by Bruce, Leo
Beef was sucking his moustache.
‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I’m not going to do that, because I can’t. Not at present, anyway. I can’t see that you are making a bloomer. Things look very black against Flipp. Very black indeed. And if you find that poison book they will be more so. No, I’ve no holes to pick at all.’
‘Thanks,’ said Chatto cheerfully. ‘And I admit that we’ve got nothing final yet. There’s a good deal more spadework to be done both at the other end and this. We’ve got to prove that Shoulter was blackmailing Flipp. That ought not to be too hard. Then we’ve got to prove that Shoulter was killed by Flipp, and that may be very, very difficult. And in the meantime we shall not, of course, refuse to consider other possibilities even if they take us in quite new directions.’
Personally I thought that Beef was giving in far too easily. I believed that his line of research had given him quite different suspicions and I did not like the way he had conceded the probability of Chatto’s case, which seemed to me a bit too plausible.
‘One thing I’d like to mention,’ I said defiantly, ‘is the place of the murder. If Flipp shot Shoulter as you say, isn’t it rather a coincidence that it should have happened at the very clearing in the woods where Mr Chickle was known to lurk?’
Beef gave this idea a noisy laugh.
‘Lurk!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve been writing too many detective stories!’
I kept my temper.
‘But isn’t it?’ I insisted.
It was Beef who silenced me, though it was his theory, I believed, that I was defending.
‘No coincidence at all. We know from young Jack that Flipp had remarked on the old gentleman’s hanging about round there. What more likely than that Flipp should have chosen the spot for that very reason? He knew that Mr Chickle might be out with a gun at that time. It would have been an easy way to divert suspicion to him.’
‘Possibly,’ I conceded.
‘Any question you’d like to ask us?’ Chatto asked Beef in an expansive way, as though he wished to recall the fact that he had all the resources of Scotland Yard behind him.
‘Yes, there is one thing,’ said Beef. ‘You said it was believed that at some time Shoulter had been married and had left his wife. What evidence is there of this? Do you know the date or the woman’s name?’
Chatto shook his head.
‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘It’s only some second-hand information we picked up. But if you’re seriously interested I’ve no doubt I could find out.’
‘I am. Seriously interested.’
Chatto glanced at him.
‘I wonder what you’re up to now. Still, you’ve given me some useful stuff to-day, and I told you I’d repay your information with mine. I’ll find out for you.’
‘Thanks,’ said Beef shortly, and the conference broke up.
S.B.—4*
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Joe Bridge at Last
BEEF’S day has some curious landmarks. Where you and I speak of ‘morning’, ‘afternoon’, ‘lunch-time’, ‘sunset’, and so on, for Beef there are four points in the clock-round – morning and evening ‘opening time’ and ‘closing time’. I have sometimes spoken to him about this. Even when we have been among the more respectable people with whom our cases have brought us in touch, Beef will glance at the clock and say: ‘Well. It’ll soon be “opening time”. We must be running along.’ Or, ‘Well, if we don’t hurry it’ll be “closing time”.’ I try to explain to him that not everyone counts the hours by the licensing laws, and that these continual references to public-houses are not in good taste. But he is, of course, incorrigible.
At what he would have called ‘closing time’ that evening we had retired to the back room when Mr Bristling put his head in. He had just been bolting the outside doors.
‘Young Bridge is waiting,’ he said. ‘Wants a word with you. He’s had a few but he’s all right. Bring him in, shall I?’
‘There you are,’ said Beef to me, not concealing his triumph. ‘What did I tell you? I knew he’d be along.’
Young Bridge was six feet four and, I judged, would have been a handsome fellow if it had not been for the effect of too much beer-drinking during his years of manhood. His cheeks were of a coarse crimson texture, though there were remnants of good features noticeable. He pushed into the room with his hands in the pockets of his mackintosh, and I could see at once that Mr Bristling was not exaggerating when he said that Bridge had ‘had a few’.
‘Evening,’ he blurted out in a gruff voice. ‘You Sergeant Beef?’
‘That’s my name,’ said Beef pompously.
‘Well, I’m going to tell you something.’
‘Wouldn’t it be wiser for you to inform the police?’
‘No. I don’t want anything to do with the police,’
Beef coughed.
‘Had some trouble perhaps?’
‘Me? With that fellow Dunton? I shouldn’t have trouble with his sort, I can tell you. No, what I’ve got to say I’ll say to you and get it over with.’
He slumped into a chair.
‘Why haven’t any of you been to me?’
‘Why should we?’ asked Beef quickly.
Bridge did not like that.
‘There’s been a lot of talk,’ he said lamely. ‘I’m supposed to have been out for that —’s blood.’
‘Which…?’
‘Shoulter,’
‘Are you?’
‘You know very well I am.’
‘And were you “out for his blood”?’
‘Well, I didn’t like the fellow. But I didn’t murder him.’
‘That’s what a good many say.’
Bridge hesitated.
‘You knew I went down that path that afternoon, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Someone see me?’
