Murder by the Book, page 2
The newcomer, after a moment more of staring, pushed back the door and came in, flinging down on top of one of Newton’s bags a rug and a pillow done up in a strap. He seemed to have no other luggage. Newton unwillingly got up and cleared a corner of his belongings, and the stranger sat down and began to unbuckle his strap. Then he settled himself comfortably with the pillow behind his head, and closed his eyes. “I hope to goodness he doesn’t snore,” Newton thought.
While our second traveller is thus peacefully settling himself for a doze, we may as well take a good look at him also; for it may be important to know him later on. He is a scraggy little man, probably of sixty or more, with a completely bald pink head and a straggling grey beard which emerges from an incredibly folded and puckered yellow chin. His height is hardly more than five foot six, and his proportions are puny; but there is a wiriness about his spare person that contrasts strongly with Newton’s fleshy bulk.
He is dressed, not so much ill as with a carelessness amounting to eccentricity. His clothes, certainly cut by a good tailor, hang in bags all over him. His pockets bulge. His waistcoat is buttoned up wrong, and sits awry, and his shirt has come apart at the neck, so that a disconsolate shirt-stud is hanging out on one side, while his red tie is leaning towards the other. Moreover, the sole of one of his boots has come loose, and flaps helplessly as his crossed legs swing slowly to the rhythm of the train.
Yet, despite these appearances, the newcomer is certainly a gentleman, and one is inclined to deem him eccentric rather than poor. He might be an exceptionally absent-minded professor; though, as a matter of fact, he is not. But who he is Joseph Newton has no idea.
For some time there was silence in the compartment, as the Cornish Riviera sped westward past the long spreading ribbon of London. Newton’s fellow-traveller did not snore. His eyes were closed whenever Newton glanced at him; and yet between whiles the novelist had still a queer feeling of being stared at. He told himself it was nonsense, and tried to bury himself in a Wild West story; but the sensation remained with him. Suddenly, as the train passed Maidenhead Station, his companion spoke, in a quiet positive voice, as of one used to telling idiots what idiots they were. A professorial voice, with a touch of Scots accent.
“Talking of murders,” it said, “you have really no right to be so careless.”
“Eh?” said Newton, so startled that his magazine dropped from his hand to the floor. “Eh, what’s that?”
“I said you had no right to be so careless,” repeated the other.
Newton retrieved his magazine, and looked his fellow-traveller contemptuously up and down. “I am not aware,” he said, “that we were talking of murders, or of anything else, for that matter.”
“There, you see,” said the other, “you did hear what I said the first time. What I mean to say is that, if you expect intelligent people to read your stories, you might at least trouble to make them plausible.”
Newton suppressed the rejoinder that rose instantly to his lips. It was that he had far too large a circulation among fools to bother about what intelligent people thought. He only said, “I doubt, sir, if you are likely to find my conversation any more satisfactory than my books,” and resumed his magazine.
“Probably not,” said the stranger. “I expect success has spoiled you. But you had some brains to begin with… Those Indian stories of yours—”
Perhaps no other phrase would have induced Joseph Newton to embark upon a conversation with the stranger. But nobody nowadays ever read or bothered about his Indian stories, though he was very well aware that they were the best things he had ever done.
“—had glimmerings of quality,” the other was saying, “and you might have accomplished something had you not taken to writing for money.”
“Are you aware, sir,” Newton said, “that you are being excessively rude?”
“Quite,” said the other with calm satisfaction. “I always am. It is so good for people. And really, in your last book, you have exceeded the limit.”
“Which of my last books are you talking about?” asked Newton, hovering between annoyance and amusement.
“It is called The Big Noise,” said the other, sighing softly.
“Oh, that,” said Newton.
“Now, in that book,” the stranger went on, “you call the heroine Elinor and Gertrude on different pages. You cannot make up your mind whether her name was Robbins with two ‘b’s or with one. You have killed the corpse in one place on Sunday and in another on Monday evening. That corpse was discovered twelve hours after the murder still wallowing in a pool of wet blood. The coroner committed no fewer than seventeen irregularities in conducting the inquest; and, finally, you have introduced three gangs, a mysterious Chinaman, an unknown poison that leaves no trace, and a secret society of international Jews high up in the political world.”
The little old man held up his hands in horror as he ended the grisly recital.
“Well,” Newton asked, “any more?”
“Alas, yes,” said the other. “The volume includes, besides many misprints, fifteen glaring inconsistencies, nine cases of gross ignorance, and enough grammatical mistakes to—to stretch from Paddington to Penzance.”
This time Newton laughed outright. “You seem to be a very earnest student of my writings,” he said.
The stranger picked up the rug from his knees and folded it neatly beside him. He removed the pillow, and laid that down too. He then moved across to the corner seat opposite Newton and, taking a jewelled cigarette case from his pocket, selected a cigarette, returned the case to his pocket, found a match, lighted up, and began to smoke. Then he again drew out the case and offered it to Newton. “Lavery’s,” he said. “I know your favourite brand.”
