Hangman's Holiday: A Collection of Short Mysteries

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Egg, ‘since you ask me, why shouldn’t the other man in the train be all three of them?’

  ‘All three of which?’

  ‘Grant and Schleicher and the secretary.’

  ‘I don’t quite get you.’

  ‘Well, I mean – supposing Grant is Schleicher, with a nice ready-made personality all handy for him to step into, built up, as you may say, over the last three years, with money salted away in the name of Schleicher – well, I mean, there he is, as you might say, waiting to slip over to the Continent as soon as the fuss has died down – complete with unofficial lady.’

  ‘But the secretary?’

  ‘The secretary was the man in train, made up as Grant made up as Schleicher. I mean, speaking as a fool, I thought he might be.’

  ‘But where was Schleicher – I mean, Grant?’

  ‘He was the man in the train, too. I mean, he may have been.’

  ‘Do you mean there were two of them?’

  ‘Yes – at least, that’s how I see it. You’re the best judge, and I shouldn’t like to put myself forward. But they’d be playing Box and Cox. Secretary gets in at Birmingham as Schleicher. Grant gets in at Coventry as Grant. Between Coventry and Rugby Grant changes to Schleicher in a wash-place or somewhere, and hangs about the platform and corridor till the train starts with him in it. He retires presently into a wash-place again. At a prearranged moment, secretary gets up, walks along the corridor and retires elsewhere, while Grant comes out and takes his place. Presently Grant walks down the corridor and secretary comes back to the compartment. They’re never both visible at the same time, except for the two or three minutes while Grant is reentering the train at Rugby, while honest witnesses like me are ready to come forward and swear that Schleicher got in at Birmingham, sat tight in his seat at Coventry and Rugby, and went straight through to Euston – as he did. I can’t say I noticed any difference between the two Schleichers, except in the matter of the cigar. But they were very hairy and muffled up.’

  The Chief Inspector turned this over in his mind.

  ‘Which of them was Schleicher when they got out at Euston?’

  ‘Grant, surely. The secretary would remove his disguise at the last moment and emerge as himself, taking the thousand-to-one chance of somebody recognising him.’

  Peacock swore softly. ‘If that’s what he did,’ he exclaimed, ‘we’ve got him on toast. Wait a moment, though. I knew there was a snag. If that’s what they did, there ought to have been an extra third-class ticket at Euston. They can’t both have travelled on one ticket.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Mr Egg. ‘I have often – at least, I don’t exactly mean that, but I have from time to time laid a wager with an acquaintance that I would travel on his ticket, and got away with it.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Chief Inspector Peacock, ‘you would oblige me, sir, by outlining your method.’

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mr Egg. ‘“Speak the truth with cheerful ease if you would both convince and please” – Monty’s favourite motto. If I had been Mr Grant’s secretary, I’d have taken a return ticket from Birmingham to London, and when the outward half had been inspected for the last time at Rugby, I’d pretend to put it in my pocket. But I wouldn’t really. I’d shove it down at the edge of my seat and go for my stroll along the corridor. Then, when Grant took my place – recognising the right seat by an attaché-case, or something of that sort left on it – he’d retrieve the ticket and retain it. At the end of the journey, I’d slip off my beard and spectacles and so on, stick them in my overcoat pocket and fold the conspicuous overcoat inside-out and carry it on my arm. Then I’d wait to see Grant get out, and follow him up to the barrier, keeping a little way behind. He’d go through, giving up his ticket, and I’d follow along with a bunch of other people, making a little bustle and confusion in the gateway. The ticket-collector would stop me and say: “I haven’t got your ticket, sir.” I’d be indignant, and say: “Oh, yes, you have.” He’d say: “I don’t think so, sir.” Then I’d protest, and he’d probably ask me to stand aside a minute while he dealt with the other passengers. Then I’d say: “See here, my man, I’m quite sure I gave up my ticket. Look! Here’s the return half, number so-and-so. Just look through your bunch and see if you haven’t got the companion half.” He looks and he finds it, and says: “I beg your pardon, sir; you’re quite right. Here it is.” I say: “Don’t mention it,” and go through. And even if he suspects me, he can’t prove anything, and the other fellow is well out of the way by that time.’

