‘Just one of those strange crimes that nearly came off. It wasn’t premeditated, of course. By a mere freak of fate the two trains ran side by side for some time, and Meredith saw the chance of getting rid of the man to whom he owed money in such a way that no suspicion could fall on him. And when Goldberg shut the window as he died, Meredith must have thought himself absolutely safe. Which,’ he concluded, ‘he would have been if he’d thrown a banana and not an egg.’
The Level Crossing
Freeman Wills Crofts
Nobody, surely, was better qualified to write railway mysteries than Freeman Wills Crofts (1879–1957). His interest in railways dated from his childhood in Ireland; as a boy, he constructed a large model of the Forth Bridge for the railway in the garden of his family home. Beginning as a teenage apprentice on the Belfast Counties Railway, he rose to become Chief Assistant Engineer, working on the impressive and photogenic Bleach Green Viaduct among other projects. He retired to Surrey in 1929, by which time he was widely regarded as one of the leading detective novelists of the era.
Railways feature in many of his novels and short stories, starting with ‘The Mystery of the Sleeping Car Express’, first published in 1921. A recurrent element in his work is the apparently unbreakable alibi, often dependent on train times; a characteristic example is to be found in Sir John Magill’s Last Journey (1930). The plot of Death on the Way (1932) involves a scheme to widen a railway on the south coast, while that of Death of a Train (1946), set during the Second World War and featuring a Nazi plot to sabotage a consignment of radio valves, brims with technical expertise. Crofts’ short fiction tended to be less effective than his novels, but this story, which dates from 1933, is among the better examples of his work in the short form.
IN spite of himself Dunstan Thwaite shivered as he looked at the level crossing. For here was where he intended, this very night, to kill his enemy, John Dunn.
It was a place well suited to his purpose. A sharp curve and some belts of firs screened both sight and sound of approaching trains. Speeds were high and with only four or five seconds’ warning the least carelessness or hesitation might well prove fatal. An accident here would raise no suspicions.
The crossing, moreover, was private; no signalman in charge, no gatehouse near. Nor in that lonely country was it overlooked. The nearest house was Thwaite’s own, and even from it the view was masked by trees. The lane which here crossed the railway ran up into the country behind Thwaite’s house and joined the main road at the opposite side of the line. But the crossing was seldom used. Because of the danger there was practically no wheeled traffic and the gates were kept locked. Wickets were provided, used mostly by foot-passengers seeking a short cut to the neighbouring station. But of these there were few and at the time Thwaite had in mind there would be none.
As he planned it there would be little difficulty in carrying out the crime. Nor was there the slightest chance of discovery. The thing was safe, safe as houses. Only a little care, an ugly few minutes, and he would be once more a free man.
For five years now John Dunn had been his tormentor. For five years he had suffered because he had seen no way of escape. Even his health had become threatened and he was reduced to sleeping draughts to get a night’s rest. Now he was shedding his burden. After tonight he would be free.
The trouble was of Thwaite’s own making, though that did not make it any easier to bear. Thwaite was a climber and so far a successful climber. Left an orphan, he early had had to fend for himself. By a lucky chance he had got a job in the office of a large steel works. There he had worked with a single aim. It had borne fruit. At the age of thirty-five he was appointed accountant. Had it not been for his one act of suicidal mania, he would have felt his future assured.
His break had occurred five years earlier when he was assistant to his elderly and easy-going predecessor. Thwaite was about to be married ‘above him,’ as the silly phrase goes. The beautiful Miss Lorraine was not only one of the leaders of the local society but was reputed to have a well-lined pocket. Why she proposed to ‘throw herself away’ on a man in Thwaite’s position, none of her friends could imagine. Some said it was a romance of pure love, others more cynically, that she believed that she had backed a winner. For Thwaite, at all events, it promised to be a brilliant match, but he found it was going to be expensive. In fact, the preparations pressed him so hard that he was faced with the choice either of obtaining more ready money or of losing Hilda Lorraine. Then suddenly the opportunity had presented itself and Thwaite had lost his head. A bit of casual slackness on the part of one of his directors, instantly seized and turned to his own advantage, a little extraordinarily skilful manipulation of the books under the nose of his infirm superior, and a cool thousand of the firm’s money found its way into Thwaite’s pockets. Needless to say, he had hoped to put it back after his marriage, but before he had time to do so the loss was discovered. Reason to suspect another clerk was discovered along with it. Nothing could actually be proved against the unfortunate man, but he was quietly got rid of.
