***
‘Missing from his home, 54 Wharfedale Terrace, Hudley, Yorkshire, since Thursday, January 12th, William Quarmby Manetot. Here is a description of Mr Manetot, who by profession is a schoolmaster. Age 47, height 5 feet 8 inches; very slender, stoops considerably; thick brown hair turning grey, brown beard; complexion pale, eyes brown; wears tortoise-shell spectacles with very thick lens; walks with a limp as a result of a shrapnel wound. When last seen he was dressed in grey tweed suit, grey pullover, soft grey felt hat, dark tweed coat, black shoes, and was carrying a small suit case and a black leather satchel. Any listener who has information about any person answering to this description should communicate at once with the Hudley police, telephone Hudley 60006. Mr Manetot, whose studies in the economic history of his native county are well known in academic circles, has been working under great pressure of late, and it is feared some ill may have befallen him.’
***
In the Audley Private Hotel, Northerley-on-Sea, the loudspeaker stood on a high shelf in the lounge, just opposite the reception office. As the reading of the police notice concluded, a sallow young man with dark hair and a black tie, who was lounging by the office window, took out from his pocket an envelope which was stamped but bore no postmark. He turned it over once or twice thoughtfully, then suddenly jerked out the several sheets it contained and began to read. The creases in the sheets were deep and soiled, as if they had often been refolded, the writing was small, but decided and the writing of an educated man.
***
‘My dear Matthew,’ read the young man, ‘I am writing to give you an account of a very extraordinary experience I have just had, and to ask your advice as to what I ought to do. It seems to me that my plain duty is to communicate with the police—yet what have I really to tell them, after all? The whole affair is so slight, so subtle, so far from obvious, that I really dread the thought of trying to explain my doubts and suspicions to a sergeant or inspector or whatever it is, in a seaside town of this kind. A sharp, shrewd bustling man, accustomed to petty pickpockets and confidence tricksters, I expect he would be; and such a man would think me mad! And how does one frame a statement of that kind? How convince an unknown policeman of one’s honest motive? Who does one ask for? How begin one’s tale? Besides, I don’t know either the name of the first person concerned, or the face of the second.
‘On the other hand, you know, Matthew, I strongly suspect that murder has been committed here. Yes, the whole thing really looks very fishy to me. And as a decent law-abiding citizen, I can’t just pass by on the other side and risk leaving a murderer at large, now can I? So here I am, in the lounge of the Audley Private Hotel, scribbling it all down for you to read. I shall post this to you on my way to the station, and I want you to give it your serious consideration, and telephone me exactly what you think I ought to do. Give me a proper legal opinion, in your capacity as my solicitor, rather than as my friend. I shall go back to Hudley by to-morrow afternoon.
‘Meanwhile, I confess, Matthew, I’m taking very good care not to be alone in any room here. The reason for this will appear in the course of my story; but I can assure you that I’m very glad of the company of the two thin spinsters by the lounge fire. I certainly shan’t venture upstairs to my bedroom. Indeed, I’m not sure that it’s wise of me to stay here at all. But then, if I went to the station I should have an hour to wait, and somehow after yesterday I’m not fond of waiting at stations. Besides, I want to see if they find poor Mrs Whitaker. And whether she’s alive or dead when they find her—I’ve not much doubt which it will be, myself. But I’m wasting time and paper, and not getting to my story. So here goes.
‘Yesterday afternoon (that is, the afternoon of Thursday January 12th) I was sitting at my desk at home in Hudley, just finishing the proofs of my new book on weavers’ guilds in the 14th century, when the telephone rang. It was one of those “personal” trunk calls, and after I had assured the operater several times that I was myself, I was put through to Sir Thomas Cadell. Of course I needn’t enlarge on Cadell’s identity to you, Matthew; he’s one of our greatest economists, and if his advice had been followed earlier, Europe wouldn’t be in the mess it is to-day. I knew his son well—the one who was killed in the War—and Sir Thomas has always been kind enough to take a fatherly interest in my work. I was delighted, but surprised, when he rang me up from his country home; for I couldn’t imagine any circumstances arising between myself and Sir Thomas, which should necessitate such urgent communication. However, it was all quite simple really. The poor old boy began by telling me he wasn’t at all well.
