The little man cocked his head on one side and assumed an expression of thought. ‘Let me see,’ he begged, ‘quite high. I should say almost two hundred feet, and quite sheer.’
‘Is there a road near it?’
‘Yes, there is. The main road from here to Lydmouth runs along the top of the cliff, I suppose within a hundred yards of the edge. Would you say a hundred yards, superintendent?’
Rhode somewhat gruffly agreed.
‘At that point,’ Mr Ewing went on, ‘the railway and the road have changed places. Most of the way to Lydmouth the railway runs along the shore and the road is inland. Here the railway goes inland to avoid the range of hills which makes the cliff.’
French nodded. Really, the little man wasn’t doing so badly. His statement, if long-winded, was at least clear.
‘I think, Mr Ewing,’ French said, ‘we must have a look at that bicycle. Is it likely to be still uncovered?’
Mr Ewing shook his head. ‘Oh, no, you couldn’t possibly go near it now. You won’t get it for a fortnight, and then only if it’s fine.’
French looked at Rhode. ‘I’d better have a boat, sir, and perhaps Mr Ewing wouldn’t mind coming out with us and showing us the place? Will you do that for us, Mr Ewing?’
‘Certainly, but it’s only fair to tell you that you won’t find anyone very willing to take a boat out there among the rocks.’
French got up. ‘Then we’d better go at once lest the wind should rise. What do you say, sir?’
Rhode nodded briefly. ‘Yes, you’d better go now. You can get a boat from John Nesbit. If you tell him I’ll guarantee any damage to his boat he’ll raise no objection about going.
‘You see, Mr Ewing, he’ll not guarantee anything about our lives,’ French smiled, as he shepherded the conchologist out of the room.
Though he had not shown it, French was extraordinarily interested in this story of Mr Ewing’s. That this should be the bicycle which had been used by the presumed murderer of Ronald Ackerley seemed more than likely. French, indeed, wondered whether such a thing would not be too good to be true. To get so valuable a clue just as he was beginning to feel up against it would certainly be better luck than he was accustomed to. Yet for two distinct bicycles to be involved simultaneously in episodes interesting to the police would be perhaps an even greater coincidence.
He listened impatiently to what amounted almost to a lecture on conchology as he walked with his new friend to the harbour. At another time he would have been interested; the little man spoke well, but now he found it a strain even to make intelligent comments. The distance, however, was short, and soon he had made a bargain with John Nesbit for what was wanted.
French enjoyed that row, for there was not enough wind to make it worth while putting up a sail. The sky was clear, and the sun, though a little thin, made the sea an exquisite turquoise and whitened the chalk of the cliffs. There was scarcely a ripple on the water, and the air was almost warm. Another phenomenal piece of luck! At this time of year French might easily have had to wait several days for a chance to look for his clue.
Their two oarsmen rowed with that apparent absence of effort which always makes the landsman who tries an oar marvel at its weight. A few minutes brought them opposite the cliff, and then the bowman, passing his oar to his mate, took up a boat-hook and began to sound with it over the bows. Slowly they worked inshore, carefully avoiding the sharp spines of rock around which, even on this day of flat calm, the water lazily swirled and eddied.
‘A little farther,’ Mr Ewing directed; ‘a little farther in and a little farther to the right. That’s better. I should think this is about the place.’
While the oarsman pulled slowly backwards and forwards, Nesbit lowered a small three-pronged anchor overboard and began to move it up and down just above the bottom. It was a slow process, the hooks continually catching in rocks and seaweed and having to be painfully disentangled.
‘I’m sorry,’ Mr Ewing explained, ‘that I wasn’t able to mark it. If I had had a cork and some string in my pocket I could have done so, but I hadn’t. In any case I didn’t think you would come out like this to get it.’
For a couple of hours they worked without result and then Nesbit pointed to the horizon, which had darkened somewhat.
‘Wind out there,’ he declared, ‘and the swell’s rising. If we don’t get it soon, we won’t get it at all. Sure it’s not farther in, Mr Ewing?’
Mr Ewing believed not, but of course could not be sure to a yard.
