The Twenty-One Clues

by J. J. Connington

  “It’s in this one, but not in that one, sir, so far as I can see,” said the sergeant, cautiously.

  “That’s to say, it’s shown by the bullet from Barratt’s skull and also on the bullet from the pistol we found beside the bodies. But it isn’t shown by the bullet from the other automatic, the one I borrowed from a gunsmith. Pretty conclusive proof, this, that Barratt was killed by a shot from the pistol that lay beside his hand.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Quilter, though his own opinion was that the inspector was making a lot of fuss about nothing. Man found shot; pistol beside him; obviously it was the pistol that killed him. And that was all that Rufford had managed to prove, with all this tomfoolery of his.

  “Now we’ll have a shy at the bullet from Mrs. Callis’s skull,” said the inspector, suiting the action to the word.

  The results here were the same as before. Obviously Mrs. Callis also had been shot by the automatic which had killed Barratt.

  “Well, that’s that!” said Rufford in a satisfied tone. “Nothing like putting the thing beyond doubt for a coroner’s jury. They can’t pick any holes in this evidence, that’s sure.”

  “No, sir,” Quilter agreed perfunctorily, before broaching a subject which he thought of more importance. “I want to report, sir, that we got the information you wanted from the Alcazar people.”

  “Good!” said the inspector. “What have they got to say?”

  “They turned up their files, sir, when we asked them about the matter. It seems that they got a wire signed ‘Barratt’ exactly a fortnight ago, asking them to book a double room from last night. It was a reply-paid wire and they sent the answer to Barratt’s address, confirming the booking of the room.”

  “You have to book well ahead if you want to get into the Alcazar at all,” Rufford explained from his experience. “A double room, you say?”

  “A double room it was, sir.”

  “That seems to put the lid on the can and solder it down tight, doesn’t it? Not much doubt, after that, about the two of them meaning to make a bolt. Everything nicely pre-arranged, evidently.”

  “Then why didn’t they, sir?”

  As this was precisely the question which Rufford was least able to answer, he was relieved when the door opened and a constable came in with a message.

  “Abbot’s Park Station ringing up, sir,” he announced. “That missing car’s been found. It was in Granby Holt, standing on a forest track away near the centre of the Holt, they say; and that’s why it hasn’t been found before. No one thought of looking for it off the roads.”

  “Then how did they find it?” demanded Rufford.

  “Some children, playing in the Holt, came across it by accident, sir, and reported it. Abbot’s Park Station reports that it’s badly smashed up. A tree had fallen across the track, and the car must have gone into it, full tilt, for the radiator’s all crumpled.”

  “Did they say anything about that black bag that Barratt was carrying?”

  “Yes, sir. They found the bag on the floor of the car, just thrown down there. But it was empty. No money in it when they found it.”

  “Had these children been helping themselves, by any chance?”

  “No, sir. The Abbot’s Park people happen to know all about them. One of them’s the daughter of an Abbot’s Park constable and a strictly honest little girl. She says nothing was touched by them.”

  “That sounds O.K.,” admitted the inspector. “Anything further?”

  “In the pocket of the door on the driving-seat side they found two driving licences: Callis’s and his wife’s one, sir. And the insurance certificate for the car. That was all they found, so they say.”

  Rufford nodded impassively, but to himself he allowed himself a comment:

  “Damnation! It looks as if this affair is going to keep me on the run for twenty-four hours on end.”

  Even the most zealous official has his human side.

  “All right!” he said aloud. “Get me a car round as quick as you can. I suppose I must go and look at this wreck.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Car

  AT Abbot’s Park police station, Rufford made fuller inquiries about the discovery of Callis’s car and picked up a constable as a guide to the spot where it still lay. He learned that the track along which the missing car had gone was so rough that he would be risking his springs if he attempted to follow it; so he and the constable left their own motor on the public road and entered the wood on foot.

