The Beast Must Die

by Nicholas Blake

  I hope I extracted all this information without appearing too heartlessly inquisitive. Would the heart-broken father be expected to want to know all this? Well, I don’t suppose Elder is particularly hot on the nuances of morbid psychology. But it’s an appalling problem. Can I succeed where the whole police organisation has failed? Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack!

  Wait a minute! If I wanted to hide a needle, I wouldn’t hide it in a haystack, I’d hide it in a heap of needles. Now then: Elder was pretty definite that the impact of the collision must have caused some damage to the front of the car, even though Martie was only a featherweight. The best way to conceal damage is to cause more damage in the same place. If I’d knocked a child down and dented a wing, say, and wanted to cover it up, I’d fake an accident – run the car into a gate or a tree or something. That would cover up all traces of the previous collision.

  What we’ve got to do is find out whether any cars were piled up in this way that night. I’ll ring up Elder in the morning and ask him.

  25 June

  NBG. THE POLICE had already thought of that one. Elder’s respect for the bereaved was severely tried, judging by his tone over the telephone. He made it politely plain that the police don’t need to be taught their job by any outsider. All accidents in the neighbourhood were investigated, to establish their ‘bona fides’, as he put it – the pompous oaf.

  It’s bewildering, maddening. I don’t know where to start. How did I ever come to think that I’d only to stretch out my hand and lay it upon the man I want? Must have been the first stage of murderer’s megalomania. After my telephone conversation with Elder this morning, I felt irritable and disheartened. Nothing to do but potter about in the garden, everything reminding me of Martie, not least this silly business of the roses.

  When Martie was a toddler, he used to follow me about the garden as I cut flowers for the table. One day I found he’d cut the heads off two dozen prize roses which I was keeping for the show – that superb dark red bloom, ‘Night’. I was furious with him, though I realised even at the time that he had thought he was helping me. A bestial performance on my part. He wouldn’t be comforted for hours afterwards. That is the way trust and innocence are destroyed. Now he’s dead, and it doesn’t much matter I suppose, but I wish I’d not lost my temper with him that day – it must have been like the end of the world for him. Oh hell, now I’m getting maudlin. I shall start making a catalogue of his babyish sayings next. Well, why not? Why not? Looking out on the lawn now, I remember how he saw two halves of a worm that had been cut in half by the lawnmower, trying to wriggle together, and he said, ‘Look, Daddy, there’s a worm shunting.’ I thought that was pretty bright. He might have made a poet, with that gift for metaphor.

  But what started this sentimental train of thought was my walking out into the garden this morning and finding that the top of every single rose had been cut off. My heart stood still (as I phrase it in my thrillers). For a moment I thought all the last six months had been a nightmare, and Martie was alive still. Some kid in the village up to a silly bit of mischief, no doubt. But it got me down, made me feel as if everything was against me. A just and merciful Providence might at least have spared me a few roses. I suppose I ought to report this ‘act of vandalism’ to Elder, but I just can’t be bothered.

  There’s something intolerably theatrical about the sound of one’s own sobbing. I hope Mrs Teague didn’t hear me.

  I’ll do a pub crawl tomorrow evening, and see if there’s any information to be picked up. I can’t go on glooming around in the cottage for ever. Think I’ll drop in on Peters for a drink now, before I go to bed.

  26 June

  THERE’S A CERTAIN unique thrill about dissembling, the sensation of that man in some story or other who carried an explosive in his breast pocket, and in his trouser pocket a bulb which he only had to press and blow himself and everything within twenty yards to glory. I felt it when I was secretly engaged to Tessa – the dangerous, lovely, dynamite secret in the breast, and I felt it again last night talking to Peters. He’s a good sort, but I don’t suppose he’s ever come up against anything more melodramatic than childbirth, arthritis and influenza. I kept on wondering what he’d say if he knew there was a prospective murderer sitting in the room with him, drinking his White Label. The compulsion to blurt it out became almost overwhelming at one point. I really will have to be very careful indeed. This isn’t a game. Not that he’d have believed me; but I don’t want him sending me back to that nursing home – or worse – for ‘observation’.

