Case with No Conclusion (19 page)

“It might be a good idea,” he said, “to get that whisky analysed. You remember, what I smelled arsenic in. Do you know of a good analyst I could send it to?”

“Why, as a matter of a fact I do,” replied Peter immediately, “a man called Stevenson. I've got the address at home somewhere; I'll send it to you, shall I?”

“Can't you remember it now?” asked Beef impatiently.

Peter could not, but he recalled that the man's initials were W.L. and that Beef would be sure to find it in the 'phone book, with which information, duly entered in his notebook, Beef had to be content.

To our surprise, it was the cook herself who opened the door to us at the Cypresses. “Oh, it's you,” she said, referring to Beef rather than to either Peter or me. “Well, don't expect to find things tidy. It's more than I can do, running up and down those stairs till my heart sounds like an electric road-drill. I said I'd stay here till the affair was finished, and stay I will, but I didn't expect to have the whole house on my hands. What with the coming and going ever since that day, and everything being topsy-turvy on account of that girl, I don't know where I am half the time.”

“Why, what girl, Mrs. Duncan?” asked Peter. “Do you mean Rose?”

“No, the other one,” said Mrs. Duncan. “Not that Rose isn't as bad in some ways, putting on airs just because she went on a bit of a spree abroad. ‘Mrs. Wilson to you,' she says to me only the other day. Anybody would think she'd married a duke by the way she carries on, instead of that good-for-nothing chauffeur who's put ideas into her head that never ought to have been there. At her age too. Work's too good for her now. Mustn't soil her hands, I suppose. Oh no, it's not her I'm talking about.”

“Who are you talking about?” asked Beef, somewhat obtusely.

“That other little hussy,” said the cook, scarcely taking time to breathe. “Said she'd had enough of the whole affair she did—as if all of us hadn't—and just packed up her things and cleared off. Didn't leave no address neither. Not that anybody
would want to know where she'd gone to. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say.”

“Do you mean to say you don't know where she's gone off to?” asked Beef with concern.

“Well,” said Mrs. Duncan, somewhat mollified by the presence of an interested audience, “she did say something about going home, I seem to remember, so I expect you could find her if you wanted to. Though why anyone should want to find her I can't imagine,” she ended with spirit.

It was impossible to persuade Mrs. Duncan to enter the library, but at last, after a great deal of of-coursing and quite-understanding Peter managed to get her seated at her own table in the kitchen.

“Now, if you remember,” said Beef at last when we were all settled, “you said something last time I saw you about you and your husband that was doing a spot of horse-racing.”

“And may I ask you why we shouldn't have a little bit on the horses now and again?” demanded Mrs. Duncan truculently. “That and the pools are about the only way a working man and his wife can turn an honest penny nowadays. You've got your fox-hunting and all that, why shouldn't we have a bet sometimes?”

The idea of Beef “having his fox-hunting” was too much for me, and the smile which this picture produced brought Mrs. Duncan's indignation down on my own head.

“Yes, you can smile,” she said. “Come down here trying to do anyone out of the little enough enjoyment
she does get out of life. You can smile.”

“But, Mrs. Duncan,” protested Peter, “Sergeant Beef has nothing against horse-racing. He wasn't trying to stop you from betting; he just wanted some information.”

“Well then,” said Mrs. Duncan expansively, “what did he want to make all that fuss about it for?”

“I'm surprised at you doing pools, though,” said Beef, rather obviously, I thought, trying another line. “Always strike me as being a bit of a take-in, they do. Now with horse-racing, if you do it right, there's a chance to make a bit. How do you usually come out?”

Mrs. Duncan thawed immediately. “Well, on the whole,” she said, “I should say about evens. Of course, we used to have a bit of a splash on the Derby—who doesn't? But taking all in all, I should say we might find ourselves up a few shillings at the end of the year. And then again we might be a few shillings down.”

“Ah,” said Beef understandingly, “and who might your bookmaker be, if you don't mind my asking?”

