“You’re a Londoner, aren’t you?”
“Wish I’d stayed there. This place gives me the ’oly blues. Not the ’otel, I don’t mean,” he hastened to add, scenting a possible visitor, “but the town. But a job’s a job in these days, and it ain’t so bad in the summer. What was it you wanted to arst me, sir?”
“Were you on duty here last Monday afternoon?”
The other stared, then laughed.
“Funny thing! You’re the second as ’as arst me that!”
“Oh?”
“A copper with a face as long as me arm came in ’ere yesterday, and arst me that very identical question. ’E didn’t give me nothink for answerin’ of it, though.”
“Oh!” John thought rapidly. Was Superintendent Lovell also following up the movements of the mysterious Clytie Price? Or had Morris broken his silence and given an account of his doings in Hereford? The porter’s next remark seemed to dispose of the second question.
“You ain’t the tall, dark gent as the copper was looking for, are yer, sir? No, I see you ain’t. You ain’t old enough. Wanted to know, ’e did, if a tall, dark gent’d bin in ’ere on Monday afternoon. Well, we ’ad a good many people in on Monday afternoon, as it ’appened, and tall, dark gents as thick as fleas on a pillow. So ’e whips out a photograph and shows me. ‘No,’ I ses, ‘I ain’t ever seen a face like that, to my knowledge.’ And Miss ’Arfitt she ses the same. So then ’e wants to know if there’s bin a big green car, a Daimler, outside the ’otel. ‘There may a bin, or there may not,’ I ses, ‘but if there was, I never seen it.’ So ’e didn’t get nothink out o’ me.”
The porter grinned and seemed rather to relish his inability to supply the police with information.
“Answerin’ questions and answerin’ questions,” he remarked, “an’ all you gets at the end is a nod. Is it the same tall, dark gent you’re after, sir?”
“No. I’m after a tall, middle-aged lady, probably dressed in black, with ear-rings and probably a veil over her eyes, who was here at three o’clock on Monday afternoon.”
The porter pondered, scratching his chin.
“Now was it Monday? It was a busy day, I know. Yes, you’re right, it was Monday. There was a lady like you’ve described sittin’ ’ere in the lounge, smokin’ and ’avin’ coffee and liqueurs all the early part of Monday arternoon. All by ’erself, she was, I remember noticin’ ’er. She arst me for a match. She ’ad lunch ’ere, I fancy. She was sittin ’ere from two o’clock till about three. And then suddenly, off she went, and dropped a lighted cigarette on the floor, she was in such an ’urry. Sittin’ in that chair and looking out o’ the door all the time she was, not readin’ nor nothin’. And then she seemed to see a friend or somethin’ in the square, and up she gets and off she goes. She’ll be the lady you’re after, depend on it. A tall, ’ansome lady, with big eyes and ear-rings and a lot o’ powder and scent. No chicken.”
“Thank you.” Two half-crowns passed from hand to hand. “Did the policeman who came here ask you anything about a lady?”
“No, sir, thank you, sir. A tall, dark gent was all ’e wanted, and ’e seemed to want ’im very bad. But ’e didn’t get ’im. Not out o’ me ’e didn’t.”
Clytie Price, it seemed then, had not yet appeared upon Superintendent Lovell’s horizon. His inquiries at the hotel for news of Morris were probably part of a routine investigation of the prisoner’s movements.
“Just one thing more,” said John, turning back as he was about to depart. You had a party of cyclists staying here last Sunday night, didn’t you?”
“Lor bless yer, sir, we’ad the gentleman who’s bin murdered—Sir Charles Price an’ ’is party! Didn’t know it at the time, we didn’t, owing to the rooms bein’ booked in the name o’ Dr. Browning. But we seed it in the papers two days arterwards. Emma, Miss Harfitt, that is, you could a knocked ’er down with a feather. And I ’ad a bit of a turn, thinkin’ o’ them all ’ere so frisky an’ jolly, and then that to ’appen. ’Ad breakfast early, they did, and I fetched their bikes round sharp at eight o’clock, and orf they went. And then to think of what was to come! Poor chap! There don’t seem much doubt about who did it, do there, sir? Funny thing, when I read in the paper about the wrong bike bein’ found in the quarry, I thought to meself, well, p’raps young Smiler’s right after all.”
