Dancers in Mourning (28 page)

In spite of his seriousness there was still a touch of the schoolboy about Oates, a certain naïve excitement which betrayed him every now and again. His work still fascinated him.

‘Now look here, Campion,' he said, ‘you knew Konrad. Would you say he might have any secret political activities? We don't get many bomb outrages over here, you know, and when we do they're nearly always political or the efforts of lunatics – usually an unhealthy combination of the two. What would you say, now? Let's have your frank opinion.'

He spoke coaxingly and Mr Campion was frankly sorry not to be able to oblige him.

‘I'd say “No”,' he said. ‘I can't help it, but I would, definitely. He wasn't a friend of mine, of course – I didn't know him well – but no, no, I really couldn't see him mixed up with politics of any sort. What an absolutely unbelievable thing to happen!'

Oates leant back in his chair.

‘Mr Campion,' he began with unusual formality, ‘I've known you for a long time and we've done a bit of work together. If you're going to be in this affair I'd like you to work for us. I'm not saying that I don't trust you, now. Don't think that. But I want all the facts from you, and if you're working for me then I know you won't be working for anyone else behind my back. Consider yourself an expert called in on the case, just as the major is.'

Having known the Superintendent for fifteen years, Campion was able to appreciate the effort such a decision had cost that logical and conventional policeman. He was properly impressed.

‘My dear chap, anything you like,' he said lightly. ‘You know all I know at the moment. I was called in by Jimmy Sutane to help Blest in uncovering a sort of persecution campaign. I thought I saw Konrad was at the bottom of it, and I tipped Blest on to him. Then I rather lost interest and faded away. From what I saw of Konrad he certainly did not strike me as a likely candidate for public assassination. The only feasible explanation that occurs to me off hand is that your bomb-thrower was demented and mistook him for somebody else.'

‘Who else did he look like in a vest and cycling shorts?' demanded Oates with practical curiosity.

Campion shrugged his shoulders. Words were beyond him.

‘Mr Sutane was at his own house surrounded by his family twenty miles away when the explosion occurred,' observed the Superintendent sadly. ‘We can be fairly sure who was on the down side of the station where Konrad stood, but some of the travellers on the up line may have escaped us.'

Mr Campion blinked.

‘Didn't anyone see someone throw the thing?'

‘No. No one's come forward. Yeo's working on that now.' Oates leant across the desk and his unexpectedly youthful eyes were indignant. ‘Can you imagine any living person doing it, Campion?' he demanded. ‘Scattering death or disfiguration among a crowd of innocent, helpless bodies on a country railway station? The man's either hopelessly insane or a – a bad, dangerous fellow. We'll have to lay our hands on him. There's no two ways about it.'

Campion smiled faintly at the ‘bad, dangerous fellow'. The Superintendent's maidenly restraint was typical of him and bore no relation to the depth of his feelings. Stanislaus Oates had spent much of his life in the pursuit of murderers and had invariably delivered them into the hands of the public hangman with serene satisfaction whenever he had the opportunity. There were very few greys, in his view; only varying depths of black. He had once expressed a certain sympathy for Crippen, but only because the little doctor had permitted himself to succumb to temptation. Once Belle Elmore was dead Crippen was already half-hanged, and very properly so too in the gentle Oates's opinion. Yet Crippen, Campion remembered, had been ‘a poor weak scoundrel'. The ‘bad, dangerous fellow' was evidently in a different class altogether.

Oates was not without softness, however, although he reserved his sympathy always for the right side.

‘There's a young woman maybe going to lose a leg and a lad of eighteen with his face cut to ribbons in the hospital. If it had been a train accident I'd have been simply very sorry, but when it's wanton, deliberate wickedness it makes me spiteful. It's a fact, now. We'll have to get this fellow.'

Campion glanced up.

‘The authorities are clamouring too, I suppose?' he ventured.

Oates smiled. ‘Yes, they're nattering,' he said cheerfully. ‘But they'll have to wait for us. We can't go worrying our heads about them when there's work to be done.'

