‘Kalang-alang-alang-alang,’ said Phil, like a level-crossing gong. ‘Look here! When do I kill Haman?’
‘In the second reel,’ Lettcombe commanded. ‘We must shoot the accident to the car all over again. Oh, we use up cars in our job as easy as lyin’, Sergeant. Now! ‘Tention! Charlie!’ — (Bunny took this serve) — ‘You’re going to show poor Jimmy what he thought was Clara’s corpse. That comes after Jimmy’s arrest. Sergeant, do you mind telling your man to stand beside Jimmy? He has only got to look as if he didn’t know what’s coming next. Ready?’
And down the fully revealed road moved the wind that comes with morning-turn — a point or two south of sou-west, ever fortunate to me. Bunny moved to the dicky of Mr. Haman’s car and opened it.
‘Stand closer to the Bobby, Phil,’ he called, ‘and, Bobby darling, put your hand on his shoulder as though you were arresting him. Keep out of the picture, Sergeant, and you’ll be able to see exactly how it’s done.’
At the same time that Lettcombe levelled a light valise, in lieu of camera, Bunny took out from the dicky what he had put there less than two hours ago. And, as he had then hauled ‘Aunt Ellen’ out backwards, so now he shook her and he shook her and he kept on shaking her, forward from where her skirt was to where her head had been. Bits of paper, buttered; bits of bottle-glass; pieces of pomatum-pot (I must have been wrong about the hair-oil) and pieces of groceries came out; but what came out most and seemed as if it would never stop, was the down of the eider-duck (Somateria mollissima). Such is the ingenuity of man, who, from a few square feet of bed-gear, can evoke earth- enveloping smoke-screens of ‘change, alarm, surprise’ — but, above all, surprise!
The Policeman disappeared. When we saw him again — Lo! he was older than Abraham, and whiter than Lot’s wife. He blew a good deal through his Father Christmas moustache, but no words came. Then he took off his Esquimaux gloves, and picked feebly at his Polar Bear belly.
Phil lurched towards us like a penguin through a blizzard. He was whiter than the Policeman, for he had been hatless, and his hair had been oiled, and he was damp all over. Bunny motioned him daintily to the open dicky.
The Sergeant, as advised, had kept out of the picture, and so had been able to see exactly how it was done. He sat at the base of the lamp- post at the crossing of the arterial by-pass, and hugged its standard with both arms. After repeated inquiries, none of which he was able to answer, because he could not speak, we left him there, while the Policeman persisted in trying to moult.
* * *
I do not laugh when I drive, which is why I was as nearly as possible dead when we followed the dachshund into Cadogan Gardens, where the numbers are ill-arranged, and drove round and round till some young people, who had been dancing, came out from beneath a striped awning into the first of the pure morning sunlight. One of them was called Doris. Phil called her, so that all Cadogan Gardens were aware. Yet it was an appreciable time before she connected the cry with the plumage of that mating bird.
Naaman’s Song
‘GO, wash thyself in Jordan — go, wash thee and be clean!’ Nay, not for any Prophet will I plunge a toe therein! For the banks of curious Jordan are parcelled into sites. Commanded and embellished and patrolled by Israelites.
There rise her timeless capitals of Empires daily born. Whose plinths are laid at midnight, and whose streets are packed at morn; And here come hired youths and maids that feign to love or sin In tones like rusty razor-blades to tunes like smitten tin.
And here be merry murtherings, and steeds with fiery hooves; And furious hordes with guns and swords, and clamberings over rooves; And horrid tumblings down from Heaven, and flights with wheels and wings; And always one weak virgin who is chased through all these things.
And here is mock of faith and truth, for children to behold; And every door of ancient dirt reopened to the old; With every word that taints the speech, and show that weakens thought; And Israel watcheth over each, and — doth not watch for nought...
But Pharphar — but Abana — which Hermon launcheth down — They perish fighting desert-sands beyond Damascus-town. But yet their pulse is of the snows — their strength is from on high. And, if they cannot cure my woes, a leper will I die!
The Mother’s Son
I HAVE a dream — a dreadful dream —
A dream that is never done.
