by Bruce, Leo
“But it can. For me it would need no more than a process of elimination to be sure that it was Stewart. It was someone in the house. It wasn’t one of the servants, and Stewart had both the strength and the motive to do it. But as you have seen, my case doesn’t rest on that.”
“Is that your case?” asked Beef.
Again Stute smiled with long-suffering good-humour. “There’s a lot more to it,” he said. “I’ve discovered the motive for one thing—or perhaps even the motives. No one who has been in Sydenham since this murder happened could possibly be in doubt about one thing—the relationship between Stewart and Mrs. Benson. There was nobody in the place who had not heard stories about it, and it is possible that Benson’s murder was no more than the outcome of the eternal triangle.”
“But what about the five hundred pounds?”
“I’ve been to see Stewart’s bank and it appears that he has drawn out altogether four sums of five hundred in single pound notes in the last two years. What could that be but blackmail? When Benson showed himself ready to sign a receipt for five hundred pounds, what, one must ask, was he receiving five hundred pounds for? Scarcely professional services. That, surely, is sufficient, though I daresay we shall find some more details between now and the date of the trial.”
“But, then,” persisted Beef, “if he’d handed that money over to Benson, and got a receipt for it, why wasn’t it in Benson’s pocket? Or was it?”
“It wasn’t,” said Stute, “but it was in Stewart’s bedroom. We found it with the faked confession of suicide when we arrested him.”
“There’s a couple more questions I’d like to ask,” Beef postulated.
“Certainly,” said Stute.
“Did you find any foot-prints round the drive or in the garden on the morning of the murder?”
Stute laughed aloud. “Come now, Beef,” he said kindly. “You must try to keep up to date, you know. Foot-prints!”
“All right, all right,” said Beef. “Only I know what I’m thinking,” he added mysteriously.
“There’s one other little point,” Stute added. “You saw where the dagger was found? In its place on the table. Who would have put it there? Surely only one man. The man who kept it there, who played with it a dozen times a day and always returned it to the same spot. Circumstantial, I know, but very convincing.
“You see,” he said finally, turning to me, “I know the position, Mr Townsend. The police always arrest the wrong man, and then the wonderful private detective comes along and shows them how mistaken they are. I’m sorry, I should have liked to see you.make a good story of this, but this time it’s not going your way. I’m afraid there can be no doubt whatever about it. Stewart is guilty, and we shan’t have much difficulty in proving it. Next time you want to get the material for a mystery you’ll really have to follow the Yard’s investigations.”
I sighed. What he had said was only too true.
But Beef was not impressed. “There are one or two ’oles I should like to pick in that,” he said. “For instance, how did he come to be so silly as to have left the knife out on the table? I mean, why didn’t he make any show of Benson having committed suicide? He never even had the confession of suicide in his pocket.”
Stute smiled with patronizing ease. “You know, Beef, what’s wrong with you is lack of experience. You get your murders out of books, where they’re all brilliantly subtle, and concealed behind extraordinary evidence. Murder in real life is a straightforward business, committed by some blundering fool. Instead of thinking of all the cases in these detective novels that Mr. Townsend believes in, why don’t you study a few of those that appear in the papers? You’ll find that murderers are not such extremely clever people, and what thinking they do is done later.”
Beef seemed a little crestfallen, for he said no more.
At this point we were interrupted by the entrance of a breezy young doctor who at once told Stute that he had made his examination.
“What of?” broke in Beef.
There was a twinkle in Stute’s eye as he turned to the doctor. “This is ex-Sergeant Beef,” he said, “who is making a private investigation of the case for Mr. Peter Ferrers.”
The doctor nodded a hurried greeting. “I’ve been examining the corpse of the butler,” he said to Beef, and then turning to Stute, added, “There are no signs of violence at all. I don’t think there can be the slightest doubt that he committed suicide without coercion.”
