Murder by Matchlight

by Lorac, E. C. R.

  Wright replaced the sheet, and as they left the building he said: “I’ll get you to sign that statement, sir, and then I needn’t trouble you any further to-night. We shall need you at the Inquest, I expect—and you’ll probably be asked further questions when the Yard take over. You won’t be moving away from your present address, I take it?”

  “Lord, no! You can find me whenever you want me,” said Mallaig, and to his own ears the words had an ominous sound.

  CHAPTER TWO

  i

  WHEN the crime in Regents Park was referred to the Commissioner’s Office, the case was immediately handed over to Chief Inspector Macdonald for investigation. Macdonald, when he heard the brief salient facts, said: “Well—that’s an unusual story: murder isn’t uncommon, but murder in the presence of witnesses is quite uncommon. In the circumstances I’ll finish off this report and get it done with. Tell the Regents Park fellows I’ll be with them shortly. Meantime, they can carry on.”

  So it came about that Inspector Wright, much to his own private satisfaction, was able to continue the job by interrogating the second witness of the crime—he whom Bruce Mallaig had described as the “bridge man.”

  “Stanley Claydon, aged twenty-eight, address 115A Euston Passage. Discharged as unfit from the Army (Middlesex Regiment, Nth Battalion). Discharged as unfit from the Arsenal Small Arms Factory. At present of no occupation.”

  Inspector Wright absorbed this information and studied the man to whom the information referred. A tall weedy fellow, pale and unhealthy looking, was this Stanley Claydon, but he looked fairly muscular—by no means feeble.

  “What’s the matter with your health?” asked Wright.

  “Asthma,” was the answer. “Never know when it’s going to lay me out. It just comes on—and then I’m kippered.”

  “Yes. Nasty thing, asthma,” agreed Wright amiably. “Now what was it took you for a walk in Regents Park this evening?”

  “Well, it’s a rum story,” said Claydon miserably. “I know before I start you won’t believe me.”

  “I haven’t the chance of believing you until I’ve heard your story,” replied Wright. “It’s up to you to choose if you want to make a statement—or if you want a solicitor present before you do so.”

  “Solicitor? Likely, isn’t it? A solicitor couldn’t tell you what he doesn’t know, could he? It’s just my luck, I always said I was born unlucky.”

  Wright enjoyed listening to Claydon’s story—it was interesting and unusual—“ingenious” Wright called it when he was talking to Macdonald later—frankly the Inspector did not believe a word of it.

  “I woke up feeling fed to the teeth this morning,” began Claydon. “I’d been fired from the works because the doctors said I wasn’t fit. Told me to get an out-of-doors job, but I was to have a holiday first to get fit. Well, I thought I’d ring up my married sister—she’s got a house in the country, near Bedford. I went into St. Pancras Station to telephone—one of those call-boxes in the booking hall. It’s dark in there—you know it?”

  “Yes. I know it.” (“Why did you choose a call-box there, I wonder?” Wright asked himself.)

  “Well, I had to wait a longish while before I got on, and while I was waiting I heard a bloke talking in the next call-box. I could hear every word. I wasn’t listening in particular, but I just couldn’t help hearing. He asked for a doctor somebody—I didn’t catch the name—and then he said ‘Just say it’s Tim—Timothy you know.’ He’d got a rum voice, not quite English somehow. Next thing he said was ‘That you, Joe? This is Tim speaking. Tim. T. I. M..’ He went on for quite a bit, saying it was Tim, and he was quite O.K. and in the pink. Then he changed his tone a bit and said ‘You and me had better get together and have a talk, Joe.’ Something in his voice made me think he was threatening, and he went on, quite sharp, ‘now don’t argue. I’ll be waiting for you at 8.30 this evening on the little wooden bridge close by the gate of Regents Park in York Gate. You know the place—near that island at the end of the lake. Oh yes, you know it all right. You’ve got to be there. Got that? Don’t try any funny stuff because this is Tim and we’ve got to have that talk.’ I think he rang off then, but anyway my own call came through and I didn’t hear any more.”