As a matter of fact, Newton never smoked Lavery’s; but for a handsome sum he allowed his face, and a glowing testimonial to their virtues, to appear on their advertisements. Well, he might as well find out what the things were like. He took the proffered cigarette, and the stranger obligingly gave him a light. Newton puffed. Yes, they were good stuff—better than might be expected, though rather heavy.
“Now, in my view,” the stranger was saying, “the essence of a really good murder is simplicity. All your books—all most people’s books—have far too much paraphernalia about them. A really competent murderer would need no special appliances, and practically no preparations. Ergo, he would be in far less danger of leaving any clues behind him. Why, oh why, Mr. Newton, do you not write a murder story on those lines?”
Again Newton laughed. He was disposed to humour the old gentleman. “It wouldn’t make much of a story,” he said, “if the murderer really left no clues.”
“Oh, but there you are wrong,” said the other. “What is needed is a perfectly simple murder, followed by a perfectly simple solution—so simple that only a great mind could think of it, by penetrating to the utter simplicity of the mind of the murderer.”
“I can’t abide those psychological detectives,” Newton said. “You’d better go and read Mr. Van Dine.” (“Or some of those fellows who would give their ears for a tenth of my sales,” his expression added.)
“Dear me, you quite misunderstand me. That wasn’t what I meant at all. There would be no psychology in the story I have in mind. It would be more like William Blake’s poetry.”
“Mad, you mean,” said Newton.
“Crystal sane,” replied the other. “Perhaps it will help you if I illustrate my point. Shall I outline the sort of murder I have in mind?”
“If you like,” said Newton, who found himself growing suddenly very sleepy.
“Very well,” said the stranger. “Then I’ll just draw down the blinds.”
He jumped up and lowered the blinds on the corridor side of the compartment.
“That’s better,” he said. “Now we shall be undisturbed. Now supposing—only supposing, of course—that there were two men in a railway carriage just like us, and they were perfect strangers, but one of them did not really care for the other’s face—Are you listening, Mr. Newton?”
“Yes,” said Newton, very sleepily. He was now having real difficulty in keeping his eyes open.
“And, further, supposing neither of them had brought any special paraphernalia with him, except what any innocent traveller might be carrying—say, a rug, a pillow, and a rug-strap—”
As he spoke, the stranger picked up the rug-strap from the seat beside him.
“Hey, what’s that about a rug-strap?” said Newton, roused for a moment by a connection of ideas he was too sleepy to sort out.
“Except, of course, just one doped cigarette, containing an opiate—strong, but in no wise fatal,” the other went on blandly.
“What the—?” murmured Newton, struggling now vainly against an absolutely stupefying drowsiness.
“There would really be nothing to prevent him from committing a nice, neat murder, would there?” the old man continued, rising as he spoke with startling agility and flinging the loop of the rug-strap over Newton’s head. “Now, would there?” he repeated, as he drew it tight around his victim’s neck, and neatly fastened it. Newton’s mouth came wide open; his tongue protruded, and he began to gurgle horribly; his eyes stuck out from his head.
“And then,” said the stranger, “the pillow would come in so handy to finish him off.” He dragged Newton down on the seat, placed the pillow firmly on his upturned face, and sat on it, smiling delightedly. The gurgling slowly ceased.
“The rug,” the cheerful voice went on, “has proved to be superfluous. Really, Mr. Newton, murder is even easier than I supposed—though it is not often, I imagine, that a lucky chance enables one to do a service to the literary craft at the same time.”
Newton said nothing; for he was dead.
The stranger retained his position a little longer, still smiling gently to himself. Then he rose, removed the pillow from Newton’s face, and, after a careful survey of the body, undid the strap. Next, he picked up a half-smoked cigarette and threw it out of the window, folded his rug neatly, did it and the pillow up in the strap, and, opening the door into the corridor, walked quietly away down the train.
“What a pity!” he murmured to himself as he went. “It would make such a good story; and I am afraid the poor fellow will never have the sense to write it.”
The body of Joseph Newton was actually discovered by a restaurant-car attendant who was going round to collect orders for the first lunch. Opening the door of a first-class compartment, which had all its blinds drawn down, he found Newton, no pleasant sight and indubitably dead, stretched out upon the seat where his companion had left him.
Without waiting to do more than make sure the man was dead, he scuttled along to fetch the guard. A brief colloquy of train officials then took place in the fatal compartment, and it was decided to stop the train short of Newbury Station, and send for the police before any one had a chance of leaving it. It seemed clear, as there had been no stop since they left Paddington, that the murderer must still be on it, unless he had leaped from an express travelling at full speed.
The police duly arrived, inspected the body, hunted the compartment in vain for traces of another passenger—for the murderer had taken the precaution of wearing gloves throughout his demonstration—took the name and address of every person on the train, to the number of some hundreds, had the carriage in which the murder had occurred detached, with much shunting and grunting, from the rest of the train, and finally allowed the delayed express to proceed.
Only those travellers who had been actually in the coach of which Newton’s compartment had formed a part were kept back for further inquiries. But Newton’s companion was not among them. Having given his correct name and address to the police, he proceeded quietly upon his journey in the empty first-class compartment two coaches farther back to which he had moved after his successful experiment in simplicity.
