Littlejohn listened carefully to the country bobby’s rigmarole, and in his mind got a picture of what had happened. We have heard it all before and it would be sheer torture to go over it again in the form of Puddiphatt’s official statement, copied in chunks from the Vade Mecum and suitably altered to suit the occasion, although there were parts where the constable had forgotten to amend the lines of his textbook to fit the case and he got a bit mixed up now and then and caused Mr. Querk to beat his brow and tear his hair.
There was a very useful line-up of other witnesses, too. Gillespie had certainly covered the ground well, if he had fallen short in finding a solution.
There was Mrs. Doakes, for example, dressed up to kill, and no mistake. Tweed skirt, scarlet coat, hat to match on the top of her peroxided head, and a diamond brooch, two diamond rings and a gold bracelet to set off the lot.
Mr. Querk’s lack-lustre eyes fell upon her and he started and looked perturbed. Bright colours seemed to affect him the same as loud noises, and he kept averting his eyes from the red jacket as though it caused him intense pain.
Mrs. Doakes had been responsible for packing the box and getting it ready for transport.
“It was empty, I take it, at the time?”
Mr. Querk looked right over the top of Mrs. Doakes as he asked the question, and she was very annoyed about it. She wasn’t used to men behaving as though she weren’t there. On the contrary.…
“Certainly it was empty. And locked …”
“How did you know it was empty if it was locked?”
“I had to turn it about as I packed it. I’d have known if there’d been anything inside.”
“Very good. You may step down.…”
Mrs. Doakes tossed her head and departed.
Then there was the man from the railway who had collected the box with his horse and lorry. His boots creaked and he was dressed in his best suit which he wore only for funerals and horse-shows. That morning he had taken three firsts and a special at Gosley Show and was a bit above himself.
Each creak of the offending shoes might have been a dagger in Mr. Querk’s heart, so badly did he take it.
“What are you looking so pleased about?” he peevishly asked the carter.
“Just taken three firsts and a special with my hosses at Gosley Show, sir …”
“Congratulations,” surprisingly replied Mr. Querk, nobody knew why. The Coroner, however, was fond of horses. To him, they represented the quiet days before cars arrived to tear his nerves and take up his time with accident cases.…
The carter, red of face, burly of body and scrubbed until he shone again, added nothing to the case. He had merely gathered the box and taken it to the station for despatch on the train.
“It didn’t seem unduly heavy?”
“No, sir. I managed to load it myself, signed for it, received the price and a small renumeration …”
“Remuneration?”
“Well, sir … Ahem, they usually …”
“Oh, I see. A tip. Yes, a tip …”
Nothing more.
Then the railway’s officials.
The goods department remembered the box quite well. It hadn’t seemed unduly heavy. They had loaded it in the van at the end of the London train, which would take it the first stage of its journey.
The guard then appeared. He was a loose-limbed, clumsy fellow, who fell on all-fours as he climbed into the witness-box, and Mr. Querk from his eminence above was seen to hold his brows and ears during the ensuing commotion, after which he drank water and chewed tablets again. A man with a cough at the back of the hall was ejected and the inquest went on.
Jeremiah Dimsdale, guard on the London train, testified that he had clipped a ticket for Mr. Grossman just after they left Fetling.
“Yes. It were a London ticket, sir.”
“WAS a London ticket,” wrote Mr. Querk, aloud.
“WAS a London ticket,” repeated Jeremiah.
Small had already stated that his partner was on his way to London and had seemed quite himself when he left. Dimsdale confirmed that Mr. Grossman seemed quite merry and bright.
“Merry and bright,” Mr. Querk was writing, and then he suddenly stopped. “Merry and bright?” he said gloomily. “Whatever is that?”
He knew very well, but he had taken a dislike to the noisy guard.
“Fit and well,” modified the guard crisply.
“That’s better.”
“Did you see him again after you’d checked his ticket?”
“No, sir.”
“Didn’t that seem rather strange?”
“Well … Yes and no, sir.”
“It can’t be both. Yes or no?”