‘“I have a cold, Will,” he said, in a querulous tone. “I keep coughing—peck, peck, peck, a silly dry cough, it is. It came on last week and it doesn’t get any better, in fact, to-day I’m not too clever, as you say in your part of the country, not too clever at all.”
‘“I’m very sorry to hear it, Sir Thomas,” I said, and meant it, for I like the old chap—he’s so simple and good and modest—as much as I admire his work, and that’s saying a good deal. ‘Is there anything I can do to help you, sir?’ I said, for I was troubled about him, he sounded so shaky and unlike himself.’
‘‘‘It’s your holidays, isn’t it, Will?” he said. When I told him yes, he seemed to hesitate, and then went on: “How is your book going, lad?”
‘‘‘I’m just correcting the last eight pages of the proofs,’ I replied.
‘‘‘Then could you do a job of work for me?” said Sir Thomas eagerly.
‘‘‘I could!” said I with emphasis. ‘“Tell me what it is, and the thing’s done.”
‘When I heard what it was I didn’t feel so sure, however, especially as I was a bit fagged with the effort to finish my proofs before school began. It appeared that Sir Thomas was booked to give two lectures on the history of silver currency, in a Lancashire town—one that very evening at seven-thirty, and another at the same time the following day. Cadell wasn’t fit to travel—“or so my wife says,” grumbled the old chap—and would I do the lectures for him. He sounded so worried and ill and mournful that in spite of some misgivings I replied at once that I certainly would do the lectures, though what the audiences would think of the substitution I could by no means guarantee.
‘‘‘You’ll do it better than I—my working days are over,” said Sir Thomas, in a high, peevish tone.
‘I told him with conviction that he was talking nonsense. The old boy seemed pleased, and his voice was more cheerful as he gave me details of the place, time, and subject of the two lectures.
‘‘‘Shall I telephone or wire to announce my coming?” I asked.
‘‘‘No; what’s the use? It’s too late for the change to be made public. Just turn up and talk,” said Sir Thomas, with a chuckle. I believe he rather hoped the audience would mistake me for him, and the notion of such a leg-pull cheered him.
‘He rang off. I looked at my watch and saw there wasn’t much time if I were to be punctual to the hour named—railway traffic through the Pennine hills is not quick work. I snatched up my notes and writing materials and hurriedly threw a few clothes into a case. Old Mrs Ingram, my landlady, had gone out, and I was alone in the house, so I scrawled on a piece of paper: Back on Saturday, and hurried off. As I went down our little terrace I thought I saw Mrs Ingram sitting chatting in the bay window next door, and waved to her. I don’t know why I report all these minor details so carefully, Matthew—or yes, perhaps I do, it’s because I’m so anxious to be absolutely accurate about what may have to be police evidence.
‘In the train I busied myself preparing notes for the two lectures. When I came to consider, it seemed rather odd to lecture twice, on consecutive evenings, presumably to the same audience, on the same rather limited and specialist subject, and it did just occur to me as I worked, to wonder, in some anxiety, whether Sir Thomas had not been mistaken in his details. And of course he had, though not, as I thought, about the s
ubject.
‘When I reached the hall—a large brick erection belonging to a chapel—it was all dark and silent, and there was nobody about; Sir T.’s name was announced on a big board outside, certainly, but only one lecture was advertised, and the date given was Friday, January 13th. It was easy to see how Sir Thomas might have fallen into the blunder; there had, perhaps, been some discussion about the date, and he had made a second entry in his diary and forgotten to erase the first. Easily done, and I couldn’t find it in my heart to curse the old fellow; but still, there it was. And there I was, stranded in a dreary industrial town, with an engagement there twenty-four hours hence, and nothing to do there before. I returned promptly to the station to ask for trains back to Hudley, but was snubbed by the booking-clerk, who seemed insulted that anyone should wish to do such a foolishly devious journey. A porter was more sympathetic, but all our poring over a well-thumbed time-table which he took from his waistcoat pocket only confirmed that the journey, in the evening was highly tedious, not to say tiresome. Why should I toil back to Hudley, I began to reflect, only to toil here again next day? My proofs were in my satchel; I could work on them anywhere. I was not expected at home. Why not stay here?