There were 498 passengers on the Cornish Riviera express whose names were taken by the police at Newbury; or, if you count Newton, 499. Add guards and attendants, restaurant-car staff, and the occupants of a travelling Post Office van—total 519.
Of these 126 were women, 153 children, and the rest men. That allowed for quite enough possible suspects for the police to follow up. They were followed up, exhaustively. But it did not appear that any single person among them had any acquaintance with Joseph Newton, or any connection with him save as readers of his books. Nor did a meticulous examination of Newton’s past suggest the shadow of a reason why he should have been murdered.
The police tried their hardest, and the public and the Press did their best to assist, for the murder of a bestseller, by a criminal who left no clue, was enough to excite anybody’s imagination. Several individuals, in their enthusiasm, went so far as to confess to the crime, and gave Scotland Yard several days’ work in disproving their statements. But nothing helpful was forthcoming, and at long last the excitement died down.
It was more than three months later that the young Marquis of Queensferry called upon Henry Wilson, formerly the chief official of Scotland Yard, and now the foremost private detective in England. His modest request was that Wilson should solve for him the mystery of Joseph Newton’s murder.
When Wilson asked him why he wanted it solved, the Marquis explained that it was for a bet. It appeared that his old uncle, the Honourable Roderick Dominic Acres-Noel, had bet him fifty thousand pounds to a penny he could not solve the problem, and he, who had the title but not the money, would be very willing to lay his hands on fifty thousand pounds which his uncle, who had the money but not the title, would never miss. Asked the reason for so unusual a bet, he replied that the reason was Uncle Roderick, who was always betting on something, the sillier the better.
“Our family’s like that, you know,” the Marquis added. “We’re all mad. And my uncle was quite excited about the case, because he was on the train when it happened. He even wrote to The Times about it.”
Wilson rejected the idea that he could solve a case which had utterly baffled Scotland Yard when the trail was fresh, now that it was stone cold, and all clues, presumably, vanished into limbo. Even the most lavish promises of shares in the fifty thousand pounds did not tempt him, and he sent the young Marquis away with a flea in his ear.
But, after the Marquis had gone, he found that he could not get the case out of his head. In common with everybody else, he had puzzled his brains over it at the time; but it was weeks since he had given it a thought. But now—here it was again—bothering his mind.
Hang it all, it wasn’t reasonable—it was against nature—that a man should be able to murder another man and get away without leaving any clue at all. So, at any rate, the Marquis’s crazy old uncle seemed to think, unless, indeed, he was merely crazy. Most likely he was.
Wilson could not say exactly at what moment he decided to have one more shot at this impossible mystery. Perhaps it was when he recollected that, according to the Marquis, Mr. Acres-Noel had himself travelled on that train to Cornwall. It might be that Mr. Acres-Noel had noticed something that the police had missed; he was just the sort of old gentleman who would enjoy keeping a titbit of information to himself. At any rate, it was one thing one could try.
Wilson rang up his old colleague, Inspector Blaikie, at Scotland Yard, and Blaikie guffawed at him.
“Solve it, by all means,” he said. “We’ll be delighted. We’re sick of the sound of Newton’s name… Yes, old Acres-Noel was on the train—I don’t know anything more about him… Oh, mad as a hatter. Completely… Yes, he wrote to The Times, and they printed it… Three days afterwards, I think. Shall I have it looked up for you?… Right you are. Let us know when you catch the murderer, won’t you?”
Wilson sent for his own file of The Times, and looked up the letter of Mr. Acres-Noel. The Times had not thought it worth the honour of the middle page, but fortunately had not degraded it into the “Points” column.
“SIR,” it ran,
“The methods of the police in dealing with the so-called Newton Mystery appear to show more than the usual official incompetence. As one of the passengers on the train on which Mr. Newton died, I have been subjected to considerable annoyance—and I may add compensated in part by some amusement—at the fruitless and irrelevant inquiries made by the police.
“It is plain the police have no notion of the motives which prompted the murder. Their inquiries show that. If they would devote more attention to thinking what the motive was, and less to the accumulation of useless information, the apparent complexity of the case would disappear. The truth is usually simple—too simple for idiots to see. Why was Newton murdered? Answer that, and it will appear plainly that only one person could have murdered him. Motive is essentially individual.
“I am, yours, etc.,
“R. D. ACRES-NOEL.”
“Upon my word,” said Wilson to himself, “that’s a very odd letter.”
He read it several times over, staring at it as if the name of the murderer was written between the lines.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet, and with an excitement he seldom showed, dashed down Whitehall to Inspector Blaikie’s office. Within ten minutes he was making a proposition to that official which left him starkly incredulous.
“I know,” Wilson persisted, “it isn’t a certainty, it’s a thousand to one chance. But it is a chance, and I want to try it. I’m not asking the Department to commit itself in any way, only to let me have a couple of men standing by. Don’t you see, the whole point about this extraordinary letter is the way it stresses the question of motive? And, more than that, it suggests that the writer knows what the motive was. Now, how could he do that unless—”
