Death on the Last Train

by George Bellairs

  “Very well, madam. I will now be getting along. I have your promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Littlejohn gathered up his hat and cold pipe and Constance saw him to the door. He left Harold still dumbfounded in the chair, but as he bade Constance good-night, he heard him ordering Leah about.

  “Bring me father’s bible, Leah. I’m going to swear to Constance …”

  Chapter X

  The Man who Played the Trombone

  Littlejohn decided to sleep on it. The discovery that the murderer had not been responsible for stopping the 10.55 nor for writing the anonymous letters turned the case upside down. No use beginning afresh at that time of night.

  The Inspector felt a bit more energetic when he turned in at the police-station the following morning.

  In the charge-room a portly sergeant was bending over a little girl wearing a pair of large spectacles. She was lost, but very self-possessed.

  The bobby, heavily paternal, was questioning her.

  “Now do you live in Albany Street …? Apple Street …? Appleby Street …? Applegarth Road …?”

  “What’s going on here?” asked Forrester, coming out to greet his colleague.

  “She can’t remember where she lives, sir. So I’m jest runnin’ through a few streets alphabetic …”

  “Good Lord! You’ll be at it all week! Have you been through the list of districts?”

  The small child, conscious that she was the centre of attraction, preened herself daintily.

  “Yus, sir. Doesn’t seem to remember any?”

  And then he added under his breath. “I’m fed-up with this.”

  The child regarded him reproachfully through her owl-like lenses.

  “Do you live in Snutton?” said Littlejohn.

  It was the only suburb he’d heard of.

  “I live there,” said the child, very pleased with it all, and smiling at Littlejohn for having won the guessing game.

  “So does he,” growled Forrester, disgustedly, pointing at the shamefaced sergeant, who looked down at his big feet as though imploring the floor covered by them to open and swallow him up.

  “I know him,” added the child, by way of a coup de grace.

  Littlejohn and Forrester combed through the list of those concerned with the fatal train, station staffs and travellers.

  “Is Mereton a closed station?” asked the Inspector.

  “Yes.”

  “What about the ticket collector? He doesn’t seem to be here.”

  Forrester slapped the table in disgust.

  “I put my hand up. We’d all missed him. I’ll just ’phone the station.”

  Yes. The ticket collector had been a fellow called Hiss. Lambert Hiss. He was off duty taking a rest. Hadn’t been well since the crime. Lived at 43, Albany Street, Mereton.

  “I’ll go there right away” said Littlejohn.

  It turned out to be a mixed business; sweets and tobacco. HISS painted large over the window and advertisements in white letters for chocolates and cigarettes stuck on the plate-glass panes. Some of the letters were missing. FO LES CH COLATE. SWE T ROS MARY CIGARE T S. The windows were full of dummy packets.

  Two women were minding the shop. One was small and obese, with a red face, mouth, nose and eyes like buttons of various shapes, and her hair elevated on two pads like little fat horns. The other was tall, skinny, thin lipped and long in the face and nose.

  “Mrs. Hiss?” said Littlejohn to the fat one, thinking what a good test it would be for sobriety.

  “She’d like to be,” said Skinny, peevishly.

  “How dare you, Mildred,” replied the heavyweight, now livid with rage.

  Mr. Hiss was a widower of twelve months’ standing. His wife had no sooner been called home than his peace was invaded by all the eligible women of Mount Horeb Chapel, which he attended. Spinsters and widows offered to mind the shop, darn his socks and pants, cook his meals and do his housework. Many married women joined in to see that their unattached sisters confined themselves to domestic science and kept off amorous designs.

  Lambert calmly accepted their ministrations. It saved the expense of a housekeeper or a shop attendant.

  “Is Mr. Hiss in?”

  The sound of male voices beyond the door leading from the shop ceased and suddenly the air was split by the braying of a trombone.

  Under a spreading chestnut tree,

  The village smithy stands.

  The smith a MIGHTY man is he …

  “No, no, no!!! You’re playin’—you’re playin’ a poem, Gus. Not When we get married we’ll ’ave sausage for tea.”

