Case Without a Corpse (13 page)

“So that—if he was doing it, you think he didn't know what he carried. Is that it?”

She looked a little less forbidding. “Yes! That must have been it. If he
was
doing it.”

“And now tell me something else, Miss Cutler. Can you, honestly, conceive of young Rogers murdering anyone?”

She did not speak for a second. Then she looked up sharply.

“Are you trying to catch me?” she said.

“Catch you? Of course not. I … well, to tell you the truth, I was almost beginning to think of this man as you paint him. And I wanted to know….”

“Well, then—I
can
conceive of Alan murdering someone. He was a violent sort of chap. But I don't believe he ever did it in a premeditated way. I don't believe he ever schemed to do it. If someone attacked him, or provoked him, he was capable of anything. But there was no subtlety in his nature.”

“I think I believe you there,” I said. “I believe that when we get at the truth you will turn out to have been right over that. But if that was so”—my inexpert mind had sudden misgivings—“why should he have committed suicide? He had everything to lose. He was engaged to you, and he had a good job. Surely if it was during a violent scene of some sort there would have been a chance for him to get off with manslaughter. How can you account for his having taken poison?”

“He had terrible fits of remorse over nearly everything crazy that he did. This must have been worse, that's all.”

Somehow, in my mind, I was trying to make her conception of young Rogers conform with the facts that Stute and Beef possessed. Unconsciously, I suppose, I was trying to make her feel happier about it all. And suddenly I had an idea.

“Suppose,” I said, “that he was made to believe he had committed murder. Suppose that some interested party had been able to convince him that he had been guilty of an act which in reality had been the work of another. That would account for it, wouldn't it?”

She stared at me blankly for a moment.

“My God!” she said at last, and I saw that she had turned pale, “that must have been it! What a wicked thing to do.
Could
anyone do that? Make him think he was guilty?”

“There are some people who have
no
scruples,” I returned, rather tritely perhaps.

“How awful! So Alan poisoned himself because he thought he had committed a crime which someone else…. Oh, it's the most terrible thing!”

“But Miss Cutler, it was only an idea of mine. It may not have any truth in it.”

“It has! It is true! I see it now! Oh, if only we had met that evening. And how do you suppose they did it—convinced him, I mean?”

“I don't know. I only mentioned it as a possibility. I am not a detective, and if I were I probably should never have considered that. Because, after all, there was the knife—his knife. How are you going to account for that? It had a bloodstain on it. So had his shirt-cuff and sleeve. Even if he didn't actually kill the person, he must have….”

“Oh, don't …” she begged.

“I'm awfully sorry. Perhaps I should never have suggested the idea. That's the worst of
anyone like me plunging about in a case of this sort.”

I could see that her lip was trembling. Poor girl, these days must have been hideous for her. The thing itself, the inquest, the people in the town.

“Miss Cutler,” I said, trying to speak considerately, “why don't you go away for a bit, while they're clearing this thing up. It can't do you any good to be here. You're making yourself more wretched than you need.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I want to stay and see it all settled. I want to know the truth. It's not much I can do for him now, but I can do that. And I will.”

“I think you are very brave—and loyal,” I said quietly.

To my surprise and pleasure she was pleased at that. She even gave me a half smile.

“Thank you,” she said. “And now….”

She was interrupted by a voice behind my chair.

“Molly! Really, how very inconsiderate! I've been searching all over the town for you.”

I rose to face her over-neat and disapproving-looking mother.

“Won't you sit down?” I asked.

“I suppose I shall have to, now that my daughter has brought me in here. Rather than cause more talk, I will. But it's not very pleasant for
me
to be in this place, with everyone staring at us.”

Molly sighed and for the first time that I had heard, she had an answer to her mother.

“What does it matter whether they stare or not?” she asked wearily.

