Case Without a Corpse, page 2
“I was just going to ask you. Unpleasant business, this.”
He shrugged. I had the impression that he was trying to appear a more practised and blase person than he was. “I had a dinner-party,” he said, “and was playing bridge when the boy came for me.”
I refrained from retaliating with my interrupted game of darts. “Did you know young Rogers?” I asked instead.
“I’ve seen him about,” said the doctor. “Crazy young fellow. He nearly knocked me down this morning on that motor-bike of his. Well, I must be getting back to my guests.”
“You’ll probably be wanted again presently,” I said, for his pretence at indifference annoyed me.
“Why? You thinking of doing the same thing?”
“No. But you evidently don’t know why young Rogers took poison. He had committed a murder.”
“Good Lord!”
I was pleased to see that I had made an impression at last. “Yes. And Sergeant Beef is finding out whom he has murdered. As soon as he’s done so, I suppose they’ll call on you again.”
“Yes. Blast them. I suppose they will. Unless by any luck it wasn’t in Braxham.”
“But …”
“He was on that motor-bike to-day, remember.”
I had not thought of that. The doctor smiled, nodded, and went out.
“Seems to know his way about,” I remarked to Mr. Simmons.
“Yes. He thinks a bit of himself. But he’s a fine doctor. He saved young Harold’s life last year. Treats everyone the same—panel or not. And he always comes when you need him.”
Mr. Simmons left me, for it was ten o’clock, and he had to close his doors. Murder or no murder, that was a matter which could not be neglected. If half the inhabitants of Braxham had taken cyanide of potassium it would have made no difference. Closing hour was the most respected rite in all England. So I reflected somewhat bitterly as I heard his bolts go home.
I was conscious of feeling very tired. The events of the last hour had been startling and gruesome enough to take all the life out of me. I wanted to get to bed, and forget the white face of young Rogers as he had stood in front of us, waiting to make an end of himself before our very eyes. I wanted to get the recollection of that knife out of my brain. I decided that to-morrow I would leave Braxham and return to London, where, if such things happened, one was not made aware of them.
I went into the sitting-room of the inn, where Mrs. Simmons brought my supper. But the sight of the underdone beef was revolting to me, and I could not eat. I lit a cigarette, and waited. I felt that I could not very well go to bed till Sergeant Beef returned. But I did not encourage Mrs. Simmons, a short, trim, respectable person with glasses, to discuss the matter with me as she cleared away.
At last, about eleven o’clock, there was a knocking on the side-door, and Sergeant Beef was with us.
“Most extraordinary thing,” he said. “No one’s missing, that I can hear of. I’ve telephoned everywhere. Sent round to every house he’s known at. Not a sign of nothink. The police all round think I’m barmy, ringing up and arsking for a corpse.”
He was out of breath and out of temper.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I always supposed a murder case started with a corpse, and then you had to find out ’oo done it. This time we know oo’s done it, but we can’t find the corpse. Wot d’you say to that?”
“I think it’s early to say anything, Sergeant. The corpse may be out in the woods, or anywhere.”
“But no one’s been missed,” grumbled the Sergeant.
“Nor was there in the Brighton Trunk Murder, till they found the body, then there were hundreds. You wait till the morning. You’ll soon find out whom he killed.”
“D’you know,” returned Sergeant Beef, unexpectedly. “This ’ere’s too much for me. This ’ere’s a case for Scotland Yard. And what’s more I’m going to ring ’em up.”
CHAPTER III
I WAS frankly disappointed. I remembered how Sergeant Beef had loftily dismissed the suggestion that he should call in “the Yard” in the Thurston mystery, and it seemed like pusillanimity on his part now. And it was surely premature. The murder, it appeared, had been committed only a few hours ago, and the fact that his telephone calls had failed to reveal anyone as missing, or to give him information of a discovered corpse, meant nothing at all.
“Well,” I said, “you know your business best, but I really can’t understand you giving up already.”