Beef nodded.
‘Well, as a matter of fact I go down that path almost every Saturday. I go to see my uncle and aunt in Barnford. But this time I had my gun.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why haven’t I been questioned?’
‘I can’t answer for the police. I haven’t got round to you yet, myself.’
‘Do you think I did it?’
‘I don’t know who did it.’
There was another pause.
‘I decided to walk down to Barnford that afternoon,’ Bridge said at last, rather sulkily. ‘And I took my gun.’
‘What for?’
‘Why not? I had to cross several of my own fields. Might have got a dinner.’
‘But you didn’t?’ ‘No.’
‘You never fired the gun?’
‘No.’
‘Is that what you’ve come to tell me?’
‘No. There’s more to it than that. I passed the Shoulter woman’s kennels and took the footpath which enters the wood at her place and comes out by Chickle’s. I did not meet anyone till I reached that little clearing where the body was found.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, I didn’t exactly meet anyone there. But just as I came into the place I heard some movement to my right, looked over and saw a man disappearing among the trees.’
‘A man? Who was it?’
There was a breathless silence, then Bridge said that he didn’t know.
‘He was off pretty quickly and he didn’t turn round. He seemed to be walking like a cat-half as though he didn’t want to be seen, and half as though he didn’t want to be heard, but most important of all to get out of the way. All I saw was that he was a biggish man wearing a raincoat.’
‘Ah.’
A slow grin crossed Bridge’s face.
‘Interest you?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
Then something in Beef’s manner seemed to anger Bridge.
‘It happens to be true!’ he said shortly.
‘I never said it wasn’t.’
Bridge looked sulky for a few moments, then continued his story.
&nb
sp; ‘I went on down the path,’ he said, ‘and about fifty or a hundred yards on I met Shoulter.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘No.’
‘You’d had a bit of a row?’
‘I had, and I didn’t want to start it again, else I’d have knocked him to hell. I decided just to walk past. And he didn’t seem to want any trouble because he made way for me on the path.’
‘Was he carrying a gun?’
‘He had his golf clubs with him. They were in one of those long mackintosh bags with a top to them. It could have been in there, I suppose. He wasn’t carrying it otherwise.’
‘And he passed straight on?’
‘Yes.’
‘That would have been about three-fifteen?’
‘Roughly. Soon after he passed there was a shot from the wood. I knew that little Chickle had what he called the “shooting rights” there and thought it was him potting at a stray pheasant. But it wasn’t.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because a few minutes later I came to his bungalow and saw him in the garden.’
‘The devil you did. Sure it was him?’
‘Certain. I saw his face.’
‘Did he see you?’
‘No. I took good care he shouldn’t. I’d come down the path quietly and looked into his garden from behind cover.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I caught him poaching once, and I didn’t.want him to accuse me of the same thing.’
‘Just because you were carrying a gun on a public footpath?’
‘Yes. ‘I’d just come through the wood, after all, and there had been a shot a few minutes before.’
‘Ah. And did you see him?’
‘Yes. He was in his garden. I watched him for a few minutes. And I saw something very odd.’
‘Mm?’
‘At least,’ said Bridge in a rather more friendly and confidential tone than he had been using, ‘it may not seem odd to you, and it may not have any meaning, as it were. But it seemed funny to me. He had a line in his hand like a gardener uses for laying out paths and beds. He had one end of it pegged by the window and was walking round with the other end as though he couldn’t decide where to put it. Then I saw him go across his little piece of lawn to where it goes up close to the wood. He stood there for a moment, then looked all round him, over to the windows of the house and towards where I was standing in a furtive sort of way. Then he stooped down and tied the end of his line to what looked like a thinner line already lying there.’
‘He did, did he?’ said Beef, staring, rather vacantly I thought, at Bridge.
‘Yes. What was the idea?’
Beef was silent.
‘I don’t know for certain,’ he said at last.
‘But you’ve got some sort of a theory?’
‘Might have,’ said Beef.
‘And it fits in?’
‘Yes. It fits very nicely. Almost too nicely. And now I’m going to give you a bit of advice. You go and tell your story, exactly as you’ve told it to me, to Inspector Chatto, who’s investigating.’
‘Why should I?’
‘I could give you a lot of reasons. In the first place it’s your duty.’
‘Hell. I told you I don’t like the —police.’
‘All right then. If that means nothing to you, let me tell you something else. How do you know you’re not suspected of this murder?’
‘Me? Why should I shoot that rat?’
‘Why should anybody? You’re known to have had a row with him, but no one knows how serious that row was. You admit you met him and a few minutes later you heard a shot. You had your gun with you. Altogether a nice little case could be made against you, Mr Bridge.’
The farmer was silent.
‘Do you think I did it?’ he asked suddenly, rather ingenuously.
‘I’m not saying whether I do or whether I don’t. But I do say that you’ve given me some evidence which the police may think important. There’s no doubt at all you should see them.’
‘I suppose I shall have to.’
‘And tell them the truth,’ added Beef, nodding significantly.
