“Unless,” he turned politely to Crook, “unless it’s yours.”
Crook shook his head.
“Which of you was it called us up?” the Inspector went on.
“I did,” said Crook. “And then this gentleman came along and ...” He paused deliberately and looked at the newcomer. It was a bizarre scene, the men looking like silhouettes against the grey blanket of fog with no light but the torches of the civilians and the bull’s-eyes of the force. “Seeing this gentleman’s a doctor ...” As he had anticipated there was an interruption.
“What’s that you said?”
“Penalty of fame,” said Crook. “Saw your picture in the papers at the time of the Baldry case. Dr. Norman Dunn, isn’t it? And perhaps I should introduce myself. I’m Arthur Crook, one of the three men living who know Tom Merlin didn’t kill Miss Baldry, the others bein’ Tom himself and, of course, the murderer.”
“Isn’t that a coincidence?” said Dr. Dunn.
“There’s a bigger one coming,” Crook warned him. “While I was waitin’ I had a looksee at that little chap’s identity card, and who do you think he is?
Mr. Alfred Smyth, also interested in the Baldry case.”
The doctor swung down his torch. “So that’s where I’d seen him before? had a feeling the face was familiar in a way, only ...”
“He is a bit knocked about, isn’t he?” said Crook. “What should you say did that?”
“I shouldn’t care to hazard a guess without a closer examination. At first I took it for granted he’d been bowled over by a car... .”
“In that case we ought to be able to trace the car. He can’t have gotten all that damage and not left any of his blood on the hood.”
There was more noise and a police ambulance drove up and spewed men all over the road. Crook lifted his head and felt a breath of wind on his face.
That meant the fog would soon start to lift. Long before morning it would have gone. The Inspector turned to the two men.
“I’ll want you to come with me,” he said. “There’s a few things I want to know.”
“I can’t help you,” said Dunn sharply, but the Inspector told him, “We’ll need someone to identify the body.”
“Mr. Crook can do that. He knows him.”
“Always glad to learn,” said Crook.
“But you ...” He stopped.
“You don’t know the police the way I do,” Crook assured him. “Just because a chap carries an identity card marked Alfred Smyth—that ain’t proof. I never set eyes on him before.”
“Mr. Crook’s right,” said the Inspector. “We want someone who saw him when he was alive.”
They all piled into the car, Crook and Dunn jammed together, and no one talked. Dunn was thinking hard. Sold for a sucker, he thought. If I hadn’t tried so hard for an alibi—perhaps, though, they won’t touch Meadows. Meadows will remember, all the same. He’ll think it’s fishy. And the car. Of course there was blood on the car. If they examine it they’ll notice it’s washed clean in one place. They’ll want to know why. No sense saying I was coming back from the pictures. Meadows can wreck that. Besides, Baron, the man who looks after the cars, may remember mine hadn’t come in when he went off duty. Round and round like a squirrel in its cage went his tormented mind. There must be some way out, he was thinking, as thousands have thought before him. They’ve no proof, no actual proof at all. Outwardly he was calm enough, maintaining the attitude that he couldn’t imagine why they wanted him. But inside he was panicking. He didn’t like the station surroundings, he didn’t like the look on the Inspector’s face, most of all he feared Crook. The police had to keep the rules; Crook had never heard of Queensbury. To him a fair fight was gouging, shoving, and kicking in the pit of the stomach. A terrible man. But he stuck to it, they hadn’t got anything on him that added up to murder. He’d had the forethought to get rid of the spanner, dropped it in one of those disused pig buckets that still disfigured London streets; but he’d had to use the one near his own flats, because in the dark he couldn’t find any others. He thought now the river might have been safer.
He tried to seem perfectly at ease, pulled off his burberry and threw it over the back of a chair, produced his cigarette case.
“Of course, our own doctor will go over the man,” the Inspector said, “but how long should you say he’d been dead, Dr. Dunn?”
He hesitated. “Not so easy. He was a little chap and it’s a bitter cold night. But not long.”
