The Man in the Queue ag-1

by Josephine Tey

  The porter dived into a corridor and came out again saying, "Got you a corner, sir. Probably have the side to yourself all the way. It's quiet tonight."

  Lamont tipped him and inspected his quarters. The occupant of the other side had staked his claims, but was not present other than in spirit. He went back to the doorway with the woman and talked to her. Footsteps came down the corridor at his back, and he said to her, "Have they any fishing, do you think?"

  "Only sea-fishing in the loch," she said, and continued the subject until the steps had moved on. But before they faded out of earshot they stopped. Lamont cast as casual a glance as he could achieve down the corridor, and found that the owner of the steps had halted at the open door of his compartment and was examining the luggage on the rack. And then he remembered, too late, that the porter had put his suitcase up with the initials outside. The G. L. was plain for all the world to read. He saw the man stir preparatory to coming back. "Talk!" he said quickly to the woman.

  "There's a burn, of course," she said, "where you can catch what they call beelans. They are about three inches long."

  "Well, I'll send you a beelan," he said, and managed a low laugh that earned the woman's admiration just as the man Stopped behind him.

  "Excuse me, sir, is your name Lorrimer?"

  "No," said Lamont, turning round and facing the man squarely. "My name is Lowe."

  "Oh, sorry!" the man said. "Is that your luggage in the compartment, then?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh, thank you. I am looking for a man Lorrimer, and I was hoping that it might be his. It's a cold night to be hanging round for people who aren't here."

  "Yes," said the woman; "my son's grumbling already at the thought of his first night journey. But he'll grumble a lot more before he's in Edinburgh, won't he?"

  The man smiled. "Can't say I've ever travelled all night, myself," he said. "Sorry to have bothered you," he added, and moved on.

  "You should have let me take that other rug, George," she said as he moved out of earshot.

  "Oh, rug be blowed!" said George, as to the manner born. "It will probably be like an oven before we've been going an hour."

  A long, shrill whistle sounded. The last door was banged.

  "This is for expenses," she said, and put a packet into his hand, "and this is what I promised you. The man's on the platform. It's all right."

  "We've left out one thing," he said. He took off his hat and bent and kissed her.

  The long train pulled slowly out into the darkness.

  9 — Grant Gets More Information Than He Expected

  Grant was studying the morning papers, with his habitual half-careless thoroughness. That is not a paradox; Grant apparently skimmed the paper, but if you asked him about any particular happening afterwards, you would find that he had acquired a very efficient working knowledge of it. He was feeling pleased with himself. It was only a matter of hours before he got his man. It was a week today that the murder had been committed, and to locate the murderer from among a mass of conflicting clues in such a short time was good work. He had been favoured by luck, of course; he acknowledged that freely. If it weren't for luck on some one's part, half the criminals in the world would go unpunished. A. burglar, for instance, was hardly ever convicted except through an outrageous piece of luck on the part of the police. But the queue affair had not been a picnic by any means. There had been spadework galore; and Grant felt as nearly complaisant as it was in him to feel as he thought of the crowd of men working the south of London at this minute, as eager as hounds in cover. He had had his suspicions of Mrs. Everett, but on the whole he had decided that she was telling the truth. The man put on to watch her had reported that no one had come or gone from the house from eight o'clock last night, when he went on duty, until this morning. Moreover, she had produced photographs of the men when there had been no necessity to, and it was quite possible that she did not know her late boarder's address. Grant knew very well the queer indifference that London breeds in people who have lived long in it. The other side of the river to a Fulham Londoner was as foreign a place as Canada, and Mrs. Everett would probably be no more interested in an address at Richmond than she would have been in a 12345 Something Avenue, Somewhere, Ontario. It would convey as little to her. The man Lamont was the one who had been least time with her, and her interest in him was probably less than that which she had for the dead man. He had probably promised in the friendly if insincere warmth of parting to write to her, and she had been content with that. On the whole, he thought that Mrs. Everett was genuine. Her fingerprints were not those on the revolver and the envelope. Grant had noticed where her left thumb and forefinger had held the photographs tightly by the corner, and the when developed proved to be quite new in the case. So Grant was happy this morning. Apart from the kudos arising from the apprehension of a badly wanted man, it would afford Grant immense satisfaction to lay his hands on a man who had struck another in the back. His gorge rose at the contemplation of a mind capable of conceiving the crime.

