My Name is Michael Sibley Read online

  On the first floor were two bedrooms furnished with small iron beds, a cupboard, a patch of carpet, and a washstand with a basin and water-jug. On the second floor, at the top of the steep, dark staircase, under the sloping roof, were two more bedrooms. One was occupied by Mrs. Martin, Phyllis and the mongrel dog Peter; and in the other Mr. Martin lived and had his being.

  When I was taken up to be introduced on my first evening I saw a man of about sixty-eight, completely bald except for some hair round his ears and neck. He sat in a big, old-fashioned brass bedstead, wearing a grey woollen cardigan. He was almost bedridden as a result of heart trouble incurred during the First World War. He would totter out of bed and wash each morning, and then go back to bed again; his hands trembled a little, but otherwise he was alert and bright. Like his wife, he was cockney born, and still retained a trace of a London accent.

  If this description gives the impression that he was a gentle, doddering old invalid with a quavering voice and a mild manner, I must correct it by adding that never in my life have I met a man whose conversation was so besprinkled with “damns,” “blasts” and “hells.” It was as though a forceful character confined to bed through ill-health found in this way some outlet for his natural energy and high spirits. He had a loud voice and rarely slept, so that at almost any hour of the day or night a roar and a string of strong adjectives might send Mrs. Martin or her daughter, or even me, hurrying to his bedroom to see what he wanted. They loved him dearly, and I am not surprised.

  He was never morose or bad-tempered; on the contrary, he was a great talker, read the papers avidly, and had decided opinions, which he sometimes scribbled on paper and sent to the Editor of the Palesby Gazette. His hobby was knitting and crochet work, and around Christmastime he would order dolls, naked, from a wholesaler, knit clothes for them and dispose of them to shops in the town. At other times he knitted women’s bedjackets and children’s garments.

  Around him in his room, were all the memories of a lifetime. Every inch of shelf and almost all the wall space were covered by ornaments, knick-knacks, pictures, coloured calendars, photographs and other treasures. There was a large picture of the late Lord Kitchener, a large picture, too, of himself with some other soldiers—his war medals hung beneath it; pictures of himself and Mrs. Martin on their wedding day, of Phyllis as a baby and Phyllis as a little girl; a coloured picture, cut from some magazine, of King George V and Queen Mary; a weather barometer, a polished brass shellcase, and much else besides.

  In winter a tiny coal fire smouldered in the room all day. In summer, through the window by his bed, he could just see a strip of blue sky above the house opposite, and a section of the star-jewelled night during his long, sleepless hours. Sometimes, for a short while, the moon would be visible, and he had invented a system of weather forecasting by watching the weather when the moon was on the turn. He swore it was “damned accurate,” and even if it wasn’t, he added, it “helped to pass away part of the blasted night.”

  My Aunt Nell was right.

  The life of a provincial reporter was a hard one. It turned me from an over-sensitive, introspective youth into something resembling a normal, objectively minded young man who could hold his own with anybody, except Prosset; and I still like to think that had he lived I might even have fought clear of that overpowering, blanketing personality. Only I wasn’t given time, in the end; and perhaps I never should have done so, anyway.

  Perhaps I am not even free now. He has already reached out to me once from beyond the grave—or so it seemed.

  We used to get into the office at about ten past nine, and would spend some minutes glancing through the morning papers while Grimshaw marked up the diary for the day. One reporter would be detailed to attend the Stipendiary Magistrate’s Court, another the less important Court presided over by JPs.

  A third reporter would be responsible for what was known as Calls. He was the emergency stand-by man, too. He would ring the infirmary and the various police stations, and the fire station, and write any snippets of news which he obtained on the telephone as a result of his calls. There was always something: an accident or two—fatal, with any luck; a fire, a burglary, an occasional suicide. If the news merited it, he would go out and visit the scene of the occurrence himself and write a fuller story.

  Somebody would be marked in the diary for Inquests; another man, called Fish-Dock Phillip, covered the fish-dock for news and gossip about trawlers. Hailey would be out getting his sports gossip-column material. If conditions required it, a man was detailed to do the Weather Story, gathering news of drought or floods, water shortage or storm damage, as the case might be.

  The police courts often finished by 11:15 and several of us would try to forgather for coffee and dominoes in a café, the loser paying the bill.

  In the afternoons there would be bazaars, municipal committee meetings, council meetings, charity parties, flower shows, and all the normal activities of a provincial town. Nor was this all. Three or four evenings a week we would get an evening job; a dance organized by some club or society which had to be reported, or a lecture, or a whist drive. Quite often we went to bed at one or two o’clock in the morning, because we had to have our copy ready written for handing in first thing next day.

  I had a certain aptitude for writing and a zest for work. I loved my life. I was independent, earning my own living, and in a happy office. Each evening I looked forward to the following day.

  Now and again three or four of us would get together and play cards in somebody’s house. We played for small stakes, and there was much laughter and joking, and a mid-evening break when steaming cups of tea and great thick sandwiches and cake would be served up. Sometimes we drank a few bottles of beer; and the air would grow thick with tobacco smoke. On the way home we would stop to buy fish and chips, and walk through the streets eating the food from the newspaper wrapping, which is the only really enjoyable way to eat fish and chips, and therefore the only really civilized way. If we had had enough beer, we sang riotous songs.

