23 OCTOBER 1959, Page 7

A FRIEND OF MINE Who lives in Westminster was recently

woken after I a.m. by sounds of a fight going on under her window, Fired by the posters saying 'Don't look the other way—your suspicions could prevent a crime,' she resisted the natural impulse to pull the bedclothes over her head and go back to sleep, and went to. the window. Two men and a woman were engaged in a tussle beside a car, with the woman screaming, 'Let me alone, you beast,' in what sounded like genuine fear. So my friend rang up Scotland Yard. After a lot of slow' and tedious questioning about who she was, and what her interest in the matter might be, and the implied assumption that she was just being a busybody, she was finally told to go and get the number of the car—which had by now, ten minutes later, driven off. Another time, she says, she will mind her own business. 'If you notice anything dubious, the police would like to know' —or would they?