The Montgomery Murder by Cora Harrison

the son, not with the father?
    Quickly, Alfie went back up Bedford Avenue, which housed the mews, turned to the right and made his way towards the huge twenty-foot gates that kept the inhabitants of Bedford Square secure from
the outside world and from people like the inhabitants of St Giles.
    ‘Here’s some beer from the coachman at number one.’ The gift was accepted, but the gatekeeper didn’t seem interested in talking and had turned his back when Alfie said
pleadingly, ‘Could I have a warm by your fire, mister?’ Despite the warming beer and cheese in his stomach, he was freezing. The damp cold was seeping into his clothes and his hair felt
wringing wet.
    The gatekeeper nodded.
    ‘Hard job you have here in all weathers!’ Alfie said sympathetically.
    ‘Hard enough,’ agreed the man, poking his fire and throwing on a few more coals.
    ‘Boring too, innit? I bet you hardly know who goes in or out during the day and the night. You must be so used to them.’
    ‘I notice all right. It makes it less boring.’ The gatekeeper looked at Alfie, as if wondering whether to trust him, and then gave a sudden grin. He turned to the cupboard behind him
and took something out. ‘Look here on this little bit of slate! Sometimes I make a guess where they are going and then I make a guess when they’ll be back. I write down when they go out
and put my guess here, and then if they come within half an hour of my guess I win, and if I’m more than half an hour out then they win. Wait a minute.’
    The gatekeeper nipped out and opened the gate, bowing politely and touching his hat as a stout man on a horse rode out, followed by a groom on foot.
    ‘That’s number eighteen. He’ll be back at one o’clock for his lunch – that’s what I’d guess.’
    The gatekeeper made a note on the slate. Alfie looked over his shoulder. He wished he could read.
    ‘What have you there?’ he asked.
    ‘Mr M. from number one,’ read the gatekeeper. ‘Well, he went out on Monday night, and he never came back,’ he said. ‘That’s one that I lost. And look here, Mr
D. M. from number one, that’s Mr Denis Montgomery. I won that one. Back in two hours. And there’s R.M. from number one.’
    ‘Who’s Are Em?’ Alfie had never heard of a name like that.
    ‘Don’t you even know your alphabet?’ asked the gatekeeper. ‘Well, R is for red and M is for mouth, and I call him that because he has a red mouth. I saw him once going
out the gate, and he yawned in my face. Gave me a shock, it did. He had a mouth like the devil, all bright red, tongue and all.’
    ‘And you lost on that one?’ Alfie was beginning to distinguish between the ticks and the crosses.
    ‘That’s right. You’re getting the hang of it now. I put him down for the same time as Mr Denis – they went out together, but they didn’t come back together. The
visitor didn’t come back until nearly midnight. That surprised me. He came back just before I locked the gate – of course, he could have come in by this little gate at the side, being
as he was on foot. And Mr Denis came back at his usual time, about one o’ clock in the morning.’
    And then a shadow of a tall man in an overcoat and a top hat fell across the entrance to the cosy little hut of the gatekeeper.
    ‘What’s that boy doing there?’ asked a voice. ‘Get rid of him, Thompson. This is not a hideaway for street brats.’
    ‘That’s the butler from the Montgomery place,’ the gatekeeper whispered into Alfie’s ear as the man left. ‘You’d better go now.’
    Alfie went rapidly out with barely a glance at the butler. He was tall and strong-looking, but it was his voice that impressed Alfie. It was the voice of a man used to power, a man used to
bullying those beneath him, but also it was the angry, irritable voice of a man who was worried. Alfie wondered whether Sammy would have an opportunity to listen to the butler. Once again he
thought of his blind brother in that house where a