Tales of the Unexpected

hands, uncomfortable in her presence, trying to say consoling things to her. Sergeant Noonan wandered into the kitchen, came out quickly and said, ‘Look, Mrs Maloney. You know that oven of yours is still on, and the meat still inside.’
    ‘Oh
dear
me!’ she cried. ‘So it is!’
    ‘I better turn it off for you, hadn’t I?’
    ‘Will you do that, Jack. Thank you so much.’
    When the sergeant returned the second time, she looked at him with her large, dark, tearful eyes. ‘Jack Noonan,’ she said.
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Would you do me a small favour – you and these others?’
    ‘We can try, Mrs Maloney.’
    ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Here you all are, and good friends of dear Patrick’s too, and helping to catch the man who killed him. You must be terribly hungry by now because it’s long past your supper time, and I know Patrick would never forgive me, God bless his soul, if I allowed you to remain in his house without offering you decent hospitality. Why don’t you eat up that lamb that’s in the oven? It’ll be cooked just right by now.’
    ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Sergeant Noonan said.
    ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please eat it. Personally I couldn’t touch a thing, certainly not what’s been in the house when he was here. But it’s all right for you. It’d be a favour to me if you’d eat it up. Then you can go on with your work again afterwards.’
    There was a good deal of hesitating among the four policemen, but they were clearly hungry, and in the end they were persuaded to go into the kitchen and help themselves. The woman stayed where she was, listening to them through the open door, and she could hear them speaking among themselves, their voices thick and sloppy because their mouths were full of meat.
    ‘Have some more, Charlie?’
    ‘No. Better not finish it.’
    ‘She
wants
us to finish it. She said so. Be doing her a favour.’
    ‘Okay then. Give me some more.’
    ‘That’s the hell of a big club the guy must’ve used to hit poor Patrick,’ one of them was saying. ‘The doc says his skull was smashed all to pieces just like from a sledge-hammer.’
    ‘That’s why it ought to be easy to find.’
    ‘Exactly what I say.’
    ‘Whoever done it, they’re not going to be carrying a thing like that around with them longer than they need.’
    One of them belched.
    ‘Personally, I think it’s right here on the premises.’
    ‘Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack?’
    And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.

Man from the South
    It was getting on towards six o’clock so I thought I’d buy myself a beer and go out and sit in a deckchair by the swimming pool and have a little evening sun.
    I went to the bar and got the beer and carried it outside and wandered down the garden towards the pool.
    It was a fine garden with lawns and beds of azaleas and tall coconut palms, and the wind was blowing strongly through the tops of the palm trees, making the leaves hiss and crackle as though they were on fire. I could see the clusters of big brown nuts hanging down underneath the leaves.
    There were plenty of deck-chairs around the swimming pool and there were white tables and huge brightly coloured umbrellas and sunburned men and women sitting around in bathing suits. In the pool itself there were three or four girls and about a dozen boys, all splashing about and making a lot of noise and throwing a large rubber ball at one another.
    I stood watching them. The girls were English girls from the hotel. The boys I didn’t know about, but they sounded American, and I thought they were probably naval cadets who’d come ashore from the U.S. naval training vessel which had arrived in harbour that morning.
    I went over and sat down under a yellow umbrella where there were four empty seats, and I poured my beer and settled back comfortably with a cigarette.
    It was very pleasant sitting there in the sunshine with beer and cigarette. It was pleasant to sit and watch the bathers splashing about in the green water.
    The American sailors were getting on nicely with the English girls. They’d reached the stage where they were diving under the water and tipping them up by their legs.
    Just then I noticed a small, oldish man walking briskly around the edge of the pool. He was immaculately dressed in a white suit and he walked very quickly with little bouncing strides, pushing himself high up on to his toes with each step. He had on a large creamy Panama hat, and he