He was perhaps fifty-five: small, as policemen go, and of a compact build which the neatness of his clothes accentuated. The close-cropped greying hair, the pink affable face, the soldierly bearing, the bulge of the cigar-case in the breast pocket and the shining brown shoes—these things suggested the more malleable sort of German petit bourgeois; to see him close at hand, however, was to see the grey eyes—bland, intelligent, sceptical—which effectively belied your first, superficial impression, showing the iron under the velvet. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Well, well, well. Chance is a great thing.’
‘What,’ said Fen severely, his head still projecting from the compartment window like a gargoyle from a cathedral tower, ‘is all this about a burglar?’
‘And you will be the Station-master.’ Humbleby had turned to Mr. Maycock. ‘You were away when I arrived here, so I took the liberty—’
‘That I wasn’t, sir,’ Mr. Maycock interrupted, anxious to vindicate himself. ‘I was in me office all the time, only these lads didn’t think to look there…’Ullo, Mr. Foster.’ This last greeting was directed to the harassed Guard, who had clearly been searching for the missing motorman. ‘Any luck?’
‘Not a sign of ’im,’ said the Guard sombrely. ‘Nothing like this ’as ever ’appened on one of my trains before.’
‘It is ’Inkson, isn’t it?’
The Guard shook his head. ‘No. Phil Bailey.’
‘Bailey?’
‘Ah. Bailey sometimes took over from ’Inkson on this run.’ Here the Guard glanced uneasily at Fen and Humbleby. ‘It’s irregular, o’ course, but it don’t do no ’arm as I can see. Bailey’s ’ome’s at Bramborough, at the end o’ this line, and ’e’d ’ave to catch this train any’ow to get to it, so ’e took over sometimes when ’Inkson wanted to stop in Town…And now this ’as to ’appen. There’ll be trouble, you mark my words.’ Evidently the unfortunate Guard expected to be visited with a substantial share of it.
‘Well, I can’t ’old out no longer,’ said Mr. Maycock. ‘I’ll ’ave to ring ’Eadquarters straight away.’ He departed in order to do this, and Humbleby, who still had no clear idea of what was going on, required the others to enlighten him. When they had done this: ‘Well,’ he said, ‘one thing’s certain, and that is that your motorman hasn’t left the station. My men are all round it, and they had orders to detain anyone who tried to get past them.’
At this stage, an elderly business man, who was sharing the same compartment with Fen and with an excessively genteel young woman of the sort occasionally found behind the counters of Post Offices, irritably enquired if Fen proposed keeping the compartment window open all night. And Fen, acting on this hint, closed the window and got out on to the platform.
‘None the less,’ he said to Humbleby. ‘It’ll be as well to interview your people and confirm that Bailey hasn’t left. I’ll go the rounds with you, and you can tell me about your burglar.’
They left the Guard and the two porters exchanging theories about Bailey’s defection, and walked along the platform towards the head of the train. ‘Goggett is my burglar’s name,’ said Humbleby. ‘Alfred Goggett. He’s wanted for quite a series of jobs, but for the last few months he’s been lying low, and we haven’t been able to put our hands on him. Earlier this evening, however, he was spotted in Soho by a plain-clothes man named, incongruously enough, Diggett…’
‘Really, Humbleby…’
‘…And Diggett chased him to Victoria. Well, you know what Victoria’s like. It’s rather a rambling terminus, and apt to be full of people. Anyway, Diggett lost his man there. Now, about mid-day today one of our more reliable narks brought us the news that Goggett had a hide-out here in Clough, so this afternoon Millican and I drove down here to look the place over. Of course the Yard rang up the police here when they heard Goggett had vanished at Victoria; and the police here got hold of me; and here we all are. There was obviously a very good chance that Goggett would catch this train. Only unluckily he didn’t.’
‘No one got off here?’
‘No one got off or on. And I understand that this is the last train of the day, so for the time being there’s nothing more we can do. But sooner or later, of course, he’ll turn up at his cottage here, and then we’ll have him.’