  At this juncture Stanley Claydon glanced round nervously: another man had come into the Inspector’s office and stood listening. Wright got up, but the newcomer said:

  “Carry on. Finish the statement,” and Wright sat down again and turned to Claydon.

  “Yes—you said your own call came through.”

  “Yes, I was ringing up my sister, Dora. Mrs. Steven her name is. She’s got a house near Bedford and a small business—cigarettes and confectionery, leastways, she had. The woman who answered the ‘phone said Dora had joined the ATS and parked the kids out somewhere and the business was sold. I was fed-up, I tell you. What can a chap like me do when he’s told to take a holiday? Dora’s the only relation I got. I came out of that call-box more fed-up than ever. I’ve got nothing to do and no one to do it with. The woman at my digs won’t give me any dinner and won’t make me a fire in my room. I just mooched about and went into cafés and had cups of tea—and all day long I thought about that Tim and his doctor bloke, and the more I thought, the rummer it seemed. You see, I know that bridge in Regents Park. It’s a lonely place after dark. Of course the park used to be shut at nights, but now the railings’ve been taken away, so it’s always open. Well, I tried going to the flicks, only the stuffiness of them places always makes me cough, and then later on I went to the Corner House and had a real blow-out and felt better. I didn’t want to go back to my room and think—so I jolly well made up my mind to go to Regents Park and see if these chaps turned up. I thought it might be funny. Just my luck. . . .”

  Stanley Claydon was a big fellow, but his loose underlip quivered as though he were on the verge of crying. “What can a chap do when he can’t keep a job?” he asked querulously. “In the Army they set me to work peeling potatoes—millions of them—only that gave me asthma, too. The place we peeled’em in was that damp.”

  “Never mind about that,” said Wright. “You get on with Regents Park.”

  “I wish I’d never bloody well gone near Regents Park,” said Claydon, plucking at his loose underlip.

  “It’s a bit late to think about that now,” said Wright, “so get on with your story.”

  “Well, I got on to the bridge about twenty-five past eight—I looked at the time in Baker Street Station. It was black dark, and I didn’t quite like the idea of waiting on the bridge till the chaps came there—this Tim and Joe. I didn’t know which way they’d come for one thing, so I thought I’d just jump over the bridge down on to the path below—it’s only a few feet. Then I thought I could hear’em talk. Anything for a bit of fun. I can see now it was a silly thing to do—but I was bored stiff and wanted to get my mind off myself. I turned my torch on—just to see there was no one about—and then I climbed over and got underneath the bridge. I hadn’t been there very long when I heard someone walking along York Gate and then they turned on to the bridge, and a voice asked ‘Anyone about?’ I recognised the voice—it was the bloke Tim who’d been in the telephone box. No one answered, and presently he struck a match and lighted a cigarette. I could see the light gleaming between the planks of the bridge, and I could smell the cigarette. I don’t smoke myself, it gives me asthma. It was perishing cold there, and I couldn’t move about in case Tim heard me, and I began to wish I hadn’t come. He threw his cigarette away—the end fell in the grass nearby where I was and it give me an awful turn—it shone so bright as it fell. Then he lit another match: leastways, I suppose it was Tim, though I couldn’t see him, and then there was a sort of schemozzle and an awful bump on the bridge . . . and something warm dripped on my face as I looked up into the dark.” Claydon shivered, and his breathing grew laboured as he spoke. “I was frightened stiff,” he said. “I hadn’t expected anything like that. I’d have run for it—but I didn’t know
if the gates of them college grounds was locked, and it wouldn’t have looked too good if I’d got copped there—so I thought I’d climb up on the bridge again and beat it down York Gate. I pulled myself up on to the bridge somehow, and then someone went for me—nearly throttled me. I couldn’t get away, and I couldn’t even yell out because I’d lost my breath . . . I just knew he was going to do me in, too. I tell you I was scared stiff. . . .”

  ii

  There was no mistaking two things: first, that Stanley Claydon had been “scared stiff,” and second, that he was an asthmatical subject. His narrative had worked on his own nerves until he was as breathless as a man in the throes of bronchitis. Macdonald, who had been standing listening to Claydon’s story, came forward at this juncture saying:

  “You needn’t be frightened of that any longer. In any case, if another man’s going to kill you, he doesn’t generally shout for the police while he’s doing it.”