‘I suggested this to my sympathetic porter, but he seemed not to like the plan, and shook his head over it doubtfully.
‘‘‘Why not go on to Northerley instead, sir?” he suggested. ‘“Now there’s a place! Northerley-on-Sea! Don’t tell me you never heard of Northerley,”’ he said with a grin, ‘“and you from Yorkshire?”
‘I grinned back, for Northerley is one of the pleasure cities of the industrial north—the lads and lasses of factory and mill live the year through on the memories of the joyous week they spend there. Seeing me incline to the project, the porter pressed it; there was a fine train to Northerley in half an hour, he said, a club train, an express, softly cushioned, brilliantly lighted, a really comfortable train. Twenty minutes by that train would see me in Northerley, with hotels and picture palaces—
‘‘‘And the sea,” I said.
‘‘‘Aye—and t’sea,” agreed my porter. “If you like sea in winter.”
‘I felt I liked the sea at any time, and particularly just now after my long bout of close work; so I booked a ticket for Northerley Central from the supercilious clerk, and began to pace up and down the station, waiting for the express.
‘Doesn’t it seem strange, Matthew, that all these small unimportant incidents should have combined into this; that I can help to hang a murderer? They might so easily not have happened! If that porter had not been on duty, for instance? But he was; and so I waited for the train to Northerley.
‘The station was by now very quiet. My porter friend, scorning the sombre covered way sloping up to the bridge, had swung himself down to the rails and crossed to the ticket office on the opposite platform, and there seemed nobody else about at all. It was a cheerless gloomy scene; the paving stones beneath my feet were dark with grime, the remote glass roof over my head was dark with grime, the supporting metal pillars were dark with grime, the very air seemed grimy too. The ticket office across the rails was the only building to show a light; on my side all was dark and silent and empty; I tried the handles of one or two doors, but they seemed locked. A quiet depressing rain had begun to fall; the drops could be seen gliding silently to earth in the light of the rare and dirty station lamps. Across the rails, in the ticket office, someone now shouted: “Good night!” A door slammed cheerfully, steps receded, silence fell again; the station seemed even gloomier than before. I shivered, turned up my coat collar, quickened my step.
‘It was at this moment that I heard the whispering.
‘You know my habit of mind, Matthew; you know I’m an incredulous, questioning sort of fellow, not easily convinced that something odd is happening, not easily impressed. I tend always to seek a natural explanation before having recourse to an extraordinary one. And so that night—strange to think it was only last night—as I could see nobody about who might be whispering, my first reaction was to decide that the sound could not be that of human voices, but must proceed from some other cause. It must come from the wind whistling through the telegraph wires, or stirring a shred of paper, or driving the rain on the roof. But there was no wind; the rain fell soft and straight; no torn corner flapped among the newspaper placards round the closed bookstall. I spent a few minutes trying to trace the sound thus to its origin, but having failed, made an effort to shake off the obsession and resumed my pacing. But the whispering went on—soft, sibilant, continuous, it was never broken by a laugh or a pause such as enliven normal cheerful converse.
‘As I paced up and down I began to locate the sound, it seemed to come from above my head, whenever I passed one of the locked waiting-rooms. I halted on the spot, yes, the hissing sound certainly was strongest there. I looked up, and saw that one of the grimy panes leaned backward in its grimy frame, open. Ah! The air hisses out through there, I decided, for the moment satisfied with this explanation. But as I stood there, close to the ventilator, the whisper seemed to become human; I even thought I caught a definite word: sand. Yes; in the sand, I heard, in the sand. I moved away at once, uncomfortable, if that was a human conversation, then I had been eavesdropping. Ashamed, I walked briskly away, to the far end of the platform, where it dipped and tailed off into nothing. The prospect here was even more dismal; just a yard of gleaming metal in the light of the last station lamp, and then endless darkness and rain. And the whispering seemed to have followed me; sand, yes, in the sand.