His bland superiority was superb. Campion felt curiously comforted. In a world of conflicting loyalties it was a relief to find someone who could really put his finger, if only to his own satisfaction, on the exact spot where right ends and wrong begins.

The Superintendent took a large flat watch from his waistcoat pocket and considered it.

‘Time for the major,' he said. ‘Now I'm trusting you, mate, I don't have to ask anyone's permission. I'm the Superintendent of the Central Department of the C.I.D. and I can have what help I think fit. I want you to sit in that corner over there. You've been working on Konrad and you can work some more.'

Mr Campion went over to the small hard chair obediently. There had never been any ceremony between them and Oates's sublime conviction that an invitation to work for the police was the highest honour man could hope to receive was unanswerable. He sat down.

Major Bloom was ushered in almost immediately and Mr Culvert, his assistant, came with him. The major was tall and heavy, with lumbering movements and eyes which peered shortsightedly from behind truly terrible steel-rimmed glasses. He shook hands with nervous affability and betrayed a pleasant Midland voice.

Mr Culvert, his assistant, hovered round him deferentially. He was a small, neat young man, precise to the point of primness. His quiet, cultured voice contrasted with his chief's burr as did his ease and self-assurance. Yet no one could have confused the master with the apprentice. Mr Culvert only too evidently considered that he was out in charge of his god, a fragile, breakable deity who was to be protected and placated in every way. They made an odd, knowledgeable pair.

The major sat down in the visitor's chair, smiled nervously at Oates, and fumbled in the leather brief-case which Mr Culvert held open for him. He found the notebook for which he was searching at last and looked up with a sigh.

‘We've hardly begun yet, of course,' he said with a nervous giggle. ‘This is going to take some time. You do realise that, don't you? I know you people are always in such a hurry. I haven't prepared any sort of statement and I haven't had time to go into the analysis of the metal at all, but there are just one or two points that may be of interest to you at the moment.'

Oates thanked him gravely.

‘Make it simple,' he said.

The major blinked. ‘I don't think I follow you …'

‘Make it simple, sir. I'm not very up in chemistry. Let's just have the straight tale first.'

‘Oh yes, I see. I see. Of course.' The expert seemed alarmed, and he glanced at his assistant helplessly. Mr Culvert coughed.

‘First of all the Superintendent should know that you're satisfied it was a grenade, sir,' he murmured.

Oates nodded. ‘Oh, ah, it was, was it? Well, we feared so. An amateur grenade would you say, sir?'

‘Well, no, you know. It's a funny thing, but I don't think it was.' The major got up and walked down the room; his shyness dropped from him and his voice rose with sudden authority. ‘I can't be certain, but as far as I can see the explosive was either amatol or tetrol. That's as near as we shall ever get. Tetrol. Tetramethylaniline, you know. I think it was that. That's by the damage and the action on the cast-iron casing. One of the doctors gave me a most valuable specimen of the casing, taken from the porter's chest. We can say that for certain, can't we, Culvert?'

‘I think so, sir.'

‘Amatol …' The Superintendent was making notes. ‘Where would that come from, now? Could an amateur obtain it?'

‘I don't know. I suppose he could. It's very usual stuff. The wholesalers have it.' The expert appeared to resent the interruption. ‘However, what I'm trying to tell you is that it didn't look like amateur work to me. The casing was grooved inside, you see. It wasn't one of your petrol cans, or the dreadful tea-caddy things that we get sometimes. As far as we can tell at the moment from the evidence we've received, it was a very decent, well-constructed grenade, not at all unlike a Mills bomb but rather more powerful.'

‘How much more powerful?' Oates sat up with frank interest.

‘My dear good man, how can I possibly tell you? A Mills bomb, now, holds about three ounces of explosive. I think in this case you might multiply that by anything up to four. That's on the damage. Don't run away with the idea that the grenade used was four times as large as a Mills bomb. That's not what I'm saying at all. It might have been any size. It depends on the casing and on the filling. And don't ask me how big it was or what shape it was because I can't possibly tell you and no one on earth except the men who made it and placed it can.'

