The Man in the Queue ag-1

by Josephine Tey

  "Well," said Murray, beaming on him, "something for the National, is it? I hope to goodness it isn't Coffee Grounds. Half Britain seems to want to back Coffee Grounds today."

  But the inspector denied any intention of losing money even on such an attractive proposition as Coffee Grounds seemed to be.

  "Well, I don't suppose you've come to warn me about ready-money betting?"

  The inspector grinned. No; he wanted to know if Murray had ever known a man called Albert Sorrell.

  "Never heard of him," said Murray. "Who is he?"

  He was a bookmaker, Grant thought. "Course?"

  Grant did not know. He had an office in Minley Street.

  "Silver ring, probably," said Murray. "Tell you what. If I were you, I should go down to Lingfield today, and you can see all the silver-ring men in one fell swoop. It'll save you a lot of touting round."

  Grant considered. It was by far the quickest and most logical method, and it had the additional advantage of offering him a knowledge of Sorrell's business associates which the mere obtaining of his home address would not have done.

  "Tell you what," Murray said again as he hesitated, "I'll go down with you. You've missed the last train now. We'll go down in my car. I have a horse running, but I couldn't be bothered to go down alone. I promised my trainer I'd go, but it was such a beast of a morning. Have you had lunch?"

  Grant had not, and Murray went away to see about a lunch basket while Grant talked to the Yard on his telephone.

  An hour later Grant was having lunch in the country; a grey and sodden country truly, but a country smelling of clean, fresh, growing things; and the drizzle that had made town a greasy horror was left behind. Grey, wet-looking torn clouds showed blue sky in great rifts, and by the time they had reached the paddock the pale unhappy pools in the rock-garden were smiling uncertainly at an uncertain sun. It was ten minutes before the first race, and both rings from Grant's point of view were impossible. He pushed down his impatience and accompanied Murray to the white rails of the parade ring, where the horses for the first race were walking sedately round, the looker-on in him loving their beauty and their fitness — Grant was a fairly competent judge of a horse — while his eyes wandered over the crowd in a businesslike commentary. There was Mollenstein — Stone, he called himself now — looking as if he owned the earth. Grant wondered what bogus scheme he was foisting on a public of suckers now. He shouldn't have thought that anything as uncomfortable as a jumping meeting in March would have appealed to him. Perhaps one of his suckers was interested in the game. And Vanda Morden, back from her third honeymoon and advertising the fact in a coat of a check so aggressive that it was the most obvious thing in the paddock. Wherever one looked, it seemed, there was Vanda Morden's coat. And the polo-playing earl who had been shadowed in the hope that he was the Levantine. And many others, both pleasant and unpleasant, all of whom Grant recognized and noted with a little mental remark.

  When the first race was over, and the little eddy of lucky ones had surrounded the bookmakers and been sent gloating away, Grant began his work. He pursued his inquiries steadily until the ring began to fill again with eager inquirers after odds for the second race, when he returned to the paddock. But no one seemed to have heard of Sorrell, and it was a rather disconsolate Grant who joined Murray in the paddock before the fourth race — a handicap hurdle — in which Murray's horse was running. Murray was sympathetic, and as Grant stood with him in the middle of the parade ring he mixed adjurations to admire his horse with suggestions for the tracking of Sorrell. Grant wholeheartedly admired the magnificent bay that was Murray's property and listened with only half an ear to his suggestions. His thoughts were worried. Why did no one in the silver ring know Sorrell?

  The jockeys began to filter into the ring, the crowd round the rail thinned slightly as people moved away to points of vantage on the stands, lads kept ducking eager heads under their charges' necks in anxiety to intercept the summons that would mean mounting time.

  "Here comes Lacey," said Murray, as a jockey came stepping catlike over the wet grass to them. "Know him?"

  "No," said Grant.

  "Flat-race crack really, but has a go over hurdles occasionally. Crack at that too."

  Grant had known that — there is very little between a Scotland Yard inspector and omniscience — but he had never actually met the famous Lacey. The jockey greeted Murray with a tight little smile, and Murray introduced the inspector without explaining him. Lacey shivered slightly in the damp air.