I was surprised to see that the aggressive Mr Bridge took this quite calmly. He stood up and after the briefest good night lurched out.
‘What do you think of that}* I asked Beef.
I might have known that he would grow mysterious.
‘Interesting,’ was all he said.
‘Do you think he was speaking the truth?’
‘Some of it, anyway. If not all.’
‘Then who was the man in the raincoat?’ I asked sceptically.
Beef looked at me almost as though he presumed to think me foolish.
‘Flipp, of course,’ he said.
‘I’m glad you know who it was,’ I rejoined. ‘Perhaps you know the murderer as well?’
‘Got a pretty good idea,’ admitted Beef. Then raising his voice he called to Mr Bristling, who was still wiping glasses in the bar, having a distaste, as he often said, for going to bed before he’d ‘got straight’.
‘Is there a Boy Scout troop here?’ was Beef’s surprising question to the publican.
‘There certainly is. Very keen they are. Mr Packham runs it.’
‘What on earth?’ I asked Beef. Privately I sometimes think he is little more than an overgrown Boy Scout himself.
‘Handy sometimes, Scouts,’ he said. ‘I think I can give them a little job that will please them and be useful, I must see that curate to-morrow. Then, of course, we must call on Aston, the solicitor.’
‘I don’t see why.’
‘Red tape,’ explained Beef, and with a huge ill-mannered yawn took himself off to bed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Lawyer and Some Boy Scouts
AT breakfast next morning I told Beef that I thought things were going very slowly. He seemed to take pleasure in stumping steadily through a case, instead of showing flashes of brilliance like his more famous confreres. I wanted action.
‘You’re going to have it to-day,’ he said. ‘We’re going on the bus to Ashley.’
‘I mean real action.’
‘What, another murder? Or a chase across the country of someone who turns out to have nothing to do with the case?’
‘Well, action,’ I returned.
‘All in good time,’ chuckled Beef. ‘You wait till we get these Boy Scouts on the job. You’ll have action all right then.’
We waited outside the Post Office for the green single-decker bus which would take us into Ashley, and Beef seemed to enjoy being stared at by the small boys who knew him to be a detective. When the bus drew up he took an awkward little seat beside the driver who also sold the tickets. I could see that he meant to get into conversation with him. But he might have used a little more originality in his approach.
‘Nice day,’ he commented gruffly.
‘Cold,’ said the driver.
‘How long does it take into Ashley?’
‘About half an hour.’
‘How many of you are there on this run?’
The driver did not seem to resent this clumsy catechism.
‘Only the two. Me and George Rivers.’
‘Did you take her in on Christmas Eve?’
‘Yes.’
‘Happen to notice who was on her on the seven o’clock run?’
‘Not many. They’d finished their shopping by then. Three or four, I think.’
Beef leaned very close to the man and tried to make his voice inaudible to the rest of us.
‘See. I’m on this murder case,’ he said.
‘I know you are.’
‘And there’s a bit of information I’d like from you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Do you happen to remember whether Mrs Pluck, the housekeeper of the old gentleman who lives by the wood, was on that bus?’
The driver whistled.
‘So that’s it, is it? It was her done him in, eh? Well, she l
ooks as though she could of.’
‘Now don’t be running away with any silly ideas,’ said Beef severely. ‘I never said nothing about her doing anyone in. I just wanted to know if she was on the bus on Christmas Eve.’
‘Well, she wasn’t.’
‘Quite sure?’
‘Quite. I’d of noticed. Well, you couldn’t miss her, could you?’
Beef laughed.
‘Bit of a fright, isn’t she? But don’t you go talking to people as though I suspected her, see? Never do. I should have a case for slander on my hands before you could say knife.’
‘That’s all right,’ said the driver, and they began to talk of other matters.
When we arrived in Ashley, Beef inquired the way to the office of Mr Aston, the solicitor, and we found it near the market place. Mr Aston had not come in yet, his clerk said, and without being invited to do so Beef sat down in the outer office to wait. The clerk, a dim and pinched-looking man of middle age, busied himself with the morning’s mail,
Again Beef started with elephantine awkwardness to try making conversation. But he got only a brief nod to his comments on the weather, the food shortage, and the price of liquor.
Presently, however, he got his chance. The clerk was tying up a bundle of papers.
‘Is that what you call red tape?’ Beef asked.
The clerk looked up as though for the first time Beef had touched on something which could interest him.
‘It is.’
‘But it’s not red at all. It’s pink.’
A faint smile crossed the clerk’s face.
‘That was precisely the comment of a gentleman sitting here a few weeks ago. “It’s not red,” he. said, “it’s pink.”‘
‘Ah,’ said Beef. ‘Great minds think alike. Who was the other one to remark on it?’
‘One of our clients. A Mr Chickle, from Barnford. He seemed most interested in the subject. He even asked, if I remember rightly, how it was sold, and I told him in spools.’
‘Well now,’ cried Beef. ‘That is funny! Because I was just going to ask you myself. What do they look like?’