“It may not matter to you,” said her mother. “You may be past such things. But it does to me. I've never in all my life given anyone cause to talk about me, and I'm not used to it. Yes, please, a cup of coffee. Yes, and perhaps it would look more natural if I had a cake. Thank you, one of those meringues will do nicely.”

She was not too embarrassed by the attention which her daughter had attracted to cope very capably with a large cream meringue, a type of cake I have never been able to eat successfully.

“And there was something else that Molly ought to have told that policeman the other day,” she went on when she had left only a few crumbs on her plate and one adhering obstinately to her chin.

“Mother!” her daughter broke in. Molly looked distressed.

“Yes. It should be known,” said Mrs. Cutler primly, “this young man, this Rogers, once told Molly that if ever the
need
arose he didn't lack the
means
to commit murder.”

“But of course he didn't. Who, as a matter of fact, does?” I returned, and I felt that Molly was pleased with my indifference.

As soon as Mrs. Cutler thought it expedient, she and her daughter got up and left the cafe. But Molly smiled sadly back to me.

I
USED
to have breakfast about an hour later than Stute and next morning, as I was finishing my toast and home-made marmalade, Constable Galsworthy was shown in by Mrs. Simmons. He looked almost offensively healthy and full of beans, and I remarked on it.

“I'm in training for the Police Boxing Championship,” he explained. “I got into the final last year.”

So that was it. I had always thought that he looked like a boxer. “Did you want to see me?” I asked.

“Yes, sir. Detective-Inspector Stute told me to call in on my way by. He's had a report in from Scotland Yard, and says that if you want to see the next move in this case, you had better go round there.”

“The next move?” I repeated.

“That's what he said, sir.”

“Well, thank you, Constable. I'll go straight round.”

I hadn't had a chance to speak to Beef for some days, and was glad to see his red face, with a smile on it, when I entered his little office.

“Morning, Townsend,” said Stute. “I thought you would like to hear the latest. We've had two reports about Fairfax.”

He picked up a photograph of a heavy-faced, solemn, not very amiable-looking man, and handed it to me.

“His real name is, or was, Ferris,” he said, “and he was convicted ten years ago of selling cocaine. So far as our people can make out, he scarcely bothered to allow a decent lapse to go by after he had come out of gaol before he was engaged in the same traffic.”

“Makes you think, doesn't it,” said Beef, growing philosophical. “I mean you never know what you're going to find out about anyone. 'Ere we are, investigating a suicide and confession of murder, and we come on this bloke selling drugs. I sometimes wonder whether if we was to look into anyone's doings, as close as we do when they been up to somethink like murder, we shouldn't find they'd all got skelingtons in their cupboards.”

“Seems as though your ‘esteemed colleague' in Buenos Aires was right about Rogers, anyway.”

“Yes. I don't think we should be jumping to conclusions if we presumed that young Rogers was bringing drugs in for Fairfax. Unfortunately that doesn't tell us whether it was Fairfax whom he murdered, and if it wasn't, who was the victim. Which brings me to the second report.”

We waited while Stute turned over his papers.

“It isn't very much, but it might help us. The woman tenant of the basement in the house where Fairfax, or Ferris, lived in Hammersmith suddenly took it into her head to remember the
firm which had moved their furniture there. They had been in the flat about two years, so this was lucky. But the firm was Pickertons, which was not so lucky, as with a large firm like that it is hard to trace a specified move. But the manager was most helpful. He went through his books very carefully, and discovered that the furniture had been collected from a London depository, and moved to Hammersmith for a Mr. Freeman. And he was able to give our man the name of the depository.”

“See 'ow they do it?” said Beef gleefully. “Wonderful 'ow they follow 'em up, isn't it?”

“The depository took longer to find the record, but eventually told us that they had moved Mr. Freeman's things from the village of Long Highbury in Oxfordshire.”

Beef rubbed his hands. I was rather peeved by his ingenuous enthusiasm. It seemed that he was revealing his inexperience too much to his superior, who already had a good idea of it. I decided to make a different tone.