Thwaite had sat tight and said nothing. He had got away with it—almost. No one knew, no one guessed, but his next in command, John Dunn. And Dunn wormed his way through the books till he got his proof.
But Dunn didn’t use his knowledge, not in the way an honest clerk should. Instead he approached Thwaite secretly. A hundred pounds changed hands.
That hundred pounds, that and the knowledge of his power, satisfied Dunn for the first year. Then there had been a second interview. Thwaite had had a rise. Mrs Thwaite had brought money with her. Dunn went home with two hundred and fifty.
For five years it had gone on. Dunn’s demands ever increasing and nothing to suggest they would ever cease. Nothing but the one thing, the remedy Thwaite was now going to take.
At first Thwaite had tried the obvious way of escape. ‘I suppose, Dunn,’ he had said, ‘it hasn’t occurred to you that you’re in the same boat yourself? You’ve known this thing and you’ve kept silent; you’re an accessory after the fact. If you send me to prison, you’ll come with me.’
But Dunn had only laughed maliciously. ‘Oh, come now, Mr Thwaite,’ he had answered, ‘you ain’t ’ardly doin’ me justice, you ain’t.’ As if it was yesterday, Thwaite remembered the mixture of mockery and cunning in the man’s eyes. ‘I’ll only ’ave found it out the very day I make my report. See? I ’ad suspected it from the first, but I ’adn’t been able to prove it. I’ll tell ’em that that very day I was lookin’ over the old ledger, an’ there for the first time I’d seen the proof. No accessory about that, Mr Thwaite. Nothin’ there but a poor clerk carryin’ out a disagreeable dooty for the good of the firm.’
Thwaite had cursed; and paid. And now the fact was that after four years of married life he could no longer make ends meet. His wife indeed had brought money, but nothing like the sum with which rumour had credited her. Besides, she held that it was her husband’s place to supply money. She demanded an expensive house, an expensive car, expensive servants, entertaining, suppers and theatres in town. Thwaite, moreover, had his own position to keep up. And he could not run to it, not with this continual drain to Dunn. With Dunn out of the way he could just manage.
‘I went into Penborough yesterday and had a look at that Sirius saloon,’ his wife had remarked a couple of nights before. ‘It’s a nice car, Dunstan. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have it now. If you’re really so hard up as you pretend, we could get it on the hire-purchase system.’
‘I don’t want to begin that,’ Thwaite answered. ‘With it you never know what you own or where you are.’
‘You don’t want it perhaps,’ his wife returned sharply, ‘but what about me? What about my going about in a shabby old Austin years out-of-date and all my friends turning up in Singers and Daimlers and Lincolns? Look at Myra Turner with her new Rolls-Royce. I tell you I feel it. And I’m not going to stand it, what’s more.’<
br />
‘I know all about it, Hilda,’ Thwaite said wearily. ‘I know it’s due to you and you shall have it in time. But we’ll have to wait. Believe me, I haven’t got the money.’
Her face took on the cold set look which he knew and dreaded. There had been many such discussions.
‘I don’t want to pry into your secrets,’ she said in a hard cutting voice. ‘Even if you’re keeping up another establishment I don’t ask about it. But I’ll tell you this: if you don’t order that car, I will. I don’t see why your likes and dislikes should be considered but not mine. You can at least meet the first instalment, I presume?’
Thwaite sighed. His lips were sealed because he knew that she had reason on her side. It was not shortage of money nor the inability to buy expensive cars that had turned a loyal comrade into a suspicious stranger and their happy home life into a nightmare. It was her want of confidence in him. It was the knowledge that he had several hundred a year for which he would not account. She was no fool, Hilda Thwaite, and his early attempts to throw dust in her eyes had only confirmed her suspicions. Yet he believed that but for this money trouble their old happy relations might be resumed. But that was where John Dunn came in.
