‘His car was found abandoned not more than two hundred yards from here,’ explained Oakington. ‘He may have entered the house in the hope of finding something valuable, and have been surprised by Riebiera.’
Archie Lenton laughed softly.
‘I can give you a better theory than that,’ he said, and for the greater part of the night he wrote carefully and convincingly, reconstructing the crime, giving the most minute details.
That account is still preserved at Scotland Yard, and there are many highly placed officials who swear by it.
And yet something altogether different happened on the night of that 24th of December…
The streets were greasy, the car-lines abominably so. Stackett’s mean little car slithered and skidded alarmingly. He had been in a bad temper when he started out on his hungry quest; he grew sour and savage with the evening passing on with nothing to show for his discomfort.
The suburban high street was crowded too; street cars moved at a crawl, their bells clanging pathetically; street vendors had their stalls jammed end to end on either side of the thoroughfare; stalls green and red with holly wreaths and untidy bunches of mistletoe; there were butcher stalls, raucous auctioneers holding masses of raw beef and roaring their offers; vegetable stalls; stalls piled high with plates and cups and saucers and gaudy dishes and glassware, shining in the rays of the powerful acetylene lamps…
The car skidded. There was a crash and a scream. Breaking crockery has an alarming sound… A yell from the stall owner; Stackett straightened his machine and darted between a tramcar and a trolley…
***
‘Hi, you!’
He twisted his wheel, almost knocked down the policeman who came to intercept him, and swung into a dark side street, his foot clamped on the accelerator. He turned to the right and the left, to the right again. Here was a long suburban road; houses monotonously alike on either side, terribly dreary brick blocks where men and women and children lived, were born, paid rent, and died. A mile further on he passed the gateway of the cemetery where they found the rest which was their supreme reward for living at all.
The police whistle had followed him for less than a quarter of a mile. He had passed a policeman running toward the sound—anyway, flatties never worried Stackett. Some of his ill humour passed in the amusement which the sight of the running copper brought.
Bringing the noisy little car to a standstill by the side of the road, he got down, and, relighting the cigarette he had so carefully extinguished, he gazed glumly at the stained and battered mudguard which was shivering and shaking under the pulsations of the engine…
Through that same greasy street came a motorcyclist, muffled to the chin, his goggles dangling about his neck. He pulled up his shining wheel near the policeman on point duty and, supporting his balance with one foot in the muddy road, asked questions.
‘Yes, sergeant,’ said the policeman. ‘I saw him. He went down there. As a matter of fact, I was going to pinch him for driving to the common danger, but he hopped it.’
‘That’s Joe Stackett,’ nodded Sergeant Kenton of the C.I.D. ‘A thin-faced man with a pointed nose?’
The point-duty policeman had not seen the face behind the wind-screen, but he had seen the car, and that he described accurately.
‘Stolen from Elmer’s garage. At least, Elmer will say so, but he probably provided it. Dumped stuff. Which way did you say?’
The policeman indicated, and the sergeant kicked his engine to life and went chug-chugging down the dark street.
He missed Mr. Stackett by a piece of bad luck—bad luck for everybody, including Mr. Stackett, who was at the beginning of his amazing adventure.
Switching off the engine, he had continued on foot. About fifty yards away was the wide opening of a road superior in class to any he had traversed. Even the dreariest suburb has its West End, and here were villas standing on their own acres—very sedate villas, with porches and porch lamps in wrought-iron and oddly coloured glass, and shaven lawns, and rose gardens swathed in matting, and no two villas were alike. At the far end he saw a red light, and his heart leapt with joy. Christmas—it was to be Christmas after all, with good food and lashings of drink and other manifestations of happiness and comfort peculiarly attractive to Joe Stackett.
