Silent Nights

by Martin Edwards

“I don’t see what makes you think so.”

  “His suicide, of course.”

  “Or murder,” replied Beef and made for Meece’s room.

  In a moment like this Beef was at his best. He went about his business swiftly and confidently.

  “Not much time before Wiggs arrives,” he said.

  Wiggs was the C.I.D. inspector at Braxham under whom Beef had worked. I knew that Beef disliked his one-time superior officer.

  I watched as Beef pulled out a tape measure and began to take a number of measurements—the length of rope left hanging, the length from where the rope was cut to where the know began, the exact height of Meece, the height of the chairs.

  He then paused for a few moments, apparently thinking deeply. I could almost hear his brain ticking over. When he moved again it was fast. He dived for the chairs and made a minute examination of their legs and cross-bars. He then went to the window-sill and remained there for a few moments.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s go downstairs. I’ve seen all I want to see.”

  ***

  Merton Watlow had taken his guests to the library, tactfully avoiding the room in which we had received our first shock. But when Beef saw this he excused himself for a moment and made for the drawing-room. He came back and remained with us.

  After that all went smoothly. The police made a formal inspection, another doctor was called, and we were told that we should be wanted at the inquest but until then there was nothing to detain us. I felt all an Englishman’s satisfaction with his national institutions and a great admiration for the police and medical professions when I saw how admirably and calmly all this was done. I could see nothing in Detective Inspector Wiggs to arouse Beef’s hostility but I knew this was an old wound.

  It did not seem very long in fact before we retired to bed.

  ***

  It was not until we had reached Beef’s house next day and were alone in what he called his “front room” that he expounded his view of the matter.

  “Of course it was murder,” he said. “You ought to have seen that at once.”

  “Why?”

  “You ask yourself a few whys. Why was the window open? Why didn’t Meece leave any sort of letter if he wanted to do for himself? Why was the rope so tight around his neck? Why was his wife away at Christmas for the first time in ten years? You may well ask why.”

  “Come on, then. Let’s hear what you think.”

  “Murder made to look like suicide. Between dinner and that lark with the conjurer in the drawing room. . .”

  “Beef! Raymond Gidley is not a conjurer.”

  “Well, whatever he is. Before we sat down to watch him someone had gone up to Meece’s room, overpowered or more likely drugged him for a few moments, knotted that rope so tight round his neck that he couldn’t yell, tied him up with the two chairs in position so that he could just keep alive by standing on tiptoe, but no more. He couldn’t release the rope, he couldn’t haul himself up, he couldn’t escape. He wasn’t a big or a strong man as you know and there was really nothing he could do.”

  “If that’s really what happened,” I said, “it won’t be hard to find the murderer. We have a nice collection of suspects though we were treating them as suspects in something else. You say it was done while we were waiting in the drawing-room. I know exactly how long each of them took to get there.”

  ***

  Beef looked at me as though he were sorry for me.

  “Won’t be necessary,” he said. “I know who did it. I told you he slung up Philip Meece so that when he dropped it would look like suicide.”

  “Then, I suppose, the murderer pulled the chairs away and watched him die?”

  “Oh no, he was too clever for that. He wanted an alibi. He had to be somewhere else when Meece died, and he was. He’s got all of us to prove it.”

  “Then how….”

  “You should know. You were watching while he did it. You saw Philip Meece murdered.”

  “Don’t be absurd, Beef.”

  “So was I for that matter. The murderer passed a double rope round the leg of the lower chair, then dropped it out of the window. You can see where the chair’s rubbed and the window-sill, too. He only had to give this double rope a jerk, then pull one line down and all trace of anything but suicide, he supposed, would disappear.”

  “But when did he do it?”

  “When he was pulling those curtains back for the contortionist.”

  “Merton Watlow?”

  “Of course. I suspected something funny as soon as I was called in. I know these people who like an expert witness round who they don’t think is too clever. When we got down there and Meece wasn’t interested in the letters after Watlow had told me he was going out of his mind about them, I knew somebody was lying. Then I heard a few things from Rumbold. This was the first time the servants had ever had a party which would keep them all occupied on Christmas Eve. Watlow, it appears, was most particular about them all being together there. And, as I say, the first time Meece’s wife had been away for Christmas.

  “Then there’s another thing. Watlow hated noise and never allowed music of any sort in the house. Yet before that trapeze artist came on he was playing it as loud as it would go—in case anyone should hear anything from the room above. But what finally settled it for me was what I saw in the drawing-room when I looked in after you and I came downstairs. It was in the corner by the window where Watlow had stood and the window was still a few inches open. Rope. A nice length of thin strong rope. He hadn’t had a chance to clear it away. Not that it would matter so much, he thought. With all those theatricals and a curtain fixed up and that, it wouldn’t seem so odd. But I knew the reason for it. He pulled it down, you see, by the same motion he used for pulling back the stage curtain.”