  ‘I see,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘How often did you say you had indulged in this little game?’

  ‘Well, never twice at the same station. It doesn’t do to repeat one’s effects too often.’

  ‘I think I’d better interview Schleicher and his secretary again,’ said Peacock pensively. ‘And the ticket-collector. I suppose we were meant to think that Grant had skipped to the Irish Mail. I admit we should have thought so but for the accident that the Mail left before the London train came in. However, it takes a clever criminal to beat our organisation. By the way, Mr Egg, I hope you will not make a habit—’

  ‘Talking of bad habits,’ said Monty happily, ‘what about another spot?’

  MURDER AT PENTECOST

  A Montague Egg Story

  ...........

  ‘Buzz off, Flathers,’ said the young man in flannels. ‘We’re thrilled by your news, but we don’t want your religious opinions. And, for the Lord’s sake, stop talking about “undergrads”, like a ruddy commercial traveller. Hop it!’

  The person addressed, a pimply youth in a commoner’s gown, bleated a little, but withdrew from the table, intimidated.

  ‘Appalling little tick,’ commented the young man in flannels to his companion. ‘He’s on my staircase, too. Thank Heaven, I move out next term. I suppose it’s true about the Master? Poor old blighter – I’m quite sorry I cut his lecture. Have some more coffee?’

  ‘No, thanks, Radcott. I must be pushing off in a minute. It’s getting too near lunch-time.’

  Mr Montague Egg, seated at the next small table, had pricked up his ears. He now turned, with an apologetic cough, to the young man called Radcott.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, with some diffidence. ‘I didn’t intend to overhear what you gentlemen were saying, but might I ask a question?’ Emboldened by Radcott’s expression, which, though surprised, was frank and friendly, he went on: ‘I happen to be a commercial traveller – Egg is my name, Montague Egg, representing Plummet & Rose, wines and spirits, Piccadilly. Might I ask what is wrong with saying “undergrads”? Is the expression offensive in any way?’

  Mr Radcatt blushed a fiery red to the roots of his flaxen hair.

  ‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ he said ingenuously, and suddenly looking extremely young. ‘Damn stupid thing of me to say. Beastly brick.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, I’m sure,’ said Monty.

  ‘Didn’t mean anything personal. Only, that chap Flathers gets my goat. He ought to know that nobody says “undergrads” except townees and journalists and people outside the university.’

  ‘What ought we to say? “Undergraduates”?’

  ‘“Undergraduates” is correct.’

  ‘I’m very much obliged,’ said Monty. ‘Always willing to learn. It’s easy to make a mistake in a thing like that, and, of course, it prejudices the customer against one. The Salesman’s Handbook doesn’t give any guidance about it; I shall have to make a memo for myself. Let me see. How would this do? “To call an Oxford gent an—”’

  ‘I think I should say “Oxford man” – it’s the more technical form of expression.’

  ‘Oh, yes. “To call an Oxford man an undergrad proclaims you an outsider and a cad.” That’s very easy to remember.’

  ‘You seem to have a turn for this kind of thing,’ said Radcott, amused.

  ‘Well, I think perhaps I have,’ admitted Monty, with a touch of pride. ‘Would the same thing apply at Cambridge?
’

  ‘Certainly,’ replied Radcott’s companion. ‘And you might add that “To call the university the ’varsity is out of date, if not precisely narsity.” I apologise for the rhyme. ’Varsity has somehow a flavour of the nineties.’

  ‘So has the port I’m recommending,’ said Mr Egg brightly. ‘Still, one’s sales-talk must be up to date, naturally; and smart, though not vulgar. In the wine and spirit trade we make refinement our aim. I am really much obliged to you, gentlemen, for your help. This is my first visit to Oxford. Could you tell me where to find Pentecost College? I have a letter of introduction to a gentleman there.’

  ‘Pentecost?’ said Radcott. ‘I don’t think I’d start there, if I were you.’

  ‘No?’ said Mr Egg, suspecting some obscure point of university etiquette. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because,’ replied Radcott surprisingly, ‘I understand from the regrettable Flathers that some public benefactor has just murdered the Master, and in the circumstances I doubt whether the Bursar will be able to give proper attention to the merits of rival vintages.’