“But more than twenty minutes?” the Inspector suggested. “Yes, more than that, of course.”
“That’s screwy,” said the Inspector. “I mean, Mr. Crook was talking to him on the telephone in his flat twenty minutes before you happened along.”
He couldn’t think how he’d forgotten that telephone conversation. That, intended for his prime alibi, was going to ball up everything.
“I don’t see how he could,” he protested. “Not unless the chap’s got someone doubling for him.”
“You know all the answers,” agreed Crook. “Matter of fact, the same chap seems to be making quite a habit of it. He rang me a bit earlier from Fragonard 1511 to tell me Smyth couldn’t keep an appointment to-night. Well, nobody knew about that but Smyth and me, so how did X know he wasn’t coming, if he hadn’t made sure of it himself?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Dunn.
“We are asking you,” said the Inspector deliberately.
The doctor stared. “Look here, you’re on the wrong tack if you think I know anything. It was just chance. Why don’t you send a man round to Smyth’s flat and see who’s there?”
“We did think of that,” the Inspector told him. “But there wasn’t anyone ...”
“Then—perhaps this is Mr. Crook’s idea of a joke.”
“Oh no,” said Crook looking shocked. “I never think murder’s a joke.
A living perhaps, but not a joke.”
Dunn made a movement as though to rise. “I’m sorry I can’t help you ...”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” drawled Crook.
“What does that mean?”
“There’s just one point the Inspector hasn’t mentioned. When I found that poor little devil to-night he’d got a bit of paper in his hand. All right,
Inspector, I’ll explain in a minute. Just now, let it ride.” He turned back to Dr. Norman Dunn. “It was a bit of a Treasury note, and it seemed to me that if we could find the rest of that note, why then we might be able to lay hands on the murderer.”
“You might. And you think you know where the note is?”
“I could make a guess.”
“If you think I’ve got it ...” Dunn pulled out his wallet and threw it contemptuously on the table. “You can look for yourself.”
“Oh, I don’t expect it would be there,” replied Crook, paying no attention to the wallet. “But—every murderer makes one mistake, Dunn. If he didn’t, God help the police. And help innocent men, too. And a man with murder on his hands is like a chap trying to look four ways at once. Now that note suggested something to me. You don’t go round carrying notes in a fog, as if they were torches. You’d only get a note out if you were going to pay somebody, and who’s the only person you’re likely to want to pay in such circumstances? I’m talking like a damned politician,” he added disgustedly.
“But you do see what I’m drivin’ at?”
“I’m only a doctor,” said Dunn. “Not a professional thought-reader.”
“You’d pay a man who drove you to your destination—or tried to. There was some reason why Smyth had a note in his hand, and my guess is he was tryin’ to pay some chap off. That would explain his bein’ at Temple Station.
On his own feet he wouldn’t have passed Charing Cross, not a chap as frightened of the dark as he was. While he was offerin’ the note, X knocked him out, and realizin’ that funny questions might be asked if the note was found with him, he’d remove it. You agree so far?”
“I don’t
know as much about murder as you do, Mr. Crook,” said Dunn.
“That’s your trouble,” Mr. Crook agreed. “That’s always the trouble of amateurs setting up against pros. They’re bound to lose. Let’s go on. X removes the note. So far, so good. But he’s got a lot to remember and not much time. He can’t be blamed if he don’t remember it’s trifles that hang a man. If I was asked, I’d say X shoved that note into his pocket, meanin’ to get rid of it later, and I’d say it was there still.”
“You’re welcome to search my pockets,” Dunn assured him. “But I warn you, Crook, you’re making a big mistake. Your reputation’s not going to be worth even the bit of a note you found in Smyth’s hand when this story breaks.”
“I’ll chance it,” said Crook.
At a nod from the Inspector, the police took up Dunn’s burberry and began to go through the pockets. During the next thirty seconds, you could have heard a pin drop. Then the man brought out a fist like a ham, and in it was a crumpled ten-shilling note with one corner missing!
