Blood on the Tracks

by Martin Edwards

  He took the roll of notes from his pocket and threw it on the table. Then he went to his file and got the copy of the letter to the stockbroker. Dunn seized the notes then slowly, caressingly, as if taking a pleasure in their mere feel, he began to count.

  ‘Fifty?’ He cackled dryly. ‘You always will have your little joke.’

  ‘Read the letter,’ Thwaite said impatiently.

  Dunn did so, very deliberately. Then very deliberately he finished his whisky and equally deliberately he spoke.

  ‘A sale of stocks for two ’undred an’ fifty? You’re very jokey tonight, Mr Thwaite.’

  ‘Three hundred, Dunn! Three hundred pounds. Six times that roll of notes. Think of it, man! And I don’t say,’ Thwaite added, ‘that it need necessarily be the last. Don’t be a fool, Dunn. Take three hundred to go on with and be thankful.’

  Dunn slowly smiled his evil smile.

  ‘Five ’undred, Mr Thwaite,’ he repeated. ‘My son: I mentioned that—’

  Thwaite sprang to his feet and began to pace the room. ‘But confound it all, man, haven’t I told you I can’t do it? Damn it, do you not believe me? Look here.’ He pulled out his keys, and going to the built-in safe in the corner of the room, unlocked it, swung the heavy door back, took out his bank-book and slapped it down dramatically on the table. ‘Look for yourself. It’s posted to this very afternoon.’

  Again Dunn cackled thinly. ‘A book, Mr Thwaite? You surprise me, sir. Surely a man of your skill with books wouldn’t ask a friend like me to believe in a book?’

  Thwaite felt a slight relief. The old fool was making his task easier for him. He ignored the gibe.

  ‘Well, I’ve made you an offer,’ he said. ‘Fifty pounds now and two hundred and fifty more as soon as my stockbrokers can realise. Take it or leave it. But I tell you seriously that if you don’t take it you’ll get nothing. I’m at the end of my tether. I’m going to have done with all this.’

  ‘An’ may I ask ’ow?’

  ‘You may. I’m going to let you put in your information. It’s five years old and I’ve served the firm well since then. I’ve saved them a good deal more than that thousand. I’ll sell this house and pay the money back with interest. I’ll take my medicine, it won’t be very much under the circumstances, and then I’ll go abroad under a new name and start fresh.’

  ‘Your wife, sir?’

  Thwaite swung round. ‘Damn you, it’s none of your business,’ he said angrily. Then more calmly: ‘My wife will leave the country first, if you want to know. She’ll be waiting for me under the new name when I get out; you’ll not know where. She’ll wait for me, two or three years; it can’t be more. That’s what’ll happen. You can take your three hundred; I’ll make it three hundred a year. Or you can do the other.’

  Dunn sat staring at him, rather stupidly. The drug was acting already. Thwaite got a momentary panic that he had given him too much.

  ‘Well,’ he said sharply, glancing at the clock. Time was nearly up. ‘What about it? Will you take it or leave it?’

  ‘Five ’undred,’ Dunn persisted in a slightly thick voice. ‘Five ’undred I want. Not a penny less.’

  ‘Right,’ Thwaite returned promptly. ‘That settles it. Now you can go and do your worst. I’ve done with you.’

  Dunn gazed at him vacantly. Then he leered. ‘No darned fear, you ’aven’t, Mr Thwaite,’ he muttered tipsily. ‘Not you. Not such a fool, you ain’t. Come, pay up.’ He slowly held out a shaking hand. ‘Five ’un’red.’

  Thwaite glanced at him in real anxiety. ‘Not feeling well, Dunn? Have a drop more whisky?’ Without waiting for a reply he opened the fresh bottle and poured out a further tot. The clerk sipped it, and it seemed to pull him together.

  ‘Strange, that, Mr Thwaite,’ he remarked. ‘I did feel a bit giddy for a time. But I’m better now. Indigestion, I expect.’

  ‘I dare say. Well, if you’re going on this train it’s time you started. Sleep on this business and let me know your decision tomorrow. Take the fifty in any case.’

