Death of a Commuter (18 page)

Carolus took more time in serving him and did not need to pour it between his teeth.

Priggley and Stick appeared together.

“Go straight back to bed,” Carolus told Priggley. “You've missed what little there was to see. They're miles away by now.”

“They?”
groaned Mr. Gorringer. “Were there several of them?”

“Someone else was driving. Your wife's all right, Stick. She's had a bit of a scare.”

Mrs. Stick turned furiously on her husband.

“This is what comes of you starting things!” she said.” We're lucky to be alive, if you want to know. I never thought I'd come to be shot at. Oh, my God!”

Carolus made a sign to Priggley, who disappeared.

“Has she been shot at?” asked Stick.

“She has had a very unnerving experience, Stick,” said Carolus. He had indeed seen Mrs. Stick angry before now, but never frightened, while Mr. Gorringer seemed to be in something like a stupor.

Carolus took a drink himself and waited for the inevitable questions and recriminations which would come when the two had recovered.

Mr. Gorringer was the first to speak.

“How do you know they will not return?” he asked, glancing uneasily at the window.

“They won't,” said Carolus, “but Stick can close the shutters if you'll feel easier.”

Stick began to do so.

“Do you realise,” asked Mr. Gorringer in a hollow voice, “that I have been threatened with a revolver? That I stood for several moments with the barrel of a pistol almost touching my stomach?”

“I told you not to open the door.”

“In very disrespectful terms, yes,” agreed Mr. Gorringer. “I
thought, in fact, you had taken leave of your senses when I heard you address me in that manner. And why not open the door? Are we to be menaced by people peering through our windows at night without trying to identify them? Or in your wisdom did you know who it was?”

“Yes. I knew.”

“You knew! Perhaps you knew his reason for coming here?”

“Of course. He wanted to kill me.”

Mrs. Stick gave a slight moan.

“To think it should come to this!” she said. “I've always known what this playing about with murder would mean sooner or later. I've told you a dozen times. Fancy shooting at anyone.”

“I didn't shoot at anyone, Mrs. Stick.”

“Then I'd like to know what that window's doing with a hole in it.”

“I just shot into space.”

“You can tell that to the police when they come for you in a minute. Someone's sure to have heard it and I'd like to know what you're going to say.”

“I
have
got a licence for it,” said Carolus mildly.

“Not for letting it off at people, you haven't. Suppose you was to have hit anyone.”

“Did I understand you to say …” Mr. Gorringer was quite recovering his manner, “that this assailant of ours intended to kill you?”

“Of course. What else would have brought him here?”

“It seemed more probable at the time that he intended to kill me. It was at my stomach that his weapon pointed.”

“You were in his way. That's why I let off that shot at the window. He had to clear out. Whoever was in the car might have gone without him. He has given up his attempt for tonight and tomorrow, he knows, will be too late. I don't think anyone can have noticed that shot. The bogey-wagon would have been here before now. If it was heard at all it was put down as a car backfiring. Shots so often are.”

“You mean the police will not investigate this incident?” said Mr. Gorringer.

“They can't if they don't know about it, can they? Unless you want me to report it?”

“Far be it from me to bring to public notice anything so disgraceful. Can you not visualise the headlines in the more sensational newspapers?
Headmaster of The Queen's School, Newminster, in Shooting Affray. Famous Educationist Held at Pistol Point.
No, Deene, it is
not
my wish that you should report this. But it is my wish that you should realise once and for all where your reckless involvement in crime may land us. That a man in my public position, whose book of memoirs has brought him fame among modern headmasters, whose name has been carried by his pupils to the farthest corners of the earth, should be held at pistol point by a desperate criminal is monstrous, Deene, monstrous. And that this should happen in this quiet town of Newminster, at the house of one of his assistants, adds fuel to the flames.”

“It's all over now, anyway,” said Carolus soothingly.

