The Z Murders

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  “Flying-Officer Turndike, of the Royal Air Force, training at the Filton Aerodrome which is attached to the factory of the Bristol Aeroplane Company, was passing over the village of Charlton at about one o’clock to-day when he noticed a figure below him crossing a field. He was flying low, a common occurrence in this neighbourhood owing to its proximity to the aerodrome, and he dropped lower still, with the idea, he admits, of impressing the figure beneath him with the dexterity of the Air Force.

  “The figure turned out to be an old woman. She glanced upwards, paused, and remained staring into the sky. A moment later she dropped dead.

  “Turndike effected a landing in an adjacent field, and then ran to the spot where the woman had fallen. He thought, at first, that she might have dropped through heart failure, but one glance at her proved that this theory was wrong. The woman had been shot.

  “He immediately reported the matter, and the local police are busy searching the countryside for the mysterious individual who fired the shot, but who, up to the present, appears to have dissolved into thin air. With aviators on the spot, however, to assist in the search, an early capture is expected.

  “Meanwhile, a grave question arises out of to-day’s two tragedies. Are we on the verge of a new crime wave, and, if so, is Scotland Yard sufficiently alive to the position? As we have repeatedly stated in our columns…”

  ***

  But what had been repeatedly stated did not interest Richard Temperley.

  There was no suggestion in the report that the two tragedies were definitely connected. But—were they connected? And, if so, by what links?

  “Nonsense! Impossible!” he decided at one moment.

  And then, the next, he thought of the open A B C. While the paper-boy outside the studio had called the word “Bristol,” he himself had been staring at the word on an open page. Eye and ear recorded, simultaneously, the identical name, exaggerating its significance! Exaggerating? Yes, of course, exaggerating! Yet, to admit the exaggeration was also to admit a startling coincidence.

  “What coincidence?” Richard demanded of himself.

  “This coincidence,” he replied to himself, bluntly. “Miss Wynne was at Euston when the first murder was committed. And now she has gone to Bristol!”

  “How do you know she’s gone to Bristol?” he again demanded of himself.

  And again replied:

  “I don’t know! But the A B C was open at Bristol. She sent and received a telegram. She left the studio in a hurry. It’s obvious she’s gone to Bristol!”

  The dispute continued:

  “Well, suppose she has gone to Bristol?”

  “Doesn’t worry one, eh?”

  “Yes, of course, it worries one! But—yes, look here! She telephoned to Richmond shortly before four, and this second murder was committed before one!”

  “She could have got to Bristol by one, and could have returned to London by four. Inspector James would point that out in a twinkling, and might suggest that it would be a clever way to try and establish an alibi. Besides—how do you know she didn’t telephone from Bristol?”

  “Don’t talk arrant nonsense! Let’s get this straight! Are you suggesting that she’s committed these murders?”

  “Of course not. You know that a girl like her couldn’t hurt a fly. But what’s the use of arguing? You’re worried about her—worried stiff—and, if you don’t hurry, you’ll miss the next Bristol train.”

  “What! Am I going to Bristol?” he challenged himself. “Am I going to do a fool thing like that?”

  “Of course, you’re going to Bristol,” he censored himself. “You’re next door to in love, aren’t you, and when a fellow’s in that condition he does any fool thing. There’s a taxi. For goodness’ sake, stop thinking, and call it!”

  He hailed the taxi, but it did not slow up for the very good reason that its flag was down. Five unendurable minutes passed before he found a cab that was not engaged. Then followed ten minutes even more unendurable, for the cab turned out to be one of the two taxis that had gone into the Ark, and it was being driven by Noah’s grandfather.

  “Can’t you get a move on?” Richard called at last, out of the window.

  The driver responded by applying his brake and stopping. Then he dismounted from his seat, made an examination and discovered that he was out of petrol.

  To find another taxi took another three minutes. Paddington station became an inaccessible Mecca during a long traffic blockage. But it was reached at last, and the impatient passenger leapt out.

