by Roy Vickers
“And now I must ask the lock-keeper to let me use his telephone.” Her smile was mis-timed.
“May I call the car?” His tone made her conscious of her attire. She thanked him but preferred to do it herself.
“Your best chance is Weston’s Garage,” he said and gave her the number. She went to the instrument and repeated the number. The siren of the ‘customer’ sounded. He waited until he had heard her speak to Weston’s then went out to the lock.
When she had explained what she wanted she was asked to hold the line. Then another voice spoke. “I’m very sorry, madam, but we can’t send a car at once. I would call one from another garage for you but we’re all in the same fix.” When she moaned, he added: “The police have commandeered all available cars.”
“But this is awful!” cried Veronica. “I simply must get to Wheatley Junction by three. Did you say the police—?”
“There has been a murder in the town. But the police will return all cars as soon as they can. I will ring you again, madam—it might be in a few minutes.”
Alone in the house she retrieved her dress and her woollen crepe coat, in yellow. Her hat she crammed into the dressing case. She would wear the scarf over her hair, concealing her face as much as possible. Dum sola et casta! The words now terrified her. Perhaps it would be safer to wait in the road for the car. She adjusted the scarf and put on her gloves. Every minute spent in the house was an added danger. Car or no car, she must get away.
Her eye was caught by a glossy lying on the sofa. The Prattler! She flicked it open, stared at her own face, trying to work out its significance in her present position. If he had seen that photograph he must have recognised her. Obviously, he had not recognised her.
She took the journal to the table and carefully tore out the photograph. Then she tore the photograph across and across into small pieces, leaving herself with the problem of what to do with the small pieces. In the fireplace they might be noticed—and fitted together.
She thrust them into the folds of the sofa. While she was doing so the telephone rang.
“We’re sending you a car, madam, by arrangement with The Hollow Tree Garage. It has already started and will be with you in ten minutes or so.”
So that was that! With vast relief, she returned to the looking-glass to make final improvements in the arrangement of the scarf.
Presently she went to the side-window to see if the lights of the car were discernible in the distance. She looked out on blackness unrelieved. Then suddenly a bright light flashed in her eyes.
“Oh don’t!” she cried involuntarily.
“What’s the matter?” asked a voice behind her. “Don’t—what?”
“Oh, Peter! Someone flashed a light on me from outside the window.”
“It must have been a car light,” he said and added: “But I didn’t see it as I came in—nor hear it.”
“It wasn’t a bit like a car light. I know it wasn’t a car light. It must have been one of those men from the barges.”
“The barges left the lock a couple of minutes ago. Besides, the men never get off. Are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”
“How could I imagine it! It was sudden—it startled me and hurt my eyes.”
He thought it over and then:
“The only person it could have been is Huggins—the policeman—on pushbike patrol. He’s rather pally and if he sees a light here he drops in for a drink.”
“A policeman!” she echoed.
“You needn’t worry. The police are not concerned with marriage settlements.”
His words drove her thought at a tangent.
“Will you please give me back my wedding ring?”
“I threw it in the lock.”
“Oh! It was engraved on the inside.”
“I couldn’t find it in the dark. I might be able to fish it out in daylight. If I can find it, I’ll post it to you.” He laughed. “Name and address, please?”
“I couldn’t bother you to that extent. I’ll buy another ring and have it engraved … Goodbye, Peter!”
“Peter is as dead as Caroline. There’s nothing to say goodbye to.”
“I think I can see the car lights.”
He picked up the dressing case. She had to keep close to him crossing the bridge. At the foot of the ramp she stopped.
“Don’t see me into the car, please. Let me just vanish into the dark.”
“As you please!” He handed her the dressing case.
“You’ll never forgive me for running away from—us?”
“What does it matter to you? You needn’t be afraid I’ll hit back. Nobody will ever know—from me—that you have been here.”