  "I'm glad it's not fences," he said, with mock fervour. "I'd just hate to be emptied into the water today."

  "Bit of a change from heated rooms and all the coddling," said Murray.

  "Been in Switzerland?" asked Grant conversationally, remembering that Switzerland was the winter Mecca of flat-race jockeys.

  "Switzerland!" repeated Lacey in his drawling Irish voice. "Not me. I've had measles. Measles — if you'd believe it! Nothing but milk for nine days and a whole month in bed." His pleasant, cameo-like face twisted into an expression of wry disgust.

  "And milk is so fattening," laughed Murray. "Talking of fat, did you ever know a man called Sorrell?"

  The jockey's pale bright eyes trickled over the inspector like twin drops of icy water and came back to Murray. The whip, which had been swinging pendulum-wise from his first finger, swung slowly to a halt.

  "I think I can remember a Sorrell," he said, after some cogitation, "but he wasn't fat. Wasn't Charlie Baddeley's clerk called Sorrell?"

  But Murray could not recall Charlie Baddeley's clerk.

  "Would you recognize a sketch?" asked the inspector, and took Struwwelpeter's impressionistic portrait from his pocketbook.

  Lacey took it and looked at it admiringly. "It's good, isn't it! Yes; that's old Baddeley's clerk, all right."

  "And where can I find Baddeley?" asked Grant.

  "Well, that's rather a difficult question," said Lacey, the tight smile back at his mouth. "You see, Baddeley died over two years ago."

  "Oh? And you haven't seen Sorrell since?"

  "No, I don't know what became of Sorrell. Probably doing office work somewhere."

  The bay was led up to them. Lacey took off his coat, removed a pair of galoshes, which he laid neatly side by side on the grass, and was thrown into the saddle. As he adjusted the leathers he said to Murray, "Alvinson isn't here today" — Alvinson was Murray's trainer. "He said you would give me instructions."

  "The instructions are the usual ones," said Murray. "Do as you like on him. He should about win."

  "Very good," said Lacey matter-of-factly, and was led away to the gate, horse and man as beautiful a picture as this weary civilization can provide.

  As Grant and Murray walked to the stands, Murray said, "Cheer up, Grant. Baddeley may be dead, but I know who knew him. I'll take you down to talk to him as soon as this is over." So it was with a real enjoyment that Grant watched the race; saw the colour that flickered and streamed against the grey curtain of the woods on the back stretch, while a silence settled eerily on the crowd — a silence so complete that he might have been there alone with the dripping trees, and the grey wooded countryside, and the wet grass; saw the long struggle in the straight and the fighting finish, with Murray's bay second by a length. When Murray had seen his horse again and congratulated Lacey, he led Grant into Tattersalls and introduced him to an elderly man, with the rubicund face of the man who drives mail coaches through the snow on Christmas cards. "Thacker," he said, "You knew Baddeley. What became of his clerk, do you know?"

  "Sorrell?" said the Christmas-card man. "He set up for himself. Has an office in Minley Street."

  "Does he come to the course?"

  "No, don't think so. Just has an office. Seemed to be doing quite well last time I saw him."

  "How long ago was that?"

  "Oh, long time."

  "Do you know his home address?" asked Grant.

  "No. Who wants him? He's a good boy, Sorrell."

/>   The last irrelevance seemed to suggest suspicion, and Grant hastened to assure him that no harm was intended Sorrell. At that Thacker put his first and second fingers into either corner of his mouth and emitted a shrill whistle in the direction of the railings at the edge of the course. From the crowd of attentive faces which this demonstration had turned towards him he selected the one he wanted. "Joe," he said in stentorian tones, "Let me speak to Jimmy a minute, will you?" Joe detached his clerk, as one detaches a watch and chain, and presently Jimmy appeared a clean, cherubic youth with an amazing taste in linen.

  "You used to be pally with Bert Sorrell, didn't you?" asked Thacker.

  "Yes, but I haven't seen him for donkey's years."

  "Do you know where he lives?"

  "Well, when I knew him he had rooms in Brightling Crescent, off the Fulham Road. I've been there with him. Forget the number, but his landlady's name was Everett. He lived there for years. Orphan he was, Bert."