  “Mr. Hiss is busy at the moment giving a trombone lesson to Mr. Judd, who’s playing a solo at the Chapel next Sunday night …”

  “Well, tell him I want a word with him at once, please. I’m from the police …”

  The pale woman turned red and the red one turned . pale, and they scuttered simultaneously into the rear quarters like two scared rabbits.

  Their joint efforts brought Mr. Lambert Hiss to the door. He was small, short in his legs, and unhealthily fat, carrying a paunch which made him look to be bending backwards like a tree tempering itself to the wind on a rough coast. Very hairy, too, except on the top, where he was bald and shining. Heavy moustache, strong black eyebrows, black hair sprouting copiously from his ears and the backs of his hands. He didn’t look well.

  “What’s all this about?” asked Hiss.

  “Two pennyworth of liquorice allsorts.”

  A child with a coupon book and twopence brought them all to earth and the two women contemptuously turned to dispose of him, one weighing the sweets, the other cutting off the personal points.

  “Can we talk in private, Mr. Hiss?”

  Hiss motioned Littlejohn to follow him and rolled into the back premises. A small, bowlegged slip of a man was just emptying the liquid by-products of his trombone work into the fire where it disappeared with hissing sounds.

  “You might wait in the kitchen, Gus,” said Hiss. “We won’t be long …”

  Gus, to whom, like Elijah, Mr. Hiss was passing the mantle of his tromboning, thereupon disappeared without a word, his legs moving like those of a cyclist.

  “And now, sir,” said Mr. Lambert Hiss. “Sit down. What can I do for you?”

  There was a magisterial self assurance about him, derived, no doubt, from his eminence on the trombone and the sultanic position accorded him by his flock of attendant women.

  “I’m investigating the Bellis murder, sir …”

  Hiss was a bad colour but he went worse. His purple lips turned almost white.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Hiss?”

  “Yes, yes. The mention of murder upsets me. I’ve not been so well. Heart’s bad. Only don’t tell them women. They think I’m havin’ a few days of my holidays. There’s nothing they’d like better than to put me to bed and fuss over me …”

  The shop bell rang and raised voices gave the impression of the arrival of yet another of Hiss’s female retinue. A new face appeared round the door, like the cuckoo from a cuckoo clock. Fluffy grey hair and melting blue eyes.

  “Just thought I’d let you know I was here, Lambert. Anything you want?”

  “No, Ada. I’m just busy. See you later.”

  It was terrible. Somewhere in Hiss’s enormous frame must have been concealed a potent store of sex appeal, but Littlejohn couldn’t for the life of him guess where.

  The fat man sighed and looked bothered.

  “Wish they wouldn’t keep buttin’ in. What was you wanting? Let’s see, Mr. Littlejohn, you said? What was you wanting, Mr. Littlejohn?”

  “You were on duty, I hear, when Bellis came for the train on which he met his death. Did you notice anything unusual? Say, anybody following him and Miss Emmott … or any suspicious characters hanging about?”

  Hiss rubbed his several chins and pondered.

  “Can’t say that I did. No … Can’t say that I did.”

  He pic
ked up a large meerschaum and lit it.

  “Not supposed to smoke … Doctor’s orders. But I can’t stop it altogether. Soothes my nerves …”

  His hands trembled as he held the match.

  “Smoke if you like, Inspector. No, don’t think I can be much use to you.”

  “Just cast your mind back, Mr. Hiss. Try to picture the pair of them, Bellis and his friend, arriving that night. Well …?”

  “I was sittin’ in my little box at the gates to the platform. There’d been a party of Samaritans … Yes … and two parsons. Not many passengers. It had been a bad day and people must have kept indoors. Bellis and Miss Emmott came. I bid ’em good-night, clipped Bellis’s ticket, letting Miss Emmott on without, because I knew their usual programme and that she’d be back when she’d seen him off.”

  “Did you know them, then?”

