Measure for Murder by Clifford Witting

Author:Clifford Witting
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Galileo Publishing
Published: 2021-10-18T12:39:43+00:00

XIII

... if you live to see this come to pass,

say Pompey told you so.

Act II, Sc. 1.

Hobson paused at the door and looked down at the carpet, as if in search of somewhere to wipe his feet. He was fidgeting with his stained cap, as he shuffled nervously into the room. His jocular manner had deserted him.

“Did you want to see me, sir?” he asked with a hesitant smile that displayed teeth of the inartistic regularity and white brilliance that are the hallmarks of commercial science’s ascendancy over Nature.

“Yes. Sit down . . . Your name’s Hobson, isn’t it?”

“Yessir. Archibald Hobson.”

“And you once got sent away for three months for working the buses at Southmouth?”

Hobson gulped so suddenly that his teeth clicked.

“Yessir, but that was a long time ago. I bin clean ever since, God’s honour! How did you come to know that I used to be at the whiz?”

“Just a part of my job. I hope you decided that dipping pockets didn’t pay?”

“Gone straight as a dart ever since, sir.”

“Good. I’m not bringing it up against you, but wanted to get you placed. Now, I’m told that you were at the ‘Measure for Measure’ rehearsal yesterday evening.”

“That’s right, sir. I’m kind of electrician and stage-carpenter for the society. I’ve always bin pretty clever with me “ands.”

“So they tell me,” murmured Charlton, and the wiry little man gave an awkward smirk. “What time did you leave the theatre?”

“With most of the others, as soon as the re’earsal was over. Say eleven o’clock.”

“And you came straight here?” Hobson agreed. “Did you walk back alone?”

“Well, sir, we were all sort of together most of the way, but I wasn’t side by side or in company with anybody, though as you couldn’t see your ’and in front of your face, I might ’ave bin right on the ’eels of the Archhishop of Canterbury and not known it. Everyone was talking and walking into things and falling off the kerb, but they gradually thinned out and, coming along Friday Street, there was only four of us, three of the lodgers ’ere and me, fifteen or twenty yards be’ind ’em. They came in through the front door and I went round the back, stoked the boiler, did one or two other little jobs and then went up to bed.”

“After you got in, did you hear anyone enter or leave Eagle House?”

“No, sir, but that’s not to say they didn’t. It’s a regular ’oneycomb, this place. There’s ’alf a dozen ways in and out and all the German spies in the country”—he gave the detective a swift, cunning glance—“could come and go without you being any the wiser, specially in the black-out.”

“Was Mr. Tudor left alone in the theatre?”

“I couldn’t swear to that, sir. There was such an ’urly-burly down the stairs, that you couldn’t tell who’d gone and who was left. I ’eard Mr. Tudor say that ’e was going to stop be’ind, but whether ’e did or not, and whether anybody stayed with ’im, I shouldn’t like to say.

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