A run of half a mile brought them to the Twiddleton Mills. The big gates were locked, but the small side-gate stood wide open.
‘Look at that!’ said Mr Bowles. ‘Whoever it was, he’ll have took hisself off by now, if he’s any sense. Ted Baggitt ain’t got no ’ead, and never ’ad, since I knew him.’
They crossed a yard and came to the door leading to the offices, which also stood wide open. A light was burning in a room on the right, and through a third open door they looked into the manager’s room. Slumped in his swivel chair, his head and arms sprawled over the desk, lay what had been Mr Robbins. One side of his skull had been ferociously battered in, and the sight was horrid enough to subdue the exuberance even of Mr Bowles. The wretched Ted sank down on a chair by the wall and began to whimper.
‘He’s dead, all right,’ said Monty. ‘Best not touch anything, but it can’t hurt if I – eh?’
He extracted a clean handkerchief from his pocket and laid it over the dead man’s head; after which it was clean no longer.
‘I don’t see no weapon,’ said Mr Bowles, gazing vaguely first at the fireplace and then at the desk, which was strewn with scattered papers.
‘There’s a big brass paper-weight missing,’ said Mr Harcourt. ‘It used to stand just here, by the blotting-pad. I’ve seen it scores of times.’
Monty nodded. ‘The man will have been sitting here, in this chair at the side of the desk. They’ll have talked a bit, and then he’ll have jumped up, snatching the paper-weight, and caught Mr Robbins on the head just as he was getting to his feet. The blow was struck from in front, as you’ll have noticed.’
‘That looks,’ said the banker, ‘as though the murder was not premeditated.’
‘That’s a fact,’ replied Monty. He peered gingerly at the dead man. ‘There’s a bit of torn paper here in his left hand; perhaps that’ll tell us something. No, no, Mr Bowles. Excuse me. Best leave everything just as it is till the police come. That sounds like them now.’
The noise of footsteps crossing the yard bore out his remark. A small group of men came in at the door, and Mr Egg found himself looking, for the second time that evening, into the face of the quiet man in plus-fours.
‘We meet again, Mr Egg,’ said Mr Charteris. ‘I’m the Chief Constable, and these are Dr Small and Inspector Weybridge. This is a bad business. See what you can tell us about it, Doctor. Now, where’s the man who found the body? What’s your name? Ted Baggitt? Very well, Baggitt, what do you know about this?’
‘Nothing at all, sir – only the finding him. I come on duty, sir, when the man on the gate goes off at half-past seven. Mr Robbins had left the Mills when I came on, but about a quarter to eight, back he comes again. He lets himself in with his own key and meets me just outside the door. “I’ve come up to do a bit o’ private work,” he says, “and Mr Edgar may come along later, but don’t you bother,” he says, “I’ll let him in myself.” So I leaves him in this here office and goes off to get m bit o’ supper ready. My little room’s down in the other building.’
‘And did Mr Edgar come?’
‘Yes, sir. Leastways, the outer bell rang about 8 o’clock, but I didn’t take no notice, seeing what Mr Robbins said. I didn’t hear nothing more, sir, nor see nobody, till I’d ’ad me supper and come out this way to start me first round just about 9 o’clock. Then I see this ’ere door open, and I looks in, and there’s poor Mr Robbins a-laying dead. So I says, “O Gawd!” I says to myself, “we’ll all be murdered.” And I takes to me ’eels.’
‘You never actually saw Mr Edgar?’
‘No, sir.’ The man’s face looked troubled. ‘No, sir – I never see ’im. You don’t think it could have been ’im, sir? That would be an awful thing, to be sure.’
‘Mr Edgar?’ cried Mr Bowles, in horror. ‘But you was there yourself, sir, when he said he wasn’t coming to the Mills.’
‘Yes,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Of course, he might have wanted us to think just that. It would be a very bold way to stage an alibi, but it’s possible. Still, at present we’ve no proof that he did come. Well, Doctor, what about it?’
‘Dead about an hour to an hour and a half,’ replied Dr Small. ‘Struck with a heavy instrument with sharp edges. A paper-weight, did you say, Mr Harcourt? Yes, it might well be something like that.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Charteris. And when the banker had explained:
‘I see. Weybridge, tell them to have a look round for the weapon. It may have been thrown away somewhere. Be careful of any possible finger-prints. Anything else, Doctor?’