“Anything to say to that?” inquired Crook, who didn’t apparently mind hitting a man when he was down.
Dunn put back his head and let out a roar of laughter. “You think you’re smart, don’t you? You planted that on me, I suppose, when we were coming here. But, as it happens, Smyth’s note was for a pound, not ten shillings. You didn’t know that, did you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Crook, “I did—because I have the odd bit of the note in my wallet. One of the old green ones it was. What I’m wondering is—how did you?”
“That was highly irregular, Mr. Crook,” observed the Inspector, drawing down the corners of his mouth, after the doctor had been taken away.
“It beats me how the police even catch as many criminals as they do,” returned Crook frankly. “Stands to reason if you’re after a weasel you got to play like a weasel. And a gentleman—and all the police force are gentlemen— don’t know a thing about weasels.”
“Funny the little things that catch ’em,” suggested the Inspector, wisely letting that ride.
“I reckoned that if he saw the wrong note suddenly shoved under his nose he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. It’s what I’ve always said. Murderers get caught because they’re yellow. If they just did their job and left it at that, they might die in their beds at ninety-nine. But the minute they’ve socked their man they start feverishly buildin’ a little tent to hide in, and presently some chap comes along, who might never have noticed them, but gets curious about the little tent. When you start checking up his story I bet you’ll find he’s been buildin’ alibis like a beaver buildin’ a dam. And it’s his alibis are goin’ to hang him in the end.
His last word in this case was to Tom Merlin and the girl Tom was still going to marry.
“Justice is the screwiest thing there is,” he told them. “You’re not out of chokey because Norman Dunn killed the Baldry dame, though he’s admitted that, too. Well, why not? We know he got Smyth, and you can’t hang twice. But it was his killing Smyth that put you back on your feet. If he hadn’t done that we might have quite a job straightenin’ things out. Y’know the wisest fellow ever lived? And don’t tell me Solomon.”
“Who, Mr. Crook?” asked Tom Merlin’s girl, hanging on Tom’s arm. “Brer Rabbit. And why? Becos he lay low and said nuffin’ And then they tell you animals are a lower order of creation!”
Once IS Once Too Many
The advertisement appeared in the Morning Argus and read:
LADY, aged 34, good education and appearance, romantic but shy, private means, no ties, invites correspondence from gentleman similarly situated. Object matrimony. Replies to Box ...
Among those who saw it was Mr. Arthur Crook in his office at 123 Bloomsbury Street, London.
“These dear old goosey-ganders, they do ask for it,” he observed to his confidant and ally, Bill Parsons. “Paste that into the office bible, Bill. Maybe, by the end of the year we can add the sequel.”
As it happened, he didn’t have to wait that long ...
No one was more surprised than Crook to find himself a member of a party of tourists going by the Scarlet Runner Coaches to the Austrian Tyrol the following spring. He had been to see a doctor for the first time in twenty
years, and was shocked to be told he was overdoing it and was ripe for a rest.
“Go abroad somewhere,” said Dr. Stanley. “Forget about corpses for a couple of weeks. You’ll come back like a tiger refreshed.”
“Me on the Continong?” exclaimed Crook, who hadn’t left his own country since he came bouncing thankfully back from France in 1918, and no thanks to the Jerries.
“Britons can take it,” suggested Dr. Stanley.
So here he was, with his passport and currency, looking about as unobtrusive as a tiger in a parlour window, taking stock of his companions for the next two weeks. There were four married couples—he marked down two of the husbands as possible pals for a pub-crawl; a pair of ancient screamers he promptly christened Arsenic and Old Lace; a devoted female pair (Dave and Jon to you, they shouted); a manhunting young woman in her late twenties, with enough vitality in her eye to light a whole sconce of candles; and a few odds and bods travelling solitary, whose names he never did learn. Then just as the coach was ready to start the last pair arrived, a tall, thin, dreamy-looking man in a raincoat and a battered-looking hat, and his wife, some years his junior but quite a way from the schoolroom at that. Crook decided she was the type you mightn’t notice much the first time but would remember if you met her again. For himself, he put his money on Arsenic and Old Lace. With a pair like that aboard you could surely count on a murder within the week.
