19 Tales of Terror

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