Sergeant Beef eyed me somewhat beerily. “I ’aven’t give up,” he said, “I don’t say I shan’t get to the bottom of this, like I ’ave of other myst’ries. Only last week there was a bit of a ’ow-d’ye-do at the Church ’ere. Someone ’ad been after the alms-boxes. I got ’er, though. It turned out to be the woman wot swep’ up on Mondays, ’oo ‘ad said she’d seen a tall man walking mysterious down the aisle. I got ’er already. And I don’t say I shan’t get at the truf of this. But I know my duty. When there’s feachers in a case wot seems extraordinary, it’s my job to inform Scotland Yard. Well? Aren’t there ’ere? ’Ave you ever ’eard of a murder where you know ’oo the murderer is and can’t find out ’oo ’e’s murdered? Corse you ’aven’t. I don’t believe it’s ever ’appened before. And if that’s not extraordinary feachers I don’t know wot is. So I shall ring ’em up first thing.”
But there was one more interruption that night before we could go to bed. While Sergeant Beef was fumbling with the buttons of his overcoat there was a knock at the door, not very loud, but distinctly audible in the back room where we stood.
Simmons turned to the Sergeant. He was angry now. “I don’t see why this house should be turned into a police-station. I want to get to bed.”
“Can’t be ’elped,” said Beef lethargically. “I didn’t choose where ’e was to do ’isself in. Will you go and see ’oo it is, or shall I?”
Mr. Simmons left us, and we could hear the sound of the bolts withdrawn.
“Is Sergeant Beef here?” came an anxious male voice.
“Yes, Mr. Rogers. Come inside.” Simmons’s voice had lost its roughness. “Put your umbrella down there. Still raining I see.”
“Where is the Sergeant?” The voice was querulously impatient.
We heard the two men approaching, and I turned to examine “old Mr. Rogers.” He wasn’t really so old—in his late fifties, I judged. He was a small man, with a little straggling and dishevelled grey hair on the sides of his head, and watery weak eyes. His clothes were baggy, and his appearance rather that of a worried, fussy, elderly rabbit. I wondered if he already knew about his nephew, and disliked the thought of his hearing the story now. In spite of my interest in human nature, I always find an emotional climax embarrassing. But with his first words he put my mind at rest on this point.
“The constable has been round to tell me, Sergeant,” he said.
“Yes. We’re very sorry about it, Mr. Rogers.”
He seemed scarcely to know that Beef had spoken. There was evidently something else on his mind. He looked up at us a minute, then down to the thick green table-cloth. I saw that he was trembling.
“My wife …” he whispered at last.
Beef jumped up. He moved more quickly than I thought possible for him.
“Your wife? Not …”
Mr. Rogers shrugged. Then he pulled a telegram from his pocket, and handed it to Sergeant Beef.
“This came to-day,” he said, “I’ve never known her to do such a thing before. If you knew my wife you would understand that it … that I can’t believe….” His eyes dropped again. “Sergeant,” he said suddenly, “Do you think it could have anything to do with …?” He was quite incoherent, yet we could understand well enough what he was suggesting.
Sergeant Beef was still staring at the telegram. “Sent off from——” he said, naming the London station from which the main line ran to Braxham, “at 12.15. Did you know she was going to London?”
“Oh yes, Sergeant. She went up on a Day Return. I’ve been down to the station and asked. She took a day return as she always did. She was going to get a little present for …” His voice broke.
“I see. The telegram says Staying night with friends, returning 11.15 a.m. tomorrow. Wot friends would that be?”
“I’ve no idea. That’s the extraordinary part. We had a few friends in Bromley where we used to live. But we haven’t seen them for years. And I’ve never known her to stay away for a night. And with young Alan home….”
“’E didn’t go up with ’er yesterday, I suppose?”
“He was away all day. He had his motor-bike. I don’t know where he was till he came and …”
“’E told you wot ’e’d done?”
Mr. Rogers nodded. “It was about eight o’clock,” he said, “when he came back. He was muddy up to the eyes. All his motor-biking things was wet and dirty. I could see as soon as he came into the room that there was something wrong. ‘Wot is it, Alan?’ I asked him. He looked at me stupidly for a minute, then he said, ‘Uncle … I’ve committed a murder.’”