  ***

  “I still find it hard to believe. What possible motive could Watlow have had?”

  “The best there is. What you call the eternal triangle. You didn’t like me staring at Freda Meece that first afternoon, did you? But I had my reason. As soon as I saw those diamonds she had on I knew they had probably been given her by a very rich man. If Watlow saw me looking at them, I thought, and he had given them to her, he’d soon tell her to put them away and not shew off any more tomfoolery while I was around. That’s just what happened.

  “There’s only one little point I’m doubtful about. Was Philip Meece genuinely ill that night? If so it was a bit of luck for Watlow. If not he may have been made ill. Or Watlow may have done something else to keep him upstairs. It’s not very important, but I should like to know. I expect we shall in time.”

  “But if you’re so sure, Beef, why didn’t you tell what you knew to Detective Inspector Wiggs. You surely don’t want a cowardly murderer to escape?”

  “To Wiggs? After what he did when I had that trouble over the vicar’s bicycle? Not likely. I’ll send a memo round to the Yard tomorrow and let them sort it out. You’re right in calling it a cowardly crime. It was. And the murderer wasn’t as clever as he thought. He made the same mistake as you do, Townsend.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Underrating me,” said Sergeant Beef. “It doesn’t do. And now, let’s have a tumble down the sink. What? A drink, of course.”

  Solutions

  A Happy Solution

  The following is the solution of the end-game referred to in the chess story entitled A Happy Solution.

  1.…P to K 6;

  2. Q to R 6 (a), Q to R 5, ch.;

  3. Q (or B) takes Q, B to B 5;

  4. Kt to Kt 3, B takes Kt and mates, very shortly, with R to R 8.

  (a) 2. Kt to Kt 4, Q takes Kt; 3. Q (or P) takes Q (b), B to B 5 as before.

  (b) If 3. Q to R 6, Q to R 5, ch., as before.

  If 2. P to K Kt 4, B to Kt 6; 3. Kt takes B, Q takes Kt and wins.

/>   The following is the proof, from the position of the pieces, that a white queen must have been taken by the pawn at Q Kt 3: All the black men except two are on the board; therefore White made only two captures. These two captures must have been made with the two pawns now at K 5 and B 3, because they have left their original files. White, therefore, never made a capture with his Q R P, and therefore it never got on to the knight’s file. Therefore the black pawn at Q Kt 3 captured a piece (not a pawn). The game having been played at the odds of queen’s rook, the white Q R was off the board before the game began, and the white K R was captured on its own square, or one of two adjacent squares, there being no way out for it.

  Now, since Black captured a piece with the pawn at Q Kt 3, and there are no white pieces off the board (except the two white rooks that have been accounted for), it follows that whatever piece was captured by the pawn at Q Kt 3 must have been replaced on the board in exchange for the white Q R P when it reached its eighth square. It was not a rook that was captured at Q Kt 3, because the two white rooks have been otherwise accounted for. The pawn, on reaching its eighth square, cannot have been exchanged for a bishop, or the bishop would still be on that square, there being no way out for it, nor can the pawn have been exchanged for a knight for the same reason (remembering that the capture at Q Kt 3 must necessarily have happened before the pawn could reach its eighth square).

  Therefore the pawn was exchanged for a queen, and therefore it was a queen that was captured at Q Kt 3, and when she went there she did not make a capture, because only two captures were made by White, both with pawns. Q.E.D.

  A Problem in White

  The Inspector arrested the Guard for the wilful murder of Arthur J. Kilmington.

  Kilmington’s pocket had been picked by Inez Blake, when she pretended to faint at 8:25, and his gold watch was at once passed by her to her accomplice, Macdonald.

  Now Kilmington was constantly consulting his watch. It is inconceivable, if he was not killed till after 9 p.m., that he should not have missed the watch and made a scene. This point was clinched by the first-class passenger, who deposed that a man, answering to the description of Kilmington, had asked him the time at 8:50: if it had really been Kilmington, he would certainly, before inquiring the time of anyone else, have first tried to consult his own watch, found it was gone, and reported the theft. The fact that Kilmington neither reported the loss to the Guard, nor returned to his original compartment to look for the watch, proves he must have been murdered before he became aware of the loss, i.e. shortly after he left the compartment at 8:27. But the Guard claimed to have spoken to Kilmington at 9 p.m. Therefore the Guard was lying. And why should he lie, except to create an alibi for himself? This is Clue A.

  The Guard claimed to have talked with Kilmington at 9 p.m. Now, at 8:55 the blizzard had diminished to a light snowfall, which soon afterwards ceased. When Stansfield discovered the body, it was buried under snow. Therefore Kilmington must have been murdered while the blizzard was still raging, i.e. some time before 9 p.m. Therefore the Guard was lying when he said Kilmington was alive at 9 p.m. This is Clue B.

