Six Against the Yard - Margery Allingham

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rose to it as I thought he would. I knew he wasn’t too fond of Pollini. He’d tried to tap him without much success. No one, not even Frank, could tap a man who looked at you like a surprised bison and shambled off muttering ‘Don’ understand. Git th’hell outa here.’

      ‘Pollini?’ said Frank. He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, without a collar, on the back of the dilapidated old chesterfield that Louie slept on when they had a row. ‘I taught Pollini all he knows and he’s too much of a stiff to say how d’you do to me these days.’ That was the sort of statement he used to make. It had no relation to the truth at all and no purpose as far as I could see, because not even Frank could expect me to believe it.

      I rambled on. I told him I’d seen young Latte Pollini teaching the kids.

      ‘Hand-springs!’ I said. ‘You’ve never seen such neat ones.’

      I won’t tell you what he called me. There’s no point in writing things like that down.

      ‘Look at this,’ he said, and he stood there poised at the top of the sofa looking like an organ-grinder’s monkey, the white stubble sticking out on his red face.

      ‘You be careful. You’ll hurt yourself,’ I said over my shoulder.

      ‘Look! ‘he commanded. ‘Look!’

      I straightened my back and stood there, the dustpan in my hand.

      ‘I’m looking,’ I said.

      Well, he didn’t do it. I didn’t think he would. That’s what I was afraid of. He always took wonderful care of himself. But I went on.

      Louie came in when he was telling me how he once walked a tight-rope and threatening to show me if I’d get him one. I had to leave it for that day.

      The next day I started again, still on the Pollinis. At first I thought I’d frightened him. He sat there, morose and angry, while I did the room.

      It was then I found out about the shirts. I told him what I thought of him and I realised more and more how necessary it was for me to hurry if she was going to have her chance at all.

      He began boasting to me. ‘This time next week we shall be at Manchester. I shall tell them what she used to be like. She’s not much to look at now but I’ll put her over.’

      My heart was in my mouth and I very nearly picked up the poker and did him in there and then, and it might have been just as well in a way.

      However, I didn’t. I went on about the Pollinis and I got him interested. He even did a simple somersault for me and when he pretended that he’d hurt himself I got him a drink, and another.

      It was an extraordinary thing, but I only discovered then after all these years that he couldn’t drink. A couple made him silly. I left him sleeping.

      That was the day I had my second row with Ma Pollini about the crumbs.

      The next day I only gave him one drink and I brought it with up me. I’d told my little girl that I was doing it for his health and she didn’t think anything of it. People were always having little drops for their health in my house.

      Everything played into my hands. He’d had words with Latte on the staircase the evening before and didn’t want to hear about the Pollinis’ prowess. But I kept on. I let him have it.

      ‘Do a handspring if you’re so clever,’ I said. ‘A simple handspring.’

      He saw I was laughing at him and came and thrust his face into mine.

      ‘I can’t do it here,’ he said. ‘There’s not room.’

      ‘There’s no room big enough for you in the whole world, you old liar,’ I said.

      That rattled him. He opened the door so that he could get on to the passage and took a run, stumbled, actually succeeded in turning some sort of cartwheel, and pitched downstairs, finishing up on the half-landing between me and Ma Pollini.

      She came out and I explained to her what had happened. And she laughed. You should have seen her laugh! She’d have made a fortune on the halls just doing it. Tears poured out of her eyes and ran down the sides of her great coarse nose and she shook all over. What with the noise she made and the sound of him swearing the whole house was roused and everybody knew that old Springer had been swanking again and had nearly broken his neck doing it.

      Louie heard about it when she came in, and it made her cry.

      The fourth morning I watched Louie out of the house. I’ve never felt like it before or since. Everything seemed to be in bright colours and Louie’s old black satin coat shone like a black beetle as she went out under the porch and down the little stone yard that we call a garden and out into the road.

      I was trembling and I don’t know if I looked funny, but anyway there was no one to see me except my little girl, and she’s so busy, poor kid, she doesn’t have time to keep her mind on two things together, even if it were capable of it.

      I went slowly up the stairs and started making the bed. There was Louie’s suitcase half packed, and in a cupboard, where they thought I wouldn’t see it, there was his. It’s still there, for all I know. All packed up neatly, labelled and ready.

      He came out when I was in the bedroom and I knew by the way he fidgeted and talked about his health that he was wondering if I’d brought him up his drink. I sent him down for it.

      I’d forgotten it; that’s what frightened me. I had meant to bring it and it had gone clean out of my mind. I wondered what else I’d forgotten.

      He went off, padding down the stairs in his stockinged feet, and came back very pleased with himself. I wondered if he hadn’t taken an extra dram. He said something uncomplimentary about my little girl and I guessed she’d given him something to go on with.

      I started talking about the Pollinis and, as I hoped, the memory of old Ma Pollini laughing at him made him furious. He told me the Pollinis were a lot of stiffs. Wops and stiffs, he called them. He said they hadn’t got a trick between them that any man couldn’t do if he had his wits about him, and told me what he could do as a child.

      I was getting him where I wanted him. I went into the other room where the gas stove was and opened the window when I’d taken the cloth off the table. Then I went back to the bedroom and shook it out of there, so that the crumbs would miss Ma Pollini’s balcony.

      My heart was beating noisily and I was so long about it that I thought he’d notice something. Finally I did what I meant to do and the cloth slipped out of my hand and landed on the edge of the parapet.

      It was very neatly thought out, because, as I forgot to tell you, the window in the bedroom was stuck. It wouldn’t open more than six inches at the top. I had to stand up on the sill, push the cloth through and shake it with one hand.

      I went back to the other room, where he was sitting up on the end of the sofa again.

      ‘What are you looking at me like that for, Polly?’ he said.

      I pulled myself together. I couldn’t tell him that I saw him in bright colours, just like I’d seen Louie go out of the gate. I saw him in crude colours, like the printing in a twopenny comic. His shirt was bright blue and his head was smudged red.

      ‘I want a broom,’ I said. ‘I’ve dropped the tablecloth out of the window and it’s stuck on the parapet. Now if you were a Pollini …’

      He didn’t hear me, or didn’t seem to, and I was afraid I’d been too quick. But he was interested, as he always was in silly little incidental things that happened. He went to the other window and looked out. He could see the cloth about fifteen feet along.

      ‘How are you going to get it?’ he said.

      ‘I’m going to get a broom and fish it up through the window in the other room,’ I said. ‘Or get a Pollini

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