‘His keys are in his pocket, so the murderer didn’t use them to let himself out. And here’s part of a letter, tightly clenched in his left hand.’
The doctor spread the crumpled scrap of paper carefully out on the desk. The message was written in block capitals, in purple copying-pencil.
The Chief Constable and Mr Montague Egg looked at the paper and then at one another.
‘The envelope that was handed to Mr Robbins tonight at the Eagle,’ said Mr Egg, softly, ‘was addressed in block capitals, in purple copying-pencil.’
‘Yes,’ said Charteris. ‘And I think we may take it that this is it.’
‘H’m!’ said Inspector Weybridge. ‘And there ain’t much doubt who wrote it, sorry as I am to say it. It’s what I’d call an easy dockiment to reconstruct. “I’m a better player than Benson, and I deserve by rights to be put in goal. I want fair play and I mean to get it. I shall call at (or come to) your house tonight, at 8 o’clock” – Well, it don’t say tonight, actually, but it do say 8 o’clock – and then there’s “and if” at the end -looking like a threat might be coming. Has anybody seen Hughie Searle about tonight?’
Only too many people had seen Hughie Searle, and heard what he had to say.
‘And to think,’ murmured Mr Bowles, ‘that it was me told him where to find Mr Robbins. If I’d a-kept my fat head shut, he’d a-gone up to the house, like it says in the letter, and nobody wouldn’t have been able to tell him anything. Except Mr Edgar. Gosh!’ added the landlord, ‘of course – that’s why Mr Robbins changed his mind and came up here, and left a message to Mr Edgar to come, thinking he might be a protection in case Hughie guessed where he’d gone and follered him up.’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ agreed Weybridge. ‘The point is, was it Hughie who came, or was it Mr Edgar?’
‘The time would fit either of ‘em,’ said Mr Bowles, ‘for they left the Eagle within five minutes of one another, or it might be ten. If Hughie had his bicycle, he could a-got here by eight, easy. He didn’t stay in the bar more nor a minute or so after you went into the parlour, Mr Egg.’
‘Well,’ said the Chief Constable, we must find out if anybody saw either of them in the town at 8 o’clock or thereabouts. Let’s work it out. Suppose it was Mr Edgar. His father is expecting him and lets him in. They come in here, and Mr Robbins takes out this letter and shows it to him. Then Mr Edgar suddenly loses his temper and strikes out, killing his father, either accidentally or of set purpose. Then what does he do? He takes the trouble to tear away as much of this letter as he can, including the signature, if there was one – on purpose to keep all the suspicion to himself. That’s either very stupid or very honest of him. Then, instead of taking the keys and making his escape that way, he runs and hides somewhere, till Baggitt is fool enough to open the gate and leave the way clear for him.’
‘It looks more to me,’ said the Inspector, ‘as if the man that wrote the letter did the murder.’
‘Meaning Searle. Very well. In that case, Mr Robbins let him in, thinking it was Mr Edgar. Once in, he couldn’t very well be turned out by a man double his age and half his strength, and Baggitt was some way away, so Mr Robbins makes the best of a bad job and takes him into the office. They discuss this little matter of goal-keeping; Mr Robbins says something that gets Searle’s goat, and it all happens the same way as before, except that it’s more natural that Searle should destroy the letter, if
he wrote it, and that he shouldn’t wait to look for the keys, since he wouldn’t know as well as Mr Edgar where the old man kept them.’
‘I can’t believe, if you’ll excuse me,’ said Mr Bowles, ‘that Hughie would go to do such a thing for such a reason. It’s true he’s got a hot temper, and uses language – but to take a brass paper-weight to an elderly gentleman! That don’t seem like Hughie.’
‘You’ll pardon my putting my oar in,’ said Mr Egg, ‘but even the humblest suggestion may be of use. “When it’s a question of stamps to lick, the office-boy knows most of the trick,” as it says in the Handbook. I wouldn’t be too sure that young Searle wrote that letter. What’s his job in life?’
‘He’s a motor-mechanic down at Hobson’s garage.’
‘Ever been in a drawing office or advertising business? Anything of an artist, or skilled letterer? That sort of thing?’
‘Nothing of that sort,’ replied Mr Bowles firmly.