He paused and eyed them with frank, weak blue eyes.

‘I'm working now on the scraps of metal which we've been able to collect, you understand, and while I think of it, there are some pieces embedded in the platform. I'd like those. Every tiny piece is of value to me. You never know … I may with luck be able to tell where the iron came from. The country of origin, I mean.'

He stopped, seemed suddenly to become aware of the unfamiliar surroundings, and sat down abruptly.

Oates remained quiet for a moment, digesting his astonishing information.

‘How do these things go off?' he inquired at last. ‘Can you tell me that, sir?'

The major permitted himself one of his unhappy little giggles.

‘There are nine-and-sixty ways,' he murmured, ‘but in this particular case I think there really must have been the usual cap and detonator. This isn't evidence, you understand. This is simply my present opinion. It was something very like a Mills bomb; I really can say that.'

Oates sat looking at him, his head a little on one side.

‘You mean someone must have pulled a pin out before throwing it?'

The major seemed to hesitate on the brink of a confidence, but thought better of it and remained cautious.

‘Something like that. A pin, or a switch, or a screw.'

‘I see.' Oates seemed only fairly satisfied and after an inquiring glance at his chief Mr Culvert broke in to remind the Superintendent in his prim, deferential way that the investigations were at a very elementary stage.

The major rose again and heaved himself over to the desk, where he made a rough sketch on the Superintendent's clean blotting-paper.

‘You take an iron casing filled with explosives and projectiles,' he said, breathing gustily on Oates's bent head. ‘Into that you introduce a tube of thin perforated metal, which is roughly hour-glass in shape, narrow in the middle. Inside the tube you put a striker, which is held in place by a rod, with an arm on the end of it. The rod is connected with the switch or screw on the outside of the casing. Now above the striker you put a little spring, so that when the rod is turned the arm slips aside and the striker plunges down, being guided by the construction in the hour-glass, on to a small anvil. The anvil is formed by the base of the hour-glass. On the anvil is the cap and detonator, probably fulminate of mercury. Understand what I'm telling you?'

‘Yes, I think so.' Oates was blinking. ‘And this is what was used?'

The major shrugged his shoulders.

‘That's what I can't tell you. I'll never be able to tell you. But I think so. Something very simple, but professional work. I may have something more to say later on. It's a rather interesting point, but I don't like to commit myself at the moment. All I'll admit now is that it was a grenade and it was professionally made.'

‘Ah!' said the Superintendent and was silent.

A young constable knocked and put a polished face inside the door.

‘Chief Inspector Yeo, sir.'

The Superintendent looked up with a grin.

‘Hallo, Freddie,' he said. ‘Glad to see you. Come in. We've got some nice bad news for you here, my lad.'

C
HIEF
D
ETECTIVE
-I
NSPECTOR
Y
EO
came in briskly. He was square and efficient, with a solid bullet head and an insignificant, almost comical face. His snub nose and round eyes had been a serious disadvantage to him all his life, undermining his dignity and earning him friends rather than admirers. Even Oates, who had the utmost respect for his quite extraordinary ability, was inclined to sympathise with him whenever he saw him.

At the moment he was very tired and his plump face was drawn.

The Superintendent performed the introduction briefly. He ignored Yeo's sharp glance of inquiry and offered no explanation for Mr Campion's presence.

‘You wouldn't have had time to prepare any sort of report, of course?' Oates was inclined to put the question mischievously. ‘You're just off the train, aren't you? Anything new?'

Yeo shook his head.

‘Nothing,' he said gloomily. ‘Plenty of negative evidence. However, my men are still slogging away at it and the local people are very helpful, but they've got their hands full. One rather wretched thing happened. The porter's wife chucked herself into the local millpool this morning. She was left with two little kids. Couldn't face life without her husband and all that. She was a bit crazy, of course; demented by the shock, probably. They got her out, but it was no good. Makes you feel a bit sick, don't it? It's a nasty callous business. No sense in it.'

He wiped his forehead and his thick short neck with a vast handkerchief and looked glum.