“Thank you, doctor,” said Stute, “that’s all I wanted to know, and I was fairly certain of it. The poor old chap may even have witnessed the murder. Certainly he knew that his employer was guilty. The onus of this knowledge was too much for him—a normally honest man—and his way out, in the circumstances, is understandable. He had practically told his wife this, and though it’s very distressing, I cannot feel surprised.”
“Do you mind if I have a look at the corpse?” said Beef.
Stute became even more indulgent. “Well, if you like,” he said. “Run down now, only don’t waste time over it, because I’ve got to get back to the Yard. I can’t think why you should want to see it, it’s not a pleasant sight.”
I shuddered as Beef walked out of the room. “It’s the last thing I should want to do,” I said.
“I’m afraid it’s only curiosity,” said Stute. “He was always a man never to ‘miss anything.’ Well, good morning, Townsend. I hope your old policeman provides you with some good situations. Come along, doctor.” And the two walked smartly from the room.
When I remembered the puzzled Stute I had known at Braxham, energetically following up this and that, I noticed the contrast with this suave and confident detective. This time, as he had so pointedly said, there was no doubt.
Chapter IX
WHEN Beef came back into the room he was with Peter Ferrers. “Suicide all right,” he said.
“The police had already established that,” I said with some exasperation.
Beef ignored me. “Could I have a look at that book as you gave your brother that night?” he asked Peter.
I thought that perhaps there was a flicker of hesitation or embarrassment in Peter’s glance as he heard this. But he said nothing as he went over to the table and picked up the elaborate edition of Omar Khayyám.
Beef turned the thick pages of the big volume slowly in his hands, and finally let go his most triumphant ejaculation. “Ah,” he said, “I know which part he was reading to you.”
I did what was expected of me. “How did you find that out?” I asked.
Beef looked up, his face lit with simple pleasure. “I seen which pages have been cut. See! There’s only two! He couldn’t have read very much.”
“No,” said Peter, “he didn’t.”
“What letters is these on the top?” he asked after a moment’s thought.
I blushed for him. “Roman numerals,” I explained in a whisper, for Peter was at the other end of the room. “That’s verse sixty-four.”
“Then he must have started here,” said Beef, turning over the pages, “and he couldn’t have read no further than that one.”
“No,” I said, “and that’s verse seventy-one.”
Beef began to read:
“Said one—’Folks of a surly Tapster tell,
And daub his Visage with the Smoke of Hell;
They talk of some strict Testing of us—Pish!
He’s a Good Fellow, and ’twill all be well.’
Now I wonder why he was so keen on that one,” he said when he had finished. “Sounds as though it might mean something.”
“It does mean something,” I hastened to put in, with some irritation and some irony.
“Oh, I know, I know,” said Beef, “I’m not talking about the poetry. I mean it might have some ‘inner significance’ for someone what was in that room. I like this last one, though. This bit:
“I often wonder what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the Goods they sell.
�
�Funny, I said that to myself a dozen times. Reminds me of the story of the man who bought a public-house, and when they asked him what time he was going to open, he said he wasn’t going to open. He was going to drink the beer himself.” And Beef gave his gross guffaw.
This was too much for Peter Ferrers. “Look here,” he said, turning round, and for the first time showing real anger, “I don’t think this is the place or the time for you to fool about.”
Beef looked as guilty as a small boy caught in an orchard. The grin disappeared from his face, and he stood up. “Er—I’m very sorry, Mr. Ferrers,” he said contritely. “I’m afraid I was forgetting myself for the minute.”
It was perhaps lucky that the door burst open at this moment and one of the servant girls broke into the room.
“I’ve got something to tell,” she said defiantly. “I didn’t tell the police, either. But now Mr. Duncan is Gone, I think it only right you should hear.”
All three of us examined the dumpy little figure that stood between us and the door. She was less than five feet tall, with a round, flat, innocent face and untidy reddish hair. In her somewhat soiled apron and blue print dress, her face flushed and her hands dirty, she looked the honest, blowzy, noisy wench that she probably was.
