The Man in the Queue ag-1

by Josephine Tey

  "Looks like it," said Grant. "But you had a good run for your money."

  "Yes," agreed the man, his eyes going to Miss Dinmont and coming back at once. "Tell me, what made you dive off the boat? What was the idea?"

  "Because swimming and diving is the thing I'm best at. If I hadn't slipped, I could have got to the rocks under water and lain there with only my nose and my mouth out until you got tired looking for me, or the dark came. But you won — by a head." The pun seemed to please him.

  There was a little silence, and Miss Dinmont said in her clear, deliberate voice, "I think, Inspector, he's well enough to be left now. At least, he won't need professional services any longer. Perhaps some one in the house would look after him to-night?"

  Grant deduced that this was her way of saying that the man was strong enough now to have a more adequate guard, and thank-fully agreed. "Do you want to go now?"

  "Just as soon as some one can take my place without any one being upset."

  Grant rang, and explained the situation to the maid that came. "I'll stay if you would like to go now," he said when the maid had gone, and she agreed.

  Grant went to the window and stood looking out at the loch, so that, if she wanted to say anything to Lamont, the way was clear, and she began to collect her things. There was no sound of conversation, and, looking round, he saw that she was apparently quite absorbed in the task of leaving nothing behind her, and the man was watching her unblinkingly, his whole being waiting for the moment of her leave-taking. Grant turned back to the sea, and presently he heard her say, "Shall I see you again before you go?" There was no answer to that, and Grant turned round to find that she was addressing himself.

  "Oh, yes, I hope so," he said. "I'll call at the manse if I don't see you otherwise — if I may."

  "All right," she said, "then I needn't say goodbye just now." And she went out of the room with her bundle.

  Grant glanced at his captive and looked away at once. It is indecent to pry too far into even a murderer's soul. When he looked back again, the man's eyes were closed and his face was a mask of such un-speakable misery that Grant was unexpectedly moved. He had cared for her, then — it had not been merely opportunism.

  "Can I do anything for you, Lamont?" he asked presently.

  The black eyes opened and considered him unseeingly. "I suppose it is too much to expect any one to believe that I didn't do it," he said at length.

  "It is, rather," said Grant dryly.

  "But I didn't, you know."

  "No? Well, we hardly expected you to say you did."

  "That's what she said."

  "Who?" asked Grant, surprised.

  "Miss Dinmont. When I told her I hadn't done it."

  "Oh? Well, it's a simple process of elimination, you see. And everything fits in too well for the possibility of a mistake. Even down to this." And picking up Lamont's hand from where it lay on the counterpane, he indicated the scar on the inside of his thumb. "Where did you get that?"

  "I got it carrying my trunk up the stairs to my new rooms in Brixton — that morning."

  "Well, well," said Grant indulgently, "we won't argue the affair now, and you're not well enough to make a statement. If I took one now, they'd hold it up to me that I had got it from you when you weren't compos mentis."

  "My statement'll be the same whenever you take it," the man said; "only, no one will believe it. If they would have believed it, I wouldn't have run."

  Grant had heard that tale before. It was a favourite gambit with criminals who had no case. When a man plays injured innocence, the layman immediately considers the possibility of a mistake; but the police officer, who has a long acquaintance with the doubtedly guilty, is less impressionable — in fact, is not impressed at all. A police officer who was impressed with a hard-luck story, however well told, would be little use in a force designed for the suppression of that most plausible of creatures, the criminal. So Grant merely smiled and went back to the window. The loch was like glass this evening, the hills on either side reflected to their last detail in the still water. Master Robert rode below the boathouse — "a painted ship" — only that no paint could reproduce the translucence of the sea as it was now.

  Presently Lamont said, "How did you find where I had come to?"

  "Fingerprints," said Grant succinctly.

  "Have you got fingerprints of mine?"

  "No, not yours. I'm going to take them in a minute."

  "Whose, then?"

  "Mrs. Everett's."

  "What has Mrs. Everett got to do with it?" the man said, with the first hint of defiance.

  "I expect you know more about that than I do. Don't talk. I want you to be able to travel tomorrow or the next day."

  "But look here, you haven't done any-thing to Mrs. Everett, have you?"

