Here Comes a Chopper

by Gladys Mitchell

  Roger opened the wicket-gate which led into the grounds, and Dorothy led the way along the narrow path to the circle of pines and the Stone.

  Roger allowed her to go on, and then suddenly he put down his ashplant and he himself dropped flat on his face behind a rhododendron bush, and cautiously peered round its edge.

  He was not, after all, mistaken in supposing that he and Dorothy had been followed. He waited until the newcomer came opposite the bush, then suddenly stretched out his long arms and grabbed the man’s feet away from under him.

  There was an oath in a voice he thought he recognized. Next instant he was astride his victim and grinding his nose into the soft leaf-mould of the park.

  Dorothy turned in her tracks, and arrived at Roger’s side just as he stood up and yanked his victim to a standing position.

  ‘Now, then,’ said Roger, who had hold of the man by the front of his shirt, ‘what do you think you’re doing, following me round?’

  ‘I don’t know you from Adam,’ snarled the man. ‘You let me alone, or——Why, I’m blowed if it isn’t Mr Hoskyn! You must have mistaken me, sir. I——’

  Roger clapped a long, hard palm over his mouth, and told him very roughly to shut up.

  ‘You’re coming to the police station,’ he added. ‘There’s something damned fishy about you, Sim, and I’m going to find out what it is.’

  ‘You’d better leave me alone!’ said the man, immediately changing his tone. ‘You’ve got nothing to charge me with, nothing! This path’s a right of way. I’ve as good a right here as you have. Better, perhaps. I’m a Wandles man when I’m at home.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Roger, struck by a sudden idea, ‘you were the fellow, I’ll bet, who took a kick at me and did your best to settle my hash at Twickenham. Now you jolly well tell me why! And why did you sling me back my half-crown tip, dash it, at Whiteledge?’

  ‘I haven’t been in Twickenham. You’ve made a mistake. And you keep your hands off me, see, else I’ll have the law on you,’ returned Sim, more mildly but in the tone of what certainly seemed a good man’s righteous indignation. ‘I live in this village, I tell you. I’ve got a holiday from Whiteledge now Mr Lingfield’s dead, and I’m stopping at home for a bit. Why should I do any harm? I can’t help it if we run into each other, can I? It ain’t no choice of mine!’

  ‘Why did you swear the dead man was Mr Lingfield when you knew jolly well it wasn’t? Do you mean to swear Mrs Denbies’ life away?’ demanded Roger wrathfully.

  ‘I’ve got nothing again’ Mrs Denbies, sir, and you know it,’ responded Sim. ‘But I’ll be on oath at the inquest, won’t I?’

  They had to let him go. Dorothy watched him out of sight, and then said:

  ‘I’m positive it’s the same man, although it’s hard to be certain without the moustache he was wearing at the match.’

  ‘It might be rather awkward if it weren’t! You weren’t very close to him at Twickenham, and his story seems reasonable enough.’

  ‘I know, but—let’s go back another way.’

  ‘Chin up. We’ve scared him, I think. If he’s up to no good he knows we’re wise to him. I don’t think we’re likely to be bothered with him again, and it’s much too far round if we take any other way now. Come on. Buck up. We’ll hurry, and keep him in sight.’

  This, however, they were not able to do, for, hurry as they would, they saw no more of Sim.

  The path led on through the woods direct to the Stone, which squatted evilly in a clearing surrounded by its ring of guardian pines.

  Dorothy paused, and shuddered.

  ‘I wish we hadn’t come here,’ she said. ‘I—Roger, I do wish we hadn’t run into Sim like that down here! And you said you were always finding him at your elbow in pubs and places. Oh, Roger, you don’t think——?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You don’t think he murdered Mr Lingfield, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t think that will wash at all. If Claudia is right, the body isn’t Mr Lingfield, and until we know who it is we can’t actually implicate Sim.’

  ‘I suppose not. Let’s get away. I feel thoroughly scared.’

  ‘Do you? So do I. But I’d rather like to come here at night to get an authentic thrill.’

