by E.
“That’s my name, yes, sir.”
“I am Inspector Tarrant of the Staines police, Porter, and this is Inspector Mackenzie of the Surrey police. You answer the description of a man named Jack Edwins, who is wanted on a charge of burglary with a man named Sprogson at Paignton, but who disappeared at that time. You are not bound to say anything—”
“My God, after all these years,” interrupted Porter. “All right, inspector, I don’t deny it. But I made restitution years ago. I sent all the money back.”
“Where do you live, Porter?” asked the inspector.
“Over the garage, here, sir.”
“Very well, you had better come with me.”
“Is there anything wrong, Jack?” Mary Porter stood at the foot of the stairs, glancing anxiously from her husband standing between the two officers. They were in plain clothes, but a certain air of officialdom about them, as she had glanced through the flat window upstairs, had sent her hurrying down to the garage.
Porter looked at her, anxiety in his eyes. “They want me for that Paignton business, Mary,” he said; and there was a touch of hopelessness in his voice.
“But—they can’t, Jack.” She turned to the officers. “We made restitution years ago,” she pleaded. “We sent all the money back—”
“There was a warrant out, Madam. It has to be served,” the Middlesex inspector explained.
“Never mind, Mary. It won’t be for long. I shall be back in a day or two, on bail. Take care of the place, won’t you.”
He kissed her tenderly, and turned and walked away with the officers.
The police car passed that of Doctor Manson on the way back to Staines. The two cars stopped and Inspector Mackenzie joined the doctor and the Chief Constable.
“Well?” asked Manson.
Mackenzie nodded. “He admitted that he was Edwins, Doctor. He said that he made restitution. He lives over the garage, by the way.”
As the police car sped towards Staines, Doctor Manson drove into the yard of the garage, and made his way inside. Mary Porter, confronted him, inquiringly. “I am afraid, sir,” she said, “that the garage is closed for the moment. My husband has had to go away on urgent business, and we have not a man for the time being.”
The doctor’s eyes rested on her and there was a trace of regret in his voice as he spoke. “Mrs. Porter,” he said, gently, “I am a police officer, and so are these two gentlemen with me. I am very sorry, but I must ask you to allow us to search your home.” Mary paled, but made way for them to enter the door at the bottom of the stairs from the garage. “You will not find anything in our home,” she said. “My husband sent back the money for the jewellery years ago. He always meant to do that, you know, when he found out that he was unwittingly a thief.”
“Unwittingly a thief?” Doctor Manson asked puzzled. “Unwittingly a thief,” Mary emphasized. “I think I had better tell you the full story, because I am sure you do not know it, and it will help my husband.”
“I should like to hear it,” said Doctor Manson, gravely. And in the tiny sitting-room above the deserted garage, Mary Porter told in her quiet voice the years’ old story of Yew Tree House, Paignton, of her meeting with Jack Edwins, their courtship, of her warning to her lover and the flight from justice, a fugitive of fate.
As Doctor Manson listened, alertness went from the scholarly face of him, and into it instead came shadows of greyness, and the eyes seemed to sink even more deep-set than usual. Colonel Mainforce looked at him anxiously when, once, he half-turned his chair so that he could not see the face of Mary Porter. He thought he was ill.
From that position the doctor spoke. “You said, Mrs. Porter, that your husband repaid the full value of the jewellery to the people at Paignton. When was that?”
“Just under three years ago from the time of the burglary, sir,” was the reply. She hesitated. “I do not want you to think that I am blaming my husband,” she begged, “but if I had been able to join him after the burglary and before he had disposed of the jewellery, it would have been sent back immediately. I know that the police would have accepted the explanation of Jack’s presence there. But it was not until long after the jewels had been sold that I knew anything about it.”
“You did know eventually?”
“Yes, and I agreed to use the money.” She looked frankly at the three men. “It bought this garage. I think that life owed something to my husband for the trick it had played on him. It was I who insisted that, from the money we made, restitution in full should be made.”
Softly she told of the struggle and the years of building up the business with the drain of the weekly contribution to the restitution fund and of the eventual clearance of the debt and of the conscience of both of them. And a great pity welled up in the heart of the scientist and of the Chief Constable, knowing what they knew of the end of the story so soon to come.
“And now, gentlemen, you are at liberty to search my home,” said Mary. She looked proudly at them. “You will not find anything here that is not ours, earned with the sweat of my husband’s brow, I know that.” She led the way to the bedroom, and left them.
Doctor Manson crossed to the wardrobe. It contained two suits, one of blue and the other of brown material. Behind them was an overcoat of heavy cloth, rough-surfaced and with a check pattern on quiet lines. Listlessly, with all the interest of the hunt seemingly departed from him, the scientist examined it. He picked off the surface one or two short threads of some kind or other. Carrying them to the light from the window he inspected them through his lens.
“I cannot be sure without putting them under a microscope,” he announced. “But I do not think there is much doubt that they are the same material as we found on Canley’s coat.” He returned the overcoat to the wardrobe and rummaged in the bottom of the furniture. Presently his hand emerged carrying a pair of heavy boots.
