by Leo Bruce
“Keep back!” shouted Beef again as the figure moved another step towards him.
“Yes, you’ve had it now,” went on the voice. “You blundered, as I say, on too much truth. But you didn’t find one thing which you must have looked for high and low.”
“What’s that?” asked Beef thickly.
“The suicide note, of course. The little letter written to explain why life was unendurable.”
“You kept it?”
“Of course I did. I hoped not to have to produce it, but how could I be sure? It gave too much away but it was there in case some fool found cause to accuse me of murder. I found a safe place for it, though. I don’t think you would ever have found it, for I can’t imagine you or anyone else in this house reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. However, I don’t think it will be necessary now.”
“It won’t do you any good to kill me,” said Beef. “The police will get you—for this too.”
“I don’t think so. It is unfortunate that you know too much. Ironic, too. You have been floundering on some facts which make your death essential if I am to enjoy peace and leisure.”
“You’ll never do that!” Beef’s voice was high and loud again. “Never. Now stand back!”
The dark figure was very near to him now. It was time, I knew, for us to move. Every instinct of loyalty to my old friend, every scrap of courage, rose in me, and I resolved to risk the levelled pistol and go to Beef’s assistance. I opened my mouth to speak but Liphook’s hand was over it before I could utter a sound. “Don’t move!” he said in a low threatening voice.
I was appalled at his cowardice. How could he watch while Beef was murdered? I knew he had no great opinion of Beef, but to cringe here while my old friend was done to death was contemptible.
“We must!” I tried to say, but the words were muffled.
Then as I watched it happened. The dark figure took a last step forward and by a sudden catlike movement swept Beef’s legs from under him and sent him hurtling over the parapet. A sickening cry, like the scream which in nightmares always sticks in one’s throat, broke from him as he went back into darkness.
“Oh God!” I cried.
I stood up, not caring now if the pistol was turned on me. I don’t know what I shouted to the creature across the parapet, but it must have been loud for at once the figure turned towards me and the moon was full on its evil face. I could not move from where I stood but I saw Liphook and the constable rushing across. I think I was still shouting incoherently and hysterically when I saw that they would be too late, for the murderer had seen them too.
In those few seconds the wretched creature had time to know the game was up. Not only had the murderous attack on Beef been witnessed but words meant only for Beef had been overheard. With a cry like that of a wild beast the murderer sprang towards the parapet. For a few seconds, and just as Liphook stretched towards the dark outline, it remained in the white glow of moonlight. Then, like a man jumping into water, the thing leapt from the parapet into the darkness of space.
I started to make my way round the chimney stacks to where Liphook and the constable were leaning over the parapet. I scarcely knew why. Beef was dead and it seemed to me suddenly that with him had died a great deal of kindness and decency and sturdy common sense which the sick world could not spare. He had his faults and one of them, his love of beer, had been the cause of his falling a victim to an unscrupulous murderer, quick enough to take advantage of his condition. But with all his faults, his vulgarity, his obstinacy, his childish sense of humour, his rudeness, he remained an honest man, a good detective and a true example of the best in English life and genius. “He was a man, take him for all in all,” I said reminiscently, and added: “I shall not look upon his like again.”
But there I was wrong. There was something strange in the attitude of Liphook and the constable as they leaned over, something that suggested deep-sea anglers trying to draw in some monstrous fish. And this I found was very much what was happening, for suspended by a steel cable just below the level of our feet was the great weight of Beef, Beef very much alive and quite literally kicking.
I think I must have been a little hysterical from the relief and pleasure of finding my old friend alive for I started to laugh.
“Oh, Beef!” I cried. “You do look funny!”
“You’ll look funny when I get up there,” spluttered Beef, floundering about like a child trying to swim. “Pull me up for goodness sake, and never mind laughing.”
It seemed that the cable was attached to something round his waist for it appeared to come from the small of his back. It took a good deal of manipulation by the three of us and some scrambling by Beef himself to get him at last over the parapet. He at once sat down and blew and gasped from these exertions.
“Good thing the coping juts out a foot or two from the walls of the house,” he said at last, “or I could never have done it. It’ll take me days to get over the wrenches and bruises as it is.”
“So you’ve come back from the dead,” I reflected.
“What’s the matter with that?” asked Beef defiantly. “You can’t say I don’t give you something to write about.”
“I don’t know. It will be very hard to make this convincing. I shall have to describe you being thrown into space and I don’t know how readers will take your resurrection.”
“They took it all right from Sherlock Holmes,” said Beef. “And he hadn’t got a steel cable like I have.”
Liphook smiled.
“Did you expect the suicide?” he asked.
“No. Can’t say I did,” Beef was honest enough to admit. “Still it may be just as well. I doubt if we would have got a conviction for murder. Now help me out of this thing.”
Beef stood up and took off his jacket which was ripped at the back. We saw an elaborate arrangement round his trunk, a sort of canvas strait waistcoat which went from his armpits to his thighs.
“My idea,” he said proudly, “though young Bomb helped me fix it. Couldn’t have done it without. Anything narrow would have cut me in two. Well, let’s go down and pick up the pieces.”
