Case Without a Corpse (10 page)

One could see so well—now—what life had been like to the old couple in their neat home behind the shop. It was dominated by the calendar, and the date on which “Alan” was due for his few days' leave. I was almost inclined to agree with Molly Cutler when she said that young Rogers must have killed in self-defence. How else could he have faced the old people?

And the Cutlers, mother and daughter. What a curious conflict had been there. The older woman studying appearances, respectable, uncharitable—the girl lovely and free. One could see how she treated her mother—not with argument or aggression, but with a kind of secret indifference. She had never troubled to answer any of Mrs. Cutler's ill-natured references, yet she had her own point of view. One
felt that up to a point the two had agreed to differ, and, when possible, had met on what common ground they had. It wasn't so much that Molly had concealed her love-affair from her mother. She had not discussed it, any more than she had discussed other intimate aspects of her life.

Yet she had been in love with young Rogers. There was no doubt about that. A deep and steadfast love, I thought, which had forgiven him much, and would have done much for him. What a fool the fellow had been not to have married her long ago. Unless there was some barrier of which we knew nothing.

I thought of Mrs. Murdoch, too, with her grim pretentiousness, her insistence on the use of words like “client,” “lunch,” “waiter,” in speaking of her business, and yet the rather cheerless look of her hotel. She was the sort of woman who, if she knew more than she had already admitted, would cheerfully have lied rather than involve her hotel's name in unwelcome publicity.

Then Mrs. Walker. I thought with a smile how much of her tawdry self she had revealed. How she had been so ready to give young Rogers's address to the enquiring Miss Smythe, and how she had gloated over the situation when the girl had come down to “get her due.” From all her garrulity nothing had emerged so clearly as the gusto with which she had watched the affair, and the chagrin she had felt at not being instantly made the chief witness. I could see her now, with her untidy red hair
and not over-clean face as she poured out her precious information.

There were others who had shewn unexpected side to their natures. Mrs. Simmons, of this hotel, with her tip-toe respect for the presence of a dead body, even if it was a murderer's body; Mr. Simmons with his instantly selfish concern for its effect on his house; Charlie Meadows, delighted to have his little part in the investigation, and the waiter at Riverside yielding to Beef's “come off of it.”

None of these people would ever have been more to me than passers-by, but the sudden earthquake in their town which a murder had caused had scattered their conventional covering wide.

It was, of course, too early to form a theory about the actual crime, and there were too many questions unanswered. If, for instance, young Rogers had indeed killed the girl, as it would seem reasonable to suppose, when had he done it? Not, as we had half-imagined, on the Common that afternoon, for she had been seen sitting on the back of his motor-bike at ten to six near the station. And how or where could he have done it after that? If she had
not
gone on the six o'clock train, where had she been during the twenty minutes or more that he spent in the Dragon, from 6.10 onwards? Or again, supposing that he had killed the girl, why had the Fairfaxes disappeared? And the foreigner?

Imagining the girl out of it, and picking Fairfax as the person murdered, when could
Rogers have done that? Had he taken the man out on the back of his motor-bike, and during that short time between starting up his motorbike at Riverside and arriving at Rose Cottage, murdered him and disposed of the corpse? Almost impossible. Had Fairfax remained away from Riverside all the afternoon and been murdered by Rogers after the latter had seen Smythe on her train at six o'clock? If so, where? How? And, above all, why?

As for the foreigner, it was too obscure. We had no hint even of his nationality, certainly not of his reason for being in Braxham. But suppose young Rogers had killed him, afternoon or evening, who was it that I saw standing across the road when Beef and Simmons were carrying the corpse? Who had visited the corpse that night, and why?

It was all very well for Stute to talk about his system and his time-table, let him answer a few of these questions. Why, good heavens, we were as much in the dark as ever. We didn't even know young Rogers's real name.