  Grant described the Levantine, and asked if Sorrell was ever friendly with a man like that.

  No, Jimmy had never known him in such company, but then, as he pointed out, he hadn't seen him for donkey's years. He had dropped out of the regular crowd when he started on his own, though he sometimes went racing for his own amusement or perhaps to pick up information.

  Through Jimmy, Grant interviewed two more people who had known Sorrell; but neither could throw any light on Sorrell's companions. They were self-absorbed people, these bookmakers, looking at him with a vague curiosity and obviously forgetting all about him the minute their next bet was booked. Grant announced to Murray that he had finished, and Murray, whose interest had waned with the finish of the handicap hurdle, elected to go back to town at once. But as the car slid slowly out of the press Grant turned with a benedictory glance at the friendly little course which had provided him with the information he sought. Pleasant place. He would come back some day when he had no business on his mind to bother him, and make an afternoon of it.

  On the way up to town Murray talked amiably of the things he was interested in: bookmakers and their clannishness. "They're like Highlanders," he said. "They may squabble among themselves, but if an outsider butts into the scrap, it's a case of tartan against all." Horses and their foibles; trainers and their morals; Lacey and his wit. Presently he said, "How's the queue affair getting along?"

  Very well, Grant said. They would make an arrest in a day or two if things continued to go as well as they were doing.

  Murray was silent for a little. "I say, you don't want Sorrell in connexion with that, do you?" he asked diffidently.

  Murray had been extraordinarily decent. "No," said Grant. "It was Sorrell who was found dead in the queue."

  "Great heavens!" said Murray, and digested the news in silence for some time. "Well, I'm sorry," he said at last. "I never knew the fellow, but every one seems to have liked him."

  And that was what Grant had been thinking too. Bert Sorrell, it seemed, had been no villain. Grant longed more than ever to meet the Levantine.

  8 — Mrs. Everett

  Brightling Crescent was a terrace of red-brick three-story houses of the Nottingham lace and pot-plant type of decoration. Their stone steps were coaxed into cleanliness and hideousness by liberal applications of coloured pipeclay. Some blushed at finding themselves so conspicuous, some were evidently jaundiced by the unwelcome attention, and some stared in pallid horror as at an outrage. But all of them wore that Nemo me impune lacessit air. You might pull the bright brass bell-handles — indeed, their high polish winked an urgent invitation to do so — but you passed the threshold only at the cost of a wide-stepping avoidance of these constantly refurbished traps of pipeclayed step. Grant walked up the street that Sorrell had trodden so often, and wondered if the Levantine knew it too. Mrs. Everett, a bony, short-sighted woman of fifty or so, herself opened the door of 98 to him, and Grant inquired for Sorrell.

  Mr. Sorrell was no longer there, she said. He had left just a week ago to go to America.

  So that was the tale some one had told.

  Who said he had gone to America?

  "Mr. Sorrell, of course."

  Yes, Sorrell might have told the talc to mask his suicide.

  Had he lived alone there?

  "Who are you, and what do you want to know for?" she asked, and Grant said that he was a plain-clothes officer and would like to come in and talk to her for a moment. She looked a little staggered, but took the news calmly, and ushered him into a ground-floor sitting-room. "This used to be Mr. Sorrel's," she said. "A young lady teacher has it now, but she won't mind us using it for once. Mr. Sorrell hasn't done anything wrong, has he? I wouldn't believe it of him. A quiet young man like him."

  Grant reassured her, and asked again if Sorrell had lived alone.

  No, she said; he shared his rooms with another gentleman, but when Mr. Sorrell had gone to America the other gentleman had had to look out for other rooms because he couldn't afford these alone, and a young lady had wanted to come into them. She was sorry to lose both of them. Nice young men, they were, and great friends.

  "What was his friend's name?"

  "Gerald Lamont," she said. Mr. Sorrell had been a bookmaker on his own account, and Mr. Lamont was in his office. Oh, no, not a partner, but they were great friends.

  "What other friends had Sorrell?"