  In the week since the queue murder its sensational value to the Press had been slightly minimized by other important happenings, and though Grant's chief interest seemed to be devoted to apparently unimportant and irrelevant scraps of information like the theft of bicycles, he was amusedly and rather thankfully aware that the most important things in Britain today, judging by the size of the heading that announced them and the amount of space allotted them, were preparations for the Boat Race, the action of a society beauty doctor against a lady who had been "lifted," and the departure of Ray Marcable to the United States. As Grant turned over the page of the illustrated paper and came face to face with her, he was conscious again of that queer, uneasy, unpolicelike movement in his chest. His heart did not jump — that would be doing him an injustice; C.I.D. hearts are guaranteed not to jump, tremble, or otherwise misbehave even when the owner is looking down the uncompromising opening of a gun-barrel — but it certainly was guilty of unauthorized movement. It may have been resentment at his own weakness in being taken aback by a photograph, but Grant's eyes were very hard as he looked at the smiling face — that famous, indeterminate smile. And though his mouth may have curved, he was not smiling as he read the many captions: "Miss Ray Marcable, a studio photograph"; "Miss Marcable as Dodo in Didn't You Know?"; "Miss Marcable in the Row"; and lastly, occupying half the centre page, "Miss Marcable departs from Waterloo en route for Southampton"; and there was Ray, one dainty foot on the step of the Pullman, and her arms full of flowers. Arranged buttress-wise on either side of her were people well enough known to come under the heading "left to right." In either bottom corner of the photograph were the eager heads of the few of the countless multitudes seeing her off who had been lucky enough to get within hailing distance. These last, mostly turned to look into the camera, were out of focus and featureless, like a collection of obscene half-human growths. At the end of the a column describing the enthusiastic scenes which had attended her departure, was the sentence: "Also sailing by the Queen Guinevere were Lady Foulis Robinson, the Hon. Margaret Bedivere, Mr. Chatters-Frank, M.P., and Lord Lacing."

  The inspector's lips curved just a little more. Lacing was evidently going to be managed by that clear, cold will for the rest of his life. Well, he would live and die probably without being aware of it; there was some comfort in that. Nothing but a moment of unnaturally clear sight had presented the knowledge of it to himself, and if he went into any London crowd, Rotherhithe or Mayfair, and announced that Ray Marcable, under her charm and her generosity, was hard as flint, he would be likely to be either lynched or excommunicated. He flung the paper away, and was about to take up another when a thought occurred to him, prompted by the announcement of the sailing of the Guinevere. He had decided to accept Mrs. Everett's statement as being correct, but he had not investigated her statement that Sorrell was going to America. He had taken it for granted that the America story had been a blind by Sorrell to mask his intended suicide, and the Levanti
ne — Lamont — whether he believed the tale or not, had not sought to alter the supposition of Sorrell's departure. Had he been wise in not investigating it further? It was, at least, unbusinesslike. He sent for a subordinate. "Find out what liners sailed from Southampton last Wednesday," he said; and remained in thought until the man came back with the news that the Canadian Pacific liner Metalinear had sailed for Montreal, and the Rotterdam-Manhattan liner Queen of Arabia, for New York. It seemed that Sorrell had at least taken the trouble to verify the sailings. Grant thought that he would go down to the Rotterdam-Manhattan offices and have a chat, on the off chance of something useful coming to light.

  As he stepped from the still drizzling day into the cathedral-like offices of the Rotterdam-Manhattan a small boy in blue leaped genie-like from the tessellated pavement of the entrance-hall and demanded his business. Grant said that he wanted to see some one who could tell him about the sailings for New York last week, and the urchin, with every appearance of making him free of mysteries and of knowing it, led him to an apartment and a clerk, to whom Grant again explained his business and was handed on. At the third handing-on Grant found a clerk who knew all that was to be known of the Queen of Arabia — her internal economy, staff, passengers, capacity, peculiarities, tonnage, timetable, and sailing.