It looked like a car worth knocking off, even in the darkness. He saw somebody near the machine and stopped. It was difficult to tell in the gloom whether the person near the car had got in or had come out. He listened. There came to him neither the slam of the driver’s door nor the whine of the self-starter. He came a little closer, walked boldly on, his restless eyes moving left and right for danger. All the houses were occupied. Bright lights illuminated the casement cloth which covered the windows. He heard the sound of revelry and two gramophones playing dance tunes. But his eyes always came back to the polished limousine at the door of the end house. There was no light there. It was completely dark, from the gabled attic to the ground floor.
He quickened his pace. It was a Spanza. His heart leapt at the recognition. For a Spanza is a car for which there is a ready sale. You can get as much as a hundred pounds for a new one. They are popular amongst Eurasians and wealthy Hindus. Binky Jones, who was the best car fence in London, would pay him cash, not less than sixty. In a week’s time that car would be crated and on its way to India, there to be resold at a handsome profit.
The driver’s door was wide open. He heard the soft purr of the engine. He slid into the driver’s seat, closed the door noiselessly, and almost without as much as a whine the Spanza moved on.
It was a new one, brand new… A hundred at least.
Gathering speed, he passed to the end of the road, came to a wide common and skirted it. Presently he was in another shopping street, but he knew too much to turn back toward London. He would take the open country for it, work round through Esher and come into London by the Portsmouth Road. The art of car-stealing is to move as quickly as possible from the police division where the machine is stolen and may be instantly reported, to a ‘foreign’ division which will not know of the theft until hours after.
There might be all sorts of extra pickings. There was a big luggage trunk behind and possibly a few knick-knacks in the body of the car itself. At a suitable moment he would make a leisurely search. At the moment he headed for Epsom, turning back to hit the Kingston by-pass. Sleet fell—snow and rain together. He set the screen-wiper working and began to hum a little tune. The Kingston by-pass was deserted. It was too unpleasant a night for much traffic.
Mr. Stackett was debating what would be the best place to make his search when he felt an unpleasant draught behind him. He had noticed there was a sliding window separating the interior of the car from the driver’s seat, which had possibly worked loose. He put up his hand to push it close.
‘Drive on, don’t turn round or I’ll blow your head off!’
Involuntarily he half turned to see the gaping muzzle of an automatic, and in his agitation put his foot on the brake. The car skidded from one side of the road to the other, half turned and recovered.
‘Drive on, I am telling you,’ said a metallic voice.‘When you reach the Portsmouth Road turn and bear toward Weybridge. If you attempt to stop I will shoot you. Is that clear?’
Joe Stackett’s teeth were chattering. He could not articulate the ‘yes’. All that he could do was to nod. He went on nodding for half a mile before he realized what he was doing.
No further word came from the interior of the car until they passed the race-course; then unexpectedly the voice gave a new direction:
‘Turn left toward Leatherhead.’
The driver obeyed.
They came to a stretch of common. Stackett, who knew the country well, realized the complete isolation of the spot.
‘Slow down, pull in to the left… There is no dip there. You can switch on your lights.’
The car slid and bumped over the uneven ground, the wheels crunched through beds of bracken…
‘Stop.’
The door behind him opened. The man got out. He jerked open the driver’s door.
‘Step down,’ he said. ‘Turn out your lights first. Have you got a gun?’
‘Gun? Why the hell should I have a gun?’ stammered the car thief.
He was focused all the time in a ring of light from a very bright electric torch which the passenger had turned upon him.
‘You are an act of Providence.’
Stackett could not see the face of the speaker. He saw only the gun in the hand, for the stranger kept this well in the light.
‘Look inside the car.’
Stackett looked and almost collapsed. There was a figure huddled in one corner of the seat—the figure of a man. He saw something else—a bicycle jammed into the car, one wheel touching the roof, the other on the floor. He saw the man’s white face… Dead! A slim, rather short man, with dark hair and a dark moustache, a foreigner. There was a little red hole in his temple.
‘Pull him out,’ commanded the voice sharply.
Stackett shrank back, but a powerful hand pushed him toward the car.
‘Pull him out!’
With his face moist with cold perspiration, the car thief obeyed; put his hands under the armpits of the inanimate figure, dragged him out and laid him on the bracken.