‘We’ll try a little farther in if I don’t get it this time,’ Nesbit went on, tapping his anchor along the bottom. Then suddenly he called out: ‘Hullo, what’s this? By gosh, we’ve got it!’
He drew in his rope, and there, with its diamond frame hooked over one of the anchor prongs, was a bicycle with a badly buckled front wheel.
French could not wait till it was taken off the hook. He swung it round and glanced at the bottom of the left front fork.
Attached to it was a cyclometer, bent forward out of place.
Making no attempt to conceal his satisfaction, French congratulated Mr Ewing and the men, and their return to the harbour became a sort of triumphant progress. Arrived at the wharf, French telephoned for a police car to be sent down. On to this the bicycle was loaded.
‘Can I run you home, Mr Ewing?’ French asked politely.
The little man glanced at the car and declined. French, outwardly regretful, thereupon wished him good-day, and instructed the driver to run down to Downey’s Point. There he fitted the cyclometer to the mark on the tree. It exactly registered.
Leaving the bicycle in the police station at Redchurch, French drove out along the Lydmouth road till he came to the cliff immediately above the spot at which they had carried out their salvaging operations. The road was bounded by a sod bank, and between it and the edge of the cliff the surface was covered with rough grass. Here French spent another couple of hours going over every inch of the ground across which the murderer might have passed, but again without result. He thought he saw where the bicycle had actually been thrown over, a slight scrape on the very edge, undoubtedly fresh, but there was nothing pointing to the man who had abandoned it.
To French it seemed that this finding of the bicycle removed the last shadow of doubt that Ackerley’s death had been due to murder. The murderer, indeed, would have had to get rid of the machine. He had left it in the shrubbery above Downey’s Point, possibly for some time, and there was always the chance that it might have been seen. If the finder were an observant person he might have been able to identify it again, and if a doubt arose as to the cause of Ackerley’s death, such identification might have proved extremely awkward for the murderer. On the other hand, if the bicycle were secretly and finally disposed of, such a danger would be removed.
French returned to the police station in Redchurch and began a meticulous examination of the bicycle. As he did so he experienced a growing disappointment which became as keen, or keener, than his delight when the machine first appeared above the sea. After all, he did not think he was any farther on. There was here, he feared, no clue to the murderer. The bicycle, it was true, was not new, but it was of a standard make and there was nothing about it, save the bent cyclometer, to distinguish it from the thousands of other similar machines on the roads.
Then an idea suddenly occurred to him at which his depression fell away and he felt once more keen and eager.
Would it not, he wondered, be as dangerous for the murderer suddenly to get rid of his bicycle, as to keep it? More dangerous even? To keep it would at least not call attention to it, while to dispose of it would do so effectively.
If he were right in this, that the murderer had felt it would be dangerous not only to keep the bicycle, but also to get rid of a machine he was known to possess, did it not follow that he must have specially obtained the bicycle for this particular purpose? No doubt, if so, he had obtained it in some way in which he did not think he could be traced, b
ut leaving that for the moment, would he not have obtained it?
French spent some time considering this point, during which a good deal of his keenness fell away. He was not so sure. It would probably be as dangerous to buy the bicycle as to get rid of it. He tried putting himself in the man’s place, and he had to admit that he was not sure what he would do.
It was, however, certain that he might have bought it. And if so, would it not be worth while trying to follow up such a purchase? French did not hesitate long over the point. It would be worth while. It was a legitimate, indeed, a promising line of inquiry.
It was the kind of job French liked to delegate to subordinates. But on this occasion he could not do so; Rhode’s men were too much occupied as it was. The next three days, therefore, French spent in painfully going round all the dealers in secondhand bicycles of whom he could hear, the suspect machine hidden in the back of his police van.
Though he did not think the murderer would have been such a fool as to put through his deal in a small place like Whitness, or even Redchurch, he combed these towns thoroughly before going farther afield. Lydmouth, he believed, was more hopeful. It was the largest town in the district, with a population of something over 50,000. Drychester, a few miles inland, was another possibility, and so was Exeter. In fact, as French grimly reminded himself, so was any town in Dorset or the surrounding counties.
