Case with No Conclusion (20 page)

Rose and Ed Wilson were living in the little flat over the garage. They both seemed pleased to see us, and as we sat talking for a few minutes I felt that it was genuine enough. In Ed Wilson himself I sensed a change, a certain steadying of character since I had last seen him. He was still self-confident, and as sure of his new plans as he had been of his old. But there was something less selfish about him now.

“We've been talking it over, haven't we, Rose?” he said. “You were awfully decent about that Ostend business, Sergeant. We've put almost all of that two hundred and twenty pounds in the bank. It's going to come in useful.”

“Almost all of it?” queried Beef severely.

Rose made a grimace at him. “We had a bit of an
outing the other night,” she said, “but we only spent a pound or two, honest.”

The antique-dealer's wife, who had been sitting in a rather foreboding silence on the settee all this time, now rose to her feet. “I thought,” she said icily, “that we were going to capture a criminal. I must say this seems a very strange way of doing it.”

Hurriedly Beef told Ed Wilson what had brought us to see him, and Wilson agreed immediately to come with us and see the old man. At the last minute Rose, who refused to be left behind, had to be squeezed into the back of the car, and then, with the antique-dealer's wife sitting somewhat grimly forward on the edge of her seat in order to direct me, we started off again.

The yard in which Fryer lived had at one time been a fairly large mews, but though it may once have housed horses, it had progressed no further, and was now dark and disused, except for the casual occupation of the old man whose headquarters it was. I drew the car a little way past its entrance and we got out and walked back.

“That's it,” said the woman. “And that's where he sleeps,” she added, pointing with her umbrella to the far end of the yard, where a door hung permanently open on one hinge.

The only light at the entrance showed a cobbled yard some twenty yards long. On either side the entrances to the stables were dark as caves. With the exception of the one at the end of the yard, all the doors had long since been taken away or
simply fallen to pieces on their hinges, and the heaps of junk stacked on every available space of the yard increased the effect of some prehistoric cave-dwelling with the kitchen-midden at each entrance. Dirty trodden straw which had spilled over from the packing-cases lay in wet smelling patches, and a dark trickle of rich brown liquid ran down the centre-way of the court.

Rose gave a shudder and drew closer to her husband. “Have we got to go down there?” she asked.

Beef peered down the yard without answering. “Are you sure he's here?” he asked the antique-dealer's wife at last. “Doesn't look like it to me.”

The woman nodded vigorously. “This is the place,” she said decisively; “I followed him to this very spot. I didn't think it was safe to go any farther, but I watched him as he went into that door at the end. That's where he sleeps, they told me.”

Gingerly we began to move forward, following Beef, who was looking cautiously behind each heap of rubbish before taking another step. Every now and again there would be a hurried rustling on either side of us, and then an abrupt silence until we moved again. Strangely enough, the least perturbed of us was the antique-dealer's wife herself. There was a gleam in her eye as she walked forward, keeping close behind Beef. In one hand she clutched her umbrella determinedly, the other held a handful of coat and skirt closely against her as if there were a danger of them falling off.

Nearly half-way down the yard rose a huge
mountain of junk, each succeeding piece having been stacked precariously on the last until it resembled a rough and dilapidated sphinx-like figure. The light behind us gleamed on twisted pipes, old carpets, wheels, and numerous fat porcelain shapes.

Beef began to negotiate it carefully, when suddenly he stopped and held up his hand. At the base of the heap we saw a slight movement, and then with slow dignity a lean black cat walked out into the light. Unable to run from sheer inanition, it stood back and unblinkingly watched us file past as quickly as we could. We stopped in a relatively open space in the center of the yard waiting for Beef to make the next move. He was breathing noisily, and took out his handkerchief to wipe his face.

“I think we might try calling him, don't you?” he said in a hoarse whisper. Nobody answered him, but I think I nodded.

“Mr. Fryer,” he called. “Mr. Fryer.” There was no answer. Beef looked at us in bewilderment.

“If he's still as drunk as what he was,” said the woman, “he won't never hear you.”

