Death on the Last Train

by George Bellairs

  Littlejohn heard all the commotion in a semi-doze. The halting of the train, the shouting voices, the tramping feet outside. He had gone through so much of it since he left Euston—was it yesterday or last week? He was impervious to the worst they could do. The dim light of the compartment and his own physical weariness filled him with a sad lethargy. The journey would end somewhere, some time.

  There was a loud popping noise, like the bursting of a steam pipe—or was it a revolver shot? Littlejohn sat upright. Steam was oozing from beneath the seats. It must have been the apparatus giving up the ghost entirely.

  The train began slowly to move again.

  Guard and driver had mounted once more and the clanking contraption crawled painfully to the cabin, where, after a shouted consultation, the signalman give them the all-clear to Salton.

  Salton station was cold and desolate, and the remaining staff bad tempered.

  “Where’ve you been?” snarled the stationmaster as the train staggered to a standstill.

  Ted Drake explained, not too graciously.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said the official. “What next? I never ’eard the likes of it. Well, come on. . . Get crackin’. Shut them doors and let’s be seein’ the last of you all.”

  The Rev. Beaglehole was first off the train. The initial fine alcoholic rapture had worn thin, and he wondered what his wife would say at the late hour. . .

  The munition workers held an inquest into the delay and, having wrung an explanation from the guard, cursed the railways, showed their passes and went into the rainy night. The Good Samaritans noisily dispersed after a volley of “Good-nights.” Harold Claypott, shaken from sleep by the guard, seemed more sober and was able to make his unsteady way home under his own power. He was a bachelor, living with two maiden sisters. He was in a vile temper when he reached his destination and found them both in bed, and he took his usual mean revenge on them. Unsteadily taking a match from his pocket he lighted the fires laid ready for morning in the kitchen and dining-room and then, leaving his wet macintosh at the foot of the stairs, reeled up to bed and fell asleep in his underclothes and dirty shoes.

  At Salton station Littlejohn again thrust out his head.

  “Where are we?”

  “Salton, sir. Ellinborne next stop.”

  Sid Grimes, the porter, always made a point of looking in the empty first-class compartments before the train left. He had once found a shilling in one of them and, on another occasion, a half-crown thriller, so he kept up the habit with hope in his breast.

  Grimes peeped in the hutch recently left by the Beaglehole and drew a blank. Then he opened the next door.

  Sid reeled back a pace and broke into a run towards the stationmaster.

  “Mr. Blades, Mr. Blades,” he panted. “Just come here. They’s a dead body in the first-class. . .”

  “Get away with yer,” replied his boss, tartly. “You been seeing things.”

  But he followed Grimes, all the same.

  Littlejohn was there already with the guard.

  “Stand aside … stand clear,” shouted Mr. Blades officiously. He was a small, thin, emaciated man with codfish eyes, a huge moustache, loose limbs and enormous hands and feet. “Oo are you?” he asked Littlejohn.

  Littlejohn explained and showed his warrant-card. Mr. Blades carefully perused the free pass given to Littlejohn by a friendly picture-house manager in Hampstead, contained in the other side of the warrant-case and, in the heat of the moment, seemed quite satisfied.

  “Wot ’ad we better do, sir?”

  “Send for the local police at once and hold the train until they arrive. Don’t any of you touch anything.”

  “Edward! Edward!!” bawled the stationmaster, as though beginning a popular and famous Scottish tragic ballad.

  The booking clerk emerged from sorting and locking-up his tickets in his lair.

  “Send for the police at once, Edward. Try to get Mister Forrester, the Chief Constable. Tell ’im we found a man shot through the ’ead on the eleven-four in … an’ he’s dead. Say that they’s a Scotland Yard detective already on the case. Got that, Edward? Well, get cracking!”

  And with a large paw Mr. Blades dismissed him like a football referee sending a guilty player from the field.

  Timothy Bellis lay among the dirt and fag-ends on the floor of his compartment, with a revolver near his hand and a hole in his temple.

  A thick-set, nautical-looking man suddenly arrived on the platform.

  “That the eleven-four just in?” he said huskily, buttonholing Sid Grimes, who in the excitement of events was busy chasing his tail. “It does get in some time, then. I got so cold waitin’ for the boss, I just nipped round to the back door of the Navigation for a warmer. . .”