The guard, thus faced with a problem, said “No.”
“Why?”
“Well, you see, I went the woal length of the train. See? Then I stopped in the front van, checking stuff, like …”
“Like what?”
“Checkin’ stuff. I forgets Mr. Gorssman, see?”
“I don’t see, my man, but go on.…”
“An’ I never gives ’im another thought. Maybe if I had, I’d just have thought he’d seen a friend and joined ’im in the more packed carriages at the front of the train.… You see, I can’t keep tally of all and sundry on the train, sir. They used to ’ave a ticket collector as well as a guard on those trains, but now they’s only a guard, see?”
“I DON’T SEE, but that will be enough,” howled Mr. Querk. Whereupon Jeremiah retired, slipped down the steps of the box on his way back to his train, and left the Coroner in a state of nervous exhaustion.
“Owld Querk’s as mad as an ’atter. Absolutely pots fer rags, ’e is,” was what Jeremiah told his wife that night … or rather early the following morning when he returned from late duties.
“Never yew mind, Jeremiah,” comforted his wife, who was as small and fat as he was long and thin. “It’s ’is wife. Wore ’im out, she ’as, with ’er naggin’ …”
Knowing Mr. Querk’s idiosyncracies, the jury, empanelled to assist him, had sat throughout the proceedings like a lot of stuffed dummies, hardly daring to move a muscle, take a note or turn a hair. One of them had sneezed and everybody had expected an eruption from the Coroner’s pulpit. Instead, Mr. Querk had looked up from his notes and said “Bless you.”
“Gettin’ barmier and barmier,” said the juryman afterwards. “They’ll ’ave to put ’im away before long. Bless yer, indeed!”
The inquest was adjourned and Mr. Querk was glad to do it, for a hurdy-gurdy started in the street outside just as he was directing the jury and he could hardly wait for their verdict and beating a hasty retreat to his private room. There he locked the door, unlocked a cupboard and took out a bottle of whisky. It was all that stood between him and the complete madness to which his wife’s endless debts and incessant nagging were driving him.
4
THE MISSING KEY
THE fatal box was in a locked room in the Coroner’s Court and after the inquest Gillespie took Littlejohn to see it.
It was just an ordinary chest. About two hundred or so years old and large enough comfortably to hold the body of a small man. It was carved in a kind of panelled Norman arches and ornamented with knops.
Now a funny thing arose. There was only one key to the box. And that had been in Miss Adlestrop’s possession since she purchased it. She had paid for the chest in the shop, locked it possessively and carried away the key.
“But surely there are plenty of keys to fit a lock like this,” said Littlejohn, squatting on his heels and examining the keyhole, set in a bed of wrought iron scrolls. He lifted the lid, too, and poked in the mechanism with his penknife.
Gillespie shook his head woefully. He sadly shrugged his shoulders and his long, sombre face grew even more sorrowful.
“You’re welcome to try it, sir,” he almost groaned. “I spent more than two hours yesterday with the best locksmith in the town trying keys. None would fit. Of course, to an expert locksmi
th the thing’s chicken feed, if you get what I mean. But it’s not a toy lock, I can assure you. Whoever made it intended only the rightful owner should get in that chest. And I took the trouble to enquire from the family about the keys. There’s only been one in existence as long as Mr. Curwen had the box.…”
“No signs of forcing or prising, I see.…”
“No. Not a mark. And it couldn’t have been Miss Adlestrop. She had the key in her handbag, which she took to the vicar’s, playing whist all the time the crime was being committed. We checked that in every detail.”
Littlejohn let the matter drop for the time being. Gillespie seemed disposed to believe that Grossman had got in the box by a conjuring trick! A sort of Harry Houdini murder!
Gillespie suggested that they paid another visit to the railway station, just to show Littlejohn how the matter had worked out. The Inspector was relieved, for he preferred to go over the ground itself rather than follow someone else’s footsteps by means of an official report.
