Murder Gone Mad

by Philip MacDonald

  Holmdale was like a town under which, with the knowledge of its inhabitants, some Nihilist has entrenched an unfindable bomb capable of blowing the whole place to many smithereens at any moment.

  II

  Superintendent Arnold Pike of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard sat in Miss Marable’s ‘lounge’ at No. 12 Fourtrees Road and played Chuffers with Millicent Brade.

  Millicent Brade was three years old and was the daughter of Mrs Augustus Brade. Millicent Brade’s father was in India, building, as Millicent had frequently explained to Superintendent Pike, a very long road for Chuffers to run along.

  Chuffers, with the rules laid down by Millicent, was an exacting game requiring, upon the part of the co-opted, vivid imagination, steel muscles, inexhaustible patience and a certain capacity for imitating the grosser noises connected with railway life.

  It seemed that all these qualifications, in full measure, were possessed by Arnold Pike. He was, and had been from the first, a very great success with Millicent. He now, at a quarter past ten in the morning of Thursday December 6th, crawled upon Miss Marable’s carpet.

  From his lips there escaped a hissing, for all the world like the hissing of the Flying Scotsman. His arms worked like pistons. And every now and then a voice, not recognisable, so hoarse was it, declaimed the names of imaginary stations upon an imaginary line.

  Pike had said that he would be with Jeffson at ten o’clock. He was, therefore, already fifteen minutes late. But this did not bother him. Nothing bothered him, except his own doubt as to his ability to keep up, for sufficiently long as would properly please Millicent, this arduous mimicry. He had a great desire to remain favourite with Millicent. He gritted his teeth and kept on. His hissing grew louder; his arms more and more like pistons of steel; his declamations hoarser and more unintelligible and therefore more realistic …

  Molly Brade, who was Millicent’s mother, came in. The carpet in Miss Marable’s lounge was a soft and heavy carpet, and therefore Molly Brade’s footsteps were not audible. When she came in, Superintendent Pike had momentarily exchanged the role of a fast express for that of the long, highly-arched tunnel through which the fast express must pass. He marvelled at Millicent’s knowledge of railways and how railways function. He perhaps discounted the fact that of her three years of life, Millicent had spent something like a quarter in railway carriages.

  ‘Millicent!’ said her mother. ‘Millicent! You’re being a nuisance.’

  The tunnel disintegrated and became, in a gymnastic flash, a man and not a tunnel; a man in a quiet blue suit and very shiny boots; a man whose lean brown face was darker than usual by reason of its sudden flush.

  Millicent, too, rose to her feet, but much more slowly. She was still a train and the train was a disgruntled train as any train might be disgruntled at finding its tunnel suddenly taken away from around it.

  ‘Not,’ said Millicent, ‘nuisance. Train.’ She turned to Pike. She added, with some indignation: ‘The tunnoo went!’

  Molly Brade smiled upon the untunnelled Pike and said:

  ‘It is good of you!’

  Pike fidgeted. He put his hands into his pockets and immediately withdrew them again. He looked down at his boots and then up at the ceiling. He said:

  ‘If you’ll let me contradict you, Mrs Brade, it isn’t at all.’ He looked down at the still frowning Millicent. ‘It’s a pleasure, as you might say. And I mean that.’ He looked everywhere but at Molly Brade’s smiling blue eyes.

  ‘All the same,’ Molly said, ‘it is good of you. Especially when you must be so busy; so … so rather terribly busy.’

  There came from Pike’s mouth a short, hard laugh. ‘Busy!’ he said, and laughed again. ‘Busy! I wish I was, Mrs Brade. I almost wish I was so busy I didn’t have time to play with this very charming young lady. Almost, but not quite; because no one could quite wish that … Busy! If you ask me, Mrs Brade, I tell you that I ought to be busy, but that I can’t be busy.’ Now he was looking straight into Molly Brade’s eyes, and now the flush of embarrassment had gone and the frown, which had been absent during the game of Chuffers, had returned in full measure. He said, after a long pause:

  ‘I’ve always said—give me something to do and I’ll get on with it … But I take that back now as you might say. Right back! … I’ve got enough to do, haven’t I? I’ve got to catch this … this … Well, anyway, I’ve got something to do! I’ve got to catch something. But can I do it? I can’t! If you knew …’

  ‘But I do know.’ Molly Brade smiled; a charming smile at which a tired and harassed and self-doubting man might warm himself.

