The Snark was a Boojum

by Gerald Verner

“I see,” murmured Halliday. “What time did you get off duty yesterday night?”

  “Four o’clock,” answered Mr. Liphook involuntarily clutching his jaw. “My tooth was killing me . . . I couldn’t stand it . . . So I went home. They told me this morning it was an abscess.”

  “When does the last train go through?”

  “The six-forty-five from Marlin’ Junction,” answered Mr. Liphook. “I normally leave ten minutes after that.”

  “The station was completely deserted last night?”

  “It would have been, unless . . .” Mr. Liphook looked uncomfortable.

  “Unless what Mr. Liphook?” asked Halliday.

  “Unless there were any passengers set down.”

  “Sergeant Lockyer, check with Marling Junction if any passengers got off here last night would you?”

  “Yes, sir.” Lockyer made a note.

  Halliday walked slowly up to the window. “Is this kept fastened?”

  Mr. Liphook looked agitated. “It’s supposed to be,” he answered. “The catch is broke. I’ve reported it. I reported it months ago.”

  “Ah,” said Halliday looking down at the twisted position of the body on the floor and noticing a contusion on the rib cage. “I reckon the body was pushed through that window. You haven’t touched it, Mr. Liphook?”

  “It ain’t been opened for as long as I can remember,” Mr. Liphook declared, unaware he was revealing the limited nature of his cleaning capabilities. “It’s been painted over enough times. It’s stuck up tight.”

  “I’ll arrange for it to be examined,” said Halliday as there came from outside the sound of voices and the thudding of feet on the wooden platform. The police-surgeon, a stout man in a soft hat and a damp raincoat, appeared at the open doorway. Behind him, just visible, loomed two other men.

  “This is a godforsaken hole,” the police-surgeon complained, uttering a clucking sound of disapproval as he pushed past me, his eyes taking a quick cursory glance around the cheerless waiting room before coming to rest upon the cold and pathetic body of William Baker.

  Halliday smiled good-naturedly. “I didn’t choose it doctor.” He beckoned to the two men who had accompanied the doctor, one of whom carried a large equipment case. “Jepson, Rogers, let’s get these photographs done.”

  I turned my face away as flash bulbs flared blindingly as William Baker was brightly illuminated and photographed from different angles. Then the stout police-surgeon stepped forward and knelt beside the body which was twisted over, partly on its side. “Can you do something about the light, Halliday?” he asked irritably.

  The Chief Detective Inspector Halliday produced a big electric torch and directed a beam of light downwards, over the doctor’s shoulder.

  The police-surgeon made his examination, grunting to himself all the time, and throwing snatches of information back over his shoulder.

  “Stabbed through the back with a thin bladed instrument . . . bleeding mostly internal . . . Death pretty instantaneous . . . dead about twenty-four hours . . . difficult to say for certain . . . No chance that wound is self-inflicted—couldn’t be done. Some post mortem contusion on his rib cage . . . must have occurred immediately after death to show up like that.” He got up brushing ineffectually at the knees of his trousers. He looked from the angle of the body to the window and pointed to it. “Contusion probably caused by being pushed through that.”

  “Meaning he was killed here,” said Halliday.

  “Not much fun moving a dead weight very far,” growled Simon Gale shifting forward a little. “Any sign of a head injury?”

  The doctor whirled round and fixed Gale with small pig like eyes. “What’s that? Head injury? Why the devil should there be a head injury?”

  “Well, d’you see,” replied Gale coolly, “there was no cut in his clothes. They must have been taken off before he was stabbed, eh?”

  Halliday looked interested. His eyes narrowed. “I see what you mean, sir. Whoever killed him may have stunned him, then stripped him, and then . . .”

  Gale nodded. “Easy to find out, eh?”

  The stout police-surgeon glared at Gale for a moment, outraged he should have poked his nose in, and that he would have to get down on his knees on the grimy floor. He shrugged his shoulders in a have it your way gesture and turned back to the body. After an examination of William Baker’s head he grunted grudgingly.

  “You’re right,” he acceded, “there’s a contusion at the base of the skull consistent with being hit with something . . . heavy but soft . . . like a sandbag. The skin isn’t broken.” He straightened up. “Anything else?”