I watch a man go out of his mind.
And he is My Mother’s Son.
They pushed him into a Mental Home.
And that is like the grave
For they do not let you sleep upstairs.
And you’re not allowed to shave.
And it was not disease or crime
Which got him landed there.
But because They laid on My Mother’s Son
More than a man could bear.
What with noise, and fear of death.
Waking, and wounds and cold.
They filled the Cup for My Mother’s Son
Fuller than it could hold.
They broke his body and his mind
And yet They made him live.
And They asked more of My Mother’s Son
Than any man could give.
For, just because he had not died
Nor been discharged nor sick
They dragged it out with My Mother’s Son
Longer than he could stick...
And no one knows when he’ll get well —
So, there he’ll have to be
And, ‘spite of the beard in the looking-glass.
I know that man is me!
Fairy-Kist
THE only important society in existence to-day is the E.C.F. — the Eclectic but Comprehensive Fraternity for the Perpetuation of Gratitude towards Lesser Lights. Its founders were William Lemming, of Lemming and Orton, print-sellers; Alexander Hay McKnight, of Ellis and McKnight, provision-merchants; Robert Keede, M.R.C.P., physician, surgeon, and accoucheur; Lewis Holroyd Burges, tobacconist and cigar importer — all of the South Eastern postal districts — and its zealous, hard-working, but unappreciated Secretary. The meetings are usually at Mr. Lemming’s little place in Berkshire, where he raises pigs.
I had been out of England for awhile, missing several dinners, but was able to attend a summer one with none present but ourselves; several red mullets in paper; a few green peas and ducklings; an arrangement of cockscombs with olives, and capers as large as cherries; strawberries and cream; some 1903 Chateau la Tour; and that locked cabinet of cigars to which only Burges has the key.
It was at the hour when men most gracefully curvet abroad on their hobbies, and after McKnight had been complaining of systematic pilfering in his three big shops, that Burges told us how an illustrious English astrologer called Lily had once erected a horoscope to discover the whereabouts of a parcel of stolen fish. The stars led him straight to it and the thief and, incidentally, into a breeze with a lady over ‘seven Portugal onions’ also gone adrift, but not included in the periscope. Then we wondered why detective-story writers so seldom use astrology to help out the local Sherlock Holmes; how many illegitimate children that great original had begotten in magazine form; and so drifted on to murder at large. Keede, whose profession gives him advantages, illustrated the subject.
‘I wish I could do a decent detective story,’ I said at last. ‘I never get further than the corpse.’
‘Corpses are foul things,’ Lemming mused aloud. ‘I wonder what sort of a corpse I shall make.’
‘You’ll never know,’ the gentle, silver-haired Burges replied. ‘You won’t even know you’re dead till you look in the glass and see no reflection. An old woman told me that once at Barnet Horse Fair — and I couldn’t have been more than seven at the time.’
We were quiet for a few minutes, while the Altar of the Lesser Lights, which is also our cigar-lighter, came into use. The single burner atop, representing gratitude towards Lesser Lights in general, was of course lit. Whenever gratitude towards a named Lesser Light is put forward
and proven, one or more of the nine burners round the base can be thrown into action by pulling its pretty silver draw-chain.
‘What will you do for me,’ said Keede, puffing, ‘if I give you an absolutely true detective yarn?’
‘If I can make anything of it,’ I replied, ‘I’ll finish the Millar Gift.’
This meant the cataloguing of a mass of Masonic pamphlets (1832-59), bequeathed by a Brother to Lodge Faith and Works 5836 E.C. — a job which Keede and I, being on the Library Committee, had together shirked for months.
‘Promise you won’t doctor it if you use it?’ said Keede.
‘And for goodness’ sake don’t bring me in any more than you can help,’ said Lemming.
No practitioner ever comprehends another practitioner’s methods; but a promise was given, a bargain struck; and the tale runs here substantially as it was told.