  Pike looked at his watch. ‘All the same, Mrs Brade,’ he said, ‘thanks very much for reminding me. I must get along now … The least I can do is to put in an appearance.’ He stooped down and kissed Millicent. He bowed stiffly—a curious, jerky little bow from the middle of his back—to Millicent’s mother. He left the room with long, quick strides. The door shut softly but decisively behind him, and presently Molly Brade heard the opening and shutting of the front door, and then, after this, the click-clicking of the front gate.

  She dropped upon her knees beside her daughter. She said: ‘Have a good game, darling?’

  Millicent nodded gravely. ‘Nice man,’ said Millicent. ‘Very good train.’

  ‘What shall we do?’ said Millicent’s mother.

  ‘Market,’ said Millicent firmly. ‘Bockey money.’

  ‘But, darling,’ said Molly, ‘it isn’t pocket money day until tomorrow. And anyway, I haven’t got two pennies. We’ll have to get change.’

  ‘Bockey money,’ said Millicent, with dispassionate firmness. She looked up at her mother with a gravely concentrated stare which made her blue eyes seem larger than they were by nature. She wore a tense pre-occupied look, so pregnant with the curious appeal of the infant, that her mother, with that feeling so common to parents, had for a moment some ado to keep from tears.

  ‘Bockey money,’ said Millicent. ‘Market. Buy little tin chuffer.’

  III

  As he drew abreast of the lamp-post, and the small green gate leading up to Jeffson’s white cottage, Pike’s heart sank, for outside the gate, drawn up to the curb, was a big green old-fashioned Daimler Saloon, which he knew belonged to the Chief Constable. The Chief Constable alone could be handled so that he was very little trouble, but with each aide that he brought with him, his awkwardness as a ‘proposition’ was increased quite disproportionately. And Heaven knew how many the green Daimler would hold and this morning had held. Pike opened the gate, walked up the little path, pushed open the front door which was ajar and so went into the little room upon the right, which, with every succeeding day, grew less like parlour and more like police station. The Chief Constable was there and with him were Davis and Farrow. The Chief Constable sat behind Jeffson’s official table. There was no decline in his plumpness, but there was in his colour. Where, when Pike had first seen him, he had been ruddy though worried looking, he was now pasty and with new lines etched upon his comfortable face. Davis was unchanged; the lean type of Sergeant-Major. Farrow, the burly, seemed to Pike’s quick eye to be a little more stupid and a little less aggressive.

  As Pike entered, he became aware that the hum of talk which he had heard as he walked up the path and through the door into the narrow passage, had died down to an expectant and yet somehow minatory silence.

  There were greetings all round; curt greetings merely sufficiently suave. Pike, at the Chief Constable’s invitation, sat himself upon a chair to face the Chief Constable. Davis and Farrow who, Pike was sure, had been sitting before his advent, now stood stiffly behind the Chief Constable, one at his left shoulder, the other at his right. The Chief Constable, the greetings over, looked at Pike.

  ‘Well?’ said the Chief Constable.

  Pike’s face was a studious blank. ‘If you mean, sir,’ he said in a very official voice, ‘is there anything to report, I’m afraid the answer’s in the negative. The
re’s nothing to report. I’m not sure …’

  The Chief Constable cut him short. He slapped with his finger-tips upon the edge of Jeffson’s table. He said:

  ‘What I would like to know, Superintendent, is what we are doing.’

  Pike shrugged. He was finding it difficult this morning to keep his temper. He waited a moment, swallowing down certain hot speeches which had suggested themselves to his mind and which almost had begun to come out of his mouth. He said:

  ‘You know, I think, sir, all that we are doing. I’ve taken no steps at all other than those you suggested. Except, of course, the letter box—which didn’t come off …’

  There came a stifled sound from Farrow and its echo from Davis.

  Once more the Chief Constable hit the table. ‘D’you mean to tell me, Superintendent, that we’ve got to go on … go on … letting this—I hardly know what to call him … this … lunatic … have his own way with every one of us?’