  During the years I was at Palesby I corresponded at irregular intervals with Prosset and to a lesser extent with Kate, but I did not see either of them on the rare and brief visits I paid to London. I replied to Prosset’s letters because, as usual, I felt it was the only thing I could do. He was still at the bank, but expecting to go abroad “any time now”; in the end, he died without ever leaving these shores, except to visit his family in Ireland.

  Kate’s letters were dull, because her life was dull. They were filled with trivialities which were of no interest to me because I had no real sentimental attachment to her. I always intended looking her up the next time I visited London, but I never did, and inevitably we began to write less and less. But Prosset was different; it was as though he could not bring himself to let me escape from him completely.

  It was a good, hard life in Palesby, and I had not a care in the world until one Sunday afternoon when I took the mongrel Peter for a walk in Central Park. By then I had been on the Gazette some seven or eight years. This dog was half collie and half something else which it was impossible to determine. He was a very friendly dog, and would sometimes go up to complete strangers and make friends with them.

  The day in question was one of those watery April days, and there had been a heavy shower or two of rain succeeded by sunshine. There were puddles on the paths, green buds on the trees, and a fair number of people taking advantage of the warm sunshine between the showers.

  A girl was sitting on a bench reading a book, eating chocolate. The dog Peter went up to her and had a sniff. I whistled him off, but he was a disobedient brute. The girl raised her hand, holding the chocolate out of his reach, which the dog regarded either as provocation or as an invitation to play. He raised himself on his hind legs, tail wagging, and put a very muddy paw on to the lap of her navy-blue suit.

  I hurried over and hauled him off, but the damage was done, if you could call it that, and a large brown paw mark stained the girl’s ski
rt.

  “I’m terribly sorry. I’m afraid he has wrecked your skirt.”

  I took out my handkerchief and offered it to her. She took it and dabbed rather ineffectually at the mud.

  She said, “It’s all right. It’ll come out when it’s dry. It’ll brush off all right later.”

  She had a Palesby accent, but also a lilt of some other origin which was not at the moment clear to me. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking about her voice. I was thinking that she was very good-looking. She was about twenty-two, and had light-brown hair and blue eyes; her face was very made-up, the cream being laid on so thick that you had an impression of smooth china; her eyelashes were stiff with mascara, and she had plucked her eyebrows into such a shape as to give her a look of continual surprise. She was small and had good legs and neatly shod feet, but was built rather on the square side for classical beauty. Her worst feature was her nose, which was prominent and had a high bridge. Her face was rather broad, and tapered to a little pointed chin. She was no real beauty, but her blue eyes and white teeth, even the very artificiality of her make-up had its attractions. I think her artificiality was attractive because her general turn-out was so neat and clean that it aided the overall impression that here was somebody who took great trouble with every aspect of her appearance. Anyway, I liked the look of her.

  I said again, “Well, I’m really sorry. Are you sure it will be all right.”

  “Quite all right, I’m sure.” She smiled, and when she did so, her face came to life, and I could see that on each side of her mouth were creases which defied the make-up and lent character to her features.

  I said, “Do you mind if I sit down and smoke a cigarette?”

  I took out my case and offered her one; she hesitated a second, then took one, and I gave her a light.

  “What kind of dog is he, anyway?”

  “Part collie and part something else. Your guess is as good as mine. He’s very disobedient, though.”

  She looked at me for a moment. “You’re not a Palesby man, are you?”

  “I’m a Londoner. I got a job as a reporter on the Gazette, so I came up here.”

  “That must be fine. Getting around and seeing things and people.”

  “It’s better than being stuck in an office all day. Do you work?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m a typist. At Benton’s, the soap people.”

  “Like it?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve got to do something. Dad’s dead, and Mum and I live together. We share the house with my brother Bill and his wife. He’s a mate on a trawler, so Mavis is alone a good deal. I’ve got a sister, too. She’s married and lives on the other side of the town. She’s older than me. She’s got a couple of kids.”

  We talked a little longer, and I told her about my early life. It was naturally a carefully edited account, sufficiently truthful to make her laugh, but omitting the dankness of the garden, the smell of mice, the dreariness of the whole street in Earl’s Court. I enjoyed talking to her. When she got up and said she must go home, I knew I wanted to see her again. I could not find anything to say, and was thinking furiously as she pulled on her gloves. All I managed to say was, “Perhaps I’ll see you again one Sunday.”

  “I don’t come into the park much on Sundays. Still, you never know. Bye-bye.”

  It was not what one could call encouraging, but at least it wasn’t a direct rebuff. Life was making me philosophical, and I was beginning to know my strengths and weaknesses—what I could do, and what I could not. I knew that at first sight few people liked me, but that if I could talk to them for a while their earlier distaste melted, and that over a period I could rub along with most people very well. Given time, I thought I could make this girl, whose name I did not even know, like me. So far I had not had a permanent girlfriend, though I had occasionally made up a party of four for a visit to the cinema or a drive in the country. Somehow I had not had either much time or inclination or money. At first I had saved a portion of my very small salary to buy decent clothes, and then I had been anxious to save a bit to put in the bank, because journalism is a precarious career and you never quite know when you may be out on your ear without a job.

