Number Nineteen: Ben’s Last Case. J. Farjeon Jefferson

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       1

       Trouble on a Seat

      On a certain grey afternoon he was destined never to forget—he had a packet of them, and he called them his Album of ’Orrers—Ben paused before a park seat, wondered whether to sit down on the unoccupied end or to move on to the next, decided to move on to the next, changed his mind, sat down where he was, and thereby sealed his doom.

      It was a pity there was somebody else at the other end of the seat. Ben liked to be alone, because when you’re alone no one can bother you, can they? But the man at the other end did not look the bothering kind, and as he was busy with a notebook and it was nice and quiet here, Ben could go on thinking. You could just hear the London traffic in the far distance, but only just, and with all this grass and trees about, well, you might almost be in country, mightn’t you?

      What was Ben thinking about? If the man at the other end had glanced up from his notebook and made a guess, it was a thousand-to-one chance he would have guessed right, although it so happened this man was good at guessing. When Ben was passing through emotion, and he very frequently was, his thoughts were as plain as the Egyptian Pyramids, but during his contemplative periods there was no knowing what lay behind his glazed, expressionless eyes, which concealed their treasure as the surface of a mine conceals its wealth.

      The safest guess was cheese. Ben loved to think of cheese. Though, of course, that came a long way behind eating it. Another possibility was corpses. These he never thought of from choice, but they had a habit of slipping into his mind from that lavish Album of ’Orrers, and—queer, this—there was a sort of fascination about them! You couldn’t get away from it. You know—once you’d done with them. For instance, take that one he’d found in the cellar in Norgate Road, or the one he’d spoken to on the Embankment, or the one he’d tumbled on in the attic of No. 17—only, of course, that hadn’t kep’ bein’ a corpse, ’ad it? You didn’t need a war for Ben to find ’em!

      But Ben was not thinking of either corpses or cheese as he sat now on the park seat. He was thinking of numbers, separating the lucky ones from the unlucky ones in the light of his own experience. Seventeen you might call the plum! He wouldn’t live in a house numbered seventeen not if you paid him a couple of quid! He always gave the number a miss when he counted. You couldn’t call fifteen nice, either. That cellar at Norgate Road had been in Number Fifteen. Thirteen—well, of course, you couldn’t ever expect Thirteen to behave itself. He’d known a couple of shockers. And the day he’d found fourteen fag-ends he’d bust his braces, so fourteen was no good, either. Bending dahn fer the last one, that was. Funny how all the ’teens seemed to be against you!

      No, the small numbers were best, you couldn’t get away from it. Digiots they was called, wasn’t they? Take Five. That was nice. It was at a Number Five that a girl had nearly fallen for him. Not quite, but nearly. They never did quite. Golden hair, she’d had, and my, what a wink! Then once he’d bet fivepence on a horse, the only time he’d ever won. And that little kid he’d helped across the road only yesterday. She was five, she told him, when he’d asked her. Yes, Five was nice. Very nice. You couldn’t get away from it.

      Ben was so busy thinking of the number Five that he did not hear a car stop in a narrow road near where he was sitting. Why should he have paid any attention to it, if he had? It was a quiet road, and the car stopped quietly, as though the driver did not want to disturb the peaceful serenity of the afternoon, or of the two men on the seat, one intent on his notebook, the other gazing at nothing. The driver himself revealed no special characteristic as he began to stroll casually towards the seat. He had dark brown hair and a small moustache. His suit was light grey, and he carried a camera.

      He approached quietly. Very quietly indeed. His first view of the two men was of their backs, which meant that neither of them had any view of him at all. He paused when he was within a few yards of them, regarding their backs with, ostensibly, only a vague interest. After a few seconds, during which Ben went on thinking and the man at the other end of the seat went on making his notes, the newcomer turned his head to glance back towards the road. Then he glanced from one side to the other. No one else was in sight. If this gratified the newcomer his expression did not register the fact. His expression, indeed, was rather bored.

      Continuing his stroll, he veered a little in his route and came round Ben’s end of the seat. Ben saw him now out of the corner of his eye, but was still too absorbed in his recollection of the little girl of five to be diverted by a glimpse of a casual stroller. It was not until the newcomer had walked a little farther on and, turning, raised the camera he was carrying that he was in full view. Ben lifted his head just as the camera clicked, and a distant clock chimed four.

      ‘Wozzat for?’ he blinked. ‘Telervision?’

      ‘No. Just for my private collection,’ answered the photographer, with a faint smile.

      ‘Oh! Well, if my phiz is goin’ in, yer better keep it privit!’ grunted Ben.

      ‘I hope you didn’t mind? I just couldn’t resist. I specialise in studies in contrast.’

      His turn to take the snapshot had brought him facing the direction from which he had come, and now he began walking back towards the road. Unless he had left his car especially to get this picture, which on the face of it seemed hardly likely, his short stroll appeared somewhat pointless. The man with the notebook had stopped writing at the sound of voices, without looking up. Now he suddenly closed the book and slipped it in his pocket. He was bringing out his cigarette-case as the photographer was returning by the seat, passing it this time at his end.

      What happened immediately afterwards was never completely clear in Ben’s mind. One obvious reason was the particular nature of the happenings, but another lay in the fact that the photographer had disturbed his thoughts and he was trying to get back into them. What had he been thinking about? Oh, yus, that little gal and Nummer Five. Nice little kid, and no mistake. He liked ’em that age. They knew just enough to get on with and they hadn’t learned yet to be cheeky. Not that this little girl looked like ever getting cheeky. No, she wasn’t that kind. He’d watched her standing there, waiting to get across—fancy lettin’ ’er aht alone, ’er mother didn’t ought!—and when he’d gone up to her she had put her hand in his, trusting him like he might be anybody. He’d like to have bought her some sweets, but he hadn’t no coupons, and even if he had, how far would tuppence go? Besides, nice little girls weren’t supposed to take things from strangers, or even to talk to ’em, and there was that there time when he’d said it was a nice day to a small child, brown hair she had, and her mother had pulled her away sharp …

      Even more sharply, Ben pulled his mind back from the past to the present. Oi! Wot was ’appenin’? That photographer bloke hadn’t gone. He’d stopped again—come round the back of the seat—and was standing behind the man with the notebook, with his hand raised … Oi! Look aht!

      Ben tried to shriek the words, but no words came. They stuck in his throat, which had become constricted with horror, and before he could make a second effort the man slumped forward with a knife in his back. Out of a corner of the glazed eye that was glued on that murderous knife Ben glimpsed the notebook slipping down to the ground.

      ‘Corse, this ain’t ’appenin’!’ decided Ben, making a miserable and familiar effort to wipe out reality. ‘Yer don’t go murderin’ folk not in public daylight, and afore witnessesses! Well, do yer?’

      The answer came in the form of the murderer’s face. It suddenly loomed larger than life before Ben’s own. It looked so large it seemed to fill the universe.