Beef called again, and this time there was the sound of movement from the end of the yard. The dilapidated door shook slightly as if someone had leaned against it for a moment, and then the figure of a man emerged and stood blinking at the dim light from under his tangled eyebrows before he began to shuffle slowly towards us.

I had never seen anybody who had so completely abdicated the bearing and appearance of a human being as this man. It was not that he looked inhuman in any Frankenstein way but rather that he seemed to have assumed so many of the properties of inanimate matter. He might have been an old tree-stump which, after having rotted comfortably in a swamp for many years, had been stood on end and clothed in a strange medley of coats and trousers in pure parody of a man. Now he wandered slowly towards us with uneven and uncontrolled steps, fumbling with one bony hand in the recesses of his tattered jacket, and mumbling continually to himself all the time.

Beef turned to Ed Wilson. “Well?” he said. “Do you recognize him?”

Ed Wilson did not need to take another look at the man. “That's him,” he said confidently.

“I
S
your name Fryer?” asked Beef.

The old man gave a non-committal grunt.

“I want to ask you some questions in connection with the Sydenham murder.” Beef brought out the words as though he were enunciating a death sentence, but they had little or no effect on the person to whom they were directed. The old man continued to stare placidly into Beefs face.

“On the morning after that murder you were seen to leave the garden of the Cypresses carrying a walking-stick. Later on you sold that stick in a local second-hand shop for seven shillings and sixpence. What's more, here it is,” ended Beef, pulling from behind him his treasured weapon and displaying it to the old man's indifferent gaze.

There was a long silence, then Beef, growing irritated, said, “Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

When the old man did speak it was disappointing. “How much do you want for it?” he asked.

Beef grew irate. “I'm not trying to sell it to you,” he said.

“Oh, I thought you had something to sell,” mumbled the old man.

Beef turned to the antique-dealer's wife. “Is he dippy?” he asked.

Her reply was made in a hoarse whisper. “I don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps there's method in his madness. He looks cunning enough.”

Whatever cunning the old man may have had seemed to me to be concentrated in the buying and selling of junk. His only interest in the swordstick was a commercial one. Beef pulled the blade out. “Have you ever seen this before?” he asked.

“When I was with Lord Roberts,” began the old fellow, and his voice trailed away into a murmur in which was audible such words as “Bloomfontein” and “De Wet.”

“They say he's never been out of London,” said the antique-dealer's wife. “He's always talking about foreign places. He gets them off the wireless.”

Beef seemed certain that bullying was the best method. “Now then,' he said, “that's enough of that. You tell us the truth. What were you doing in the garden of the Cypresses that morning?”

“I was out in the Klondike,” said Mr. Fryer calmly.

Beef looked round with exasperation, then tried a new method. “Look here,” he said, “I shouldn't be surprised if we was to buy you a pint or two if you was to tell us anything.” It needed an optimist to perceive any greater animation in the old face, even on this suggestion. “Where did you get this stick?”

“I'll give you a shilling for it,” the old man volunteered.

“Try taking him down to the pub,” said Ed Wilson.

Nobody had any serious objections to the scheme, and the old man himself started walking steadily towards the roadway.

“Don't you think you ought to have a look round this yard?” I suggested to Beef. “Surely there might be further evidence.”

Beef shook his head impatiently as he turned to follow Mr. Fryer, and I realized that I might have known that after Wilson had made that suggestion Beef would not delay, even if by doing so he might help his investigations. Or was Beef, I wondered cynically, a sort of modern Drake who could both finish his game of darts and arrest the criminal.

We indicated to Mr. Fryer that he should get into the car, but he slowly shook his head. “Wallamaloo,” was all he said, or all we could hear of his next sentence as he moved off along the pavement. And the best we could do was to drive slowly near the kerb, keeping him in sight.

The antique-dealer's wife was in ecstasies. “Isn't it thrilling?' she said, nudging me altogether too vigorously. “I never thought I'd be sitting in a high-powered car chasing a criminal.”

