After a little discussion, the Bench decided that they would like to hear the evidence, if the accused was agreeable. Accordingly, the lady was put in the box, and sworn, in the name of Millicent Adela Queek.
'I am a spinster, and employed as art mistress at Woodbury High School for Girls. Saturday 18th was a holiday, of course, and I thought I would have a little picnic, all by my lonesome, in Melbury Woods. I started off in my own little car just about 9.30. It would take me about half an hour to get to Ditchley--I never drive very fast, and there was a lot of traffic on the road--most dangerous. When I got to Ditchley, I turned to the right, along the main road to Beachampton. After a little time I began to wonder whether I had put in quite enough petrol. My gauge isn't very reliable, you know, so I thought I'd better stop and make quite certain. So I pulled up at a roadside garage. I don't know exactly where it was, but it was quite a little way beyond Ditchley--between that and Helpington. It was one of those dreadfully ugly places, made of corrugated iron painted bright red. I don't think they should allow them to put up things like that. I asked the man there--a most obliging young man--to fill my tank, and while I was there I saw this gentleman--yes, I mean Mr Barton, the accused--drive up in his car. He was coming from the Ditchley direction and driving rather fast. He pulled up on the left-hand side of the road. The garage is on the right, but I saw him very distinctly. I couldn't mistake him--his beard, you know, and the clothes he was wearing--so distinctive. It was the same suit he is wearing now. Besides, I noticed the number of his car. Such a curious one, is it not? WOE 1313. Yes. Well, he opened the bonnet and did something to his plugs, I think, and then he drove on.'
'What time was this?'
'I was just going to tell you. When I came to look at my watch I found it had stopped. Most vexatious. I think it was due to the vibration of the steering-wheel. But I looked up at the garage clock--there was one just over the door--and it said 10.20. So I set my watch by that. Then I went on to Melbury Woods and had my little picnic. So fortunate, wasn't it? that I looked at the clock then. Because my watch stopped again later on. But I do know that it was 10.20 when this gentleman stopped at the garage, so I don't see how he could have been doing a murder at that poor man's cottage between 10.15 and 10.25, because it must be well over twenty miles away--more, I should think.'
Miss Queek ended her statement with a little gasp, and looked round triumphantly.
Detective-Inspector Ramage's face was a study. Miss Queek went on to explain why she had not come forward earlier with her story.
'When I read the description in the papers I thought it must be the same car I had seen, because of the number--but of course I couldn't be sure it was the same man, could I? Descriptions are so misleading. And naturally I didn't want to be mixed up with a police case. The school, you know--parents don't like it. But I thought, if I came and saw this gentleman for myself, then I should be quite certain. And Miss Wagstaffe--our head-mistress--so kindly gave me leave to come, though today is very inconvenient, being my busiest afternoon. But I said it might be a matter of life and death, and so it is, isn't it?'
The magistrate thanked Miss Queek for her public-spirited intervention, and then, at the urgent request of both parties, adjourned the court for further inquiry into the new evidence.
Since it was extremely important that Miss Queek should identify the garage in question as soon as possible, it was arranged that she should set out at once in search of it, accompanied by Inspector Ramage and his sergeant, Mr Barton's solicitor going with them to see fair play for his client. A slight difficulty arose, however. It appeared that the police car was not quite big enough to take the whole party comfortably, and Mr Montague Egg, climbing into his own Morris, found himself hailed by the inspector with the request for a lift.
'By all means,' said Monty; 'a pleasure. Besides, you'll be able to keep your eye on me. Because, if that chap didn't do it, it looks to me as though I must be the guilty party.'
'I wouldn't say that, sir,' said the inspector, obviously taken aback by this bit of thought-reading.
'I couldn't blame you if you did,' said Monty. He smiled, remembering his favourite motto for salesmen: 'A cheerful voice and cheerful look put orders in the order-book,' and buzzed merrily away in the wake of the police car along the road from Beachampton to Ditchley.