Armed with a local directory, he set to work in Lydmouth. From shop to shop he drove his van, asking the proprietors to come out and inspect the bicycle and say whether they had ever seen it before. But when closing-time came and he had to knock off, he had had no luck.
Next morning he was early at work, going on from where he had left off on the previous night. For some hours longer he continued without result, then suddenly his search was rewarded.
Mr Peabody, principal of the small firm of John Peabody & Son, recognised the machine as one he had sold on the previous Saturday week, the Saturday previous to the murder.
‘It was a good machine,’ Mr Peabody declared, ‘a thorough good machine, in first-class order and with all accessories, but secondhand, you know. It was easily worth five pounds, but I let it go for four. You have to let these secondhand machines go for less than they’re really worth.’
‘I suppose you have,’ French said sympathetically. ‘Whom did you sell it to, Mr Peabody?’
Mr Peabody shook his head. ‘It may sound strange to you,’ he answered, ‘but I know no more than if it was the man in the moon.’
This was what, in a way, French had hoped to hear. At least it showed him that he was on the right track.
‘How was that?’ he asked.
‘Never saw the man. Never laid eyes on him.’
‘Ordered by letter?’
‘Letter? No, not a stroke of writing about it.’
‘Then how?’
‘Telephone. I’ll tell you. Will you come into the shop?’
French followed him through the small and dingy shop into the smaller and dingier office behind it. Mr Peabody lifted a stack of catalogues off the only chair and motioned French to sit down. French produced his cigarette-case. Mr Peabody waved it aside.
‘Thanks; only smoke a pipe.’ A cold pipe was lying on the paper-littered desk, and he thrust it into his mouth and after some difficulty lit it.
‘About, let me see, about seven-thirty or a little later last Saturday week evening,’ he went on, ‘I was called up by someone whose voice I didn’t know, asking if I sold secondhand bicycles, and if so, what was the best I could do for four pounds? I said I had a good Rudge-Whitworth, in first-class order, in fact, practically new and fitted with all accessories complete down even to the carbide in the lamp. The man said it sounded like what he wanted and could I let him have it at once for cash?’
‘Did he give his name?’
‘Yes; Mr Howard Wiliams, but he said I shouldn’t know him as he was a stranger in the town. He said my shop had been recommended to him by a friend.’
‘Any address?’
‘No.’
‘What sort of voice had he?’
‘What sort of voice?’
‘Yes: was it high or low-pitched; clear or throaty; or peculiar in any way?’
‘It was a high-pitched voice; not very high, but higher than ordinary.’
‘Any accent? Could you tell what part of the country he came from?’
Mr Peabody shook his head. ‘Not except that it wasn’t from anywhere I’ve ever been.’
‘Disguised perhaps?’
This had not occurred to Peabody, but on consideration he somewhat hesitatingly admitted that it might have been.
‘Very well. What happened then?’
‘The man said he had started on a walking tour, but had decided to continue on a bicycle. He was leaving the town on the Monday and he would like to try the machine on the Sunday. He was engaged at the moment himself, but he would send a messenger for it at once. The messenger would have the four pounds and I could hand the machine over to him. If it turned out to his satisfaction, well and good; the deal would be over. If he didn’t like it, he would bring it back on Monday morning and I would refund him his four pounds, less one day’s hire and less cost of damage done, if any. Would I agree to that?’
‘And did you?’
‘Certainly I did. Why shouldn’t I? It was fair enough.’
‘Sounds perfectly fair. Well?’
‘Well, I gave the bike a bit of a rub and set it aside and then in twenty minutes or so—about eight o’clock—a boy came in and said he was come for Mr Williams’ bicycle and handed me an envelope. There were four notes in it, four Bank of England one-pound notes. That was all right. I gave the machine to the boy and he wheeled it out and that was the last I saw of it till you brought it back.’
French nodded. It was the kind of story he had expected to hear.
‘Was the envelope addressed?’
‘No, there was nothing on it.’
‘I suppose you didn’t keep it?’