  "Can you tell me if any one booked a passage on the Queen of Arabia on this trip and did not go?"

  Yes, the clerk said, two people had failed to occupy their berths. One was a Mr. Sorrell and the other was a Mrs. James Ratcliffe.

  Grant was speechless for a moment; then he asked the date of the bookings. They had been booked on the same day — seven days before the murder. Mrs. Ratcliffe had cancelled hers at the last minute, but they had had no further word from Mr. Sorrell.

  Could he see the plan of the cabins?

  Certainly, the clerk said, and brought them out. Here was Mr. Sorrell's, and here, three along in the same row, was Mrs. Ratcliffe's.

  Were they booked separately?

  Yes, because he remembered the two transactions quite well. He thought the lady Mrs. Ratcliffe, and he was sure from his conversation with him that the man was Sorrell himself. Yes, he thought he would recognize Mr. Sorrell again.

  Grant produced the Levantine's photograph and showed it to him. "Is that the man?" he asked.

  The clerk shook his head. "Never saw him before to my knowledge," he said.

  "That, then?" asked Grant, handing over Sorrell's photograph, and the clerk immediately recognized it.

  "Did he inquire about his neighbors in the row?" Grant asked. But the clerk could recall no details like that. It had been a very busy day that Monday. Grant thanked him, and went out into the drizzle, quite unaware that it was raining. Things were no longer reasonable and understandable; cause and effect, motive and action decently allied. They were acquiring a nightmare inconsequence that dismayed his daytime brain. Sorrell had intended to go to America, after all. He had booked a second-class passage and personally chosen a cabin. The amazing and incontrovertible fact did not fit in anywhere. It was a very large wrench thrown into the machinery that had begun to run so smoothly. If Sorrell had been as penniless as he seemed, he would not have contemplated a second-class journey to New York, and in view of the booking of the passage, contemplated suicide seemed a poor explanation for the presence of the revolver and absence of belongings. It shouted much more loudly of his first theory — that the lack of personal clues had been arranged in case of a brush with the police. But Sorrell had, to all accounts, been a law-abiding person. And then, to crown things, there was Mrs. Ratcliffe's reappearance in the affair. She had been the only one of the people surrounding Sorrell to show marked distress at the time of the murder or afterwards. It was she and her husband who had avowedly been next behind Sorrell in the queue. Her husband! A picture of James Ratcliffe, that prop of British citizenship, swam into his mind. He would go and have another, and totally unheralded, interview with Mr. Ratcliffe.

  The boy took in his card, and he waited in the outer office for perhaps three minutes before Mr. Ratcliffe came out and drew him in with a welcoming affability.

  "Well, Inspector," he said, "how are you getting on? Do you know, you and dentists must be the most unhappy people in the world. No one sees you without remembering unpleasant things."

  "I didn't come to bother you," Grant said. "I just happened to be round, and I thought you'd perhaps let me use your telephone to save me going to a post office."

  "Oh, certainly," said Ratcliffe. "Carry on. I'll go."

  "No, don't go," said Grant, "there'll be nothing private. I only want to know whether they want me."

  But no one wanted him. The scent in South London was weak, but the hounds were persevering and busy. And he hung up with a relief which was rather surprising when one considered the eager frame of mind in which he had set out from the Yard. Now he did not want an arrest until he had time to think things over for a bit. The nightmare of a Scotland Yard officer's whole life is Wrongful Arrest. He turned to Ratcliffe, and allowed him to know that an arrest was imminent; they had located their man. Ratcliffe was complimentary, and in the middle of the compliments Grant said, "By the way, you didn't tell me that your wife had intended sailing for New York the night after the murder."

  Ratcliffe's face, clear in the light of the window, was both blank and shocked. "I didn't know," he began, and then with a rush — "I didn't think it was of any importance or I should have told you. She was too much upset to go, and in any case there was the inquest. She has a sister in New York, and was going over for a month just. It didn't make any difference, did it? Not knowing, I mean? It had no bearing on the crime."

