As Grant's eyes closed in sleep, he was deciding whom to send to investigate Mrs. Everett.

10 — The Burst to the North

"Simpson," said Grant, "what were you yesterday when you were gathering information about the Ratcliffes?"

"I was an ex-serviceman with writing-pads, sir."

"Oh, well, you can be an ex-serviceman again today. Very self-respecting, clean, with a collar, not a muffler, and out of a job. I want to know about a Mrs. Everett who lives at 98 Brightling Crescent, off the Fulham Road. I don't want any door-to-door business. She's shy of that, and you must be very careful. She looks as if she attends church. Try that. I think you should find it useful. Bar a club, it's the gossipiest community I know of. I want to know, above all, where her friends and relations live. Never mind her correspondence. I can keep an eye on that myself, and, in any case, I have an idea that that isn't likely to be useful. Mrs. Everett was not born yesterday. Get that into your head and remember it. Don't work faster than you can with safety. If she spots you, it will mean that some one else will have to take over, and a promising line of investigation will be spoiled. The minute you get something, let me know, but don't come back here until you've talked to me on the telephone first."

That was how Mr. Caldicott, the clergyman of the Brightlingside Congregational Church, pushing damply at the mower which jibbed at the tough grass of his front lawn and finding the March sun too prodigal of its blessing, became aware that his labours were being viewed by a stranger with a queer mixture of sympathy and envy. Seeing that he had been discovered, the stranger made a sketchy motion towards his cap, in deference evidently to the cloth, and said, "That's hot work on a day like this, sir. Will you let me take a hand?"

Now the clergyman was young and very fond of showing that he was not above a good day's work. "Do you think I'm not able to do a job like that myself?" he asked, with a strong, brotherly smile.

"Oh, no, sir. It isn't that at all. It's only that I'd be very glad to earn a copper or two for doing it for you."

"Oh?" said Mr. Caldicott, his professional instincts aroused. "Are you looking for work?"

"That's about it," said the man. "Married?"

"No, sir." Simpson was about to add a pious thanksgiving, but stopped himself in time.

"What kind of work are you looking for?"

"Anything.

"Yes, but have you a trade?"

"I can make shoes, sir," said Simpson, thinking he might as well stick to the truth as far as it served him.

"Well, perhaps it would be more sensible if you did the grass and I attended to other duties. Come in and have lunch with me at one o'clock."

But that was not at all what Simpson wanted. The kitchen was his objective, not the parsonical conversation of the dining-room. With a masterly confusion he turned hesitatingly from the mower on which he had already laid zealous hands, and stammered, "If it's all the same to you, sir, I'd rather have a bite in the kitchen. You see — I'm not used to the other kind."

"Come, come," began Mr. Caldicott in brotherly rallying, and Simpson, fearful that his chance of precious gossip was going to be taken from him, could have hit the reverend gentleman.

"Please, sir, if you don't mind — " he said, with such a wealth of conviction in his tone that the clergyman gave way.

"Well, well," he said half testily — had he not exhibited broadmindedness and the true spirit of brotherhood and had them discounted? — "if you really would prefer it." He went away, but before very long he came back, and under pretext of hearing Simpson's history — he catalogued his visitor in a completely unbrotherly fashion as a very respectable fellow — he remained on the pathway until lunchtime, gossiping cheerfully about the things that interested him. He talked about the War — he had been a C.F. at Rouen — about seedlings, and London soot, and shoeleather — this last as being of possible interest to his listener — and the difficulty he experienced in getting young men to come to church. When Simpson found that his last sermon had proved conclusively that God disapproved of betting, and that those who betted committed a sin against themselves, against their neighbour, and against God, he was not particularly surprised at the paucity of Mr. Caldicott's youthful following.

"Now you are young," Mr. Caldicott said. "Can you tell me why young men do not like church?" But Simpson had no intention of leaving the clergyman's house before evening if he could help it, so he refrained from instructing him, and merely shook his head sadly to indicate mournful disapproval. A consciousness of the weekly half-crown that went to enrich the bookmakers instead of the managers of the local Empire made him attack his work with a new zeal, but he was glad when a gong sounded in the house and the clergyman dismissed him with his blessing to the back regions. More than any meal to Simpson was the pursuit of the game he was engaged in.

The clergyman — who, he learned, was a most eligible bachelor — had two maids: a cook-housekeeper and a "help," who looked just like every stage and cinema Tweeny. They were delighted to welcome such a presentable male to their board, and in the hour that he took to his meal, Simpson learned more of lower-class suburbia than he had known in a whole lifetime spent among it. But beyond hearing that Mrs. Everett was a stuck-up widow who gave herself airs because her father had been a clergyman, he learned nothing that he wanted to know. When he asked if her father had been clergyman here, they said oh, no, that it had been somewhere in the north. Some one-horse place, he might be sure. Mrs. Everett went to all the church meetings and things, the cook opined, not because she was keen on church, but just to keep every one in mind that her father had been a clergyman. Revolving this really striking elucidation of human motive, Simpson went back to the garden to resume the mowing which was very nearly finished, and presently the clergyman joined him again. They were having a social meeting in the church hall that evening — would Simpson care to come? Simpson thanked him, and said with sincerity that he would be delighted. In that case there were chairs and such impedimenta to be carried from the church into the church hall — would Simpson like to help with them? If he went down after tea, he would find the ladies' committee preparing for the event. A ladies' committee was the thing above all that Simpson wanted to meet at the moment, and he again expressed his complete willingness, and the clergyman departed.

After an afternoon of border-trimming and gossiping alternately with the cook and the "help," who invented excuses to come and talk to him without apparently caring whether he believed the excuses or not, and a kitchen tea which, though more productive than the previous day's one in Lemonora Road, lacked the spice provided by his colleague's presence, Simpson betook himself to the church. The church he had already located — a red-brick building of a hideousness so complete that it was difficult to believe that it was accidental. The yellowish brown and ultramarine blue of the stained-glass windows was now decently shrouded by the kindly dusk, but evening had its own horror in the brightly lit church hall, where two or three women were rushing about in the aimless, excited fashion of hens, talking much and achieving little, since none of their number did a thing without one of the others suggesting an amendment, which resulted in the committee immediately going into session. Their debates were protracted beyond the limits of an ordinary man's patience by their constant and insincere deferrings to each other, and after Simpson had watched them from the door for a little, very much as he had watched Mr. Caldicott's efforts with a lawn-mower, he came slowly forward, cap in hand, and called attention to himself. "Are you looking for some one?" one of them said, and he explained that Mr. Caldicott had sent him down to assist. He was an immediate success. In fact, he was so sought after that he began to feel inordinately pleased with himself a state of mind which has no business in a member of the Criminal Investigation Department, and which died a sudden death when later in the evening he met his rivals. Reporting them afterwards in camera to Mullins, he used a picturesqueness of phrase which I regret I cannot reproduce, but which left no doubt in Mullins' mind as to the type of men who had attended that "social." Altogether Simpson was rather bitter about that evening, though why he should have been, I cannot fathom. His red-fair hair and freckles were his passport to happiness — no one could resist them; the pink wash that adorned the walls — it was raspberry, with a touch of cochineal — did not presumably hurt him as it might have hurt more sensitive souls; he was by far the most popular male present; and the information he had come to seek was lying about in chunks waiting to be picked up. But the fact remains that, when the ploy was all over and Mullins said to him, "The boss is pleased with you about Brightling Crescent," Simpson's pleasant face twisted in a sneer that did not go with red hair and freckles, and he snarled, yes snarled, "Well, I sweated for it!"