  Was glad to hear from Peters, when I’d screwed myself up to ask him, that nothing was said at the inquest about my being responsible for Martie’s death. It still rankles in my mind a little, though. I look into the faces of the village people, and wonder what they’re really thinking about me. Mrs Anderson, for instance, our late organist’s widow – why did she deliberately cross the street to avoid me this morning? She always used to be so fond of Martie. Spoilt him, in fact, with her strawberries and cream and those queer gelatine lozenges and her furtive huggings of him when she thought I wasn’t looking – he disliked the latter as much as I did. Oh well, the poor thing never had a kid herself, and Anderson’s death broke her up for good. I’d much rather she cut me dead than came slobbering over me with sympathy.

  Like many people who lead a rather isolated life – spiritually isolated, I mean – I’m abnormally sensitive to other people’s opinion of me. I hate the idea of being the popular, hail-fellow-well-met type, yet the idea of unpopularity gives me a feeling of deep uneasiness. Not a very sympathetic trait – wanting to eat one’s cake and have it, to be liked by my neighbours yet to remain essentially aloof from them. But then, as I said before, I don’t set up to be a very nice person.

  I’ll go straight away to the Saddler’s Arms, and beard public opinion in its den. I might get a lead there, too, though I suppose Elder interviewed all the chaps.

  Later

  I’ve drunk about ten pints in the last two hours, but am still cold sober. There are some wounds too deep for local anaesthetics, it seems. Everyone very friendly. I’m not the villain of the piece, anyway.

  ‘A cruel shame,’ they said. ‘Hanging’s too good for the like of them sort.’

  ‘Us do miss the little lad – a regular peart ’un, he were’ – this from old Barnett, the shepherd. ‘These yurr automobiles are the curse of the countryside. If I’d my way, I’d pass a law against ’em.’

  Bert Cozzens – the village wiseacre – said, ‘The toll of the roads. That’s what it is, see, the toll of the roads. Ar. Natural selection, if you take my meaning. The survival of the fittest – meaning no disrespect to you sir, who has all our sympathy in this shocking fatality.’ ‘Survival of the fittest?’ young Joe piped up. ‘What’re you doing here, then, Bert? Survival of the fattest, more like.’ This was considered a bit near the knuckle, and young Joe was suppressed.

  They’re grand chaps – neither smug nor cynical nor sentimental about death; they’ve got the proper realist attitude towards it. Their own children have to sink or swim – they can’t afford nurses and vita-glass and fancy foods for them, so it would never occur to them to blame me for letting Martie live the independent, natural life their own children live. I might have known that. But they were no use to me otherwise, I’m afraid. As Ted Barnett summed it up, ‘Us’d give the fingers off our right hands to find the B— who done it. Us seen a car or two come through village after the accident, but us had no call to notice ’em special, see, not knowing anything’d happened; and they headlights maze ’ee so, ’ee can’t see number plates nor nothing. Reckon ’tes the job of the bloody police, only that Elder spends ’is time –’ here followed slanderous speculations about the spare-time activities, mainly erotic, it would appear, of our worthy sergeant.

  Same at the Lion and Lamb and the Crown. Much goodwill but no information. I shan’t get anywhere on this tack. Must try an entirely different line. But what? Too tire
d to think any more tonight.

  27 June

  A LONG WALK over towards Cirencester today. Passed the ridge from which Martie and I catapulted those toy gliders. He was quite crazy about them; would probably have smashed himself up in an aeroplane if the car hadn’t come first. I shall never forget the way he stood watching the gliders, his face ineffably solemn and tense, as though he could will them to keep soaring and flying for ever. The whole countryside is his memorial. As long as I stay on here, the wound will stay unhealed – which is what I want.

