Case with No Conclusion (11 page)

6.
Rose and Freda.
It would really have been very far-fetched to think of these two as possible murderesses merely because they were employed in the house where a murder had been committed.

7.
Ed Wilson.
If anyone in this tangle might be considered a suspect, he had to be. But again, one could see no possible motive. He had been more sympathetic in his attitude towards Benson than any of the others, who cordially disliked the man. And although he had no alibi, he stood to gain nothing so far as one could see.

8.
The mechanic.
He had admittedly been up to the house at twelve o'clock that night, but beyond that had no connecting point. I liked his easy manner and open face, and personally refused to suspect him.

9.
Wilkinson.
Now there was a man one felt physically, morally and mentally capable of murdering another man with very little concrete motive. He had the sourness and strength of the old type of villain, and from the first moment that Beef had gone into his pub and seen how badly kept and uninviting it was, how the beer pipes from the cellar needed cleaning, and the beer itself was none of the best, from that moment Beef had decided that he was an “unsatisfactory character” and had had, he assured me, “an eye on him from the start.” He admittedly went up to the house at frequent intervals, and would not tell us when he had last been there, but again there was no known motive. If Beef's pretty interpretation of Omar Khayyam's reference to the
surly Tapster had anything in it, this man's connection with the murder might yet be established.

10.
Sheila Benson.
She had given us our most puzzling interview. Her blatant disregard for decency was so conspicuous as almost to be thought a bluff. Her evidence had been perfectly clear, but it conflicted with so much else that we had heard. Was she really in love with Peter, as she said? Could she really have scarcely known Stewart, as she claimed? And when she told us that the doctor was indifferent to her infidelities, was she speaking the truth? Those seemed important questions to probe.

11.
The old man.
I remembered Ed Wilson's admission of having met, on the morning after the murder, an old man leaving the main gate. Had he any connection with the “second figure” seen by Rose from the landing window? Or was he some harmless tramp who had slept in the summerhouse that night? If the former, it seemed possible that he was the murderer. If the latter, he might have very valuable information.

12.
Orpen, or Oppenstein.
He had no connection with the murder, of course, but was a name I remembered, since it had interested Beef, and been remembered by the cook.

W
HEN
Beef was what he somewhat ambiguously called “on the job,” his old habits were apt to return to him, and he liked to work regular hours. In this at least, I felt, he was original, for every other detective, of whose exploits I had read, would examine foot-prints, if possible, by moonlight, and make quite ordinary inquiries in the small hours with all the business of Grand Guignol. Beef would arrive at his headquarters—usually the scene of the murder—with great punctuality at ten o'clock, take an hour off for what he pompously termed his dinner, and leave the place promptly at six. This did not mean, of course, that he would not, on occasion, do a little nocturnal prowling, or early-morning observation. But he had to have good reason for it beyond the providence of inexpensive colour for his biographer.

That next day he was in a silent, self-important mood when I met him, and told me solemnly that he had “one or two investigations to carry out.” When I tried to discover the nature of these, he told me that I “would see,” and said no more until we arrived at Sydenham.

At the Cypresses he asked at once for Ed Wilson,
and the young man came to us in the library. I noticed a remarkable change in his manner from the last time I had seen him. Instead of the rather aggressive, almost cheeky young man whom we had interviewed, this was a jumpy and apprehensive Wilson, who seemed afraid of each question before it was put to him.

“You've got nothing else to tell me?” asked Beef, eyeing him narrowly.

“No, Sergeant,” he said, and shook his head with uncharacteristic vigour.

“Sure?” persisted Beef.

“Why, what do you think I might have?” returned Wilson, a little of the old aggression in his manner again.

“All right,” said Beef, “we'll leave it at that. Only, if you
have
got anything up your sleeve, I'd advise you friendly to out with it. Now then, I want to see that summer-house.”

Ed Wilson seemed genuinely surprised. “Summer-house?” he repeated.

“Yes. That summer-house where you told me it would be possible for an old tramp to spend the night.”