  Henry Stansfield, who was investigating on behalf of the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company the loss of the Countess of Axminster’s emeralds, reconstructed the crime as follows:

  Motive. The Guard’s wife had been gravely ill before Christmas: then, just about the time of the train robbery, he had got her the best surgeon in Glasgow and put her in a nursing home (evidence of engine-driver: Clue C): a Guard’s pay does not usually run to such expensive treatment; it seemed likely, therefore, that the man, driven desperate by his wife’s need, had agreed to take part in the robbery in return for a substantial bribe. What part did he play? During the investigation, the Guard had stated that he had left his van for five minutes, while the train was climbing the last section of Shap Bank, and on his return found the mail-bags missing. But Kilmington, who was travelling on this train, had found the Guard’s van locked at this point, and now (evidence of Mrs Grant: Clue D) declared his intention of reporting the Guard. The latter knew that Kilmington’s report would contradict his own evidence and thus convict him of complicity in the crime, since he had locked the van for a few minutes to throw out the mail-bags himself, and pretended to Kilmington that he had been asleep (evidence of K.) when the latter knocked at the door. So Kilmington had to be silenced.

  Stansfield already had Percy Dukes under suspicion as the organizer of the robbery. During the journey, Dukes gave himself away three times. First, although it had not been mentioned in the papers, he betrayed knowledge of the point on the line where the bags had been thrown out. Second, though the loss of the emeralds had been also kept out of the Press, Dukes knew it was an emerald necklace which had been stolen; Stansfield had laid a trap for him by calling it a bracelet, but later in conversation Dukes referred to the ‘necklace’. Third, his great discomposure at the (false) statement by Stansfield that the emeralds were worth £25,000 was the reaction of a criminal who believes he has been badly gypped by the fence to whom he has sold them.

  Dukes was now planning a second train robbery, and meant to compel the Guard to act as accomplice again. Inez Blake’s evidence (Clue E) of hearing him say “You’re going to help us again, chum,” etc., clearly pointed to the Guard’s complicity in the previous robbery; it was almost certainly the Guard to whom she had heard Dukes say this, for only a railway servant would have known about the existence of a platelayers’ hut up the line, and made an appointment to meet Dukes there; moreover, to anyone but a railway servant Dukes could have talked about his plans for the next robbery on the train itself, without either of them incurring suspicion should they be seen talking together.

  Method. At 8:27 Kilmington goes into the Guard’s van. He threatens to report the Guard, though he is quite unaware of the dire consequences this would entail for the latter. The Guard, probably on the pretext of showing him the route to the village, gets Kilmington out of the train, walks him away from the lighted area, stuns him (the bruise was a light one and did not reveal itself to Stansfield’s brief examination of the body), carries him to the spot where Stansfield found the body, packs mouth and nostrils tight with snow. Then, instead of leaving well alone, the Guard decides to create an alibi for himself. He takes his victim’s hat, returns to the train, puts on his own dark, off-duty overcoat, finds a solitary passenger asleep, masquerades as Kilmington inquiring the time, and strengthens the impression by saying he’d walk to the village if the relief engine did not turn up in five minutes, then returns to the body and throws down the hat beside it (Stansfield found the hat only lightly covered with snow, as compared with the body: Clue F). Moreover, the passenger noticed that the inquirer was wearing blue trousers (Clue G); the Guard’s regulation suit was blue; Duke’s suit was grey, Macdonald’s a loud check—therefore the masquerader could not have been either of them.

  The time is now 8:55. The Guard decides to reinforce his alibi by going to intercept the returning fireman. He takes a short cut from the body to the platelayers’ hut. The track he now makes, compared with the beaten trail towards the village, is much more lightly filled in with snow when Stansfield finds it (Clue H); therefore it must have been made some little time after the murder, and could not incriminate Percy Dukes. The Guard meets the fireman just after 8:55.

  They walk back to the train. The Guard is taken aside by Dukes, who has gone out for his “airing”, and the conversation overheard by Inez Blake takes place. The Guard tells Dukes he will meet him presently in the platelayers’ hut; this is vaguely aimed to incriminate Dukes, should the murder by any chance be discovered, for Dukes would find it difficult to explain why he should have sat alone in a cold hut for half an hour just around the time when Kilmington was presumably murdered only 150 yards away.

  The Guard now goes along to the engine and stays there chatting with the crew for some forty minutes. His alibi is thus established for the period from 8:55 to
9:40 p.m. His plan might well have succeeded but for three unlucky factors he could not possibly have taken into account—Stansfield’s presence on the train, the blizzard stopping soon after 9 p.m., and the theft of Arthur J. Kilmington’s watch.

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