by E.
Doctor Manson gazed at him, thoughtfully. “What about the neck?” he asked. “Any injury there—apart from losing his head, of course.”
Doctor Gaunt exploded into hysterical Homeric laughter. “Losing his head,” he stammered. “Oh, Ho! . . . that’s a good one. He lost his head and got it in the neck. Ho! Ho!” He coughed. “But there, nothing to jest about,” he said, repentantly. “Ahem! Serious business.”
He answered the scientist’s question.
“There was a lot of bruising on the neck. Expected it, of course. Bound to be bruising. The neck would be hit and pushed along the lines a bit before the wheels crunched over it.”
“And that is the only injury you can find?” asked Manson.
“That’s all, Doctor. I had a good look round, of course.”
Manson nodded approving acquiescence.
“Then that,” he said, “is probably why he had his head cut off.”
Gaunt stared. He passed a hand through his sparse locks, rubbing them in puzzlement. “I dinna get that, Doctor!” he said.
Mackenzie grunted. He also stared. “Why he had his head cut off?” he echoed. He made it sound as if the late Mr. Canley had with malice aforethought committed a kind of hara-kiri to set them a problem.
Doctor Manson eyed them both placidly and in mild surprise. “But, of course,” he said, judiciously. “There is no alternative.”
“I still dinna see it,” protested the surgeon.
“Come, come, Gaunt.” The doctor was amicably expostulatory. “The organs are healthy and the man did not die any sort of natural death?”
“Aye, mon. I hae said so.”
“There is no heart failure. Yet he is dead?”
The surgeon nodded.
“His head was cut off. But that did not kill him. He was dead before that?”
“There’s no doubt about that at all, Doctor,” agreed the surgeon.
“And there are no marks on the body that could have led to an injury to cause death?” Gaunt nodded again, grimly.
“No visible injury.” Doctor Manson emphasized the words. He registered disappointment at the inquiring look still on the face of the police surgeon. “Then, since the man is not alive, Gaunt,” he went on, “it must follow, ipso facto, that the injury has been hidden. Then logically, the only place where there could be any hidden injury, unable to be traced medically, must be on the neck. In other words, the body had to be decapitated in order to hide it.”
“Mon, ye hae it,” said Gaunt. He slapped his hand in delight on the shoulders of Mackenzie. The inspector yowled, in startled pain.
“God bless me soul, Manson,” said the Chief Constable. “You mean that someone cut his ruddy throat?”
“No, I don’t,” retorted the scientist. But he made the assertion half-heartedly, and the wrinkles of doubt appeared in the corners of his eyes. He looked across at the police surgeon. Gaunt shook a negative head.
“The doctor’s right, ye ken,” he announced.
“How do you know?” demanded the Chief Constable. “You say yourself—or at least Manson does, that the injury has been hidden by the decapitation.”
“Ye’re no doctor, Chief Constable,” retorted Gaunt. “The man’s head would hae tae have been cut off with a saw if that were the case. A knife would hae made a clean cut in the throat or the neck. I’d hae seen it. I didna. That’s all. There was no clean cut, only crushed and torn tissues.”
“In any case, if his throat had been cut he would have bled to death before he reached the railway,” put in Manson, unhelpfully. “And if it had been cut up here, the blood would have run in streams, and would certainly have run down. The blood on the line came from the decapitation,” he added, making confusion more confounded.
The Chief Constable waved his hands in the air. He looked as though he was going off into hysterics. “Cor sufferin’ crows,” he bellowed. “Where are we getting now? He wasn’t killed by the train. He was dead before the decapitation. Nobody cut his throat. And the blood from the body was caused by the beheading. Will somebody tell me something that makes sense.” Manson smiled grimly. He was, he felt, beginning to see his way out of the maze. The doctor, he felt, could settle the matter once and for all if he could be led up to the point without he, Manson, putting a leading question.