  “Knew him by sight. Never had anything to do with him. Known Miss Emmott a good number o’ years. In the old days she was at the club. I’m still a member there, though I don’t know why. I never go now. She was there till she set up on her own.”

  Not a trace of irony, mirth or condemnation when he mentioned Bessie. As far as he was concerned she might have been a very respectable woman.

  “You bade them good-night … Yes. And then what …?”

  “As Bellis fumbled in his pocketbook for his ticket he dropped a letter on the floor and they’d got to the train when I saw it. I picked it up and put it in the box and then handed it to Miss Emmott when she came back.”

  Hiss had large brown eyes with blue whites the colour of duck-eggs. As though in his ancestry some Spaniard or even a negro lurked somewhere. He turned them anxiously on Littlejohn.

  “What sort of a letter?”

  “Oh, I dunno. I didn’t look at it particularly. Don’t even recollect reading the address. I knew it belonged to Bellis, so thought that Bess——Miss Emmott would see it safe to him. It might ’ave been a bill or something …”

  “And when Miss Emmott left?”

  “She got the bus at the station like she always did when she’d been seein’ Bellis off. Then I closed my box and went home, too.”

  “Did you see Claypott?”

  “Yes. They brought him on blind drunk. Two pals holdin’ him up between them.”

  The bell in the shop kept tolling and outside the sitting-room women could be heard scuttering round like worker bees.

  “Well, thanks for your help, Mr. Hiss. If you should remember anything more, you’ll get in touch with me, won’t you?”

  “Yes, I’ll do that, Inspector. Sorry. How’s Miss Emmott?”

  He smiled as he said it, showing his white, strong teeth.

  Littlejohn wondered what the women outside would have said if they’d overheard the question.

  “Not too bad. It was a big shock to her, but she’s getting over it, I guess.”

  “Yes. Must ’ave been a great shock.”

  Mr. Hiss looked melancholy and puffed noisily at his cold pipe.

  “Any idea who’s done it, yet, Inspector?”

  “No. It’s still a great mystery and looks like taking some time.”

  “H’m. Can you let yourself out? Don’t tell anybody I’m not so well. Nothin’ would please those good women better than …”

  It wasn’t far to Bessie Emmott’s shop. Littlejohn made his way there again and found the door locked, but in answer to his knocking Miss Emmott appeared and let him in.

  She didn’t look too pleased.

  “You again! What do you want this time? Better come inside, I can see some of the neighbours peeping round the curtains already.”

  The room behind the shop was as cosy as ever. Tea things were still on the table.

  “The shop ought to be open by this … But I somehow didn’t feel like it. The girl from up the street should be here in a few minutes to look to things. Alice has gone to stay with her cousins. Since Tim died we seem to have got on one another’s nerves. I can’t realise Tim’ll never come again …”

  And Bessie dissolved into noisy sobbing.

  Littlejohn thought he’d best get his business over and be off.

  “By the way, Miss Emmott, I hear Mr. Bellis dropped a letter on his way to the train that night and the ticket collector gave it to you as you returned from seeing him off …”

  Bessie Emmott clutched her heart. Every scrap of colour drained from her face and then returned to make her livid.

  “I … I … It was only a bill.”

  “Have you got it?”

  “No … I … I … burned it.”

  “You know that’s not true, Miss Emmott. Even if Mr. Bellis were dead you wouldn’t have burned a simple bill. Now come along, I want the truth, please.”

  She looked round with a stare of wild anxiety. She seemed to have mislaid something and to be looking for it. Her mouth opened and her breath came in noisy gasps.

  “Don’t … don’t … Please …”

  “Now, Miss Emmott, calm yourself. I must insist on knowing the truth.”

  She looked ready to faint, fixing Littlejohn with a wild look. She passed her hand across her forehead and a lock of fair hair detached itself and fell across her cheek.

  “It was a letter from another woman, wasn’t it?”

  Bessie went to pieces, flung herself down with her head in her arms across the table and wept tempestuously. It was dreadful.

  “Who was it?”