25
Beef now began to behave like a hero returning in triumph. He led the way downstairs, and before even going to examine the body lying on the terrace he announced that he needed a drink.
“First today?” I asked mischievously.
“Not so far from it,” he replied with good-humour, “though I had to have enough to make me look as though I’d had too much. I’m not so good an actor that I could have come in and convinced even you, Townsend, that I was drunk if I hadn’t been a little bit. See, I know just how much I can take. Not like some people. What I needed was the right amount to make me look a bit lit, but not so much that I couldn’t do my part. Yes, I’ll have a nice drop of Scotch for a change. Well, here’s to all the suspects who aren’t guilty.”
I noticed that Inspector Liphook seemed to treat Beef with a new respect, while even Constable Spender-Hennessy made no more sarcastic remarks. We waited until Beef had finished his drink then allowed ourselves to be led through the french windows on to the stone-flagged terrace.
Here a very loathsome sight awaited us. The suicide had fallen on his back and lay now with blood around his head and eyes staring glassily up to the night sky. It was the man whose voice I had heard speaking to Beef on the roof. It was Theo Gray.
I make no apology for my first reaction to this sight. I felt no pity for the dead man and only a queasy horror at the gruesome appearance of his corpse. I turned at once to Beef and said: “But this means you’ve cheated. You specifically stated that Theo Gray did not kill Cosmo Ducrow.”
“No more he didn’t,” said Beef.
“Then I give up,” I said. “It’s too difficult.”
Beef grinned and without touching the corpse, which Liphook had examined, led the way back into the house.
“I asked them all to stay in the dining-room,” said Beef. “It would never have don
e to have them hopping about while I was arranging things. You can let ’em out now,” he added grandly.
Liphook went off to telephone to Stute and to arrange for Gray’s corpse to be removed, while I went to the dining-room and said as politely as possible that Sergeant Beef would be glad if they would care to come through to the library as he had some news for them.
“Another murder?” asked Gulley.
“Very nearly,” I replied. “Fortunately only a suicide this time, though.”
“Where is Theo?” demanded Rudolf Ducrow.
I was not sure whether Beef wished me to give any details of events so I said simply: “He’s gone out, I think,” which, in a way, was true.
When we filed into the library Beef rose from his chair and said to Rudolf: “I should like the staff to come in for this.”
“For what?”
“For what I’m going to tell you.”
“And what is that?” asked Rudolf with a suggestion of scorn in his voice.
Beef looked rather menacing.
“I’m going to tell you who killed Cosmo Ducrow.”
“At last,” said Rudolf. “Very well, we’ll gather them all here.”
When the Duntons and Gabriels came in it was obvious that their reconciliation was no pretence for the two women sat down side by side. The men also appeared to be on the best of terms. Mills sat on a hard chair away from the rest of them.
“I must apologize for being a bit umpty earlier in the evening,” said Beef. “It was necessary to make someone believe I was drunk, and so that I shouldn’t have to take any chances, I got drunk. I mean, that’s the way to be convincing, isn’t it? You will nearly all be glad to hear that this piece of acting was highly successful and that a murderous attack was made on me not half an hour ago.
“Well, now, about this case. Most of you are longing to know the whole truth, just as I was when I started on it. And very soon I realized that I was up against something particularly difficult and someone fiendishly clever. I was pretty sure that nothing had been planned before the night of the twelfth because on that night something led to Cosmo Ducrow’s death which could not have been anticipated unless there was a fairly wide conspiracy amongst you. That something was his learning of his wife’s infidelity with his nephew.”
Ernest Wickham broke in.
“Is there any need to refer to intimate matters of that kind? De mortuis, you know.”
“We can’t mince matters now, Mr. Wickham. As I was saying, I did not think that Cosmo’s death had been planned, yet there was a perfection about the scheme which I could scarcely believe had come from what you might call improvising. This perfection continued to be evident throughout the whole case. Even after the death of Mrs. Ducrow I knew that the question I had to answer, the key to the whole puzzle, remained the same. Who killed Cosmo Ducrow?”
Just then a prolonged ringing of the front-door bell interrupted him. He guessed, I suppose, that it was someone who had come in response to Liphook’s phone calls, and decided to break the news of Gray’s death to all his listeners. This he did in a characteristically crude manner.
“Oh, by the way,” he said. “Theo Gray’s dead.”
Since he had not first explained that Gray was guilty this was a most shocking way to make his announcement.
Rudolf jumped to his feet.
“Murdered?” he said in a loud rising voice.
Beef did not turn a hair.
“No. Suicide,” he said.
Gulley was excited now.
“That I will not believe. You may be able to convince me that Mrs. Ducrow took her own life, but not Theo. He was far too . . . too sane. Too cool a man.”
“He was cool all right,” said Beef, “and as you’ll see later he was guilty.”
“You mean, you’re going to try and make us believe that Theo murdered Cosmo Ducrow?”
“No. I’m not going to try to make you believe anything.”
“Then what was he guilty of?”