  “Oi! The fare!” cried the driver. Like paper-boys, taximen have sometimes to look after themselves.

  Within thirty more seconds, Richard had paid the taximan, bought his ticket, and reached the platform from which the Bristol train departed. Now that he was free of London streets he could make his own time. Petrol does not run out, and policemen do not bar your way, on railway platforms.

  But other mishaps can happen. When he reached the platform from which the Bristol train was due to leave, he found that it had just departed.

  Chapter XI

  Shocks

  The train Richard Temperley missed by a narrow margin of twenty seconds went at 5.15. There was not another till 6.30. An hour and a quarter to wait—an hour and a quarter during which to hang on to a mad impulse and to argue with sanity!

  “Fate made you miss that train,” Sanity was insisting in his ear. “Accept the ruling of Fate and drop the whole business. Go to your comfortable sister in Richmond and play bridge.”

  “Sylvia Wynne may be on that train you’ve just missed,” whispered Mad Impulse in his other ear. “Going to the very spot where the second murder was committed, just as she went to the first. And she rang you up before leaving—wanted to get in touch with you. What! Leave her to face things alone, after that?”

  Then another thought occurred to him. Perhaps she had telephoned to Richmond a second time? And perhaps, this time, she had left a message? In that case, Fate might not have played him such a bad trick, after all! In two minutes he was in a station telephone box, speaking to his sister.

  “Any news?” he asked, without preamble.

  “Yes,” came the prompt reply. “The canary’s swallowed a pip.”

  “Don’t rot!”

  “I’m not! It’s quite true.”

  “Of course, you’re incorrigible! Is there any other news, then?”

  “She hasn’t ’phoned again.”

  “Has anybody else?”

  “Only the butcher.”

  Richard took a breath, and started afresh. “What about the fellow by the lamp-post?” he asked.

  “He went away, but now he’s back again,” she told him.

  “Don’t worry! He never went away!”

  “I’m inclined to believe you. Do you want me to do anything about him?”

  “Yes. Keep him there!”

  “Certainly, dear. I’ll hang a bit of toasted cheese outside the front door.”

  “I suppose you must be foolish?” he sighed.

  “Foolish? I like that!” came the retort. “How do you expect me to keep him here? Go out with a rope and lassoo him to the lamp-post?”

  Richard smiled.

  “You’re quite right, Winnie,” he said. “I imagine I’m a bit potty.”

  “I hope you’re nothing worse, Dick! Where are you telephoning from?”

  “That’s a leading question.”

  “It’s meant to be.”

  “Sorry. Nothing doing. Love to the canary. Good-bye.”

  He rang off. He did not feel in the least apologetic. The less his sister knew, the better it would be for her if there were any trouble. And Richard believed there was going to be a lot of trouble. In which prediction, he did not err. Leaving the telephone box, he glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes past five. How the hands
were crawling!

  He went into a restaurant, and ordered tea. By slow-motion eating and drinking he managed to prolong the meal to half an hour, and afterwards he sat and smoked. Just as well, he decided, to stay in the restaurant. He was not in a mood at the moment to court publicity.

  At a quarter-past six he left the restaurant and walked towards the platform from which the 6.30 Bristol train was due to start, but suddenly he changed his mind and re-visited the telephone box.

  “How’s the canary?” he asked, when connected once more with Richmond.

  “What about a canary?” came a male response.

  “Blast!” muttered Richard, and rang off hastily.

  He certainly did not wish to discuss matters with his brother-in-law! Why on earth had Tom Mostyn chosen this afternoon of all afternoons to return home early? It was a wretched nuisance! If he rang up again, ten to one his brother-in-law would answer again. And if he waited—well, the train wouldn’t!

  Thus, a moment of facetiousness prevented Richard from learning some news that would have interested him.

  He walked to the platform. The train was almost due to depart, and late-comers were hurrying to find good seats. There were plenty of good seats, as it happened, for the train was not crowded, and Richard was able to select an empty compartment. He was soon joined, however, by a stout, good-natured countryman who selected the seat opposite Richard, opened his newspaper, and became immediately social.