“I don't quite see how all this is going to help you,” I said. “You know Fairfax's real name. And you know where he went from to Hammersmith over two years ago. But you don't know where he is now. Or, in fact,” I added ironically, “if he is now.”

“That's true,” said Stute, quite unruffled, “but you expect too much at a time, Townsend. As I'm always telling you, detection is not done by leaps and bounds. Now we want to trace
this Fairfax, or Ferris, or Freeman, and his wife. If he is alive, he will certainly be able to tell us a good deal and perhaps everything we want to know. And if he's dead, then his wife will. Either way, it is worth our while to find out all we can of him in his pre-Hammersmith days, and by that means we may be able to find out where to look for him, or his wife, or his widow, now.”

“So you're going to Long Highbury?”

“I am. Would you like to come?”

I hesitated. Really, to drive all the way to Oxfordshire on the chance that someone in a certain village remembered a man who had been there, perhaps for only a short time, over two years ago, seemed a little over-optimistic to me. Besides, even if they did remember him, what could they say that would help Stute now? Surely this Fairfax was not the man to spread the story of his life among his casual acquaintances in the village, and even less his plans for the future. Still, it was kind of Stute to suggest my going with him, and it would have been churlish to refuse. So I accepted with as much enthusiasm as I could manage.

“You won't need me, sir,” questioned Beef.

“No, I don't think so, Sergeant.” Then, as though to conciliate him, Stute added, “We must keep someone on the spot.”

Beef nodded solemnly. “Just so, sir. Any partic'lar line of enquiry you'd wish me to follow?”

Stute gave his rather cynical smile. “Nothing I can think of,” he said, “but perhaps
you'll get some interesting information from Mr. Simmons or Mr. Sawyer, while I'm away.”

Beef did not see that the detective was pulling his leg. “I'll do my best, sir,” he said, and left us.

“You'd better pack a bag, Townsend,” Stute said to me. “It's about sixty miles away, and if we don't get our information straight away we may have to stay the night.”

“Oh, very well. But doesn't it seem….”

“A long shot? I don't think so. After all, Fairfax is our favourite for the murder stakes at the moment, isn't he? Anything we can find out will help. Our people are working in London to try to trace some associates of his there—but that's a different proposition. They can go among the known drug people, and they'll be met with blank faces. But in a village this size he must have talked to someone.”

“Yes,” I said, still dubious. “All right, I'll go and pack a bag.”

“I'll pick you up at the Mitre in half an hour, then.”

But before I reached the door, Constable Galsworthy entered.

“Well?” snapped Stute, who had never forgiven the athletic Galsworthy for his name, which Stute seemed to consider pretentious.

“Got something to report, sir.”

“What about?”

“The case, sir.”

“The case? What is it?”

“I've been making enquiries….”

“You'e
been making enquiries! By whose orders?”

Galsworthy remained admirably calm, and my sympathies were wholly with him. Stute, I thought, was being altogether too discouraging.

“On my own initiative, sir.”

“I see. Were you at a public school?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I knew it! The Force is full of you fellows. Every constable in England begins to think he's a detective nowadays. Well, what have your enquiries told you?”

“I went to the railway station, sir,” said Galsworthy, apparently quite oblivious of Stute's hostility, “and enquired there of the staff whether any of them had seen Fairfax leave for London on the Wednesday of the suicide, sir. It occurred to me that we had their statements with regard to Rogers and Smythe, but no enquiry had been made about Fairfax.”

“And you thought it your business to make it?”

“Yes, sir.” Still he was quite unimpassioned. “It appears that Fairfax travelled up to London that day on the 2.50.”

“I see. And from what does it appear that he travelled up to London?”

“He bought his ticket, sir, and mentioned to the booking-clerk that his little holiday was over. He then spoke to one of the porters on the platform, who saw him into the train. It was a slow train, and only one other passenger was travelling. The porter saw that he went.”