Young Smiler?”
“Lad as works ’ere—runs messages and that. Funny thing, ’e ’ad ’is bike stolen the same morning, and in ’e comes, all red in the face an’ near cryin’, an’ ses the nobs have gone off on ’is bike by mistake. But I knew they ’adn’t, ’avin’ wheeled their bikes round from the shed meself, and knowin’ young Smiler’s bike by sight. Obstinate, ’e was, and ’e would ’ave it ’e’d left ’is bike a-standin’ alongside o’ the others, and one of them ’ad took it by mistake. ‘Well,’ I ses, ‘use yer eyes, me lad,’ I ses, ‘if one of them ’as took it by mistake, where’s the bike they mistook it for? And use yer sense, me lad,’ I ses, ‘none of them didn’t go off ridin’ two bikes at once.’ ‘Did you see ’em?’ ’e ses, obstinate-like. And as it ’appened, I ’adn’t actually seen ’em go, bein’ called inside to fetch some luggage down. So I gives ’im a good cuff and tells ’im not to be a young fool. But ’e never got ’is bike back. Some tramp must ’a’ pinched it. ’Ard luck on the lad, it was, ’im ’avin’ bought the bike second-’and not long before. And ’e’s a good lad, though saucy.”
“Did he inform the police?” asked John.
“That ’e did, rushed off straight away. But Lor’ bless yer, sir, what can they do? One bike’s like another bike, and once they’re stole, they’re stole.”
John returned thoughtfully to Rampson and the car and was silent so long that Rampson was constrained to ask, as they left the town behind:
“Well? Our friend the porter seemed a chatty soul. Did you collect any clues?”
John sighed.
“Young Smiler had his bike stolen.”
“Eh?”
“Oh, Lord!” exclaimed John. “I go here and I go there, and everywhere I go I seem to pick up a piece of the puzzle. But no two pieces fit together. It’s like an enormous jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces lost! Blow young Smiler and his bike! Where can I fit him in?”
“Probably nowhere. Forgive me, John, but in my view you’re much too optimistic about these stray pieces of information.”
“Optimistic! Good Lord!”
“But you are. You’re inclined to regard everything you hear and can’t easily explain as a clue to this murder. I can’t see any reason for attaching any importance to half the stray facts you insist on storing up as clues. You’ve got a hopelessly romantic, novel-reading way of looking-at things. Think it over. Nora tells you she saw a man looking at her down the passage of the Tram Inn. And immediately you think: a clue. Why? A man stopping for a drink must look in at the door of the Tram Inn several times a day. Miss Whatsername at the Tram sees a man making for the orchard, and lets her eggs boil hard while she looks for him and doesn’t find him. A clue? No, not really. For, on her own showing, she’s always having apples stolen from her orchard. Then the egg-shells you found in the rabbit-hole. What do they prove except that somebody had stolen some eggs? What reason is there to see the remotest connection between them and Charles’s death? I don’t know the story of young Smiler and his bicycle, but I suspect it of being no more sound than the rest of these clues. Smiler had his bicycle stolen, did he? And Charles was found dead in the quarry with a bicycle beside him. A bicycle appears in both cases. But that’s no reason for connecting them. The world’s full of bicycles, and they’re very frequently stolen. It’s all so imaginary, so hopelessly unscientific! Imagination’s an excellent thing, kept under control. It’ll arrive at the same conclusion as scientific reasoning, and get there quicker. But really, John, you’re letting your imagination run away with you over this murder case! So much so that you’re blinding yourself to the obvious. And when you get a really good cl
ue, like that cigarette-end in the shepherd’s hut, you ignore it, because you don’t like the way it leads. It’s the beginning of intellectual ruin when a man starts picking and choosing his facts to suit his private sentiments. It—it shocks me.”
There was a pause, as they moved evenly along under the streaking evening shadows of great trees. Then Rampson glanced round at John. They looked solemnly at one another and laughed.
“It’s all very well to laugh,” said Rampson ruefully. “I don’t like to see a promising young mind like yours going to the dogs.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” agreed John amicably. “It’s a terrible sight—the once keen intellect tottering on the verge of lunacy. Seriously, though, Syd, you are the heavy parent this afternoon, aren’t you?”
