“What a journey,” said Macdonald, and she laughed a little and went on:
“It was. It was simply grim. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his face on his hands, staring at the floor, and I wondered if I ought to ask him if he knew his way in London—but then when the train stopped, he jumped up and said something to one of the men who’d got in at Reading and jumped out on to the platform after them without even looking at me—and I didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry, because he was a nicely behaved boy: he’d been well brought up.”
2
It was Macdonald’s turn to laugh a little: he was rather taken with the old-fashioned phrase coming from this most contemporary-looking young woman. He liked Sarah Dillon; her fresh skin and blue eyes and close-cropped curly hair were very young-looking, but her mind was observant and analytical, and Macdonald knew he was lucky.
“Now let’s get this a bit clearer. What did he actually say to the two men?”
“He said: ‘Wait a minute. Haven’t we . . .’ or it might have been ‘Aren’t you?’—or something like that.”
“As though he were going to say: ‘Haven’t we met before,’ or: ‘Aren’t you so and so?’ ” asked Macdonald.
“Yes. Just like that. I was surprised, because although he’d stared at them so queerly, I don’t think they’d taken any notice of him. And I don’t think any of them had been talking. When I came back into the compartment, the boy was staring at the floor, the older man was still drowsing over his paper and the spiv was sitting with his hands in his pockets, sucking his teeth, and looking quite revolting, and the writing body was putting her script together.”
“Then let’s have a little more about the fellow travellers,” said Macdonald. “Did you grasp if the two men who got in at Reading were acquaintances?”
“I don’t think so,” said Sarah. “Anyway, they didn’t utter, and they were quite different. The older man was about fifty, solid and prosperous looking, stockbrokerish. I should have expected him to have an educated voice—though I didn’t hear it—and a good bank balance, and his clothes were good clothes. The younger man was quite young, and a nasty bit of work: cheap smart clothes and a horrible tie and a green scarf with red dogs on it and too much hair muck. He was fat and pasty-faced, like a white slug.”
“And which of them was the lad speaking to when he said: ‘Wait a minute’?” asked Macdonald.
“I don’t know. You see, they were all standing up, the large lady holding the door, then the two men, then the boy, and I was left in the corner coping with my own suitcase.”
“A thing which doesn’t often happen,” put in Garstang. Turning to Macdonald, he added: “May I tell you what strikes me as odd about all this? Miss Dillon said that when she first talked to the boy while they stood in the corridor he was perfectly normal: they chatted on about the countryside, and obviously he was quite coherent and easy to listen to. Then, when the fog began to thicken, after Taunton, he became different—strained and difficult and ill at ease. The suggestion of claustrophobia was quite apt, but I don’t think that’s the real explanation, because if he had suffered markedly from that particular neurosis, I’m certain he’d have got out of the train at Reading, if only to stand on the platform, just for the relief it would have given him. Advanced claustrophobia is a tormenting state, and even a momentary change of environment can be a tremendous relief. But he didn’t get out: he stayed put and stared at the newcomers—‘as though they were the answer to his problem’ was the way Sally put it, and it’s a very telling phrase.”
“Yes. I agree with you that that’s an odd point,” said Macdonald. “I know there’s not much to go on, but would you make a guess as to the cause of the boy’s changed behaviour?”
“ ‘Guess’ is the word, and my opinion’s not worth any more than yours at this stage,” said Garstang, “but it looks as though the boy had some complex or inhibition, and a chance word or impression sent his mind off the rails. Well, there was the fog: and there was Sally’s remark about it being like smoke wreaths and something choking. That might have done it: if this boy had ever been shut up in a burning building and been badly frightened and then tried to cover up his fear, he might have reacted in the way described. But that doesn’t account for his behaviour over the other two men, unless he was in an advanced state of neurosis, and thus liable to associate anybody he happened to be with, with his own phantasy, as it were.”
“Thanks very much, sir,” said Macdonald, and then turned to Sally again. “Can you remember if the boy had any luggage with him?”
“He’d got a haversack, a khaki-coloured thing with a webbing strap which went over his shoulder,” she replied. “He’d got it with him when he got out of the train. I don’t know if it’s of any interest to you, but the coach we were in was just behind the restaurant car, and we were in the centre of the coach.”
“Yes. That’s very useful,” replied Macdonald. “How were you all sitting?”
“I was in a corner on the corridor side, facing the engine, the boy was opposite to me. The writing lady was in the other corner, back to the engine, and the two men who got in at Reading sat on my side. I didn’t really get a good look at them till I stood up and got my grip down from the rack when I wanted my sponge bag and towel. I’m quite sure the older man wasn’t taking any interest in any of us; he was half asleep. The younger one, the spiv, kept on looking at us in a furtive, calculating sort of way.” She hesitated and then added: “I don’t want you to think I’m dramatising this. He really was a nasty job. If I’d been alone with him I’d have been ready for anything.”
“Can you describe the ‘writing lady’?” asked Macdonald.