  “He wanted to put it on to me, that’s what he wanted,” said Claydon. “I knew it when I tried to beat it. ‘Oh, no, you don’t he says’—and I understood.”

  “Now don’t you worry your head about that,” said Macdonald. “I want you to answer this question. You say that you heard the second match struck—and then the thud and the body failing: had you heard a second person walk on to the bridge?”

  “No, sir. There wasn’t a sound.” Claydon turned eagerly to the plain-clothes officer, sensing the humanity in the quiet voice. “There was just this chap Tim. I knew where he was standing, just above my head, because I heard him shift his feet once or twice, but I never heard a sound of no one else coming—the other one, he must fair have crept up like a mouse. I didn’t hear nothing.”

  “Think back to the time when you climbed up on to the bridge again,” went on Macdonald. “How did you get up?”

  “I caught hold of the bars and pulled myself up—you know, like a monkey,” said Claydon. “I got my foot on to the edge and hauled myself on to the rail—and I’d just got there when this other chap turned his torch on me and came at me.”

  “The chap with the torch was on the bridge then?”

  “No, sir. Not then he wasn’t. He’d gone away a bit—further from the gate. He was about three yards along the path. If I’d known there was anyone there, I shouldn’t have climbed up like I did. I thought Tim must have thrown a fit, or been poisoned and fallen dead. You see I never heard no one else—and that’s rum, you know, because when you’re underneath that bridge there’s no mistaking when anyone sets foot on it. It sort of echoes.”

  “Rum it is,” agreed Macdonald, and Claydon put in eagerly:

  “Could it’ve been a bit of bomb or shrapnel or something like that hit’im, sir? Something dropped out of a plane, say? A bit of stone’d do no end of damage if it was dropped from a height.”

  “Maybe it would, but it wasn’t any bit of stone or bomb which killed this man,” said Wright. “It was something like a small coal hammer.”

  Claydon, whose face was as pallid as a potato, turned a shade greener when supplied with this information, and after a moment’s pause Wright said to Macdonald:

  “Shall I ask him to see if he can identify the body, sir?”

  Macdonald nodded. “Yes, Inspector. Ill look through your notes in the meantime, and read this other statements I’ll be here when you come back.”

  iii

  Macdonald read through the statement which Bruce Mallaig had signed, and then studied Wright’s brief but admirably legible notes giving the gist of Claydon’s statement: this latter document he handed to an attendant constable to be typed. Just then a sergeant came in to report. He had been sent to the address on the dead man’s Identity Card, and had returned with what information he had been able to collect. John Ward had lived at 5A Belfort Grove, Notting Hill Gate. This house was divided up into six self-contained single-room flatlets, of which John Ward had rented the topmost—and cheapest. On the same floor lived the resident caretaker, a talkative and ancient charlady whose erstwhile occupation had been that of lavatory attendant. This body, who gave her name as Mrs. Maloney and her age as sixty-five (the sergeant guessed that eighty was nearer the mark) said that she was employed as “house-keeper,” her duties including answering the front door, cleaning the stairs and landings and the bathrooms shared by the tenants, as well as rendering such “service” as her other duties permitted to those tenants who wished to employ her. She had identified the dead man as Mr. John Ward of 5A Belfort Grove. He had lived at this address for six months, occupying the room of a Mr. Claude d’Alvarley, an actor, now in His Majesty’s Forces. Mr. d’Alvarley still paid the rent of the flat, and Mr. Ward occupied it on a basis of friendly agreement.

  Concerning Mr. Ward himself, Mrs. Maloney could—or would—give no information. “’E was a gentleman—which is more’n I’d say of some,” she volunteered, “and’e kep’’isself to’isself and caused no bother.”

  “Relations?”