The fun (from Crook’s point of view) started a couple of hours later. The coach stopped at a superior kind of roadhouse for elevenses. The ladies popped off, demanding telephone, toilet, and tea. Crook put in a modest request for beer, to be informed this wasn’t a pub but an hotel, and the licence didn’t operate till twelve o’clock.
“I don’t wait till noon to get thirsty,” said Crook in affable tones, congratulating himself on his foresight in laying in a bottle of beer in his overcoat pocket. He went back to the coach to fetch it and was brought up short by the sight of one of the passengers who hadn’t dismounted with the rest. She was the wife of the last-comer, and when she saw Crook she hurriedly fitted on a smile, but not quite quickly enough. He had seen her face, noted her rigid attitude and clenched hands. Whatever she had been contemplating it hadn’t been buttercups and daisies.
He dropped into the seat her husband had vacated. “Shove over, sugar,” he offered. “Tell your Uncle Arthur all about it. What’s up?”
She stared, as well she might. “Who are you?”
“Crook’s the name, Arthur Crook. Take a read of that when you’ve got a minute to spare.” He pushed an immense printed card into her hands. “And remember, we’re like the best morticians, me and Bill. We work all round the clock.”
“‘Linen discreetly washed in private. Danger no object,’” she read. “I didn’t know lawyers undertook investigations themselves.”
“There ain’t many of us,” agreed Crook, modestly, “and if some of the Law Lords had their way, there wouldn’t be even one. Now, any little service I can render it’ll be a pleasure, and I mean it.”
“You’re very kind,” said the lady, whose name proved to be Mrs. Maud Ames, “but I’m afraid it may prove too much, even for you. You see, Mr. Crook, my husband has brought me abroad to kill me.”
Crook’s face was like the sun bursting through a wall of fog. “Put that one over the plate again,” he begged. “You did say kill, as in murder?”
“Yes. He’s tried twice already at home, but perhaps he thinks it’ll be easier to engineer an accident abroad.”
“Sounds just my cup of tea,” said Crook enthusiastically. “Me and the chap who liked to fold his hands and wait ’ud never see eye to eye, so any little job you can put in my path ’ull be pure jam, if you get me. Tell me ab
out the other two shots.”
“The first was on a subway station ...”
Crook groaned. “He don’t sound very original. Don’t tell me next time something went wrong with your sleeping mixture.”
Mrs. Ames regarded him with amazement. “Yes. But how did you know?”
“That’s all in the manual for beginners,” explained Crook, gently. “Tell me. Any special motive for wanting you out of the way or is just that murder’s his hobby?”
“Hobby? I never thought ...”
“I mean to say, are you the first Mrs. A?”
“Paul was a widower when we met.”
“Any notion how the dear departed came to be the dear departed?”
“An—an accident. To a car.”
“I get you. Mr. A. not driving? Such luck for him.”
“But he was driving. Only he wasn’t hurt. That’s why he hasn’t married again. Remorse, I mean. For ten whole years.”
“You do it almost as good as me,” Crook commented, admiringly. “Quite the hermit, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Confide in you where? I mean, not behind bars or anything?”
“Oh, no—nothing like that! The verdict was death by misadventure. The jury was very sympathetic.”
“I’ll say. Jealous, maybe. How did he seem about the lady? Happy release on either side?”
“They’d only been married a few months. He said he was heartbroken.”
“That was handsome of him. Some husbands’ hearts ’ud remain intact after ten years. Know whereabouts it happened?”
“Somewhere in the north.”
“About ten years ago? That makes looking for a needle in a haystack a kindergarten game. Was the lady well-padded?”
“I never saw—oh, I see what you mean. Had she any money? I believe so.”
“And you? Case of ‘nothing in my hand I bring’?”
“I inherited a legacy just before we met. My brother, Peter, died abroad. I hadn’t seen him for years, but there was no other relative ...”
Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries Page 4