‘And in the meantime,’ said Fen thoughtfully, ‘there’s the problem of Bailey.’
‘In the meantime there’s that. Now let’s see…’
It proved that the six damp but determined men whom Humbleby had culled from the local constabulary had been so placed about the station precincts as to make it impossible for even a mouse to have left without their observing it; and not even a mouse, they stoutly asserted, had done so. Humbleby told them to stay where they were until further orders, and returned with Fen to the down platform.
‘No loophole there,’ he pronounced. ‘And it’s an easy station to—um—invest. If it had been a great sprawling place like Borleston, now, I could have put a hundred men round it, and Goggett might still have got clear…Of course, it’s quite possible that Borleston’s where he did leave the train.’
‘One thing at a time,’ said Fen rather peevishly. ‘It’s Bailey we’re worrying about now—not Goggett.’
‘Well, Bailey’s obviously still on the station. Or else somewhere on the train. I wonder what the devil he thinks he’s up to?’
‘In spite of you and your men, he must have been able to leave his cabin without being observed.’ They were passing the cabin as Fen spoke, and he stopped to peer at its vacant interior. ‘As you see, there’s no way through from it into the remainder of the train.’
Humbleby considered the disposition of his forces, and having done so: ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘he could have left the cabin without being seen; and for that matter, got to shelter somewhere in the station buildings.’
‘Weren’t the porters on the platform when the train came in?’
‘No. They got so overwrought when I told them what I was here for—the younger one especially—that I made them keep out of the way. I didn’t want them gaping when Goggett got off the train and making him suspicious—he’s the sort of man who’s quite capable of using a gun when he finds himself cornered.’
‘Maycock?’
‘He was in his office—asleep, I suspect. As to the Guard, I could see his van from where I was standing, and he didn’t even get out of it till he was ready to start the train off again…’ Humbleby sighed. ‘So there really wasn’t anyone to keep an eye on the motorman’s doings. However, we’re bound to find him: he can’t have left the precincts. I’ll get a search-party together, and we’ll have another look—a systematic one, this time.’
Systematic or not, it turned out to be singularly barren of results. It established one thing only, and that was, that beyond any shadow of doubt the missing motorman was not anywhere in, on or under the station, nor anywhere in, on or under his abandoned train.
And unfortunately, it was also established that he could not, in the nature of things, be anywhere else.
Fen took no part in this investigation, having already foreseen its inevitable issue. He retired, instead, to the Station-master’s office, by whose fire he was dozing when Humbleby sought him out half an hour later.
‘One obvious answer,’ said Humbleby when he had reported his failure, ‘is of course that Bailey’s masquerading as someone else—as one of the twelve people (that’s not counting police) who definitely are cooped up in this infernal little station.’
‘And is he doing that?’
‘No. At least, not unless the Guard and the two porters and the Station-master are in a conspiracy together—which I don’t for a second believe. They all know Bailey by sight, at least, and they’re all certain that no one here can possibly be him.’
Fen yawned. ‘So what’s the next step?’ he asked.
‘What I ought to have done long ago: the next step is to
find out if there’s any evidence Bailey was driving the train when it left Borleston…Where’s the telephone?’
‘Behind you.’
‘Oh, yes…I don’t understand these inter-station phones, so I’ll use the ordinary one…God help us, hasn’t that dolt Maycock made a note of the number anywhere?’
‘In front of you.’
‘Oh, yes…51709.’ Humbleby lifted the receiver, dialled, and waited. ‘Hello, is that Borleston Junction?’ he said presently. ‘I want to speak to the station-master. Police business…Yes, all right, but be quick.’ And after a pause: ‘Station-master? This is Detective-Inspector Humbleby of the Metropolitan C.I.D. I want to know about a train which left Borleston for Clough and Bramborough at—at—’
‘At a quarter to midnight,’ Fen supplied.