Lord, how he hated the man! The thought of the level crossing recurred to him. It was no new idea. Weeks ago he had thought out the ghastly details of what might happen there. His scheme had had its inception when the doctor had ordered him sleeping draughts. He had thought first of giving the man a concentrated dose. Then he had seen that this was too crude and a subtler way had suggested itself. With the level crossing at hand an innocuous dose only would be required.
Thwaite let his mind dwell on the completed scheme. With something not far from horror he felt himself being driven towards it by forces greater than himself. Like the man in Poe’s sketch he seemed to see the walls of his chamber closing in on him.
The very next morning, while Thwaite was still hesitating, Dunn himself had put the lid on the situation. The two men were in Thwaite’s private room, discussing some business.
‘Sorry to trouble you, Mr Thwaite,’ Dunn began in his whining voice, when the firm’s affair had been settled, ‘but I’m in difficulty about my son. ’E’s got into more trouble and ’e must produce five ’undred or ’e’ll get run in. I was wonderin’, Mr Thwaite, if maybe you could ’elp me?’
For a reason known only to himself, Dunn’s demands always took the form of aid for a mythical son. On the first occasion when Thwaite had pointed out the flaw in this premise Dunn had cheerfully admitted it, but with cynical insolence his subsequent applications had been couched in the same terms.
‘Damn your son!’ Thwaite returned in low tones. Though the room was large he must be careful not to be overheard. ‘Can you never say straight out what you want?’
‘Straight as you like, Mr Thwaite,’ the other agreed amicably. ‘Just five ’undred quid. It ain’t much from one gentleman to another.’
Thwaite felt a yearning to seize the creature and slowly to choke the life from his miserable body.
‘Five hundred?’ he repeated. ‘You wouldn’t like the moon by any chance? Because you’re as likely to get the one as the other.’
Dunn washed his hands in air. ‘Oh, come now, Mr Thwaite,’ he whined. ‘Come now, sir. That’s a shockin’ thing to say. To a gentleman like you five ’undred’s a mere nothin’. Nothin’. You ain’t surely goin’ to make a difficulty about a trifle like that?’
‘You needn’t think you’re going to get it from me,’ Thwaite said firmly. ‘And I’ll tell you why. I haven’t got it. A small sum I could manage, but not five hundred. You’ll never see it in this world.’
Dunn smiled evilly. This was the stage that he really enjoyed.
‘Five ’undred, Mr Thwaite,’ he murmured. ‘You wouldn’t cheat a poor man out of his bit of money?’
Thwaite looked at him steadily. ‘Don’t you be a fool,’ he advised. ‘I’ve paid you something like three thousand in the last five years and I’m fed up. Don’t push me too far.’
Dunn’s face essayed the expression of injured innocence. ‘Too far, Mr Thwaite? I wouldn’t put you about, not for the world. I would never have mentioned this trifle if I didn’t know you could oblige with ease. Sir, you ’urt my feelin’s.’
‘I could oblige, could I? Then since you know so much, just tell me how.’
Dunn grinned maliciously. ‘I wouldn’t ’ave presumed to suggest it, Mr Thwaite, but when you ask my opinion it’s another thing. Since you ask me, sir, what about postponin’ the Sirius? The Austin is still a good car. Many a man would give his ears for a five-year-old Austin.’
Thwaite swore. ‘How the hell do you know about that?’ he growled.
‘Nothin’ in it,’ Dunn returned smoothly. ‘Everyone knows that Mrs Thwaite ’as been tryin’ out the new saloon an’ it’s not ’ard to guess why.’
It was then that Thwaite finally decided to carry out the plan. He pretended to think, then shifted impatiently in his chair.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we won’t discuss it here. I’ll do what I can. Come up tomorrow night and we’ll go into it.’ The following night Mrs Thwaite was going on a visit to town. ‘And by the way,’ he added, ‘bring those quotations of Maxwell’s also. No harm to have a reason for your call.’
So far, so good. Thwaite could see that Dunn suspected nothing. Of course, there was no reason why he should. It was not the first time he had been to Thwaite’s house on a similar mission.