Fetling station is rather a large one and assumes a certain importance in the summer season owing to weight of holiday-makers coming and going. Mr. Henry Fludd, the stationmaster, was, or fancied himself to be, a very important person. He thought himself worthy of a much higher post and had long awaited the time when he would change his peaked pancake hat for the tall-shiner of a real station mandarin. And here he was, still in Fetling, and only three years to retirement. It was a damned shame. He told his wife so, and she agreed. If Lord Trotwoode, the chairman of the company, would only travel by train instead of always running round in a Rolls Royce, he would encounter Mr. Fludd more often, realise his worth and promote him to a top hat at once.…
Mr. Fludd occupied an office almost like a lighthouse in Fetling Station. It was built over the refreshment room and an iron staircase led to it from Number One platform. There sat Mr. Fludd watching the trains come in and then watching them all go out and sending a runner down the iron staircase and rebuking him for slackness when he came back. He always descended himself to see the London, Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham trains off. In fact, anything with a corridor he deemed worthy of his attentions.…
Yes, he told his visitors, he himself had speeded the parting 7.45 p.m. train to London on the night of the murder.
Mr. Fludd conducted the interview seated at a plain wooden table in a bentwood armchair. He was tall, portly and bald. But to compensate for lack of hair on top, nature had endowed him with a magnificent red beard. It was like a flaming curtain over his collar and tie. In his young days Mr. Fludd had pursued painting as a hobby. The walls of his house up-town were covered almost from floor to ceiling with landscapes and still-lifes signed FLUDD in the bottom right corner, and his beard was all that was left of his early vie Bohème. Mrs. Fludd had married him on the strength of it. There must have been something aphrodisiac in that red beard, for ever after she would not hear of its removal. Or, perhaps, it reminded her of more carefree days, when Fludd was Fludd instead of a pompous luster for a top-hat.
Littlejohn couldn’t keep his eyes off the beard. He remembered his days on the beat when elderly, bearded gentlemen had implored his aid in dispersing bands of small boys who followed shouting gleefully in their wake. Here was one which would have delighted them. Beaver! Littlejohn almost shouted it himself.
“Yes, I saw the train out myself,” foghorned Mr. Fludd at the two officers sitting uncomfortably on rickety wooden chairs, like spies being interrogated. “I spoke to Mr. Grossman. He said he was going to attend a sale of antiques by the 7.45, travelling overnight and returning late the following afternoon.”
There were a number of indicators on the walls and these gave frequent reminders of their presence by the tinkle of little bells and the trembling of their needles. Every time a bell rang Mr. Fludd turned, looked at the relative dial, gave it a glare of contempt and returned to his task. There were buff forms, dirty files and large, dog-eared books on the table and stacks of correspondence on the floor.
“Mr. Grossman seemed all right … I mean in good spirits?” asked Littlejohn.
“Without a doubt; without a doubt,” roared the station-master, and smoothed his beard.
“And now about the box—the oak chest. That went by passenger train?”
“Yes. Not the sort of thing I am accustomed to deal with. I leave that to subordinates. But in view of the trouble that ’as arisen, I have called for a full report. The box went by passenger train, well wrapped in the usual packing materials, and labelled With Care …”
“Which would make the men who handled it chuck it about a bit more than usual,” giggled Gillespie biliously. He disliked Mr. Fludd and could not resist a little acid joke.
“I beg your pardon,” thundered the beaver. The beard seemed to leap with flames and the poached, bloodshot eyes flashed.
“Did it travel on the same train with Mr. Grossman?” hastily said Littlejohn.
“Yes.”
“In the baggage van?”
“In the luggage van, yes. To be delivered at Stainford junction for the local to Hartsbury. I h’enquired from my colleague at Stainford. He tells me the chest was put off the express there and placed in the freight room, whence it was consigned to ’artsbury the following morning.”
One of the indicators on the wall tingled and the needle executed a violent dance. Mr. Fludd looked at it, read its cryptic message, and dismissed it with a frown.
“The thrrree forty teeoo will depart for Creeoo from number thrrree pletfome. Orl steyshuns to Creeoo from nembah thrree pletfome …” announced a magnified female voice in loud eddicated tones over the trumpets dotted here and there on the platforms below.