  Granby Holt was a fair-sized pine-wood in which some felling had been done in the previous year. Its forest tracks were deeply scored by the wheels of timber-carts; desolate clearings dotted with stumps and strewn with bark, showed where the work had been done; and, here and there, the roots of storm-stricken trees reared up in the moonlight like the arms of uncouth decapods lying in wait for their prey.

  “Nobody but a born fool would have brought a car here at all, sir,” the constable pointed out, unnecessarily. “You see how rough this track is, and how it winds about amongst the trees. And yet the fellow must have been driving at a fair lick, to judge by the smash he came when he did hit something. The car’s just round this bend, sir, at the bottom of a slope.”

  When they came to the top of a steep incline in the track, Rufford could see the damaged vehicle. A pair of long deep scores cutting through the skin of fallen leaves and deep into the soft soil below spoke plainly of a frantic application of the brakes as the danger below had come in sight of the driver. Evidently the wheels had locked and the car had slid headlong to the crash. Followed by the constable, Rufford advanced to the scene of the disaster.

  In the shock between the car and the fallen tree, the bumper had been useless as a protection. It had been driven in; the radiator shield was crumpled like pasteboard; and the radiator itself had suffered badly. One wing, with the headlight and side-lamp, had been twisted free. The bonnet had been distorted and the glass was gone from the windscreen frame.

  “That looks a bit of a mess,” said Rufford, sardonically, as he ran his flashlight beam over the injuries.

  “There’s some blood on the floor of die driving-seat, sir,” the constable pointed out enthusiastically. “If you’ll bring your flashlamp you’ll be able to see it. There isn’t much; but it’s blood, all right.”

  “Not much wonder, after a smash like this,” commented the inspector as he moved round to the side of the car.

  He examined the stains, dipped the tip of his finger into the blood to satisfy himself, and then ran his flashlamp beam over the dashboard of the car. The clock had stopped at eleven-ten, evidently as the result of the collision. Rufford reached over to the winding-rod and very carefully began to wind up the spring, counting the clicks as he did so. When he had made half a dozen turns, the clock was fully wound up. He noted the number in his pocket-book before turning again to the constable.

  “You’ve read Sherlock Holmes?” he asked. “No? Well, that was one of his tricks. But all I really wanted to know was whether the clock was going when the smash happened. It might have been run down, you see? Some people forget all about winding up their dashboard clocks.”

  He examined the dial of the speedometer. The trip recorder stood at seven miles; but it was one of those which run from zero to one hundred and then repeat themselves, so that evidently it had not been set at the beginning of the day, and it threw no light on how far the car had actually gone.

  “What ages were the children who spotted this car first?” Rufford demanded from the constable.

  “The youngest would be about nine, sir, and the oldest one’s thirteen, I believe. She’s the daughter of one of my mates.”

  “Nobody else been about, except some of you Abbot’s Park people?”

  “Not so far as we know, sir. We’ve kept our thumb on this business for the present.”

  “Quite right. That makes it possible to get something out of the footprints, hereabouts, in this soft soil. I’ll ask your inspector to go into tha
t for me.”

  “There’s one thing I was told to explain to you, sir. Last night, about ten-fifty-five, one of our men was on patrol along Rickman’s Lane. A car passed him, going all out, doing about seventy, he said. The tail-lamp was out and he whistled them to stop; but no notice was taken of him. The car was coming in this direction. When he got to the nearest phone post, he rang up; and orders to stop the car were given out. But no one seems to have seen it after that, at least not with its tail-lamp extinguished. When this smashed-up car came into our hands, we examined the tail-lamp bulb and found the filament gone. That might have happened in the smash, of course. But it might have been gone before that.”

  “In other words, this was the car that went along Rickman’s Lane and when the driver heard the whistle, he got off the road and hid the car here? Likely enough. It wasn’t his car—it’s got Mr. Callis’s number-plate—so even if the driver smashed it up, it wasn’t going to cost him a penny for repairs. Furiously driven, you say, when it passed the constable?”