“To tell you the truth,” said Mrs. Duncan, “I don't know his name. Duncan always put the money on through the newsagent's just down the end of the road. But I expect they'd tell you.”

“Duncan used to put some money on for Mr. Stewart Ferrers too, didn't he?” continued Beef in what was supposed to be a casual voice.

Mrs. Duncan looked suspicious immediately and gave a quick glance at Peter before she answered.
“Who told you that?” she asked sharply.

“Why, Mr. Ferrers himself, of course.”

“Well, since you seem to know—though I thought it was supposed to be a secret—yes, he did.”

Beef then turned the conversation to other subjects, and after having heard a lengthy discourse from Mrs. Duncan on the character of her late husband, we left the Cypresses and drove down to the little newsagent's at the bottom of the road. Beef was only gone a few minutes, and returned with a triumphant smile on his face. As we headed north again, towards the address which Beef had obtained from the newsagent, I began to feel that at last the case was beginning to move. It might be quite a small point we were after, but there was satisfaction in it after the mass of unhelpful evidence we seemed to have collected during the last few days.

Once again Peter and I stayed in the car while Beef entered the office of the bookmaker, and we were chatting pleasantly when, after about ten minutes, the Sergeant returned.

“Well, that's that,” he said as he reseated himself next to me.

“What did you find out?” asked Peter.

“Those remarkable sums your brother's been throwing away on the horses,” said Beef, “don't ever add up to more than three or four pounds in a year, that's what.”

“How do you know that?”

“Well, all the bets were registered under Duncan's name, and in the first place it was easy to see
that it was mostly in half-crowns and such, which was what Duncan and his wife would want on for themselves. Every now and again there was a bet of ten bob, and once or twice one for a quid, but even if we took all those as being Stewart Ferrers's it doesn't come to more than a fiver at the most.”

“That's not very helpful,” I commented.

“It's helpful for the prosecution,” said Peter soberly. “If he wasn't using the money for betting, what else could it be but blackmail?”

“Don't you jump to conclusions,” said Beef slowly. “We haven't got to the bottom of this by a long chalk. There's a lot of things I don't quite understand yet. But it's only a question of time, you'll see.”

“I hope so,” I muttered, and Beef gave me a hurt look.

We dropped Peter at his flat on the way back to Paddington, but by the time I drew the car into the side of the kerb in Lilac Crescent, Beef seemed to have shaken off his gloom, and it was in his familiar manner that he said:

“Well, you'll come in for a cup of tea now you're here, won't you? Mrs. Beef 11 get some for us in two ticks.”

I accepted his invitation, and in a short time we were all three seated round the table in his small back room eating the food which Mrs. Beef had prepared for us.

Beef had a habit, which I well knew, of reciting the day's events to his wife every evening when he
returned home. This he proceeded to do now while his wife knitted imperturbably at a length of sock, occasionally interrupting Beefs dramatic monologue with such remarks as, “Did he really? Well, don't let your tea get cold, then,” or more simply, “Don't talk with your mouth full, dear.”

It was while Beef was in the middle of a description of Stewart in gaol that the telephone bell rang, and he stopped in mid-sentence with his mouth slightly open.

“Whoever can that be?” said Mrs. Beef placidly. “I expect it's only a wrong number.”

But Beef brushed her remarks aside, and was out in the little hall almost before the bell had rung three times. The muffled sound of his voice came to us through the door, but we could not hear the words. It was quite a lengthy conversation, and when at last Beef returned his face was flushed with exertion and his eyes sparkled.

“Who do you think that was?” he asked pregnantly. “It was that antique-dealer's wife. You know, where we bought the dart-board.”

“Dart-board?” I queried. “Oh—where we found the swordstick, you mean.”

“That's right,” said Beef. “Well, she says she's got on to that old man what sold them the stick. She's followed him round, just like I thought she would, and now all we've got to do is to go down there straight away and see what he's got to say for himself.”

L
OOK
here, Beef,” I said, “I think you'd better go down to Sydenham alone this time. I really don't think I could face that suburb again tonight.”