  Grant grinned. "No; I think it's what Mrs. Everett's done to us."

  "What do you mean? You haven't arrested her, have you?"

  There was obviously no hope of the man being quiet until he knew how they had traced him, so Grant told him. "We found a fingerprint of Mrs. Everett's in your rooms, and as Mrs. Everett had told us she didn't know where your new rooms were, it was a fair conclusion that she had a finger in the pie. We found that her relations stayed here, and then we found the man you fooled at King's Cross, and his description of Mrs. Everett made things sure. We only just missed you at the Brixton place."

  "Mrs. Everett won't get into trouble over it, will she?"

  "Probably not — now that we've got you."

  "I was a fool to run, in the first place. If I'd come and told the truth in the beginning, it couldn't be any worse than it is now, and I'd have saved all the hell between." He was lying with his eyes on the sea. "Funny to think that, if some one hadn't killed Bert, I'd never have seen this place or — or anything."

  The «anything» the inspector took to be the manse. "M'm! And who do you think killed him?"

  "I don't know. There wasn't any one I know of who'd do that to Bert. I think perhaps some one did it by mistake."

  "Not looking what they were doing with the needle, as it were?"

  "No, in mistake for some one else."

  "And you're the left-handed man with a scar on his thumb who quarrelled with Sorrell just before his death, and who has all the money Sorrell had in the world, but you're quite innocent."

  The man turned his head wearily away. "I know," he said. "You don't need to tell me how bad it is."

  A knock came to the door, and the boy with the protruding ears appeared in the doorway and said that he had been sent to relieve Mr. Grant, if that was what Mr. Grant wanted. Grant said, "I'll want you in five minutes or so. Come back when I ring." And the boy melted, grin last, into the dark of the passage like a Cheshire cat. Grant took something out of his pocket and fiddled with it at the washstand. Then he came over to the bedside and said, "Fingerprints, please. It's quite a painless process, so you needn't mind." He took prints of both hands on the prepared sheets of paper, and the man submitted with an indifference tinged with the interest one shows in experiencing something, however mild, for the first time. Grant knew even as he pressed the fingertips on the paper that the man had no Scotland Yard record. The prints would be of value only in relation to the other prints in the case.

  As he laid them aside to dry, Lamont said, "Are you the star turn at Scotland Yard?"

  "Not yet," said grant. "You flatter yourself."

  "Oh, I only thought — seeing your photograph in the paper."

  "That was why you ran last Saturday night in the Strand."

  "Was it only last Saturday? I wish the traffic had done for me then!"

  "Well, it very nearly did for me."

  "Yes; I got an awful jolt when I saw you behind me so soon."

  "If it's any comfort to you, I got a much worse one when I saw you arriving back in the Strand. What did you do then?"

  "Took a taxi. There was one passing."

  "Tell me," the inspector said, his curiosity getti
ng the better of him, "were you planning the boat escape all the time at the manse tea?"

  "No; I had no plans at all. I thought of the boat afterwards only because I'm used to boats, and I thought you'd think of them last. I was going to try to escape somehow, but I didn't think of it until I saw the pepper-pot as I was going out. It was the only way I could think of, you see. Bert had my gun."

  "Your gun? Was that your gun in his pocket?"

  "Yes; that's what I went to the queue for."

  But Grant did not want statements of that sort tonight. "Don't talk!" he said, and rang for the boy. "I'll take any statement you want to give me tomorrow. If there's any-thing I can do for you tonight, tell the boy and he'll let me know."

  "There isn't anything, thank you. You've been awfully decent — far more decent than I thought the police ever were — to criminals."

  That was so obviously an English version of Raoul's gentil that Grant smiled involuntarily, and the shadow of a smile was reflected on Lamont's swarthy face. "I say," he said, "I've thought a lot about Bert, and it's my belief that, if it wasn't a mistake, it was a woman."

  "Thanks for the tip," said Grant dryly, and left him to the tender mercies of the grinning youth. But as he made his way downstairs he was wondering why he had thought of Mrs. Ratcliffe.