‘At a quarter to midnight…Good heavens, yes, this last midnight that we’ve just had…Yes, I know it’s held up at Clough; so am I…No, no, what I want is information about who was driving it when it left Borleston: eyewitness information…You did?…You actually saw Bailey yourself? Was that immediately before the train left?…It was; well then, there’s no chance of Bailey’s having hopped out, and someone else taken over, after you saw him?…I see: the train was actually moving out when you saw him at the controls. Sure you’re not mistaken? This is important…Oh, there’s a porter who can corroborate it, is there?…No, I don’t want to talk to him now…All right…Yes…Goodbye.’
Humbleby rang off and turned back to Fen. ‘So that,’ he observed, ‘is that.’
‘So I gathered.’
‘And the next thing is, could Bailey have left the train between Borleston and here?’
‘The train,’ said Fen, ‘didn’t drive itself in, you know.’
‘Never mind that for the moment,’ said Humbleby irritably. ‘Could he?’
‘No. He couldn’t. Not without breaking his neck. We did a steady thirty-five to forty all the way, and we didn’t stop or slow down once.’
There was a silence. ‘Well, I give up,’ said Humbleby. ‘Unless this wretched man has vanished like a sort of soap-bubble—’
‘It’s occurred to you that he may be dead?’
‘It’s occurred to me that he may be dead and cut up into little pieces. But I still can’t find any of the pieces…Good Lord, Fen, it’s like—it’s like one of those Locked-Room Mysteries you get in books: an Impossible Situation.’
Fen yawned again. ‘Not impossible, no,’ he said. ‘Rather a simple device, really…’ Then more soberly: ‘But I’m afraid that what we have to deal with is something much more serious than a mere vanishing. In fact—’
The telephone rang, and after a moment’s hesitation Humbleby answered it. The call was for him; and when, several minutes later, he put the receiver back on its hook, his face was grave.
‘They’ve found a dead man,’ he said, ‘three miles along the line towards Borleston. He’s got a knife in his back and has obviously been thrown out of a train. From their description of the face and clothes, it’s quite certainly Goggett. And equally certainly, that’—he nodded towards the platform—‘is the train he fell out of…Well, my first and most important job is to interview the passengers. And anyone who was alone in a compartment will have a lot of explaining to do.’
Most of the passengers had by now disembarked, and were standing about in various stages of bewilderment, annoyance and futile enquiry. At Humbleby’s command, and along with the Guard, the porters and Mr. Maycock, they shuffled, feebly protesting, into the waiting-room. And there, with Fen as an interested onlooker, a Grand Inquisition was set in motion.
Its results were both baffling and remarkable. Apart from the motorman, there had been nine people on the train when it left Borleston and when it arrived at Clough; and each of them had two others to attest the fact that during the whole crucial period he (or she) had behaved as innocently as a new-born infant. With Fen there had been the elderly business man and the genteel girl; in another compartment there had likewise been three people, no one of them connected with either of the others by blood, acquaintance, or vocation; and even the Guard had witnesses to his harmlessness, since from Victoria onwards he had been accompanied in the van by two melancholy men in cloth caps, whose mode of travel was explained by their being in unremitting personal charge of several doped-looking whippets. None of these nine, until the first search for Bailey was set on foot, had seen or heard anything amiss. None of them (since the train was not a corridor train) had had any opportunity of moving out of sight of his or her two companions. None of them had slept. And unless some unknown, travelling in one of the many empty compartments, had disappeared in the same fashion as Bailey—a supposition which Humbleby was by no means prepared to entertain—it seemed evident that Goggett must have launched himself into eternity unaided.
It was at about this point in the proceedings that Humbleby’s self-possession began to wear thin, and his questions to become merely repetitive; and Fen, perceiving this, slipped out alone on to the platform. When he returned, ten minutes later, he was carrying a battered suitcase; and regardless of Humbleby, who seemed to be making some sort of speech, he carried this impressively to the centre table and put it down there.
‘In this suitcase,’ he announced pleasantly, as Humbleby’s flow of words petered out, ‘we shall find, I think, the motorman’s uniform belonging to the luckless Bailey.’ He undid the catches. ‘And in addition, no doubt…Stop him, Humbleby!’
The scuffle that followed was brief and inglorious. Its protagonist, tackled round the knees by Humbleby, fell, struck his head against the fender, and lay still, the blood welling from a cut above his left eye.