Rampson answered gently:
“I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed, John, and I want you to be prepared for it.”
A chill descended on John’s spirit for a moment with his friend’s gentle and serious words. Suppose, after all, the obvious explanation of the mystery were the true one?
But once again he heard the voice of Morris Price, astounded, indignant, suddenly shaken by an unexpected fear: “Don’t be a fool!” No. Morris Price was innocent, and the obvious explanation was not the true one.
“I see your point,” said John. “And I admit the justice of your remarks. But, you see, I am convinced that Morris Price is not the murderer. Therefore, the obvious clues, which all point to him, are no use to me. And I have no choice but to follow up others, the best I can get.”
“You admit, then, that the obvious clues all do point to Morris Price? How do you explain that, if he is innocent?”
“Either they point to him by pure chance, or else the murderer took care to plant the crime on him.”
Rampson nodded.
“Either explanation is possible. But the second is by far the more probable of the two. If we accept it, it means that the murderer must be somebody who knew, not only that Charles would be at the Tram Inn on Monday evening, but also that Morris would be there at the same time. Considering that Morris apparently told no one where he was going, and that the cycling party cycled and stopped as the spirit moved them, I don’t see that anybody can have known.”
“The crime might have been committed, on the spur of the moment, by somebody who saw them both there, and saw an opportunity of getting away with the murder,” replied John, and his thoughts swung back to Clytie Price.
Rampson shook his head, but said no more.
“Well,” said John, “we can’t be far off Moseley, and perhaps when we get there we shall find a clue that will pass the acid test of your scientific mind.”
“I see no reason for hoping so,” said Rampson sadly, as they turned off the main road.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BULLS’ EYES
The village of Moseley seemed to sleep around its triangle of green. A little knot of dark-clothed men sat on the benches outside the Carpenter’s Arms. A small girl in a red frock trundled a perambulator across the grass, using the handle-bar as book and elbow rest. Four or five lads stood around the pond which lay at the base of the green, throwing chestnuts at a family of ducks. The square-towered, hump-backed church behind its little churchyard kept a close watch upon its flock.
The one small shop and post office showed dark green blinds, close drawn over door and window, and a little front garden that displayed, among its dahlias, asters and late roses, the notice of a Grand Fête and another of Petrol for Sale.
“This,” said Rampson, drawing up before the little white gate, “is the very archetype of rural peace and innocence. A church, a green, and ducks upon the pond! Moreover, it is small. If there are any clues here, you won’t have far to look for them.”
“I shall look in the shop first. Coming?”
“No. I’m going to pursue some investigations of my own at the Carpenter’s Arms. You’ll find me there when you come out. Buy me some bulls’ eyes.”
“Can’t. It’s Sunday.”
After a moment’s hesitation, John decided to go round to the side door. The shop door was obviously locked, and the front door of the little house, with its glittering brass handle and doorstep of pure snow, had such a formal and inviolable air. The springs of conversation would flow more easily, he thought, at the back, where straggling honeysuckle made a porch over a rough door set ajar on a small kitchen. He knocked, and a masculine voice requested him cheerily to come in. A young woman was engaged in clearing away tea-things, and a young man with shrewd blue eyes and a ruffled thatch of hair sat on the edge of the table with a child on his arm.
“Anything you want, mister? The shop’s shut, by rights, being Sunday, but if there’s anything you want pertickerlar, I can get it for you. Can’t I, Sam?”
The two-year-old addressed as Sam made no answer, gazing round-eyed surprise from a countenance besmeared with jam and dust.
“Oh, wash his face, Eddy, for goodness’ sake!” said the young woman, offering her husband a damp dishcloth, and to John:“Shall I put you a cup o’ tea, sir? This is a bit cold, but the kettle’s boiling and I can easy make some fresh.”
A talkative young woman. On John’s refusal to partake of tea, she entered into a dissertation on the weather, the harvest, the Shops’ Act, and the difficulty of teaching infants not to suck their thumbs. It was some time before John could communicate his errand.