D
ETECTIVE
-I
NSPECTOR
S
TUTE
scarcely said good morning, when I reached the station next day, before he referred with some irritation to Beef.

“Not here yet!” he said. “The man has no sense of time.” He gave me a rather grim smile. “You've spoiled him, you know, writing up the bit of luck he had in that Thurston case. The poor chap thinks he's a detective.”

“I don't think he's ever thought that,” I returned.

Just then Beef entered, looking somewhat dazed and irritable, as he is apt to do in the early morning.

“Well, Sergeant,” said Stute, “I've done half a day's work. I've given instructions in London that every effort shall be made to find the girl Smythe's address or to trace her story before this happened. If she is what we suppose it shouldn't be hard to find out where her room was, though whether she's still alive or not remains to be seen.”

His brisk voice went on, as he turned over the papers before him.

“I've also arranged for the Common to be searched, at any rate for two hundred yards each side of the road to begin with. They will form search parties out there. Fortunately the hunting instinct is still strong enough in human
beings to make the formation of a search party an easy matter.”

Stute paused and lit a cigarette.

“Then—are you listening, Sergeant?—I have sent for the postman who delivers in the High Street to come here as soon as he's finished his round.”

“Wotever d'you want 'im for?” These were the first words Beef had spoken.

“I want to see whether any other letters were delivered to young Rogers of which his aunt and uncle knew nothing. An ordinary routine enquiry, Beef. The sort of enquiry you ought to have made already. I wish you could realize that a case like this is not cleared up by some miraculous flash of insight or deduction, but by a steady accumulation of the facts.”

“Yessir,” said Beef.

“Then, since I gather you had forgotten the matter, I have given orders for the searching of the interior of that warehouse beside the Dragon.”

“Oh yes. I get you,” said Beef, sucking his moustache.

“And finally, I had a look at the motor-bike. I understand that you have allowed it to remain at old Rogers's. I had it brought round. It should have been brought here at once.”

“Why? There was nothink to see. I 'ad a look at it.”

“That is for me to judge, Sergeant. And now, will you kindly attend while I tell you what reports have come in this morning? Thank you. The Research Department tell us that the stains on the cuff of the shirt and the sleeve
of the coat are actually the stains of human blood. The bottle from which young Rogers drank contained cyanide of potassium. And the Fairfax couple have not yet been traced.”

“Well, we knew about the stains and the bottle,” said Beef, “so we aren't much forrader.”

“Wait a minute,” said Stute. “I have a report here from a man who examined the only one of young Rogers's fellow stewards who had anything revelant to say.”

Beef looked up. This seemed to interest him.

“Only one little point emerges,” said Stute, “and it's this. Young Rogers was apparently in the habit of bringing home a number of tickets for the Buenos Aires Lottery. He had them in a sealed envelope, and told this steward that he was always a bit afraid they would be found on him by the Customs officers.”

“'S' that all?”

“Yes. Our man tried hard to get anything further there might be, but Rogers had never told him what he did with the tickets in England.”

“Well, that's worth knowing, anyway,” said Beef.

“Everything connected with the case is worth knowing,” said Stute. “It is by co-ordinating all these pieces of information that we shall arrive at the truth.”

There was a knock at the door, and Constable Galsworthy came in. There was an air of respectful independence about this big, finely-built countryman, with the ruddy young face and rather intelligent eyes, which made me
inclined to support his claim for consideration as an efficient policeman, as against that of Constable Smith of Chopley, who had been almost ingratiating towards Stute.

“Fawcett, the postman, is here, sir,” he said to Stute.

“Show him in,” said the detective.

Fawcett looked a little embarrassed as he took a chair. His encounters with Beef were usually less formal.

“I want you, Fawcett, to think carefully. Can you remember what letters you have delivered for young Rogers lately?”

Fawcett thought carefully. “There was one,” he said at last.

“When did it arrive?”

“I can't say exactly. A day or so before he got home.”

“You didn't notice the postmark?”