“Leather soles—no good to us,” he said, and returned to the wardrobe.
“These look like it,” and he turned up a pair of black shoes, of a lighter weight. The soles were of rubber material, and so were the heels. With the Chief Constable at his side, he looked closely at the heel of the left shoe. The rubber was worn down to the heads of the two sprigs driven through the centre of the heel.
“Just as you said, Doctor,” commented Colonel Mainforce. “Any more evidence you want?”
For reply the scientist returned to the wardrobe, and looked over the two suits. He took out the darker of the two. “He would use the darkest suit he possessed, I should think,” he said. “Did you notice when we drew into the garage in the first instance, Porter drew a piece of mutton-cloth from his right-hand pocket and wiped his hands?” he asked.
He turned out the right-hand pocket of the jacket and examined it. The examination was more or less a form, for a distinct stain of oil marked the lining.
“Just one more thing, and I think the tale is complete,” the scientist commented. He led the way down the stairs, and out into the front of the garage. Taking from a pocket a box of matches, he emptied them out. Then, walking towards the road, filled the matchbox with some of the trodden portion of soil from round the dump of mortar. “That is all,” he announced.
“Do we charge him, Doctor?” asked Mackenzie.
“Let me get back to my laboratory, Mackenzie, and test the threads and this portion of soil, first. I would like to make sure.”
He drove back to Thames Pagnall, dropped the Chief Constable and Mackenzie, and set the nose of his car in the direction of London.
An hour later the telephone bell rang in Inspector Mackenzie’s office. The inspector lifted the receiver.
“Manson here, Mackenzie,” came a voice. “You must charge him.”
* * * * *
In the police station at Staines, Jack Porter listened to the charge—“that you did wilfully murder James Canley, at Thames Pagnall—”
“Oh, Mary—Mary—my dear, my dear,” he whispered quietly, under his breath; and those were the
only words he said, then or later.
“I shall take you to the prison at Guildford, Porter,” explained Mackenzie, “and there you can send for your legal representative.” Porter nodded.
A police car took the couple to Staines railway station, and from there to the junction; the last time that Porter had stood on that platform was the night that he had walked along the line from Thames Pagnall with the burden of Canley freed from his back.
At the junction Inspector Mackenzie waited with his prisoner for the train to Guildford. Round the curve it came from London turning towards number four platform. Alongside it, racing at full speed came a Basingstoke express, which would pass along platform four. Its whistle shrieked as it approached the station.
With a sudden jump Jack Porter leaped back from the escorting Inspector Mackenzie, and hands above his head dived straight in the track of the express. Screams of women mingled with the cries of men and the screeching of the wheels of the train as the driver applied the emergency brakes.
The station-master and porters shepherded the waiting passengers into the exit, and cordoned them there until the line was cleared of all that remained of Jack Porter.
He lay in the permanent way a yard from the end of the platform. He lay flat on his back, but with his body crumbled—and headless. The engine of the express had decapitated Porter as the engine of the local had decapitated the body of James Canley.
Three hours later Doctor Manson drove up to the garage on the By-pass. He had imposed upon himself the task of breaking the news of her husband’s death to Mary Porter; and of the charge that had been levelled against him.
Mary heard him to the end, dry-eyed, calm with the dreadful calm of hopelessness and despair. Then:
“But, sir,” she asked, “why should he want to murder this Canley. I have never heard his name, and my husband at no time has ever known a Canley to my knowledge. Why should he murder the man?”
Doctor Manson placed a hand gently over those she had held out imploringly as she asked her question.
“Mrs. Porter,” be said, “James Canley was—Sprogson.”
“Sprogson?” The word came in a whisper. “Jack never told me.”
“He was trying to save you from anxiety, I think,” said Manson. “He paid Sprogson for his silence for months.”
“I see. So that is where our money went. And I blamed Jack for—Oh, why didn’t he tell me. We said always that we would have no secrets from each other.”
Doctor Manson took a card from his wallet. He placed it on the table. “This is my address. Mrs. Porter,” he said. “Will you come to me for any help you want, or any advice. It will be at your service at any time.” He thought for a moment, hesitatingly, then seemed to make up his mind.
“Mrs. Porter, I would like to tell you that the only words your husband spoke after his arrest were these: ‘Oh, Mary—Mary, my dear—my dear’.” He turned, pressed her hand in his and left.
Mary Porter stood in the little living-room; she stood as though she was carved in marble itself. She stared through the window into the busy road outside the garage, but saw nothing of the traffic that raced past; her eyes wandered over the mental panorama of the years. She saw the café in Paignton, the entry of Jack Edwins, the smile, the first walk along the sands as the band played in the bandstand to the host of holiday-makers.
She saw her lover on that night she had begged him to end his association with Sprogson; she remembered the pain of the months of waiting, the reunion in London, and the years of happiness and building in the little garage.