  The man demurred, but he could not resist the notes and slowly put them in his pocket. Then he looked at his watch and from it to the clock.

  ‘Your clock’s fast,’ he declared.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He looked at his own wristwatch. ‘No, you must be slow. See here.’

  Dunn seemed a trifle bemused. He stood up, swaying slightly. Thwaite congratulated himself. It was exactly the condition he had hoped for.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘you’re not quite fit yet. I’ll see you to the station. Wait till I get my coat.’

  Now that the moment was upon him, Thwaite felt cool and efficient, master of himself and of the situation. He put on his coat, feeling the hammer in the pocket.

  ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘We’ll go out this way. Give me your arm.’

  The study was entered from a passage leading from the main hall to a side door into the garden. This door Thwaite now opened, and when they had passed through, drew it noiselessly to behind him. Presently he would return, let himself in as noiselessly, alter the clock and his watch, make a noisy passage to the hall door, bid someone a cordial good night, and slam the door. At once he would ring, on the pretext that he was working late and wanted more coffee, and when the servant came he would draw her attention to the hour in explaining when to bring it. This would establish, first, that he, Thwaite, had not left the house, and second, that his victim had gone at the proper time to catch his train. These two admitted, his innocence would follow as a matter of course.

  It was a fine night, but intensely dark. As they left the house a goods train clanked slowly by. Thwaite almost exulted. His ally! There were plenty of them at this hour. It was on one of them he was counting to blot out his crime. A blow on the head with the hammer; through the man’s hat there would be no blood; then it would just be necessary to lay the body on the rails clear of the level crossing and the train would do the rest. There would be a few anxious minutes, then—safety!

  Slowly the two men passed on, arm in arm. Now they were in the blackness of the shrubbery. Thwaite knew every step. He had brought the torch, only in case of emergency. A breeze met them, faint, but chill. It moaned dismally among the pines. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. There was a little movement in the shrubs; a rabbit perhaps, or a cat. Thwaite’s heart began to pump as he steered his unconscious victim towards his dreadful goal. Now they were going down the hide sidewalk to the gate. Now they were at the gate, were passing through, were in the lane. Not twenty yards away was the crossing.

  It seemed to Thwaite that he had lost his personality as they walked that twenty yards. From a distance he, the real Thwaite, watched this automaton which bore his shape. His brain was numb. Something had to be done by this automaton, something nasty, and with detached interest he watched its performance. They reached the crossing and halted at the wicket. Save for the faint moan of the wind and the rumble of a car on the road all was still. Thwaite grasped the hammer. The moment was upon him.

  Then he gave a sudden gasp as a thought flashed devastatingly into his mind. It hit him like a physical blow. He could not do it! He had made a mistake. He had given himself away. For that night at least, Dunn was as safe as if he were surrounded by a legion of angels with flaming swords.

  His keys! He had left them in the safe. Without them he could not get back into the house. He would have to ring. And if he had been out, no one would believe he had not gone at least as far as the crossing. It was too close to the house. Thwaite leaned against the wicket, grimly remembering his cocksure superiority as he had marvelled at the mistakes of murderers.

  Then a rush of relief, almost painful in its intensity, swept over him. What if he had not remembered? Another minute and he would now be a murderer himself, fleeing from justice. The rope would be as good as about his neck. Nothing could have saved him.

 
; The sudden revulsion of feeling unnerved him. For the moment he felt he could stand no more of Dunn. Unsteadily he murmured a good night and a safe home. Turning, he staggered back along the lane.

  For ten minutes he paced up and down till he felt his manner had become normal. Then he rang at his door.

  ‘Thank you, Jane,’ he said automatically. He still felt in a dream. ‘I went to see Mr Dunn over the crossing and forgot my keys.’

  His relief at his escape had been instantaneous. Now to his surprise he found another and a deeper relief growing up within him. He was not a murderer! Now he began to see in its true proportions the hideousness of the crime. He felt that his vision had been the truth. If he had done what he intended he would never have got rid of Dunn’s eyes. Peace, safety, happiness, assurance? He would never have known one of them! He would have changed his present thraldom for a slavery ten times as severe.