'We ought to be getting near it now,' remarked Ramage when they had left Helpington behind them. 'We're ten miles from Ditchley and about twenty-five from Pinchbeck's cottage. Let's see--it'll be the left-hand side of the road, going in this direction. Hullo! this looks rather like it,' he added presently. 'They're pulling up.'
The police car had stopped before an ugly corrugated-iron structure, standing rather isolated on the near side of the road, and adorned with a miscellaneous collection of enamelled advertisement-boards and a lot of petrol pumps. Mr Egg brought the Morris alongside.
'Is this the place, Miss Queek?'
'Well, I don't know. It was like this, and it was about here. But I can't be sure. All these dreadful little places are so much alike, but--Well, there! how stupid of me! Of course this isn't it. There's no clock. There ought to be a clock just over the door. So sorry to have made such a silly mistake. We must go on a little farther. It must be quite near here.'
The little procession moved forward again, and five miles farther on came once more to a halt. This time there could surely be no mistake. Another hideous red corrugated garage, more boards, more petrol-pumps, and a clock, whose hands pointed (correctly, as the inspector ascertained by reference to his watch) to 7.15.
'I'm sure this must be it,' said Miss Queek. 'Yes--I recognise the man,' she added, as the garage proprietor came out to see what was wanted.
The proprietor, when questioned, was not able to swear with any certainty to having filled Miss Queek's tank on June 18th. He had filled so many tanks before and since. But in the matter of the clock he was definite. It kept, and always had kept, perfect time, and it had never stopped or been out of order since it was first installed. If his clock had pointed to 10.20, then 10.20 was the time, and he would testify as much in any court in the kingdom. He could not remember having seen the car with the registered number WOE 1313, but there was no reason why he should, since it had not come in for attention. Motorists who wanted to do a spot of inspection often pulled up near his garage, in case they should find some trouble that needed expert assistance, but such incidents were so usual that he would pay no heed to them, especially on a busy morning.
Miss Queek, however, felt quite certain. She recognised the man, the garage and the clock. As a further precaution, the party went on as far as Ditchley, but, though the roadside was peppered the whole way with garages, there was no other exactly corresponding to the description. Either they were the wrong colour, or built of the wrong materials, or they had no clock.
'Well,' said the inspector, rather ruefully, 'unless we can prove collusion (which doesn't seem likely, seeing the kind of woman she is), that washes that out. That garage where she saw Barton is eighteen miles from Pinchbeck's cottage, and since we know the old man was alive at 10.15, Barton can't have killed him--not unless he was averaging 200 miles an hour or so, which can't be done yet awhile. Well, we've got to start all over again.'
'It looks a bit awkward for me,' said Monty pleasantly.
'I don't know about that. There's the voices that baker fellow heard in the kitchen. I know that couldn't have been you, because I've checked up your times.' Mr Ramage grinned. 'Perhaps the rest of the money may turn up somewhere. It's all in the day's work. We'd better be getting back again.'
Monty drove the first eighteen miles in thoughtful silence. They had just passed the garage with the clock (at which the inspector shook a mortified fist in passing), when Mr Egg uttered an exclamation and pulled up.
'Hullo!' said the inspector.
'I've got an idea,' said Monty. He pulled out a pocket-diary and consulted it. 'Yes--I thought so. I've discovered a coincidence. Let's check
up on it. Do you mind? "Don't trust to luck, but be exact and certify the smallest fact."' He replaced the diary and drove on, overhauling the police car. In process of time they came to the garage which had first attracted their attention--the one which conformed to specification, except in the particular that it displayed no clock. Here he stopped, and the police car, following in their tracks, stopped also.
The proprietor emerged expectantly, and the first thing that struck one about him was his resemblance to the man they had interviewed at the other garage. Monty commented politely on the fact.
'Quite right,' said the man. 'He's my brother.'
'Your garages are alike, too,' said Monty.
'Bought off the same firm,' said the man. 'Supplied in parts, Mass-production. Readily erected overnight by any handy man.'
'That's the stuff,' said Mr Egg approvingly. 'Standardisation means immense saving in labour, time, expense. You haven't got a clock, though.'
'Not yet. I've got one on order.'
'Never had one?'
