Death on the Last Train

by George Bellairs

The woman jerked a thumb like a claw in the direction of a small clean-looking tavern a few doors away. As he made for the pub, the Inspector felt her eyes following him.

  Tarrant was sitting in the taproom with a pint mug of beer at his elbow. His face was glum. The five other occupants of the place and the landlord were casting sidelong glances of resentment at him. He had repulsed their sympathy and curiosity and insisted on drinking alone. Littlejohn sat opposite him and told him what he wanted.

  “What, another of you?” grumbled Tarrant in offended tones. He was small, very thick set, with clear blue eyes, a large nose once broken and set askew, and a firm craggy chin. His light hair was clipped close to his skull except for a quiff at the front.

  “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want us to find out who killed Mr. Bellis?” muttered Littlejohn. The rest of the company in the taproom strained their ears and tried to read the lips of the two men speaking over the beer-slopped deal table.

  “Like hell I do. If I knew who’d killed the boss, you wouldn’t find me here tryin’ to ferget I’ve lost ’im. I’d be out huntin’ the swine with me bare ’ands. … But because I didn’t ’appen to be on the station just when the boss’s train got in, is there any reason why you damned police should be cross-questionin’ me as if I’d done it? Not good enough. …”

  Tarrant emptied his mug and looked ready to order another. The landlord, a lanky, cross-eyed fellow, narrow-nostrilled and with a perpetual catarrhal sniff, kept hanging round, mopping the tables and trying to overhear what was said.

  “Suppose we go to the house. We can talk better, Tarrant. You have a key?”

  “Yes. Wonder the ruddy police didn’t take that, too. They were there before I got up this mornin’. Locked every thin’ up and took away the keys. Might think I’d pinch somethin’. An’ after the way the boss trusted me when ’e was alive. Ruddy shame, I calls it.”

  Tarrant had drunk himself into a mood of self-pity and looked ready to weep. His eyes were filmed and he squinted a bit.

  “How long have you been with Mr. Bellis?” asked Littlejohn as they made their way back to the house.

  “Ten years.. Used ter drive the car when his wife was alive, but I lived out, then. After she died I lived in and looked after the boss. The maids left when he came on bad times, and I was on me own. When we moved ’ere I was general ’andyman. Cook, clean up and all. And when the swine started sendin’ those threatenin’ letters I was the boss’s ruddy bodyguard as well.”

  They had reached the house and stood for a minute talking on the step. Tarrant wore no raincoat and his reefer jacket was damp and out of shape. He looked to have slept in it all night. The woman in the nearby doorway goggled at them.

  “Wot do you want? Starin’ as if you’d seen a ghost,” Tarrant bawled at her and pulled the key from his pocket.

  “Keep a civil tongue in yer ’ead, you. I can stand in me own doorway and look out if I want. … Might think you owned the whole perishin’ quayside. …”

  The house had once been a fine one. A graceful staircase rose straight up from the hall and the walls were half panelled in oak. The place smelled of dry-rot, cooking, mice and lack of fresh air.

  “We’d only one room furnished downstairs, as well as my kitchen, an’ two bedrooms. No use ’avin’ more. Only more work. Nobody called, let alone wantin’ entertainin’.”

  “You were very attached to your master?”

  “You’ve said it, mister. Never forget a good turn, I don’t. He an’ Mrs. Bellis was good to my mother in her last illness, with me away at sea and the old girl not a soul to do a hand’s turn for ’er, till they come along. … To most folk Tim Bellis was a proper old sinner. … Most people ’adn’t a good word for him. But Ted Tarrant never forgets a good turn. …”

  “Yes. Well, how long is it since Mrs. Bellis died?”

  “Six months. She was ’is second wife …”

  “Did they get on well?”

  “That’s not for me to say. No business o’ yours, either. But after she died, ’is luck changed. Money went, house burnt down, a lovely house, too. And all that bloody anonymous threats business. Master showed me them letters. Scared ’im to death, they did. ’Don’t leave me, Tarrant,’ ’e’d say. ‘Yo’re all I got. … They’ll kill me. …’ ‘Over my dead body, boss,’ I sez. An’ now they’ve done for ’im. Oh, ’ell. Wish I could lay me mits on ’em, I’d …”

  They had been talking in the dim hall. Now Tarrant led Littlejohn into what had apparently been Bellis’s sitting-room. A squalid den, once a fine room, with a dirty but ornamental ceiling and good woodwork sadly short of paint and soap and water.

