by Whit Burnett
measure the footmarks and pick up the clues and find the knife
that the police have overlooked. But Linley never even went
near the place, and he hadn't got a magnifying glass, not as I
ever saw, and Scotland Yard was before him every time.
In fact they had more clues than anybody could make head
or tail of. Every kind of clue to show that he'd murdered the
poor little girl; every kind of clue to show that he hadn't dis-
The Two BoHies of Relish • 3 1
posed o f the body; and yet the body wasn't there. I t wasn't in
South America either, and not much more likely in South
Africa. And all the time, mind you, that enormous bunch of
chopped larch wood, a clue that was staring everyone in the
face and leading nowhere. No, we didn't seem to want any
more clues, and Linley never went near the place. The trouble
was to deal with the clues we'd got. I was completely mystified;
so was Scotland Yard; and Linley seemed to be getting no forwarder; and all the while the mystery was hanging on me. I mean if it were not for the trifle I'd chanced to remember, and
if it were not for one chance word I said to Linley, that mystery
would have gone the way of all the other mysteries that men
have made nothing of, a darkness, a little patch of night in
history.
Well, the fact was Linley didn't take much interest in it at
first, but I was so absolutely sure that he could do it, that I k�pt
him to the idea. "You can do chess problems," I said.
"That's ten times harder," he said, sticking to his point.
"Then why don't you do this?" I said.
"Then go and take a look at the board for me," said Linley.
That was his way of talking. We'd been a fortnight together,
and I knew it by now. He meant go down to the bungalow at
Unge. I know you'll say why didn't he go himself, but the plain
truth of it is that if he'd been tearing about the countryside he'd
never have been thinking, whereas sitting here in this chair by
the fire in our fiat there was no limit to the ground he could
cover, if you follow my meaning. So down I went by train next
day, and got out at Unge station. And there were the North
Downs rising up before me.
"It's up there isn't it?" I said to the porter.
"That's right," he said. "Up there by the lane; and mind to
turn to your right when you get to the old yew tree, a very big
tree, you can't mistake it, and then . . . " and he told me the way
so that I couldn't go wrong. I found them all like that, very
nice and helpful. You see it was Unge's day at last; everyone
had heard of Unge now; you could have got a letter there any
time just then without putting the county or post town, and
this was what Unge had to show. I dare say if you tried to find
Unge now . . . ; well, anyway, they were making hay while the
sun shone.
Well, there the hill was, going up into sunlight, going up like
a song. You don't want to hear about the spring, and all the
May colors that came down over everything later on in the day,
and all those birds; but I thought, "What a nice place to bring a
girl to." And then when I thought that he'd killed her there,
well I'm only a small man, as I said, but when I thought of her
on that hill with all the birds singing, I said to myself, "Wouldn't
32 • Nineteen Tales of Terror
it be odd if it turned out to be me after all that got that man
killed, if he did murder her."
So I soon found my way up to the bungalow and began prying about, looking over the hedge into the garden. And I didn't find much, and I found nothing at all that the police hadn't
found already, but there were those heaps of larch logs staring
me in the face and looking very queer.
I did a lo� of thinking, leaning against the hedge, breathing
the smell of the May, and looking over the top of it at the larch
logs, and the neat little bungalow the other side of the garden.
Lots of theories I thought of; till I came to the best thought of
all; and that was that if I left the thinking to Linley, with his
Oxford-and-Cambridge education, and only brought him the
facts, as he had told me, I should be doing more good in my
way than if I tried to do any big thinking. I forgot to say that I
had gone to Scotland Yard in the morning. Well, there wasn't
really much to tell. What they asked me was, what I wanted.
And, not having an answer exactly ready, I didn't find out very
·
much from them.
But it was quite different at Unge; everyone was most obliging; it was their day there, as I said. The constable let me go indoors, so long as I didn't touch anything, and he gave me a look at the garden from the inside. And I saw the stumps of the
ten larch trees, a.nd I noticed one thing that Linley said was
very observant of me, not that it turned out to be any use, but
any way I was doing my best; I noticed that the stumps had
been all chopped anyhow. And from that I thought that the
man that did it didn't know much about chopping. The constable said that was a deduction. So then I said that the axe was blunt when he used it; and that certainly made the constable think, though he didn't actually say I was right this time.
