Sgt Beef - Case Without A Corpse Part 34

Can't help your troubles, said Miss Smythe airily.

There was a pause, during which Stute seemed to be considering his future line of attack.

Finished now? asked Smythe. I've got things to do, you know.

How did you get that 20 out of Rogers? Told him there was a baby, I suppose. All right. Don't answer.

Another long pause, during which Mrs. Walker fidgeted irritably.

Look here, Miss Smythe, said Stute suddenly, in a more civil tone of voice, I believe you when you say that you knew nothing about the murder. Now you won't hear any more of me after this if you'll do your best to help me now. Just rack your brains and see if you can think of anything else that might help us. Rogers left you, and went straight off, so far as we can make out, and committed a murder. Now tell us if you can remember anything he said or did that would help us.

I'm trying to think, the girl replied. Honestly I am. No, I really can't remember another thing. I was as surprised as everyone else when I read how he'd done for someone, and killed himself. He seemed full of beans that night.

Stute rose. Very well then, he said, we'll leave it at that. And he turned to go.

I thought for a moment that there was going to be some discordance between the two women but both seemed to prefer an att.i.tude of exaggerated hauteur to one of violence. Mrs. Walker made her exit royally, and Miss Smythe pretended to yawn again.

Not until we were in the car, and at her mercy, did Mrs. Walker release her pent-up feelings.

There you are! she said. That's what comes of being good to anyone. And to think of that girl being alive the whole time! Deceitful, I call it. She might have told anyone and saved all that searching for her. And 20 too! If I'd have known she'd got all that, things would have been very different. But there you are. Well, now you know she's alive, so I suppose you've got to find out who was murdered.

Yes, said Stute, I have. And if you would be good enough to remain silent for a moment I might have a chance of concentrating what wits I have left on the subject.

There. That's a nice thing to say to anyone. And after I've come all this way to help you. Still, it's what one must expect from the police I suppose. I shall be glad when we're home.

CHAPTER XXV.

AT DINNER that night Stute was in good spirits, but I fancied that there was irony in his amus.e.m.e.nt.

Really, he said, this thing is going too far. It seems we have only to start enquiries for one of the people we supposed murdered, to find them safe and sound, and quite willing to tell us all they know. I've never had such a case. Do you know that for the first time in ten years I've been thinking of getting someone else in?

I don't think you should do that, I said. After all, it is narrowing down.

Narrowing down! I should think it was. It will fade away altogether soon. But what can I do? If I go to my chief and say I don't believe that anyone was murdered, he will instantly ask why young Rogers committed suicide. And whom he had stabbed with that knife. And whose blood it was. After all, even if n.o.body's dead, young Rogers believed there was. Where is that person?

I sighed. Don't ask me, I begged, I've been out of my depth from the beginning.

There is this about the facts that we've collectedthey are gradually establis.h.i.+ng the time of the murder. Now that we have found the girl it can be a.s.sumed that it was done after Rogers left the Dragon at twenty to seven I am going to concentrate everything on the next hour and a halfthat is before he got back to confess to old Rogers at eight o'clock I've instructed that constable. ...

Galsworthy, do you mean? Stute nodded irritably. I've sent him to question the commissionaire and box-office girl at the Cinema, to see if they remember Molly Cutler waiting there at seven o'clock. And we'll go to-morrow to see the people living on either side of old Rogers's shop, in the hope of discovering whether young Rogers came in while his uncle was out between six-thirty and seven fifteen. But it's all hearsay. All reports from townspeople. Nothing to go on. Give me an honest murder with a body to it, and I'll find your man. A couple of bloodstained carpets and a telegram from Bournemouth, and we'll have a hanging. But d.a.m.n itwhere are you in a thing like this? It doesn't need a detective but a fortune-teller, or a water-diviner, or a medium.

You know very well you're enjoying it, I said.

Well, it's unusual. But they're getting a bit impatient at the Yard. They need me in this Rochester affair.

You've still got the foreigner, I reminded him, and Mr. Sawyer's brother.