“Now then, none of that,” Beef returned, though quite good-humouredly. “You know very well I can't go trapezing down there in buses. Besides, if things turn out as I think they will, I can promise you this will be the last time. What's wrong with Sydenham, anyway?”

“Oh, I daresay it's all right,” I conceded, “but I'm tired of it, Beef, and I'm tired of this case. You seem to keep fidgeting about with little bits of evidence, and you don't give me any idea where it's leading.”

“Still,” said Beef with irrepressible optimism, “you must admit that this is promising. That old chap might be the murderer himself,” he chuckled.

“Don't be silly,” I snapped. “You may be able to lead other people up all sorts of garden paths of suspicion, but don't try it on me. You know very well you don't think this old man had anything to do with it.”

“I shouldn't go so far as to say that,” said Beef, “but we'll see what
he
has to say.”

“Oh, all right,” and once again I got into the
driving seat of my car, and we set out on the familiar road to the south-eastern suburb.

We did not need to enter the shop, for the antique-dealer's wife was standing in the doorway scanning the road as we drove up. Her round eager face was flushed, and a small black hat tottered precariously on her untidy hair. She grasped an umbrella in her hand, and when she saw us drawing up she waved vigorously.

Beef, however, stepped down with leisure and decorum from the car, and brushed his overcoat with his hand before turning to her. “Good evening,” he said.

“Oh, I'm so glad you've come,” she exploded. “I've been waiting for you nearly an hour. I've got him all right. Found out where his place is, and everything about him. I can tell you his name, and his reputation. I tried to get a photograph of him, but the light was too bad.”

“If there's any photographing to be done,” said Beef, “I'll arrange for it. All I asked you to do was to find out where the man lived.”

“Yes, and I've found out. It was quite by chance, in a way; at least, that was, my seeing him again at all. I went down to do a bit of shopping just after lunch, and at two o'clock, when the public-houses shut, I saw him come rolling out as drunk as you please. I was with another lady, and I turned round to her and said, ‘Who's that?' I said. She said, ‘That's old Fryer. What about it?' I told her it was a matter of life and death, and set off after him. It
took nearly an hour and a half for him to get the little way down to his yard. He kept stopping, and once he sat down on the pavement for half an hour with his head against a lamp-post, until a policeman moved him on. He's known in these parts-well, everybody seems to have heard of him. He's always on the booze, and when he's not he deals in rags and bones and that. They say he's got a lot of money put away, but there's no telling. Anyway, from what I've heard of him, I should say he was capable of anything—even murder.”

“Whatever he's capable of,” said Beef crushingly, “all I want to see him about is if he's picked up a swordstick which maybe didn't belong to him.”

“Well,” said the woman, looking at Beef as though she'd been tricked, “I thought this was a real crime you were investigating. If I'd have known that's all you was after, I wouldn't have soiled my mind with finding out about a dirty old drunken rag-and-bone man.”

“I must say,” Beef amended quickly, “that you've been a great help to me. It's the little things what count in a case like this, you know. Now, where did you say this man Fryer lived?”

“You could hardly call it living,” said the woman, with a quick return of interest. “He's got a sort of a dirty old yard where he keeps his barrow and things, and sometimes he sleeps there.”

“Where else does he sleep, then?” asked Beef.

“From what they tell me, almost anywhere. He's been found in almost every corner you can imagine.
When he's out on the booze, he's likely to stop anywhere and sleep it off. Why, he was even found in the church once. And the times he's been run in for the night, you wouldn't believe.”

Beef grunted understandingly. “I've known people like him before,” he said.

“But, Beef,” I interrupted, “how will you know if this man Fryer is the same man Wilson saw coming out of the front gates of the Cypresses that morning? They might be two different people altogether. And the stick may be just a coincidence.”

“I'd thought of that,” said Beef calmly. “Before we go along to see him we're going to pick up young Wilson. If we take him along with us he can identify him, can't he?”