‘Yes … Yes,’ Reade said. ‘Of course … Yes, I see.’ He raised his head, flinging it back with a movement almost theatrically defiant. ‘I suppose you want to ask me a lot of questions. Isn’t that the way you do it?’
Pike shrugged. ‘Well, sir, that’s as you like. You can either make a statement on which we may want to ask you questions afterwards or you can answer my questions as I put them to you without making any original statement at all.’
‘When I was stopped by the patrol,’ Reade began in a voice which seemed deliberately emotionless, ‘it was a few minutes after midnight. I was walking down Broad Walk coming in this direction. I’ve been overworked lately and suffering from insomnia. Tonight I went to bed just after dinner. I thought I could sleep tonight. I soon knew sleep was impossible unless I took drastic measures. So I went out for a walk. I daresay it was foolish of me and may seem incredible to you but my own state of mind had made me forget all about this … this Butcher business. I just went out as I would’ve done at any normal time in the same circumstances. I walked straight up Marrowbone Lane, round the Poultry Farm and back down Runborough Lane, across the Playing Fields and into the top of Broad Walk like that. I was half-way down Broad Walk when I was stopped … That’s all!’ He sat staring at Pike. The eyes, Pike thought, were covered with a hard, protective glaze through which a man could see nothing of feeling.
Pike pondered. ‘Tell me, sir,’ he said after a moment, his voice urbanity itself, ‘while you were on this walk how many people did you see before you met the patrol?’
Reade shook his head. ‘None.’ His mouth shut, after the word, in a hard, lipless line.
‘No one at all?’ Pike was insistent.
‘No one.’
‘And how long would you say the walk occupied, Dr Reade?’
The broad shoulders were lifted, somehow despairingly. ‘I can’t give you any accurate estimation. All I can swear to is that I was not out for less than an hour and not out for more than two.’
There ensued a long silence. Jeffson, shifting from one foot to the other, looked first at the doctor’s pallid defiance and then at the inscrutability of Pike. Jeffson knew what he would do, yet had a sinking suspicion that this would be wrong. A good man, Jeffson, and one knowing his own limitations. He waited, almost unbreathing, for what should happen. When it came it was so unexpected an anti-climax that he let out his breath in a long hissing whistle instantly repressed.
For Pike got to his feet and said:
‘Well, thank you very much, Dr Reade. I’m sorry to have had to disturb you.’ He looked round for his hat which lay upon a chair to the left of the door. He made for it. ‘We’ll be getting along, Jeffson,’ he said.
Reade sprang to his feet. ‘Look here!’ he said violently. ‘What I …’ And then once more closed his mouth into a tight line.
Pike stooped to pick up his hat; turned with it in his hand. ‘Yes, sir?’ He was suave.
‘Nothing,’ said Reade. ‘Nothing!’
Pike set his fingers to the door handle but dropped them as if struck by a sudden thought. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Just one more question. Is there anyone besides yourself, Dr Reade, sleeping in the house?’
There was a little movement of Reade’s bulk; a movement almost like the recoil from a light, sharp blow. ‘Housekeeper,’ he said. His lips hardly opened to emit the word.
Pike raised his eyebrows. ‘No one else?’
‘No.’ Reade shook his head.
Pike took his soft hat in both hands and began to knead the brim. He seemed, now, a personification of diffidence. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘whether we might have a few words with your housekeeper?’
Reade seemed to have grown bigger. As he stood, he looked taller, burlier, more self-assured. ‘What the devil for?’ he said.
‘Verification,’ said Pike. The hat brim twisted in his fingers. ‘I’m sure you’ll see, sir, that it may save you some unpleasantness, as you might say, and us, perhaps, some work, if we just saw whether we could get some nearer hint as to the time you left the house …’
‘Good God!’ said Reade. His tone was one of unleashed anger. ‘D’you want to wake the poor old woman up? She was in bed and asleep before I went to bed.’
‘Mrs Reade, sir,’ said Pike inconsequently, ‘is away, I understand?’
‘Thank God,’ Reade said, ‘she is!’ He came round the corner of the table and stood to face Pike, his hands, which were clenched into fists, thrust into his pockets.