“So Grossman was probably killed on the train between Fetling and Stainton and put in the box on the way?”
“Doubtless. The chest was never out of sight after it reached Stainton. I ’ave the assurance of my colleague on that point. In view of the disgraceful pilfering going on, there’s always somebody on duty watching the freight room there.”
“And what about the guard on the train. I saw him at the inquest, but he was off before I could speak to him. Any chance of a word with him?”
Mr. Fludd rummaged among the papers on his desk, glared at them for not giving up their secrets promptly to him, pawed his beard and then took up a speaking tube down which he blew a wheezy blast.
“Oo was the guard on the 7.45 London, the day the man was murdered in the box?” he asked officiously. “Let me know quick.”
“Dimsdale,” said Gillespie.
Mr. Fludd glared at the Superintendent as though he didn’t believe him and sat waiting for his answer from the other end of the contraption.
There was a loud whistle and Mr. Fludd uncorked the tube.
“Yes? Dimsdale? Right.” He corked up again.
“I said so,” said Gillespie.
“Dimsdale,” rumbled Fludd to Littlejohn.
Gillespie’s lips moved soundlessly under his small moustache.
“Could we have a word with him?” asked Littlejohn.
There was more uncorking and whistling.
“Yes. He’s on the four o’clock London train.”
The stationmaster consulted a huge timepiece which he drew from his pocket, and, as though doubting its integrity, also went to the window and glared at the station clocks.
“A little over twenty minutes. I’ll get him.…”
Mr. Fludd rose, pressed a switch, and spoke.
“Guard Dimsdale of the four o’clock train to London will please report at the stationmaster’s office … Guard Dimsdale …”
“Gawd Dimsdeyle uf the faw o’cluck treyn to Lenden will please reepawt et the steyshunmestah’s offiss. Gawd Dimsdeyle …” roared all the loud-speakers on the platforms.
There were sounds of scuffling below, and footsteps began to climb the iron staircase, trotting, fumbling and apparently falling up every other step.
“Wot the ’ell? Oh …”
The loose-
limbed, tall, hairy guard appeared in the doorway. He apparently wasn’t enamoured of Fludd, but the three of them rather overfaced him.
“Dimsdale, these two gentlemen are from the police. They want a word or two with you …”
“Uhu,” said Dimsdale to the stationmaster. He knew he had his Union at the back of him, so treated Fludd without respect. He smiled upon Littlejohn, however.
“I know you’ve already testified at the inquest, Mr. Dimsdale …”
That was better. Mister Dimsdale. The guard bared his long teeth in approval and cantered up to Littlejohn in his eagerness to be of use. He removed his cap even, revealing thin, black hair plastered down firmly and a curly quiff across his brow which looked to be rigidly held in place by glue.
“Yuss?”
“You saw Grossman board the train here?”
“Right you are, sir.”
“And you clipped his ticket?”
“Yuss. He were alone in a fust-class, see? Three doors from my van at the back it was.”
“Corridor train all the way?”
“Yes. All London trains are corridor,” interposed Mr. Fludd.
“Yuss,” said Dimsdale, as though the stationmaster hadn’t spoken.
“What were your movements about that time, guard?”
“I started to go through the train …”
“What time would that be?”
“About seven-fifty. Just after we’d cleared the station and yards here …”
“Yes?”
“I went through the train and clipped tickets.”
“Including Grossman’s?”
“Yuss. Quite merry and bright, he were.”
“Was,” groaned the beaver.
“Were,” repeated the guard. No nonsense from Fludd.
“‘Nice night. ’ope we ’ave a good trip’, sez he to me. ‘No reason why not’, I sez, and then gets along.”
“When did you reach the front?”
“Oh, about ten past eight. Yes, I looked at me watch. We was due in Stamford at 8.15 …”
“Were due …”
“Was. Was due at 8.15 and was runnin’ to time.”
The Case of the Seven Whistlers Page 3