“When I examined the body first,” he explained to the company, “I realized that the decapitation was a staged one. But the reason for staging was not so obvious. Was it to hide violence of some kind. It seemed likely. But what violence? If death were due to poison being administered in some way by another person in the case, that person must have realized that the poison would be found, for every schoolboy knows, these days, that inquests are held in cases of sudden death, and a post mortem examination is made on all inquest victims. Such a post mortem would have disposed at once of any question of accidental death. It has puzzled me. But now, I think I see the reason for the staging of the decapitation?”
“That being?” asked the Chief Constable.
The doctor begged the question. Instead, he turned to the police surgeon. “Suppose, Gaunt,” he said, “that someone wanted to kill Canley without showing trace of injury. Bearing in mind the subsequent decapitation, and that the throat could not be cut because of the loss of blood which would not be left to show the decapitation, where would be the one place, the only place, fatally to hit him?”
“Top of the spine, Doctor, I should say,” said Gaunt. “The fatal spot—” He broke off and stared. The line of reasoning of the scientist had become suddenly clear to him.
“By gad, sir, that could do it,” he said; and showed the excitement of a schoolboy at an unexpected discovery. “It would serve three purposes; conserve the blood for the beheading, the train wheels would obliterate the marks of the blow, or at least by their bruising would not allow an earlier bruise or bruises to be identifiable, and there would be the semblance of accident.” He looked at the scientist in admiration. “What the devil made you think of that?” he solicited.
“A cigar stub,” said Doctor Manson, cryptically.
“Eh, what?” demanded the Chief Constable. “Cigar stub? It’s the first I’ve heard about that. Why does everybody keep things from me?” He became plaintive. Doctor Manson grinned.
“Now, now, Mainforce,” he chided. “There’s nothing whatever in it that could have helped you had you known about it,” he said. “When I saw the body on the line I decided straight away that he had not been knocked down by the train. I’ve told you why, already. Nor that he had committed suicide. Later on I was certain that he had been placed there after death by someone else. But the fact confronted me that he might have been placed there after a natural death by someone who was with him at the time of death and did not want to be mixed up with an inquest, or in the business at all—”
“Well, we know all that, Doctor. What about the cigar end?” The Chief Constable was becoming impatient.
“Coming to that now, Mainforce. Don’t rush me. I must explain in continuity. It was Mackenzie who told me that he had picked up a cigar stub some few yards down the line. He explained that it had apparently been knocked out of Canley’s mouth when he was hit by the train—”
“I see,” interrupted the inspector. “As he was dead, and had not been knocked down by the train, the cigar stub must have been planted for us to find?”
The scientist nodded acceptance of the hypothesis.
“Hold hard,” said the Chief Constable. “How the devil do either of you know that the cigar belonged to Canley. Might have been thrown out of a carriage window by a passenger.”
“There was cigar leaf in Canley’s mouth, Mainforce,” put in Manson. “Only a small piece, but quite big enough.”
“Huh!” said the Chief Constable. “Answer for damn near everything.”
Doctor Manson switched the conversation from its wanderings back to the question of the blow. “Could the bruising you found on the neck, Gaunt, have been caused by such a blow a
t the top of the spine. The blow would have to be sufficiently strong to cause death, you know?”
“Could be.” The surgeon fumbled for his spectacles. “I wouldn’t like to swear that it was caused that way, but there is nothing incompatible with the suggestion.”
He stampeded suddenly. “Hoicks!” he whooped. “The only chap I ever knew to get it in the neck twice.”
The Chief Constable glared. Gaunt subsided, abashed. A hand dived into a waistcoat pocket and emerged flourishing a watch. “Well, I’d better be getting off.” He thrust the post mortem report into Doctor Manson’s hands, and disappeared below the embankment.
For a moment or two all were silent. Colonel Mainforce mopped his forehead with a huge yellow handkerchief. “That a serious suggestion?” he asked the doctor.
“Quite serious, Colonel. I have little doubt that that is what happened.”
“Means murder, I suppose.” The Chief Constable sighed. Then he exploded in annoyance. “Murder Hoodoo, that’s what you are, damn you, Manson. You and Merry. We are all set for a nice comfortable railway accident that would have stopped damn fools walking over the railway line in future. A nice accident with no trouble. And you run us in for another murder investigation. And Scotland Yard in it. All coming out of the rates. Fifteen and six in the pound they are now—”
Manson and Merry laughed together. The Chief Constable grinned sheepishly.