Pike laid his hat upon the chair from which he had taken it. ‘I think, sir,’ he said, ‘it would be best if we saw the housekeeper. And by the way …’ He turned for an instant and his eyes met Jeffson’s.
It was much to Jeffson’s credit that he understood the unspoken message. He came forward from the fireplace. He said, heavily, looking at Reade:
‘Isn’t there a maid too?’
Reade glared. He made a little movement as if his arms, the hands still fists, were coming out of their pockets. But what he did was to turn and take a pace and once more sit down upon the table. He said, answering Jeffson’s question but looking at Pike:
‘There was a maid. I discharged her last week. She was impertinent and unsatisfactory. My housekeeper’s been looking for another girl, but so far hasn’t got one. Therefore the only person in the house besides myself tonight is Mrs Flewin.’
‘I see, sir.’ Beneath the diffidence of Pike’s tone had come a subtle hardness. ‘Now, what I think’s best is if you take Sergeant Jeffson here and go and wake this Mrs Flewin and tell her you would be much obliged if she would come down and answer some questions which Sergeant Jeffson will put to her. If you would then, sir, come back here, we could have a further little chat ourselves while Sergeant Jeffson is talking to Mrs Flewin … Once more I must apologise for being so pestering, as you might say. But it can’t be helped.’
Reade stood motionless for a long moment. Four eyes watched him. ‘Oh! All right!’ he said at last. He swung himself off the table, passed Pike and went to the door. He set his hand to the door-knob and turned. ‘This way, Sergeant,’ he said. The accent upon the last word was heavily ironic as was the little bow which accompanied the words. Jeffson, unmoved, crossed like a silent and agile elephant to the door.
Pike, straining his ears to listen, heard the footsteps—Reade’s quick and light like a cat’s; Jeffson’s solid and ponderous yet quiet—go down the hall, turn left and begin the ascent of carpeted stairs.
When the sound of the footsteps had died away and been replaced, after a small bridge of silence, by a rat-tatting of knuckles against a door, Pike ceased to listen. He crossed the surgery and sat himself upon the table in the spot where Reade had been sitting. He pulled from a pocket of his blue suit an oilskin pouch and a new but pleasantly maturing pipe. He began to fill the pipe from the pouch. The filling was complete and the pouch rolled up and once more put away when he heard, following a broken murmur of voices, feet coming down the stairs—three pairs of feet this time: two leather-clad and softly ringing, the others soft and slipshod. He slipped off the table and crossed with light steps to the door. He waited, leaning against the door-jamb so that without obtruding himself into the passage he could yet see the foot of the stairs.
He saw the little procession. Reade first, and then an elderly and many-angled female wrapped in a dressing-gown of blue flannel, with curling pins clustered thick about a head whose raven blackness seemed too black. And lastly, Jeffson, blue-clad and silver-buttoned, heavy and apparently unmoved by humour or any other emotion. At the foot of the stairs the cortege halted. Opposite where it stood was a door. Reade reached out a hand and flung this open. The woman passed in first and then Jeffson already fumbling in left-hand breast pocket for pencil and notebook.
Pike drew back a little. Down the hall towards him Reade came with slow steps. By the time he got to his surgery, Pike was once more seated upon the table. He had the filled but unlighted pipe in his mouth and a box of matches
in his hand.
‘Mind if I smoke in here, sir?’ he said.
Reade shook his head. ‘No!’ he said savagely. ‘You can do anything in here … After all, you’re a big noise, aren’t you?’
‘I try,’ Pike said with urbanity, ‘not to make one.’
Reade flung himself into a chair. He, too, pulled out pipe and tobacco. While he fumbled for matches, he said:
‘Well, Inspector or whatever you are, where’s these other questions of yours?’
Pike smiled, friendly enough. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘that I’ll be worrying you. Not yet anyhow.’
Reade laughed; a short, barking sound. ‘Thought so,’ he said. ‘All you’re waiting for is for that hulking bobby to see what he can get out of old Flewin and keep me here in the meantime. What?’