  Pike swallowed. He said, after a longer pause than his first:

  ‘I’m afraid that’s what it means, sir … At the moment anyhow.’

  The Chief Constable looked at Pike. The Chief Constable in the next instant proved himself a shrewder man than most would have expected. He said:

  ‘I think you’ve got something up your sleeve, Superintendent. If you have, I think we ought to know about it. You must follow your own judgment in these matters, but I must say I don’t like the idea that you’re not taking us fully into your confidence.’

  Pike, momentarily, was taken aback. He said at last:

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m sure. If you feel that there’s anything wrong about the way I’m handling this matter …’

  ‘It isn’t that …’ The Chief Constable at this direct riposte to his attack seemed to grow slightly discomfortable. ‘All that I meant was … well … fact is I’ve had one or two suggestions made to me, Superintendent, and I think I’d better give them to you right away.’

  Pike crossed one leg over the other. He sat looking hard at the Chief Constable. ‘Please do so by all means. We’re not up against an ordinary job here, or we’d have had some results by now. We’re up against something strange, as you might say: something almost … or quite, inhuman … Therefore, sir, my idea is this: that if anyone’s got any notion whatsoever about dealing with this matter; if anyone can give us any sort of workable suggestion whatever, about how to lay our hands on the man we want … Well then, I’m all attention.’

  The Chief Constable coughed and gave a half glance, instantly repressed, over his right shoulder at Farrow. The Chief Constable said:

  ‘Well, for one thing, Superintendent, it has been suggested to me, that whatever the cost, we ought to try and double the patrols.’

  ‘Getting the men, sir,’ Pike said, ‘from where?’

  The Chief Constable swelled out his cheeks and exhaled with a puffing sound.

  ‘My dear fellah!’ said the Chief Constable. ‘My dear fellah! You surely must know of all the offers of volunteers we’ve had since this business began! And now I come to think of it, I know you know. The last time we met we were talking about it … And now Jeffson tells me the number of offers he’s had in the past forty-eight hours has almost doubled the total previous offers … Well, what’s the matter with that?’ The Chief Constable’s last words were heavy with repressed ire.

  For Pike had shaken his head in some subtly clever way which was not rude, and yet was most emphatic. And Pike said:

  ‘I’m beginning to think we not only ought not to increase patrols, but we ought not p’raps to have any patrols at all …’

  There came a snort from Inspector Farrow, and this time a quite audible snigger from Inspector Davis.

  The Chief Constable wisely went on as if there had been no sound from behind him. He said:

  ‘You’ll forgive me, Superintendent, but that sounds damned nonsense to me! Damned nonsense! Doesn’t seem to be any sense in it, damn it!’ He glared at Pike, waiting.

  Pike took his time. He discovered within himself a desire to rise from his chair, to seize the large ink-pot which stood just before the Chief Constable and to empty it over the Chief Constable’s bald head. Successfully he restrained himself. But he didn’t look at the Chief Constable as he spoke. He said:

  ‘If you’ll allow me, sir, I’ll explain. The reason why I didn’t think we ought to add to our patrols—the reason why, sometimes, I even think we should have no patrols at all, is that we do not know who the Butcher is …’

  This was too much for Davis and Farrow. Once more Davis sniggered, and this time Farrow spoke. ‘You don’t say so, Superintendent!’ he said. His tone was so heavily ironic as to be either insulting or ridiculous or both.

  Pike ignored him. ‘I daresay, sir,’ he said, looking at the Chief Constable, ‘that you think I’m dithering. I’m not. I said “we don’t know who the Butcher is” on purpose. I thought that if I put it like that you might get a new angle on this business and see it as I do … And the way I see it is this: this Butcher is someone who knows Holmdale—all Holmdale—upside down and sideways and backwards and through and through. This Butcher is not only a resident in Holmdale and knows everybody and, therefore, one that everybody knows … and if we start putting every Holmdale resident into Special’s armlets, we’re just asking ourselves to give shelter to the Butcher …’

  The Chief Constable opened his eyes wide. There came no sound from Davis and Farrow behind him.