“Steady now, my girl, steady,” said Beef, becoming dignified again. “Just you tell us quietly what you know, and you’ll be all right.”
The last phrase displeased her. “Oh, I know I shall be all right,” she said briskly. “I’m only telling you because I think it’s my duty.”
Her story followed, told between gasps and asides with which she gave us to understand that she had suffered violently in her imagination from what she had seen, both at the time, and since then. She had been the first to go up to bed on the night of the murder, and, not expecting Rose to be late, had left the landing light on. In answer to a question from Beef as to whether Rose was often late she became clumsily coy and said surely Beef knew about Rose and Ed Wilson. Beef pretended that this was no surprise to him, made a note, and the girl Freda continued.
She must have dropped straight off to sleep, for she hadn’t heard Rose come up, nor the cook, nor the butler. She had in fact heard nothing, until she had found herself wide awake in the darkness. She knew something must have woken her and she was rather frightened and thought of calling Rose in the next room. But just then she heard the frontdoor bell. Whoever can that be, it appears she had thought to herself, and unwillingly got out of bed. It seemed that no one else had been aroused by the ringing, though she thought now that it must have been going on for some time to have awoken her. She could hear Mrs. Duncan snoring, and no sound of movement on the servants’ landing.
When Beef asked her what time it had been when she got out of bed she said she was certain she was not sure, and even when pressed to give some rough estimate she only insisted that she could not say.
Going on with her story, she said that she had pulled on her overcoat (she mentioned that she could not afford a dressing-gown) and began to go downstairs. But when she reached the first-floor landing she thought she’d have a look out of the window which commanded the drive to the front door. And as she did so she saw a man get on a bicycle and start up towards the front gate. But when he had nearly reached it he jumped off and turned back. There had been bright moonlight, she said, and she could see his outline distinctly. She hadn’t recognized him, and she wouldn’t recognize him again. He was black, standing there. We knew how people looked in the moonlight, she said. She hadn’t been able to make out why he should have stopped and looked back, and was just beginning to wonder whether he had seen her, when she heard him call out, “Who’s that down there?” sharply, as though he were frightened. He must have stood there, she thought, for two minutes, then suddenly he jumped on his bicycle and pedalled away.
She herself had not been able to move. She was, she now explained, glued to the spot. Her heart was going in a manner which she described as “fit to burst,” while at the same time, and rather confusingly, she didn’t know whether she was standing on her head or her heels. A feather, she assured us, would have been sufficient to send her prostrate. But it was fortunate that these metaphors, however mixed, had come into play, for they kept her there to see something else. A long time passed, she assured us, and then, as sure as she was standing before us now, a man emerged from the shrubbery near the front door. At this point Beef interrupted her.
“There!” he said. “I asked them if there was any foot-prints!”
This lonely and silent pedestrian had, the girl thought, kept to the grass borders at the edge of the drive, for although the night was so still that she had been enabled to hear her own respiration, she didn’t catch the sound of his footsteps. No, she hadn’t been able to recognize him. You couldn’t see any face. All you could see was the shape of a man walking away.
It appeared that her information was exhausted, but, with the willingness of her type to oblige as much as possible, she was about to repeat it from the beginning. And when Peter Ferrers had told her kindly that that would do, she said, with a broad smile, that she hoped that she had been useful.
“Useful,” growled Beef. “I don’t know about that. It makes things two or three times more conplicated. Still, I suppose you meant to do right,” he added grandly. “You may go now.”
Chapter X
PETER FERRERS asked us if we would have some lunch, but Beef declined, and as we were walking down the drive together he explained his refusal. “I noticed a nice little House down at the corner,” he said, “where I shouldn’t be surprised if we was to pick up some information.”
I thought what an old hypocrite he was, but said nothing and resigned myself to the inevitable bread and cheese which was all the pub was likely to supply.
