Death of a Commuter

by Bruce, Leo

  “The plan was to give Felix an overdose of sleeping pills disguised as something else, then make it appear that he had committed suicide. They took their time. First they had to obtain a powerful antibiotic, and decided on Opilactic. Elspeth suggested a holiday in Tangier where, she must have known, chemists sell this and other drugs without insisting on a doctor’s prescription. She may have obtained the information from Scotter; if so, it was with great subtlety and she certainly would not have got the tablets from him. What she may have bought, some considerable time ago—and this the police will doubtless ascertain if they think it necessary—is something sold in those little capsules made of rice-paper in which a sufficient dose of Opilactic, pounded in a mortar, could be inserted. This is, of course, only a guess, but Felix was a man who took medicines easily.

  “There were other preparations to make. Rumble was aware that Bert Holey who kept the local filling-station was in the habit of noticing the mileage and petrol level of his clients’ cars, and not wishing this observation to be made of his, picked a quarrel with Holey and filled his car elsewhere. They also saw less of one another, so that Elspeth in introducing Rumble to me was able to say that they ‘scarcely knew each other’ before Felix’s death without fear that she would be contradicted, and Rumble could say ‘it’s only since this happened I’ve been seeing much of Elspeth’.

  “I think they fixed the time by a certain eventuality. Felix occasionally drove over to see Dr. Kumar Shant in Buttsfield, and the doctor would give him a prescription which Elspeth would take to Scotter next day. Felix would then be expecting to take medicine when he came down in the evening and Elspeth could give him the capsule or capsules full of Opilactic without arousing his suspicion. It was unlikely that this would be aroused since he trusted Elspeth, but they had to think of every possible eventuality. The only risk she ran now was that Felix might grumble at the size of the capsule and decide to ring up Dr. Kumar Shant before taking it But it was a small risk. As I knew from Magnus Parador, one of Felix’s little meannesses was over the telephone. He hated making unnecessary calls and would swallow the capsules without question.

  “Yes. They nearly brought it off. And as usual it was chance that defeated them. For how were they to know that on the day they had chosen, the very day on which Elspeth had taken Kumar Shant’s prescription to Scotter, Felix Parador would call at his lawyer’s to sign a new will? And how were they to know of George Catford and his habit of motor-cycling to lonely places to indulge in megalomaniac dreams?”

  Mrs. Stick, who must have been waiting at the door for a pause in Carolus’s narrative, entered.

  “What about dinner?” she asked firmly. “They’ve all gone to the pictures and I’ve got yours ready.”

  She gave a hostile look at the rest of the assembly.

  “There are four of us, Mrs. Stick.”

  “Yes, I know there are but there’s not enough, I’m afraid.” This was so unlike Mrs. Stick that it could only be explained by her hostility to the police.

  Hemingway and Haggard both made protestations. Carolus was not to bother about them.

  “What about some sandwiches, Mrs. Stick? We can eat them while we are talking.”

  Knowing that her disapproval of policemen as visitors was only slightly less than her horror of ‘murderers’, Carolus feared this might bring another outbreak from Mrs. Stick. But her pride as a caterer was too strong for her.

  “I might manage a few sandwiches,” she admitted, “but you’ll have to wait some time because there’s nothing ready and Stick’s gone to the pictures with the rest of them. I don’t know what’s come over him. I really don’t. He usually won’t leave the telly. Well, I’ll see what I can do.”

  She left them and Mr. Gorringer shook his head.

  “You are fortunate indeed, my dear Deene. The help we are able to get at the School House is meagre. Meagre in the extreme.”

  Haggard coughed and looked at his watch, but Hemingway said, “It’s very kind of you to be so hospitable, Mr. Deene. But you will understand we have to get back to Brenstead. I’m not denying that what you are telling us may turn out to be useful, but…”

  “Detective-Inspector, relax!” commanded Mr. Gorringer.

  “That’s all very well,” said Haggard. “But we happen to be on duty.”

  “Ah! Magic word! But I assure you Deene will reach the end of his peroration in his own good time.”

