Sgt Beef - Case Without A Corpse Part 29

You mean, you thought the foreigner was a policeman? That he had followed young Rogers from Buenos Aires?

Well, he had been on the boat.

I see. So you telephoned your wife, and the two of you used the pa.s.sport you had ready Very opportune.

Stute was thoughtful.

Why didn't you want Rogers to go back to Buenos Aires? he asked.

That didn't sound healthy either. With a gentleman following him from there. He might have been asked awkward questions in Buenos Aires. And not in the gentle and courteous way you have here.

Mm. How long had you known Rogers?

About two years.

And your bi-monthly visits to Braxham, 'for the fis.h.i.+ng,' coincided with his leave every time, and were made solely with the object of collecting the dope he brought over.

Now you're becoming personal, Inspector.

I'm not going to ask you where he got it, how much he brought, or for whom you were working. I know such questions would be useless. But I think you have the sense to see that if you had nothing to do with the murder young Rogers did, you had best tell me anything you know. We could very soon extradite you on the other charge if we thought you were keeping anything back.

I have seen your point since we began talking, said Fairfax. What do you want to know?

Have you any reason to suppose that Rogers might later have attacked that foreigner?

Well, you never know what a man's nerves will make him do when he's being followed. But he had absolutely no thought of it when I left him. He was full of a girl he was to meet that evening.

And that afternoon?

He had an appointment in Chopley. He didn't tell me what it was.

When did you see him last?

After we came out of the Mitre we walked towards the station and Riverside. At the entrance to the station I left him, and he was going on to pick up his motor-bike which he had left in the Riverside drive.

Every point in the man's story seemed to me to accord perfectly with our information. He had evidently been engaged in drug-smuggling, but was hoping that he might escape extradition on this charge while the graver affair overshadowed it.

Incidentally, Inspector, I have retired.

Retired?

Exactly. We needn't explain from what. I am not a criminal. I am a human being who wanted money, a lot of money, very badly. And I've got it. Quite securely, thank you. And now my wife and I are going to turn our energies to quite other matters. I have always been a keen antiquarian. Research is to be our future.

Now won't you have a c.o.c.ktail? said Mrs. Fairfax.

No, thanks. Well, before you do any research, you re going to do another stretch, Ferris. Here, in France, my friend. The French police have been following you, and know your relations with that beauty parlour.

Ferris smiled. Not a bit of it, he said My call was purely cautionary. I have never done anything in this country for which I could be blamed by even the mildest cure. No, such days are over. We always meant to retire to France when the time came. And the appearance of that foreign gentleman in Braxham meant that the time had come. There is no charge whatever that can be brought against me in France, and I don't quite see how you're going to formulate one in England.

Wot about your pa.s.sport? asked Beef suddenly. It's a wrong 'un. The French'll send you back over that, and then you'll be for it in England.

I think not, said Ferris. I have my own legitimate pa.s.sport of course, though I didn't think it wise to use it yet, imagining in the innocence of my heart that if anyone was pursued here it would be Ferris; not Freeman. However, now that we've had this little chat, I must use my own.

I will own that we stared at him, even Stute stared at him, with something like wonder. He was no ordinary blackguard.

Then Stute stood up smartly. Your 'retirement' as you call it, depends on a number of things. In the first place on the truth of your statements about Braxham, and your alibi. In the second, on whether or not we extradite you for drug-peddling in England. In the third, on whether you're speaking the truth about your innocence in France.

Quite, said Fairfax in his cool and even voice, But I don't think that you and I are going to meet again Inspector.

In any case, you'll be watched while I'm finis.h.i.+ng my investigations in England.

Then I do hope you'll be quick. My wife has never been to see the winter sports, and I've promised her a stay this year.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE RETURN was less cheerful than the voyage out. It seemed that we had got what evidence Fairfax could supply, and that so far from being helpful it set us back. That was the maddening thing about the casethe more of it that was cleared up, the further receded the solution. Stute had begged for facts, and had promised to form a full explanation from them, But the more he learnt the less he knew.

Do you believe Fairfax's story? I asked, when we were on board our home-bound channel steamer.

Yes. I'm afraid I do. We shall check his details, of course, and see if we can follow a few more of his movements as a drug-vendor. But I'm pretty certain that they will be incidental to the main issue. I don't think he was directly concerned in the murder. I shouldn't be surprised, in fact, if he's speaking the truth when he says that his first knowledge of it came from reading the newspaper.

Strange type.

Yes. Not at all usual. It is so rarely that a criminal looks ahead. I should think he owes that much to the wife. But I should like to get evidence against him. He was clever enough and imaginative enough all the time he was selling cocaine to know at whose expense he was getting rich. Wretched little addicts who were throwing away their lives. Whatever is right or wrong it is pretty certain that giving people narcotics is a moral crime as well as a legal one.

I was anxious to return to the problem, and to know what Stute would make of it now. One of the possibilities had been, provisionally, removed. To which of the others would he turn?

What line are you going on now? I asked, taking advantage of the fact that he liked thinking aloud to me.

I suppose, he said, I shall come back to the girl. There is not yet the remotest evidence that Rogers even met the foreigner. Whereas we have actually got a motive when it comes to Smythe. And in this hotch-potch, a motive alone is worth worrying over.

But I thought you ruled the girl out. You explained to me why it could not very well have been her.

I know, I know, snapped Stute irritably, but what the devil is one to go on in this preposterous case. Where's Beef?

He said he was going to lie down. He doesn't feel his best as sea.

Stute continued to talk peevishly.

I've had enough of this investigation, he said And they'll be getting impatient at the Yard soon.

You can always report that there was no murder, I suggested.

I wish I could. But thenwhy did the fellow commit suicide? A man of Rogers's stamp doesn't swallow cyanide of pota.s.sium for nothing. And if there wasn't a murder there was violence, and I can't even find that. No there's no way out. I've got three chances. Fairfax's alibi may be a dud, so that I can prove that he was involved. I may be able to see a way out of the impa.s.se I reached in the possibility of its being the girl. Or something may come to light about the foreigner.

You don't think there can be anything in Beef's story of Sawyer's brother?

Stute shrugged. There might be, he said, but if we've got to trace every husband who is escaping an insufferable wife just now, we might as well call in every policeman in Great Britain. However, I can keep it as a last resource. And now, he turned to me quite politely, but with some of that terseness I had noticed him show to others, would you mind leaving me to think this out?