The Z Murders

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  All the same, Richard was taking no undue risks. At eleven o’clock that night Sylvia would meet him outside Bristol station, and until that time he would sit upon his impulses and ensure that he and she were not seen together, even accidentally, by Dutton, or by James, or by the countryman…

  The countryman! Who the devil was the countryman? Richard closed his eyes, to probe this mystery further, and in the darkness of his closed lids he hit upon a solution so simple that he smiled. The countryman was just a countryman! Suspicion alone had given him a sinister interpretation. That allusion to Crecy…pooh! Nothing at all! Even the humblest of us have some scrap of knowledge, some remnant of the schoolroom, that stays by us when other knowledge has flown, and we love to trot the scrap out to create an impression. We may even subtly lead the conversation round to the scrap. The countryman’s scrap was the Battle of Crecy!

  The Battle of Crecy began to form in the darkness. Richard was tired, and the throb-throb of the speeding train acted as a soporific. Thus his relaxed mind became a facile battle-ground for history both past and present, for fact and fancy, for beauty and the beast. The arrows of archers merged into murderous bullets, the galloping of mail-clad horses melted into the song of the sleepers, flags became faces, and the charging steeds created a draught resembling a breeze through an open window.…

  The draught was wonderfully realistic. The horses, of course, were just dream illusions, but the draught seemed actually to be playing upon his face. “Am I dreaming?” he thought, fretfully. “I must wake up!” He made an effort. One of the horses descended upon him violently. “Hey, I don’t like this dream!” he reflected. “I must wake up!” But he couldn’t. The horse was upon him, and his head was facing downwards, and he was being kicked and shoved about…nearer and nearer the breeze…nearer and nearer a dim vastness that seemed the very home of wind…

  Then another vision flashed abruptly into his mind. A vision of the countryman. Was this, too, fancy? He did not know. But whether it was fancy or fact, it stirred him to sudden violence, and all at once a weight that had been impelling him towards the rushing void ceased to exist.

  He flung out his hand, and grasped something swaying. For an instant he swayed with it, and the rushing void swayed, also; now receding, now advancing, till it became immediately beneath him. Then Richard found that the thing he grasped was a door. The carriage door. It was open.

  Dizzily, he closed it. The train, heedless of this minor incident at one small point in its length, sped on through the night. Richard’s eyes, now wide open and staring, turned towards the corridor.

  The young man with the eye-glass was passing by.

  Chapter XV

  Eleven P.M.

  In a flash Richard was in the corridor. The young man with the eye-glass paused and turned his head. Then he took a step into the entrance to the nearest compartment and waited for Richard to pass him.

  But Richard made no movement. He was regarding the young man intently, and the young man’s eye-glass dropped from his eye in a sort of mild protest.

  “I thought you were in a hurry?” the young man queried, raising the eyebrow that was no longer required to imprison the monocle.

  “Aren’t you?” challenged Richard.

  Now the young man replaced the monocle, and returned the intentness of Richard’s gaze. Then he smiled rather acidly, and answered: “As a matter of fact, sir, I am.” And, to prove it, he left the compartment entrance in which he had been politely waiting, and continued coolly on his way.

  If Richard Temperley could have been in two places at once he might have followed the young man with the eye-glass, for one of his obvious objects in leaving his compartment had been to find out who had made the attack upon him, and he was by no means certain that the monocled passenger was as innocent as he looked. But a second object had been to satisfy himself that no similar attack had been made on Sylvia Wynne and to protect her against the possibility of one; and now, in the compartment outside which he stood, he suddenly caught a glimpse of Sylvia, sitting composedly beside an elderly woman in a severe black dress.

  He did not permit himself more than this one quick glimpse. Resisting temptation, he turned his head away and stared out of the corridor window into the night. The glimpse had achieved his second object, however. The lady by whom Sylvia was sitting, though uncongenial, did not look murderous, while two other people in the compartment—a clergyman and a depressed lady who might well have been such a clergyman’s wife—helped to appease his immediate anxiety.

  But it did not lessen the general anxiety set up by the mysterious attack upon him. Somebody (whether he wore an eye-glass or not) was on the train who did not stick at quietly opening a door beside a dozing passenger and trying to push him out on to the line; and there could be no question, in these circumstances, of leaving the vicinity of Sylvia Wynne once she had been found.

  So, as the train ran through its last lap, Richard stayed where he was and smoked a cigarette.

  The light of his match, reflected in the window, abruptly blotted out a dim and sinister stone quarry, and substituted his head. “Yes, and my real—not my reflected—self might have been lying in a stone quarry at this moment,” pondered the owner of the head, “if those eyes had remained closed just one tiny second longer!” The match went out and the head vanished, as though frightened by the prospect.

  But the head reappeared intermittently behind the fitful glow of the cigarette, travelling along with the train that left all else behind. Dim fields, dim roofs, little lights under the dim roofs, came and went. The dim fields grew fewer, and the dim roofs more. The train ran through a station. “Stapleton Road, for South Wales.” Hallo! Must be nearly there! Richard glanced at his watch and found, to his surprise, that it was a quarter-to-nine. Due in a couple of minutes. He must have slept longer before his unpleasant awakening than he had imagined.…And might have slept for ever!