  Dorothy shuddered. They walked along the path which skirted the pines and the Stone. ‘By the way,’ Dorothy began. Suddenly there was a sharp crack close at hand. Bomb-conscious, both dropped flat.

  ‘Don’t touch it! Fingerprints!’ yelled Roger, getting to his feet. ‘I felt it whistle past us. Did you?’ He galloped up, pulled out his handkerchief, picked up a heavy spanner of the kind that are used in garages, and headed for the Vicarage lane.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got him cold this time. We’ve only got to get this to the police.’

  They arrived at the Stone House breathless. Laura Menzies came into the drawing-room to greet them.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘I thought you were going to make a day of it. I suppose you were hungry. I knew you didn’t take enough with you.’

  Roger, prompted by Dorothy, recounted all their adventures, produced the spanner with his handkerchief still shielding it, and said they had eaten their sandwiches and were not in the least hungry.

  ‘What were you going to say, Dorothy, when Sim chucked the spanner?’ enquired Roger, when Laura had locked away the spanner in a cupboard.

  ‘I forget. Oh, no, I don’t! I was going to say that, if you work it out, it would have paid Sim to identify the body correctly if he were the murderer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he must have known that Mrs Denbies had said it wasn’t Mr Lingfield, and, as she is the obvious suspect for the murder——’

  ‘I get it. Rather too clever for Sim, though, I should have thought. He hasn’t shown spectacular intelligence in his attempt to lay me out.’

  ‘I suppose he does really mean to lay you out?’ said Laura thoughtfully. ‘I say, I expect you’d like some tea.’ She rang the bell. ‘I mean, take that kick on the head. You ought to have had a pretty severe injury from that, if he’d put a real jerk behind his boot. And, just now, in the woods, why not have used a gun if he really intended dirty work?—Or crept up behind you and coshed you over the head? I can’t see any point in his goings-on.’

  ‘But there isn’t any point! I’m not dangerous to anybody. I don’t know anybody’s secrets. I can’t make head or tail of it,’ said Roger.

  ‘Oh, well, we’d better leave all that to Mrs Croc. She’ll be home first thing in the morning, I expect, if not tonight. I’m rather expecting her tonight. By the way, they’ve postponed the inquest for a day. You’d better ring up your boss.’

  ‘I had notice. I have,’ said Roger.

  With this they did leave it, so far as conversation was concerned; but Roger was far from satisfied. It seemed to him that there was a mystery here which he (the most interested party, since his personal safety was involved) would do well to fathom. He decided to work out whether, unwittingly, he was in possession of somebody’s dangerous secret.

  To this end, he went up to his room at eleven o’clock, and, instead of going to bed, sat down with a notebook and took thought. He went over all the events which had taken place since he had met Dorothy on Maundy Thursday. He tried to discover any scrap of information which he might have obtained (and which he had not already given out to become public property either through police action or reports to the press) which might conceivably affect the safety of Sim or of anyone else at Whiteledge house.

  Midnight approached and found him still unsatisfied. So far as he could tell, he had made no discovery except that the wrecked car was not the vehicle destroyed by the army exercises, and this fact he had immediately communicated to the police, who had been working on it for days. It was nothing to do with the car, then. Therefore there must be something further.

  Midnight struck, and then twelve-thirty. He was not a whit nearer a solution. Action, he felt, was required, bu
t the particular action which was applicable to his problem did not present itself. He was certainly not lacking in courage, but the thought of turning out into the night and searching for a will-o’-the-wisp antagonist who, for all he knew, might by that time have returned to his base in Surrey, seemed more than foolish.

  He went to bed and put out the light. He did not fall asleep at once. His thoughts turned to Claudia Denbies. He wondered what she was thinking and feeling about her probable arrest and its consequences. He wondered what kind of woman she really was. The panic-stricken letter to Mrs Bradley indicated that she knew something more than she had admitted. He tried to visualize her appearance in court, and all the formality of a trial. He even began to fall in love with her again, but, before he could indulge this emotion far, he had dropped off to sleep.

  He woke to the sound of a distinct (although he was inclined to think it not a very loud) noise. He sat up in bed and switched the light on.

