked.

‘A man was found dead in the sitting-room at 19, Wilbraham Crescent this afternoon.’

Mrs Curtin stared. Ernie Curtin wriggled in ecstasy, opened his mouth to say ‘Coo’, thought it unwise to draw attention to his presence, and shut it again.

‘Dead?’ said Mrs Curtin unbelievingly. And with even more unbelief, ‘In the sitting-room?’

‘Yes. He’d been stabbed.’

‘You mean it’s murder?’

‘Yes, murder.’

‘Oo murdered ’im?’ demanded Mrs Curtin.

‘I’m afraid we haven’t got quite so far as that yet,’ said Inspector Hardcastle. ‘We thought perhaps you may be able to help us.’

‘I don’t know anything about murder,’ said Mrs Curtin positively.

‘No, but there are one or two points that have arisen. This morning, for instance, did any man call at the house?’

‘Not that I can remember. Not today. What sort of man was he?’

‘An elderly man about sixty, respectably dressed in a dark suit. He may have represented himself as an insurance agent.’

‘I wouldn’t have let him in,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘No insurance agents and nobody selling vacuum cleaners or editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Nothing of that sort. Miss Pebmarsh doesn’t hold with selling at the door and neither do I.’

‘The man’s name, according to a card that was on him, was Mr Curry. Have you ever heard that name?’

‘Curry? Curry?’ Mrs Curtin shook her head. ‘Sounds Indian to me,’ she said, suspiciously.

‘Oh, no,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘he wasn’t an Indian.’

‘Who found him—Miss Pebmarsh?’

‘A young lady, a shorthand typist, had arrived because, owing to a misunderstanding, she thought she’d been sent for to do some work for Miss Pebmarsh. It was she who discovered the body. Miss Pebmarsh returned almost at the same moment.’

Mrs Curtin uttered a deep sigh.

‘What a to-do,’ she said, ‘what a to-do!’

‘We may ask you at some time,’ said Inspector Hardcastle, ‘to look at this man’s body and tell us if he is a man you have ever seen in Wilbraham Crescent or calling at the house before. Miss Pebmarsh is quite positive he has never been there. Now there are various small points I would like to know. Can you recall off-hand how many clocks there are in the sitting-room?’

Mrs Curtin did not even pause.

‘There’s that big clock in the corner, grandfather they call it, and there’s the cuckoo clock on the wall. It springs out and says “cuckoo”. Doesn’t half make you jump sometimes.’ She added hastily, ‘I didn’t touch neither of them. I never do. Miss Pebmarsh likes to wind them herself.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with them,’ the inspector assured her. ‘You’re sure these were the only two clocks in the room this morning?’

‘Of course. What others should there be?’

‘There was not, for instance, a small square silver clock, what they call a carriage clock, or a little gilt clock—on the mantelpiece that was, or a china clock with flowers on it—or a leather clock with the name Rosemary written across the corner?’

‘Of course there wasn’t. No such thing.’

‘You would have noticed them if they had been there?’

‘Of course I should.’

‘Each of these four clocks represented a time about an hour later than the cuckoo clock and the grandfather clock.’

‘Must have been foreign,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘Me and my old man went on a coach trip to Switzerland and Italy once and it was a whole hour further on there. Must be something to do with this Common Market. I don’t hold with the Common Market and nor does Mr Curtin. England’s good enough for me.’

Inspector Hardcastle declined to be drawn into politics.

‘Can you tell me exactly when you left Miss Pebmarsh’s house this morning?’

‘Quarter past twelve, near as nothing,’ said Mrs Curtin.

‘Was Miss Pebmarsh in the house then?’

‘No, she hadn’t come back. She usually comes back some time between twelve and half past, but it varies.’

‘And she had left the house—when?’

‘Before I got there. Ten o’clock’s my time.’

‘Well, thank you, Mrs Curtin.’

‘Seems queer about these clocks,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘Perhaps Miss Pebmarsh had been to a sale. Antiques, were they? They sound like it by what you say.’

‘Does Miss Pebmarsh often go to sales?’

‘Got a roll of hair carpet about four months ago at a sale. Quite good condition. Very cheap, she told me. Got some velour curtains too. They needed cutting down, but they were really as good as new.’

‘But she doesn’t usually buy bric-à-brac or things like pictures or china or that kind of thing at sales?’

Mrs Curtin shook her head.

‘Not that I’ve ever known her, but of course, there’s no saying in sales, is there? I mean, you get carried away. When you get home you say to yourself “whatever did I want with that?” Bought six pots of jam once. When I thought about it I could have made it cheaper myself. Cups and saucers, too. Them I could have got better in the market on a Wednesday.’

She shook her head darkly. Feeling that he had no more to learn for the moment, Inspector Hardcastle departed. Ernie then made his contribution to the subject that had been under discussion.

‘Murder! Coo!’ said Ernie.

Momentarily the conquest of outer space was displaced in his mind by a present-day subject of really thrilling appeal.

‘Miss Pebmarsh couldn’t have done ’im in, could she?’ he suggested yearningly.

‘Don’t talk so silly,’ said his mother. A thought crossed her mind. ‘I wonder if I ought to have told him—’

‘Told him what, Mom?’

‘Never you mind,’ said Mrs Curtin. ‘It was nothing, really.’