'Never.'
'Ever seen this lady before?'
The man looked Miss Queek carefully over from head to foot.
'Yes, I fancy I have. Came in one morning for petrol, didn't you, miss? Saturday fortnight or thereabouts. I've a good memory for faces.'
'What time would that be?'
'Ten to eleven, or a few minutes after. I remember I was just boiling up a kettle for my elevenses. I generally take a cup of tea about then.'
'Ten-fifty,' said the inspector eagerly. 'And this is--' he made a rapid calculation--'just on twenty-two miles from the cottage. Say half an hour from the time of the murder. Forty-four miles an hour--he could do that on his head in a fast sports car.'
'Yes, but--' interrupted the solicitor.
'Just a minute,' said Monty. 'Didn't you,' he went on, addressing the proprietor, 'once have one of those clock-faces with movable hands to show lighting-up time?'
'Yes, I did. I've still got it, as a matter of fact. It used to hang over the door, But I took it down last Sunday. People found it rather a nuisance; they were always mistaking it for a real clock.'
'And lighting-up time on June 18th,' said Monty softly, 'was 10.20, according to my diary.'
'Well, there,' said Inspector Ramage, smiting his thigh. 'Now, that's really clever of you, Mr Egg.'
'A brain-wave, a brain-wave,' admitted Monty. '"The salesman who will use his brains will spare himself a world of pains"--or so the Handbook says.'
ONE TOO MANY
A Montague Egg Story
............
When Simon Grant, the Napoleon of Consolidated Nitro-Phosphates and Heaven knows how many affiliated companies, vanished off the face of the earth one rainy November night, it would have been, in any case, only natural that his family and friends should be disturbed, and that there should be a slight flurry on the Stock Exchange. But when, in the course of the next few days, it became painfully evident that Consolidated Nitro-Phosphates had been consolidated in nothing but the name--that they were, in fact, not even ripe for liquidation, but had (so to speak) already passed that point and evaporated into thin air, such assets as they possessed having mysteriously disappeared at the same time as Simon Grant--then the hue-and-cry went out with a noise that shook three continents and, incidentally, jogged Mr Montague Egg for an hour or so out of his blameless routine.
Not that Mr Egg had any money in Nitro-Phosphates, or could claim any sort of acquaintance with the missing financier. His connection with the case was entirely fortuitous, the by-product of an savage budgetary announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which threatened to have alarming results for the wine and spirits trade. Mr Egg, travelling representative of Messrs Plummet & Rose of Piccadilly, had reached Birmingham in his wanderings, when he was urgently summoned back to town by his employers for a special conference upon policy, and thus--though he did not know it at the time--he enjoyed the distinction of travelling by the very train from which Simon Grant so suddenly and unaccountably vanished.
The facts in the case of Simon Grant were disconcertingly simple. At this time the L.M.S. Railway were running a night express from Birmingham to London which, leaving Birmingham at 9.5, stopped only at Coventry and Rugby before running into Euston at 12.10. Mr Grant had attended a dinner given in his honour by certain prominent business men in Coventry, and after dinner had had the unblushing effrontery to make a speech about the Prosperity of British Business. After this, he had hastened away to take the Birmingham express as far as Rugby, where he was engaged to stay the night with that pillar of financial rectitude, Lord Buddlethorp. He was seen into a first-class carriage at 9.57 by two eminently respectable Coventry magnates, who had remained chatting with him till the train started. There was one other person in his carriage--no less a man, in fact, than Sir Hicklebury Bowler, the well-known sporting baronet. In the course of conversation, he had mentioned to Sir Hicklebury (whom he knew slightly) that he was travelling alone, his secretary having succumbed to an attack of influenza. About half way between Coventry and Rugby, Mr Grant had gone out into the corridor, muttering something about the heat. He had never been seen again.