Pike did not answer. There was no other sound in the room until, heralded by his footsteps, Jeffson came. He stood in the doorway, seeming to fill it. He looked at Pike and, in answer to Pike’s raised eyebrows, shook his head.
Once more Reade let out a harsh, barking laugh.
Pike got to his feet. ‘I think, sir,’ he said, ‘that that’ll be all … for tonight.’ He turned towards the door.
Reade sat where he was. ‘You’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘if I leave you to let yourselves out.’ There was a sneer in voice as well as words, but there was something else behind the sneer. As Jeffson said to Pike when the car started, its headlights cutting a white swathe down the blackness of Marrowbone Lane:
‘Seemed some’ow to me, sir, as if ’e was more scared than he liked to let on!’
CHAPTER VII
THE car had not gone a hundred yards before Pike halted it. He felt in the darkness of the saloon the little start of surprise which Jeffson gave.
‘What is it?’ said Jeffson.
‘Had an idea,’ said Pike. ‘Get taken like that sometimes. Where’s the post-office? Never mind. Don’t tell me, I know. What I mean is this: Know the postmaster?’
‘Yes, sir. Name of Myers.’
Pike grunted. ‘Hmm! Where’s he live?’
‘’Bout two hundred yards,’ Jeffson said, his tone shewing his endeavour to conceal curiosity, ‘of where we are now.’
Pike started the car. ‘Stop me,’ he said, ‘opposite his house. When we get there, get out, knock him up, shove him into some clothes and bring him along. Can you do that?’
In the darkness Jeffson nodded. ‘I can, sir. Know ’im well.’
The car went on at a smooth fifteen miles an hour.
‘Whoa, sir!’ said Jeffson.
The car came to a halt. There was the click of one of its doors opening and a scraping shuffle as Jeffson got out. Pike switched off the car’s lights and waited in the darkness. He remembered his own theory of ‘not thinking’. He smiled wryly to himself as he realised that, now, even at this stage in this case, his mind was working as hard as never before. With a small percentage, as it were, of his senses, he was aware of Jeffson’s approach to the dim bulk of a little house; aware of the sound of a knocker; a silence; voices and then, after another and smaller silence, the opening and shutting of a door.
In what seemed an amazingly short time, there came the sound again of the door, this time followed by footsteps crunching upon the half-frozen gravel. Pike came to himself with a start. He shivered a little as he realised the cold. He leaned over as the footsteps drew nearer and opened the door.
‘’Ere’s Mr Myers!’ came Jeffson’s voice. ‘In you get, Myers.’
Behind Pike there came a scrambling and puffing and then the sound of a body settling itself upon the back cushions. Jeffson climbed in beside Pike. Once more the headlights cut a swathe through the night. The car moved off.
‘Which,’ said the driver, ‘is the nearest way to the post-office?
‘First left, second right, first left,’ came a high, eager voice from the back.
The car, seeming to gather speed all the way and take its bends without pause, did the half-mile in creditable time. There was a squeaking of brakes and a flurry of gravel, and the car came to a stand.
‘Out you get!’ said Pike, and within a moment was peering at a thin and bespectacled person introduced by Jeffson as Mr Myers, our postmaster.
‘I don’t know yet, Mr Myers, what the Superintendent wants …’
‘Easy!’ Pike said. ‘Can we get in? Got a key, Mr Myers?’
Mr Myers had got a key and, leading them round to the back of the small brick-tiled, rough-cast plaster house which was the post office, used it.
The side door of the post-office clicked behind them. They stood in darkness until at a touch of the postmaster’s fingers the lights sprang up all about them.
‘This,’ said Mr Myers, ‘is the Sorting Office.’ He peered at Pike with an avid curiosity. ‘Now, sir?’
Pike looked about him and saw two desks, walls bare save for almanacks and a clock, and three long trestle tables. The windows of the room—long, narrow windows—were barred and netted. ‘Sorting Office, eh?’ said Pike. ‘Now then, Mr Myers, that nine o’clock collection. The nine o’clock is the last collection, isn’t it?’