  ‘We’re just asking ourselves,’ Pike repeated, ‘to give shelter to the Butcher … if we’re not doing that already.’ These last words of Pike’s were said without raised voice or seemingly stressed emphasis but yet they fell upon the silence of the little room like lumps of pig-lead into a shallow pond; their ripples set up vibrating circles which could almost be seen.

  The Chief Constable twisted uneasily in his chair. He was being forced to realise that determination and courage and hard work were not necessarily of use in this matter. The Chief Constable said, with an uneasy attempt at humour:

  ‘Yes, I see what you mean, Superintendent … But aren’t you going rather far? I mean to say damn it! I don’t live in Holmdale, but I know Holmdale; You might almost be saying that you don’t know I’m all right.’

  ‘If you will forgive me, sir,’ Pike said with firmness, ‘that’s exactly what I am saying.’

  ‘Eh!’ said the Chief Constable sharply, and Farrow made a movement as if to step forward round the table, only to be repressed by Davis’s fingers on his arm.

  ‘You must not, sir,’ said Pike, ‘misunderstand me. I don’t think you do, really. What I’m saying is this: the only thing I do know about this Butcher is that he doesn’t know me and he doesn’t know the two men I’ve brought down with me. But, so far as we’re concerned, there isn’t a single person in and about this place who mightn’t be him. Hope you follow me, sir. You’ve got to remember this man’s that most dangerous sort of lunatic—the sort of a lunatic who doesn’t show as a lunatic as you might say … He’s the sort of man that you meet and I meet every day—we probably are meeting him every day. He’s the sort of man that when we find out who he is we shall all, maybe, get the shock of our lives!’

  There was no sound in Jeffson’s small room save the ticking of the clock upon the mantel.

  At last the Chief Constable, clearing his throat, spoke awkwardly. ‘Then I take it, Superintendent,’ he said, sounding somehow shy, ‘that you don’t advocate the policy of taking any more recruits to the special branch?’

  Pike nodded decisively. ‘I don’t, sir. In fact, while I remain of any importance down here, I shouldn’t let that happen. I am referring, of course, to recruits from Holmdale and district. If you could get ’em—or better still, regular police or military, from other quarters, well and good. Very good. But not from this quarter.’

  The Chief Constable grew peevish. ‘You know very well, Superintendent, we’ve drafted in all the men we can from anywhere and it’s costing Heav
en knows what …’

  ‘I know all that, sir,’ said Pike, blatantly interrupting. ‘I’ve said all I’ve got to say.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Chief Constable. He paused; then went on, rather in the tone of a sixth-form boy doubtful as to the reception of a suggestion he is going to make to his House Master: ‘The only other suggestion we need put to you, Superintendent, is the one Inspector Davis here made. Inspector Davis suggested to me last night that it might do a good deal for public safety if we could manage somehow or other to establish a curfew … What d’you think about that?’

  This time Pike did not pause before he answered. ‘I have thought about it, sir. The idea occurred to me—probably about the same time it occurred to Inspector Davis—and I’ve been thinking it over. I must say I’m against it.’

  ‘Against it!’ said the Chief Constable in astonishment. ‘Damn it, man! I thought it was good. Damn it! This Butcher can’t wander into people’s houses; at least, if he does, we’ll soon catch him.’

  Pike nodded. ‘I know, sir. But it’s like what I said to you the first time we met, if you remember. If we make everything so safe for everybody that the Butcher cannot operate, well, what he’ll do is to lay low, or move on somewhere else. I don’t think he’ll do the latter, but I’m pretty certain he’ll do the former. He’s cute, this gentleman. And what should we do, and where would Holmdale be if he did lay low? Right, as you might say, in the soup! You can’t keep up this expense we’re incurring every day indefinitely. What would happen would be that after about a month with no Butcher stuff, all the extra police would be taken out and all protections would have to be removed. Then, after a nice fortnight’s holiday at Blackpool or somewhere, the Butcher would start his tricks again, and we should have to start our tricks again. All over again! With no good done to anyone by the work we’re putting in now … No, sir, it won’t do. We’ve got to be like the scientists in this game. If necessary, sir, we’ve got to let one or two or three more people run the risk of meeting the Butcher—that’s the way we’re going to catch him. If we make them all safe from the Butcher before we know any more about him, then …’ He broke off. He shrugged. It was an eloquent shrug.