At first, a very sinister light had been thrown on the incident by the fact that a door in the corridor, a little way up the train, had been found swinging open at Rugby, and the subsequent discovery of Mr Grant's hat and overcoat a few miles farther up the line had led everybody to fear the worst. Careful examination, however, failed to produce either Simon Grant's corpse or any evidence of any heavy body having fallen from the train. In a pocket of the overcoat was a first-class ticket from Coventry to Rugby, and it seemed clear that, without this, he could not have passed the barrier at Rugby. Moreover, Lord Buddlethorp had sent his car with a chauffeur and a footman to meet the train at Rugby. The chauffeur had stood at the barrier and the footman had paraded the platform in search of the financier. Both knew him very well by sight, and between them they asserted positively that be had never left the train. Nobody had arrived at the barrier ticketless, or with the wrong ticket, and a check-up of the tickets issued for Rugby at Birmingham and Coventry revealed no discrepancy.
There remained two possibilities, both tempting and plausible. The Birmingham-London express reached Rugby at 10.24, departing again at 10.28. But, swift and impressive as it was, it was not the only, or the most important, pebble on the station beach, for over against it upon the down line was the Irish Mail, snorting and blowing in its three-minute halt before it roared away northwards at 10.25. If the express had been on time, Simon Grant might have slipped across and boarded it, and been at Holyhead by 2.25 to catch the steamer, and be in Dublin by 6.35, and Heaven only knew where a few hours after. As for the confident assertion of Lord Buddlethorp's footman, a trifling disguise--easily assumed in a lavatory or an empty compartment--would be amply sufficient to deceive him. To Chief Inspector Peacock, in charge of the investigations, the possibility appeared highly probable. It had also the advantage that the passengers crossing by the mail-boat could be readily reckoned up and accounted for.
The question of tickets now became matter for inquiry. It was not likely that Simon Grant would have tried to secure them during his hasty one-minute dash for the Mail. Either he had taken them beforehand, or some accomplice had met him at Rugby and handed them over. Chief Inspector Peacock was elated when he discovered that tickets covering the train-and-steamer route from Rugby to Dublin had actually been purchased for the night in question from the L.M.S. agents in London in the absurd and incredible name of Solomon Grundy. Mr Peacock was well acquainted with the feeble cunning which prompts people, when adopting an alias, to cling to their own initials. The underlying motive is, no doubt, a dread lest those same initials, inscribed on a watch, cigarette-case or what-not, should arouse suspicion, but the tendency is so well known that the choice of initials arouses in itself the very suspicion it is intended to allay. Mr Peacock's hopes rose very high indeed when he discovered, in addition, that S
olomon Grundy (Great Heavens, what a name!) had gone out of his way to give a fictitious and, indeed, nonexistent address to the man at the ticket-office. And then, just when the prospect seemed at its brightest, the whole theory received its death-blow. Not only had no Mr Solomon Grundy travelled by the mail-boat that night or any night--not only had his ticket never been presented or even cancelled--but it turned out to be impossible that Mr Simon Grant should have boarded the Irish Mail at all. For some tedious and infuriating reason connected with an over-heated axle-box, the Birmingham-London express, on that night of all nights, had steamed into Rugby three minutes behind time and two minutes after the departure of the Mail. If this had been Simon Grant's plan of escape, something had undoubtedly gone wrong with it.
And, that being so, Chief Inspector Peacock came back to the old question: What had become of Simon Grant?
Talking it over with his colleagues, the Chief Inspector came eventually to the conclusion that Grant had, in fact, intended to take the Irish Mail, leaving the open door and the scattered garments behind him by way of confusing the trail for the police. What, then, would he do, when he found the Mail already gone? He could only leave the station and take another train. He had not left the station by the barrier, and careful inquiry convinced Mr Peacock that it would have been extremely difficult for him to make his way out along, the line unobserved, or hang about the railway premises till the following morning. An unfortunate suicide had taken place only the previous week, which had made the railwaymen particularly observant of stray passengers who might attempt to wander on to the permanent way; and, in addition, there happened to be two gangs of platelayers working with flares at points strategically placed for observation. So that Peacock, while not altogether dismissing this part of the investigation, turned it over as routine work to his subordinates, and bent his mind to consider a second main possibility that had already occurred to him before he had been led away by speculations on the Irish Mail.
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