“I know,” she said, sealing his pledge. He was the man she had believed him to be in their ecstatic moments. He might come to hate her, but he would never injure her. As she walked up the ramp he kept the beam of his torch at her feet.
By the time she reached the road the car had already turned. The driver was an excessively cautious man.
“Are you the lady that rang Weston’s Garage?” Assured that she was, he explained. “We’re The Hollow Tree.” He pointed to a transparency on the window as if his word might be doubted. “They passed your call to us. Their cars were all out. So were ours, bar this one. Police and newspaper men. On account there’s been a murder in the town.”
“How dreadful!” said Veronica as she got in. “It’s lucky for me you could come. I simply must catch the three-fifteen at Wheatley Junction.”
“Easy enough, Miss, provided they don’t put a cordon round Renchester, which we’ve got to go through for Wheatley.”
“But why should the police want to stop us going through?”
“Only for questions, like. Who you are and what you’re doing out at this time o’ night. Nothing to upset a lady, except the loss o’ time. We had a murder here two years ago next month—got away too, he did, and hasn’t been caught yet. They said at the time that the police ought to’ve drawn a cordon.”
Veronica was too appalled to continue the conversation, so the driver was able to relate the circumstances of the earlier murder.
“Take what’s happened tonight, fr’instance. The police are trying to pick up an old Ford car with a dented wing and a broken rear window. We’ve all been warned to keep an eye open for it and if we see it ring the police.”
Chapter Two
There was no cordon. The first rush and bustle—the hiring of a number of supplementary cars—had been partly for the record and partly to obtain negative evidence that the murder was not “a local job”.
The hunt was started close upon midnight by a pair of yokel lovers. They had been sitting, they said, on a stile near the foot of Penbrook Hill, which is seven miles east of Renchester, when they became intrigued with the behaviour of a large car which approached slowly and stopped by the sandbin—for use in frosty weather. They crept along the meadow and, looking through the hedge, observed two men, one holding a torch while the other picked the padlock of the sandbin. The men then lifted from the big car what appeared to be a dead body which they put inside the sandbin, no doubt believing that it would lie there undiscovered until next winter. They could not identify the men but judged them to be young by the swiftness of their movements. The men adjusted the padlock, reversed the car and drove back in the direction of Renchester. The lovers had seen that the car was a Daimler but had been unable to note its number.
The first covey of cars had found a Daimler parked in a side-street close to the nearly completed factory of WillyBee Products Ltd.
The tale of Constable Franks, recalled from his beat, is best told backwards. Coming on duty at eight-thirty he was warned by the colleague he relieved that, in the yard of the new factory of Brengast’s, was a new push bicycle, which was likely to be stolen. About nine he passed the factory; leaning against a cement mixer was the bicycle, presumed to have been left by one of the workmen. There were lights in an upper room of the nearly completed building and in
front of the entrance was parked an old Ford saloon with a crumpled wing and a broken rear window.
Returning an hour later he observed a large Daimler parked close to the Ford. There was nothing remarkable in this as there was much coming and going in the new building at all hours. The bicycle was still leaning against the cement mixer.
His third visit was at midnight. The Daimler had gone. The Ford was still in position. The lights were still on. But the bicycle was no longer leaning against the cement mixer.
This little tale was told around one o’clock. A check-up revealed that the Ford, too, had gone. The register meantime had declared the Daimler to be the property of William Brengast himself. This strongly suggested that the corpse was that of Brengast, until the managing director, called on the telephone, asserted that Mr. Brengast was in Madrid; but the manager of the Red Lion gave positive identification.
“We want that Ford,” said the Chief Constable. There had been rude remarks in the murder of two years ago on the dilatoriness of the police in calling in Scotland Yard to help in what was obviously not a local crime.
“This is obviously not a local crime,” asserted the Chief Constable, without a twinge of conscience. “Put me through to Scotland Yard.”