  He had had very few, she said. He and Jerry Lamont went everywhere together. After some strenuous thinking she recollected two men who had once come to the house, and described them well enough to make it certain that neither was the Levantine.

  "Have you any photographs of Sorrell or his friend?"

  She thought she had some snapshots somewhere, if the inspector wouldn't mind waiting while she hunted. Grant had had hardly enough time to examine the room before she came back with two amateur photographs of postcard size. "These were taken last summer when they were on the river," she said.

  The snapshots had been taken obviously on the same occasion. They both showed the same willowy background of Thames bank and the same piece of punt. One was a photograph of Sorrell in flannels, a pipe in one hand and a cushion in the other. The other was also a photograph of a young man in flannels, and the man was the foreigner.

  Grant sat a long time looking at that dark face. The photograph was a good one. The eyes were not a mere shadow as in most snapshots; they were eyes. And Grant could see again the sudden horror that had lit them as they lighted on him in the Strand. Even in the pleasant repose of the moment on the river the eyes had an inimical look. There was no friendliness in the hard-boned face.

  "Where did you say Lamont had gone?" he asked matter-of-factly.

  Mrs. Everett did not know.

  Grant examined her minutely. Was she telling the truth? As if conscious of his suspicion, she supplemented her statement with another. He had got rooms somewhere on the south side of the river.

  Suspicion filled him. Did she know more than she was telling? Who had sent the money to bury Sorrell? His friend and the Levantine were one, and the Levantine, who had had two hundred and twenty-three pounds from him, had certainly not sent the money. He looked at the woman's hard face. She would probably write like a man; the handwriting experts were not infallible. But then, the person who had sent the money had owned the revolver. No, he corrected himself; the person who had posted the money had had the revolver.

  Had either of the men owned a revolver? he asked.

  No; she had never seen such a thing with either of them. They weren't that type.

  There she was again, harping on their quietness. Was it mere partisanship, or was it a feeble attempt to head him off the track? He wanted to ask if Lamont were left-handed, but something held him back. If she were not being straight with him, that question in relation to Lamont would alarm her immediately. It would give away the whole extent of his investigations. She would give warning and flush the bird from cover long before they were ready to shoot. And it was not vital at the moment. The
man of the photograph was the man who had lived with Sorrell, was the man who had fled at sight of him in the Strand, was the man who had had all Sorrell's money, and was almost certainly the man of the queue. Legarde could identify him. It was more important at the moment to keep Mrs. Everett in the dark as to how much they knew.

  "When did Sorrell leave for America?"

  "His boat sailed on the 14th," she said, "but he left here on the 13th."

  "Unlucky day!" said Grant, hoping to bring the conversation to a less formal and less antagonistic level.

  "I don't believe in superstition," she said. "One day is very like another."

  But Grant was thinking hard. The 13th was the night of the murder.

  "Did Lamont leave with him?" he asked.

  Yes, they had left together in the morning. Mr. Lamont was going to take his things to his new rooms and then to meet Mr. Sorrell. Mr. Sorrell was going down to Southampton with a boat train at night. She had wanted to go to see him off, but he had been very insistent that she shouldn't.

  "Why?" asked Grant.

  "He said it was too late, and in any case he didn't like being seen off."

  "Had he any relations?"

  No, none that she had ever heard of. And Lamont, had he any?

  Yes, he had a father and mother and one brother, but they had emigrated to New Zealand directly after the War and he had not seen them since.

  How long had the two men stayed with her?

  Mr. Sorrell had been with her for nearly eight years and Mr. Lamont for four.

  Who shared the rooms with Sorrell for the four years previous to Lamont's arrival?

  There had been various people, but most of the time it was a nephew of her own, who was now in Ireland. Yes, Mr. Sorrell had always been on good terms with all of them.

  "Was he always bright and cheerful?" asked Grant.

  Well, no, she said bright and cheery didn't describe Mr. Sorrell at all. That was Mr. Lamont, if he liked. Mr. Lamont was the bright and cheery one. Mr. Sorrell was quiet, but pleasant. Sometimes he'd be a bit mopy, and Mr. Lamont would be extra bright to cheer him up.