A Very Murderous Christmas

by Cecily Gayford

  ‘The police will be awaiting us back at Tebay, so we’d better all have our stories ready.’ Stansfield turned to Percy Dukes. ‘You, for instance, sir. Where were you between 8.55, when you left the carriage, and 9.35 when I met you returning? Are you sure you didn’t see Kilmington?’

  Dukes, expansive no longer, his piggy eyes sunk deep in the fat of his face, asked Stansfield who the hell he thought he was.

  ‘I am an inquiry agent, employed by the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company. Before that, I was a Detective Inspector in the C.I.D. Here is my card.’

  Dukes barely glanced at it. ‘That’s all right, old man. Only wanted to make sure. Can’t trust anyone nowadays.’ His voice had taken on the ingratiating, oleaginous heartiness of the small businessman trying to clinch a deal with a bigger one. ‘Just went for a stroll, y’know – stretch the old legs. Didn’t see a soul.’

  ‘Who were you expecting to see? Didn’t you wait for someone in the platelayers’ shack along there, and smoke a cigar while you were waiting? Who did you mistake me for when you said “What’s the idea, keeping me waiting half an hour”?’

  ‘Here, draw it mild, old man.’ Percy Dukes sounded injured. ‘I certainly looked in at the hut: smoked a cigar for a bit. Then I toddled back to the train, and met up with your good self on the way. I didn’t make no appointment to meet—’

  ‘Oo! Well I must say,’ interrupted Miss Blake virtuously. She could hardly wait to tell Stansfield that, on leaving the compartment shortly after Dukes, she’d overheard voices on the track below the lavatory window. ‘I recognised this gentleman’s voice,’ she went on, tossing her head at Dukes. ‘He said something like, “You’re going to help us again, chum, so you’d better get used to the idea. You’re in it up to the neck – can’t back out now.” And another voice, sort of mumbling, might have been Mr Kilmington’s – I dunno – sounded Scotch anyway – said, “All right. Meet you in five minutes: platelayers’ hut a few hundred yards up the line. Talk it over.”’

  ‘And what did you do then, young lady?’ asked Stansfield. ‘You didn’t return to the compartment, I remember.’

  ‘I happened to meet a gentleman friend, farther up the train, and sat with him for a bit.’

  ‘Is that so?’ remarked Macdonald menacingly. ‘Why, you four-flushing little—!’

  ‘Shut up!’ commanded Stansfield.

  ‘Honest I did,’ the girl said, ignoring Macdonald. ‘I’ll introduce you to him, if you like. He’ll tell you I was with him for, oh, half an hour or more.’

  ‘And what about Mr Macdonald?’

  ‘I’m not talking,’ said the youth sullenly.

  ‘Mr Macdonald isn’t talking. Mrs Grant?’

  ‘I’ve been in this compartment ever since, sir.’

  ‘Ever since—?’

  ‘Since I went out to damp my hankie for this young lady, when she’d fainted. Mr Kilmington was just before me, you’ll mind. I saw him go through into the Guard’s van.’

  ‘Did you hear him say anything about walking to the village?’

  ‘No, sir. He just hurried into the van, and then there was some havers about it’s no’ being lockit this time, and how he was going to report the Guard for it – I didna listen any more, wishing to get back to the young lady. I doubt the wee man would be for reporting everyone.’

  ‘I see. And you’ve been sitting here with Mr Macdonald all the time?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Except for ten minutes or so he was out of the compartment, just after you’d left.’

  ‘What did you go out for?’ Stansfield asked the young man.

  ‘Just taking the air, brother, just taking the air.’

  ‘You weren’t taking Mr Kilmington’s gold watch, as well as the air, by any chance?’ Stansfield’s keen eyes were fastened like a hook into Macdonald’s, whose insolent expression visibly crumbled beneath them.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he tried to bluster. ‘You can’t do this to me.’

  ‘I mean that a man has been murdered: and, when the police search you, they will find his gold watch in your possession. Won’t look too healthy for you, my young friend.’

  ‘Naow! Give us a chance! It was only a joke, see?’ The wretched Macdonald was whining now in his native cockney. ‘He got me riled – the stuck-up way he said nobody’d ever got the better of him. So I thought I’d just show him – I’d have given it back, straight I would, only I couldn’t find him afterwards. It was just a joke, I tell you. Anyway, it was Inez who lifted the ticker.’

