VIII
All that happened upon the morning of Tuesday, December 4th. At half-past three in the afternoon of that day, a busy time at The Market and also at the main post-office which faced the most southerly door of The Market, four men—four unobtrusively loitering men—became, on a sudden, no longer loiterers and no longer unobtrusive. Their eyes, as they had loitered, had been fixed upon a spot just above the wall-slit letter box of the post office, and they had seen for one little flash of time, so infinitesimal as to be unseen by any eyes except their own, a red glow of light from the spot which they had watched. The one nearest to the letter box, though upon the far side of the road, ran forward, and as he ran, he put a whistle to his lips and blew three short sharp blasts. His three companions converged upon him. There was one behind him at the western end of the short road (it joins Market Road and Norfolkgate) closing that exit, and there were two before him, half-way between the post office outside which he now stood and the junction of this road with Market Road.
To watch these four men was like watching a sheep dog trial. Out of a scattered little throng of some hundred and twenty persons, each picked a number. The first man two; the man behind him three, the other two, respectively, four and one. This made a total of ten, and these ten persons presently were gathered, like bewildered sheep, in the postmaster’s room which opens out of a door to the left of the main entrance to the post-office.
The man who had blown his whistle, seeing that the necessary work had been completed without aid, came out to the steps of the post office and once more whistled, this time using only two blasts. At either end of the short road, the four uniformed constables who had appeared in answer to the first summons of the whistle melted away like leaves before the wind. The man with the whistle turned on his heel and went back into the post-office and the postmaster’s room. The selected ten were huddled into a sheepish group. The room was bare save for a desk, a chair, and three long trestle tables. They stood in the centre of the barrenness. They shuffled their feet and whispered indignantly one to the other. There were three women, two boys of apparently under sixteen years of age, and five men. The three women were, as to two of them, well advanced in middle age and of the respectable small-retired-trader class, and as to one of them, of the would-be-smart artificial-silk-stockinged live-on-your-credit class. The two boys were—two boys. The five men were, at first sight, so alike as to seem brothers. It was only when one had been close to them for some time that one saw that really the differences between them were so great as to make their brotherhood most unlikely. It was their uniformity of clothes (the cheap ready-made ‘sports’ suits of the holiday-making clerk) and the uniform pallor of their faces which gave the initial impression of similarity.
The man who had whistled went to the telephone and spoke into it in a voice so low that not even the ear-straining sheep could hear. He put the receiver back upon its hook and turned to the sheep. He said:
‘I am afraid you ladies and gentlemen will have to wait until the Superintendent comes.’
More muttering amongst the sheep, but not one voice raised in hurried wrath. Sheep they looked like and sheep they were; sheep, moreover, lacking a bell-wether.
The Superintendent was not long in coming. He must, it seemed even to the sheep, have been very closely at hand. He came in upon them in a suave and friendly-seeming rush which made them immediately feel, if not less like sheep, at least less like sheep waiting outside the abattoir.
Pike surveyed his catch and spoke to it. He said:
‘Shan’t keep you long, ladies and gentlemen. Just one moment, if you please, then we’ll start our business.’
He went out through the door by which he had come to return immediately followed by Myers the postmaster.
The postmaster, ignoring the flock, went out by another door.
Pike, after a word with the whistle-blower, followed.
The whistle-blower went up to the flock, and from it detached one of the elderly women.
‘If,’ said the whistle-blower, ‘you would follow me, madam …’
The woman followed. Separated from her enforced companions she seemed, perhaps paradoxically, to gain not only in individuality but in strength. There was about her, as she passed through the door which the whistle-blower held open and so into the presence of Pike sitting behind the post-master’s table, an air of shrewd, mind-your-own-business efficiency.
Pike, seeming courtesy personified, leapt to his feet and placed a chair. ‘Take a seat, madam,’ he said.
She sat upon the chair with an air of protest. She perched herself so much upon its edge that a fall seemed imminent. Pike remained standing. He said:
‘Madam, I am informed that just now you posted a letter in the box outside this building. Is that so?’