“And you believed him at once?”
“Well, yes. It was the way he looked, and that. He was half crazy. I just said ‘Who?’ like that. But he shook his head, and wouldn’t answer. Then I thought that p’raps he had not really killed anyone, only believed he had. So I said, ‘Best thing you can do is to go and give yourself up.’ I somehow thought that he couldn’t have done anything in cold blood. There would be provocation, or something. I was already thinking how we should go about getting him off. You see, he’d often been in scrapes before. He’d been to me many times to own up to something he had done. And we’d always managed to get him out of it. It never occurred to me that we shouldn’t have a try this time. Only if … if it could be anything to do with his auntie….”
“Can you think of any reason why ’e might have gone for ’er?”
“Reason? There could be no reason, unless he was out of his mind. She’s done everything for him.”
“Well, Mr. Rogers, I don’t see that there’s any cause for you to go connecting the two. We’ll trace both of their movements to-morrow. I expect you’ll find Mrs. Rogers coming ’ome as right as rain in the morning. No reason why she shouldn’t stay in London if she wanted….”
“But she’s never thought of such a thing before….”
“No. Well. Don’t you get anythink into your ’ead too soon. Mustn’t go jumping to conclusions. Doesn’t do in a turn-out like this. I shall ’ave to come along and arsk you all sorts of questions in the morning, about your nephew, and that. And by then I expect your wife’ll be ’ome as right as a trivet. Now the best thing you can do is to go along and get some sleep….”
“Sleep?” Mr. Rogers groaned as though he did not understand what sleep was. “With all this?”
“I know it’s a narsty shock for you. Your nephew and one thing and another.” The Sergeant was trying to be soothing. “Still—there you are. And worrying your ’ead off won’t ’elp you.”
Suddenly a new idea seemed to come to the little man. “But—haven’t you found out? Isn’t anyone missing? You haven’t found anything to tell you who it was that Alan …?”
Beef shook his head. “Nothink ’asn’t come to light as yet,” he said. “But it will, in due course.”
“It’s terrible for me,” moaned Mr. Rogers.
“Now come along,” said the Sergeant, and clumsily took his arm. “You’ve got to get some rest.”
Obediently, but with a sort of vague looseness, Mr. Rogers walked towards the door.
“Good night, Mr. Rogers,” someone called. But he went out without answering.
Mr. Simmons yawned. But this new development had awakened my curiosity.
“Do you really think it could be the old lady?” I asked Beef.
“I never jump to conclusions,” said the Sergeant sternly. “Nor vencher an opinion when there’s not sufficient evidence. And now, gentlemen….”
CHAPTER IV
BUT before the Sergeant could leave us Mr. Simmons addressed him.
“Are you going to leave him in the bar all night?” he asked.
There was no need for Simmons to explain what was referred to as “him.”
“Don’t see why not,” said Beef.
“Oh, you don’t? Well, I do,” returned Simmons truculently. “It’s bad enough having a dead ’un in the house all night, without everyone who uses the bar knowing afterwards that it was there all the time. Besides, even if the chap is a murderer and suicide and that, he’s dead. And it’s not respectful to the dead to leave them in a public. And how’s young Harold to go about sweeping the place up in the morning?”
As though convinced by these arguments Beef rose. “Wot you want done with ’im then?”
“I’d like you to take him away altogether.”
“Wot, wheel ’im on my bicycle, I suppose?” suggested Beef indignantly. “I’d like to know what more you want. P’raps you expect me to take ’im to bed with me?”
“Well, surely there’s somewhere for him? What on earth do we pay taxes for?”
Beef looked stern. “It can ’ardly be expected that the authorities are to build a special mortuary in Braxham. It’s not every day we get a suicide, nor yet a murder.”
“It’s a good thing we don’t,” returned Simmons, “if they’re going to choose my hotel to do it in. Well, if you can’t take him away he better be put in the club-room at the back.”