‘He’s dead,’ he whimpered.
‘Completely,’ said the other.
Suddenly he switched off his electric torch. Far away came a gleam of light on the road, coming swiftly toward them. It was a car moving towards Esher. It passed.
‘I saw you coming just after I had got the body into the car. There wasn’t time to get back to the house. I’d hoped you were just an ordinary pedestrian. When I saw you get into the car I guessed pretty well your vocation. What is your name?’
‘Joseph Stackett.’
‘Stackett?’
The light flashed on his face again. ‘How wonderful! Do you remember the Exeter Assizes? The old woman you killed with a hammer? I defended you!’
Joe’s eyes were wide open. He stared past the light at the dim grey thing that was a face.
‘Mr. Lenton?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Good God, sir!’
‘You murdered her in cold blood for a few paltry shillings, and you would have been dead now, Stackett, if I hadn’t found a flaw in the evidence. You expected to die, didn’t you? You remember how we used to talk in Exeter Gaol about the trap that would not work when they tried to hang a murderer, and the ghoulish satisfaction you had that you would stand on the same trap?’
Joe Stackett grinned uncomfortably.
‘And I meant it, sir,’ he said, ‘but you can’t try a man twice—’
Then his eyes dropped to the figure at his feet, the dapper little man with a black moustache, with a red hole in his temple.
Lenton leant over the dead man, took out a pocket case from the inside of the jacket and at his leisure detached ten notes.
‘Put these in your pocket.’
He obeyed, wondering what service would be required of him, wondered more why the pocket-book with its precious notes was returned to the dead man’s pocket.
Lenton looked back along the road. Snow was falling now, real snow. It came down in small particles, falling so thickly that it seemed that a fog lay on the land.
‘You fit into this perfectly… a man unfit to live. There is fate in this meeting.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by fate.’
Joe Stackett grew bold: he had to deal with a lawyer and a gentleman who, in a criminal sense, was his inferior. The money obviously had been given to him to keep his mouth shut.
‘What have you been doing, Mr. Lenton? That’s bad, ain’t it? This fellow’s dead and—’
He must have seen the pencil of flame that came from the other’s hand. He could have felt nothing, for he was dead before he sprawled over the body on the ground.
Mr. Archibald Lenton examined the revolver by the light of his lamp, opened the breech and closed it again. Stooping, he laid it near the hand of the little man with the black moustache and, lifting the body of Joe Stackett, he dragged it toward the car and let it drop. Bending down, he clasped the still warm hands about the butt of another pistol. Then, at his leisure, he took the bicycle from the interior of the car and carried it back to the road. It was already white and fine snow was falling in sheets.
Mr. Lenton went on and reached his home two hours later, when the bells of the local Anglo-Catholic church were ringing musically.
There was a cable waiting for him from his wife:
A Happy Christmas to you, darling.
He was ridiculously pleased that she had remembered to send the wire—he was very fond of his wife.
The Man with the Sack
Margery Allingham
Along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh, Margery Louise Allingham (1904–66) was one of those ‘Queens of Crime’ who helped to transform the detective fiction genre in the 1930s. Albert Campion, her series character, is a rather more enigmatic figure than most ‘great detectives’ of the Golden Age, but no less interesting for that. He made his first appearance in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), although he played a subordinate role to Dr. George Abbershaw. Before long, he took centre stage, and after Allingham’s death, her husband Philip Youngman Carter completed the last Campion novel, and wrote a couple more himself. In recent years, continuation novels featuring Campion have been penned by Mike Ripley, while the flourishing state of the Margery Allingham Society more than half a century after her death is testament to the enduring appeal of a highly engaging author.
Allingham was a prolific writer of short stories, and the disciplines of the short form seemed to bring out the best in her. This Yuletide tale was first published as ‘The Case of the Man with the Sack’ in the Strand Magazine in 1936, and was included in Mr Campion: Criminologist the following year; an abbreviated version, ‘The Man with the Sack’, appeared many years later. The text reprinted here is the original.
