The 12.30 from Croydon

by Crofts, Freeman Wills

  To both Macpherson and Gairns Charles said that all reductions of staff would be postponed. To both he contrived to suggest, without actually putting it into words, that these changes of policy were due to his uncle’s action. To both also he hinted that the last few weeks had been a strain, and that now that his anxiety was over he would take a short holiday.

  The third preliminary was the raising of more cash, and here Charles saw his way clearly. During his later years his father had developed a taste for art, and, being comfortably off, he had gratified it by buying some pictures. They were not Old Masters, but they were good of their kind and had cost a couple of hundred or more apiece. There were fourteen in all, and Charles estimated that they were worth about three thousand pounds. He now proposed to pawn them and he thought he should get at least fifteen hundred for them.

  He had, of course, during the past few weeks frequently considered selling these pictures, but it happened that Una admired them and would have at once noticed their disappearance. She would have demanded an explanation and then the fat would have been in the fire. Pawning them, however, was a different matter. She need never know they had been removed. He would be able to redeem them before having her to the house, particularly as he was going on a holiday.

  Next morning was Sunday, which Charles spent in his usual way at tennis, but on Monday he carried out the first item of his programme: a journey to Town. Before starting he got Rollins to pack the fourteen pictures in his car, on the ground that he was taking them to be cleaned. He also had lunch put up, saying that this would enable him to have it when he liked, instead of having to fit in a call at some hotel. While Rollins was engaged elsewhere he secretly slipped into the car his portable typewriter, with two ribbons, its own purple and a spare black. To these he added a kitbag containing a lounge suit with black coat and waistcoat and grey striped trousers – what he called ‘Town business clothes’ – a pair of black shoes and a hairbrush. Then, having given notice at the works that he would be away for a couple of days, he set off.

  He had worked out an intensive programme by which he hoped to get all that he wanted done in the short time available, and had looked up the necessary firms and addresses in the directory at the club. Besides the visit to Reading, which was the ostensible reason for the trip, and the pawning of the pictures, which he wished to keep private, though not necessarily secret, he had a number of other errands. With these latter he must not under any circumstances become connected. None of them must ever be traced home to him.

  From this point of view he had given the question of a disguise a good deal of thought. A proper make-up he would not attempt. He realized that a poor disguise was more dangerous than no disguise at all. But he intended at least to dress in clothes unlike his ordinary wear, put on horn-rimmed spectacles, and do his hair in a different fashion.

  It was another delightful day, though there was a slight haze from the heat. The fine spell had brought out the holiday-makers, and all England seemed to be on wheels. Charles drove fast, as fast as he could without drawing attention to himself. If he could get into Town early enough he might carry through the picture negotiations that afternoon.

  He was surprised to find that in spite of the terrible decision he had taken, he was feeling light-hearted and in good form. The mere fact indeed that he had come to a decision was a relief. The misery of uncertainty was gone. And if his scheme was dangerous; well, the very risk added to the thrill.

  He did the run of about two hundred miles in well under six hours, arriving in London between three and four in the afternoon. He had selected the name of Jamieson & Truelove from the formidable list of pawnbrokers in the directory because they advertised themselves as dealers in objects of art. Now he stopped in a nearby park and walked round to their premises in Arundel Street.

  A statement of his business brought him at once to Mr Truelove’s private office. Mr Truelove was an elderly gentleman with a Jewish cast of countenance and an oily manner. He begged Charles to be seated, and, rubbing his hands, inquired what he could have the pleasure of doing for him.

  Charles told him. He wished to raise some money on pictures. If that was in Mr Truelove’s line, Mr Truelove might care to see what he had brought; if not, perhaps he could direct him where to apply.

  It appeared that the advancing of money on pictures was Mr Truelove’s heart’s joy, and it would delight him to examine Mr Swinburn’s property. Charles thereupon superintended the removal of the pictures to Mr Truelove’s room. Truelove looked at them with an air of polite disparagement, and asked how long Charles proposed to leave them. Charles did not exactly know, but suggested six months.

  ‘We can certainly allow you something on them, Mr Swinburn,’ Truelove said at last. ‘They are not valuable, as you no doubt know, but we can allow something.’

  ‘Values are relative, as you no doubt know,’ Charles returned dryly. ‘What amount will you allow?’

  Truelove spread out deprecating hands. Much he regretted that he was not himself a connoisseur. The pictures would have to be valued by his expert. Could Mr Swinburn come back?

  Charles could come back on the following afternoon.

  That, Mr Truelove explained, would do admirably. He would have a proposal to lay before, he hoped he might say, his client, and in the meantime here was a receipt for the pictures. And might he add that all their business was conducted with the utmost possible discretion?

  So far as it went, this all seemed satisfactory to Charles. The offices looked large and prosperous, and he thought he would probably do as well there as anywhere else.

  Charles’s next business was secret, and systematically he took all the precautions he had thought out to prevent his proceedings being traced. Returning to his car, he took from it the kitbag. He left the car parked where it was, and going to Aldwych Tube Station took the train to Holborn. There he alighted and walked westwards till in one of the streets off New Oxford Street he came to a second-hand clothes shop. It was a superior sort of place, which would exactly suit his purpose.