The woman’s head was bonnetted. There were dangling bugles upon the bonnet and these shook with the vehemence of her nod. In her craggy face the lips had disappeared, but momentarily they showed again as she spoke. ‘I did,’ she said, ‘and what of it?’
Pike at some length, and with a grave courtesy wholly admirable, explained his position.
‘… and so, I am sure, Madam,’ he concluded, ‘you will realise that it is only for the good of yourself and the community that I am forced to take these rather drastic steps and ask you the questions which I shall have to ask you.’
Once more the bugles danced, though whether this time to a nod or a shaking of the head it was hard to determine.
‘How many letters, Madam,’ said Pike, going back to his chair and resting his elbows upon the table, ‘did you post?’
‘One,’ was the answer.
‘To whom?’ said Pike.
The woman bridled. Her hands which had been folded in her lap came up until in the palm of each there rested an elbow. The thin-lipped mouth emitted one word: ‘Imperence!’
Once more Pike went over his explanations, this second time fully as courteous as he had been the first. His bright, small eyes were veiled with a smiling veil of deprecatory innocence and yet there was beneath his manner a quality of adamant which communicated itself.
The woman gave in. ‘If you must know,’ she said, ‘it was to my boy Alf. It was a white envelope. It had one penny and one ha’penny stamp, and it was addressed to 28706, Lance-Corporal A. Hitchin, 3/4th Duke of Gloucester’s Own Light Infantry, Tidworth.’
Pike glanced down at a slip of paper tucked into the corner of the postmaster’s blotting pad.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Now—Mrs Hitchin is it?—you are not bound to do this, but I must say it would make our labours much easier, and possibly save you a good deal of annoyance, if you could just give me a rough outline of what this letter contained. I have explained to you that we have, in connection with our investigation, to check the letters posted just now, and if you care to just give me the outline I have asked for, well …’ His shrug intimated how delightful such information would make the future relations of Mrs Hitchin with the police.
Mrs Hitchen’s thin-lipped mouth writhed into a soundless and doubtless genteel epithet, but Mrs Hitchen gave her information. Mrs Hitchen had written to her Alf the usual letter. Was he well? Had the last lot of socks fitted him? She had not yet received the 5s. 0d. he had promised three weeks ago. She did hope that he would not have to go to India to fight them blackamoors. Cissie and Fred and Alice’s children were all well. Hoping this found him as it left his loving mother at present … And that was that.
Through yet another door Pike bowed Mrs Hitchin, having first, however, written down her full name and her address. He went back to his seat and touched a bell. There was ushered in to him the second sheep, this time one of the five men, a person bearing the startling name of Loosebutton.
Mr Loosebutton, it appeared, had posted two letters, one to a ‘lady friend,’ Miss Gwladys Frenchem, at an office in Holborn Viaduct asking her whether she would like to come to the pictures with him upon the next Thursday evening, and one to his father,
a commercial traveller working in the north, asking for the loan of 10s. 0d. presumably to enable him to carry out the appointment made in the first letter. Addresses and details duly taken, Pike got rid of Mr Loosebutton and once more pressed his bell.
The next was another woman, this time the young and automatically charming apex of the feminine triangle. After Pike’s preliminary she smiled. She was ready enough with her information.
‘Eunice Doulton,’ she said. ‘My father’s very well known here. He’s assistant Secretary of the Company.’ She looked at Pike and found him ‘interesting.’ She made good use of her eyes.
Pike asked his next question. ‘I don’t mind,’ said Miss Doulton, ‘telling you at all … Of course I don’t! What I mean is, Superintendent, I think everybody ought to do everything they can to help the police to find this … this … terrible creature. At least I hope I’m right in supposing that’s what you’re after.’
Pike’s shrug and nod were triumphant masterpieces of the non-committal, but he reiterated his question.
‘Of course I don’t mind!’ Miss Doulton was most obliging. ‘I only posted a letter to a boy I know. One letter. Rather a difficult letter. As a matter of fact, Superintendent, as a matter of fact he wrote to me last Thursday asking me … asking me …’ She paused in some confusion, assumed or not.
Pike was gallant. ‘And this letter was your answer, Miss Doulton?’