***
‘Albert dear,
‘We are going to have a quiet family party at home here for the holiday, just ourselves and the dear village. It would be such fun to have you with us. There is a train at 10.45 from Liverpool Street which will get you to Chelmsworth in time for us to pick you up for lunch on Christmas Eve. You really must not refuse me. Sheila is being rather difficult and I have the Welkins coming. Ada Welkin is a dear woman. Her jewellery is such a responsibility in a house. She will bring it. Sheila has invited such an undesirable boy, the son in the Peters crash, absolutely penniless, my dear, and probably quite desperate. As her mother I am naturally anxious. Remember I rely on you.
‘Affectionately yours,
‘Mae Turrett.
‘P.S. Don’t bring a car unless you must. The Welkins seem to be bringing two.’
Mr. Albert Campion, whom most people described as the celebrated amateur criminologist, and who used to refer to himself somewhat sadly as a universal uncle, read the letter a second time before he expressed himself vulgarly but explicitly and pitched it into the waste-paper basket. Then, sitting down at the bureau in the corner of the breakfast-room, he pulled a sheet of notepaper towards him.
‘My Dear Mae,’ he wrote briefly, ‘I can’t manage it. You must forgive me. My love to Sheila and George.
‘Yours ever,
‘Albert.
‘P.S. My sympathy in your predicament. I think I can put you on to just the man you need: P. Richards, 13 Acacia Border, Chiswick. He is late of the Metropolitan Police and, like myself, is clean, honest and presentable. Your guests’ valuables will be perfectly safe while he is in the house and you will find his fee very reasonable.’
He fo
lded the note, sealed it, and addressed it to Lady Turrett, Pharaoh’s Court, Pharaoh’s Field, Suffolk.
‘In other words, my dear Mae,’ he said aloud, as he set it on the mantelpiece, ‘if you want a private dick in the house, employ one. We are not high-hat, but we have our pride.’
He wandered back to the breakfast-table and the rest of his correspondence. There was another personal letter under the pile of greeting cards sent off a week too soon by earnest citizens who had taken the Postmaster-General’s annual warning a shade too seriously, a large blue envelope addressed in a near-printing hand which proclaimed that the writer had gone to her first school in the early nineteen-twenties.
Mr. Campion tore it open and a cry from Sheila Turrett’s heart fell out.
‘My Darling Albert,
‘Please come for Christmas. It’s going to be poisonous. Mother has some queer ideas in her head and the Welkins are frightful. Mike is a dear. At least I like him and you will too. He is Mike Peters, the son of the Ripley Peters who had to go to jail when the firm crashed. But it’s not Mike’s fault, is it? After all, a good many fathers ought to go to jail only they don’t get caught. I don’t mean George, of course, bless him (you ought to come if only for his sake. He’s like a depression leaving the Azores. It’s the thought of the Welkins, poor pet). I don’t like to ask you to waste your time on our troubles, but Ada Welkin is lousy with diamonds and Mother seems to think that Mike might pinch them, his father having been to jail. Darling, if you are faintly decent do come and back us up. After all, it is Christmas.
‘Yours always (if you come),
‘Sheila.
‘P.S. I’m in love with Mike.’
For a moment or so Mr. Campion sat regarding the letter and its pathetic postscript. Then, rather regretfully, but comforted by a deep sense of virtue, he crossed the room and, tearing up the note he had written to Lady Turrett, settled himself to compose another.
***
On Christmas Eve the weather decided to be seasonable; a freezing overhead fog turned the city into night and the illuminated shop fronts had the traditional festive appearance even in the morning. It was more than just cold. The damp, soot-laden atmosphere soaked into the bones relentlessly and Mr. Campion’s recollection of Pharaoh’s Court, rising gaunt and bleak amid three hundred acres of ploughed clay and barren salting, all as flat as the estuary beyond, was not enhanced by the chill.
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