  There he bought a good though worn suit of inconspicuous brown, which he rolled up and stowed in the kitbag. In the next block there was a hat shop, and he bought there a grey Homburg hat. A third shop supplied a tie of unostentatious pattern.

  His fourth purchase he dared not make while dressed in his ordinary clothes. Slipping therefore into a street lavatory, he changed his suit, tie, shoes and hat. At the same time he brushed up his moustache, eyebrows and hair into unwonted styles. Glancing at himself in a mirror as he came out, he was delighted to find his appearance was really considerably altered.

  With a good deal more self-confidence he entered a theatrical supplies shop in Shaftesbury Avenue and bought a pair of plain glass horn-rimmed spectacles ‘for a part he was doing at a children’s show’. With these on he felt his disguise was good enough. He was ready for the first definite act of his dreadful drama.

  In Charing Cross Road he drifted into a second-hand bookshop devoted to scientific works and began an outwardly desultory examination of the shelves.

  He wanted a book, but his difficulty was that he didn’t know exactly what book he wanted. It was a book about poisons, and it must tell not only the effects of various poisons, but the amounts required to ensure death. Also it must indicate how or where the substances in question were to be obtained. In taking his degree of Bachelor of Science Charles had worked through a fairly advanced course in chemistry. He had not, however, specialized in poisons, though, of course, he knew something about them. He felt sure that some book would give the required information, if he could only light on it.

  In a leisurely way he ran his eye along the shelves. The books were classified by subject, and he was able to drift quickly past astronomical and botanical works, treatises on chemistry and daltonism, electricity, and ferro-concrete construction. He was hurrying on to the ‘P’s’, but in passing the ‘M’s’ he halted suddenly.

  Medical jurisprudence! Was that not
what he wanted?

  He was only vaguely conscious of what medical jurisprudence really encompassed, and with some hesitation he began to take down and glance through one bulky volume after another. Yes, it looked as if he were on the right track. These were books about the evidence which doctors might give in cases of crime. They gave the signs for which doctors should look: the post-mortem appearance of bodies murdered in various ways, the causes which produced various results…

  Charles fingered book after book, hastening though with slow outward movements, so as not to attract the attention of the assistants. The assistants, however, were busy, and as a number of other persons were standing at the shelves looking through the books just as Charles was, he was not disturbed.

  Suddenly he experienced a little thrill of satisfaction. Surely this was what he required! In the second volume of Taylor’s Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence there was a huge section headed Poisoning and Toxicology, with sub-sections on Dangerous Drugs, The Action of Poisons and Diagnosis of Poisoning.

  Charles picked out the two large volumes. They were second-hand, and he thought them cheap at thirty shillings. Wrapped in paper, he took them out under his arm. The purchase had attracted no attention from the rather bored and overworked assistant who had attended to him, and Charles was certain that it could never be brought home to him.

  Twice Charles repeated his manœuvre. In two other bookshops he made purchases with similar precautions. First he bought The Extra Pharmacopoeia, by Martindale and Westcott, which he remembered from the days of his science course as the dispensing chemists’ Bible, Secondly, he picked up a good elementary book on sleight-of-hand.

  In another street lavatory he changed back to his own clothes, and squeezing the books into the kitbag with his other purchases, he returned to his car and drove it openly to The Duchy of Cornwall, the hotel in Northumberland Avenue at which he invariably put up.

  He met some men he knew in the hotel, and though he was on the qui vive to get at his book, he decided to spend the evening with them. Doing so, he thought, would enable him to account for the whole of his day: driving in a leisurely way to Town and spending the time from his arrival until bedtime in the presence of other people. So far there was nothing to suggest that he had done anything secret.

  But immediately on reaching his room he seized the book and began searching for what he wanted. At once he found himself up against a difficulty. The section on poisons was so big, he didn’t know where to turn for his information. He decided, however, that if necessary he would spend the entire night reading it through.

  He began at Section XV, Poisoning and Toxicology. Sub-section A, The Law on Poisons, including the Definition of a Poison or Noxious Thing, did not help him. On the contrary, he was puzzled and embarrassed by finding that there were some forty or more different poisons or groups of poisons to be considered. How was he to select the one most suitable for his purpose?

  He passed on to Sub-section B, Dangerous Drugs, which gave him no information, and then to Sub-section C, The Action of Poisons. Skimming rapidly through this section he came to a heading, The Time at which Symptoms appear after swallowing a Poison. At this he halted.

  For him this was an excessively important point. It might not prove possible to get hold of Andrew Crowther’s bottle of pills unknown to the old man, and the poison must act sufficiently quickly to prevent him revealing his suspicions, should any be aroused. Charles therefore read the paragraph carefully.

  Immediately the sentence caught his eye: ‘A large dose of prussic acid… may destroy life in less than two minutes.’ This was obviously the most rapid poison. The next mentioned was oxalic acid, which killed in ‘from ten minutes to an hour,’ and after that the periods given were many hours.