“You’d better come back, and have a spot of lunch with me,” he said. “We can talk things over.”
“Accepted!” said the doctor. “I’m a bit peckish. You spoilt my breakfast.”
“Me?” The Chief Constable feigned indignation.
“Well, your dashed body did.” He paused. “Just a moment,” he said. He peeped into the lounge outside the door of which a police constable was on guard. “Keep this room just as it is until I have a chance to go over it, Inspector,” he asked.
“In view of our later discoveries the room may be very important. It may hold the secret of Canley’s death. Meanwhile, perhaps you will have a few inquiries made into the life of Canley in this village. It will be better if I have some idea of the personal character of the man and his associates.”
He followed after the Chief Constable and the others. They piled into the car, and with a series of violent explosions started on the way to lunch.
CHAPTER XVI
The Chief Constable’s car clanged its way through Thames Pagnall, turned into the Portsmouth By-pass and followed the tip of its bonnet at a steady twelve miles an hour in the direction of Guildford, pursued by agonized glances from pedestrians.
Doctor Manson, himself a driver of considerable practice and expertness watched, fascinated, the ‘play’ in the steering wheel; the Chief Constable had to make nearly a complete turn of the wheel in order to deviate his course clear of a car standing at the side of the road.
“Have you a vehicle inspection department attached to your police force, Mainforce?” he asked.
The Colonel took one hand off the wheel and the car made straight for the pavement. Doctor Manson glimpsed the sins of his past life and sought absolution in time. The Colonel pulled his way clear before he answered the question. The fires of Hell retreated from the scientist’s vision.
“We have, Manson, yes,” said the Colonel. “And a very efficient one it is, too.”
Doctor Manson chuckled. “I take it they do not operate with traction engines,” he suggested.
“Traction engines?” echoed the Colonel. “No. We are only concerned under the Act with internal combustion engines. Steam traffic comes under the Ministry of Transport. Why?”
He turned, to see the doctor with his hands over his ears. He laughed. “Ah, I see,” he said. “You mean old Ypres.” He shook a concerned head. “I’m afraid she’s nearly at her end,” he said. “But she’s an old favourite, you know. I drove her at Ypres, which is why she’s got that name. Did good work. Thought, once, of recommending her for a medal or a badge or something. Like Old Bill, the London bus. I don’t think Ypres did her much good. That and police work afterwards. Things keep falling out of the engine,” he explained.
“It’s a ruddy miracle the whole contraption doesn’t fall in a heap,” said Merry, in an atrocious pun on the name Ypres.
Past Sandown racecourse, Ypres steered an erratic course, and climbed up the busy main street at Esher, thronged with cars and shoppers. At the top, nearly opposite the ancient Bear Hotel, the Colonel, missing a van by inches, turned right—and emerged into so peaceful an oasis that Doctor Manson gasped in surprise.
Gone were the cars, the racket of noise, the throngs; instead, a verdant village green spread itself in virgin loveliness amidst a solitude surrounded by low, rambling cottages of a hundred or more years old, white-washed walls and red roofs, the tiles of which bore the green hallmark of genuine old age.
An ancient church looked greyly and benevolently over the old homes. A few slowly wending pedestrians pursued a leisurely course, in keeping with the quietude, on their lawful comings and goings. Fifty yards away the cars sped on their way noisily and the crowds bustled.
“What a haven,” said Manson. The car drew up with a jerk and clatter. The Chief Constable squirmed out, in indication that their journey had ended. He looked his pleasure at the Doctor’s surprise.
“Haven?” he echoed. “Nicest little spot in Surrey. Wouldn’t believe it could exist, would you?”
“I wouldn’t,” said Merry.
“Mind you, it’s been well known in its time. Beats me why Gray went all the way to Stoke Poges to write his dashed Elegy; he was always wandering round this churchyard. And it’s a thunderin’ sight better churchyard than the one he moaned over at Stoke Poges.”