“Murdering me,” said Beef calmly.
“For God’s sake stop this clowning!”
“No clowning about it. He pushed me off the roof with three witnesses. I mean, witnessed by three people.”
Gulley spoke as though he were clinching an argument with a lunatic.
“Then would you kindly explain how you come to be standing here, alive and well?”
It would be impossible to describe all the peasant cunning, the grinning mysteriousness, the sheer boyish artfulness that Beef managed to show in his face and voice as he made his triumphant reply.
“Ah!” he said.
Gabriel meanwhile had been out to open the front door. He returned now with Stute and two stretcher bearers. The gathering broke up into smaller conferences and on all sides I heard expressions of incredulity about Gray’s guilt.
“It makes you think, though, doesn’t it?” said Mrs. Gabriel, “I mean that’s three gone. You wonder who the next will be. It’s all very well to talk about suicide, but it’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?”
“You’re right,” replied Mrs. Dunton. “It’s more like a madman at work. If what he says is true and Mr. Gray pushed him off the roof he wouldn’t be alive now to tell the tale, so what’s the good of talking? It’s more likely he murdered Mr. Gray, if you ask me.”
“And such a nice gentleman,” said Mrs. Gabriel. “In all the years he’s lived here and I’ve been here we’ve never had a bit of trouble. He was a real gentleman, I will say that. Not like some.”
“No. That’s a fact.”
I left them nodding at one another with tight lips and meaning eyes.
The stretcher party had done its work, taking the remains of Theo Gray out by the back way. But Stute remained. He sounded annoyed with Beef.
“If you had told me what you were up to I certainly shouldn’t have agreed to the Inspector coming here. We can’t have Special Branch men watching suicide.”
“It was murder I wanted them to watch,” argued Beef. “And they watched it. I had my reasons, Inspector, as you’ll hear if you like to stay on a little while. I’m just going over the case to them all.”
“Oh, you are? You’ve got it all taped?”
“I think so.”
“You know who killed Cosmo Ducrow?”
“Yes. I know that.”
“You are going to name him or her?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll stay. I like to have my job done for me. Do you think there will be any more violence tonight?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“We don’t want another suicide.”
“There won’t be any more.”
“Very well. You can go ahead with your exposition.”
“Will you all take your seats again, please? The cadaver has been removed. I am about to clear up the whole of this mystery for you.”
A silence fell on the room. I looked round once more at those tense and anxious faces, wondering which member of Beef’s audience would be named. Gray was “guilty”, Beef said. But of what? Not of murdering Cosmo. Perhaps he had killed Freda Ducrow? Yet Beef himself had spoken of one murder and one suicide and of the suicide note which Gray said had been left. Did his guilt lie only in his actions after someone else had committed the greater crime of murder? Had he but taken advantage of the violence of others? If so, there was a murderer yet to be named, and again I found myself looking round the room in desperation, trying to pick out the guilty one before Beef did so. Gulley? He looked distraught and guilty enough. Rudolf? I did not want to believe it of him for I had always admired and liked his frank open disposition. Mills? I had to admit that he was my choice, if any. Gabriel? A dark horse this, and he had had every opportunity. Dunton? The big heavy fellow looked like a killer to me. Ernest Wickham? Why not? He could have been here that night for all we knew, and it was curious that Beef had insisted on his presence this evening. Or was it one of the women? The big muscular Zena? The fierce-looking Mrs. Dunton? Littl
e bitter Mrs. Gabriel? Attractive Esmeralda Tobyn? It could be anyone, I supposed.
But Beef knew. However foolish he might have been, he knew now and would tell us the truth. I, no less than the others, was agog to hear his story.
“Yes,” he said. “I have never doubted that the key to this whole mystery lay in the answer to that question—who killed Cosmo Ducrow? Even now when we have had this violence tonight and I have been thrown over the parapet of the roof I know that the riddle could never be solved unless I can answer that. And I can. The funny thing is that I got it first as you’re trying to get it now—by guesswork. A little thing made me think, and I saw the whole secret. It was guesswork which suggested it, but I’m going to produce a lot more than guesswork to prove it to you all tonight.
“Still, I’ll start off with what I guessed. Very early in the case I guessed that the answer to the question which we were all asking ourselves, the answer to the question, Who Killed Cosmo Ducrow? was . . . Cosmo Ducrow.”
26
Beef, of course, expected this to gain an effect, and he was not disappointed. To describe the faces around him I can only use the old-fashioned adjective “spellbound”. Rudolf was the first to pull himself together.
“Look here,” he said. “I don’t know if you’re trying to be funny. But if you think that a man can bash in the back of his own skull with a croquet mallet you must be out of your mind. Surely if ever a murder was obvious it was this one?”
“That’s the point. It was obvious. A little too obvious. Murderers don’t as a rule leave their weapons for everyone to see. Nor do they use about six times the violence that is necessary. That was what made me think. I soon realized what made this case unique. Most murderers try to make murder look like suicide. Someone here had tried to make suicide look like murder.”
“Very neat,” said Stute. “But have you any proof of this?”