  Light-heartedly and thankfully he went to bed. Light-heartedly and thankfully he got up next morning. He would be done with the whole horrid nightmare. That very day he would make a clean breast to the manager, take his medicine, and know peace once again.

  And then at breakfast the blow fell. Jane, her eyes starting from her head, burst into the room.

  ‘Have you heard the news, sir?’ she cried. ‘The milkman has just told me. Mr Dunn was killed last night; run over at the crossing! The platelayers found him this morning terribly cut up!’

  Thwaite slowly turned a dead white. What had he told the girl last night? Already she was staring at him curiously. What could she be thinking?

  With a superhuman effort, he pulled himself together. ‘Bless my soul!’ he exclaimed in shocked accents as he rose from the table. ‘Dunn killed! Good Heavens, Jane, how terrible! I’ll go down.’

  He went down. Already the body had been removed to an adjoining platelayers’ hut and the police were in charge. The sergeant saluted as Thwaite appeared.

  ‘Sad affair this, Mr Thwaite,’ he said cheerily. ‘You knew the old gentleman, didn’t you, sir?’

  ‘Knew him?’ Thwaite returned. ‘Of course I knew him. He worked in my own office. Why, he was with me last night; going into some business, it must have been when he was leaving me that this happened. Awful! It’s given me quite a shock.’

  ‘Bound to,’ the cheery sergeant sympathised. ‘But, Lord, sir, accidents will happen.’

  ‘I know, sergeant, but it’s upset me, for I feel a bit responsible about it. He had had a drop too much. I offered him a very moderate drink, but he was evidently not accustomed to it. Of course, it only affected him slightly. All the same, I thought it wise to come out to see him safely to the station.’

  The sergeant’s expression altered. ‘Oh, you came out with him, did you? And did you see him to the station?’

  ‘No, the cold air seemed to make him all right. I turned before we reached the crossing.’

  Was that the sergeant’s ordinary look, or was he—already?

  They came that day to make inquiries. They saw him at the office; presumably they saw the servants also. Thwaite told the truth; that he had gone as far as the wicket and then returned home. They took notes and went away.

  Next day they came again.

  At the trial the defence made much of the fact that Thwaite had gone openly to the crossing; he had not attempted to hide this action either from the servant or the police. But the defence could not explain the sleeping draught found in the dregs of the decanter and in the stomach of the deceased, nor the fact that the study clock had gone ten minutes fast since dinner-time, when Jane had noticed that it was correct. Nor could they hide the significance of a closely written sheet about ledger entries which was found in a sealed envelope in Dunn’s lodgings. Nor yet of certain sums which on certain dates had vanished from Thwaite’s bank account, and of similar sums which a few days later had appeared in Dunn’s. Finally, the defence could offer no convincing explanation of two facts: the first, ascertained from dark stains on a certain engine, that the tragedy had taken place seven minutes before Thwaite returned to his house; the second, that the kitchen hammer, bearing Thwaite’s finger-prints, should be in the pocket of the old coat he wore that night.

  On the last dreadful morning Thwaite told the chaplain the exact truth. Then he showed the courage which was expected from him.

  The Adventure of the

  First-Class Carriage

  Ronald Knox

  Ronald Arbuthnot Knox (1888–1957) was a member of a gifted family and himself a man of many parts: clergyman, broadcaster, translator, compiler of acrostics, and much else besides. In the field of detective fiction, he gained a curious kind of immortality as a result of producing the ‘Detectives’ Decalogue’, ten mostly tongue-in-cheek ‘commandments’ supposed to promote the principle that whodunit writers should ‘play fair’ with their readers. He published six detective novels, and a handful of short stories, and was a founder member of the Detection Club.