  I watched her as she walked away. She had pretty legs, I thought again, and not at all a bad figure, even if it was a little too square. I returned home, had my usual high tea, and settled by the fire to read.

  I did not read for long. There was a telephone in the house because, now that I had settled down in my job, the office agreed that it was useful to have both Hailey and myself on the end of a line. They paid the rental, half the local calls up to a certain maximum, and such toll calls, of course, as were made on behalf of the Gazette, which were few enough. At ten past six it rang. I heard Grimshaw’s heavy voice on the other end.

  “That you, Sibley? Get down to Suffolk Street, lad. There’s been a murder there. Some tart’s been stabbed by a Lascar seaman, or something.”

  “A murder?”

  I could hardly credit it. There hadn’t been a single murder in Palesby since I had been there.

  “I’ve got Charlie down there with his camera. Nip along, lad, and find out something about the woman.”

  “Righto. Anybody else going down?”

  “I can’t find any other bloody reporter on the whole staff. They’re all out or ill or something.”

  I remember thinking it was not much of a compliment to have been telephoned last, but I did not care. I pictured myself finding vital clues, an overlooked bloodstained matchstick, perhaps, and being complimented by the Superintendent. There might also be a discreet reference in the Gazette’s gossip feature to the valuable help afforded the police by the Gazette reporter’s powers of observation. Perhaps even a picture of the vital matchstick. Prosset had predicted some such drama. Grimshaw’s next words damped me down a bit.

  “He’s given himself up to the police, so be careful what you write, lad. A few facts about the woman, and how it was discovered. Then just say: a man later made a statement to the police. Get it?”

  “I get it.”

  “Keep in touch with the police tonight. Find out if he’s been charged. If he has, just say so, and give his name. Get the story in sharpish tomorrow morning. They may do a special edition. OK?”

  He rang off. On the films reporters dash off in powerful cars, but not in Palesby. If you couldn’t get a lift in the photographer’s car, you went by tram. Suffolk Street was down in the dock area. It did not look very different from many other streets in the better parts of town, except that it was narrower and meaner.

  There were the same squalid little red houses, the same damp pavements, cats on walls, and children playing around lamp standards. Halfway down the street a small crowd was gathered round one of the houses. Two cars were parked outside it, and three uniformed policemen were keeping the pavement clear in front of the house. We were on good terms with the police in that town, and I shouldered my way through the crowd and spoke to one of the constables.

  “I’m a Gazette reporter. Can I have a word with the Inspector?”

  “He’s inside. Your photographer chap has been and gone.”

  I nodded and went into the little hall. Somebody had had fish for tea, and the smell of it hung about. There was a murmur of voices from a room on the left. The door was half open and I put my head round it. Inspector Daley was seated at a little table taking a statement. With him was a sergeant. Opposite Daley was an old, dirty-looking woman, snivelling into a shawl.

  The Inspector and I got on well, because I always gave him prominence when he was prosecuting in the police courts, and he thought the publicity was helpful. He got up when he saw me and came into the hall.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “In the mortuary. Her room’s upstairs. On the right. You can go up if you want to.”

  “Thanks. What about the bloke?”

  “He’s ‘inside.’ Coloured seaman called Geoffries—James Nelson Geoffries. That’s all I know about him at the m
oment.”

  “Charged?”

  “Not yet. I’ll be charging him when I get back.”

  “Can I have the woman’s name?”

  He flicked over two or three pages of his notebook.

  “Mary O’Brien, aged forty-two, born in Cork. No regular employment. Prostitute, of course. We’ve had her inside half a dozen times on different charges.”

  “How did you catch him?”

  “We didn’t. He walked in and gave himself up. Threw his knife on to the station counter.”

  “Know why he did it?”

  “Jealousy. That’s according to this old bitch I’m questioning, anyway. She’d been going around pretty regular with this bloke Geoffries, even though she was a tart. But when he went to sea, she had to live, of course. He heard about it when he came back and did her in.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Only about an hour or so ago.”

  I thanked him and went upstairs. There was another constable standing outside the room where the murder had taken place. In the room on the other side of the passage a Negro, a slatternly white woman and an old man who might have been the husband of the hag downstairs were talking in low tones. The constable had heard me talking to the Inspector downstairs. He opened the door of the room, and I went in.

  I have never thought there is anything dramatic or exciting about the scene of a murder, especially if it has taken place in a bedroom. There are too many trivial, everyday things lying about; a pair of trousers on a chair, the seat of the trousers well worn and shiny; or a pair of soiled socks on the floor, or a dirty collar.

  Murders in bedrooms do not happen at a time of day when the room has been freshly tidied. There is always an element of disorder. The scene is sordid. The only reason why some of these crimes make tolerable reading, if you like that kind of reading, is because all that which is squalid does not appear in the printed page. The imagination of the reader is left to conjure up a scene of strong human emotions, and emotions, if violent enough, are either sublime or devilish, and in either case are awe-inspiring.