Murder Isn't Cricket, page 23
If the scientist expected to cause something of a sensation he was not disappointed. The A.C. let his monocle drop to the full length of its silken cord. Inspector Kenway scratched a puzzled head, but said nothing; and Carruthers sat staring, with eyes that were nearly popping out of his head. Curiously enough, only Superintendent Jones preserved an unconcerned air. “Knew he’d got ’old o’ somethin’,” he said. “Seen it all evenin’.”
Sir Edward shook his surprise from himself, “Something we’ve said here this evening, Doctor?” he asked.
“Partly, A.C.,” was the reply. He looked round the company. “There are seven vital points which have emerged from the various talks we have had together, allied to certain lines of inquiry we have made. Six of those seven points are beyond doubt. The seventh I hope to make so within a few hours. Then . . .”
The scientist stopped in the middle of the sentence. His fingers felt for, and extracted, a gold pencil from a waistcoat pocket, and with it he began a quiet tapping on the arm of his chair. Sir Edward, hearing and seeing it, stiffened. He had heard that sound a dozen or more times before in mystery cases. And he knew what it meant. He pointed an expressive finger at the scientist and jabbed it six times in emphasis as he spoke.
“You . . . know . . . who . . . we . . . want . . . Doctor,” he said.
It was noticeable that there was no note of query in his voice. It was an assertion, not an inquiry. There was absolute conviction in its tones. He waited for the answer.
“I have known for some time, Sir Edward,” was the quiet reply. “But I could not prove it to my own satisfaction. Nor can I now. But I think that I shall be able to prove it to the satisfaction of myself, you, and a judge and jury, within two or three days.”
TO THE READER
The last two of Dr. Manson’s seven points (clues to a detective writer and reader) are in this chapter. You should now have the solution in your hands.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
WONDERINGS AND WANDERINGS
The wanderings of Chief-Detective-Inspector Dr. Manson took that scientist crime investigator exactly three days. For the sake of surprise—publishers of detective stories insist that the ending of the story shall be a surprise—these wanderings must be shrouded, as is occasionally the British Army, in a ‘Security Silence’.
The observant and discerning reader with a good armchair training in detective work and an eye to detail may be able to pierce the smoke-cloud of dialogue, and follow Dr. Manson in his wanderings. He may even be ahead of him! There is no good reason why he should not so be able. As an extra guide, it may be said that a riverside walk began them; and that, subsequently, the doctor took in his stride a famous cathedral city, a place famous among schoolboys, and a well-known agricultural manufacturing centre. The joumeyings ended in a visit to the Port of London Authority, and another to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue sitting at Somerset House, that sprawling building which has a gateway in the Strand and a long outlook over the River Thames between Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges.
It was within five minutes of the ending of the conference in the room of the assistant commissioner that Dr. Manson began his itinerary. Back in his laboratory, he drew a telephone towards him and dialled a Wapping number. His demand to be put through to Inspector Lawrence, of the River Police, evoked a response from a booming voice, with a twang of salt water behind it. Inspector Lawrence, from years of hailing craft in the river, had developed a voice that rolled out in carrying waves.
“Dr. Manson here, Inspector,” responded the scientist. “You remember . . .”
For a couple of minutes the scientist spoke into the receiver, while the inspector listened. The voice ceased at last with a final inquiry: “Can you manage that, Inspector?”
“Yes, quite easily, Doctor. I have a couple right at hand. Can see ’em from the window.”
“Right, then, Inspector, I’ll meet you on the bridge there, in—how long do you think?”
“Say an hour, Doctor.”
“All right. . . . What? . . . No. I’ll see to that.”
Thus it was that, sixty-five minutes later, four men walked underneath a bridge soaked in history. A river craft was waiting, and in this they embarked.
With the sun sinking below the horizon on the starboard side the boat was pushed off, and its nose set upstream. With Inspector Lawrence at the wheel, it chugged a leisurely passage between high embankments, then past park and wooded land, past riverside bungalows, gay with flowers for the summer week-ending visitations, past houseboats with gangways on to plots of land which gave access to the floating homes.
During the journey, Dr. Manson had been keeping a sharp lookout along the left-hand bank. The trip had proceeded for some five or six minutes, when he called out “Dead slow”. Inspector Lawrence throttled down the engine, and with only enough way to keep the bows pointing up-stream, the doctor, from their position in the centre of the stream, looked carefully at the objects nearer shore. “Yes, that, I think, is what we want,” he decided. “Drop down a little lower and we’ll turn back, nearer inshore, and get a closer view.”
As the inspector opened up the boat’s engines, the scientist turned to the two men who had been puffing at their pipes unconcernedly. He spoke in low tones for a minute. They nodded in reply. “Right,” he rejoined, “then here we are approaching. Now, have a good look.” As they approached the object of the scientist’s interest, Inspector Lawrence again shut off the engine. The two men leaning over the starboard side, stared hard. The boat drifted down with the current, and passed.
“Well?” asked Dr. Manson.
“I reckon so,” replied the elder of the two.
“And you?” The doctor turned to the second man.
“I suppose we couldn’t see the other side, could we?” he asked.