  The roofs now reigned, their victory marked by an overwhelming army of black blotches. A long, low smudge of bank, the last gasp of the unseen grass. “Lawrence Hill,” the words just caught as they ran backwards. The ghosts of seven tall chimneys, presided over by the ghost of a still taller steeple. Asleep on a blacked-out hoarding, his work for the day done, “Mr. Wise, of Fry’s.” The tapering ends of platforms, like the station’s outstretched fingers. A straggling row of porters, hoping dully for tips…Bristol…

  The train stopped, and, as it stopped, Richard Temperley turned to glance once more into the compartment outside which he had stood for ten minutes. The severe woman in black was on her feet. The clergyman and his wife were fussing with their luggage. Sylvia Wynne…where was Sylvia Wynne?

  “Well—she hasn’t wasted much time!” reflected Richard, with a little frown. He would have welcomed one more reassuring glimpse of her. “Still, I dare say it’s just as well.”

  As Sylvia herself had disappeared, so had every other familiar personality by the time Richard stepped out on to the platform. He caught one momentary glimpse of the two well-dressed ladies who had sat at the table with the young man with the eye-glass, and he dived through a small knot of people in the hope that the ladies would lead him to their dinner-companion; but somebody in the middle of the knot of people objected to the process of bisection, and by the time the objection had been over-ruled the two ladies had vanished.

  “Not my best moment, this,” Richard decided. “But, after all, what would I have done with old Monocle if I’d found him? Maybe it’ll be better to avoid the dramatis personae until I’ve had my talk with Miss Wynne!”

  His hand went into his breast pocket, and his fingers found comfort in the tangibility of the thin cardboard they touched. Richard had stolen a menu from the Great Western Railway Company, to ensure that nobody else stole it. It was the menu that confirmed the 11 o’clock appointment.

  Eleven o’clock. And it was now, if station clocks tell the truth, ten
minutes to nine. Two hours and ten minutes to burn. How could the time be burned most profitably? “I can hang round and wait,” he thought, “or I can take a trip to Charlton, and see if I can pick up a few useful things there.”

  He compared the two alternatives.

  If he went to Charlton he would almost certainly bump into the police. The police, like himself, would be trying to pick up useful things. Of course, he had Inspector James’s assurance. Relying on this, he felt sure that neither the inspector nor Dutton would interfere with him. But suppose some other suspicious member of the force—a local man, say—or suppose some person from the opposite camp followed him back to Bristol afterwards? That would not be too good!

  “On the other hand,” he argued, “if I stick around here for a couple of hours I’m bound to attract attention—and that wouldn’t be too good, either. Besides, I’m dashed if I’ve the patience to stand still and do nothing!”

  The idea of a compromise occurred to him. Why not go towards Charlton, stop on the edge of it, and search for some voluble local gossip?

  “Yes, that’s the ticket!” he decided, and strolled out into the wide open space that separates Bristol station from Bath Parade.

  The extent of this space rather worried him. A smaller area would have made a more definite meeting-place for the darkness of eleven o’clock. Still, he did not suppose he and Sylvia would miss each other. Hailing a taxi, he inquired of the driver:

  “Do you know Charlton?”

  The driver smiled rather pityingly.

  “I’ve ’eard of it,” he answered, in the tone of one who informs you that Queen Anne is dead.

  “Well, what’s the name of the place just before it?” went on Richard.

  “D’you mean Westbury, sir?”

  “Ah, Westbury! How far is Westbury?”

  “About four mile, sir.”

  “From Charlton?”

  “From ’ere.”

  “Then how far is it from Charlton?”

  “From ’ere?”

  “No, man, from Westbury! From Charlton to Westbury. Have you got that?”

  “Another couple,” answered the driver, slightly hurt.

  “Right,” said Richard. “Then drive me to Westbury—and a good tip if you’re smart!…No, wait a moment!”

  Not far away, somebody was standing in the shadow of a wall. The stillness of the figure impressed itself upon Richard. Ahead of him, on the road to Westbury, would be the police. Was this figure waiting to form a sort of rearguard? “You know, Richard, your mind isn’t functioning properly!” he chided himself. “Surely, even to go in the direction of Charlton spells idiocy?” And, all at once, he chose quite another direction. “Changed my mind,” he said to the driver, laconically. “Clevedon.”

  The driver blinked, then shrugged his shoulders. A good tip had been mentioned, and probably the best way to earn it was to refrain from obvious opinions. In a few seconds, the taxi was gliding out of the wide station yard and turning westwards towards Clevedon. Meanwhile, the figure slipped from its shadows and turned northwards, towards Charlton.

  But other figures were abroad that night, and Richard’s decision to avoid the north road was not due entirely to the figure he had spotted. The trip to Clevedon was in the nature of a big shake, and it was intended to shake off anybody and everybody. If you feel that bees are buzzing round your hair, you do not necessarily stop to identify them. You just want to be sure you are rid of them. Richard told himself grimly, as his car wended its way towards its absurd destination, that when he returned he would be entirely free of insects!