  ‘Murdered the Master?’ echoed Mr Egg.

  ‘Socked him one – literally, I am told, with a brickbat enclosed in a Woolworth sock – as he was returning to his house from delivering his too-well-known lecture on Plato’s use of the Enclitics. The whole school of Literœ Humaniores will naturally be under suspicion, but, personally, I believe Flathers did it himself. You may have heard him informing us that judgement overtakes the evil-doer, and inviting us to a meeting for prayer and repentance in the South Lecture-Room. Such men are dangerous.’

  ‘Was the Master of Pentecost an evil-doer?’

  ‘He has written several learned works disproving the existence of Providence, and I must say that I, in common with the whole Pentecostal community, have always looked on him as one of Nature’s worst mistakes. Still, to slay him more or less on his own doorstep seems to me to be in poor taste. It will upset the examination candidates, who face their ordeal next week. And it will mean cancelling the Commem. Ball. Besides, the police have been called in, and are certain to annoy the Senior Common Room by walking on the grass in the quad. However, what’s done cannot be undone. Let us pass to a pleasanter subject. I understand that you have some port to dispose of. I, on the other hand, have recently suffered bereavement at the hands of a bunch of rowing hearties, who invaded my rooms the other night and poured my last dozen of Cockburn ’04 down their leathery and undiscriminating throttles. If you care to stroll round with me to Pentecost, Mr Egg, bringing your literature with you, we might be able to do business.’

  Mr Egg expressed himself as delighted to accept Radcott’s invitation, and was soon trotting along the Cornmarket at his conductor’s athletic heels. At the corner of Broad Street the second undergraduate left them, while they turned on, past Balliol and Trinity, asleep in the June sunshine, end presently reached the main entrance of Pentecost.

  Just as they did so, a small, elderly man, wearing a light overcoat and carrying an M.A. gown over his arm, came ambling short-sightedly across the street from the direction of the Bodleian Library. A passing car just missed whirling him into eternity, as Radcott stretched out a long arm and raked him into safety on the pavement.

  ‘Look out, Mr Temple,’ said Radcott. ‘We shall be having you murdered next.’

  ‘Murdered?’ queried Mr Temple, blinking. ‘Oh, you refer to the motor-car. But I saw it coming. I saw it quite distinctly. Yes, yes. But why “next”? Has anybody else been murdered?’

  ‘Only the Master of Pentecost,’ said Radcott, pinching Mr Egg’s arm.

  ‘The Master? Dr Greeby? You don’t say so! Murdered? Dear me! Poor Greeby! This will upset my whole day’s work.’ His pale-blue eyes shifted, and a curious, wavering look came into them. ‘Justice is slow but sure. Yes, yes. The sword of the Lord and of Gideon. But the blood – that is always so disconcerting, is it not? And yet, I washed my hands, you know.’ He stretched out both hands and looked at them in a puzzled way. ‘Ah, Yes – Greeby has paid the price of his sins. Excuse my running away from you – I have urgent business at the police-station.’

  ‘If,’ said Mr Radcott, again pinching Monty’s arm, ‘you want to give yourself up for the murder, Mr Temple, you had better come along with us. The police are bound to be about the place somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course so they are. Yes. Very thoughtful of you. That will save me a great deal of time, and I have an important chapter to finish. A beautiful day, is it not, Mr – I fear I do not know your name. Or do I? I am growing sadly forgetful.’

  Radcott mentioned his name, and the oddly assorted trio turned together towards the main entrance to the college. The great gate was shut; at the postern stood the porter, and at his side a massive figure in blue, who demanded their names.

  Radcott, having been duly identified by the porter, produced Monty and his credentials.

  ‘And this,’ he went on, ‘is, of course, Mr Temple. You know him. He is looking for your Superintendent.’

  ‘Right you are, sir,’ replied the policeman. ‘You’ll find him in the cloisters. . . . At his old game, I suppose?’ he added, as the small figure of Mr Temple shuffled away across the sun-baked expanse of the quad.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Radcott. ‘He was on to it like a shot. Must be quite exciting for the old bird to have a murder so near home. Where was his last?’