Next evening Thwaite made the few simple preparations necessary. He had already put notes for fifty pounds in his pocket and now he made sure that his bank-book, posted to date, was in his safe. Next he wrote a letter to his stockbroker, placed the carbon copy in his file and burned the original. Then he poured away the whisky in the decanter until only two moderate glasses remained, and into this he put half of one of his sleeping powders. He saw that an unopened bottle of whisky, a siphon, plain water, and glasses were available. In the right outside pocket of his overcoat, hanging in the passage outside his study door, he put a hammer and in the left an electric torch. Lastly, he put on both the clock and his wristwatch ten minutes. Then he sat down to wait.
It was necessary that he take the utmost care. There could not fail to be suspicion, and his scheme must be capable of withstanding a police investigation. Thwaite was aware that it was generally believed in the office that Dunn had some kind of hold over him. Things were overlooked in Dunn’s case which would not be tolerated from any one else. But Thwaite would have a good alibi. He would be able to prove that he had never left the house.
The need for action over, Thwaite found that he could scarcely bear the weight of horror that was creeping down over him. Like most people, he had read about murders and had marvelled at the mistakes murderers made to their own undoing. Now, though the crime as yet existed only in his imagination, he understood those mistakes. Under the stress of such emotions a man could not think. He seemed as from a distance to see Dunn before him, alive and well, with not a thought of death in his mind. He seemed to see his own arm rise, to hear the sickening thud of the hammer on the man’s skull, to watch the body relax and become motionless. Dunn’s dead body! Dead all but the eyes. In Thwaite’s imagination the eyes seemed to remain alive, staring at him reproachfully, following him about wherever he went. He shuddered. Heavens! If he did this thing would he ever know peace again?
He took out his flask, poured out a stiff tot and gulped it down almost neat. Immediately things once again took on their normal perspective. He had let his nerves run away with him. It was not his way to funk things, and he was not going to funk this one. A little courage, a nasty ten minutes, and then—safety, release from his present troubles, happiness in his home, assurance for the future! When half an hour later there came a ring at the door and Dunn was shown in, Thwaite was his own man again.
For the benefit of the ser
vant he greeted his visitor cordially. ‘It’s those Maxwell quotations, I suppose? We’ll do them at once.’ Then, the door closed, he went on: ‘Get them out, Dunn, and I’ll initial them. No use in taking half a precaution. You came here to get them dealt with and we’ll deal with them.’
They settled down to work, as if in Thwaite’s room in the works. Fifteen minutes later the business was completed and Dunn pushed the papers back into his pocket. Thwaite leaned back in his chair.
‘Now about the other matter,’ he said slowly, while Dunn’s eyes gleamed avariciously. ‘By the way,’ Thwaite rose to his feet as if for something he had forgotten, ‘have a drink? No use in quarrelling even though we’ve got unpleasant business to do.’
Suspicion fought with desire in the man’s shifty eyes. ‘I’ll not mind anything tonight,’ he quavered.
‘Don’t be such an unholy fool,’ Thwaite said roughly. ‘What are you afraid of? Think I’m going to poison you? Here,’ he shoved decanter and glasses across the table. ‘Pour out the same for us both.’ He dumped down the siphon. ‘Add the soda yourself and don’t be more of an ass than you can help.’
Desire conquered, as Thwaite knew it would. Thwaite drank his first, then Dunn, his suspicions dispelled by this ocular demonstration, followed suit. The dose was small, a quarter of the normal to each man, but it would fulfil its purpose. On Thwaite, because of its many predecessors, it would have no effect to speak of. Dunn it would make sleepy. Thwaite did not wish him put to sleep; he only wanted him to be stupid and off his guard.
With grim satisfaction Thwaite noted his first fence taken. He had now only to see that no inkling of his purpose penetrated the man’s mind. He sat forward and became confidential.
‘Now look here, Dunn,’ he said in the tone of one man of the world to another, ‘there’s not a bit of use in your talking about five hundred pounds. I simply haven’t got it and that’s all there’s to it. I told you that already. All the same I’m anxious to meet you. How would this do?’
Blood on the Tracks Page 28