  The porter looked blankly at his questioner and then his face lit up.

  “Eh, Mr. Tarrant, I’m glad you’ve come. Your boss ’as been found shot dead in the train. … Suicide, they say …”

  Tarrant stiffened. Then he grasped the palpitating porter by the lapels of his jacket.

  “Where is ’e? Where’ve they put ’im?” he breathed harshly.

  “Still in the train. Waitin’ fer the perlice. Scotland Yard’s already on the job. . . An’ you leave me alone, Tarrant. No need to shake me like that … I ain’t done ’im in.”

  But Tarrant was running along the platform like one demented.

  “Suicide,” he called as he ran. “Suicide … To ’ell with that for a tale. They’ve got ’im at last … Murder. That’s wot it is. Murder. Where is ’e?”

  Two men had to hold him back to prevent him meddling with the body.

  Chapter II

  The Chief Constable Feels Guilty

  Littlejohn was intoxicated by fatigue and could hardly keep his eyes open. His brain refused to register all the Chief Constable was saying.

  Captain Forrester was a tall, heavily-built man in his middle forties. Salton being a County Borough controlled its own police, and the Chief Constable was a hard-working officer who had risen in the ranks in other towns. In his official clothes and wearing his cap he looked his age, for he had bright blue eyes, a fresh complexion, a humorous mouth and a good carriage. Minus his cap, however, he seemed years older. He was completely bald on top with a fringe of fair, almost sandy hair all round a shiny pink dome. His record was unusually good and the force he controlled was efficient and contented.

  Forrester had clutched at Littlejohn like a drowning man at a straw when he found him with the body of the dead man. He wanted his help badly. He would make it all right with Scotland Yard and give him every facility for completing his brief business in the neighbouring town of Ellinborne. Besides, the hotels in the latter town were all third-rate. Now, The Laughing Man, at Salton, was really tip-top. Why not stay there and be comfortable?

  Littlejohn didn’t need much persuading. They sent his bag to the hotel and booked a room for him. The fatal railway coach was slipped from the train and after the police had carefully examined the compartment whence the body of Bellis had been removed, it was locked and put in the siding with a constable on guard. An excited statement was taken from Bellis’s manservant, Tarrant, and a police car sent to Mereton to bring in Bessie Emmott. The police surgeon, Dr. Cooper, who in spite of the late hour seemed keen on his work, began an autopsy on the body right away.

  Then Forrester took Littlejohn to the police station to explain why he was so anxious to enlist his aid.

  It was a dismal sort of building, old, with little in the way of comfort and smelling strongly of disinfectant. Even the Chief Constable’s office was bare and depressing. There was a big fire in the old-fashioned grate, but the desks were of plain wood and the chairs old and as hard as bricks. Defence regulations and police notices plastered the walls.

  PORT OF SALTON.

  CARRYING OF CAMERAS AND TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS.

  It is forbidden to …

  So Salton was a port, was it? Never heard of it, mused Littlejohn.

>   FISHING GROUNDS … BUOYS AND LIGHTS …

  MINES … WRECKAGE WASHED IN BY THE TIDE …

  HIGH TIDE THIS DAY. . . And then a blank. Somebody was keeping it a secret! Littlejohn’s dim eyes roamed from one poster to another. All illuminated by a solitary bleak electric lamp shaded by a hideous old-fashioned bell-shaped affair of opaque glass.

  Tea arrived in a large brown teapot with thick cups and huge saucers. There was a bottle of rum on the tray. The atmosphere took a turn for the better.

  Midnight is a bad time to start investigating sudden death. The best that Kenneth Forrester could do was to send for the police surgeon and ask him to make sure at once that it was suicide, as indicated by all the evidence, and gather the names of as many travellers on the train and of station personnel as possible. An immediate interview with Bessie Emmott was also desirable. Littlejohn had mentioned that the large blonde had seen Timothy off at Mereton. No need to say more. All Salton knew about Timothy and Bessie.

  They had hardly settled down after putting their wet clothes to dry in the charge room, before Dr. Cooper was in after making his preliminary examination of the body.