  “Yes, sir, very carelessly driven, my mate said. He had to pick up his feet and jump out of the way, when it came along, for it was yawing about all over the road.”

  “Where’s the nearest station?” demanded Rufford.

  “Abbot’s Park, sir.”

  “When does the last train pass through at night?”

  Fortunately the constable seemed to be an expert in local communications.

  “Five past eleven on the up line and a quarter past eleven on the down line, sir.”

  “What about bus services? Any of them running at that time of night in your area.?”

  “The last one passes through Abbot’s Park at eleven seven, sir, going away from here,” explained the constable, catching Rufford’s drift. “No bus route comes anywhere near Granby Holt, sir. That’s a third-class road we came up by, and it leads nowhere that a bus would want to go. Not enough population, hereabouts, to make a service worth while.”

  “I see,” said the inspector. “It amounts to this, then. The smash here occurred at eleven-ten, apparently. The last possible transport out of Abbot’s Park was the eleven-fifteen down train; and nobody could have caught that, starting from here at ten past eleven. And I’m twelve miles from my happy home and bed. Very jolly, no doubt. It’s lucky I had a square meal when I got the chance.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the constable agreeably. “Would there be anything else you’d like to examine, before we go?”

  Rufford stared at the wrecked car for a few seconds before answering.

  “No, I don’t think there’s much to be learned from this scrap-iron just at present,” he said. “Your people went over it carefully, I was told; and they found nothing of importance except the licences in the door-pocket and that blood on the floor. I think I’ll get off home now. I’ll drop you at Abbot’s Park. Let’s get back to my car.”

  The constable was nothing loath, and they set off through the pine wood towards the road. When they reached Abbot’s Park police station, Rufford interviewed the officer in charge.

  “I’ve had a look at the footprints round that car in Granby Holt,” he explained. “Most of them were made by children, I noticed. Four of them in all, I made out. Is that right?”

  “That’s correct, sir,” said the sergeant in charge.

  “There were two other sets of prints, constabulary boots unless I’m mistaken. These would be made by the men sent up from here after the children brought in the news?”

  “Yes, sir. That’s so.”

  “Then there was another set of prints—tennis-shoes with patterned rubber soles, not quite full size for a man. They might have been made by a woman or a boy, to judge from the size. Is there anyone here who could take plaster casts of some of these impressions? Someone who really knows how to do it, I mean, not somebody who merely thinks he knows all about it.”

  “I could do it myself, sir. I’ve had some experience over a case lately, when I had to make some casts.”

  “Then, if there’s no objection, I’d like a few casts of these tennis-shoe prints,” said Rufford. “But find out for certain, first of all, that none of the children were wearing rubber shoes.”

  “Very good, sir. I’ll see to it.”

  The inspector bade him good night and got into his car again. As he drove homeward, he let his mind run over the evidence which he had accumulated since the morning, trying to fit it together into a consistent scheme.

  In the first place, there was this intrigue between Barratt and Mrs. Callis. On the face of the evidence, that wasn’t an affair of yesterday. The two love-letters which he had pieced together were not isolated documents; their tenor proved them to be parts of a longer ardent correspondence. Why they in particular should have been picked out from the rest, he could not guess; for there was nothing in either letter which suggested that it was of especial importance. But then, as he reflected, unless one knew the ins and outs of the affair, one was bound to miss some point which had a special meaning for a pair of lovers, but which meant nothing to an outsider. He had tested them for finger-prints as part of the routine, but had found only a few hopelessly blurred marks.