  “’Ave ye read about second murder?” he exclaimed.

  Richard frowned, and replied rather shortly,

  “Yes. Gruesome, isn’t it?”

  He wished he had not added the “isn’t it?” for this invited a continuation of the conversation, and Richard was not feeling social himself. He wished the countryman in Jericho. He wanted to think. The countryman, however, seemed to prefer conversation to reflection, and as Richard sat down in the corner seat opposite he observed that it was a sight more’n gruesome. It was funny!

  The word “funny” was significantly emphasised.

  “How do you mean, funny?” asked Richard, wondering how to choke him off without being rude.

  “Well, I’m not meanin’ hoomerous, lad,” observed the countryman, solemnly, “but—funny!” Then, as Richard refused to press him further, he went on, “Do ye s’pose, now, second murder had aught to do wi’ first murder?”

  The countryman could hardly have asked a question more likely to force his companion’s interest. Noting its effect and the sudden gleam in Richard’s eye, he leaned back against the cushion in a sort of triumph.

  Richard, on his side, regretted the gleam. His interest was genuine, but he was not disposed to reveal, even to a simple countryman, its extent. As casually as he could, he observed: “That’s rather an odd idea of yours, isn’t it?”

  “Mebbe ’tis, sir,” answered the countryman, “but then so was war in 1914. There’s many an odd idea that turns out to be right idea.”

  “Quite true,” agreed Richard, “but that doesn’t prove every odd idea to be right. How on earth do you connect a murder committed at Euston with another murder committed at Bristol on the same day? Euston and Bristol aren’t exactly next door to each other, you know.”

  The countryman, now definitely challenged, closed his eyes, and it seemed as though he were defeated. The guard blew his whistle. Some one was told to “Stand away there!” and disobeyed. The train began to move.

  “You can go from one place to t’other, can’t you?” said the countryman. His eyes were wide open again. “Same as we’re doin’ now?”

  He goggled his eyes. He reflected the attitude of a man who has just made a good move at draughts, and all at once Richard, realising the possibilities of the game, decided to finish it. After all, two minds are better than one, even if the second mind has expanded among cabbages.

  “You’ve evidently got something up your sleeve,” smiled Richard subtly, “but I’m bothered if I can make out what it is!”

  “Well, you see, I’ve bin thinkin’, ” replied the countryman, in the manner of one imparting an unusual fact, “and I’ve bin puttin’ two and two together—”

  “Don’t you mean, one and one?”

  “Eh? Oh! The murders! That’s right, sir! And I come to this. First murder, she was committed, as they say, at five in the mornin’. Or thereabouts. Second murder, she was committed at one.” He fished for a cigarette, found it, and lit it. He was a bit of a dramatist. “Well, sir,” he remarked, as he threw the match away, “that’s eight hours. Now, it ain’t takin’ us eight hours to go to Bristol!”

  Richard nodded, and expressed his appreciation of the point. “But I still don’t see the precise connection,” he added.

  “Train connection,” the countryman pointed out.

  “I mean between the two murders themselves,” explained Richard, “not between the places they were committed at.”

  “If the murders was committed by same person, lad,” asserted the countryman, doggedly, “there must be connection!”

  “You’re putting it the wrong way round,” Richard retorted. “You’ve got to prove the connection before you can say that the murders were committed by the same person.”

  The countryman found this a little difficult, and he puzzled over it while they went through Ealing Broadway. Then he blinked and asked:

  “Well, sir! What’s your idea, now?”

  Richard shook his head.

  “I didn’t say I’d got any idea,” he parried. “We’re discussing yours, aren’t we?”

  “Ay, but I thort, with smart mind like your’n, you’d hit on somethin’. ”

  “Not a thing. I’m waiting to hear what you’ve hit on!”

  Ruthlessly pressed, the countryman closed his eyes once more, sought inspiration, and reopened them. “’Ow about mad?” he asked.