“It may be for Some,” said Mrs. Stick. “I shall never get over it to my dying day. Pistol shots all over the place—I'd only cleaned that window this morning and now look at it. If it hadn't been that Stick was partly to blame we'd have to pack up and go this very night. If you'd have seen that face at the window all covered up with goggles and that, you'd have said the same.”

“You haven't yet told us why this man wanted to injure you,” Mr. Gorringer pointed out to Carolus.

“He didn't want to injure me. That's the very last thing he wanted to do. He wanted to kill me.”

“But why?” asked Mr. Gorringer who looked as though he shared some of the man's ambition.

“Because I know too much. It's not a novel motive. He is desperate. You are quite right there.”

“If that is so,” said Mr. Gorringer grimly, “I do not see that we have any guarantee against his return.”

“Nor don't I,” said Mrs. Stick. “We shall all be murdered in our beds. I've said so from the start. Once they get an idea like that in their heads, what's to stop them? That's what I'd like to know.”

“If this man is a practiced criminal, as you say …”

“I didn't say practiced. I said desperate. If he were a practiced criminal he wouldn't have messed it up that time. He could have shot me through the window.”

“There you go,” said Mrs. Stick. “I shan't get a wink of sleep tonight. I don't know how you can stand there talking about shooting through the window as though it was a thing that happens to respectable people every day. I don't really.”

“I've made no study of ballistics,” admitted Mr. Gorringer, “but have I not read that a pane of glass may deflect the most accurate aim? To shoot a man with a pistol at a range of four yards, as you must have been to him, is no easy task, I opine, and he doubtless decided to make sure of his accuracy.”

“No, it wasn't that,” said Carolus, “but fortunately we were sitting by firelight. He could not distinguish me.”

“And to think he was coming in at that very front door to do it!” said Mrs. Stick. “It's a wonder there's any of us left to tell the tale.”

“I suppose that the sound of the shot you fired caused him to lose his nerve?” suggested Mr. Gorringer. “Or was he thinking of his confederate in the waiting car?”

“That's more like it,” said Carolus. Then deciding that this inquest had gone on long enough, he said,” Mrs. Stick, you had better go and get ready for the Druids' Ladies' Night.”

“I don't know what to do, I'm sure. I shan't enjoy a moment of it, thinking about what might have happened. Then there's your dinner to think of and the young gentleman. Stick will be heart-broke if I don't go and I promised Mrs. Spiner, but how do I know I shan't come back to find the house burnt to the ground?”

“I've told you they won't be back tonight. Now for goodness' sake stop frightening yourself and get ready. Headmaster, we must have another drink to celebrate our escape.”

Mr. Gorringer was coming round to an appreciation of his own conduct.

“You're of the opinion, then, Deene, that if I had been forced to take one step farther back and our attacker had reached this
door, he would have shot you down in cold blood?”

“If hadn't got him first, yes.”

“In that case you must surely be warned against this foolhardy behaviour of yours in involving yourself in crime? Homicide has no place in our quiet educational backwater, and you must, after the events of tonight, begin to realise that With one of your pupils sick upstairs, with your headmaster enjoying a moment's respite from domestic cares in your hospitable home, we have the murderous intrusion of a killer. Does it not make you consider?”

“I'm sorry it happened here,” admitted Carolus.

“You were not anticipating events such as these?”

“I thought there might be some move. I never imagined this. But you're right headmaster. I must take precautions. I'll send the Sticks away for a few days. Mrs. Stick is anxious to visit her sister in Battersea. I myself shall go to a place called Buttsfield.”

“And Priggley?” questioned Mr. Gorringer anxiously.

“I thought perhaps you might care to take …”

“I am astounded that you should voice such a suggestion. As you know perfectly well, Mrs. Gorringer, in spite of a cheerful front, is by no means strong and I am in urgent need of a relief from all anxieties. Your proposition is quite unthinkable.”

“Then he must go to Battersea,” said Carolus. “Mrs. Stick's brother-in-law is a respectable undertaker and may be able to tame Priggley's exuberance better than you or I. Mrs. Stick has a quite unaccountable weakness for the little horror and will be glad to take him.”