  The driver worked for the tip he eventually got. His direction was changed several times, and, as a matter of fact, they never touched Clevedon at all. With five miles still to go they turned south, and played hide and seek with a little place called Nailsea, though Richard Temperley never knew its name. Afterwards, they looped back Bristolwards by another road, and the car was dismissed in the south of the city.

  It occurred to Richard as he paid his very large fare that a word of explanation might not come amiss, and would perhaps save gossip.

  “If you’d like to know,” he said, “you’ve just taken me over some ground I’ve not been over for twelve years.” That was true. “I was born here.” That was not.

  The mixture of truth and untruth, coupled with the tip, served its purpose. Sentiment binds all English people together, whatever their county. The cabman had been born in London.

  Then Richard zigzagged back to the wide space outside the station, and, as he turned into it, a voice hailed him softly. “Mr. Temperley!”

  It was the only voice in the world he wanted to hear, and his heart raced with gratitude.

  Chapter XVI

  A Strange Partnership

  Even in the darkness he noticed her agitation. She had been composed in the dining-car, and had looked serene enough during that solitary glimpse he had subsequently had of her in the compartment, but now the composure and the serenity had gone, and he sensed once more the horror that had threaded through their first interview. Was this the general horror of the situation in which she appeared to be involved, or had something now happened during the past two hours to increase her fear?

  “Let’s get away from this spot before we talk, shall we?” he whispered, taking hold of her arm instinctively. “I’ve an idea it may be better.”

  She obeyed him without protest, and they turned their back on the station. When they had passed through one or two streets in silence, she asked: “Where are you taking me?”

  Her voice was unsteady, and he patted her arm in a vague attempt to comfort her.

  “I haven’t any idea,” he replied. “I just thought, somehow, that the station mightn’t be too healthy.”

  “But why?” And while he sought an answer to the question, she flashed another. “Is anybody following you?”

  “Don’t believe so,” he responded. “Is anybody following you?”

  She looked round quickly, then shook her head.

  “But somebody has been?” he pressed.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think they might have been, though?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why should they?”

  “Why should they follow you?” she parried, with the shrewdness that never seemed wholly to desert her even in her terror.

  “Well, if anybody is following me—and, you remember, I said I didn’t believe anybody was—it will probably be because they know I’m interesting myself in you. You see, Miss Wynne, in a sense I’m your partner, though so far you haven’t technically admitted me into the business.”

  “A partner generally wants to know something about the business before he asks to be admitted.”

  “This partner is burning to know more about the business! Meanwhile, he’s banking on instinct—and the business can draw upon him to the last ounce.”

  She stopped suddenly. Then went on again. Her voice was still unsteady when she spoke, but not this time with fear.

  “I—I simply don’t understand,” she said. “Why are you doing all this for me?”

  “The biggest things are always the most difficult to understand,” answered Richard, gravely. “I’m not going to pretend that I understand myself. Shall we give up trying, and just accept the fact? Accept the fact that I am doing this for you, and want to do ever so much more? Look here, Miss Wynne, if you don’t need a friend I’m the worst guesser in the whole of Creation. Regard me as your friend, and see if you can’t find some way of making use of me.…No, not that road. It’s too wide! I like the little dark ones, don’t you?”

  She smiled as he led her round a corner, but the smile did not last. A tired mind was thinking desperately.

  “Do you remember some advice I gave you this morning, in your studio?” asked Richard, breaking a rather long silence
. “I advised you to confide in the police. Well, I still advise it.”

  “Even when I don’t confide in you?” she replied.

  “I wish you would confide in me!” he exclaimed. “But, even if you did, I believe I’d still advise you to pass the information on. You see—dash it all, aren’t the police here to protect us?”

  “You’re showing wonderful confidence in me!”

  “Of course I am! If you told me you’d killed a moth, I wouldn’t believe you! But policemen don’t bank on instinct, you know. They want facts. And they won’t show any confidence in you unless you give them a few facts first.”

  “Such as?”

  “How on earth do I know?” he retorted. “Probably an account of to-day’s doings would satisfy them.” For a moment, her dogged silence almost angered him. “What have you been doing?” he demanded.

  “I can’t tell you—yet,” she murmured.

  “Thank you for that ‘yet.’ I’ll remind you of it later!”

  “Meanwhile, what have you been doing?”

  “Shaking off a police spy for the first part of the day—”

  “Do you mean, that man who called at the studio this morning?”

  “And who sent you dashing out of it? Yes, that’s the fellow! His name’s Dutton, and his job is to find you through me. But don’t look so anxious. I’ve arranged a temporary truce, and we’re safe—from him—for a few hours.”

  “A truce?” she repeated, puzzled.

  “Yes. I’ll come to that in a minute. First let me tell you what happened after I shook Dutton off. I telephoned to my sister at Richmond. It was just after you had telephoned yourself. By the way, why did you telephone?”

  The abruptness of the question appeared to fluster her. “I—I’m not quite sure,” she stammered. “I think I wanted your advice.”

  “Well—here I am.”

  “Yes, but—it mightn’t be so necessary, now.”

  “You mean, you’ve come to Bristol?”

  “Won’t you go on, please?”