‘As a matter of fact I’m afraid he’ll be fearfully cut up. D’you know, Superintendent, I don’t know exactly how to put it. As a matter of fact I hardly got any sleep last night …’
‘I quite understand.’ Pike, of necessity all things to all men, was at once courteous, gallant and business-like. He took his notes of Miss Doulton’s address and all particulars, and he bowed Miss Doulton out.
He came back to his table and once more pressed the bell: but this time there entered to him not the next of the ten letter-posters but his own aide, Blaine.
Pike looked up sharply. ‘What’s up?’ he said. He knew his man.
Blaine raised his right hand to a level with the table. In it was a square piece of yellow paper covered with writing in a deep black ink.
‘This,’ said Blaine. He set it down upon the postmaster’s blotter.
‘Good man!’ said Pike. ‘I was going to send Walters down for you in a minute. I ought really to’ve seen this first but I couldn’t keep these people hanging about … What’s he got to say this time?’ He bent over the letter. He read; and read again. What he read was this:
DEAR POLICE,—You will remember that in my last letter I promised to let you know of any future jobs I intended to carry out. Now please don’t get excited. This is not, exactly, the first of my ‘warning’ letters, as I shall call them, but it is a line to let you know of a job of mine which has been completed without your knowing anything about it, and over which, I gather from our local broadsheet, you have made a grave or comical error. You have arrested Dr Reade, and although you have given no reason for his arrest, it is clear to me at least, that this has to do with the disappearance of his dispenser (dispenser of what?) Marjorie Williams.
Marjorie Williams was an experiment of mine in a new technique. I must say that the whole job has given me the very greatest satisfaction. I am far from vindictive, however, and would not wish poor Dr Reade to languish in prison much longer. I will therefore tell you where you may find the body of Marjorie Williams.
If you will go out of Holmdale and along the bypass road, travelling southwards, until you come—just before the Batley cross-roads—to four new bungalows which are built but not yet inhabited and will go to the third of these, you will find that the door of the cupboard under the stairs is not quite shut. I am afraid one of her feet would get in the way.
Good-bye, Police, for the present, and please let poor Dr Reade out of jail.
Yours in sportmanship,
THE BUTCHER
Pike looked up at Blaine in silence.
‘Yes, I know,’ Blaine said.
Pike grunted. ‘Do you? Wish I did.’ He tapped the letter before him. ‘How many of these this time?’
‘One, sir.’
‘Addressed?’
‘County Police. At the Station.’
‘Envelope?’ said Pike.
Blaine smiled reproachfully. ‘I’ve done all that, sir. As usual, nothing. I’ve kept it, of course … Excuse me, sir, had any luck with these people?’
Pike shook his head. ‘No,’ he said bitterly. There was a pause. The silence was broken by the squeaking of a chair as he rose to his feet. He said:
‘I’m going to leave these people. Walters can keep ’em. I was being considerate, but I think for once consideration won’t pay. They can blinking well wait and blinking well cool their heels. Blast ’em!’
Blaine almost staggered. He had known Pike and worked under him for four years, but never before had he heard from that thin-lipped but pleasant mouth in the lean, brown, lantern-shaped face any oath, however mild. He thought: Getting him down, this is! He said:
‘What’s to do now then, sir?’
‘Get a car,’ said Pike, ‘and two men and yourself. We’re going down to this bungalow.’
Blaine for one half-second looked at his Superintendent curiously. Never before had he seen quite that look upon his Superintendent’s face—not even during the Ponsonby case.
‘Hurry,’ said Pike.
The tone sent Blaine out at a run.
Pike pressed the bell, keeping his finger upon it. The plain clothes man, Walters, came at once. He was told, curtly: ‘Keep the rest here till I come back. It doesn’t matter how long I am.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Walters, and was gone.
CHAPTER X
I
THE Blue Crossley swung out of Pearmount Road into Dale Road at speed. Police Constable George Birch, on duty in Dale Road, opened his eyes first and then his mouth. He had been standing upon the left-hand pavement at the junction of the two roads and the wind of the passing car had seemed almost strong enough to blow off his helmet. He was about to shout after the car when he saw what car it was. He shut his mouth but his eyes remained widely open, staring.