  ‘You dirty little rotter!’ screeched the girl.

  ‘Shut up, both of you! You can explain your joke to the police. Let’s hope they don’t die laughing.’

  At this moment the train gave a lurch, and started back up the gradient. It halted at the signal-box, for Stansfield to telephone to Tebay, then clattered south again.

  On Tebay platform, Stansfield was met by an Inspector and a Sergeant of the County Constabulary, with the Police Surgeon. No passengers were permitted to alight till he had had a few words with them. Then the four men boarded the train. After a brief pause in the Guard’s van, where the Police Surgeon drew aside the Guard’s black off-duty overcoat that had been laid over the body, and began his preliminary examination, they marched along to Stansfield’s compartment. The Guard who, at his request, had locked this as the train was drawing up at the platform and was keeping an eye on its occupants, now unlocked it. The Inspector entered.

  His first action was to search Macdonald. Finding the watch concealed on his person, he then charged Macdonald and Inez Blake with the theft. The Inspector next proceeded to make an arrest on the charge of wilful murder …

  So, whodunnit? Nicholas Blake provided eight clues to both method and motive, scattered through the text. Try to find them – and solve the mystery yourself by logical deduction, or turn to page 135 for the solution.

  A Problem in White – The Solution

  The Inspector arrested the Guard for the wilful murder of Arthur J. Kilmington.

  Kilmington’s pocket had been picked by Inez Blake, when she pretended to faint at 8.25 and his gold watch was at once passed by her to her accomplice, Macdonald.

  Now Kilmington was constantly consulting his watch. It is inconceivable, if he was not killed till after 9 p.m., that he should not have missed the watch and made a scene. This point was clinched by the first-class passenger, who deposed that a man, answering to the description of Kilmington, had asked him the time at 8.50: if it had really been Kilmington, he would certainly, before inquiring the time of anyone else, have first tried to consult his own watch, found it was gone, and reported the theft. The fact that Kilmington neither reported the loss to the Guard, nor returned to his original compartment to look for the watch, proves he must have been murdered before he became aware of the loss, i.e. shortly after he left the compartment at 8.27. But the Guard claimed to have spoken to Kilmington at 9 p.m. Therefore the Guard was lying. And why should he lie, except to create an alibi for himself? This is Clue A.

  The Guard claimed to have talked with Kilmington at 9 p.m. Now at 8.55 the blizzard had diminished to a light snowfall, which soon afterwards ceased. When Stansfield discovered the body, it was buried under snow. Therefore Kilmington must have been murdered while the blizzard was still raging, i.e. sometime before 9 p.m. Therefore the Guard was lying when he said Kilmington was alive at 9 p.m. This is Clue B.

  Henry Stansfield, who was investigating on behalf of the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company the loss of the Countess of Axminster’s emeralds, reconstructed the crime as follows:

  Motive. The Guard’s wife had been gravely ill before Christmas: then, just about the time of the train robbery, he had got her the best surgeon in Glasgow and put her in a nursing home (evidence of engine driver: Clue C): a Guard’s pay does not usually run to such expensive treatment; it seemed likely, therefore, that the man, driven desperate by his wife’s need, had agreed to take part in the robbery in return for a substantial bribe. What part did
he play? During the investigation, the Guard had stated that he had left his van for five minutes, while the train was climbing the last section of Shap Bank, and on his return found the mail-bags missing. But Kilmington, who was travelling on this train, had found the Guard’s van locked at this point, and now (evidence of Mrs Grant: Clue D) declared his intention of reporting the Guard. The latter knew that Kilmington’s report would contradict his own evidence and thus convict him of complicity in the crime, since he had locked the van for a few minutes to throw out the mail-bags himself, and pretended to Kilmington that he had been asleep (evidence of K.) when the latter knocked at the door. So Kilmington had to be silenced.