  Someone seems to want me to clear out. All the madonna lilies and tobacco plants in the bed under my window were torn up last night and flung on to the path. Some time early this morning, rather; they were all right at midnight. No village kid would do a thing like that twice. There’s a malevolence about this that worries me a little. But I’m not going to be intimidated.

  An extraordinary thought has just struck me. Have I got some deadly enemy who killed Martie deliberately and is now destroying everything else that I love? Fantastic. Just shows how easily anyone’s brain can be turned if he is too much alone. But if this goes on much longer, I shall be afraid to look out of the window in the morning.

  I walked fast today, so that my brain couldn’t keep up with me and I was free of its constant nagging for a few hours. I feel refreshed now. So, with your permission, hypothetical reader, I’ll start thinking on paper. What is the new line that I must adopt? Better put it down as a series of propositions and deductions. Here goes:

  (1) There’s no use my trying the methods of the police, which they have far better means to carry out, and in any case seem to have failed.

  The implication is that I must exploit my own strong point – presumably, as a detective writer, the capacity to imagine myself into the mind of the criminal.

  (2) If I’d run down a child and damaged my car, my instinct would be to keep off main roads, where the damage might be spotted, and get as quickly as possible to a place where it could be repaired. But, according to the police, all garages have been investigated, and all damages repaired during the days after the accident were found to have had some innocent explanation. Of course, they may have been diddled about this, somehow or other but, if they were, I couldn’t possibly discover how.

  What follows from this? Either (a) the car was undamaged after all – but expert evidence suggests this is most unlikely. Or (b) the criminal drove his car straight into a private garage and has kept it locked up ever since; possible, but highly improbable. Or (c) the criminal secretly effected the repairs himself. This is surely the likeliest explanation.

  (3) Assume the chap did his own repairs. Does that tell me anything about him?

  Yes. He must be an expert, with the necessary tools at his disposal. But even a small dent in a mudguard has to be hammered out, and that kicks up enough din to wake the dead. ‘Wake’! Exactly. He’d have to do the repairs the same night, so that there should be no trace of the accident next morning. But a sound of hammering at night would be bound to wake people and rouse suspicion.

  (4) He did not do any hammering that night.

  But, whether his car was in a private or a public garage, hammering the next morning would surely call attention to him, even if he could afford to put off the repairs till the morning.

  (5) He did not do any hammering at all.

  But we have to assume that the repairs were effected somehow or other. What a fool I am! Even to hammer out a small dent, one has to take the wing off. Now if – as we are forced to conclude – the criminal could not afford to make a noise while repairing his car, the deduction is that he must have removed the damaged parts and replaced them with new spare parts.

  (6) Assume that he fitted another wing – perhaps another bumper too, and/or a new headlight, and got rid of the damaged ones. What follows?

  That he must be at least a fairly expert mechanic, and have access to spare parts. In other words, surely, he must work in a public garage. More, he must own it because, only the owner of the garage could conceal the fact that certain spare parts had disappeared from stores and were not accounted for.

  By God! I seem to have got somewhere at least. The man I’m after owns a public garage, and it must be an efficient one, otherwise they would not stock the requisite spare parts; but probably not a very big one, for in a big garage it would be presumably some clerk or manager, not the owner, who would check the spare parts in store. Or the criminal might be manager of a big garage, or a clerk in it. That widens the choice again, I’m afraid.

  Can I deduce anything about the car and the nature of the damage? From its driver’s point of view, Martie was crossing the road from left to right. His body was flung into the ditch on the left-hand side of the road. This suggests that the damage would be on the left side of the car, particularly if it swerved out to the right a bit to avoid him. The left-hand wing, bumper or headlight. Headlight – that is trying to convey something to me. Think. Think …

  I’ve got it! There was no broken glass on the road. What kind of headlight is least likely to be smashed by an impact? The kind covered with a wire grille, like you see on those low, fast sports cars. And it must have been a low-slung fast car (with an expert driver) to get round this corner at the pace it did, without going off the road.