Like an automaton she walked down the stairs and into the garage. She wandered round, remembering the planning which had purchased this and that of the fittings for the happy years of the future.
Strewn across a bench lay the overalls that her man had stripped off when he went away with the police officers. Her hands went out to them, and caressed them.
“Oh, Jack—Jack,” she said softly; and her voice broke and there came the relief of tears. Mary Porter cried as a woman cries once only in a lifetime, whether her lifetime be twenty or seventy years.
T H E E N D
EPILOGUE
Sir Edward Allen and Manson sat together over a tea table in the window of a famous London club overlooking the Mall, and the park beyond it. The Assistant Commissioner had heard the end of the story.
“A fine piece of work, Harry,” he said. “It was a thousand to one against the murder ever coming out. I have never known science more devastating in any case you have solved than in this one.”
Doctor Manson kept his gaze on the strolling people in the park across the Mall. There seemed a certain resignation in his attitude; and the cigarette was staining with nicotine fumes the whiteness of his long, delicate fingers. It was nearly a minute before he replied.
“I have never concluded a case with less satisfaction, Edward,” he said, and there was pain in his voice. “Porter had made good, he had made restitution, and was building up a business by craftsmanship and hard work. And now all that is gone, and his life, too, has gone—for a rogue like Canley. If only he had come to us and told us. After all those years the punishment, if any, would have been nominal only. There are times when I hate this job of mine, Edward.”
He stood up.
“Let me go home,” he said, and his voice was shaking. “I am no company for anyone today—nor do I want any company.”
The Assistant Commissioner, silent, watched him go slowly through the door, and out into the open air.
T H E E N D
Notes
I. Our regular readers may be surprised at finding that Chief Detective-Inspector Dr. Manson has, in this volume, blossomed out into Superintendent Manson.
This is by no desire of us, or of Doctor Manson; it is inevitable in order that the ‘Manson Stories’ may follow with accuracy the set-up of Scotland Yard. Up to July last year (1949) a yard man detailed to conduct a murder investigation was always a chief detective-inspector. Because he had to meet, and not infrequently, entertain local superintendents, he was allowed an annual emolument of £65.
In July last year, Scotland Yard authorities took the view that the investigating chief detective-inspector should not be placed in the peril of being junior in rank to a superintendent of police in the investigating area. So all chief detective-inspectors were raised to the rank of superintendent. Because a superintendent is not officially an ‘investigating officer’ but an ‘executive officer’ he no longer draws the extra £65 a year! But thus, Chief Detective-Inspector Dr. Manson, has, willy-nilly, to be a superintendent. [RETURN TO CHAPTER 1]
II. Murder isn’t Cricket by E & M.A. Radford.
[RETURN TO CHAPTER 15]
III. Doctor Manson was wrong. The reader knows that Porter wiped the knob after he had realized that he had used the poker to stir up the ashes of the cigar which he had put on the fire.
[RETURN TO CHAPTER 17]
IV. The reader knows that Doctor Manson was incorrect in this deduction.
[RETURN TO CHAPTER 18]
V. Again Doctor Manson’s reasoning, though on the right lines, was faulty. For it was Porter, not Canley who had arranged the table.
[RETURN TO CHAPTER 18]
VI. This was, of course, another wrong deduction, this time on the part of Merry. No ash was flicked away outside the cottage.
[RETURN TO CHAPTER 21]
VII. There was no justification, as the reader knows, for this deduction on the part of the doctor. It was wrong.
[RETURN TO CHAPTER 24]
VIII. Again Doctor Manson’s reasoning (as the reader knows) is incorrect.
[RETURN TO CHAPTER 25]
IX. This was again a wrong deduction. Porter, the reader will remember, wiped the prints off the shoes with the mutton-cloth. Doctor Manson had, curiously enough, proved this but seemed to have forgotten the fact.
[RETURN TO CHAPTER 26]
About The Authors
EDWIN ISAAC RADFORD (1891-1973) and MONA A
UGUSTA RADFORD (1894-1990) were married in 1939. Edwin worked as a journalist, holding many editorial roles on Fleet Street in London, while Mona was a popular leading lady in musical-comedy and revues until her retirement from the stage.
The couple turned to crime fiction when they were both in their early fifties. Edwin described their collaborative formula as: “She kills them off, and I find out how she done it.” Their primary series detective was Harry Manson who they introduced in 1944.
The Radfords spent their final years living in Worthing on the English South Coast. Dean Street Press have republished six of their classic mysteries: Murder Jigsaw, Murder Isn’t Cricket, Who Killed Dick Whittington?, The Heel of Achilles, Death of a Frightened Editor, and Death and the Professor.
Published by Dean Street Press 2020
Copyright © 1950 E & M.A. Radford
Introduction copyright © 2020 Nigel Moss
All Rights Reserved
First published in 1950 by Andrew Melrose
Cover by DSP
ISBN 978 1 913054 98 4
www.deanstreetpress.co.uk