By eight o’clock, Detective Inspector Curwen had arrived from the Yard with a skeleton staff. The Chief Constable received him with magnificence. He allotted him an extensive suite in the town hall, recently adapted and awaiting occupation by his own C.I.D. He put a large number of cars at Curwen’s disposal and said that he wished him luck—which was not quite true.
By this time reports had been turned in by the municipal and rural district police. The latter, per Constable Huggins of Peasebarrow village, offered provisional identification of the Ford with the crumpled wing, adding that at dawn he had ascertained that the Ford was in its “garage”, a disused cowshed adjacent to the lockhouse.
After giving appropriate orders, Curwen went to WillyBee Products in Welback Street. The Chief Constable had cordoned-off the whole premises, leaving Curwen virgin soil. Constable Franks indicated the room in which he had seen the light burning, the relative positions of Ford and Daimler and added that an aluminium push bicycle had disappeared from the yard.
There was every indication that the room had been the locale of the murder. It was the office adjoining what was to be a laboratory and experimental workshop. It was unfurnished except for a row of shelved lockers, two of which were open and empty. There were three packing cases, serviceable as chairs. The lid of a biscuit tin had been used as an ash tray. On the floor was a large wet patch, cleaner than the rest of the floor.
“They couldn’t wash between the boards,” said Curwen and left his staff in charge while he made a tour of the building, keeping an eye open for the “blunt instrument” that had smashed the skull of William Brengast—the doctor said—with a single blow. He need not have bothered. When he returned to the office he was shown an iron lever, some three feet long, with a forked end, such as is used for opening packing cases.
“It was standing up against the wall, sir—beside those lockers. Wiped clean with a wet rag.”
“Everything has been wiped clean with a wet rag, said another. “Not a dab in the whole room except on the gun, there. Handled only by the deceased.”
“Where did you find it?” It was a short, snubby revolver, which had not been fired.
“On the floor, sir—chalk mark behind that packing case.”
Curwen turned, to gaze at a gap made by the removal of a floorboard.
“Blood all right, sir. I’ve taken a swab.”
Curwen added the medical report to the known movements of the Ford and the Daimler.
“One of those two men who were in the Ford dotted him one when he drew that gun. Then one or both came back and cleaned up, after the sandbin act,” he muttered. “Amateurs in a panic!” He turned to Detective Sergeant Rouse. “Check that cosh with the wound. I’m going back to the Town Hall.”
The best room in the suite, which Curwen himself personally occupied, was a subtle challenge to Scotland Yard. The thickness of the carpet, for one thing. An impressive reference library, which included Who’s Who. Two gridded electric wall maps. A dictaphone. An enormous desk with a number of shiny gadgets, whose purpose he intended to explore.
In an alcove sat Benjoy, his aide, using a silent typewriter. Benjoy was a pink young man, fresh from the training college, who was shaping very well. He stopped typing as his chief dropped into a padded swivel chair.
“I’ll dictate when you’ve finished what you’re doing.” There was a curve in the pad of the chair that rested the small of his back. “London has a lot to learn from the provincial towns.”
“Yes, sir. A few items have come in. Marchmont, Assistant Manager of WillyBee Products, thought deceased was in Madrid and has no information. He gave address of deceased’s London flat. A Miss Aspland, deceased’s niece, spoke from the flat for Mrs. Brengast. The two ladies will be in Renchester at three this afternoon. More!”
Curwen made a rough note on the ornate blotting pad.
“Go ahead, boy!”
“Deceased and deceased’s wife, sir. Brengast turned up at the Red Lion without previous booking. He identified himself to the manager but refused to register until the next day as he wanted no publicity. He said he was expecting his wife, who had missed him at Diddington and would probably arrive later. The only stranger to arrive in Diddington was a young, well-dressed lady with a dressing case who got off at the railway halt at seven-fifty-five. She tried to hire a car but none was available. According to a garage hand, she was offered a lift to Renchester by a traveller for Rondgarth Draperies. It looks very much as if she might have been Mrs. Brengast.”