  “Thought I’d better let you know all’s quite consistent with suicide. I’ll make a proper job of it later, but superficially the wound could very well have been self-inflicted. And in the circumstances …”

  Cooper pulled up a chair to the table, poured himself a cup of dark-coloured tea and laced it well with the rum.

  A phlegmatic physician of the old school, about sixty years of age and running a large practice as well as serving the police. Tall and as heavy as the Chief Constable, but whereas Forrester was fair and ruddy, Cooper had a good shock of grey hair and a sallow complexion. He looked like a white nigger, with his thick lips, heavy snub nose, dark eyes and clean ready smile. He was well-groomed and, considering the late hour, looked very fresh and alert.

  “. . . Position of body, gun fallen from his hand, angle the bullet entered the temple and powder burns, seem conclusive.”

  “All the same, I’m worried, doctor,” answered Forrester. “You know how Bellis has been of late.”

  Forrester turned to Littlejohn.

  “I admit the doctor’s case, Inspector. Tarrant, Bellis’s man, identified the revolver as his master’s, but swore by all his gods that it wasn’t suicide. That, of course, doesn’t count for much against the circumstances and Dr. Cooper’s report, but what worries me is that I feel responsible for it in a way …”

  “Responsible?” asked Littlejohn. He was wondering what all the fuss was about and why he’d almost forcibly been retained in the case.

  “Now, don’t be silly, Forrester,” said Cooper bluntly. “You’ve been up all night and you’ll feel better in the morning. How can you be blamed if a fellow kills himself on a moving train? We know that since his wife died Bellis has gone downhill. He treated her damn badly during her life-time, but down at bottom he must have thought a lot of her. Folks are funny, aren’t they? He must have got to the far end and taken the quick way out.”

  “It’s just this, gentlemen,” replied Forrester miserably. “In my view Bellis was driven to suicide. I knew he was being driven and I’ve done nothing to prevent it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Chief Constable opened a file at his elbow and took out six sheets of cheap paper. Common stuff with messages typed across it.

  “Just after his wife’s death, Bellis received that letter. No finger prints on it except his own; no means of tracing whence it came. The other five were equally uninformative.”

  Littlejohn took the paper, scrutinised it and passed it to Cooper.

  YOU KILLED YOUR WIFE, BELLIS, AND NOW, BY GOD, YOU’LL PAY.

  “Just the usual vindictive, anonymous letter, eh?” muttered the surgeon. “Written by the usual amateur purveyor of justice …?”

  “Yes, but wait a minute. Here’s another.”

  I’VE TOLD YOU YOU’D PAY. YOU’VE NOT FINISHED YET.

  “Well …? Just another threat.”

  “No. Look at the date pencilled at the bottom. After he got that note, Bellis came to me and I put on the date of receipt. It was three days after the Salton Building Society crash. The bulk of Bellis’s money was in that.”

  “Well, I’m damned! Might have been a coincidence, and whoever wrote that note took the chance to gloat a bit …”

  “You might not have come across the details of that affair, Inspector.”

  “No. I can’t say that I have.”

  “The Salton Building Society was run almost like a bank. Good rates of interest, bulk of the deposits on demand, high local prestige and most of its assets in local mortgages. Somebody started a whispering campaign against it. In spite of every effort by officials, there was a run on the society. Its affairs are still being wound-up. Given a chance to liquidate its assets normally, it would have paid twenty shillings in the pound. The panic, however, reduced the dividend to an estimated ten shillings. There were rumours that Bellis had made a pretty penny in director’s fees and such like, but there was no legal way of getting at him. Those who lost money on it, however, hated him.”

  “A few weeks after the crash, he got this …”

  YOU’VE PAID YOUR FIRST INSTALMENT. BUT YOU’VE NOT FINISHED YET BY A LONG CHALK.

  The doctor turned the paper over and back in his heavy fingers.

  “This is damnable. And it might happen to anybody. You or me, or you, Inspector. What’s to prevent the husband of a patient I’ve lost or a felon who’s done a stretch through your efforts starting on us. No way of detecting him. It’s frightening … In fact, if this is the cause of Bellis’s suicide, it takes on the form of murder.”

