Death of a Commuter Page 14

  “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.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WHEN HE HAD DRIVEN THE STICKS AND RUPERT TO THE STATION 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.”

  “I’m a motor-cyclist myself.”

  “Then you’ll get on with George. He’s mad on the thing. Here, there and everywhere. For his business, of course. He’s with an estate agent here. But I believe he’s thinking of leaving. He tells me he has made a successful speculation on his own account. He’s always been ambitious.”

  “What is the charge for the room you have free?”

  “We don’t do lunches,” explained Mrs. Hamley. “You get a good English breakfast and a meal at night. I have to charge ten guineas, I’m afraid.”

  Carolus agreed to this and paid a week in advance as his luggage, he said was being brought by a friend later in the day. His room was an attic with a small electric fire with a coin-insertion meter. The bed was narrow and the carpet sparse. This was the kind of living which must make bachelordom impossible, he thought.

  But at last he had run to earth the most mysterious figure in this curious affair, the man in the train, the face at the window, and found him to be—on paper at least—George Catford, nephew to the cosy Mrs. Hamley, employee in an estate agent’s, keen motor-cyclist, an everyday member of the community.

  Yet his first sight of George Catford that evening in the ill-lit hall was somehow both eerie and forbidding. Catford had just come in, having ridden up on his motor-cycle, and was garbed in black oilskins. He stood quite motionless as Carolus approached, watching intently, and for a sickening moment Carolus thought he must have identified him somehow. When Catford spoke it was in that curiously deep voice which had so impressed the men in the railway compartment, and also Flood.

  “Is that your motor-cycle outside?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Same as mine. Criterion. You staying here?”

  “For a time,” said Carolus, not too cordially.

  “What brings you to Buttsfield?” asked George Catford, remaining immobile. There was something feline in his steady observant stare.

  “Business,” retorted Carolus.

  It was his policy from the first to make all the advances come from Catford.

  “Cagey, aren’t you? I’m only asking.”

  “I know. It’s all right. I’ve got a lot on my mind,” said Carolus.

  George Catford at last moved towards the little cloakroom in which Carolus had removed his overalls.

  That was their first unpromising encounter and it left Carolus with an unpleasant taste in his mouth. There was something which Mrs. Stick would have called ‘creepy’ about George Catford. But he knew that the young man was curious about him.

  There was a communal dining-room in which were a number of small tables rather close together, and when Carolus came down he found his place had been laid at Catford’s.

  “If you’d rather sit at the big table you can,” Catford said. “But you’ll be asked all your business there.”

  “All right Thanks,” said Carolus, taking his place.

  “This is my aunt’s hotel. She thinks everyone ought to mix. It’s not my idea.”

  “Nor mine,” said Carolus.

  “Haven’t I seen you before somewhere?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. I only arrived today. Got some insurance work to do in the district”

  “Ah. I’m with Willows and Willows the estate agents. But I don’t expect to be here much longer. I want to go abroad. Had enough of this place.”

  “Where d’you mean to go?”

  “Don’t know yet Away from all this. I’ve always had a fancy for Algeria.”

  “Disturbing at present, I should have thought.”

  “I should like that. I’m not a home-loving type.”

  Then the conversation became technical.

  “What can you get out of that bike of yours?” asked Catford, and Carolus who had as usual mugged up his facts was able to reply. He saw Mrs. Hamley beaming across the room.

  Catford said nothing which might not have been said by any young estate agent in a place like Rosehurst, yet Carolus knew that he was not mistaken in thinking that about him there was something very odd indeed, something sinister and quite ruthless. Trying to analyse his feelings about Catford, Carolus c
ame to the conclusion that in a sense he was not real, was not in the least what he appeared to be and only spoke from the upper crust of his mind while underneath, his manner, out of sight and hearing of those who knew him, was another self, primitive, cruel and greedy for power. The man was a potential murderer. People were nothing to him; in his jungle dreams he dominated the world. But all this came with time. On that first evening Carolus only knew that he had not come to Rosehurst in vain.

  Like so many schizophrenics, however, Catford could not keep his mouth shut. He was under an impulse stronger than himself to impress Carolus. Perhaps he had been starved of love as a child, perhaps he had been born with a tormenting subconscious knowledge of his own mediocrity which made him cry for someone’s admiration, or perhaps he recognised in Carolus all he could never be. Whatever the cause, as the days passed he grew more and more arrogant and boastful and more revealing of his inner nature. Carolus listened fascinated to all he said and sometimes heard the voice of madness in it. Carolus allowed himself to be drawn into Catford’s confidence as though unwillingly, but when he showed diffidence Catford grew more emphatic and far-fetched.

  On the third night they had a drink together at the local.

  “Though I don’t drink much. Until lately I’ve concentrated everything on saving enough money to get out of England. I’ve been treated very unfairly in this country. Some day I may tell you all about it. I had to have the motor-bike, though. To get out of this town. I like to sit on a hill somewhere with a lot of the countryside spread out beneath me and think my own thoughts.”

  So did Hitler, reflected Carolus. But he encouraged him to go on.

  “I’ve always had big ideas. Ever since I was a kid. I’ve always meant to be someone. I didn’t mean to go on all my life working for others. I was determined to get to the top—quick.”

  “Big ideas, as you call them, may take a man to the top. Or they may land him in prison.”

  Catford fixed those cold eyes on him and said, “Someone been talking about me?”