  ‘Lincoln, sir; last Tuesday. Young fellow shot his young woman in the Cathedral. Mr Temple was down at the station the next day, just before lunch, explaining that he’d done it because the poor girl was the Scarlet Woman.’

  ‘Mr Temple,’ said Radcott, ‘has a mission in life. He is the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Every time a murder is committed in this country, Mr Temple lays claim to it. It is true that his body can always be shown to have been quietly in bed or at the Bodleian while the dirty work was afoot, but to an idealistic philosopher that need present no difficulty. But what is all this about the Master, actually?’

  ‘Well, sir, you know that little entry between the cloisters and the Master’s residence? At twenty minutes past ten this morning, Dr Greeby was found lying dead there, with his lecture-notes scattered all round him and a brickbat in a woollen sock lying beside his head. He’d been lecturing in a room in the Main Quadrangle at nine o’clock, and was, as far as we can tell, the last to leave the lecture-room. A party of American ladies and gentlemen passed through the cloisters a little after 10 o’clock, and they have been found, and say there was nobody about there then, so far as they could see – but, of course, sir, the murderer might have been hanging about the entry, because, naturally, they wouldn’t go that way but through Boniface Passage to the Inner Quad and the chapel. One of the young gentlemen says he saw the Master cross the Main Quad on his way to the cloisters at 10.5, so he’d reach the entry in about two minutes after that. The Regius Professor of Morphology came along at 10.20, and found the body, and when the doctor arrived, five minutes later, he said Dr Greeby must have been dead about a quarter of an hour. So that puts it somewhere round about 10.10, you see, sir.’

  ‘When did these Americans leave the chapel?’

  ‘Ah, there you are, sir!’ replied the constable. He seemed very ready to talk, thought Mr Egg, and deduced, rightly, that Mr Radcott was well and favourably known to the Oxford branch of the Force. ‘If that there party had come back through the cloisters, they might have been able to tell us something. But they didn’t. They went on through the Inner Quad into the garden, and the verger didn’t leave the chapel, on account of a lady who had just arrived and wanted to look at the carving on the reredos.’

  ‘And did the lady also come through the cloisters?’

  ‘She did, sir, and she’s the person we want to find, because it seems as though she must have passed through the cloisters very close to the time of the murder. She came into the chapel just on 10.15, because the verger recollected of the clock chiming a few minutes after she came in and her mentioning h
ow sweet the notes was. You see the lady come in, didn’t you, Mr Dabbs?’

  ‘I saw a lady,’ replied the porter, ‘but then I see a lot of ladies one way and another. This one came across from the Bodleian round about 10 o’clock. Elderly lady, she was, dressed kind of old-fashioned, with her skirts round her heels and one of them hats like a rook’s nest and a bit of elastic round the back. Looked like she might be a female don – leastways, the way female dons used to look. And she had the twitches – you know – jerked her head a bit. You get hundreds like ’em. They goes to sit in the cloisters and listen to the fountain and the little birds. But as to noticing a corpse or a murderer, it’s my belief they wouldn’t know such a thing if they saw it. I didn’t see the lady again, so she must have gone out through the garden.’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Radcott. ‘May Mr Egg and I go in through the cloisters, officer? Because it’s the only way to my rooms, unless we go round by St Scholastica’s Gate.’

  ‘All the other gates are locked, sir. You go on and speak to the Super; he’ll let you through. You’ll find him in the cloisters with Professor Staines and Dr. Moyle.’

  ‘Bodley’s Librarian? What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘They think he may know the lady, sir, if she’s a Bodley reader.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Come along, Mr Egg.’

  Radcott led the way across the Main Quadrangle and through a dark little passage at one corner, into the cool shade of the cloisters. Framed by the arcades of ancient stone, the green lawn drowsed tranquilly in the noonday heat. There was no sound but the echo of their own footsteps, the plash and tinkle of the little fountain and the subdued chirping of chaffinches, as they paced the alternate sunshine and shadow of the pavement. About midway along the north side of the cloisters they came upon another dim little covered passageway, at the entrance to which a police-sergeant was kneeling, examining the ground with the aid of an electric torch.