by Bruce, Leo
Beef, I must say, had the grace to invite all the customers present to drink with him, and the place became so noisy that I felt it wiser to leave the Sergeant and to make for home. As I approached the school, however, a figure emerged from the darkness of an archway, and I realised that I had been waylaid. It was, I soon discovered, one of the boys in School House, who asked breathlessly whether Briggs had won.
“You ought to be in bed,” I said sharply. “You boys seem to wander about the town as you please at night. I feel inclined to report the matter to the Headmaster.”
“Oh, don’t be a bore, Ticks,” replied the youth. “What was the result?”
I told him curtly that Beef had won, and feeling nervous lest I should be seen in conversation with him, and so be suspected of countenancing such a flagrant breach of school rules, I hurried past him, and did not pause again till I reached my brother’s house. Next morning it was only too evident that the news had spread through the whole network of Penshurst life, and Beef complained that his right arm had been almost pulled out of its socket by schoolboys eager to congratulate him.
Sometime during morning school it was Beef’s duty to take round a number of notices from the Headmaster, and to-day I saw that he was preparing to leave his lodge with one or more of these. I did hope that his entering the classrooms while lessons were proceeding would not cause any interruption or disturbance. He was due to hand over his duties at lunch-time that day, and it would be a pity, I felt, if he so far forgot himself as to do anything which might finally blacken his name with the masters as well as with the Headmaster. But there was a self-satisfied grin on his face as he set off with his notices which dissuaded me from voicing my opinions.
It must have been nearly an hour later when Beef got back to the lodge and with a triumphant sigh dropped into his armchair. Out of curiosity I picked up the notice he had just carried to every classroom in the school, and which had been read aloud by each master in turn.
“In recognition of the distinction just achieved by one closely associated with Penshurst, the Headmaster is giving a whole holiday on Tuesday next.”
For a moment a fantastic idea came into my mind. Was it conceivable that the Rev. Horatius Knox had heard of Beef’s triumph and was honouring it? Impossible, I realised at once.
“For whom is the whole holiday?” I asked Beef.
“For me,” he returned placidly.
“For you?”
“Yes. Didn’t I win last night?”
“I suppose so. But I can hardly understand how Mr. Knox would think of recognising such foolery.”
“He hasn’t,” said Beef. “He doesn’t know nothing about it.”
I stared aghast.
“You mean to say . . .” I began, but Beef held up his hand.
“Won’t hurt them to have a day off,” he said. “Something to remember me by, too. They weren’t half interested in the match, were they?”
This was getting worse and worse.
“Is this a forgery?” I asked, tapping the Headmaster’s notice.
“Forgery? Good heavens, no. Don’t you know me better than that? I wouldn’t forge a man’s name, not if you paid me a thousand pounds.”
“Then . . .”
“It’s an old one,” explained Beef. “I found it in a drawer You look at the date on it.”
Horrified, I did so, and found that it was nearly a year old.
“That,” explained Beef complacently, “was when a parson who had been Chaplain here was made Bishop of Egypt.”
“Good God, Beef!” I said. “You’ve completely disgraced us this time. Do you realise what will happen when Mr. Knox hears of this?”
“I hadn’t really thought,” said Beef. “And anyhow, we shall be in London before then, I hope.”
But in that the Sergeant was mistaken. I had still hardly taken in the situation when the door opened and the Headmaster himself swept in.
“I want a word with you,” he said sternly to Beef, who afterwards described him to me as behaving “rather like the Chief Constable done over the little business of the ‘Fox and Hounds’.”
“Yes, Sir?” said Beef.
“Apparently you took round a notice which purported to come from me.”
Beef’s face showed a skilfully assumed innocence.
“Well, didn’t it, Sir? I found it on the table where your man always puts your notices for me.” And he handed Mr. Knox the fatal sheet of paper.
The Headmaster’s usually kindly eyes ran over it.
“But this is for last year,” he said. “When Wilson was made a Bishop.”
Beef stared blankly at the Headmaster, and there was a long and awkward pause.
“I can only suppose,” Beef mumbled at last, “that Mr. Townsend, in turning over the old papers in that drawer, must have left this one out.”
I was about to deny the suggestion most indignantly, but the Headmaster, his normal, kindly manner returning, spoke again.
“I am quite prepared to believe,” he said, “that the mistake is a genuine one, but the really unfortunate aspect of it is that I feel unable to rescind it. The boys have begun to anticipate the holiday and it really would be most inconsiderate to disappoint them in that way. On the other hand, the occasion is meaningless.”
Beef coughed, and for a moment I was afraid that he would point out that in the minds of the boys it was anything but meaningless. All he said, however, was: “I’m very sorry, Sir, about it.”
“It is indeed most unfortunate,” said Mr. Knox. “Most unfortunate.” And without bidding good-bye to either of us he left the Lodge.
“A bit awkward, wasn’t it?” grinned Beef to me. “Still, they’ll have their day off, and nothing will ever make them believe it wasn’t my winning the championship as did it,” and he guffawed loudly.