That past autumn, Lemming’s pig-man (who had been sitting up with a delicate lady-Berkshire) discovered, on a wet Sunday dawn in October, the body of a village girl called Ellen Marsh lying on the bank of a deep cutting where the road from the village runs into the London Road. Ellen, it seemed, had many friends with whom she used to make evening appointments, and Channet’s Ash, as the cross-roads were called, from the big ash that overhung them, was one of her well-known trysting-places. The body lay face down at the highest point of a sloping footpath which the village children had trodden out up the bank, and just where that path turned the corner under Channet’s Ash and dropped into the London Road. The pig-man roused the village constable, an ex-soldier called Nicol, who picked up, close to the corpse, a narrow-bladed fern-trowel, its handle wrapped with twine. There were no signs of a struggle, but it had been raining all night. The pig-man then went off to wake up Keede, who was spending the week- end with Lemming. Keede did not disturb his host, Mrs. Lemming being ill at the time, but he and the policeman commandeered a builder’s handcart from some half-built shops down the London Road; wheeled the body to the nearest inn — the Cup o’ Grapes — pushed a car out of a lock-up; took the shove-halfpenny board from the Oddfellows’ Room, and laid the body on it till the regular doctor should arrive.
‘He was out,’ Keede said, ‘so I made an examination on my own. There was no question of assault. She had been dropped by one scientific little jab, just at the base of the skull, by someone who knew his anatomy. That was all. Then Nicol, the Bobby, asked me if I’d care to walk over with him to Jimmy Tigner’s house.’
‘Who was Jimmy Tigner?’ I asked.
‘Ellen’s latest young man — a believing soul. He was assistant at the local tinsmith’s, living with his mother in a cottage down the street. It was seven o’clock then, and not a soul about. Jimmy had to be waked up. He stuck his head out of the window, and Nicol stood in the garden among the cabbages — friendly as all sin — and asked him what he’d been doing the night before, because someone had been knocking Ellen about. Well, there wasn’t much doubt what Jimmy had been up to. He was altogether “the morning after.” He began dressing and talking out of the window at the same time, and said he’d kill any man who touched Ellen.’
‘Hadn’t the policeman cautioned him?’ McKnight demanded.
‘What for? They’re all friends in this village. Then Jimmy said that, on general principles, Ellen deserved anything she might have got. He’d done with her. He told us a few details (some girl must have given her away), but the point he kept coming back to was that they had parted in “high dungeon.” He repeated that a dozen times. Nicol let him run on, and when the boy was quite dressed, he said “Well, you may as well come on up-street an’ look at her. She don’t bear you any malice now.” (Oh, I tell you the War has put an edge on things all round!) Jimmy came down, jumpy as a cat, and, when we were going through the Cup o’ Grapes yard, Nicol unlocked the garage and pushed him in. The face hadn’t been covered either.’
‘Drastic,’ said Burges, shivering.
‘It was. Jimmy went off the handle at once; and Nicol kept patting him on the back and saying: “That’s all right! I’ll go bail you didn’t do it.” Then Jimmy wanted to know why the deuce he’d been dragged into it. Nicol said “Oh, that’s what the French call a confrontation. But you’re all right.” Then Jimmy went for Nicol. So we got him out of the garage, and gave him a drink, and took him back to his mother. But at the inquest he accounted for every minute of his time. He’d left Ellen under Channet’s Ash, telling her what he thought of her over his shoulder for a quarter of a mile down the lane (that’s what “high dungeon” meant in their language). Luckily two or three of the girls and the bloods of the village had heard ‘em. After that, he’d gone to the Cup o’ Grapes, filled himself up, and told everybody his grievances against Ellen till closing-time. The interestin’ thing was that he seemed to be about the only decent boy of the lot.’
‘Then,’ Lemming interrupted, ‘the reporters began looking for clues. They — they behaved like nothing I’ve ever imagined! I was afraid we’d be dragged into it. You see, that wretched Ellen had been our scullery-maid a few months before, and — my wife — as ill as she was...But mercifully that didn’t come out at the inquest.’
‘No’ Keede went on. ‘Nicol steered the thing. He’s related to Ellen. And by the time Jimmy had broken down and wept, and the reporters had got their sensation, it was brought in “person or persons unknown.”‘
‘What about the trowel?’ said McKnight, who is a notable gardener.