  She raised her head. Tears were streaming down her face making a patchy mess of the heavy powder she used. You couldn’t see her eyes properly. She seemed on the verge of collapse.

  “Alice,” she said, between her sobs.

  Littlejohn had noticed a bottle of whisky on the sideboard and he crossed and poured out a stiff dose.

  “Drink this …”

  She almost choked but it did her good.

  “That better?”

  “Yes. I made up my mind you’d never know about it … but I just haven’t strength to go on. At first I was goin’ to turn Alice in the street … But flesh and blood’s flesh and blood. An’ I thought if I did turn her out at a time like this, you’d suspect. But to-day I couldn’t stand it any more … I told ’er to go.”

  Littlejohn puffed his pipe calmly. It was bound to come out now. All that was needed was patience.

  “I little thought when I told her she could come to live here that this would ’appen. I just wanted a bit of help with the shop to give me more time for him. Instead, she must have been making-up to him behind my back . .”

  More sobbing and gasping and then Bessie reached for the whisky bottle again, poured out a large helping and drank it.

  “Have some?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Words flowed in harsh, hysterical torrents. She cried as she spoke.

  It all fell into place. Bellis the benevolent uncle to Alice when she arrived to live with Bessie. And then, gradually, she had taken his fancy. The letter talked about presents and good times. Bellis had been meeting Alice on the sly and spending his money on her. There might have been nothing more than that. Bessie was pathetically anxious to prove that there had been nothing more. Then they had gone to Brighton …

  “She was convalescent down there at a military place or something. He told me he’d some business in London and would be away a week. Instead … instead … he was in Brighton. It said so in the letter.”

  “So you burned the letter?”

  “I threw it at ’er when we had a row. She picked it up and was puttin’ it in her bag … just like a love-letter. So I snatched it back and threw it in the fire.”

  “What exactly did it say? Can you remember?”

  She was howling, tears flowing, just like a child.

  “Nothin’ much. Nothin’ wrong, any way. Just that she thanked him for the present and would never forget those days at Brighton and how good he was to her …”

  “I see …”

  “But it was the tone of it that cut. Just like a love-l
etter. As if he might ’ave been a young man instead of old enough to be her grandfather. I felt right out of it. Just didn’t know what to do. It knocked me to pieces. ’Specially as he’d borrowed fifty pounds from me for the London deal as he called it. And then he went and spent it on ’er …”

  “What did you do when you read the letter?”

  “I don’t know. It felt just like a mental black-out. My knees gave way and I felt too sick to move.”

  “Where were you when you read it?”

  “In the bus comin’ home.”

  “Yes?”

  “I recognised Alice’s writin’. The bus was light enough to read by. I couldn’t stop myself from readin’ it. I remembered the looks she used to give him and the way he’d smile at her. The bus started as I was three parts way through. I had to get off at the next stop I felt I was goin’ to faint.”

  “Where was the stop?”

  “The railway bridge beyond the station.”

  “You got out on the bridge?”

  “Yes.”

  “See the train standing just below?”

  Bessie sat bolt upright, swaying slightly from side to side. Despair was written all over her face. She looked awful.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Salton train was stopped on the line under the bridge and Bellis was killed whilst it was there.”

  She sighed loudly and gently fainted.

  Chapter XI

  The Shouting Man

  Mr. Humphrey Godwin was rejected from the forces for his awful eyesight. He wore powerful spectacles through which his eyes looked like far distant, corrugated trouser buttons. Round the same organs were dark rings, like bruises, from lack of sleep. It almost looked as though someone had given him a pair of permanent black eyes.

  Mrs. Godwin toiled on night shift at a munition works, whilst her husband worked too. By day he was a butter and bacon rationer at Hitchfields (The Grocers) Ltd., Mereton, where he spent his time doling out provisions and peering and clipping in coupon books like a curious bespectacled monkey. By night he soothed and pacified the six-months-old child he had begotten and which slept all day whilst its mother was at home and howled all night to keep its father reminded of its presence.