  "Oh, no," Grant said. "I found it out quite accidentally. It is of no consequence. Is your wife better?

  "Yes, I think so. She has not been at home since the inquest. She is at Eastbourne with the other sister the one you met, I think."

  Still more puzzled, Grant made his way back to the Yard. He pressed the button on his desk and said to the man who answered it, "I want some one for special work. Is Simpson in?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Send him in."

  A fair and freckled man of medium height arrived; he had the pleased, alert air of a terrier who is waiting for some one to throw a stone. To him Grant said:

  "At 54 Lemonora Road, Golder's Green, live a Mr. and Mrs. Ratcliffe. I want to know what terms they are on — with each other, I mean. Also anything else you can learn about the household. The gossipier the better. I know all about his business, so you needn't waste time on that. It's his home affairs that I want to know about. You can use any method you like as long as you keep within the law. Report to me tonight whether you have got anything or not. Is Mullins in the Yard just now?" Yes, Simpson had seen him as he came up. "Well, send him to me."

  Mullins was not freckled, and he looked rather like a verger. "Good morning, sir," he said, and waited.

  "Good morning, Mullins. From now until further notice you are a pedlar. You make an excellent Italian, but I think perhaps you had better be British. It is less conspicuous. I'll give you a chit to Clitheroe on Lowndes Street, and he will give you the kind of stock I want. Don't sell more than you can help. And I don't want you to come back here. Meet me in the alley by Clitheroe's in an hour from now. Can you manage it in an hour?"

  "I think so, sir. Am I young or old?"

  "It doesn't matter. Young to middle-aged. Grey-beards are too theatrical. Don't overdo anything. Respectable enough to travel on a bus if need be."

  "Very good, sir," said Mullins, as though his instructions had been to post a letter.

  When Grant stumbled across him in the alley in Lowndes Street an hour later, he said, "You're a wonder, Mullins — simply a wonder. I should never believe you had ever written a report in your life if I didn't know first hand." He looked appreciatively at the Pedlar before him. It was incredible that that slightly drooping figure was one of the most promising men at the Yard. It is very seldom that
the C.I.D. resort to disguise, but when they do they do it well. Mullins had the supreme touch that faculty of looking as though he could not possibly be other than he was at the moment. His clothes, even, though obviously third hand, had not that uneasy fit that newly donned garments have. They lay to his shoulders as a much-worn garment does, however ill-fitting.

  "Like a trinket, sir?" said Mullins, the pedlar, opening the lid of his wicker tray. On the baize lining lay a collection of articles mostly of cheap Italian manufacture — paper-knives, painted wood ornaments of all sorts, useful and useless, papier-mвché bowls, stucco figures.

  "Good!" said Grant. He took from his pocket a thin thing wrapped in tissue paper. As he unrolled the paper he said, "I want you to go to 98 Brightling Crescent, off the Fulham Road, and find out if the woman who lives there has ever seen this before." He laid a silver dagger with an enamelled handle down among the painted wood and the stucco. "Needless to say, it isn't for sale. What's the price of this?" he added, picking up an article.

  "Give that to a gentleman like you for one-and-ninepence," said Mullins, without hesitation.

  As the passer-by went beyond hearing, Grant continued cheerfully as if there had been no parenthesis. "When you've disposed of the woman in Brightling Crescent — and keep your eyes open generally — go to 54 Lemonora Road and see if any one there recognizes it. Report as soon as you have finished."

  When the pedlar of Italian goods reached the back door of 54 Lemonora Road about teatime, a pretty but sapless maid said, "Goodness, here's another!"

  "Another wot?" said the pedlar.

  "Another man selling things."

  "Oh? Bin a lot? Bet they hadn't anything like mine," he said, and opened the tray.

  "Oh!" she said, obviously enraptured. "Are they dear?"

  "Not them. 'Sides, a girl with wages like yours can easy afford something nice."