The Moving Toyshop (2 page)

Cars and lorries, it seemed, were reluctant to stop—this was 1938, and British motorists were having one of their periodical scares about car thieves—but eventually a big eight-wheeler pulled up at his hail, and he climbed in. The driver was a large, taciturn man, his eyes red and strained with much night driving.

“The Ancient Mariner did this better than me,” said Cadogan cheerfully as they started off. “He at least managed to stop one of three.”

“I read abaht ’im at school,” the driver replied after a considerable pause for thought “
‘A thahsand, thahsand slimy things lived on and so did I.’
And they call that poetry.” He spat deprecatingly out of the window.

Somewhat taken aback, Cadogan made no reply. They sat in silence while the lorry bucketed through the outskirts of Didcot and into open country. After about ten minutes:

“Books,”
the driver resumed. “I’m a great reader, I am. Not poetry. Love stories and murder books. I joined one o’ them”—he heaved a long sigh; with vast effort his mind laboured and brought forth—“circulatin’ libraries.” He brooded darkly. “But I’m sick of it now. I’ve read all that’s any good in it.”

“Getting too big for your Boots?”

“I ’ad a good ’un the other day, though.
Lady Somebody’s Lover. 
That was the old firm, if you like.” He slapped his thigh and snorted lecherously.

Being mildly astonished by these evidences of culture, Cadogan again failed to answer. They drove on, the headlights picking out mathematical segments of the flying hedges on either side. Once a rabbit, dazed by the glare, sat up and stared at them for so long that it only just escaped the wheels.

At the end of a further interval—perhaps a quarter of an hour—Cadogan said with something of an effort:

“I had a pretty bloody journey from London. Very slow train. Stopped at every telegraph pole—like a dog.”

At this the driver, after a pause of earnest concentration, began to laugh. He laughed so immoderately and long that Cadogan feared be was going to lose control of the vehicle. Before this could happen, however, they fortunately arrived at Headington roundabout, and pulled up with a violent screeching of brakes.

“I’ll ’ave to drop yer ’ere,” said the driver, still shaking with silent mirth. “I don’t go into the tahn. You walk down that there ’ill, and you’ll be in Oxford quickern’ no time.”

“Thanks,” said Cadogan. He clambered down into the road. “Thanks very much. And good night to you.”

“Good night,” said the driver. “Like a dawg, eh? That’s rich, that is.” He put the engine into gear with a noise like an elephant treading down a tree and drove off, laughing loudly.

The roundabout, with its scattered lights, seemed very lonely after the sound of the lorry had passed out of earshot. It occurred to Cadogan for the first time that he did not know where he was going to sleep that night. The hotels would be tenanted only by night porters and the colleges would be shut. Then suddenly he smiled. Such things didn’t matter in Oxford. He had only to climb over the wall of his college (he’d done it often enough in the old days, God knows) and sleep on a couch in somebody’s sitting-room. Nobody would care; the owner of the sitting-room would be neither surprised nor annoyed. Oxford is the one place in Europe where a man may do anything, however eccentric, and arouse no interest or emotion at all. In what other city, Cadogan asked himself, remembering his undergraduate days, could one address to a policeman a discourse on epistemology in the witching hours of the night, and be received with neither indignation nor suspicion?

He set out to walk, past the shops, past the cinema by the traffic lights, and so down the long, winding hill. Through a rift in the trees he caught his first real glimpse of Oxford—in that ineffectual moonlight an underwater city, its towers and spires standing ghostly, like the memorials of lost Atlantis, fathoms deep. A tiny pinpoint of yellow light glowed for a few seconds, flickered, and went out. On the quiet air he heard faintly a single bell beating one o’clock, the precursor of others which joined in brief phantom chime, like the bells of the sunken cathedral in Breton myth, rocked momentarily by the green deep-water currents, and then silent.

Obscurely pleased, he walked on at a quicker pace, singing softly to himself—his mind drained of thought: only looking about him and liking what he saw. On the outskirts of Oxford he became a little lost, and wasted some minutes in finding the right road again. Which was it—the Iffley foad or the Cowley road? He had never been able to get them clear in his mind, even as an undergraduate. No matter; at the end of it was Magdalen Bridge, and the High, and beyond that again the College of St. Christopher, patron saint of travellers. He felt a little disappointed that his journey should end thus uneventfully.