  Knox’s love of the genre was fired by a passion for the Sherlock Holmes stories, which he shared with his brother ‘Evoe’, who later became editor of Punch. Their youthful writings about Holmes became the foundation for a paper, ‘Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes’, which Ronald read to the Gryphon Club in Oxford in 1911, and which earned the approval of Arthur Conan Doyle himself. His other Sherlockian writings included ‘Mycroft and Moriarty’, an essay included in a book edited by H.W. Bell, Baker Street Studies (1934). This entertaining pastiche, Knox’s last notable contribution to the crime genre, was published in the February 1947 issue of the Strand, and combines pleasing Holmesian touches with an ‘impossible crime’ scenario.

  The general encouragement extended to my efforts by the public is my excuse, if excuse were needed, for continuing to act as chronicler of my friend Sherlock Holmes. But even if I confine myself to those cases in which I have had the honour of being personally associated with him, I find it difficult to make a selection among the large amount of matter at my disposal.

  As I turn over my records, I find that some of them deal with events of national or even international importance; but the time has not yet come when it would be safe to disclose (for instance) the true facts about the recent change of government in Paraguay. Others (like the case of the Missing Omnibus) would do more to gratify the modern craving for sensation; but I am well aware that my friend himself is the first to deplore it when I indulge what is, in his own view, a weakness.

  My preference is for recording incidents whose bizarre features gave special opportunity for the exercise of that analytical talent which he possessed in such a marked degree. Of these, the case of the Tattooed Nurseryman and that of the Luminous Cigar-Box naturally suggest themselves to the mind. But perhaps my friend’s gifts were even more signally displayed when he had occasion to investigate the disappearance of Mr Nathaniel Swithinbank, which provoked so much speculation in the early days of September, five years back.

  Mr Sherlock Holmes was, of all men, the least influenced by what are called class distinctions. To him the rank was but the guinea stamp; a client was a client. And it did not surprise me one evening when I was sitting over the familiar fire in Baker Street—the days were sunny but the evenings were already falling chill—to be told that he was expecting a visit from a domestic servant, a woman who ‘did’ for a well-to-do, childless couple in the southern Midlands. ‘My last visit,’ he explained, ‘was from a countess. Her mind was uninteresting, and she had no great regard for the truth; the problem she brought was quite elementary. I fancy Mrs John Hennessy will have something more important to communicate.’

  ‘You have met her already, then?’

  ‘No, I have not had the privilege. But anyone who is in the habit of receiving letters from strangers will tell you the same—handwriting is often a better form of introduction than hand-shaking. You will find Mrs Hennessy’s letter on the mantelpiece; and if you care
to look at her j’s and her w’s, in particular, I think you will agree that it is no ordinary woman we have to deal with. Dear me, there is the bell ringing already; in a moment or two, if I mistake not, we shall know what Mrs Hennessy, of the Cottage, Guiseborough St Martin, wants of Sherlock Holmes.’

  There was nothing in the appearance of the old dame who was shown up, a few minutes later, by the faithful Mrs Hudson to justify Holmes’s estimate. To the outward view she was a typical representative of her class; from the bugles on her bonnet to her elastic-sided boots everything suggested the old-fashioned caretaker such as you may see polishing the front doorsteps of a hundred office buildings any spring morning in the city of London. Her voice, when she spoke, was articulated with unnecessary care, as that of the respectable working-class woman is apt to be. But there was something precise and businesslike about the statement of her case which made you feel that this was a mind which could easily have profited by greater educational advantages.

  ‘I have read of you, Mr Holmes,’ she began, ‘and when things began to go wrong up at the Hall it wasn’t long before I thought to myself, if there’s one man in England who will be able to see light here, it’s Mr Sherlock Holmes. My husband was in good employment, till lately, on the railway at Chester; but the time came when the rheumatism got hold of him, and after that nothing seemed to go well with us until he had thrown up his job, and we went to live in a country village not far from Banbury, looking out for any odd work that might come our way.

  ‘We had only been living there a week when a Mr Swithinbank and his wife took the old Hall, that had long been standing empty. They were newcomers to the district, and their needs were not great, having neither chick nor child to fend for; so they engaged me and Mr Hennessy to come and live in the lodge, close by the house, and do all the work of it for them. The pay was good and the duties light, so we were glad enough to get the billet.’