  ‘Put it out!’ said a peremptory voice. Recognizing the voice as that of Mrs Bradley’s secretary, Roger obeyed at once.

  ‘Come and open the window,’ said the voice. Roger leapt out of bed and as he got to the window he heard a curious scrabbling sound on the glass outside. ‘Buck up,’ said Laura, who seemed to be in the throes of gigantic effort. Roger thrust up the window and found himself confronted by a shock head which seemed to be moaning. ‘Hike him inside—by the hair or something—I can’t hold him any longer,’ Laura continued, gasping. ‘He’s almost as strong as I am, and he’s frightened to death.’

  The captive, dumped by Roger on to the bedroom floor and threatened with disembowelling if he moved or uttered, was identified some two minutes later, for Laura drew the curtains, switched on the light, seated herself on the bed and then addressed the wretched object.

  ‘So it’s you, Smeary? I might have guessed it. Bumped your head for you, have I? Jolly good thing too. What do you mean by climbing up ladders at night? Do you want to be run in for robbery, you silly ass? Who do you think you are? Bally Romeo or something?’

  The captive, permitted to sit up in order that he might reply to these enquiries, was an unkempt, daft-looking individual with a vacant, dull yet avaricious countenance. He began to whine and protest.

  ‘I was to knock him on the yead,’ he pleaded, nodding and grimacing. ‘He’s a German, he is. He’s a German.’

  ‘And you’re an anti-cyclone!’ retorted Laura. ‘Of course he isn’t a German! And, even if he were, it’s none of your business to come here hitting people over the head. What d’you think Mrs Bradley would say?’

  ‘I been with a fellow,’ said Smeary, ‘told me he was a German, and made Smeary promise to hit him over the yead.’

  ‘What fellow? What did he look like?’ demanded Roger.

  ‘It’s no good asking him,’ said Laura. ‘Listen, Smeary. Where’s this fellow now?’

  ‘By the Stone.’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ said Laura sharply. ‘Where is he? Can you take us to him?’

  Smeary looked cunning, and did not reply.

  ‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ said Laura. ‘He’d probably lead us up the garden. He’s as cunning as a ferret.’

  What did he give you?’ asked Roger, going to work in the masculine way.

  ‘Five shillin’, and Smeary anna ‘ad it,’ mumbled the half-wit. ‘Smeary anna ‘ad it. But Smeary’s goin’ to ‘ave it in the mornen.’

  I’ll come with you, and make sure he gives it you. Where are you going to find him?’

  ‘He lodge along of blacksmith, so he do. He be black. Oh, ay, he be black as old Nickie.’

  Roger glanced at Laura, and then hitched Smeary on to his feet. He patted him kindly on the head.

  ‘Good man, Smeary,’ he said. He gave him a shilling. ‘Here you are. I’m not a German, you see. You find this black devil of yours, and tell him so. Miss Menzies, shall I boot him out now?’

  ‘No. I’ll give him a bite. He’s probably hungry,’ said Laura.

  ‘Is he safe?’

  Laura grinned.

  ‘He won’t be if he tries any tricks,’ she said. ‘And he knows it. Come on, Smeary, you old humbug. I’ve got a meat pie downstairs.’

  She returned alone in half an hour.

  ‘I saw him right off the premises and then unchained Lasher and Penn,’ she said. ‘We shan’t have visitors with them let loose in the garden. I ought to have thought of it before. I wish I could understand this dead set at a lad like you. What have you been a-doing of? Any idea? Because, from what I got out of Smeary downstairs in the kitchen, somebody got at him to get at you.’

  ‘I keep racking my brains, but nothing comes. I’m not in the least dangerous to anybody, if that’s what you mean,’ said Roger.

  ‘Perfectly certain you’re not? It was you discovered the body, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but Mrs Bradley was there, and Dorothy not far off, and the body gave nothing away. At any rate, not to me.’

  ‘But you actually saw it first?’

  ‘Yes, I did. That’s correct. But, I tell you, that didn’t mean a thing.’ He remembered his own reactions and blushed with shame.

  ‘You must have seen something you weren’t intended to see.’