  14 — The Statement

  It was not at Carninnish, however, that Lamont gave his statement to the inspector, but on the journey south. Dr. Anderson, on hearing what was mooted, pleaded for one more day's rest for his patient. "You don't want the man to have inflammation of the brain, do you?"

  Grant, who was dying to have a statement down in black and white, explained that the man himself was anxious to give one, and that giving it would surely harm him less than having it simmering in his brain.

  "It would be all right at the beginning," Anderson said, "but by the time he had finished he would need another day in bed. Take my advice and leave it for the mean-time." So Grant had given way and let his captive have still longer time to burnish the tale he was no doubt concocting. No amount of burnish, he thought thankfully, would rub out the evidence. That was there unalterable, and nothing the man might say could upset the facts. It was as much curiosity on his part, he told himself, as fear for his case that made him so eager to hear what Lamont had to say. So he bullied himself into some show of patience. He went sea-fishing in Master Robert with Drysdale, and every chug of the motor reminded him of the fish he had landed two nights ago. He went to tea at the manse, and with Miss Dinmont's imperturbable face opposite him and an odd pepper-pot alongside the salt on the table, his thoughts were almost wholly of Lamont. He went to church afterwards, partly to please his host, but mainly to avoid what was evidently going to be a tête-а-tête with Miss Dinmont if he stayed behind, and sat through a sermon in which Mr. Logan proved to his own and his congregation's satisfaction that the King of kings had no use for the fox-trot; and thought continually of the statement Lamont would give him. When the incredibly dreary noise of High-land «praise» had faded into silence for the last time and Mr. Logan had pronounced an unctuous benediction, his one thought was that now he could go back and be near Lamont. It was rapidly becoming an obsession with him, and he recognized the fact and resented it. When Mrs. Dinmont — Miss Dinmont had not come to church — reminded him as she was saying good-night that on the morrow the car would stop at the manse gate to allow them to say goodbye to Mr. Lowe, it came as a shock to him that there was more play-acting to be done before he departed from Carninnish. But things proved easier than he had anticipated. Lamont played up as he had played up during the fateful tea, and neither his host nor his hostess suspected that there was anything more serious amiss than the matter of his health. Miss Dinmont was not present. "Dandy said she had already said goodbye to you, and it is unlucky to say goodbye twice," her mother said. "She said you had been unlucky enough already. Are you a very unlucky person, then?"

  "Very," said Lamont, with an admirable smile and as the car moved away, Grant took out the handcuffs.

  "Sorry," he said brusquely. "It's only till we reach the railway." But Lamont merely repeated the word "Unlucky!" as if, surprisingly, he liked the sound of it. At the station they were joined by a plainclothes man, and at Inverness had a compartment to themselves. And it was after dinner that night, when the last light was going on the hills, that Lamont, pale and rather ill-looking, offered again to tell them all he knew.

  "It isn't much," he said. "But I want you to know."

  "You realize that what you say may he used against you?" Grant said. "Your lawyer would probably want you to say nothing. You see, it's putting your line of defence into our hands." And even while he was saying it, he was wondering: Why am I so punctilious? I've told him already that anything he says may be used against him. But Lamont wanted to talk, and so the constable produced his notebook.

  "Where shall I begin?" Lamont asked. "It's difficult to know where to start."

  "Suppose you tell us how you spent the day Sorrell was murdered that's a week last Tuesday — the 13th."

  "Well, in the morning we packed — Bert was leaving for America that night and I took my things to my new room in Brixton and he took his to Waterloo."

  Here the inspector's heart missed a beat. Fool! He'd forgotten all about the man's luggage. He had been so hot on the false scent of the Ratcliffes and then on the trail of Lamont that he hadn't had time to see the thing under his nose. Not that it was of supreme importance, in any case.

  "That took us till lunchtime. We had lunch in the Coventry Street Lyons —"

  "Whereabouts?"

  "In a corner table on the first floor."

  "Yes; go on."

  "All the time we were having lunch we argued as to whether I was going to see him off or not. I wanted to go down to Southampton with him and see him sail, but he wouldn't let me come even to the boat-train at Waterloo. He said there wasn't any-thing in the world he hated like being seen off, especially when he was going a long way. I remember he said, 'If a chap's not going far, then there's no need, and if he's going to the other side of the world, then there's no good. What's a few minutes more or less? Then in the afternoon we went to the Woffington to see Didn't You Know?"