There had been neither pedestrian nor vehicle to be seen during his walk from Headington; and in this respectable, rather tawdry quarter of Oxford the inhabitants were long since in bed. Shop-lined on either side, the road stretched long and deserted before him. A small wind had risen, creeping in little gusts round the corners of buildings, and it caught and gently stirred a white awning which some negligent tradesman had left down in front of his shop. Cadogan fixed his eye idly on it as he walked, since it was the only one showing, and when he came up to it looked for the name of the owner; but it was hidden under the shadow of the awning. Then he glanced at the shop itself. There were blinds drawn against the windows, so he could not see what kind of shop it was. Moved by an idle curiosity, he strolled to the door and tried it. It opened.

And now he stopped and considered. It was not usual, certainly, for tradesmen to leave their shops unlocked at night. On the other hand, it was very late, and if burglars had got in it was unfortunate, but certainly none of his business. Probably the owner lived over the shop. In that case, he might be pleased at being woken and informed, or he might not. Cadogan had a horror of meddling in other people’s business, but at the same time he was curious.

Stepping back into the street, he regarded the blank, unpleasing windows above the awning for a moment; and then, coming suddenly to a decision, returned to the door. After all, he had embarked on his holiday with a desire for excitement, and the door of the shop, if not exactly the portal of romance, presented a problem sufficiently unusual to be worth investigating. He pushed it wide, and felt a windy vacuum in the pit of his stomach when it creaked noisily. It was possible that he might catch a burglar, but more likely, on the whole, that he would be arrested as one himself. He closed the door again, as softly as he could, and then stood quite still, listening.

Nothing.

The beam of his torch showed the small, conventional interior of a toyshop, with a counter, a cash-register, and toys ranged about it—Meccano sets, engines, dolls and dolls’ houses, painted bricks, and lead soldiers. He moved farther in, cursing his own lunacy, and succeeded in knocking over a box of large balloons (deflated), with a considerable clatter. It sounded in his ears like some vast detonation.

Again he stood stock-still, hardly daring to breathe.

Again, nothing.

Beyond the counter were three wooden steps leading up to a door. He crept through this door and found himself at the bottom of a short flight of bare, steep stairs leading up to the floor above. These he climbed with further inward malediction, kicking the treads, creaking, banging, and stumbling. He arrived, exhausted, and with his nerve practically gone, in a short passage, linoleum-covered, with two doors on either side of it, and one at the end. He now was quite resigned to the appearance of an infuriated householder with a shot-gun, and was engaged in inventing explanations which might pacify him. After all, it was reasonable that anyone finding a shop door open should come in to make sure nothing was amiss… though not, perhaps, with such elaborate and futile attempts at silence.

But yet again, there was no sound.

This is ridiculous, Cadogan told himself severely. The front rooms are probably the living-rooms. You will enter one of these and make certain nothing is wrong. After that, honour will be satisfied, and you can beat a retreat as quickly as may be.

Nerving himself, he crept forward and turned the knob of one of the doors. The small white circle of his torch played on tightly closed curtains, a cheap lacquered sideboard, a wireless set, a table, uncomfortable leather arm-chairs with big, garish mauve and orange cushions in satin; there were no pictures on the papered walls. A living-room, certainly. But there was something more, which caused him to breathe an audible sigh of relief and relax a little. The musty smell, and the dust which lay thick on everything, showed that the flat had not been occupied for some time. He stepped forward, tripped on something, and shone his torch down on it. Then he whistled softly and said “Well, well,” several times.

For what lay on the floor was the body of an elderly woman, and there was no doubt that she was very dead indeed.

He was curiously unsurprised: the spectre had been laid, the mysterious attraction of the deserted toyshop exorcised and explained. Then he checked himself; the appearance of the body which lay there was no occasion for random analyses. Becoming conscious that the torch was an encumbrance, he stepped back and tried the light switch by the door, but no light resulted, for the bulb was not in place under its cheap frilly shade. Hadn’t he seen a candle on the table in the passage? Yes, it was still there, and it was the work of a moment to light it. He left his torch on the table and returned to the living-room, setting the candle down by the woman’s body.