  Carolus, as though he had not heard this altercation, continued quietly.

  “Yes, Felix Parador went to Thriver’s office in the City that afternoon to sign a new will. Only three people were aware of it, Parador himself, Thriver, and Thriver’s confidential clerk, all men accustomed to keeping secrets. There was good reason for secrecy in this case for Parador had arranged to leave a thousand pounds a year for life to his mistress, Henrietta Ballard. He was also cutting out two minor beneficiaries for reasons which seemed to him adequate, Dr. Sporlott for what he considered a breach of confidence, and Hopelady for a practical joke which had shown him at a disadvantage. These are not things which would make many men change their wills, but Parador was in some ways unusual and had had an unusual life. According to his own sense of justice (or was it humour?) he was fair to his godson who would lose nothing, in fact probably gain by the change.

  “Thriver told me that he was quite himself, quite cheerful that afternoon and a boy in his own office remembered and told the Coroner of how he had fooled about with a hat too small for him. He came down in the train, gave Bill Flood the same impression as he gave Thriver, then set off in his car. From that time to the next morning at ten when a policeman found his dead body in his own car in the parking place of the Great Ring, nothing positive is known of his movements.

  “But there was one fact which I found very helpful. His car, when it was driven back to Brenstead after his death, registered, according to Bert Holey, only twenty miles more on the speedometer. This was the distance to the Great Ring and back. Wherever he was between the arrival of his train at Brenstead and the arrival of his car at the Great Ring, he was not driving about the countryside.

  “But we know where he was. From the station he drove, as he did every evening, to his home. Among the plans made by Elspeth and Rumble was one—I think ill-advised from their point of view—that Elspeth should say she had received a call from Felix to say he was not coming down that night. The idea was to account for her not being anxious when he—according to the account she would give—did not appear. But there is nothing but Elspeth’s word for this call and no reason to think it was ever made. Felix arrived home, was welcomed by Elspeth and, according to his custom as told me by Magnus, probably had a couple of stiff whiskies which would make deadlier and quicker the effect of the Opilactic.

  “Everything, on the surface, was as usual. Then probably Elspeth said, ‘By the way I got your pills from Scotter today. You have to take two this evening’. Felix may have said, ‘What pills? ‘, and she, ‘The ones Dr. Kumar Shant ordered for you’. And Felix swallowed the capsule, or two capsules if that was necessary. I don’t know how long after that he died but I have no doubt experts could tell to within half an hour. I don’t think it’s very important, anyway.”

  Haggard could scarcely restrain himself.

  “But what proof have you of all this?”

  Carolus smiled rather sadly.

  “I’m afraid I’m telling it rather as I see it. Novelist fashion. But I do know that he went to his home and that only later was he taken out to the Great Ring. I think I shall be able to convince you of that in a moment, if you’ll let me go on in my own way.”

  “I’m bound to confess,” boomed Mr. Gorringer, “that you seem to be taking a great deal on yourself, Deene, by so positively accusing a woman of high repute. Did you yourself find her so base?”

  “I found her charming. But then she had been an actress. Ah, here is Mrs. Stick with our sandwiches.”

  “Just a minute, sir; there’s another tray to come.
These are the smoked salmon and there’s some caviar there by the headmaster. I’ve left the foy grass whole on the ice so you can help yourselves. I didn’t know what you’d like to drink so I’ve had this couple of bottles of Rosy on the ice for you.”

  “Kingly providence!” said Mr. Gorringer. “Mrs. Stick, you excel yourself.”

  “I did what I could in the time,” said Mrs. Stick modestly. “I thought if you must talk about murders and that you might as well have something to do it on.”

  “You are not interested?” asked Mr. Gorringer with his mouth full.

  “I don’t want to hear of such things,” said Mrs. Stick. “I’ve had quite enough of it as it is. You’ll ring if you want anything else, sir?”

  Carolus nodded and ate and drank in a preoccupied way. Then almost before they had finished eating, he went on.