Did I tell you that Seeger never went outdoors, except to the
little garden to chop wood, ever since Nancy disappeared? I
think I did. Well it was perfectly true. They'd watched him
night and day, one or another of them, and the Unge constable
told me that himself. That limited things a good deal. The only
thing I didn't like about it was that I felt Linley ought to have
found all that out instead of ordinary policemen, and I felt that
he could have too. There'd have been romance in a story like
that. And they'd never have done it if the news hadn't gone
round that the man was a vegetarian and only dealt at the
greengrocers. Likely as not even that was only started out of
pique by the butcher. It's queer what little things may trip a
man up. Best to keep straight is my motto. But perhaps I'm
straying a bit away from my story. I should like to do that for
ever; forget that it ever was; but I can't.
Well I picked up all sorts of information; clues I suppose I
The Two Bottles of Relish • 33
should call it in a story like this; though they none of them
seemed to lead anywhere. For instance, I found out everything
be ever bought at the village; I could even tell you the kind of
salt he bought, quite plain with no phosphate in it, that they
sometimes put in to make it tidy. And then he got ice from the
fishmongers, and plenty of vegetables, as I said, from the greengrocer, Mergin and Sons. And I had a bit of talk over it all with the constable. Slugger he said his name was. I wondered
why he hadn't come in and searched the place as soon as the
girl was missing. "Well, you can't do that," he said. "And besides, we didn't suspect at once, not about the girl, that is. We only suspected there was something wrong about him on account of him being a vegetarian. He stayed a good fortnight after the last that was seen of her. And then we slipped in like a
knife. But, you see, no one had been inquiring about her, there
wa
s no warrant out.''
"And what did you find," I asked Slugger, "when you
went in?"
"Just a big file," he said, "and the knife and the axe that he
must have got to chop her up with."
"But he got the axe to chop trees with," I said.
"Well, yes," he said, but rather grudgingly.
"And what did he chop them for?'' I asked.
"Well of course my superiors have theories about that," he
said, "that they mightn't tell to everybody."
You see, it was those logs that were beating them.
"But did he cut her up at all?" I asked.
"Well, he said that she was going to South America," he
answered. Which was really very fair-minded of him.
I don't remember now much else that he told me. Seeger
left the plates and dishes all washed up and very neat, he said.
Well I brought all this back to Linley, going up by the train
that started just about sunset. I'd like to tell you about the late
spring evening, so calm over that grim bungalow; but you'll
want to hear of the murder. Well, I told Linley everything,
though much of it didn't seem to me to be worth the telling.
The trouble was that the moment I began to leave anything
out, he'd know it, and make me drag it in. "You can't tell what
may be vital," he'd say. "A tin tack swept away by a housemaid
might hang a man."
All very well, but be consistent even if you are educated at
Eton and Harrow; and whenever I mentioned Num-numo,
which after all was the beginning of the whole story, because
he wouldn't have heard of it if it hadn't been for me, and my
noticing that Seeger had bought two bottles of it, why then he
said that things like that were trivial and we should keep to the
main issues. I naturally talked a bit about Num-numo, because
34
Nineteen Tales ol Terror
•
only that day I had pushed close on fifty bottles of it in Unge. A
murder certainly stimulates people's minds, and Seeger's two
bottles gave me an opportunity that only a fool could have
failed to make something of. But of course all that was nothing
at all to Linley.
You can't see a man's thoughts and you can't look into his
mind, so that all the most exciting things in the world can
never be told of. But what I think happened all that evening
with Linley, while I talked to him before supper, and all
through supper, and sitting smoking afterwards in front of our
fire, was that his thoughts were stuck at a barrier there was no
getting over. And the barrier wasn't the difficulty of finding
ways and means by which Seeger might have made away with
the body, but the impossibility of finding why he chopped those
masses of wood every day for a fortnight, and paid as I'd just
found out, £ 25 to his landlord to be ·allowed to do it. That's
what was beating Linley. As for the ways by which Seeger
might have hidden the body, it seemed to me that every way
was blocked by the police. If you said he buried it they said the
chalk was undisturbed, if you said he carried it away they said
he never left the place, if you said he burned it they said no
smell of burning was ever noticed when the smoke blew low,
and when it didn't they climbed trees after it. I'd taken to Linley wonderfully, and I didn't have to be educated to see there was something big in a mind like his, and I thought that he
could have done it. When I saw the police getting in before him
like that, and no way that I could see of getting past them, I felt
real sorry.
Did anyone come to the house, he asked me once or twice?
Did anyone take anything away from it? But we couldn't account for it that way. Then perhaps I made some suggestion that was no good, or perhaps I started talking of Num-numo
again, and he interrupted me rather sharply.
"But what would you do, Smithers?" he said. "What would
you do yourself?"