Dr. Manson looked across at the inspector. “What do you say, Lawrence?” he asked. “I do not want to attract undue attention.”
“There does not appear to be anyone about, Doctor, except a courting couple”—nodding towards the opposite bank. “I should say they are too busy with their canoodling to take any notice of us.”
“Then we’ll risk it.”
The boat was put about, and steered this time close inshore. With engine again shut off, it drifted towards the object of Dr. Manson’s interest. As they passed, the younger of the two men leaned over the side. An exclamation came from him. “That’s what I wished to see, sir,” he said, and pointed out a series of markings. “Yes, I reckons that’s it,” he concluded.
“You are quite sure of it?” insisted Dr. Manson.
Both men nodded emphatically.
The scientist caught the inspector’s eye, and that officer once more put the boat about, and opened up the throttle. Running full out, a quick return was made to the starting point of the adventure.
The two men were returned to their homes in a police car with strict instructions to make no mention of the incident. Dr. Manson, driving the inspector back, held a short confabulation with him. “It should be shadowed, Lawrence,” he maintained. “I think that is the way it is done. But for heaven’s sake don’t arouse any suspicions, or we are sunk. It will only be for three or four days at the outside. These men won’t talk, will they?”
“No, Doctor. They depend upon us for their licence. They won’t talk, after what I said to them before we started.”
Next morning the scientist began those wanderings which were to provide the evidence needed to bring the Thames Pagnall village green tragedy to a solution. In the long Oldsmobile, which was usually the link between him and his fishing waters in far distant Cornwall, he drove, first to the famous city set amid lovely countryside, and with the river running past its meadow-lands and parks. Turning through a gateway, he sidled a lawn and pulled up at an oaken door.
“Good heavens, what are you doing in this emporium,” came a voice from the doorway. A burly figure emerged with outstretched hand.
“I’ve come to see you, Bill,” was the reply.
“Then you probably want something, Harry.”
The two entered a library, and it was an hour before they emerged. Thrice a bell had been rung, and visitors had been ushered into the library, and left again. His host accompanied Dr. Manson to the car. “Well, au revoir, Harry. And good luck. On my soul, if it is as you believe, it’s extraordinary. Never heard of anything like it being done before.”
“Mind, Bill, not a word to anybody,” warned Manson.
“Not a word, Harry.”
Turning the facts he had accumulated over in his mind as he drove back towards London, the scientist felt that he had good grounds for satisfaction. He had, in his opinion, acquired the modicum of background which, before embarking on his tour, he had decided was required from the first point of call, if the other destinations were to be taken in. He was satisfied that such background was that which he had, days before, visualized.
His next visit was more or less a chance shot, which might shorten his touring. If nothing came of it, it would not matter particularly. His mental preoccupation over his problems almost led him to stray from his route. It was not until he had passed a secondary arterial road, and a gaunt building suddenly confronted him, that he realized that he should have turned down the road a few hundred yards back. Hastily he braked, and swung his car round, turning right at the crossroads. “Now, I must put the thing out of my mind until I reach the next stage,” he abjured himself.
It was a glorious afternoon, with the sun pouring down from a deep, cloudless blue sky. A light breeze circulating kept the heat within comfortable bounds. As he pursued his course, almost alone, through the Surrey country lanes, and across bracken-buried heath-land, he soliloquized that nowhere in the world was the countryside more pleasant than in England in the summer months, with its cool, green grass and rippling streams, its vari-green trees reaching up to the dome of heaven. The scientist had travelled in many countries, from the arid wastes of the deserts beyond Cairo, the hard heat of Australia, where pasture is burnt by the rays of the sun and for lack of water during years of drought; the heated moisture of New Zealand, where the hot geyser springs give the countryside the appearance of giant Turkish baths.
“And I think that of all England, nowhere is more lovely than a Surrey lane,” he communed. For no reason at all, he recalled a drive in the same car a year before, along a road in the south of France. The green of the hedges had been completely hidden by the thickness of the white dust which covered it; dust which, if the hedge was shaken, came out in choking, enveloping clouds. Alongside the hedge had been a three-feet deep sunken track, winding in its shade. That should have been a stream, rippling on its way to the Mediterranean. It was bone dry, and had been so for months. In the winter it would become, again, a raging torrent. The hedges of this Surrey lane were verdant, the stream which flowed alongside it was no higher and no lower than it had been in winter. There was a balance between winter and summer here, the scientist said to himself, which, however uncomfortable it might be in certain periods, was more to be desired than the drastic contrasts of the winter Playground of the Wealthy.
The car ran out of the lane on to a concrete-based highway. Dr. Manson pulled himself together. He was approaching his second destination of the day. A toot on the horn, and two large gates were thrown open. Once again he drove up a long drive and to a door, this time at the head of a flight of broad stone steps. Once again he was shown into a library; and, as before, there were comings and goings. It was less than an hour when he re-entered his car and departed in the direction of his third destination. A mile on his way, and at a cross-roads, he pulled into the side and consulted a road map, running a map measurer over the route he was following.