  “Thank you doctor,” said Halliday.

  The doctor looked at his watch as if he’d spent too long there already. “I’ll be off then.”

  “Tell the driver to come back here after he’s taken you home, will you.”

  The police-surgeon nodded. “I’ll let you have my report in the morning.”

  When he had gone Halliday looked relieved. He turned to Sergeant Lockyer. “Arrange for the body to be removed, will you?” He looked at Mr. Liphook. “Is there a telephone here?”

  “In the ticket office,” said Mr. Liphook helpfully.

  “Let’s all go over there,” said Halliday looking round at everyone. “Not pleasant in here . . . Except you Jepson—I’d like a sketch plan of this place with the position of the body clearly marked. And Rogers . . .” he addressed the other man, “see if you can find any fingerprints—particularly that window, inside and out. See if it’s been opened recently. It looks to me as if the paint’s cracked where someone has forced it.”

  I think we were all relieved to escape to the ticket office, though it wasn’t in a much better state than the waiting room. The atmosphere was damp and clammy. There was an old fashioned telephone screwed to one wall, and Sergeant Lockyer busied himself arranging for the removal of William Baker’s body. The rain was beating down heavily now, drumming on the roof, and somewhere was splashing and gurgling from a broken gutter.

  Mr. Liphook seemed to have recovered a little from his ordeal, his face was a more normal colour and he was smoking a cigarette. We all stood in a group waiting for what would happen next. Halliday was leaning against a dusty narrow bench that ran the length of the wall under the ticket window, deep in thought.

  “Before we all split up I’d like to get the facts of this thing clear. I’d like to know more about this business of a Snark.” He looked at Gale and then at me.

  We described the dinner-party at Hunter’s Meadow and Simon Gale’s joking reference to the analogy between the names of the people round the table and the characters in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark.

  Chief Detective Inspector Halliday, his round face quite expressionless, listened. When we had finished he said, pinching his fleshy chin gently: “I’ve never read this book you’re talking about but, from what you’ve just described, the circumstances of Baker’s disappearance exactly coincide?”

  “Almost,” correct Gale. “The Baker in Carroll’s verses wasn’t found dead, d’you see? He only vanished . . .”

  “Well Mr. Baker vanished . . . but then he turned up! Turned up in a very unpleasant way . . . And you say all because this Snark turned out to be a Boojum.” He shook his head as if saying the nonsense verse out loud was against every rule in the police force. He bit his lower lip. “Somebody listened to you Mr. Gale and saw an opportunity . . . This is very nasty—a very nasty murder.”

  I remembered Hocknell describing what he had heard that night in the darkness of Goose Lane:

  ‘A cackling chuckle, a disembodied mocking laugh . . .’

  I involuntarily jumped as the shutter over the ticket window rattled as a gust of wind and driving rain shook it violently. Some dusty handbills on a ledge stirred with a soft rustle and a couple fluttered to the floor . . .

  Someone very nasty indeed . . .

  Someone with a perverted sense of humour who had murdered William Baker and dumped his
naked body with as little concern . . . Someone who treated murder as a joke . . .

  Chapter Six

  Talking drums and smoke signals were a form of rapid communication. A method equally as efficient was used by the inhabitants of Lower Bramsham, because before nine o’clock that Tuesday evening the whole village was seething with comment and speculation over the vanishing and subsequent murder of William Baker.

  Fear began to creep like an invisible mist through the village, lurking coldly at people’s elbows, and making them look quickly over their shoulders in case there might be something behind them . . .

  The news had reached Hunter’s Meadow by the time Gale and I got back for pre-dinner drinks in the drawing room.

  Zoe and Ursula, who had apparently spent most of the day shopping at Marling, had heard all about it from the keeper of the local garage where Zoe had stopped for petrol. Both were bubbling over with excitement. Ursula, who had displayed a complete lack of interest in Baker’s disappearance now had a completely different attitude and was burning with curiosity. Joshua Bellman treated the matter with an indifference she found difficult to understand.

  “Surely you must be curious?” she asked him. “This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened here . . .”