  Stansfield already had Percy Dukes under suspicion as the organiser of the robbery. During the journey, Dukes gave himself away three times. First, although it had not been mentioned in the papers, he betrayed knowledge of the point on the line where the bags had been thrown out. Second, though the loss of the emeralds had been also kept out of the Press, Dukes knew it was an emerald necklace which had been stolen; Stansfield had laid a trap for him by calling it a bracelet, but later in conversation Dukes referred to the ‘necklace’. Third, his great discomposure at the (false) statement by Stansfield that the emeralds were worth £25,000 was the reaction of a criminal who believes he has been badly gypped by the fence to whom he has sold them.

  Dukes was now planning a second train robbery, and meant to compel the Guard to act as accomplice again. Inez Blake’s evidence (Clue E) of hearing him say ‘You’re going to help us again, chum,’ etc., clearly pointed to the Guard’s complicity in the previous robbery; it was almost certainly the Guard to whom she had heard Dukes say this, for only a railway servant would have known about the existence of a platelayers’ hut up the line, and made an appointment to meet Dukes there; moreover, to anyone but a railway servant Dukes could have talked about his plans for the next robbery on the train itself, without either of them incurring suspicion should they be seen talking together.

  Method. At 8.27 Kilmington goes into the Guard’s van. He threatens to report the Guard, though he is quite unaware of the dire consequences this would entail for the latter. The Guard, probably on the pretext of showing him the route to the village, gets Kilmington out of the train, walks him away from the lighted area, stuns him (the bruise was a light one and did not reveal itself to Stansfield’s brief examination of the body), carries him to the spot where Stansfield found the body, packs mouth and nostrils tight with snow. Then, instead of leaving well alone, the Guard decides to create an alibi for himself. He takes his victim’s hat, returns to the train, puts on his own dark, off-duty overcoat, finds a solitary passenger asleep, masquerades as Kilmington inquiring the time, and strengthens the impression by saying he’d walk to the village if the relief engine did not turn up in five minutes, then returns to the body and throws down the hat beside it (Stansfield found the hat only lightly covered with snow, as compared with the body: Clue F). Moreover, the passenger noticed that the inquirer was wearing blue trousers (Clue G); the Guard’s regulation suit was blue; Duke’s suit was grey, Macdonald’s a loud check – therefore the masquerader could not have been either of them.

  The time is now 8.55. The Guard decides to reinforce his alibi by going to intercept the returning fireman. He takes a short cut from the body to the platelayers’ hut. The track he now makes, compared with the beaten trail towards the village, is much more lightly filled in with snow when Stansfield finds it (Clue H); therefore it must have been made some little time after the murder, and could not incriminate Percy Dukes. The Guard meets the fireman just after 8.55.

  They walk back to the train. The Guard is taken aside by Dukes, who has gone out for his ‘airing’, and the conversation overheard by Inez Blake takes place. The Guard tells Dukes he will meet him presently in the platelayers’ hut; this is vaguely aimed to incriminate Dukes, should the murder by any chance be discovered, for Dukes would find it difficult to explain why he should have sat alone in a cold hut for half an hour just around the time when Kilmington was presumably murdered only 150 yards away.

  The Guard now goes along to the engine and stays there chatting with the crew for some forty minutes. His alibi is thus established for the period from 8.55 to 9.40 p.m. His plan might well have succeeded but for three unlucky factors he could not possibly have taken into account – Stansfield’s presence on the train, the blizzard stopping soon after 9 p.m., and the theft of Arthur J. Kilmington’s watch.

  Loopy

  Ruth Rendell

  At the end of the last performance, after the curtain calls, Red Riding Hood put me on a lead and with the rest of the company we went across to the pub. No one had taken make-up off or changed, there was no time for that before The George closed. I remember prancing across the road and growling at someone on a bicycle. They loved me in the pub – well, some of them loved me. Quite a lot were embarrassed. The funny thing was that I should have been embarrassed myself if I had been one of them. I should have ignored me and drunk up my drink and left. Except that it is unlikely I would have been in a pub at all. Normally, I never went near such places. But inside the wolf skin it was very different, everything was different in there.

  I prowled about for a while, sometimes on all fours, though this is not easy for us who are accustomed to the upright stance, sometimes loping, with my forepaws held close up to my chest. I went up to tables where people were sitting and snuffled my snout at their packets of crisps. If they were smoking I growled and waved my paws in air-clearing gestures. Lots of them were forthcoming, stroking me and making jokes or pretending terror at my red jaws and wicked little eyes. There was even one lady who took hold of my head and laid it in her lap.