“Oh yes,” said Wilson, “I remember.”

Beef picked up his hat, and we followed the chauffeur to the front door. “Nasty sort of a morning,” commented Beef, as a gust of damp wind caught our faces in that gloomy drive. Neither of us replied as we took the gravel path beside the windows which led to a small lawn which might
once have been used for croquet, at the back of the house. We crossed this and found, half-concealed by the shrubs beyond it, one of those damp-looking, rotting little structures which the gardeners of fifty years ago loved to put in the most conspicuous points of their gardens. It seemed more a shed than a summer-house, and even before he opened the door, I knew the smell of rotting wood, and foresaw the stacks of miscellaneous garden tools and ornaments which we should find inside. I was right too—the place did not seem to have been used for anything but storing for many years, and I could smell the damp in the floor-boards.

Beef sniffed the air with the vigour of a vacuum-cleaner being demonstrated by a young and ardent salesman. “Hm,” he said, and then looked round him. After a moment he stooped down and picked up three or four small pieces of paper. These were about an inch by three-quarters of an inch, with one long edge straight and the opposite edge charred, the two ends being roughly torn. He took them between his thick finger and thumb and then placed them carefully in the pages of his notebook. “Good,” he grunted, wishing no doubt to be enigmatic.

Replacing his notebook in his pocket, he ignored the rest of the shed and, standing in the doorway, he began to examine the ground over which we had come.

“Now, if anyone was to want to get from here to the front gate at night,” he said, “when it didn't
matter whether they were seen from the windows of the house or not, that's the way they'd take, isn't it?” and he pointed obliquely across the lawn. “If, on the other hand,” he continued sagaciously, “they was to be creeping out in the morning, under full observation from the windows, they'd probably go round that way, wouldn't they?” and he indicated what might have been a path running round under the trees at the side of the lawn, so reaching the gate. “We'll follow them both,” he said finally.

“But Beef,” I interrupted, thinking this clumsy reasoning was a part of his facade, “what on earth do you expect to find now? If those foot-prints you asked about ever had been there, they would have been washed away long ago.”

“I'm not looking for foot-prints,” returned Beef. He started to pace across the lawn in the way he had first suggested, with his large, rheumy eyes watching the ground near him. He got as far as the front gate without pausing, and returned to the summer-house. “Now the other one,” he said, and he repeated the same performance with the second of the two routes, still, apparently, finding nothing. “That's funny,” he commented, inevitably, and stood pulling gently at the damp ends of his moustache.

Presently he began to cogitate slowly again. “Now if anyone following that route was to come on anything that had been thrown away by anyone else who had been leaving by the ordinary way, where would they have been most likely to find it?”

“In the attic,” I suggested helpfully.

“No, don't let's have any larking about,” said Beef; “this is serious. Can't you see what I'm getting at? There must be somewhere, where something thrown from there might be come on by somebody going this way.”

“Well,” I admitted, “I suppose that might be so, but it still leaves a fairly large area to cover. If they walked down the drive from the front door to the gate they could easily reach at least ten yards of this shrubbery which would be passed through by a person leaving the summer-house.”

“All right, then, those ten yards we'll have to search,” said Beef, and the two of us obediently followed him into the bushes.

“What are we to look for?” I asked.

“Anything,” said Beef.

“Well, there are plenty of dead leaves,” I returned sarcastically.

“Anything out of the way,” Beef amplified.

Suddenly there was a triumphant cry from Wilson, who had been a little way from us. “Would you call this out of the way?” he cried, and opening his hand under Beefs nose he showed him a small, unrusted latch-key.

Beef grabbed it. “Yes, I should,” he said; “only it wasn't what I was expecting to find.” He stared narrowly at Wilson. “Not by a long chalk,” he added.

We searched for a little longer in a desultory sort of way, and then Beef announced that we had done
enough. But when we had returned to the library he sat drumming his fingers on the desk in a vacant and irritating way until I asked him what he was going to do next.