‘Yes, that’s the culprit,’ said Fen. ‘And it will take a better lawyer than there is alive to save him from a rope’s end.’
***
Later, as Humbleby drove him to his destination through the December night, he said: ‘Yes, it had to be Maycock. And Goggett and Bailey had, of course, to be one and the same person. But what about motive?’
Humbleby shrugged. ‘Obviously, the money in that case of Goggett’s. There’s a lot of it, you know. It’s a pretty clear case of thieves falling out. We’ve known for a long time that Goggett had an accomplice, and it’s now certain that that accomplice was Maycock. Whereabouts in his office did you find the suitcase?’
‘Stuffed behind some lockers—not a very good hiding-place, I’m afraid. Well, well, it can’t be said to have been a specially difficult problem. Since Bailey wasn’t on the station, and hadn’t left it, it was clear he’d never entered it. But someone had driven the train in—and who could it have been but Maycock? The two porters were accounted for—by you; so were the Guard and the passengers—by one another; and there just wasn’t anyone else.
‘And then, of course, the finding of Goggett’s body clinched it. He hadn’t been thrown out of either of the occupied compartments, or the Guard’s van; he hadn’t been thrown out of any of the unoccupied compartments, for the simple reason that there was nobody to throw him. Therefore he was thrown out of the motorman’s cabin. And since, as I’ve demonstrated, Maycock was unquestionably in the motorman’s cabin, it was scarcely conceivable that Maycock had not done the throwing.
‘Plainly, Maycock rode or drove into Borleston while he was supposed to be having his supper, and boarded the train—that is, the motorman’s cabin—there. He kept hidden till the train was under way, and then took over from Goggett-Bailey while Goggett-Bailey changed into the civilian clothes he had with him. By the way, I take it that Maycock, to account for his presence, spun some fictional (as far as he knew) tale about the police being on Goggett-Bailey’s track, and that the change was Goggett-Bailey’s idea; I mean, that he had some notion of its assisting his escape at the end of the line.’
Humbleby nodded. ‘That’s it, approximately. I’ll send you a copy of Maycock’s confession as soon as I can g
et one made. It seems he wedged the safety handle which operates these trains, knifed Goggett-Bailey and chucked him out, and then drove the train into Clough and there simply disappeared, with the case, into his office. It must have given him a nasty turn to hear the station was surrounded.’
‘It did,’ said Fen. ‘If your people hadn’t been there, it would have looked, of course, as if Bailey had just walked off into the night. But chance was against him all along. Your siege, and the grouping of the passengers, and the cloth-capped men in the van—they were all part of an accidental conspiracy—if you can talk of such a thing—to defeat him; all part of a sort of fortuitous conjuring trick.’ He yawned prodigiously, and gazed out of the car window. ‘Do you know, I believe it’s the dawn…Next time I want to arrive anywhere, I shall travel by bus.’
The Villa Marie Celeste
Margery Allingham
‘The Villa Marie Celeste’, which has also appeared under the titles ‘Family Affair’ and ‘Clue on the Washing Line’, was first published in 1960, making it a relatively late entry in the case-book of Albert Campion, who had made his debut more than thirty years earlier. His creator, Margery Allingham, is not closely associated in readers’ minds with impossible crime mysteries, perhaps because intricacy of plotting was not as important to her as it was to, say, her good friend John Dickson Carr. Bob Adey’s Locked Room Murders nevertheless includes a single novel of hers—Flowers for the Judge (1936) together with four short stories, of which this is one.
Margery Louise Allingham (1904–1966) came from a family with strong links to literature. Both her parents—Herbert and Emily—were writers, and their story is told by Julia Jones in Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory, a book which provides plentiful insights into the world of popular culture and those responsible for it. Jones is also the author of The Adventures of Margery Allingham, a biography of a writer who encountered a series of difficulties in life, but made a significant and lasting contribution to the crime genre. Even this short story, slight in comparison to her major novels, captures nicely the flavoursome nature of her writing.
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