Beef nodded, and the two men approached the corpse. When they had lifted it, I went to open the door into the private part of the house, through which they could reach the club-room. But Simmons detained me.
“Not that way,” he said, “Mrs. Simmons is still up, and we don’t want to run into her with it. Might give her a bad turn. We must take him round outside.”
So I opened the two doors into the street, and Beef and Simmons brought their burden through.
It was while they were carrying it down the few yards of pavement to the door through which they would pass into the Mitre yard, that I observed someone watching the whole procedure. He was immediately noticeable, for at that time of night in Braxham there was nobody about. It gave me quite a start to see him standing on the other side of the road, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, and a black hat pulled rather far forward. He did not move when we came out, but I could see that he was watching closely. I don’t know even now quite what gave me the impression that he was a foreigner. It may have been his black hat and sallow face, or the precise cut of his clothes. But I know that afterwards when I remembered him it was with that notion—a silent, motionless, foreign observer of our doings.
In the club-room, after the two had laid the body of young Rogers on a rickety sofa, I turned to Beef.
“Did you see that man?” I asked.
“Wot man?”
“That man on the other side of the road, watching us?”
“No. Just now, d’you mean?”
“Yes. Yes. Out there!”
Beef started off as quickly as he could and Simmons and I followed him. But when we had crossed the yard and come out on to the pavement again there was no sign of the lonely watcher. Beef hurried down to the corner of the road, and looked in all directions, but no one was in sight.
“You must have been seeing things,” he said.
“Oh no. He was there all right. No mistake about that. A foreign-looking chap.”
“Foreign-looking, eh?” said Beef.
“I wonder if he was the one that came into the bar to-day when Rogers and Fairfax went out,” Simmons suggested, as he turned to lock up the club-room and the yard.
“Well, anyway, we can’t do no more to-night,” said Beef. “It’s time we was all in bed. Good night, Mr. Simmons. Night, Mr. Townsend.”
And this time he managed to make his departure without further delay.
I went up to bed not altogether pleased with what Beef and Simmons had just done, for the club-room was directly under my own bedroom. But I was so tired that even my proximity to that corpse could not keep me awake, and it cannot have been more than ten minutes after leaving Simmons that I drifted into a deep and satisfying sleep.
Waking up during the night is unusual with me, and when it happens it comes from some outside cause. I remember that I found myself staring at the square of the window, a visible yellow outline due to the street-lamp below. At first I supposed that it was morning, and then had that curious sense of being still deep in the small hours. I turned over, and determined to sleep again.
But no. At first almost negligible, then more insistently, came a sound from below me. A slight thud, I think, though I was too nearly asleep still to be certain. Then a vague rumour of movement.
Perhaps, I thought, it was morning. Perhaps someone was already astir, cleaning the rooms downstairs. I am not an early riser, and had no idea how light or dark it would be at the time the work of the house began. I groped for my watch on the table beside my bed, and looked at its luminous dial. Three o’clock. Then it could scarcely be a dream.
I listened, trying to persuade myself that it was nothing. But that was impossible. The sound was not definable, but there certainly was a sound.
Suddenly I found myself fully awake. Here and now, if ever in my life, was my chance. Someone had entered the club-room where the corpse of young Rogers lay. Perhaps his object was to steal something from it. Perhaps he meant to remove the body itself. Whatever his plan, he must be prevented and identified. Catching him would probably clear up the whole mystery which faced Beef. And to me had been given the opportunity of actually contributing something to the investigation.
I slipped quietly from my bed, and pulled on a dressing-gown. I wondered whether to put shoes on. Being without them would give one a feeling of unprotectedness, but wearing them would make one’s approach noisy. I left them behind, slowly and silently crossed the room, and got safely to the landing. Then I started to go downstairs.
It is not often that the mere chronicler of crime gets a thrill. His work is usually to attend, as unintelligently as possible, the dreary post-mortems, and to listen, without too much acumen, to the elucidation offered by the masters. But during those few minutes I knew all the excitements of the chase. I was about to do my own part—and an important part it would be.