  “Somebody gets murdered somewhere in the world every day,” he answered drily. “Why should I get excited because one’s happened in the village?”

  Ursula spoke what they were thinking in a voice with a hint of a reprimand. “That’s a very cynical point of view, Joshua, and would not be shared by many.”

  “This is different to any other murder, isn’t it?” said Zoe. “It’s on your doorstep and it’s gruesome and tragic, but also weird like the characters in the poem.”

  “Weird like a Snark!” cried Gale.

  “Yes!” exclaimed Zoe. “Like a fairy tale gone wrong . . . Like something’s leapt out of the pages of a book and committed this terrible crime.”

  “A crime of imagination,” I added.

  “Or a crime of deception,” suggested Gale.

  “For which you were responsible,” remarked Bellman, looking pointedly at Gale.

  “No!” thundered Gale, thrusting out his chin belligerently. “I won’t have that! I saw the coincidence and made an innocent comment. I certainly wasn’t to know someone was listening with a cracked brain.”

  Ursula caught her breath. Into her violet-blue eyes came a sudden look of comprehension and a flicker of fear. “Someone listening? Are you suggesting the murderer was here at dinner . . . sitting round this table. Simon, you can’t mean that, can you . . .?”

  I saw Zoe’s impish face change as her eyes moved quickly from Ursula to Simon Gale. Her lips tightened until the dimples at the corner of her mouth almost disappeared.

  “That’s exactly what I do mean, d’you see?” Gale exclaimed. “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “Rubbish!” exclaimed Bellman, without raising his voice which gave him more authority. “It’s by no means exact, by no means certain, Simon. What you said on Friday wasn’t acted on until Monday and then we are by no means certain that the vanishing of Baker wasn’t some sort of coincidence. It probably had nothing to do with what you said. And if it did, you know how quickly things get about round here . . . There was plenty of time for half the village to have heard about it by Monday. I think you’re all letting your imaginations run away with you.”

  Ursula’s lovely face looked relieved. “Of course you’re right darling! You must be right. There must be a stranger . . .”

  Gale didn’t agree. “You can’t dismiss the possibility there was a killer at dinner with us. It’s wishful thinking. They’ll all come under suspicion, d’you see . . .”

  Ursula didn’t want to go back to their former conversation. She wanted to believe her husband. “How could anyone at dinner have had any reason for wanting to kill poor William Baker?”

  “Does there have to be a reason?” I asked. “Maybe we’re dealing with a cracked-brain as Simon calls it.”

  “If that were the case,” declared Ursula with conviction, “it couldn’t be one of us. It couldn’t be anyone who was here on Friday. We’re not mad are we?” she laughed.

  “Don’t run away with that delusion, Ursula,” scolded Gale, wiping the smile from her face in an instant. “It doesn’t work like that. The kind of crack-brain that may have done this terrible thing doesn’t wear a label. Outwardly they would appear quite normal, d’you see?”

  I noticed Zoe give a little shiver. Her hands were twisting a handkerchief in her lap and they suddenly gripped it hard. “This is really horrible,” she said. “I never knew the poor man properly but I feel compassion for him, walking out of his house and vanishing only to turn up—only to be found in such a lonely place . . .”

  Gale flung out an impatient arm looking at all of us as if we were completely stupid. “Of course it wasn’t Baker who left the house at a quarter past nine on Monday night, walked down Goose Lane and vanished without his clothes.”

  I must admit he had our undivided attention. We all hung on his next words . . .

  He thrust forward a bristling and belligerent beard: “Just as it wasn’t Baker who returned home just after nine. That’s as obvious as a wart on the tip of your nose, hey? It was the murderer!” he thundered.

  Zoe gasped in horror at this revelation.

  “It was the murderer setting the stage. Baker must have been killed last night at Farley Halt, and his clothes stripped off ’im, so that his killer, wearing Baker’s mackintosh an’ check cap, could go back to Mrs. Tickford’s an’ perform his trick.”

  “How?” asked Ursula frowning.