“Oh yes. She was quite a person. She was a big woman, tall and stout, in a very well-tailored suit, navy blue with a pin stripe, and a severe white blouse with a cravat effect furnished with a black bow, so that the whole effect was masculine rather than feminine. She had dark, straight hair, cropped like a man’s, very soignee and well brushed, and dark eyes with George-Robeyish eyebrows. She wore horn-rims and she had an enormous ring on her left hand, a sort of scarab effect. At Paddington she pulled on a black beret and she wore a heavy navy-blue topcoat—pilot cloth, I think it was, and a rather dashing black and white scarf. She was quite a noticeable body, and she had a very deep voice.”
“Did she talk to you at all?”
“Oh no. She looked as though she’d have hated anyone to speak to her, but when the train stopped at Reading she exclaimed: ‘It’s Reading, thank God,’ and her voice was so deep it nearly set me giggling. You see, by that time, what with the fog and everything, the journey had become a sort of nightmare—or phantasy. And the writing lady was the pantomime dame.” Macdonald laughed. “If I manage to trace the writing lady, I shall be very much interested to know if she noticed anything odd about the setup,” he said. “Now I wonder if you noticed if either of the two men who got in at Reading had any luggage or cases with them?”
“The older man had a leather case—quite a small one. I remember seeing him put it on the rack. The younger one hadn’t anything with him.”
“You have a very good memory,” said Macdonald, and Garstang put in:
“She’s a visualiser. She remembers things as a visual pattern.”
“That explains it,” said Macdonald. “In my experience visualises have accurate memories.” He turned again to Sarah. “You’ve remembered that the boy had a haversack, the older man a small suitcase——”
“Oh, largish attache case,” said Sarah.
“All right. And the writing lady?”
“A brief case and an outsize in handbags.”
“And you?”
“I had a suitcase and a grip—one of those zipup efforts.”
“Can you remember anything about luggage labels on anybody’s cases?”
Sarah stared at him, as though puzzled: then she said: “I couldn’t read any of the labels, if that’s what you mean. I think Richard’s haversack
had a very chewed, crumpled bit of label on it, and I know the older man’s case had a tie-on label, because it hung down a bit from the rack. But I can’t tell you what was on the label.”
“And your own luggage was properly labelled, I’m sure.”
“Yes. It was. Though I don’t see why you’re so sure.”
“Because I think you’re a very practical, efficient person,” rejoined Macdonald, and Garstang chuckled.
“You’re right. She is. She always sees my bag has a label when I go away.”
“You’ve been most helpful to me, Miss Dillon,” said Macdonald quietly, “unexpectedly helpful, because you have just the qualities we hope for in witnesses and very seldom find. I’m grateful to you, and I shall be more grateful if you’ll do one thing more. Write out a detailed description of the appearance of those two men who got in at Reading. I think it’s sometimes easier to write down a description than it is to say it in words.”
“Yes. Of course. I’ll do it now, if Mr. Garstang doesn’t mind.”
“Go along and do it, my child—on your typewriter. It beats me how these efficient young things are so conditioned to their typewriters that they never use a pen,” he added. “I can’t think on a typewriter, and they can’t think without one.”
“That’s grossly unfair,” said Sarah indignantly. “The chief inspector has just said I’m a perfectly good witness, and I didn’t type a word at him.”
3
After Sarah had made a dignified exit, Garstang turned to Macdonald. “Look here, Chief Inspector, I think a few words off the record are indicated. In a sense, I feel responsible for that child—Sarah Dillon. It was my doing that she came to London. I don’t think I need explain to you what’s in my mind.”
“No. You needn’t,” said Macdonald. “I’m glad to hear you say that you do feel a responsibility towards her, because I assure you that I do too. The plain fact is that she’s touched the fringes of what may be a very ugly business. Speaking in confidence, the boy she travelled with was the victim of a savagely murderous attack.”
Macdonald repeated to Garstang the opinion of the surgeon: that the lad had first been knocked out and then deliberately battered over the head with the iron bar. “Robbery with violence is common enough these days,” went on Macdonald, “but the violence is generally used to enable the thief to win his loot. As I see it, this case is quite different. The theft was an attempt to conceal the boy’s identity: everything was taken from his pockets, and then an attempt was made to murder him. It doesn’t look to me an ordinary case of robbery with violence. What was the nature of the mess the boy had got into we have no means of guessing at present, but we do know that somebody capable of a brutal murder is involved. I assure you that I shall be very careful that that person does not get to know that Miss Dillon has volunteered evidence.”
“When you asked her about the labels on the suitcases, were you thinking that the name and address on her own labels could have been read by those fellows who joined the train at Reading?”
“Yes. I was, though I find it difficult to see how they connect up with the boy. You see that train doesn’t generally stop at Reading. There couldn’t have been any arrangement to meet the boy on the train, because the stop there was unexpected, due only to the fog. But the fact that the boy spoke to the others—or to one of them—as he jumped out of the train, has got to be considered. There wasn’t much time between the arrival of the train and the assault on the boy—a matter of fifteen minutes at the outside.”