  Sum up. There’s reasonable hypothetical evidence to suppose that the criminal is an expert, reckless driver, is owner or manager of an efficient public garage, and owns a sports car with wire-protected headlamps. It is probably a pretty new car, or the difference between the original right-hand mudguard and the new left-hand one would have been noticed, though I suppose he might have faked the new one to look as though it had been worn a bit – scratches, dust, etc. Oh, and another thing: either his garage must be in rather a lonely place, or he must have some efficient sort of dark-lantern; otherwise he might have been spotted doing the repairs at night. Also, he must have gone out again that night to get rid of the damaged parts he’d removed from the car; and there must be some river or thicket fairly near into which he could throw them – he couldn’t afford just to put them on the garage dump.

  Heavens – it’s long after midnight. I must go to bed. Now that I’ve made a beginning, I feel a new man.

  28 June

  DESPAIR. HOW FLIMSY it all looks in the morning light. Why, now that I come to think of it, I’m not even sure whether any cars have wire screens over the headlamps; the radiators, yes, but the headlamps? Still, that’s easily enough verified. But even supposing my whole train of argument has by some miracle hit the truth, I am almost as far away from him as ever. There are probably thousands of garage proprietors who own sports cars. The accident occurred about six twenty in the evening. Assuming it took him a maximum of three hours to refit with new parts and get rid of the old ones, he would still have had ten hours of darkness to play about with, which means that his garage may be anywhere within a three-hundred-mile radius. A bit less, perhaps. He wouldn’t be likely to stop anywhere for petrol, with the mark of the beast on his car. But think of all the garages within even a hundred-mile radius. Am I going round to each of these, asking the proprietor if he owns a sports car? And what if he says, yes? The prospect is as sickening as the endless reaches of eternity. My hatred for this man must have swept my common sense right off its feet.

  Perhaps this is not the chief reason for my depression. There was an anonymous letter this morning. Left by hand, before anyone was awake – presumably the same maniac or filthy joker who has been destroying my flowers. It’s getting on my nerves. Here is the letter – cheap paper, block capitals, all the usual.

  YOU KILLED HIM. I WONDER YOU DARE SHOW YOUR FACE IN THE VILLAGE AFTER WHAT HAPPENED ON 3 JANUARY. CAN’T YOU TAKE A HINT? WE DON’T WANT YOU HERE, AND WE’LL MAKE THINGS SO HOT FOR YOU THAT YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU EVER CAME BACK. MARTIE’S BLOOD IS ON YOUR HEAD.

  Sounds like an educated person. Or people, if the ‘we’ means anything. Oh, Tessa, what am I to do?

  29 Jun
e

  THE DARKEST HOUR comes before the dawn! The hunt is up! Let me salute the new day with a salvo of commonplace. This morning I took the car out. I was still in the depths of depression, so I thought I’d go over to Oxford and see Michael. I took a short cut from the Cirencester to the Oxford road – a narrow track over the hills I’d never been on before. Everything was alive and sparkling in the sunlight, after the recent rain. I was gazing out over the wolds to my right – there was an astonishing field of clover, the colour of crushed raspberries – when I ran slap into a watersplash.

  The car crawled out to the other side and stopped dead. I don’t know anything about what goes on under the bonnet but, when my car stops, the thing to do is to leave it for a while to recover its temper, and then it usually starts up again. I was outside the car, shaking the water off my clothes – a great fan of water had gone up and descended on me when I hit the splash – and a bloke leaning over a farm gate addressed me. We bandied a few wisecracks about shower-baths. Then the bloke remarked that just the same thing had happened here one night this winter. Idly, just to make conversation, I asked him what day that was. The question turned out to be an inspiration. He did some exceedingly complex calculations in his head, involving a visit of his mother-in-law, a sick sheep, and a wireless set that had broken down, and said, ‘January the third. Ar, that’s what it were, third of January. No mistake about it. After nightfall.’