  Bounding up to the bar to collect my small dry sherry, I heard Bill Harkness (the First Woodcutter) say to Susan Hayes (Red Riding Hood’s Mother):

  ‘Old Colin’s really come out of his shell tonight.’

  And Susan, bless her, said, ‘He’s a real actor, isn’t he?’

  I was one of the few members of our company who was. I expect this is always true in amateur dramatics. There are one or two real actors, people who could have made their livings on the stage if it was not so overcrowded a profession, and the rest who just come for the fun of it and the social side. Did I ever consider the stage seriously? My father had been a civil servant, both my grandfathers in the ICS. As far back as I can remember it was taken for granted I should get my degree and go into the civil service. I never questioned it. If you have a mother like mine, one in a million, more a friend than a parent, you never feel the need to rebel. Besides, Mother gave me all the support I could have wished for in my acting. Acting as a hobby, that is. For instance, though the company made provision for hiring all the more complicated costumes for that year’s Christmas pantomime, Mother made the wolf suit for me herself. It was ten times better than anything we could have hired. The head we had to buy but the body and the limbs she made from a long-haired grey fur fabric such as is manufactured for ladies’ coats.

  Moira used to say I enjoyed acting so much because it enabled me to lose myself and become, for a while, someone else. She said I disliked what I was and looked for ways of escape. A strange way to talk to the man you intend to marry! But before I approach the subject of Moira or, indeed, continue with this account, I should explain what its purpose is. The psychiatrist attached to this place or who visits it (I am not entirely clear which), one Dr Vernon-Peak, has asked me to write down some of my feelings and impressions. That, I said, would only be possible in the context of a narrative. Very well, he said, he had no objection. What will become of it when finished I hardly know. Will it constitute a statement to be used in court? Or will it enter Dr Vernon-Peak’s files as another ‘case history’? It is all the same to me. I can only tell the truth.

  After The George closed, then, we took off our make-up and changed and went our several ways home. Mother was waiting up for me. This was not invariably her habit. If I told her I should b
e late and to go to bed at her usual time she always did so. But I, quite naturally, was not averse to a welcome when I got home, particularly after a triumph like that one. Besides, I had been looking forward to telling her what an amusing time I had had in the pub.

  Our house is late Victorian, double-fronted, of grey limestone, by no means beautiful, but a comfortable well-built place. My grandfather bought it when he retired and came home from India in 1920. Mother was ten at the time, so she has spent most of her life in that house.

  Grandfather was quite a famous shot and used to go big game hunting before that kind of thing became, and rightly so, very much frowned upon. The result was that the place was full of ‘trophies of the chase’. While Grandfather was alive, and he lived to a great age, we had no choice but to put up with the antlers and tusks that sprouted everywhere out of the walls, the elephant’s-foot umbrella stand, and the snarling maws of tigris and ursa. We had to grin and bear it, as Mother, who has a fine turn of wit, used to put it.

  But when Grandfather was at last gathered to his ancestors, reverently and without the least disrespect to him, we took down all those heads and horns and packed them away in trunks. The fur rugs, however, we did not disturb. These days they are worth a fortune and I always felt that the tiger skins scattered across the hall parquet, the snow leopard draped across the back of the sofa and the bear into whose fur one could bury one’s toes before the fire, gave to the place a luxurious look. I took off my shoes, I remember, and snuggled my toes in it that night.

  Mother, of course, had been to see the show. She had come on the first night and seen me make my onslaught on Red Riding Hood, an attack so sudden and unexpected that the whole audience had jumped to its feet and gasped. (In our version we did not have the wolf actually devour Red Riding Hood. Unanimously, we agreed this would hardly have been the thing at Christmas.) Mother, however, wanted to see me wearing her creation once more, so I put it on and did some prancing and growling for her benefit. Again I noticed how curiously uninhibited I became once inside the wolf skin. For instance, I bounded up to the snow leopard and began snarling at it. I boxed at its great grey-white face and made playful bites at its ears. Down on all fours I went and pounded on the bear, fighting it, actually forcing its neck within the space of my jaws.