“There seems no other way,” admitted the headmaster. “He certainly can't stay here. But what of the future? Are we to start next term under the menace of gunmen? Am I to expect my classes to be interrupted by incursions such as this evening's?”

“No, headmaster. I am not going to Buttsfield for nothing. It is the twin dormitory town to Brenstead and about twenty miles away. I think I can assure you that within a week this wretched business will be finished, one way or another.”

“One way or another, Deene? I find something ominous in the words.”

“Yes. It's tricky. I don't deny it's tricky. But it has got to be
wound up. We can't as you say, have our quiet educational backwater threatened in this way.”

“Ah, Deene, incurably frivolous as ever. But I confess myself out of my depth here You must follow the guidance of your own conscience.”

“That's just what I'm proposing to do,” said Carolus as Mr. Gorringer rose to go.

Next morning, after a quiet night, Mrs. Stick vaccilated but finally agreed to the proposal.

“I won't deny I'd like to go to stay with my sister for a few days and Stick has quite a liking for Battersea Park. The young gentleman's normal this morning…”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Stick?”

“I mean his temperature's down. I don't see why he shouldn't travel with us. Of course he couldn't bring that motor-cycle of his—my sister would have a fit if she was to set eyes on it, but he said it had to go in to the garage anyway. We certainly can't stay here till that murderer's been caught. I shall have to ring up and ask if it's convenient, of course, but my sister's a great one for arranging things so I expect it will be all right.”

It was.

“Only you must let me know as soon as it's safe to come back here, sir, and don't let my sister think there's been any trouble because she can't bear anything that Calls Attention. It doesn't do, with her husband being in the line he is.”

Priggley agreed to lend Carolus his motor-cycle for some days. He seemed enchanted with the idea of Battersea.

W
HEN
H
E
H
AD
D
RIVEN THE
S
TICKS AND
R
UPERT TO THE
S
TATION
Carolus arranged that his garage should send a driver with the Bentley to Buttsfield and put it in a garage there in Carolus's name. He then made the journey on Priggley's Criterion motorcycle.

He found Rosehurst, Brenstead Road, to be a villa rather of the type he had known in Brenstead itself except that it had a discreet sign reading
Residential Hotel.
He left his motor-cycle outside the gate and walked up to the front door hindered by the oilskin overalls he had purchased.

A harrassed-looking young woman opened the door.

“Rooms? I don't know whether we have or not You better see my aunt about that. She'll be down in a minute.”

As he approached this last episode in the matter of Felix Parador's death, an episode which he knew would be grim, sordid and dangerous, Carolus thought how commonplace was this setting with a faint smell of cooking in the air and ugly Victorian furniture about him. He had not even known that such residential hotels existed and certainly had not expected to find
one in the dormitory town of Buttsfield, yet it was Rosehurst that seemed normal, complacent, sure of itself, and the new town of Buttsfield that was outré. And when Mrs. Hamley appeared the impression was confirmed, for she was a stout, comfortable-looking party with a very pink face and bright grey hair, just what one might have expected the proprietress of a residential hotel to be.

“Come in,” she said looking anxiously at his overalls, “unless you'd like to take those off first? I know my nephew always does. The gentlemen's cloakroom is there.”

Feeling distinctly more at ease, Carolus faced Mrs. Hamley across a bearskin hearthrug.

“I understand you wanted a room,” she said. “Would it be for some time?”

“Some weeks, yes,” said Carolus. “I'm with an insurance company, you see.”

Mrs. Hamley picked up her knitting.

“You would be alone?”

“Oh, yes. Quite.”

“It happens that we have a single room. But it's not very large and at the top of the house. There are two rooms up there and the other is occupied by my nephew.”

“I don't mind a small room,” said Carolus.

“It's quite a comfortable little room and my nephew is a very quiet young man, except when he's on his motor-cycle.”