‘I only ask,’ said Monty, ‘because this letter was written by somebody who’s been accustomed to write in capitals as quick and easy as you or I would write in ordinary hand. See how the letters are joined together, and how free the movement of the pencil is. It’s rough, but it’s clear, and it comes natural to the writer, that’s the point. It’s not the printing script they teach you in the schools. And it isn’t done laboriously, by way of disguise. It’s the script of somebody accustomed to roughing out head-lines.’
‘I see what you mean,’ said Charteris. ‘That’s smart.’
‘About this man Fletcher, who had a grievance,’ pursued Monty. ‘He’s gone to live with his father. What’s his father’s profession?’
‘I believe he’s head-compositor at a small jobbing printers,’ said Mr Bowles.
‘Just the man,’ said Monty. ‘And that word “son” might very well be “son” and not “Benson,” mightn’t it?’
‘So it might,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘But if you mean to suggest that the murderer was this man Fletcher, or his father, how did he know where to find Mr Robbins? Nobody knew he was coming up to the Mills except you and me and Bowles, and Mr Edgar Robbins and Hughie.’
‘One other person, sir,’ replied Monty. ‘The elderly party who was sitting in the bar with his newspaper – the man who was a stranger to you, Mr Bowles. He went out just after he had heard that Mr Robbins would be up at the Mills, and that Mr Edgar would not be there to protect him.’
‘By jove, you’re right!’ Charteris thought this over for a moment. ‘But all this about playing in goal –’
‘Ah!’ said Monty, ‘if you bar “gauge,” which they always spell “guage,” that word is the biggest stumbling-block a printer can have. Trips him up every time. It’s a disease with ’em. “You’ve acted like a thief by my son, and deserve by right to be put in gaol.” Don’t you think that sounds more natural? Personally,’ added Mr Egg. ‘I take the soft option and write it JAIL – mayn’t look so classy, but it’s safer.’
Dirt Cheap
A MONTAGUE EGG STORY
MR MONTAGUE EGG WAS startled out of his beauty sleep by the ugly noise next door.
‘Wah! wah! wah!’ in a series of crescendo roars. Then followed a long, choking gurgle.
The Griffin at Cuttlesbury was an old-fashioned and ill-kept hotel. Neither Mr Egg nor his fellow-commercials would have dreamed of patronising it in ordinary circumstances. But the Green Man had been put temporarily out of commission by a disastrous fire; and that was how Mr Egg, after an ill-cooked and indigestible dinner, came to be lying in a lumpy bed in this fusty, dusty bedroom, without electric light or even a bedside candle and matches, so slovenly was the service.
As full consciousness slowly returned to him, Mr Egg took stock of the situation. There were, he knew, only three bedrooms in this isolated corridor; his own, in the middle; on the left, No. 8, containing old Waters, of Messrs Brotherhood, Ltd, the soft-drinks-and-confectionery firm; on the right, No. 10, allotted to that stout man who travelled in jewellery, whose name was Pringle, and who had stuffed himself up that evening with dubious mackerel and underdone pork, to the admiration of all beholders. Close behind the head of Monty’s bed, the rich and rhythmical snoring of old Waters shook the thin partition like the vibration of a passing lorry. It must be Pringle who was making the uproar; mackerel and pork were the most probable explanation.
The bellowing had ceased; only a few faint grunts were now to be heard. He didn’t know Pringle, and hadn’t liked the look of him very much. But perhaps the man was really ill. It would be only decent to go and find out.
He swung his legs reluctantly over the side of the bed and thrust his feet into his slippers. Without troubling to search for matches and light the gloomy gas-jet with the broken mantle at the far end of the room, he felt his way to the door, unlocked it and stepped out into the corridor. At the far end, another gas-jet burned dimly on the by-pass, throwing a misleading jumble of light and shadow on the two creaking steps that separated the corridor from the main landing.
In No. 8, old Waters snored on undisturbed. Monty turned to his right and knocked at the door of No. 10.
‘Who’s there?’ demanded a stifled voice.
‘Me – Egg,’ said Monty. He turned the handle as he spoke, but the door was locked. ‘Are you all right? I heard you call out.’