  “That’s always a possibility,” answered Richard.

  “But, mind ye, not one o’ them madmen ye can tell by the look of ’em. Ordin’ry person. Same as you and me might be, if one of us was mad, sittin’ ’ere and torkin’, and not knowin’ which!” Yes, this countryman undoubtedly had ideas! Richard regarded him quizzically while the ideas ran on: “I knew a feller once, clever as politishun, ’e was, and you’d never know there was screw loose. Poured out tea fer me many a time, ’e did, and ‘One lump fer you, George,’ ’e’d say, ‘I’m not one fer fergettin’.’ And one day ’e goes out and comes back on a cow sayin’ ’e’s Black Prince. Back to the Battle o’ Crecy, ’e was. Well, then, sir, mebbe this other one—one we’re torkin’ about—” He paused and looked down at his newspaper, which had slipped on to the floor of the compartment. “Mebbe this other one, now, thinks ’e’s Crippen?”

  He stooped, and regained the paper.

  “And mebbe, if ’e does, we’ll soon be readin’ about third murder.” He opened his paper.

  “And mebbe, again, it isn’t man at all, but girl! ”

  This apparently exhausted the countryman of his complete stock of notions, and he buried himself behind his newspaper again to find new ones.

  Richard, staring unprofitably at the newspaper screen, found himself frowning. He wondered why he was frowning.

  Having nothing else to do, he set about trying to discover the reason. One frequently falls into a depressed state without being conscious of the cause, and the depression usually remains until one has unearthed the cause and proved its folly. Richard hoped, by this same process, to dispel his frown and to rid himself of a vague, disturbing sensation.

  Was he annoyed with the countryman for having conversed with him about the murders? Couldn’t be that. The murders were to-day’s bright topics! To-morrow’s would be a Government reverse, and the next day’s a fire in Fleet Street. Was he annoyed with himself for having entered into the conversation and encouraged it? Couldn’t be that, either. He had not comm
itted himself in any way. How could one commit oneself to a simple-minded countryman? …

  “Watch yourself, Richard!” he thought. “You’re getting over-sensitive!”

  Was he worried by the countryman’s allusion to lunatics, and did he think the countryman might be one himself? Ridiculous! Was he worried by the countryman’s suggestion that the murderer was a girl?…

  “Might be that,” he conjectured, fretfully. “Yes—might be that!”

  But he knew it wasn’t that. He knew it was something far more subtle, something that remained just round the corner of his eye, like an untrappable shadow. A moving shadow. Now with a vague shape. Now with no shape. Now with a shape again. A shape like a horse.…

  Horse? Why, on earth, a horse? Yet it was a horse! There it was, galloping absurdly through Richard’s mind! A black horse. And, on the horse, a prince. A black prince…

  “Eureka!” thought Richard, galvanically. “The Black Prince! And that Battle of Crecy! That’s what’s worrying me! How the devil does a simple countryman who can’t pronounce his ‘h’s’ know that the Black Prince fought at Crecy?”

  The discovery of the cause did not, in this case, conclude the discomfort. On the contrary, the discomfort was increased, and for several stations Richard revolved the discovery in his mind, trying to ridicule it out of its assumption of significance. If only the countryman had lowered his newspaper and had continued with his conversation, Richard could have marked him now more closely and could have settled his suspicions one way or the other. Now he was anxious to get another glimpse of the face so persistently concealed behind the newspaper, and to hear once more the voice so doggedly silent. He could have learned from them whether the man who remembered history so well had truly been born among the cabbages!

  But the man made no attempt to renew the conversation—perhaps he, also, had his secret anxieties and his self-doubts!—and he refused to respond to Richard’s own attempts. A remark about the weather was apparently unheard. So was a request for a match. And when, making one more effort, Richard asked his invisible vis-à-vis whether he would mind having the window down a little, the only response he received was a faint snore. The newspaper was now frankly covering the countryman’s head, like a tent.