  ‘I saw nothing except the body, and it was naked. There was nothing else at all. It looked perfectly beastly. I was sick,’ he added, coming out with it.

  ‘Yes, I’m glad it wasn’t me. I’ve a horror of horrors. Well, that doesn’t seem to get us anywhere. What other adventures have you had?’

  ‘None.’

  ‘Think clearly.’

  ‘I have thought—until my head spins. There isn’t a thing. I’m quite positive that I know nothing whatsoever that could harm a single living creature.’

  ‘When the engine-driver had that remarkable turn on the night of the murder, I think you got out of the train?’

  ‘I did, but I didn’t see anything. I mean—not anything to do with the murder.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know, duck. You didn’t know then that there’d been a murder, you see.’

  ‘Well, I can’t remember anything significant.’

  ‘Pity you can’t advertise those facts. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘With your permission, I’m going to make my way to the blacksmith’s at crack of dawn, lie in wait for this blighter, Sim, and mark him.’

  ‘Mark him?’

  ‘Literally. So that, whatever disguise he chooses to adopt, we’re certain to know him again. I’m sick of being followed and waylaid.’

  ‘Smeary keeps saying it was a black man. Oh, Lor!’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I suppose Smeary wasn’t being used as a decoy duck?’

  ‘Decoy——?’ But Laura had gone. Roger followed, and saw her enter Dorothy’s room. She switched on the light. The bed was empty.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘Julia was careless, and withal,

  She rather took, than got a fall:’

  ROBERT HERRICK, Julia’s Fall

  ‘Whither, mad maiden, wilt thou roam?

  Far safer ’twere to stay at home!’

  ROBERT HERRICK, To His Muse

  ‘NOW DON’T WASTE time swearing,’ said Laura. ‘Put on your clothes and come downstairs. How bright is this girl? The kind to go off with any handsome stranger?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right then. We add her brains to ours. Don’t have a fit. Just be quick.’

  Roger was quick. He pulled on trousers, a sweater and a sports jacket over his pyjamas and put on socks and shoes. Laura, who had been fully dressed, added a wind-jacket to her tweed costume.

  ‘Get hold of a good thick stick,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a gun.’

  ‘A gun?’

  ‘Sure, bo. Mrs Croc. gets threatening letters sometimes. She never bats an eyelid, but I get nervous. Hence the gatling. Now for the plan of campaign. Remember that, so far as we know, it’s you they want to get, not the wench. So watch out for yourself, a
nd keep your eyes and ears open. I’ll be right back as soon as there’s anything to report.’

  ‘Report be damned!’ said Roger, resenting her cheerful tone. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Spoken like a man, albeit a bone-headed one,’ responded Laura. ‘Come on, then. But you don’t know the neighbourhood, and I do, so you takes your orders from me.’

  ‘All right! All right! But for goodness’ sake——’

  ‘Get a move on? Right. This way.’ She stepped to the French doors, opened them and walked out on to the lawn. Roger followed, pushing the doors to behind him and reflecting cynically that Mrs Bradley’s French servants could probably take care of one another.

  Laura, who apparently could see in the dark, gripped his sleeve, and, so joined, they walked across the lawn. By the hedge Laura stood still and listened. Then she pulled him down into cover, whispered, ‘Keep still!’ and searched the ground with a torch, after finding and leading off the dogs.

  ‘Not this way,’ she muttered at last. ‘Come on.’ They came round, still on grass, to the side-gate which led to the stables. They passed through the gate. The stable yard was paved, for the stables were used partly as a garage. Laura pushed Roger against the brick wall with a muttered caution to keep still, and studied the yard, illuminating it foot by foot until Roger could have leapt out and strangled her. He himself had no particular plan in his head for the rescue of Dorothy Woodcote, but Laura seemed to his overstrung nerves to be wasting precious time.

  She herself did not think so.

  ‘No car’s been here,’ she reported.

  ‘Well, we’d have heard it,’ said Roger.

  ‘Possibly not. However, it means they can’t have got far. We know what we’re not looking for, and that’s something. This is the shortest cut.’

  ‘Where are we going? To the blacksmith’s?’