  “Well, we might have an idea who’d taken offence at us,” said Forrester. “We could make a list and perhaps trace the culprit by a process of elimination …”

  “Yes,” interposed Littlejohn. “Threats of that kind are a part of our job, but in this case I suppose there would be almost the whole town to go at.”

  “Yes. Everybody knew what a swine he was to his wife. Hundreds suffered in the building society affair and blamed Bellis. The letters were all posted at the main post office, Salton. Not a clue on the paper or the envelopes. And there are hundreds of typewriters in the town.”

  “Any more letters?”

  “Yes. His house was burned to the ground. As plain a case of arson as you could wish.”

  “He’d be insured, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yes. But he’d a devil of a job with the insurance company. Their assessor found what might well have been the remains of a fire-raising gadget in the ruins. Looked like being a court case. They settled at a compromise figure. There wasn’t definite proof that it was Bellis who started the fire.”

  “Well, it was an old house; a big rambling affair. He’d get enough out of the company to set himself up in a cosy modern one. By the way, how did the house get so well alight as to be completely gutted?”

  “Bellis was at Mereton, visiting his light o’ love. Tarrant, who wasn’t supposed to leave the place empty, dodged off for an hour or two with his cronies. Whoever did the job made quite sure there was a big blaze. And as to Bellis getting himself enough to build a new house, that wasn’t the point. His collection of pottery, furniture and pictures was completely destroyed. You recollect how proud he was of his Turner, his Crome and his Corot. He’d a precious lot of china and such, too, picked up here and there with infinite pains and often at great expense.”

  “I remember, now. He used to put it in the local paper whenever he’d secured some new treasure.”

  “Yes. It was all going to be a monument to him when he died. It was left to the town in his Will. The Timothy Bellis Bequest. His Ralph Wood and Whieldon figures, Toby jugs and the like, were priceless and irreplaceable. And he’d Sheraton and Heppelwhite furniture with the makers’ receipts to show they were genuine. All those went up in smoke at the fire. However much insurance he drew, he couldn’t repl
ace it. On the one night Tarrant took a brief spell off, that happened.”

  “His unknown pursuer meant business. That’s obvious.”

  “Bellis got so scared he was never off our doorstep. We did all we could. We put a man on watching his house and another keeping an eye on his movements. Then this arrived.”

  POLICE PROTECTION, EH? MUCH GOOD WILL IT DO YOU. MORE TO FOLLOW.

  “And did more follow?”

  “Not at once. There was a lull for two months. Just as Bellis was beginning to feel he could breathe again, came this.”

  WHAT DOES BESSIE EMMOTT DO WHEN YOU’RE AWAY? YOU SURELY DON’T THINK YOU’RE THE ONLY PEBBLE ON THE BEACH.

  “Trying to bust up his relations with his mistress, too, eh?”

  “The writer failed that time. Bessie seemed to convince Bellis that she was true to him. I’ve no doubt she was. He’d taken to drink and was a bag of nerves. She was the only friend he’d got left. He was so shattered by the time he got that letter that he wouldn’t stir a foot alone after dark, and slept with a revolver—the one we found with the body—under his pillow. He kept up visiting Bessie, but Tarrant, his bodyguard, met him at this end and Bessie always saw him safe on the train at Mereton.”

  “What about epistle number six?”

  “Here it is.”

  THINGS ARE DRAWING TO A CLOSE. YOU’VE PAID WITH NEARLY ALL YOU’VE GOT EXCEPT YOUR LIFE. I’LL BE SENDING THE BILL.

  “If he hadn’t killed himself last night, this might have been very ominous,” said Cooper.

  “True. As it is, I think this series of letters has gradually driven him to suicide. The police have been helpless. We worked like blacks to get a line on the writer, without results, and we’ve let Bellis be slowly driven to taking his own life. I don’t intend to let this drop and that’s why I’d like you to help me, Inspector Littlejohn. I hesitated about calling in Scotland Yard, but now that you’ve been delivered on the doorstep, so to speak, I very much want you to stay and help me clear my conscience. As you say, doctor, the whole business is frightening. Like putting the evil eye on somebody. … What the blazes is that? Less noise out there!”