  The furniture looked like salvage from the fire at the big house. On a mahogany round table stood an empty bottle of whisky and a syphon, with dirty glasses and the remains of a plate of sandwiches. Crumbs and splashes all over the table. The mice had been busy at the remnants of the meal. Newspapers and circulars littered the place.

  The floor was carpeted in threadbare squares. It had once been good parquet, but there were gaps where blocks had come away and several more were loose and displaced. Another whisky bottle lay on its side on the rug. The place reeked of alcohol and the cheese of which the sandwiches were made.

  Tarrant looked a bit ashamed of the state of the room.

  “A bit untidy. Kep’ me busy keepin’ an eye on the boss lately. Afraid to go out by himself. Didn’t leave me much time to tidy around.”

  Littlejohn lit his pipe and took it all in. Whoever had set about Bellis with his anonymous letters had certainly brought him to a pretty state. Living in squalor, reduced in circumstances, scared to death for his life, and without a friend except Tarrant. . . Oh, yes, and Bessie. . .

  “Who was Miss Emmott, Tarrant?”

  “A friend of ’is in Mereton,” replied the man sullenly. “I ain’t sayin’ any more about it. His private affairs don’t concern anybody.”

  “He visited her often?”

  “Three or four times a week. I used ter see ’im safe on the train, here, an’ she met ’im at the other end. Same when ’e came ’ome. We thought it safe as ’ouses. Who’d ’a thought somebody would stop the bloody train and kill ’im? If I could lay me ’ands on …”

  Tarrant wiped his mouth with a big fist and dashed his hand across his eyes as though to clear his brain. He was genuinely upset about things.

  “Now, about your movements last night, Tarrant. You saw Mr. Bellis to the train for Mereton?”

  “Yus. I told ’em that this mornin’.”

  “Well, you can tell me again, now. What time?”

  “The 6.57. Got ’im a carriage to himself and saw the train leave the station. Bessie Emmott met ’im at the other end.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Went to the Rodney and stayed there till ten-thirty, closin’ time. Landlord’ll tell you that’s right. He’s already told the police that.”

  “Yes, I know. What next?”

  “Walked to the station. Ten minutes walk. There about quarter to eleven. Grimes, the porter, ’ll tell you I did. Stood talkin’ to ’im till five past eleven and got starved to the marrer. Then, the bookin’ clerk tells us that the train ’ll be ten minutes late. So I nips out for a glass o’ grog to warm me up. . .”

  “Where?”

  “I told ’em this mornin’, I don’t want to get a pal in trouble for sellin’ stuff after hours. I’ll take the blame …. Told ’im I felt ill, an’ like a decent bloke, he gave me a quick one.”

  “Who?”

  “Landlord at the Navigation Inn, behind the station. I told the police that ’e’d tell ’em it was so. Decent chap, Ted Mills. But I’ll take the blame, see?”

  “I see. And you got back to the station just after the train got in, Tarrant?”

  “Yes. . . An’ a nice how-de-do I found.”

  “Any idea who was at the back of all this?”

  “Naw. Think if I’d known I’d a let ’im torture the boss and ’ound
’im to ’is death? I’d ’ave murdered the swine meself.”

  “Can you think of any motive?”

  “Not for me to start guessin’. The boss wasn’t popular. Lot a people ’eld ’im to blame for the Salton Building crash. I dunno. I’m not a business man. Keep my money in the Post Office.”

  “Yet you say you saw all the threatening letters?”

  “Yus.”

  “Don’t they mention his being cruel to Mrs. Bellis?”

  Tarrant clenched his fists and his teeth.

  “Nothin’ to do with me,” he growled. “So you needn’t ask me. God, I could do with a drink. …”

  “I’m not stopping you.”

  The man picked up the bottle from the floor and emptied its contents into one of the dirty glasses. Almost a glassful. He tipped half of it down his throat at a gulp.