‘It was a most valuable clue, of course, because it explained the modus operandi. The punch — with the handle, the local doctor said — had been delivered through her back hair, with just enough strength to do the job and no more. I couldn’t have operated more neatly myself. The Police took the trowel, but they couldn’t trace it to anyone, somehow. The main point in the village was that no one who knew her wanted to go into Ellen’s character. She was rather popular, you see. Of course the village was a bit disappointed about Jimmy’s getting off; and when he broke down again at her funeral, it revived suspicion. Then the Huish poisoning case happened up in the North; and the reporters had to run off and take charge of it. What did your pig-man say about ‘em, Will?’
‘Oh, Griffiths said: “‘Twas Gawd’s own Mercy those young gen’elmen didn’t ‘ave ‘alf of us ‘ung before they left. They were that energetic!”‘
‘They were,’ said Keede. ‘That’s why I kept back my evidence.’
‘There was the wife to be considered too,’ said Lemming. ‘She’d never have stood being connected with the thing, even remotely.’
‘I took it upon myself to act upon that belief,’ Keede replied gravely. ‘Well — now for my little bit. I’d come down that Saturday night to spend the week-end with Will here; and I couldn’t get here till late. It was raining hard, and the car skidded badly. Just as I turned off the London Road into the lane under Channet’s Ash, my lights picked up a motor-bike lying against the bank where they found Ellen; and I saw a man bending over a woman up the bank. Naturally one don’t interfere with these little things as a rule; but it occurred to me there might have been a smash. So I called out: “Anything wrong? Can I help?” The man said: “No, thanks. We’re all right,” or words to that effect, and I went on. But the bike’s letters happened to be my own initials, and its number was the year I was born in. I wasn’t likely to forget ‘em, you see.’
‘You told the Police?’ said McKnight severely.
‘‘Took ‘em into my confidence at once, Sandy,’ Keede replied. ‘There was a Sergeant, Sydenham way, that I’d been treating for Salonika fever. I told him I was afraid I’d brushed a motor-bike at night coming up into West Wickham, on one of those blind bends — up the hill, and I’d be glad to know I hadn’t hurt him. He gave me what I wanted in twenty-four hours. The bike belonged to one Henry Wollin — of independent means — livin’ near Mitcham.’
‘But West Wickham isn’t in Berkshire — nor is Mitcham,’ McKnight began.
‘Here’s a funny thing,’ Keede w
ent on, without noticing. ‘Most men and nearly all women commit murder single-handed; but no man likes to go man-hunting alone. Primitive instinct, I suppose. That’s why I lugged Will into the Sherlock Holmes business. You hated too.’
‘I hadn’t recovered from those reporters,’ said Lemming.
‘They were rather energetic. But I persuaded Will that we’d call upon Master Wollin and apologise — as penitent motorists — and we went off to Mitcham in my two-seater. Wollin had a very nice little detached villa down there. The old woman — his housekeeper — who let us in, was West Country, talkin’ as broad as a pat o’ butter. She took us through the hall to Wollin, planting things in his back-garden.’
‘A wonderful little garden for that soil,’ said Lemming, who considers himself an even greater gardener than McKnight, although he keeps two men less.
‘He was a big, strong, darkish chap — middle-aged — wide as a bull between the eyes — no beauty, and evidently had been a very sick man. Will and I apologised to him, and he began to lie at once. He said he’d been at West Wickham at the time (on the night of the murder, you know), and he remembered dodging out of the way of a car. He didn’t seem pleased that we should have picked up his number so promptly. Seeing we were helping him to establish an alibi, he ought to have been, oughtn’t he?’
‘Ye mean,’ said McKnight, suddenly enlightened, ‘that he was committing the murder here in Berkshire on the night that he told you he was in West Wickham, which is in Kent.’
‘Which is in Kent. Thank you. It is. And we went on talking about that West Wickham hill till he mentioned he’d been in the War, and that gave me my chance to talk. And he was an enthusiastic gardener, he said, and that let Will in. It struck us both that he was nervous in a carneying way that didn’t match his build and voice at all. Then we had a drink in his study. Then the fun began. There were four pictures on the wall.’
Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) Page 568