  “Elspeth Parador was an astonishing woman as I had reason to know later. She coolly waited until her husband was dead then telephoned to Rumble to come at once, according to plan. At a certain time that night, which you gentlemen will be able to establish for yourselves, the two of them took the body of Felix out to the yard at the back. They may have prepared a stretcher for this—I don’t know. They put him in the seat next to the driver’s in his own car which one of them drove, while the other followed in Rumble’s. I rather think, because it fits in with my conception of her character, that it was Elspeth who drove the dead man.

  “This was not so risky as it seems, for if they were stopped they had a perfectly good story ready. Felix had gone to his study and swallowed a whole bottle of Opilactic. They had discovered him and were driving him post haste to his own doctor at Buttsfield. They might have been blamed for not immediately sending for Sporlott who was nearer, but nothing more might have been proved against them. In fact—it’s easy to talk after the event—I wonder why they didn’t handle it this way in any case, and arrive on Kumar Shant’s doorstep with their load. They wouldn’t have escaped all suspicion but they might have escaped conviction.

  “But they had made other plans. They found the car park of the Great Ring empty as they were confident it would be. They pushed the corpse of Felix into the driving seat, left an empty flask of whisky with him and an empty bottle which had held Opilactic tablets, with one dropped on the floor for the sake of naturalness and got into Rumble’s car to return.

  “Their story, if they were seen or stopped on the way back, was equally good. Once clear of the Great Ring they could say that Rumble had seen Felix on the train that night and as he had not come home, they had been to Buttsfield to look for his car. Not very convincing but impossible to disprove. But they were not stopped and as far as they knew they were not seen.

  “Whether George Catford was actually at the Great Ring with his motor-cycle out of sight, or whether he was on the road and saw two cars turn up towards the Great Ring and only one emerge from the turning so that he went up to investigate, we shall probably never know. But he knew what they had left there and followed them back to Brenstead. He even went up Manor Lane and saw Rumble drop Elspeth at her home, then followed him back to his own, noting the address. He was not quite as accurate as he thought about this because some nights later, when he came either to reconnoitre or to see Rumble, he got the wrong house and was seen by Patsy Thriver peering in the window of their house, which is next door to Rumble’s.

  “The rest of his movements we know. He returned to Butts-field, changed into his alarming black clothes and put on his dark glasses, then rode back to Brenstead in the early morning to watch outside Rumble’s house. This, he believed, was the Great Chance for which, he told me, he had always held himself in readiness.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “TO ME, THE MOST FASCINATING THING ABOUT INVESTIGATING A clever crime is to find where the criminal has made his mistake. Fortunately for the course of justice he always makes at least one, and Elspeth Parador and James Rumble soon discovered theirs. They had forgotten to leave Felix’s brief-case beside him in the car and it lay where he had left it in the hall of the Old Manor.

  “That he had it with him that day we know from two sources—Thriver saw him put the will he had signed in it at his office and Flood held it for him when he opened the door of his car at Brenstead station.

  “When did Elspeth discover it? That same night? Or in the morning? It is just possible that the discovery was made by Mrs. Byles or Mrs. Pocock, the two women who come in daily to help at the Old Manor; if so it will be a valuable piece of evidence. Whenever it was, Elspeth must certainly have decided to destroy every trace of it. It would be supposed that someone had stolen it from the car, she hoped, if the question arose at all. Before destroying it she went through the contents and found the new will.

  “It is the unexpected which upsets the most careful plans and she and Rumble had made no provision for this. Destroy it? But Henrietta Ballard might know that Felix was leaving her money and would raise heaven and earth to trace the will, which might lead to all sorts of awkward questions. Ironically she had no personal interest in it one way or the other, but she knew Henrietta to be as ruthless as herself. Send it anonymously to Thriver who, she saw, had drawn it up? He would suppose that some repentant thief had returned it, perhaps. In the end, after a fruitless discussion with Rumble, who had his own worries at this time, she decided to keep it hidden and watch the course of events. The inquest must have relieved her mind a little. Suicide was officially accepted as the explanation of Felix’s death and she could breathe again.