Our departure from Penshurst was marked by scenes which I will remember with shame to the end of my life. Beef had become, it appeared, little less than a popular hero. Whether it was the senior boys who guessed that he had manoeuvred their whole holiday by this most underhand means and had taken advantage of the kindness and credulity of Mr. Knox, or whether it was the juniors who really believed that the whole holiday had been given in recognition of his success in the ridiculous field of darts, they all seemed to regard him as a person to be admired and respected rather than one whose conduct as Porter had not been unexceptionable.
My sympathies went even to Herbert Jones in his frank disapproval of Beef, and when I discussed the matter with my brother, and he affected to laugh at Beef’s subterfuge with the Headmaster’s notice, I lost all patience.
A crowd of boys accompanied us with our suitcases to where my car stood in the quad, and, to my acute embarrassment, we were loudly cheered from the premises. Throughout all of this Beef maintained the attitude of one whose achievements are receiving just recognition. I felt it wiser on the whole to refrain from comment, and drove, without speaking, towards London. Beef was slumbering beside me.
15
However, I did not waste that time in which the conversation of Beef was suspended. Rather the contrary. I followed my usual custom of making a mental list of suspects and considering the possibilities of each of them. I often think that if Beef were more methodical in this kind of way he would arrive at his conclusions more quickly than he does. In this case I thought as follows:
Herbert Jones. The reasons for suspecting him were only too obvious. The man was desperate and, as I privately considered, not altogether sane. He could well be the mysterious stranger who had arrived at the “White Horse” that evening since Freda did not know Jones by sight. Again, it was quite possible that Lord Alan Foulkes was the young man who was blackmailing him. He would not have been doing it with the usual spirit of the blackmailer, but as a sort of joke, until the evening when Hadlow told him that he needed money. Whereupon Alan may well have thought of Herbert Jones, and decided to help his brother out at the Housemaster’s expense. It was not difficult to imagi
ne, with a man of Jones’ character, things by which Alan had achieved his hold on him, and I was tempted to follow this line of argument by the fact that Alan had rung up his brother from a call-box in Gorridge at ten-thirty that evening. Where else, I wondered, could he have had any prospect of securing money that he could post straight away? Then again, there would be nothing very odd about Jones meeting him in the gymnasium to hand over what he had promised. But my strongest reason of all was a less logical one. I could imagine him doing it.
Barricharan. Again the possibilities were chiefly by instinct. When the young Indian had spoken in that indifferently amiable way about Alan, I had felt that it concealed some other emotion I could not name. He had a certain inscrutability, which I supposed was proper to his race, but which made me feel that anything might be expected from him—an act of great heroism or one of savagery. There were no clues or circumstances, so far as I knew, however, which made the suggestion more reasonable than that.
Felix Caspar. Now this seemed the most improbable of all. But I did not feel my list would be complete without Caspar’s name on it. He had been so closely associated with Alan that I had to include him. This murder—if murder it was—must be, I felt, some form of crime passionné. It must have been done out of revenge, hatred, or jealousy, for there was so little to gain otherwise that I could scarcely imagine anyone cutting off that young life for the sake of it (unless, as we had seen, it was Jones escaping from the blackmailer’s hold). I had no reason to suspect Caspar. Nothing that he had said suggested that he had anything to do with the crime. I doubted, in fact, if he were physically capable of strangling the other boy, even if it had been done, as it would appear to have been done, from behind. There might be some of the fierce jealousy of the intellectual for the nobler and more popular qualities of the other young man, though one could scarcely imagine that such an emotion could be strong enough.
Alfred Vickers. This dour, brutish man, I felt, might well be a murderer as far as his character went, and there were other possibilities which gave colour to this supposition. He was obviously in love with Freda, and violently jealous of young Alan’s success with the barmaid. Then again, he would have keys to the gymnasium. He was very obviously physically capable of the crime. He had been at the boxing that evening, and at the public-house afterwards. I privately put his name very far forward on my list of suspects, and determined to say nothing to Beef about this, for the fact that I suspected the man was enough to make the Sergeant pass him over.
Lord Hadlow. I felt that with a young man of this type anything was possible. I detest the West End jeunesse dorée, and remembered recent cases of violent robbery by people of exactly the type described as “Mayfair’s young men.” Also, we knew that he had been down that evening, and we had only his word for it that he had returned to London immediately after the fight. It was quite on the cards that his story of a telephone call from his brother was a complete fabrication, and that he had obtained the money by other means. Being an old boy, he would know his way about the school, and would probably have thought of some means of persuading Alan into the gym at the time. Possibly the time of his return to London could be fixed by enquiries at his flat, but I decided to let Beef go his own way. I have learned not to make suggestions to him, for they all too frequently produce obstinacy in the Sergeant.
Danvers. Danvers, on his own admission, was actually the last person who knew of Alan alive. He said that Alan called out to him on his way back from the town that evening, while he was in bed with influenza. Who could say that the influenza was not an elaborate blind, and that the old man had actually been waiting for Lord Alan when he reappeared? As for motive, again this seemed extremely flimsy, but I could believe that years of unimaginative baiting by someone of Alan’s character had produced in the old porter a resentment so savage that he was capable of going to any lengths to avenge himself.
