Tales from Two Pockets by Capek Karel.; Comrada Norma

Author:Capek, Karel.; Comrada, Norma
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 0945774257, 9780945774259
ISBN: 0945774257
Published: 2010-10-24T08:13:26+00:00

199

The Crime at the Post Office

“Talk about Justice,” said Police Sergeant Brejcha. “I’d like to know why the pictures always show some female with a bandage on her eyes and the sort of scales they use to weigh peppers. What I mean is, Justice seems more like a policeman, to me. You wouldn’t believe the things us policemen pass judgment on, without any judge, without any scales, and without all the fuss and feathers. In a few cases we tap a few jaws, and in most cases we undo our belts, but in ninety cases out of a hundred that’s all justice is. But I’ll tell you right now, mister, I proved two people guilty of murder all by myself, and I was the one what sentenced them to just punishment and even decided what that punishment was to be, and I’ve never said a word about it to nobody. But I’m going to tell it to you right now.

“You’ll recall, mister, that little miss what worked here two years ago in our village post office? Sure, Helenka, that was her name. She was such a good, kind girl, pretty as a picture. Not likely you’d forget her. Well, this Helenka, mister, last summer she drowned herself; she jumped in that big pond near here and went out maybe fifty-five yards until she got to the deep part, and she didn’t wash up for two days. And you know why she did it? On that same day when she drowned herself, there was this auditor from Prague who suddenly turned up at our post office and found out Helenka was short a couple hundred crowns from the cash drawer. A miserable couple hundred, mister. That bonehead of an auditor said he was going to report it and there’d be an investigation, like for embezzlement. But that evening, mister, Helenka drowned herself — from shame.

200

“When they pulled her out, over by the dike, I had to stay with her till the coroner came. There wasn’t anything pretty about her then, poor girl, but the whole time I kept seeing her the way she used to be, smiling behind the window at the post office — well, we all hung around there because of her, you know; everybody liked that girl. Damn it, I said to myself, that girl never stole no two hundred crowns. In the first place, I just didn’t believe it; and in the second place, she sure didn’t need to steal: her daddy was the miller over on the other side of town, and she was only there at the post office because of some female urge to make her own living for herself. I knew her daddy well, mister; he was sort of a literary type and a Protestant, too; and let me tell you, mister, these Protestant religious scribblers around here, they never steal nothing. Mister, I promised that dead girl right there on the dike that I wasn’t going to let this business drop.

“All right

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