  Another datum was the anonymous letter which he had secured from Callis. Somebody had spotted this hankey-pankey between Barratt and Mrs. Callis. But the principals in any illicit attachment are pretty sure to be very circumspect in their behaviour at the start. It’s only after the intrigue has gone undetected for a while that they grow careless. Since somebody had spotted that there was a screw loose, it was plain that the liasion was far beyond its initial stages. And they must have been clever enough in their proceedings, since Callis had not had the slightest suspicion of what was going on under his nose. True enough, the man most concerned in these affairs was usually the last one to notice anything wrong, since he, of all people, was the person who had to be hoodwinked by the guilty couple. But even when Callis had been put on the alert by that anonymous scribbler, he had persisted in his belief that his wife was innocent. Rufford prided himself on knowing the ring of truth when he heard it; and Callis’s asseverations of his wife’s irreproachability had sounded genuine beyond cavil. On the face of things, those two turtle-doves had been remarkably clever in throwing dust into Callis’s eyes. And that was a point worth remembering in connection with later events.

  The inspector passed on to consider the problem of the actual elopement. It had not been decided upon on the spur of the moment. That was plain enough. The room at the Alcazar had been booked a fortnight ahead; so the decision to cut and run must have been taken even longer ago than that. Then there was that fake wedding-ring found on Mrs. Callis’s hand. Obviously they needed a wedding-ring to show, or there would have been difficulties at hotels and elsewhere. Mrs. Callis’s real wedding-ring was of a conspicuous type, apt to draw attention, from Callis’s account of it. That would be a sound enough reason for discarding it. Besides, a married woman eloping with a paramour might well have sentimental notions about wearing her proper wedding-ring. It would have been a reminder of her true position, which might make her feel at least slightly uncomfortable every time she happened to glance at her hand. Sentimental idea, no doubt. But then she obviously was sentimental in some ways, or they would not have had her initials and Barratt’s put on the new ring. And, as Peter Diamond said: “Some people can persuade themselves that anything’s straight, so long as they want it badly enough.” The new ring probably helped her to believe that her new venture was a marriage of sorts “contracted in heaven without the intervention of mere registrars and such-like.” The main point here was that one can’t walk into a jeweller’s shop and come out in five minutes with an engraved ring. The lettering takes time. So the existence of that ring went to confirm the Alcazar evidence that this elopement had been planned well ahead.

  Passing on to the affairs of the previous day, the inspector saw his way through them easily enough. Barratt and his wife occupied separate rooms; so it would be easy enough for him to pack tha
t cane suit-case without her knowledge. The Barratts kept no maid, and after breakfast Mrs. Barratt would be in the scullery, busy with washing up the dishes. That would give Barratt an opportunity to take the suit-case out of the house unobserved, when he told his wife he was going round to the church to meet the organist. Mrs. Callis must have joined him at some rendezvous in town, after smuggling her own suit-case out of her house without attracting the notice of her maid. When they met, Barratt evidently took charge of both suit-cases, handed them in at the left-luggage office and took the tickets for London, while Mrs. Callis sent off the telegram which was supposed to come from Mrs. Longnor. That would finish the morning’s work for the pair of them. In the afternoon, Mrs. Callis probably took her car into town, parked it, went to some picture-house and then had dinner at a restaurant, thus passing the time until she could pick up Barratt after his meeting at the church hall. He had to attend that meeting; for if he absented himself, immediate inquiries might be made at his home, and the hunt would be up before he and his lady-love had got away from the town. And with a scent as fresh as that, it would not have been long before the pair of them were run down at the Alcazar.

  That was all plain sailing. But now, once more, Rufford came up against the psychological difficulty which had baffled both himself and Peter Diamond earlier in the day. Why, with everything cut and dried, had these two suddenly changed their minds at the eleventh hour? It was not because of any hitch in their arrangements. They had enough ready cash for emergencies; the residue from that £25 cheque would suffice there. Mrs. Callis had her cheque-book, which would provide further sinews of war when they were needed. They had their London tickets, their luggage was at the station, the room at the Alcazar was booked and waiting for them . . . and, at the very last moment, they turned their backs on the future they had planned and went off to die amongst the bracken. As the inspector himself had said, it was like paying for something and not taking delivery of the goods.