  It would seem then that other things being equal, prussic acid would best suit his purpose. Could he find out something more about it?

  He turned to the index and began to run his finger down the closely printed columns. There it was: ‘Prussic acid, poisoning by, page 661.’ He turned to page 661.

  Charles read, and as he did so his knowledge of the subject grew. Prussic or hydrocyanic acid was a medicinal drug. It did not look as if a layman could obtain it. On the other hand, the cyanides, derived from the acid, were ‘Freely used in the arts… and in photography, etc.’ The cyanides therefore should be easier come by, and of them cyanide of potassium seemed to be most suitable. Charles read a lot about cyanide of potassium. He learned that it was a hard white substance and one of the most formidable poisons known to chemists, that a dose of five grains had proved fatal in three minutes, that though death might not come for a few minutes, sensibility usually ceased within seconds. It killed by paralysing the nervous system and the heart. Charles assumed that in the case of a man with a weak heart like Andrew Crowther, a very small dose would suffice.

  Charles sat studying his book. Could he put sufficient potassium cyanide into a pill of the size of those in Andrew’s bottle? If so, how or where could he obtain the poison?

  The first question he thought might be answered if he weighed one of the pills. Not conclusively, of course, because the specific gravity of the poison might be different to that of the contents of the pill. But he should get an approximate idea. The second question was more difficult.

  Then it suddenly occurred to him that he had often heard that potassium cyanide was used for destroying wasps’ nests, and that by signing the poison book anybody could obtain a quantity for this purpose. He wondered if this were true.

  Charles was a man of resource. Two minutes’ thought showed him a way by which he could find out. He decided that next morning he would put the thing to the test.

  It was past three when he closed his book and got into bed. His plans for the next day were cut and dry.

  Presently he slept, as easily as if his mind contained only the most altruistic schemes for the benefit of his fellow men.

  ‌

  Chapter IX

  Charles Completes His Preparations

  Next morning Charles called for a taxi and was driven with his kitbag to Piccadilly Circus. There he repeated his manœuvres of the previous day. Changing to the second-hand clothes in the station lavatory, he packed his others in the kitbag, locked it and deposited it at the station cloak-room. Then he made his way to the nearest chemist’s.

  ‘I’m having trouble with wasps’ nests,’ he explained to the assistant. ‘There are two in my garden and it’s as much as my life’s worth to go out there. Can you give me something to destroy them?’

  The assistant suggested flooding them with petrol and setting fire to them.

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard of that,’ Charles admitted. ‘But petrol’s rather a nuisance to get. I don’t want a huge tin of it, and it’s not easy to take out of the car. I thought you had some poison or something that one could simply put into the nest?’

  ‘Potassium cyanide is often used,’ the assistant returned. ‘But, of course, we can’t sell that to everyone.’

  ‘I’ve heard of that too,’ said Charles. ‘I dare say it would do. What are the formalities for getting it?’

  ‘Well, we have to know the purchaser personally, or he has to be vouched for to us by someone we know personally. And, of course, he has to sign the poison book.’

  ‘Would a letter from a doctor do?’

  ‘Yes, if the doctor was known to us.’

  Charles smiled. ‘Looks as if I’d have to wait till I got home and get it from my own chemist,’ he said as he thanked the man and left the shop.

  For the moment he could not pursue this line of business, but there were others. A little farther down the street he saw another chemist’s. He turned in.

  ‘A bottle of Salter’s Anti-Indigestion Pills,’ he asked as a young man came up.

  ‘Yes, sir. What size?’

  ‘The smallest size, please.’

  Without a word the young man parcelled up a small cardboard box and handed it across. Charles t
ook it with a brief ‘Thank you’ and walked out.

  It spoke volumes for the care with which Charles was playing his part, that he remembered to give his features a somewhat strained expression while making his purchase. It must not occur to the assistant that this was a very healthy-looking man to have indigestion.

  He had not known that the pills were sold in more sizes than one, and he had said the smallest to avoid a discussion. Now in the shelter of another street lavatory he opened the package. The bottle was not so large as that used by Andrew Crowther. The advertisement, however, stated that the pills were sold in three sizes, and it was evident that Andrew’s was the largest. Charles therefore went into a third chemist’s and asked for another bottle, this time saying ‘Largest size’.

  Once again he received his purchase without having attracted special attention. He was satisfied that by the next day the two assistants who had served him would have forgotten the tiny transaction.

  Charles had two other matters to deal with. With the help of a directory he found a chemical instrument maker’s, and there he bought a working chemist’s balance and weights: the smallest size. Then he turned to something more difficult.

  This was his first step towards the purchase of the poison, and he felt that it behoved him to proceed with the utmost caution. He had decided to try a bluff in the hope of overcoming the scruples of some chemist more easy-going than the man he had already tackled. To do so he saw that he must adopt a personality, a real personality.

  And first as to the location of his personality. After some thought he chose Surbiton. It was a big place, and yet it was surrounded by houses with gardens, many of which doubtless contained wasps’ nests. A visit to Surbiton seemed indicated.