The Crossley gathered speed and shot down Dale Road towards its junction with the Main Road. Pike was driving and though he was not yet fully admitting this to himself, he was both angry and afraid; not afraid, of course, for his own skin, but afraid of the intangible in this business as a child is afraid of the intangibilities which the dark may hold.
It is, from the junction of Dale Road and the Main Road, a matter of six miles to the bungalow of which the letter had spoken. The car covered the distance in under seven minutes. It screamed along the macadamed road with its white curbing and the flat grasslands upon its either side. Suddenly turning the bend just before the Batley cross-roads, the engine was switched off, its gears thrown into neutral and the brakes rammed on. It drew up with a shriek of protest opposite four little gaily painted boxes of red brick and white stucco.
Almost before it was motionless its doors opened and four men scrambled out—Pike and Blaine and two plain clothes county policemen.
They ran. Of the four, two were under twenty-seven years of age, one thirty-four and the other forty-two. It was forty-two who reached the door of the third bungalow a good twenty yards in front of his fellows. The door, Pike found, was, though it appeared shut, merely pushed to. On the threshold he turned, waved imperiously and disappeared within.
Blaine was next and by the time that Blaine was within the small green front door, it was to find his Superintendent kneeling a few feet beyond the threshold before an open cupboard and looking at something which lay in this cupboard …
They took what was left of Marjorie Williams out by the back way. The second of the county policemen was sent to the car and came back from it, running with a blanket. With this blanket they covered what was left of Marjorie Williams and, between them, carried the shrouded thing to the Crossley and lai
d it somehow in the back seat.
Pike drove. Blaine sat beside him. Marjorie Williams filled the back. The two county policemen stood one upon each running board and thanked their Gods that now the Superintendent drove never at more than forty-five miles an hour.
II
It was five minutes to five o’clock when Pike once more mounted the steps of the post-office, pushed open the swing doors and found himself face to face with a group from whom anger had now chased all resemblance to sheep. He did not look at them. He turned sharp to his left and went once more into the postmaster’s room. He sat down at the table. He was about to ring the bell when Walters came. Walters, previously calm, was now red of face and damp. At any other time in any other circumstance Pike would, at least privately, have laughed. But now he merely barked:
‘Had any trouble?’
Walters took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his large brow. ‘Had any trouble!’ said Walters. ‘Look here, sir, I—’
‘All right!’ Pike snapped at him. ‘Next one in. Send in the most troublesome.’
For a moment it seemed that Walters had more to say; but only for a moment.
‘Quick!’ said Pike. And Walters was quick.
There was ushered in to Pike a very angry man; one of the five men who when they had first been gathered together had looked all exactly like each other, but who now, after an hour and a half’s incarceration, were as dissimilar as well might be. This one went, as after some trouble, Pike was to find out, by the name of Crawley. And Mr Crawley had much to say and very many words in which to say it.
‘… kept here,’ said Mr Crawley, ‘for three or four hours and not knowing what we’re kept here for! I want to know what the meaning of this is!’ Mr Crawley, who had refused a chair, leaned over the table and thumped with the soft part of his fist upon the post-master’s blotting paper. ‘It’s damn scandalous!’ he said. ‘Damn scandalous! Can’t think what’s come over the place, when a decent orderly citizen can’t go out in the afternoon without getting held up by a lot of plug-uglies! Life’s come to a pretty pass!’ Mr Crawley was rapidly working himself up into an even greater rage than that in which he had entered the room. ‘By God!’ he said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but they tell me you’re something to do with Scotland Yard. If you’re a specimen of Scotland Yard and what Scotland Yard can do, all I can say is God help England! I’ve got a cousin in the Home Office. He knows all about these things. As soon as I get away from here I’m going to get straight on the ’phone to him. As I said before, I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care, but I’ll damn well see the place is made too hot to hold you. Some of you chaps seem to think that because you’ve been three or four years in the police force it gives you the right to act like Mussolini.’ Once more he banged upon the desk. ‘I’ll see that you’re discharged and discharged damn quickly,’ said Mr Crawley, and went on mouthing.
Murder Gone Mad Page 12