  Littlejohn cast his eyes round the room. Three old leather-seated chairs scattered about the place, and a battered leather armchair by the untidy fireplace. A dilapidated wireless set, a small three-legged table cluttered up with magazines and papers. Littlejohn turned some of them over. Daily and weekly stuff of a popular kind. Bellis must have spent a lot of time indoors looking at pictures and reading bits of news. The top of the small sideboard also held piles of the same stuff, and a rack of dirty pipes and a tobacco jar.

  “What’s in there?” asked the detective, pointing to the drawers and cupboards.

  “Nothin’ much,” hiccupped Tarrant. He began to open and close them unsteadily.

  Poor table linen, tea cosies, cutlery in the drawers. Bottles galore in the cupboards. Whisky, chutney, jam, pickles, empty siphons. A squalid medley of stuff collected by men pigging along in the way of food and drink.

  Finally, in the corner, a combination bureau and bookcase.

  “What’s in this?” said Littlejohn.

  “That’s what they locked-up this mornin’. Private papers and such of the boss. Even locked up the books. As if I’d pinch ’em.”

  “I’ll have a look at these before I go. I’ve got the keys.”

  Forrester had handed them to Littlejohn as he left the police station.

  Upstairs it was the same. Beds unmade in airless rooms. Floors dirty, linen scattered about. Drawers filled with junk and worn linen. But nothing useful in the case, except a box of cartridges in a handkerchief drawer. Littlejohn pocketed these and Tarrant told again the tale of the revolver he’d already told Forrester.

  “I thought Mr. Bellis had a valuable collection of china and such like at his other house. What happened to it?”

  “Most of it lost in the fire. Damn shame. Somebody set fire to the place. If I could …”

  “All right. Was any of it saved?”

  “Not much. What was, was sold. Mr. Bellis ’ad got to sellin’ as much as ’e could. Lost a lot of ’is money, as I said before, and drank away a lot more. Not that I blame ’im, with all ’is troubles. Even sold the late Mrs. B.’s jewellery. Cried, ’e did, when it came to partin’ with that. ‘Tarrant,’ ’e said, ‘Who’d ’a thought I’d ’a come down to this?’ ‘Never you mind, boss,’ I sez …”

  “Very well …”

  They looked through the empty, forlorn rooms. Four upstairs, two down. All of them full of dust, dry rot and damp. Littlejohn found himself wondering where Bellis would have ended if someone hadn’t killed him. It was almost a mercy …

  “Now for the desk …”

  Littlejohn opened the drawers and the top of the bureau. A dirty jumble of old bills, pamphlets, circulars, notepaper and envelopes and heaven knew what else. It would take hours to examine it properly.

  “That belonged to Mrs. Bellis … The boss’s desk went up in smoke at the fire,” mumbled Tarrant. He breathed whisky over Littlejohn.

  “I see …”

  Littlejohn turned over the papers, but those in the two top drawers seemed all alike and not of much account. The bottom drawer had contents of another kind. Packed with every type of salacious literature. The Inspector pushed the books about. Decameron, Contes Drolatiques in a dirty looking translation, Selections from Rabelais. Then some fine art editions from Paris and even a few choice medical works.

  Tarrant sniggered alcoholically.

  “Mr. Bellis had a pretty taste in literature, I see,” said Littlejohn closing and locking the drawers again. “Let’s see what his real bookcase has in store.”

  The shelves behind the glass doors were filled with a different kind of matter. The bottom ones held a jumble of business books and pamphlets, jammed in anyway. The top line, however, was of a better class.

  “Mrs. Bellis’s, those was,” explained the goggling Tarrant.

  A few books of poetry, Mrs. Beeton, novels of twenty years ago, little dainty collections of bright thoughts and sayings. Littlejohn took them out one by one and examined them. About a score of them in all, bearing the name of Helen More, or else Helen Blandford.

  “Maiden name More; first ’usband Blandford, see?” explained Tarrant, still breathing hard at Littlejohn’s side and owlishly interested in his every movement.

  There was one book wedged out of sight behind the rest. Bound in morocco leather with gilt edges. A collection of poetry. Littlejohn turned the fly leaf. There was an inscription, and some lines of verse, in a faded, clear hand.

  To Helen. June 24th, 1903.

  Helen, thy beauty is to me

  Like those Nicean barks of yore,

  That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,

  The weary, wayworn wanderer bore

  To his own native shore.