Wrinkling her brows and plaiting her apron into little folds, she thought she did remember a young man on a bicycle coming about a week back. She was silent a moment, travelling back over seven days of supplying people with stamps, ginger-beer, bacon, cotton-reels and bananas. At last her face cleared.
“Yes!” she said animatedly. “Of course I remembers! And it were on a Saturday, as you says! For I remembers it were my busy day. A tall young gentleman with fairish hair and a bicycle. Said he were going to Hereford, and wanted a pound of bulls’ eyes. ‘That’ll be a tidy big bag,’ I says, and he said they was for his young lady. ‘Why don’t you ask her in?’ I says. ‘We’ve got ginger-beer and lemonade, or could damp some tea, and cycling’s thirsty work?’ But it seemed he’d left her somewhere on the road waiting for him. I remembers well, for when I were weighing out the sweets, I were thinking: A pound of bulls’ eyes, they’ll get in a tidy sticky mess in his pockets afore they’re all ate!”
“Can you remember anything else he said?” asked John hopefully.
She shook her head.
“Nothing, except what a fine day it were, and how far were it to Hereford, and this were hilly country for a bike. Oh, and he wanted to know had I any iodine, because he’d gived his ankle a bit of a twist and it were beginning to come up a bit. I hadn’t none, not in stock, but as it happened, there were a bottle with some in that I got for Baby when he cut his foot. So I looked it out for him, and put him some in a little bottle, and off he went.”
Iodine. Yes, Charles had sprained his ankle slightly. Felix had said so, that day in the Tram Inn shed, when they were all standing round the body. What more natural than that he should supply himself with iodine? There had been no brown stain on either of his ankles when Dr. Browning had examined them in the shed. But he might never have used it. Or he might have used it once or twice and washed it off.
“That was all, sir,” the young woman assured John, as he did not reply at once. “He didn’t ask for nothing else, nor say nothing else that I remembers.”
“Thank you very much for remembering him at all,” said John. “You didn’t happen to notice which way he went when he left here, did you?”
“Yes, I did, for I went to the door with him. He got on his bike and went straight off to the main Hereford Road. I seed him turn the corner.”
John took his leave and crossed the green to the Carpenter’s Arms. He found Rampson discussing the weather with the rushes gathered around the inn’s long trestles, and joined them in a glass of sour but refreshing cider.
As they walked bac
k to the car Rampson remarked: “Your friend Charles didn’t do anything in this village but buy bulls’ eyes, John. I found a man in the pub who saw him come and go, and he says he wasn’t in the place above ten minutes. He was cutting the grass on the green, my aged friend was, and he saw a young chap on a bicycle come in from the lane and go straight to the post office. And then he saw him come out of the post office and get on his bike and go straight back up the lane. So I’m afraid this village isn’t exactly a hotbed of clues.”
John nodded.
“It isn’t. I’ve discovered the reason why he didn’t invite anybody to come with him, and it’s a perfectly innocent reason. He wanted to buy some iodine.”
Rampson laughed.
“Iodine? Is that a reason for creeping off by stealth? I thought you were going to say cocaine or opium, at least, if not prussic acid. I shouldn’t mind buying iodine with the whole population of England looking on, personally.”
“Of course not. But when they said in the shop he’d been buying iodine, I remembered Felix telling us that he had spoken of spraining his ankle a little—not much of a sprain, you know, just a nasty twist. Of course he wanted the iodine for that.”
“And still I don’t see the need for secrecy. It isn’t a crime to sprain one’s ankle.”
“No, but I also remembered Dr. Browning asking Felix why Charles hadn’t mentioned it and had free medical attention. And Felix said that Charles had asked him not to say anything about it, because he hated having any sort of fuss made, and didn’t like people to know he was ass enough to have anything the matter with him, or words to that effect.”
“That,” said Rampson approvingly, driving off, “is the first good word I’ve heard said for Sir Charles Price. But it rather puts the lid on your theory of mystery at the cross-roads, doesn’t it?”
“It does. I’m sorry I’ve dragged you all this way for nothing, Syd. But at any rate I can cross Charles’s secret expedition to Moseley off the list of suspicious circumstances, and forget about it. And that’s something, in such a welter of apparently disconnected facts.”
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