“You ought to have met Beef before,” I said; “you've got so much in common.” On which the Sergeant gave me a reproving glance and Ed Wilson smiled. We must have made an extraordinary quintette driving along there; Rose looking rather frail and silent but quite happy with her husband's
arm lightly around her shoulders, the antique-dealer's wife flushed and shining with enthusiasm, Beef solemn and thoughtful, and I incongruously conducting the whole manage.

To our surprise the old man passed the doors of one public-house and walked some hundreds of yards on to another. But my interest was rekindled when I perceived that it was the one kept by the ex-gardener of the Ferrers; the man we had tentatively identified with Omar Khayyám's “surly tapster.”

“Now,” said Beef, when we were all settled with our drinks, “tell us what you remember about that night.”

Old Fryer stared at his glass without answering for a minute or so, then he looked up and I thought there was a more intelligent look in his rheumy eyes. “It was dark,” he said, and then stopped.

“Here,” said Beef, “have another. Now, what were you saying? It was dark, and then what?”

The old man mumbled to himself for a while and I couldn't catch any of it until suddenly he said, “Like walking in a dream. Went on for days it seemed, then suddenly I saw a light, and made for it.” There were more mumblings until he fell silent again.

“Did you reach it?” I asked.

“I just stood there looking,” said Fryer, with a puzzled expression on his face, “and I saw…” He paused again, and then his face cleared, and he went on quickly, “And there was Lord Roberts.
'I've got great news for you,' he said…”

“We shan't never get nothing out of him,” said Beef despondently. “What sort of a figure would he cut in the witness-box, anyway?”

“How do you know he's not just tricking you?” asked the antique-dealer's wife. “I wouldn't mind betting he knows all about the murder and he's been paid to keep quiet about it. Why don't you answer the Sergeant properly?” she said, suddenly turning on the old man and prodding him sharply with the ferrule of her umbrella.

The old man lurched to his feet with a horrified look on his face. “The Matabele have surrounded the stockade,” he shouted, and then sank back on to the form and closed his eyes.

“No, that's no use,” said Beef. “I've got to think, I have. Do you play darts?” he said sullenly to Ed Wilson. “Of course you do. Well, come on then. I always think better when I'm playing darts. You'd better sit by old Fryer,” he said to me, “just in case he does say anything that might come in useful.”

I did not think much of the arrangement, which I took to be merely a manoeuvre on Beef s part to get to the dart-board, but nevertheless I did what he told me. For a time I continued to prod him with short questions, but he only carried on a continuous mumbling to himself as he absorbed the beers I brought him. When I noticed Rose looking amusedly at me I gave up the attempt altogether.

“What do you expect to get out of him, anyway?” she asked.

I explained that as far as we could guess he had been in the summer-house of the Cypresses on the night of the murder and that it was quite possible that he had seen something which would be considered as evidence. In any case we wanted to find out if he had actually picked up the swordstick in the grounds of the Cypresses, or if he had had it with him when he went in there.

“But where does the swordstick come in?” asked Rose. “Doctor Benson was stabbed with that knife, wasn't he?”

“You'd better ask Beef about that,” I said. But Beef was concentrating on the double seven in what looked like a losing game, so she did not interrupt him.

“Do you think Mr. Stewart did it?” she asked me; “I don't. Not with a knife he wouldn't have done. He wasn't that sort of a man. Of course he was a cold sort of man, you didn't ever know what he was thinking. But I don't think he could have done a thing like that.”

“But there's no special sort of man who is a murderer,” I said. “It's something anyone might do without knowing they were going to.”

“I didn't mean that I didn't think he was a murderer,” said Rose sanely; “I haven't ever seen a murderer, so I wouldn't know. What I meant was that he couldn't have killed Doctor Benson with that knife. He just couldn't have.”

Our conversation was interrupted by Beef, who had apparently lost the game to Wilson. “I don't
know,” he said disgustedly, “I don't seem to be able to do either. My darts game's all gone to pieces, and I can't think what to do next.”