“It’s an odd business,” said Garstang. “You know when Sarah Dillon says the boy was a nice boy, she does mean something by it: he wasn’t a tough.”
“Possibly not, but it’s no use assuming that nice boys don’t sometimes get involved in situations the reverse of nice,” said Macdonald dryly.
Garstang sat and stared at his desk for a moment or two, then he said, “You asked me what I made of it: if I began to write down my own reactions I should start with three words: the mist, the moor, Princetown.”
“Yes,” agreed Macdonald. “Anyone who knows Princetown knows about the moor and its enveloping mists. It’s often the mist which has defeated convicts who have tried to escape from Princetown. But no prisoner has escaped from Princetown recently, and no boy of this boy’s age has been sent to Princetown. All the same, I’m interested in your headings. They’re so much to the point that I’ve got my work cut out not to be overinfluenced by them.”
“But it was the mist which upset the boy,” murmured Garstang. “Before they ran into the mist he was perfectly happy. So that’s the starting point—as I see it.”
“The mist was a conditioning factor, but it’s too nebulous for a detective to base his case on,” replied Macdonald.
CHAPTER FOUR
“WELL—IT’S A starting point,” said Detective Inspector Reeves, “and that’s more than we might have hoped for, last night being what it was. . . .”
“ ‘Come thick night and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell . . .’ ” murmured Macdonald, but Reeves didn’t rise to the familiar quote. He was already staring out of the window as the train crawled dejectedly westwards through inspissated, sulphurous gloom. Macdonald, watching his younger colleague, knew that Reeves was chewing over the essentials of the evidence given by Sarah Dillon and the comments made by Dr. Garstang, which Macdonald had related. Reeves had a capacity for concentrating on reported evidence to the exclusion of everything else: he examined it bit by bit, rejecting what he thought irrelevant—or “fancy,” as he would have said, and eventually seizing on the bit which seemed to him essential. Dr. Garstang had picked out three key words: the mist, the moor, Princetown. Reeves had rejected these keys, or relegated them to the background. At the outset of a case Reeves was severely practical: his first reaction to the Paddington case was: “There’s a killer about. He didn’t pull it off this time, but he’ll try again. They always do.”
When he heard Macdonald’s precis of Sarah’s evidence, Reeves picked on one word—Reading—adding: “It’d be worth going there, just to see if any of the platform chaps can help. It’s the right direction, anyway.”
Macdonald had agreed. He knew that Reeves was well aware that further enquiries would be published and broadcast asking passengers who had travelled in the relevant part of the Penzance-Paddington train to report, but that there was bound to be a time lag before replies came in. Reeves, concentrating on the fact that the boy in the train had spoken to one of the men who boarded the train at Reading, considered that fact first priority, and Macdonald was of the same opinion, so to Reading they were travelling.
It was after half an hour of silence that Reeves began to talk. “All this psychologist’s stuff, Chief: isn’t it just trimmings at the moment? It always seems to me they talk round in circles and avoid the centre. Here’s a young chap comes to London and someone has a good bash at murdering him five minutes after he’s arrived. All this guff about claustrophobia and complexes caused by fog or smoke or what-have-you doesn’t do anything to suggest why somebody thought it important to put paid to him.” Macdonald nodded. “True enough, but every chap has to apply his own type of shop to any problem that’s presented to him.”
“Seems too elaborate to me,” said Reeves. “I’d rather have the homely feet-on-the-ground judgment. The girl said the boy was a nice boy. I gather you thought the girl was a nice girl.”
“I did,” put in Macdonald, “without any reservations.”
“Noted. My guess is that the boy knew he’d got involved in something pretty murky and wasn’t too happy about it, and when he got talking to the girl he realised his project would seem just revolting to her, and he dithered around trying to see a way out and wondering if he dared ask her advice about it.” Reeves broke off, adding: “I know that interpretation would be dismissed as a hundred-per-cent sentimentality by the clevers. Sentiment—ugh!” He screwed up his lean, dark face and snorted, and then went on: “All the same, the young of today may talk al
l this sophisticated stuff, but fundamentally they’re just young—just what I was when I was green and twenty—and a nice girl can still have an upsetting effect on a boy who was once nice.”
“I think you’re right,” agreed Macdonald. “Sentimental or not, there’s common sense to me in the idea that the boy was worried, possibly in a blue funk, and would have given his head to confide in Sally Dillon, because she has just the quality of serenity and stability which would seem desirable to a boy in a mess. Well, that suggests that he knew he was in for trouble, but it doesn’t suggest the nature of the trouble.”
‘Somebody thought it worth while to loot his pockets and then kill him,” said Reeves. “It wasn’t done merely to obtain what was in his pockets. The boy wasn’t just being employed to hand over stolen property or something of that kind.”
“Agreed,” said Macdonald. “To me the facts indicate that he could have given somebody away: he was a danger. So much a danger that somebody thought murder was a smaller risk than letting him live.”
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