“I think,” he announced, “I'll go down to see that bank manager. I've often said it was time I took my money out of the savings bank and had it in some place where I could write cheques. Now I've set up on my own it would be better, I daresay. And while I'm on it I might as well ask this manager what to do.”

We therefore drove to the local branch of one of the Big Five, and Beef produced his card and asked to see the manager. “You wait here,” he said rather rudely to me when he was summoned to the end of the counter.

I didn't have to wait long, for the brisk and busy manager seemed to dispose of him with great promptitude.

“Did you get the information you wanted?” I asked.

“He wasn't very chatty,” regretted Beef, “but he gave me all I needed. These are the dates on which Stewart drew those sums in notes,” and he showed me a written list. “Now, what I want to know is where Benson happened to be when each of those was drawn.”

“You'd better go and ask Mrs. Benson,” I suggested slyly.

“No, thanks,” almost shouted Beef. “I had a dose of her yesterday. I'm going to do it on the
telephone.” And I waited outside the booth while he shouted into the instrument.

When at last he joined me, he said, “It's a funny thing, but the third of those was drawn while that doctor was on his month's holiday. He had a lockout here while he was away.”

“A lock-out?” I repeated.

“That's what she said.”

After a moment I understood. “Oh, you mean a
locum.
A
locum tenens.”

“You know I can't speak French,” growled Beef, “and anyway it's time we had a tumble down the sink.”

I sighed. “All right,” I conceded, “if you're satisfied with your morning's work.”

“I am,” said Beef, suddenly cheering up, “more than satisfied. This case isn't going to be as difficult as what I thought for.” And he turned abruptly into a large and lavishly decorated public-house.

But I was relieved to find that in his mood of busy preoccupation, Beef did not waste as much time as usual in leaning conversationally over the bar, and we found ourselves strolling back towards the Cypresses before it was yet closing-time. I was reflecting that these were the dog-days of the case, the period after we had heard its more or less exciting outline, and before there were sensational developments. I realized that one had to plod through these steady hours of investigation, but Beefs nature made the process a somewhat too realistic one.

However, he suddenly stopped, and became so demonstrative as to seize my arm. “Cor, look at that!” he said, and there was a thrill of real excitement in his voice.

We were standing outside the window of a small second-hand shop, one of those useful and satisfactory little businesses so pleasantly different from their refined rich cousins the antique shops. I thought that at least he had seen in its window some object through which he could confidently expect to trace the murderer. Benson's own watch perhaps, or something of the sort. But to my disgust I found that his finger was stretched out in eager indication of a second-hand dart-board.

“Just what I've been looking for,” he said. “Nice elm board, hardly been played on, marked seven-and-six. Almost too good to be true; they're worth twenty-five bob new, and last a lifetime if you take care of them. Mind you, you want to soak them in water every week, otherwise they dry and little bits fall off of them. Then you should shift the numbers round now and again so as you don't get the nineteen and twenty worn to shreds. But handled carefully, a board like that'll be played on when I'm pushing up the daisies. It's just what I want for that front room of mine. I told Mrs. Beef when she was arranging all those antimacassars and things that I should add
my
little note of decoration to the room before long, and this is just what I had in mind. I don't say she'll be pleased, mind you, to have a dart-board up beside the photo of her father.

I remember her saying once before when I wanted it that she was afraid the glass would get broke. But there you are, she'll have to lump it. Come on, let's go in and buy it. It'll go in the back of your car quite handy.”

I got over my disappointment at finding that this had been all there was to excite Beef, and followed him into the shop. It was a dingy little place, full of valueless glass and china, a few Victorian chairs, some spring mattresses standing against the wall, a couple of chests of drawers that scarcely left one room to move around the shop, and all the useless bric-à-brac that one finds in such places. It smelt stale and unpleasant as though most of the furniture, before it had been scattered by auction sales, had stood around the shuttered bedrooms of Sydenham, while their late possessors had lain awaiting the undertaker on their brass bedsteads.