“No. I didn't. If I had to notice every postmark on the letters I deliver—well.”

“Nor the handwriting?”

“No.”

“And you can't remember any others lately?”

“No.”

“None from abroad?”

This query caused Fawcett to think carefully again.

“There
was
one from abroad,” he said at last, “but I don't think it was for him. It was for Mr. Rogers.”

“When did that arrive?”

“Before the other one. I should say about a week before. I remember that because it was
one of those thin envelopes what they use for air mail.”

“Indeed? You are sure it wasn't for young Rogers?”

“Not so far as I can remember. I have an idea—can't be sure, mind you—that it was just addressed to ‘Mr. Rogers' and nothing more. But that may be my fancy.”

“You remember delivering it?”

“Yes. Because I said to Mr. Rogers that you want to be careful of them thin envelopes in case they get lost among the others.”

“He took it himself.”

“That's right.”

“And where had it come from?”

“Ah. Now you're asking,” said Fawcett. “I don't know nothing about foreign postage.” He implied that he was nothing less than an authority on the home variety. “I can only say this came from abroad.”

“Well, I'm much obliged to you, Fawcett. That's all we shall require.”

And Fawcett, though he couldn't afterwards have explained his reason for it, said, “Thank you, sir,” and left.

Stute was uncharacteristically silent and thoughtful for a moment, then he said, “Might be worth following up. Send me that constable with the ridiculous name, Beef.”

“Galsworthy!” Beef shouted without rising from his chair.

Stute winced but turned to the young man. “Go round to Mr. Rogers, the bootmaker, and ask him if he remembers a letter arriving by
air mail from abroad about a week before his adopted nephew came home. Find out who had written it, and to whom it was addressed, and anything else you can. And by the way, I would like a specimen of young Rogers's handwriting.”

“Very good, sir.”

Once more we were alone.

My recollection of the whole of that day, in fact, is of spending hours in Beef's little office, with Stute receiving reports and sending out enquiries. It was a day for trimming the edges of our evidence, and squeezing out the last detail from local informants. Before mid-day the man who had searched the warehouse returned to say that he had found nothing. It was Beef's second constable who had done this job, a rather lanky young man, with a large nose, called Curtis.

“There was nothing there, sir,” he said quite coolly to Stute, to whom he was making his report, “and you can take it that unless anyone had a key and went in from the door that opens on to the street, no one has been there. There was dust and cobwebs round the windows and doors on the river side which hadn't been disturbed for months.”

“And nothing
in
the place?”

“Nothing at all, sir.”

“Thank you, Curtis.”

Stute never showed any sign of disappointment when he drew blank. And he had another disappointment a few minutes later when Galsworthy returned from the bootmaker's.

“Well?” he snapped at the constable.

“I saw Mr. Rogers, sir,” began Galsworthy rather breathlessly, “and he remembered the letter perfectly. It
was
to him, he says, and had been sent by young Rogers himself from Rio de Janeiro on the way home.”

“Did you ask him what it was about?”

“Yessir, Nothing special, he said. It appears that young Rogers had the habit of sending them an air mail letter now and again when he was out there. Mr. Rogers looked to see if he'd kept it, but he hadn't. He found an old envelope addressed in young Rogers's writing and gave it to me. Here you are, sir.”

We examined a dirty envelope. The writing was firm and straight, not altogether the writing of an illiterate man, but not ornate or scholarly.

“Very well, constable,” said Stute. He still could not bring himself to enunciate the name.

The next person to be shown in brought us more satisfying information. He was the Vicar of Chopley, a boisterous and professedly busy individual, rubicund and noisy.

“Ah, Inspector,” he shouted to Stute, and I silently wondered why parsons so frequently opened their sentences with that sound, “young Smith, our village policeman at Chopley, suggested that I should give you a call.”

His tones rang through the whole police station. I was thankful to see that Stute treated him with no more ceremony than he had shewn to other informants.