‘I shook my shoulders angrily, annoyed with myself, for allowing my nerves to be so easily upset and limped briskly back, determined to settle the matter once and for all. If there were people inside that waiting-room, then I could go inside too. I marched up to the hissing ventilator, halted there and tried to peer through the window, below, but the panes were of opaque glass for the purpose of privacy, and nothing was to be seen. I strode up to the door, tried the handle and shook it violently, it did not yield. The whispering, however, stopped at once.
‘‘‘There is someone within, then!” I thought, and shook the door again.
‘Just then I observed that one of the door panels had been broken, and replaced with plain glass. Irritated into bad manners by thwarted curiosity, I stooped and peered through this pane.
‘The hanging lamp outside threw a shaft of light obliquely across the little room on to the far wall. The surrounding darkness was so black, and the shaft of light so narrow and so clearly defined, that for a moment I was not sure whether what I saw was a framed picture or a reality. Then the girl became aware of my presence; she turned her head quickly, and shot me a viperish glance from her beautiful eyes. Yes, what I saw was the head and shoulders of a real girl; a beautiful creature, brilliantly fair, with a black velvet cap perched on her small neat head. She sat erect with a defiant air. Her pale hair shone, her rounded cheek had a delicate bloom, her lips were rich and shapely, her rather broad tip-tilted nose gave her face character. Only her eyes, which shone out in the dark like those of a tigress, were displeasing; they were—well, they were like a tigress’s eyes: golden, gleaming, inhuman.
‘I see I’ve just compared her to a viper, and now to a tigress! Well, and perhaps I’m not far wrong. That’s the trouble, you see. At this moment she was certainly very angry, and not without cause. I know too much of the difficulty experienced by young people of the poorer kind in finding a place and time for courtship, to blame a pair of lovers for any expedient they may adopt to secure solitude; I forgave these two the jammed door at once, and felt a real mortification for having disturbed them. Yes, there was a young man beside the girl; but—and this is the whole point of the story, Matthew—I saw only his hand, which lay caressingly on the girl’s upper arm. It was a rather unusual hand, however; long and sallow, with very thin fingers, very wide apart; and on the first finger was a ring with a large green stone. In the shaft from the lamp
the green stone gleamed like a cat’s eyes in the headlights of a car. I saw nothing else of the pair, Matthew; just the girl’s fair head, her velvet beret her rather solid white throat, some rough dark fur below, the man’s curving fingers, the gleaming ring. For a moment I gazed in at them, forgetting myself in my admiration for the Rembrandt chiaroscuro effect, and thinking what a good shot it would make for a camera, then with a start I remembered my manners, and stepped backward out of sight.
‘This might have been a signal for which the whole station was waiting, for at once everything began to be perfectly ordinary and cheerful. A door swung open again on the opposite platform, and out came my porter, his peaked cap perched on the back of his head; whistling cheerfully, he swung himself down to the rails and came across to me.
‘‘‘She won’t be long now, sir,” he said; he nodded reassuringly and began to make a considerable noise throwing parcels on a heavy truck.
‘From the dark slope leading to the bridge there now came the sound of footsteps and cheerful voices; a group appeared—father, mother, two children walking and a babe in arms—then a single man alone, then another group of four; suddenly the platform seemed full of passengers, all talking and laughing, and the station was no longer grim and desolate, a place of eerie shadows and mysterious whispers, but just a normal industrial station, peopled by jolly, sturdy north-country folk. The pair in the waiting-room had evidently resigned themselves to an end of their privacy and released the door, for the woman with the baby in her arms pushed it open and went in without any difficulty.
‘The train roared in; a long, fine, fast, comfortable train, brilliantly lighted and sumptuously upholstered, as my porter had promised me; it was so crowded that the windows were all steamed, but after my lonely wait I was not averse from company, and took the only vacant seat in a smoker without dissatisfaction. In the bustle of entraining I did not observe Tiger Lily and Green Ring, as I called them, on the platform; I cannot swear, Matthew, either that they took the train or did not take it, or that one took it and the other not. If I could give definite information on this point, my duty would be clearer; but I cannot.
Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries Page 24