  "What!" said Grant. "You went to the show at the Woffington in the afternoon?"

  "Yes; that was arranged a long time be-forehand. Bert had booked seats. Stalls. It was a sort of final do — celebration. At the interval he told me that he was going to join the pit queue for the evening performance as soon as we got out — he had gone a lot to Didn't You Know? It was a sort of craze; in fact, we both went a lot — and said that we'd say goodbye then. It seemed a poor way to me to say goodbye to a pal you'd known as well as I knew Bert, but he was always a bit unaccountable, and anyhow, if he didn't want me, I wasn't going to insist on being with him. So we said goodbye outside the front of the Woffington, and I went back to Brixton to unpack my things. I was feeling awfully fed up, because Bert and I had been such pals that I hadn't any others worth mentioning, and it was lonely at Brixton after Mrs. Everett's."

  "Didn't you think of going with Sorrell?"

  "I wanted to, all right, but I hadn't the money. I hoped for a while that he'd offer to lend me it. He knew that I'd pay him back all right. But he never did. I was a bit sore about that too. Every way I was pretty fed up. And Bert himself didn't appear to be happy about it. He hung on to my hand like anything when we were saying goodbye. And he gave me a little packet and said I was to promise not to open it till the day after to-morrow — that was the day after he sailed. I thought it was a sort of farewell present, and didn't think anything more about it. It was a little white packet done up in paper like jewellers use, and as a matter of fact I thought it was a watch. My watch was always going crazy. He used to say, 'If you don't get a new watch, Jerry, you won't be in time for kingdom come even. "

  Lamont choked suddenly and stopped. He carefully wiped away the steam on the window and then resumed:

  "W
ell, when I was unpacking my things in Brixton, I missed my revolver. I never used the thing, of course. It was just a war souvenir. I had a commission, though you mightn't think it. And I tell you straight I'd rather a thousand times be for it wire-cutting, or anything else like that, than be hunted round London by the police. It isn't so bad in the open. More like a game, somehow. But in London it's like being in a trap. Didn't you feel that it wasn't so deadly awful out in the country somehow?"

  "Yes," admitted the inspector; "I did. But I didn't expect you to. I thought you'd be happier in town."

  "Happy! God!" said Lamont, and was silent, evidently living it over again.

  "Well," prompted the inspector, "you missed your revolver?"

  "Yes; I missed it. And though I didn't use it — it used to be kept locked in a drawer at Mrs. Everett's — I knew exactly where I had put it when I was packing. Whereabouts in the trunk, I mean. And as it was only that morning I had packed, I was just taking things out in the reverse order from the way I'd put them in, and so I missed it at once. And then I grew frightened somehow — though even yet I can't tell you why. I began to remember how quiet Bert had been lately. He was always quiet, but lately he had been more so. Then I thought he might just have wanted a gun going to a strange country. But then I thought he might have asked for it. He knew I'd have given it to him if he asked for it. Anyway, I was sort of frightened, though I couldn't tell you just why, and I went straight back to the queue and found him. He had a good place, about a third of the way down, so I think he had had a boy to keep his place for him. He must have meant all the time to go back on his last night. He was sentimental, Bert. I asked him if he had taken my revolver, and he admitted it. I don't know why I grew so scared then all of a sudden. Looking back, it doesn't seem to be anything to be scared about — your pal having taken your revolver. But I was, and I lost my head and said, 'Well, I want it back right now. And he said, 'Why? And I said, 'Because it's my property and I want it. He said, 'You're a mean skunk, Jerry. Can't I borrow anything of yours even when I'm going half round the world and you're going to stay in little safe old London? But I stuck to having it back. Then he said, 'Well, you'll have a sweet time unpacking my things for it, but I'll give you the key and the ticket. It was only then that it occurred to me that I had taken it for granted that he had the revolver on him. I began to feel small and to feel I'd made a fool of myself. I always did things first and thought afterwards, and Bert always thought for ages about a thing, and then would do exactly as he had intended to. We were opposites in lots of ways. So I told him to keep his ticket and the revolver too, and went away."