I came then to the almost inconceivable people whose names I had to include because they were at least on the spot and at least possibilities, however remote. There was, for instance, the Headmaster, fantastic though it was to imagine that an aloof and Christian gentleman could be guilty of an act so violent and low. Then again, Lord Edenbridge himself. If I suspected Lord Hadlow of fratricide, I saw no reason to exclude the Marquess from at least a possibility of guilt. I left all women out of the way as being incapable physically of the act in itself, Freda, Mrs. Jones and the Matron. It could not very well be thought of in this connection, for how in the world could any one of them have strangled the boy and afterwards pulled his body up by the rope over the beam? But Stringer’s name I felt should be added, if for no other reason than that it was he who found the body. Finally, I came to my brother. I had put off consideration of his name till the last, for it produced a difficult ethical problem. A detective’s chronicler was, as I understood it, by duty bound to consider every possibility. Should a family tie interfere in such a matter? I felt that it should not, that art should come before blood relationship. So, without dwelling on the matter too dramatically, I let Vincent’s name be on my list.
By the time I had completed this I found that we were already in the suburbs.
16
Beef sat bolt upright.
“We’d better call and see Stute first, at Scotland Yard. The paper said he was on the case, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “And do you think he’ll be particularly glad to see you? The last time you were in touch with him was over the Sydenham business, and, of course, you came a nasty cropper on that, didn’t you?”
“We’ll go and see, anyway,” said Beef.
Accordingly I drove straight to the Yard.
Rather to my surprise we were shown straight up to Stute’s room, and found him examining some typewritten reports.
“Well, Beef,” he said, “what are you up to now?”
Without being invited the Sergeant sat down.
“Just having a look round that little murder at Penshurst School.”
“Oh, you mean Lord Alan Foulkes’ suicide,” nodded Stute.
“Call it what you like,” agreed Beef. “Whatever it is, I’m acting for Lord Edenbridge.”
“Well, what can I do for you?” said Stute.
“I understood you were handling this Camden Town business.”
“Oh, you mean this murder in the gymnasium? Yes, I’m handling that.”
“Well, I should like to take my bearings in this case, too,” said Beef.
“Why? Do you connect it with Penshurst?”
Beef spoke quickly.
“I haven’t said so, have I?”
“Well, all right,” said Stute, with a slightly cynical smile. “I don’t suppose I can keep you away, so I may as well let you in. What do you want to know?”
“If you’ve got the time,” said Beef, “I’d very much like to hear your summary of the case, always agreed that if I should come on anything you might have overlooked I’ll give you word before any of the papers snatch it up.”
Stute rather waved this aside, but all the same, I was extremely impressed by the businesslike way in which he treated Beef, when I remembered that not long ago Beef had been no more than the village sergeant in a town to which Inspector Stute had been sent to investigate a murder. He remained a little doubtful of Beef, as everybody probably would be till the end of time, but he had dropped the impatient manner of one who has to suffer a fool, and the fact that he was about to give him an outline of the case showed how his opinion of the Sergeant had changed in the last year or two. Inspector Stute lit a cigarette and began.
“The murdered boy was nineteen,” he said, “and he had done a couple of years at a Borstal Institution. I should not describe him as a born criminal, but he was one of a pretty tough crowd, and his associates are, nearly all of them, of the kind we have to watch now and again for the good of the community. He started boxing through having a great reputation as a street fighter, which his friends persuaded him to turn to account. I find he h
ad several convictions for assault in the Camden Town area, where he lived and trained. He calls himself Beecher, but his real name is Martinez, his father having been a Spaniard, who kept a Spanish eating-house in Soho for some years, and deserted his mother rather mysteriously at the beginning of the Civil War. There is reason to suppose that Beecher, as we will continue to call him, was associated with some very undesirable Spanish elements in London. For you know,” went of Stute earnestly, “we of the Yard have had our hands full. Without discussing politics, you can see for yourself that it makes all sorts of difficulties when you have Spanish reds, Italian subversives, White Russians, Croat Nationalists, and all sorts of other foreigners, each working their own little rackets under our eyes. Well, this lot, so far as we know, were Spanish who came over after the fall of Barcelona, and are still hoping to work up something against Franco.”
Stute paused and drew from his pocket-case an envelope, which he held between his fingers as he continued:
“Now, without wishing to lead you up this one particular avenue of enquiry, I’ll show you something very interesting. We’ve had this under the microscope, and there’s no doubt as to what it is.”
“Microscope?” said Beef. “I never go much on that sort of thing.”
Stute opened his envelope, and from it extracted a folded piece of paper. He proceeded to unfold this, and laid it out on the desk before him. On it were two tiny strands of thin silk thread.
“Red and yellow, you’ll notice,” said Stute. “The Spanish Nationalist colours.”