“He didn’t,” said Merry.
“Eh? Didn’t what?” asked the Chief Constable.
“Didn’t moan over Stoke Poges.”
“Eh?” said the Colonel again.
“What Merry means, Mainforce,” Doctor Manson explained, “is that it is extremely improbable that Stoke Poges was really the churchyard of the Elegy.”
“Gray never said it was,” put in Merry. “He never said which was his churchyard. A lot of guessers and wishful thinkers put it at Stoke Poges.”
“Why?” demanded the Chief Constable.
“So far as I can see because his ma and sister lived there, and because he died in the place and was buried in the yard.”
“Damnitall,” objected the Chief Constable, “he describes the place, doesn’t he?”
“Sure!” agreed Merry. “He says he heard the curfew tolling the knell of parting day. The only curfew round the place was at Windsor Castle. He must have had damn good hearing to have heard that at Stoke Poges, five miles away.”
“H’m,” said the Chief Constable, badly shaken, “sounds reasonable.”
“That isn’t all.” Doctor Manson chuckled. “He also remarked on the rude forefathers of the hamlet and the ivy-mantled tower of the church. Ever seen Stoke Poges, Colonel?”
“Not to notice it, Manson. Been through it in the car, of course.”
“There you are, you see. Going in for hearsay evidence, and you a policeman. Tch! Tch! There has never been ivy on the tower of Stoke Poges church, and it was always a well-known village with a rural council and never a hamlet.”
“God bless me soul,” said the Chief Constable. “Then where was his blasted churchyard?”
“Probably Upton, which was a real hamlet near Slough, and is now part of Slough. It still has its ivy-mantled tower, and the curfew could have been heard from Windsor Castle, because it’s dashed near next door to the place. And Gray would have gone through Upton to reach Stoke Poges.”
“God bless me soul,” said the Chief Constable, again. “You mean to say that Stoke Poges pinched the blessed poem?”
“That,” said Doctor Manson, “is what literary people and archaeologists believe.”
“It was a bit of their old Bucks,” supplemented Merry. The pun w
as received by the Chief Constable in silence. He was cogitating over the sad business of Stoke Poges and seemed, eventually, to arrive at a decision. “He’d have done better to have kept to Esher, which he knew,” he said at last, decisively.
He pointed to a house in the middle distance. “See that place? Jane Porter’s. She wrote all her novels there. And old John O’Keiffe lived round here, too—chappie who wrote I am a Friar of Orders Grey. George Meredith lived round the corner.”
“Dear, dear, dear! The decline and fall of Esher,” said Doctor Manson. “Now the place houses a Chief Constable.”
“Decline and fall!” echoed the Colonel. “Funny you should mention that.” He looked quite startled. “Old Gibbon was here—at school. But there, let’s go and have that lunch. We’ve got to solve this Canley business, you know.”
He entered the green front gate of a low double-bow window cottage that had in its heyday been the village chandler’s. It was one of a number of such houses, each with its roses and creepers clinging lovingly to the old stone work, and each facing the old village green, soft and verdant with age and untouched by the hurrying feet of the busy traffic on the Portsmouth road just round the corner.
The Chief Constable inserted his latchkey into the keyhole, and then pulled up with a jerk.
“Good Lord,” he said.
“Now, what’s the matter?” asked Doctor Manson. The Colonel grinned. “Just remembered that I ought to have told Mrs. Crouch that you’d be coming to lunch,” he said.
With a determination he did not feel, he opened the door, entered the tiny hall, and ushered his guests into the two rooms knocked into one that had made the delightful lounge-cum-living room. It was essentially a man’s room, furnished with a mixture of antiquity and club-room comforts. He placed a drink in front of each of his guests, and then, squaring his shoulders, made for the kitchen.
He halted at the door as Mrs. Crouch smilingly looked up from the oven.
“Lunch won’t be long, sir,” she said. “I’m just dishing up.”
“Ah, yes. Very nice,” said the Colonel. He raised his voice to a challenging loudness. “I’m very sorry to say, Mrs. Crouch, that I’ve brought a couple of friends to lunch.”