  How was she to know? Mr. Ward wasn’t one of those who made confidences not asked for, and she’d got too much to do to gossip. “I did out’is room once a week by arrangement—Tuesday’s my day for’im, and’e always obliged by going out so’s to leave me free to get on with it. And I’ve never’ad no dealings with the police, nor don’t want to, and I say so straight. I’ve me character for twenty-five years since me’usband was took, and never been in no trouble at all.”

  When this ancient lady had retired, Sergeant Phillips grinned at Macdonald.

  “I went and found her in the local—the Duke of Clarence—and she was properly annoyed. No lady likes to be inquired for by the police, she told me, accident or no accident. The landlord says she’s highly respectable and to be trusted. Drinks like a fish but she’s never any the worse for it, and all the tenants say she’s as honest as the day—so the pub people say. The tenants are mostly in the profession—variety folk. There wasn’t a soul in the house this evening.”

  When Wright came back he said, “Claydon couldn’t identify him—but I didn’t expect him to.”

  Macdonald nodded, and then said: “These two statements—Mallaig’s and Claydon’s—tally remarkably well over the events at the bridge. Remembering their relative positions, there isn’t a single discrepancy. Mallaig said he saw another man’s face in the matchlight—but both men agree that they heard no other footsteps after deceased came on the bridge. That’s a bit remarkable. Glaydon did not say that he heard Mallaig approach the bridge, and Mallaig states that Claydon, to the best of his belief, was below the bridge when deceased was struck. Since it doesn’t seem probable on the face of it that there’s any collusion between those two witnesses, we’re faced with the probability that another man arrived on the bridge unheard by the man immediately beneath it.”

  “You accept these two statements without doubt, sir?”

  “No. I never accept any statement until I can prove it, but the fact that these two independently narrated identical facts makes me believe that both statements are true so far as they go. They both told exactly what they saw and heard—though that’s not to say that they told all that they saw and heard, or that they are truthful and innocent people.”

  “How do you suppose that the man Mallaig says he saw got on to the bridge—since Claydon, immediately underneath, didn’t hear him?”

  “Mallaig didn’t hear him either. He says that he saw a face. It might have been an optical delusion—matchlight is very confusing. However, we have the one objective fact we can’t get away from: deceased had his skull smashed in by a whacking great blow which was probably struck by that coal hammer your man picked up from the lower path which goes under the bridge.”

  Wright pondered. “If both Mallaig and Claydon are speaking the truth, it beats me how anyone else got on to the bridge without either of the other two hearing footsteps. Do you think there could be any other possibility: could the hammer have been thrown, for instance ?”

  Macdonald replied: “I always hesitate to sa
y that a thing’s impossible, and I’m quite willing to experiment, but I feel very doubtful. If you throw a hammer it tends to revolve in the air owing to the fact that the two ends are unequal in weight, and it would be very difficult to throw it in such a manner that the weighted end would hit its objective with the necessary force, I was playing about with a similar idea in my own mind. I thought of a catapult, but again I doubt if any projectile from a catapult could have struck with the force that was used in this case, not merely cracking but smashing the skull. In addition to this, there is the evidence from Mallaig that he saw another face in the matchlight—a face which he says he could recognise again. Of course I haven’t seen Mallaig myself—what was your own opinion of him and of his evidence?”

  “He was a good witness, and he seemed a sound, trustworthy sort of fellow,” said Wright, “but I don’t feel disposed to take either of these witnesses at their face value. Both of them told stories which it would be difficult to disprove—but both stories could have been made up in advance, just to account for the witnesses’ presence at the spot.”

  “That’s perfectly true,” agreed Macdonald, “but it’s worth bearing in mind that Mallaig could have got away without attracting any attention at all, and that he chose to give the alarm quite deliberately. Had he been concerned in the murder, I doubt if he would have shouted for the police.”

  “Maybe not,” said Wright, “though it’s an old trick to pretend to discover a body when you’ve just committed the murder yourself.”

  Macdonald nodded. “Admittedly—and I don’t want you to think I’m accepting either statement without reserve. Both men’s careers will have to be looked into very carefully. However, I should like to spend a little time considering that bridge where the murder took place. Have you got a man posted there?”