  On desperate seas long wont to roam,

  Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

  Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

  To the glory that was Greece,

  To the grandeur that was Rome.

  For a minute Littlejohn forgot the sordid room and the squalid house, with the drunken manservant snorting at his side. He wondered who had given Helen Bellis, then Helen More, the book and inscribed the lines by Edgar Allan Poe. If it were Timothy Bellis, which was unlikely, time had changed things. The faded lines, the hidden book, told a sad little tale …

  “Poetry … No use for that stuff,” belched Tarrant peering over Littlejohn’s arm.

  “Shut up!” rapped Littlejohn. Tarrant recoiled like one who has been suddenly bitten by a docile looking dog.

  “I wasn’t doin’ anythin’. No offensh meant.”

  “Do you know this writing?”

  “Never seen it before. Not Mrs. Bellis’s … Not the boss’s.”

  “Could it have been Mrs. Bellis’s first husband’s?”

  “No … I remember the boss finding some letters of his in the missus’s desk after she died. Showed ’em to me. Couldn’t hardly read the writin’. Now that, you can read …”

  He pointed to the inscription in the book which Littlejohn was still holding.

  “You can read that … I can read it meshelf … Helen, thy beauty ish …”

  “That’ll do, Tarrant,” said Littlejohn snapping the book. “I’ll keep this.”

  He slipped the volume in his pocket. He didn’t really know why, but felt it would save its being mauled about in further searches and perhaps the inscription read by louts like Tarrant. He locked the desk and bookcase and pocketed the key.

  “I’m going now, Tarrant, and if I were you, I wouldn’t take any more of Mr. Bellis’s whisky,” he said in leaving. “His brother’s due any time and may not like it.”

  Littlejohn left him staring vacantly at the empty bottles and let himself out into the rain.

  Chapter IV

  The Off-Licence

  The Inspector soon finished his business at Ellinborne and returned to Salton in the police car in time for tea. He had arranged by telephone that morning for his colleague, Sergeant Cromwell, to join him in the investigation and, thinking his assistant might have better luck in travelling than he himself had enjoyed yesterday, he strolled to the station to meet the 5.45 train in.

>   It was still blowing a gale, with intermittent showers of driven rain. Pedestrians struggled to keep on their feet and fought the wind. The harbour was full of small craft sheltering until an improvement in the weather.

  The Inspector was in good time at the station and spent the quarter-hour he had to spare looking over again the railway carriage in which Bellis had been murdered and which stood dripping in the open siding behind the platforms.

  The policeman on duty was sitting in one of the carriages munching sandwiches and drinking tea from a Thermos flask. He jerked to his feet like a spring-heeled-Jack when Littlejohn tapped on the window. Frantically he chewed a mouthful of food trying to dispose of it and give tongue.

  “Don’t disturb yourself, officer. Just give me the carriage key, please. I want to look over the compartment where the crime occurred. Get on with your tea, man …”

  The bobby struggled frenziedly in his hip pocket, which his ample rolls of flesh seemed to fill and keep tightly closed, and finally brought out the key. He was trying to salute, put on his helmet, conceal his food and drink and comport himself deferentially at the same time. Littlejohn left him to sort himself out.

  The Inspector climbed into the compartment without much difficulty. He carefully noted the span from the permanent way to the first step into the carriage. It was not excessive. In fact, a child could have managed it. The rain had completely washed away any traces that might have remained on the outside. Not that there would have been any distinctive ones on the battered, badly painted exterior.

  It was the same inside the compartment. Everything had been left as it was when the murder was discovered. Filthy piece of worn carpet on the floor, presumably to distinguish first from third class … Cigarette ends, spent matches, bits of paper. Blinds torn and bedraggled and the netting of the luggage rack dangling in large holes. Pictures of holiday resorts fading in frames above the seats, Llandudno, Ribble Valley, Bournemouth and Port Erin, I.O.M. A cracked mirror with a label stuck on it. Repair: broken mirror.

  A really sordid setting for what looked like turning out to be a sordid crime.

  The whistle of an incoming train sounded and Littlejohn locked the compartment. After the inquest on the morrow it would probably be put back into service, bloodstains and all.