  “Aha! That was the simplest thing in the world,” cried Gale. “He was carrying Baker’s clothes under the mackintosh, d’you see? All he had to do was to drop ’em on the pavement, strip off his mackintosh and cap, slip over the wattle fence . . . Hey presto! Baker has vanished leaving all his clothes behind!”

  While everyone digested this, Gale whipped out his battered tin of tobacco and deftly rolled a cigarette which he lit, drawing in the smoke deeply.

  “It was a considerable risk to take,” commented Bellman. “Supposing he’d run into someone . . . What’s that woman’s name . . .?”

  “Mrs. Tickford,” I answered.

  “Mrs. Tickford or that man Hocknell, if he’d been a few seconds earlier turning the corner . . .” continued Bellman.

  “But neither of those things happened,” retorted Gale. “I admit he took a risk, but it wasn’t such a big one, d’you see?”

  “I can’t understand why anyone would go to all that trouble,” I objected. “Once Baker was dead, why the trimmings? Why take the risk?”

  Gale leaned forward in my direction and pointed a finger at me. “You’ve biffed the nail right on the cranium young feller. Why? That is puzzling me.” He tugged his beard, and both his shaggy brows drew down over his eyes until they almost disappeared. “Maybe that’s where the cracked-brain comes in. Maybe if we knew more about Baker we’d have a motive. Maybe . . .”

  “Excuse m-me, Mr. Bellman . . .” Jack Merridew’s voice, with its slight stammer, broke in apologetically. He had come silently into the drawing room and was standing just inside the door. “There’s a long d-distance call for you, sir—f-from Glasgow . . . The one you were expecting . . .”

  Bellman swallowed his drink and got up. He had, I knew, a large store and warehouse in Glasgow from which all his Scottish business was controlled.

  “Excuse me,” he muttered, and hurried out with Merridew at his heels.

  Ursula made a little fretful movement of impatience. “I suppose that’s the last we’ll see of Joshua this evening. Why he can’t conduct his business at normal times I’ll never know. I’ll just tell Trenton to send his dinner up on a tray.”

  Dinner was a subdued affair after the heated debate that led up to it. Instead of coffee after dinner Simon leapt up and proposed an alternative. “Let’s all go down t
o the Golden Crust! I need beer! Lots of it!” he boomed.

  I could tell he was overflowing with suppressed energy. I noticed Zoe brighten at the suggestion, but knew Zoe wouldn’t go if Ursula didn’t. I could see Ursula’s hesitation. I’m quite sure she wanted to go but wasn’t going to appear eager. In a subtle, but charming way, she conveyed the fact that the Golden Crust wasn’t for her—not the right setting for Ursula Bellman.

  I thought it was a welcome idea. I didn’t relish spending the evening in the house. Gale wouldn’t listen to any excuses, seeking to override any in that overpowering way he had. Eventually Ursula gave in resisting and agreed to come with us.

  While Ursula and Zoe went off to fetch coats and wraps, I went round to the garage to fetch the car. It was still pouring with rain, but at Hunter’s Meadow you could reach the garage by a covered way, which old Bellman had specially built when he’d bought the house.

  There were two cars apart from Zoe’s: Bellman’s huge Rolls and Ursula’s Humber. There was an assortment of bicycles. Between the bicycles, and the cars, stood an incongruous contraption that was Simon Gale’s motorcycle. Perhaps if it had been an ordinary motorcycle it wouldn’t have looked so out of place. But it wasn’t in any respect ordinary. It was a special product of Gale’s own devising that he had constructed himself. He had assembled it entirely to suit his own ideas of what a motorcycle ought to be, and the result was extraordinary. It was painted bright orange and sported all kinds of unusual gadgets attached in the most unexpected places. Simon Gale mounted on this appalling contraption, dressed in his usual flamboyant style, was a sight once seen never forgotten!

  I had previously agreed with Ursula that I would drive her Humber to take us down to the village. When I drove it round to the front door the others were waiting for me.

  The Golden Crust was unusually full that evening.

  Gifford was talking to the large and impressive figure of Cranston, whose face was bent forward in an attitude of grave attention. They hailed us as we came in. We threaded our way through the crowded bar and joined them. The usual greetings were exchanged, Ursula introduced Zoe.