It lay on the right side, with the left arm flung backwards beneath the table, and the legs stretched out. A woman of near sixty, he judged, for the hair was almost wholly grey and the skin of the hands wrinkled and brown. She was dressed in a tweed coat and skirt and a white blouse, which emphasized her plumpness, with rough wool stockings and brown shoes. There was no ring on her left hand, and the flatness of her breasts had already suggested that she was unmarried. Near her, in the shadow of the table, lay something white. Cadogan picked it up, and found it was a scrap of paper with a number pencilled on it in a sloping feminine hand. This paper, after a brief glance, he slipped in his pocket. Then he looked back at the woman’s face.

It was not a pleasant sight, since it was discoloured a blackish purple, as were her finger-nails. There was froth at the corner of her mouth, which hung open, showing a gold stopping which winked in the candlelight. In her neck was embedded a thin cord, tied fast behind. It had sunk so deep that the flesh which closed over it made it almost invisible. There was a pool of dried blood on the floor by the head, and Cadogan found the reason for it in a sharp contusion just below the crown. He felt the bone of the skull, but as far as he could tell it was not fractured.

Up to now he had experienced only the passionless curiosity of a child, but the action of touching her brought a sudden revulsion of feeling. He wiped the blood quickly from his fingers and stood up. He must get to the police as quickly as possible. Anything else to be observed? Ah, yes, a gold pince-nez, broken, on the floor nearby… And then, abruptly, he stiffened, his nerves tingling like charged electric wires.

There had been a sound in the passage outside.

It was a small sound, an indefinite sound, but it made his heart beat violently and his hand tremble. Oddly enough, it had not previously occurred to him that the person who had killed this woman might be still in the house. Turning his head, he looked steadily out of the half-open door into the darkness beyond, and waited, absolutely motionless. The sound did not recur. In that dead stillness the watch on his wrist sounded as loud as a kitchen alarm-clock. He realized that if anyone were there it was going to be a matter of endurance and nerves: whichever moved first would give the other the advantage. The minutes passed—three, five, seven, nine—like aeons of cosmic time. And reason began officiously to interfere. A sound? Well, what of it? The house, like Prospero’s isle, was full of noises. And in any case, what purpose was being served by standing in an unnatural attitude like a waxwork? The aching muscles added their cry, and at last he moved, taking the candle from the table and peering, with infinite precautions, into the passage.

It was empty. The other doors were still shut. His torch stood on the table where he had left it. In any case, the thing to do was to get out of this detestable house as quickly as possible, and so on to the police station. He picked up his torch, blew out the candle, and put it down. A flick of the button, and…

No light came.

Savagely, uselessly, Cadogan wrestled for perhaps half a minute with the switch, until at last he realized what was the matter: the thing weighed too light in his hand. With a sick premonition he unscrewed the end and felt for the battery. It had gone.

Trapped in the pitch blackness of that musty-smelling passage, his self-control suddenly failed. He knew there was a soft, padding step coming towards him. He knew that he threw the empty torch blindly, and heard it strike the wall. And he sensed, rather than saw, the blazing beam of light which shone out from behind. Then there was a dull, enormous concussion, his head seemed to explode in a flare of blinding scarlet, and there was nothing but a high screaming like the wind in wires and a bright green globe that fell twisting and diminishing, to annihilation in inky darkness.

He awoke with his head aching and a dry, foul mouth, and after a moment staggered to his feet. There was a rush of nausea and he clung to the wall, muttering stupidly to himself. In a little while his head cleared and he was able to look about him. The room was small, scarcely more than a closet, and contained a miscellaneous collection of cleaning things—a pail, a rag mop, brushes, and a tin of polish. A faint light glowing through the small window made him look at his watch. Half past five: unconscious four hours, and now it was nearly dawn. Feeling a little better, he cautiously tried the door. It was locked. But the window—he stared—the window was not only unlocked, but open. With difficulty he climbed on to a packing-case and looked out. He was on the ground floor, and beyond him was a deserted and neglected strip of garden, with creosoted wooden fences running down on either side and a gate, standing ajar, at the bottom. Even in his weakened condition it was easy to climb out. Once outside the gate the nausea seized him again, the saliva flowed into his mouth, and he was violently sick. But he felt better for it.