“H’m! No need to hurry,” he said to himself. “I’ll not be able to do anything tonight. Might as well trundle along slowly, have a cup of tea and arrive in time for a dinner and a music-hall, or something.” He proceeded to put the plan into operation. As a church clock struck 6 p.m. he arrived in an Essex town.
Ten o’clock next morning saw him setting out on a walking tour that was to take him up to the luncheon hour. In all, he made some half a dozen calls, and if variety is the spice of life the scientist spent a lively morning, for the people to whom he paid visits included two parsons, a solicitor, two aged women who in their heyday had been domestic servants to members of what they themselves referred to as ‘gentry families’, a prosperous estate agent, and a pedagogue. After each visit, he made brief entries in his note-book. Only once did he evince more than a polite interest in the answers he received. That was after a remark made by the second of the clergymen.
“What!” he said, and looked in surprise at the vicar. “Are you sure of that?”
“Well, sir,” was the reply, “I do not know of my own knowledge, but it was given to me by a brother priest in whose word I have complete confidence. Does the fact so much surprise you?”
“I ought not, in my profession, to be surprised at anything, Padre,” the scientist replied. “But I must confess that this was most unexpected. Thank you for your courtesy and patience.”
The doctor ate lunch in thoughtful silence, and as soon as it was over collected his car and drove to the little village of Dewsley, some five miles out of the town. The car he left parked alongside the pond which stood at one end of the village green. He himself made his way in the direction of the village church, the tower of which stood high above the tops of the thatched cottages and the trees.
A man cutting the grass with the long, sweeping rhythm of the scythe looked up, and stopped his swinging. He laid the scythe against a gravestone, and came forward. “Be yiew a-wanting to see t’old church, sir?” he asked.
“Will you be the sexton here?” Manson countered.
“Man and boy this fifty-five years, sir,” the man replied. “And will be come many more years, God willing.”
The scientist spoke a few words quietly. The sexton nodded. He led the way to a corner of the churchyard, pointed. Dr. Manson looked. He copied a few words into his note-book.
“You remember?” he asked the man beside him.
“Aye, sir. I ’members very well.”
A coin changed hands. The scientist left the yard and walked back to his car. He let in the clutch, accelerated, and retraced his wheel-tracks. Nor did he stop again or slacken until he reached the entrance to his flat in London.
It was the evening of the second day.
The morning of the third day found him in the offices of the Port of London Authority. His visit lasted no more than a quarter of an hour, and left him with a foolscap sheet of paper full of figures. Another hour, and he was closeted with an official of Somerset House. His errand explained, the official produced two forms. “The alpha and the omega,” he chuckled.
Dr. Manson, too, chuckled in reply. But the chuckle was a grim one. “It is omega, I think,” he said; and smiled at the puzzled look in the eyes of the official.
One more visit remained—to another part of Somerset House which is a little nearer the river and Waterloo Bridge. There, ledgers were laid open for him; from them he copied out a number of entries. Then, after inspecting several bundles of forms, he took up his hat, and, with a word of thanks, walked down the steps to the Embankment below, and, turning left, strode Westminster way—and so on to Scotland Yard, and up to his laboratory.
Save for Wilkins, the assistant, the laboratory was empty. The doctor slipped off his dustcoat and dropped it on the table. He laid his hat on top of it. He lifted the telephone receiver and dialled a number. “Inspector Lawrence, urgently,” he demanded.
The inspector’s voice came booming back. “Lawrence here . . . oh, is that you, Doctor?”
“Any news, Lawrence?”
“Two trips, Doctor. The evening after, and again this afternoon.”
“Where?”
“Kew. You know where the river runs to the ferry entrance to the Gardens? Couldn’t do much the first time, you understand. We had to track. But had a man waiting inside the Gardens after that, on the off-chance. They had gone into the Gardens on the first occasion, and we couldn’t follow. This time he walked into the Gardens and met a man by the railings which look over the river at the bottom. They talked. He handed something over, and walked back to the ferry. He went straight back.”
“Good man! Have a second man there, and let him follow. Get him when he leaves the Gardens. Make any excuse, but get him to a station and search him. Your man will have to watch him pretty closely, you understand. And listen, Lawrence. Bring a boat up to Westminster tonight, about ten o’clock. We are going up the river—you and I and Kenway, and one other. I want nobody else. Is that clear? Tie up at the station and come up to the laboratory.”
One more telephone call the doctor made before he went in search of the assistant commissioner. Inspector Carruthers answered the ring in person. “Manson here, Carruthers. Did you make that particular inquiry for which I asked?”
“Yes, Doctor. He did not give notice. Just left. And—”
“No more now, Carruthers. Come along here tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and I’ll tell you all you want to know. Thanks for the trouble.” And he rang off.
The assistant commissioner looked up as the door of his room opened. “Hallo, Harry, didn’t know you were back.” He greeted the appearance of Manson with surprise.
“What luck?” he asked, anxiously.
“The best, Edward. I’ve got them.”
“Them, Harry?”
“That is what I said.” He leaned forward and spoke a few words.
“Good heavens!” The monocle fell from the left eye of the assistant commissioner with the ejaculation. “Who are they?”