‘Except,’ said Mr Myers, ‘in the very outlyin’ boxes like Arrowcourt, Forest Road, Two Tiddlers Corner over The Other Side and such, the last collection is nine, Superintendent. With a final collection here at nine-thirty.’
‘Right!’ said Pike. ‘Right! When are letters cleared at this last collection sorted?’
‘The succeeding day, Superintendent, at 5 a.m. We have to have a five o’clock sort so’s to catch the 6.10 up-mail and the 6.30 down-mail. Letters wanted to be delivered in London first post have to be posted by the eight o’clock, but we have a nine o’clock collection to get London letters up by the second post and some others like Cambridge.’
‘What I want,’ said Pike, ‘is to have a look at the mail. Can we do it?’
‘Cer-tainly, cer-tainly!’ Mr Myers bounded like a consumptive, but eager antelope. In three strides he was at a small door facing the one by which they had entered. It swung upwards and closed again, only to re-open a moment later to admit the back of Mr Myers bent into the shape of a C. Mr Myers was dragging with both hands and all his inconsiderable weight at a bulky mail sack. With Jeffson’s help the sack was hoisted to one of the tables, tilted and emptied of a cascade of envelopes and cards and little parcels. Pike, with eager fingers and a look of concentration which somehow lent a sharp, knife-like appearance to his lean face, was busy among the great scattered pile of paper. There was a crack like a distant pistol shot: Jeffson had slapped his thigh.
‘Kor!’ said Jeffson. ‘Got it!’ The creased frown of worry which had been on his face since their arrival at the cottage of Mr Myers disappeared and was replaced by a grin of triumph at his own perspicacity and of admiration for the Superintendent. Jeffson, too, became busy. Mr Myers, his head on one side, his eyes twinkling like a small bird’s behind their metal-rimmed spectacles, watched them …
‘Right!’ said Pike suddenly and straightened himself.
‘God strike me dead!’ said Jeffson. He was staring round-eyed at what Pike was holding in his right hand. It was a square, yellowish envelope bearing a superscription written in a backward-sloping handwriting, and with curious jet-black, shining ink.
Pike, the envelope between his fingers, advanced upon Mr Myers. ‘Any way of telling,’ said Pike curtly, ‘which box any of these letters came out of?’
Mr Myers shook his head decisively. ‘’Fraid not, Superintendent. They’re all pitched in here together to wait the five o’clock sort.’ Suddenly his eyes fell upon the envelope and widened slowly, while the bright spot of colour upon each cheek-bone faded to leave a ghastly green patch. ‘The Butcher!’ said Mr Myers.
Pike nodded. He turned and spoke over his shoulder, and Jeffson produced a knife.
Jeffson, watching, saw that Superintendent Pike had only held this letter by its edges, and that now that he wished to open it he laid it down caref
ully upon a sheet of paper and, still taking great care not to touch more of its surface with his fingers than was necessary, carefully slit the top of the envelope.
There was a rustling. Delicately Pike drew out the envelope’s contents. Three sheets of paper this time. He opened the first. He read. Over his shoulders the other men read too. They saw:
My Reference THREE
R.I.P.
Amy Adams,
died Monday, 26th November …
THE BUTCHER
Pike opened out the second sheet. It read:
My Reference FOUR
R.I.P.
Albert Rogers,
died Friday, 30th November …
THE BUTCHER
Pike opened out the third sheet. It read:
DEAR POLICE,—Enclosed please find my memos regarding those unfortunates, Amy Adams (what a terrible name) and Albert Rogers (what a far worse one!)
I really am so very sorry that I am late with my memo, in regard to Amy Adams, but pressure of business (after all, you know, I have had a lot of staff work to do) has made it impossible for me to let you have this earlier.
I must now pass quickly on to the main point of this letter, and that is to tell you to keep your spirits up. I quite realise how disheartening, to say the least, it must be for you never to know when and how and where and who I am going to strike next. I hate causing unnecessary pain to others and am, therefore, undertaking to give you warning wherever possible of any future little jobs which I may be contemplating. This will, don’t you think? add quite another spice of excitement to our game?
Believe me, Police,
Yours tolerantly,
THE BUTCHER
Murder Gone Mad Page 9