“Who turned up at Diddington, got a lift to Renchester, changed her mind about meeting her husband and went back to her London flat?” queried Curwen.
“Just so, sir! But I didn’t guess anything.”
“This time you’re allowed to guess that she didn’t help bash him with a crowbar and put him in a sandbin. I don’t see a sex angle in this job, with two killers. Ready for dictation?” He eyed the dictaphone with mistrust of himself. “You haven’t had much practice with these things, so I’d better bawl it out as usual.”
Curwen’s preliminary “appreciation” for his chief had the unfortunate effect of revealing that the local bobbies on the beat—mainly by luck, of course!—had done all the work. Little remained, he thought, but to tidy up the case for the lawyers. Why the Yard had been called in was the Chief Constable’s secret.
The stream of paper had already started. Within the next hour enough information came in about the three men at the lockhouse for Curwen to write their obituaries.
An item, which seemed to be of secondary interest only, came from Weston’s Garage. At two-ten a.m. approximately, a woman had ordered a car on the lockhouse telephone. A car was shortly sent—by arrangement with The Hollow Tree Garage—which took the lady to Wheatley Junction to catch the three-fifteen to Salisbury.
“All that girl can give us is that one man stayed behind at the lockhouse—which we know,” he told Benjoy. “I shall make the arrest myself. Tell the team to follow on. We shall want three of the Chief Constable’s cars.”
To the eye trained to observe trifles it was obvious that the front door of the lockhouse had not been opened for a long time. Curwen followed the tarred path round the house. Through the side window that gave a view of the road in the Renchester direction, he saw one of the young men bending over a photographic printing frame.
As he turned the corner and came in view of the lock he saw another of the young men standing stark naked, his toes over the edge of the lockside. Apparently unaware of the presence of a stranger he plunged into the lock.
Curwen knocked with his knuckles on the open side door. A voice from within shouted:
“Come in, Huggins.”
Huggins, Curwen remembered as he went in, was the rural consta
ble who had supplied information about these men and their Ford car.
“Good morning! Are you Mr. Stranack?”
“No. I’m Eddis. Stranack is probably somewhere in the river. I’ll fish him out for you.”
“Don’t bother, thanks, I’d like a word with you first, Mr. Eddis. My name is Curwen—Detective Inspector, Scotland Yard.”
“Oh-h, I say! Do forgive me for gaping, but I’ve never seen a detective before. What can I do for you? You want to use the telephone, I expect? It’s behind you.” As Curwen shook his head: “Do sit down. I gather poor old Stranack must have broken the law in a big way.”
“I don’t know,” said Curwen. “I’ll tell you why I’m here. Last night Mr. William Brengast was murdered in Renchester and—”
He broke off as Eddis laughed.
“Oh no! No, my dear Inspector, he was not! WillyBee—that’s what we call him—we’re all on his staff—was not murdered in Renchester last night. He’s not in England. I’ll show you a cutting from The Times—”
“I know he was supposed to be in Madrid having one of his factories opened for him by a minister. There was a political crisis in Spain yesterday. And Brengast flew back in his own helicopter to Diddington, here.”
“So WillyBee really is dead!” Eddis spoke as if talking to himself. Curwen was watching him, wondering whether he was putting on an act. “Don’t think me ghoulish, Inspector—this is a bit of good news! His death solves a lot of our problems. No malice, mind! But—there you are! The others will be pleased.”
It was at this point that Curwen got his first suspicion that the case might not be as simple as he had thought. Get down to bedrock.
“Mr. Eddis, were you in Renchester last night?”
“No.”
That was a straight answer, anyhow. But it had come a little too pat—as if the question had been expected.
“I will give you a chance to revise that answer, Mr. Eddis. We know that your Ford left here a little after eight last night and that it was parked for some hours of the night outside the new depot. I now ask you—”