And a thousand other people who haven't been seen lately. I dislike the idea of even making enquiries about the publican's brother. It will make a fool of me, because no one would believe afterwards that I wasn't certain it was he. And also because I don't want to be the one who sends that poor devil back to his wife. I'm a married man myself.

And so?

So we must just go on hammering away. Collecting facts and sorting them out. At any rate we have established that it was not Fairfax and not the girl, who was murdered. And again he smiled somewhat bitterly.

Next morning several reports had come in. Fairfax's alibi was in order. The shop at which he had bought the two hand-bags was able to find the purchase in their books for that Wednesday, and a record of their having been sent to Hammersmith that night. The a.s.sistant even claimed to recognize the photograph shewn him. The barmaid at the Sword on the Cross remembered the incident referred to by Fairfax and on seeing his photograph said that he often came in. But she could not, of course, fix the date. However, since Fairfax had been at Braxham for some days before, and had, presumably, gone to France the morning after, this added weight to his story. The most concise and satisfactory confirmation came from the Flints.h.i.+re Hotel, who remembered Fairfax and had a record of his having stayed there that night under the name of Fortescue.

Nice 'ow it all fits in, commented Beef.

I think we can take it as proved, Stute admitted more dryly.

Then Galsworthy had to tell us that both the commissionaire and the box-office clerk at the Cinema clearly remembered Molly Cutler having waited about in the foyer for at least an hour on the day of the suicide, and had often commented on it since. Galsworthy was about to go into details of how upset she had been when Stute cut him short and dismissed him.

'E's a decent young fellow, Beef said. 'Is trouble is 'e keeps too much to 'imself. Never gets among the other fellows. 'Owever, wot with this training. . . .

There are more important matters to be discussed, Beef, than the idiosyncrasies of your a.s.sistant. Have you done as I asked you and questioned the various garages where Rogers might have bought petrol?

Yessir. 'E 'ad some in at Timkins's near the station at some time just before three, but that's all.

Very well. And now we will go round and see the people living beside old Rogers's shop, to see whether they remember hearing the motorbike that night.

The houses of the High Street were old, and as so often happens behind the clearly divided shop fronts, the living quarters were chaotically arranged. The yard of one house would be set behind the back windows of another, while behind a lock-up shop would be the whole of a dwelling-house which was reached by a pa.s.sage running down beside it.

We went first to old Rogers himself, who left his workshop to show us where his adopted nephew had kept his motor-bike. Between Rogers's shop and the next, a dingy furniture store was a public pa.s.sage leading right through to another street, and in the wall of this was a wooden doorway into Rogers's back-yard.

He had fixed that door with a spring catch behind it, and a Yale lock, so that when he went out on his bike he left the latch of the lock up, and when he came back he had only to kick the door and it would stay open for him. You can see the place on the paint-work where he used to kick it. Then he could ride right in, across the yard, and into that shed, where he kept it. It was a heavy machine, and he didn't like wheeling it, old Rogers explained.

Very ingenious, said Stute. But noisy for you if you were sitting in your room behind the shop.

Oh, we didn't mind that, said old Rogers with a smile. We were used to noise when he was about.

I see. So that if, when he came in at eight o'clock that evening, he had come on his motorbike, you would certainly have known it?

Oh yes. But I'm sure he didn't. Unless by any chance he wheeled it in on purpose. Even if he'd ridden it up the pa.s.sage I should have noticed, because it used to resound between those two walls.

So that I am to understand that he came in on his motor-bike between half-past six and seven while you were out, and then went out again on foot?

''That's what it certainly looks like. His bike was in the shed next morning, anyway.

Whose windows are those? queried Stute indicating two very dirty windows which looked out on to the Rogers's back yard. They faced the wall with the door in it from a house behind the shop on that side.

Some people we have nothing to do with. Well, there are a lot of children, and they took to climbing out of that window into our garden, and when I spoke to the mother about it, she got very abusive. Very abusive indeed.

Does she own the shop in front of her house?

Oh no. That's a lock-up sweet shop. These premises are let to hervery cheaply I believe, but the landlord can't get her out. Not very pleasant neighbours for us. Such very dirty children. My wife gets quite worried about them.

I see. How does one get to them?