When we entered the Sheepdippers’ Arms it seemed doubtful if we should get even that. What Beef had called a “nice little house” turned out to be a small and dreary pub with the smell of last week’s beer still hanging on the air in the taproom. There was no fire lit in the grate, and even the dart-board was pierced and decayed until a player’s score would have been more dependent on faith than on mathematics. The man behind the bar eyed us morosely, and grudgingly took our order.
“I’ll try a pint of your bitter,” announced Beef, as if the publican should be flattered at a connoisseur of his experience experimenting here. Beef seemed quite unaware of the publican’s failure to show us any welcome, and said brightly, “It’s a nice day, isn’t it?”
The man scarcely nodded, and stood there with his face averted from us. An old lady over in the public bar called shrilly for another glass of ruby wine, and we noticed that the sourness in his manner was not for us alone, for he served her without a word.
“I wonder if you’ve got a nice piece of bread and cheese?” asked Beef when the publican had returned to our side of the bar.
“No, we don’t do bread and cheese.”
This time Beef did seem a little crushed. “Hardly what you’d call matey,” he commented aside to me. And then his face lit up. “Come and sit over here,” he said. “I’ve got something to ask you.”
We moved to an uncomfortable bench across from the bar and stood our tankards on a table. “What was that bit?” whispered Beef.
“Bit?” I asked, wholly unable to understand.
“You know, in that poem.”
“Oh yes. I know what you mean.
“Said one—‘Folks of a surly Tapster tell,
And daub his Visage with the Smoke of Hell;
They talk of some strict Testing of us—Pish!
He’s a Good Fellow, and ’twill all be well.’ ”
Beef nodded excitedly. “How do we know it’s not him?” he said, indicating the man behind the bar.
“We don’t,” I returned curtly, “but we have absolutely no reason for thinking it is. Drink your beer and let’s get back to the Cypresses.”
But Beef wouldn’t be hurried. And when a few minutes lat
er a young man in the overalls of a motor-mechanic lounged in, he became embarrassingly talkative.
“Do you work round these parts?” he asked, with a directness I should have thought the mechanic would have resented.
“Yes, I’ve got a little garage of my own round the corner.”
“Oh, did you have anything to do with Benson’s car?” asked Beef.
“ ’Course I did,” said the mechanic cheerfully. “In fact, I’ve wondered the police haven’t been to see me already.”
“The police don’t find out everything,” said Beef with a meaning glance at me. Whereupon he pulled out of his pocket-case one of his newly printed cards. “I’m investigating this case,” he said, “on behalf of Mr. Peter Ferrers, and if there’s any information you can give me, I shouldn’t half be grateful.”
The mechanic looked at him squarely and smiled. I liked his frank and pleasant face, his lively boyish eyes and obvious intelligence. “There’s quite a lot I can tell,” he said, “though I don’t know whether it’ll be any use to you. Mr. Wilkinson here might be able to tell you something too.” And he indicated the publican.
“Why? How would he know anything?” asked Beef.
“Used to be gardener up there,” explained the mechanic in a low voice. “The old man left him enough money to buy the pub, but he still goes up for a walk round to see how Wilson’s getting on with the garden sometimes. I don’t say he does know anything, but he might.”
“Well, let’s hear what you can tell us,” said Beef. “Have a drink?”
The young man said he didn’t mind, and began at once to tell us quite freely what details he could remember. He had heard, it seemed, the story of Stewart and Mrs. Benson, though he could never remember their having driven into his garage together. On the evening of the murder Benson had brought his car in on the way to the Cypresses for dinner. It was missing on one cylinder, he said, and he wanted him, Fred Coleman, to examine it and get it right. If he could have it running before about ten he was to bring it to the Cypresses. If not, Benson would have a taxi home and the car was to be delivered at his own house. It was absolutely essential, Dr. Benson had said, to have it ready for the morning when he had a round to make and several important visits.