  “Rumble, meanwhile, had been approached by Catford for a very large sum of money. Whether Catford followed him to his office when he left the train that morning, or made his approach by telephone, I cannot guess. But at any rate Rumble stalled. Had he known as much as I came to know of Catford he might have paid up. Catford wanted one big sum to take him somewhere, where he could use that as capital on which to accumulate a fortune. By the time he had failed in this, Rumble and Elspeth would have left the district and after a year, say, his information about what happened that night would not have been much good. I doubt if the police would have re-opened enquiries on a tale told by a man who had been in prison for fraud, and, if they did so, the evidence to support his story would have vanished.

  “For a time the two of them were cautious about seeing one another, Elspeth going to Rumble’s house at night. I shouldn’t be surprised if it was on one of these visits that Elspeth knocked over old Gobler, but I haven’t the smallest evidence for that, just noting that it was someone who did not want to stop.

  “It was at this point that my housekeeper’s husband who had once worked for Parador came to me, and on his persuasion I went to see Magnus Parador and took an interest in the case. I must have been singularly unwelcome to Elspeth and Rumble who, however, were clever enough to appear pleased at my arrival. Elspeth hoped I would get at the truth about Felix and I set to work.

  “I had almost nothing to go on. I believed that the man in the train knew something about one of the other passengers but it was little more than a hunch. I put some faith in a brief-case I carried which was an exact duplicate of Felix’s, but I knew it might fail to get reactions. I believed Felix Parador had been murdered and I suspected his wife for no better reason than that I did not see where he could have gone when he left the train that evening except home. I had to regard his five fellow travellers with almost equal suspicion and it happened that they provided a fine collection of red herrings, for all five of them, Thriver, Dogman, the brothers Limpole, and Rumble were out that night—Dogman, Thriver and Rumble being seen at The Royal Oak and the brothers Limpole chasing about the countryside looking for their sister. For a time I had at least to recognise that Sporlott and Hopelady had some sort of motive, but frankly I did not take them very very seriously as suspects. In fact for a time I was floundering.”

  “We appreciate your modesty, Deene. But let us …”

  “Yes,” said Carolus. “Let us. I’m dry. I didn’t realise that I
should keep you so long, gentlemen.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Deene,” said Hemingway, and even Haggard said, “We’d certainly like to hear you out now we’ve gone so far.”

  Carolus lit a cheroot.

  “There were several things that pointed my way, but nothing absolutely reliable. The brief-case was not in the car when it was found and if it was a thief who had taken it surely he would have also taken the money, about £70, in Parador’s pocket-case? There was an empty whisky flask, the idea being that Parador had swallowed the contents in taking his pills. This could have been intended to account for the whisky which the post-mortem would reveal, the whisky which Felix had actually drunk on arrival at the Old Manor. Thriver remembered the flask being emptied at his office. But there were ways of accounting for this other than the way I saw it.

  “Then there was the little I discovered about the movements of Elspeth and Rumble that evening. Thriver heard the sound of television and radio as he approached the house and Elspeth did not ask him in as she usually did, but told him she was going to bed. This fitted with the probable timing—Felix was dead or dying and Rumble was with her. But it proved nothing. Thriver surprised Elspeth by saying he was going to The Royal Oak and soon after he arrived there Rumble came in for a drink. Again it was possible that he looked in as some sort of alibi before going with Elspeth to take the body to the Great Ring, but there was no certainty about this.

  “More relevant, and hard to account for in any way but the truth was Boggett’s story of the cars he heard late that night. Two going out of Manor Lane, which would be Elspeth taking the body of Felix and Rumble following her to bring her back, one returning followed by a motor-cycle, which would be Rumble and Elspeth returning followed by Catford, and one coming out of the lane again followed by a motor-cycle—Rumble going home with Catford following to see where he lived. All very nice but lacking the final touch of definite application. There was even the fact that Rumble, who rarely ate much in the evening, that evening finished off all that was left for him, which suggested to me that he had burnt or otherwise destroyed it to avoid leaving his meal untouched. But what was that worth as evidence?