"If I'd murdered poor Nancy Elth?'' I asked.
"Yes," he said.
"I can't ever imagine doing such a thing,'' I told him.
He sighed at that, as though it were something against me.
"I suppose I should never be a detective,'' I said. And he just
shook his head.
Then he looked broodingly into the fire for what seemed an
hour. And then he shook his head again. We both went to bed
after that.
I shall remember the next day all my life. I was till evening,
as usual, pushing Num-numo. And we sat down to supper about
nine. You couldn't get things cooked at those fiats, so of course
The Two BoHies of Relish
35
•
we had it cold. And Linley began with a salad. I can see it now,
every bit of it. Well, I was still a bit full of what I'd done in
Unge, .pushing Num-numo. Only a fool, I know, would have
been unable to push it there ; but still, I had pushed it; and about
fifty bottles, forty-eight to be exact, are something in a small
village, whatever the circumstances. So I was talking about it a
bit; and then all of a sudden I realized that Num-numo was
nothing to Linley, and I pulled myself up with a jerk. It was
really very kind of him ; do you know what he did? He must
have known at once why I stopped talking, and he just stretched
out a hand and said: "Would you give me a little of your Numnumo for my salad?"
I was so touched I nearly gave it him. But of course you don't
take Num-numo with salad. Only for meats and savories.
That's on the bottle.
So I just said to him, "Only for meats and savories." Though
,I don't know what savories are. Never had any.
I never saw a man's face go like that before.
He seemed still for a whole minute. And nothing speaking
about him but that expression. Like a man that's seen a ghost,
one is tempted to say. But it wasn't really at all. I'll tell you
what he looked like. Like a man that's seen something that no
one has ever looked at before, something he thought couldn't
be.
And then he said in a voice that was all quite changed, more
low and gentle and quiet it seemed, "No good for vegetables, eh?"
"Not a bit," I said.
And at that he gave a kind of sob in his throat. I hadn't
thought he could feel things like that. Of course I didn't know
what it was all about; but, whatever it was, I thought all that
sort of thing would have been knocked out of him at Eton and
Harrow, an educated man like that. There were no tears in his
eyes but he was feeling something horribly.
And then he began to speak with big spaces between his
words, saying, "A man might make a mistake perhaps, and use
Num-numo with vegetables."
"Not twice," I said. What else could I say?
And he repeated that after me as though I had told of the
end of the world, and adding an awful emphasis to my words,
till they seemed all clammy with some frightful significance,
and shaking his head as he said it.
Then he was quite silent.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Smithers," he said.
"Yes," I said.
&
nbsp; "Smithers," said he.
a&
Nineteen Tales at Terror
•
And I said, "Well?"
"Look here Smithers," he said, "you must 'phone down to
the grocer at Unge and find out from him this."
"Yes?'' I said.
"Whether Seeger bought those two bottles, as I expect he
·
did, on the same day, and not a few days apart. He couldn't
have done that."
I waited to see if any more was coming, and then I ran out
and did what I was told. It took me some time, being after
nine o'clock, and only then with the help of the police. About
six days apart they said; and so I came back and told Linley. He
looked up at me so hopefully when I came in, but I saw that it
was the wrong answer by his eyes.
You can't take things to heart like that without being ill, and
when he didn't speak I said, "What you want is a good brandy,
and go to bed early."
And he said, "No. I must see someone from Scotland Yard.
'Phone round to them. Say here at once."
But I said, "I can't get an inspector from Scotland Yard to
call on us at this hour."
,
His eyes were all lit up. He was all there all right.
"Then tell them," he said, "they'll never find Nancy Elth. Tell
one of them to come here and I'll tell him why." And he added,
I think only for me, "They must watch Seeger, till one day they
get him over something else."
And, do you know, he came. Inspector Ulton; he came
himself.
While we were waiting I tried to talk to Linley. Partly curiosity, I admit. But I didn't want to leave him to those thoughts of his, brooding away by the fire. I tried to ask him what it was
all about. But he wouldn't tell me. "Murder is horrible," is all
he would say. "And as a man covers his tracks up it only gets
worse."
He wouldn't tell me. ''There are tales,'' he said, "that one
never wants to hear."
That's true enough. I wish I'd never heard this one. I never
did actually. But I guessed it from Linley's last words to Inspector Ulton, the only ones that I overheard. And perhaps this is the point at which to stop reading my story, so that you don't
guess it too; even if you think you want murder stories. For
don't you rather want a murder story with a bit of romantic