Mr Peabody smiled a trifle crookedly. ‘We keep some things that we maybe don’t want,’ he declared, glancing round the little office with its masses of dusty papers lying higgledy-piggledy over everything, ‘but we draw the line at used envelopes.’
French grinned. ‘I suppose it’s natural,’ he admitted. ‘Who was the boy, Mr Peabody? You didn’t by any chance know him?’
‘Never set eyes on him before or since.’
‘Well, I’ve got to find him. I’d be obliged if you’d give me the best description of him that you can.’
Mr Peabody’s descriptive powers were not on a par with his gift for narration. French had to do a lot of detailed questioning, not only of the principal, but also of his two assistants, before he was able to form in his mind’s eye an adequate picture of the messenger.
He was, it appeared, a youth of about twelve, of the labouring classes, if not what used to be called a street arab. He was tall and thin, with pale face, made paler still by his dark hair and eyes. A good-looking boy, dressed fairly neatly, though in patched clothes.
There was not much help in all this, and French was therefore thankful when a further question brought out what really might prove a clue. The boy spoke in a very thin, high-pitched voice, as if his throat was somehow constricted.
‘You would know him if you saw him again?’
Oh, yes, Mr Peabody would know him all right. Moreover, he would agree to see and if possible identify any boys whom French would present for his inspection.
On the whole not dissatisfied with his progress, French snatched a bit of lunch at a tea shop and immediately plunged into a second inquiry. This time schools were his objective. From his directory he made a list of all those in the neighbourhood of Peabody’s shop. He hurried in order to get round as many as possible before they closed.
At the first school he saw the principal and put the case to him. The principal, as soon as he was assured that none of his pupils was ‘wanted’ on any ch
arge, became helpful. It was on his suggestion that French, in the rôle of a school inspector, made a tour of the building and asked questions in history and mathematics of tall pale youths of about twelve. But none of those whose physical peculiarities answered the description spoke with a squeaky voice. Nor were any absentees tall and thin.
French’s inquiries at the second school produced a similar negative result, but at the third he struck oil.
Here a thin, pale boy, asked if he knew a town on the River Mersey, replied in a squeak. French passed on, but when he left the class he had the boy sent for.
‘This gentleman wants to ask you a few questions, Langton,’ said the principal. ‘Do your best to answer them. There’s nothing wrong; you need not be in the least alarmed. I’ll leave you here, Mr French. I have to get back to my class.’
‘No, son, there’s nothing wrong,’ French said with a smile. ‘I just want you to give me a bit of help. It really hasn’t anything to do with you. Do you remember last Saturday week doing a job for someone? Something about a bicycle?’
The boy nodded and French breathed more freely. Then, with the aid of a good many questions, the story came out.
It appeared that about eight o’clock on the night in question he was walking past the corner of the street close to Messrs Peabody’s establishment. The corner, in fact, was not more than twenty-five or thirty yards from the shop. A man was standing at the corner, and he called Langton over and asked him would he like to earn a tanner? The boy said he would. The man said: ‘Well, take this note into Peabody’s shop and ask for Mr Williams’ bicycle and bring it out to me here. I’d go myself,’ the man went on, ‘only I have to meet a friend here, and if I went into the shop I might miss him.’
Langton thereupon went into the shop and delivered the envelope and message. A bicycle was handed to him and he wheeled it out to the man. The man thereupon gave him the tanner and he went home rejoicing.
‘Had you ever seen the man before?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then I want you to describe him.’
As in the case of Mr Peabody, the description was more easily asked for than obtained. French put in a tedious half-hour, at the end of which he had not a great deal to show for his work. The man was wearing his collar up about his ears and the brim of his hat turned down over his eyes, and Langton could not see much of his face. There was, moreover, a lamp-post at the immediate spot, and the light came down so directly that what was visible of the face was in shadow from the hat brim. The man, however, was tallish and stout, and was dressed in a fawn-coloured waterproof and soft sports hat. He had a black moustache and wore black-rimmed spectacles. His voice was rather high-pitched and he spoke in a queer sort of way, though French’s most painstaking efforts failed to discover wherein the queerness lay.
Death on the Way Page 7