‘Sorry.’ The bed creaked as though the speaker were levering himself up to a sitting position. ‘Nightmare. Sorry I disturbed you.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Mr Egg, pleased to have his diagnosis confirmed. ‘Sure there’s nothing I can do?’
‘No, thanks, quite all right.’ Mr Pringle seemed to have buried his head in the blankets again.
‘Good-night, then,’ said Monty.
‘G’night.’
Mr Egg slipped back to his own room. The snores in No. 8 were increasing in vehemence, and, as he shut and relocked his door, ended suddenly in a ferocious snort. All was quiet. Monty wondered what time it was, but while he was feeling in his coat-pocket for his matches, a clock began to strike with a sweet, vibrating, mellow tone that seemed to come from a considerable distance. He counted twelve strokes. It was earlier than he thought. Being tired, he had gone up to bed at half-past ten and had heard Waters pass his door only a few minutes after. There was now no sound of movement in the hotel. In the main street below, a car passed. The snoring in No. 8 began again.
Mr Egg returned to his uncomfortable mattress and once more disposed his plump body to slumber. He hated being roused from his first, deep, delicious unconsciousness. Confound Waters! Drowsily counting the snores, be began to doze.
Click! a door in the passage had opened. Then came stealthy footsteps, interrupted by a creak and a stumble. Somebody had tripped up the two badly-lighted steps on the way to the landing. Listening to the steady rumbling of Waters, Monty decided, with a certain grim satisfaction, that the mackerel and pork had finally proved too much for Mr Pringle.
Then, quite suddenly, he fell fast asleep.
At six o’clock, he was awakened again by a clatter in the corridor and a banging on the door of No. 8. Waters, confound him, catching an early train. The chambermaid was giggling next door. One of the boys was old Waters, but Mr Egg wished he would keep his gallantries for a more appropriate time of day. Stump, stump past the door; creak, trip, curse – Waters falling up the two steps on his way to the bathroom. Blessed interval of peace. Trip, creak, curse, stump, stump, crash – Waters returning from his bath and banging his bedroom door. Bang, rustle, thump – Waters dressing and strapping his bags. Stump, stump, creak, trip, curse – thank heaven! that was the last of Waters.
Monty stretched out his hand for his watch, whose face was now dimly visible in the morning light that filtered through the dingy curtains. Two minutes to seven – a good half-hour before he need get up. Presently, the four quarters and the hour from the town clock, and, closely following them, the sweet, vibrating musical tones of a clock in the distance. Then silence, punctuated only by
the far-away comings and goings of the hotel staff. Mr Egg dropped off again.
At twenty minutes past seven the corridor rang with piercing and reiterated screams.
Monty leapt up. This time, something really was the matter. He ran to the door, dragging on his dressing-gown as he went. Three or four people came hurrying down the steps from the landing.
The chambermaid stood at the door of No. 10. She had dropped the can she was carrying, and a stream of water was soaking over the carpet. Her face was green, her soiled cap was thrust awry, and she was shrieking with the shrill, automatic regularity of violent hysteria.
Inside, on the bed, sprawled the gross body of Mr Pringle. His face was swollen, and there were ugly purple marks on his thick neck. Blood had run from his nose and mouth and stained the pillows. His clothes were huddled on a chair, his suit-case stood open on the floor, his false teeth grinned from the tooth-glass on the wash-stand, but his traveller’s bag with its samples of jewellery was nowhere to be seen. Mr Pringle lay robbed and murdered.
With a dreadful feeling of reproach, Mr Egg realised that he must actually have heard the murder committed – actually spoken with the murderer. He explained all this to Inspector Monk.
‘I couldn’t say whether the voice sounded like his. I had scarcely spoken to him. He didn’t sit at my table at dinner, and we only exchanged a few words later on in the bar-parlour. The voice was muffled – it might easily have been the voice of a man who has just woken up and was speaking from half under the blankets and without his false teeth. I don’t suppose I should recognise the voice again.’
‘That’s very natural, Mr Egg; don’t distress yourself. Now, about this Mr Waters, who left by the early train. You say you heard him snoring all the time?’
‘Yes – both before and after. I know him; he’s a highly respectable man.’
‘Quite. Well, we shall have to get in touch with him some time, I suppose, but obviously, if he slept right through it he won’t be able to tell us anything. I think we must take it that the person you spoke to was the murderer. You say you can fix the time?’