Give a Corpse a Bad Name (24 page)

‘Nor'd Major Maxwell,' Eggbear put in. ‘He spent the morning in bed with a notice on his door tellin' Mrs Deller, who does for him, that he didn't want to be waked. He told me he'd been sleepin' badly and didn't want to be roused in case he did manage to doze off for a bit.'

‘Yes, you see, the tall, dark man with the glasses arrived at Knightsteignton by train, not car. The major's car was out of order. But though Laws had got a car, it's such a distinctive one that he'd never go in it if he was engaged on any shady business. Well, as I was saying, when I was out at the cottage I came on a fancy little monthly called
New Voices
, printed in the type I was looking for, and bound with a pretty spiral wire. And the November number was missing. And a spiral wire was in the top layer of ashes in his ash-bin, where the remnants of that November number were too, I expect, only not in a recognizable condition. He must have been in an awful hurry to catch the post to go and use a whole word of a type as noticeable as that, or he must have been losing his nerve already or something …' Again Toby yawned, and asked Eggbear how late it was, because, he said, there was some writing he wanted to do before he went to bed.

But Eggbear only prompted him: ‘And what revolver, Toby? How'd he get hold of that?'

‘Oh, it was Major Maxwell's,' said Toby. ‘When I left he probably realized that he'd not much chance of coming through. So he borrowed it while the major was picking up seed catalogues in Wallaford.'

‘But look here, Dyke,' said Whitear, ‘that call you put through to him from The Laurels—what the devil d'you think you were up to, doing a thing like that? You were warning him. It was a gross interference with the course of the law!'

‘My dear man,' said Toby wearily, ‘the law got him. The law of his own nature. There's no other that could have touched him.'

‘And so, Mr Poppenheimer,' said Mrs Milne, meeting George in the road near her home a couple of days later, ‘your friend has done quite nicely out of the newspapers after all.'

George was scrambling out of the ditch where he had discovered a couple of primroses. The thaw, as Sergeant Eggbear had prophesied, had come; the sergeant's garden was fragrant with huge violets. In the ditches, too, a few primroses were hurrying to greet the West Country warmth.

George stood pinning the two he had found into the side of his cap.

‘That's so,' he said.

‘And the fee he asked me was hardly—small,' said Mrs Milne.

‘Oh, well, it's always nice when you make something out of a holiday,' said George, ‘ain't it?' He set the cap, gay as the promise of spring, on the side of his head. ‘And at least he found out who was writing those letters, just like you wanted.'

‘Oh, I'm grateful,' she answered.

‘So you ought to be,' said George, ‘because, mind you, if Toby was a bit different …'

When he paused she asked him: ‘What d'you mean?'

‘Well, ma'am,' said George, turning and walking beside her towards her gate, ‘I've known Toby a long time. He's one of the best chaps in the world. I'd back him in anything—that didn't involve judgment.'

She laughed. ‘But I don't understand. He's a very intelligent, really quite a brilliant man. It's lucky for me that he is.'

‘It's lucky for you,' said George, ‘that he's just as brilliant and intelligent as he is, and not a ha'porth more. But take it from me, he follows that big nose of his a lot too fast. Now take the matter of the third letter and the blunder in it—'

‘He told me all about that,' she said quickly. ‘I saw the point. It really was a very bad blunder of Adrian's, letting it appear that he'd talked to Henry.'

‘A blunder?' said George. ‘I should say it
was
a blunder. Such a blunder that I says to myself: would a cute young chap like Laws ever make a mistake of that kind? Then I says to myself: and who benefits by this so-called blunder of his, eh? And I answers: our Mrs Milne. Because even if it gives away that she's Mrs Rhymer, she's slick enough to know we're going to find that out anyway. Then I says: and who was it grinned all over her face when young Laws wouldn't back up her story about his being the man she was expecting? And I answers: Mrs Milne, and I reckon she was grinning because she was glad to know for certain sure at last it was Laws who was trying to do her down. He gave himself away, you see, when he wouldn't back up her perfectly true story. And who's clever enough to use that bit of fancy type to make us sure the letter was from young Laws, and to throw that wire into the top layer of ashes where we'd be sure to find it? And again the answer is—'

‘Mrs Milne. So I wrote that letter about myself, did I?'

They had reached the gate. Each was leaning an elbow upon it.

‘Certain sure you wrote it,' said George. ‘Who else would ever have thought of such a thing?'

‘Really? And—er—did I murder my husband, if you don't mind my asking?'

‘Murder?' said George. ‘That wasn't any murder. It was an accident—couldn't have been anything else. See here, you know what that bit of road's like. And you know that the couple in the sports car didn't see a thing. When they come past there wasn't a soul in the road. So Rhymer and young Laws must've been behind the hedge, mustn't they? But it was in the middle between the two bridges you went over Rhymer, and you can't hide behind the hedge there; for one thing, it isn't a hedge, it's a fence, and it drops down straight into those meadows the other side of it. They'd have had to be beyond the second bridge, and that means Laws'd have had to follow Rhymer over it and knock him down, or knock him down and carry him over it. But if he'd done that you'd have seen him yourself. No, he must just've let Rhymer loose in the road, and Rhymer went hareing over the bridge on his own and fell down and you did him in, innocent and accidental, like you said. O' course, you might call it homicidal to let a bloke as tight as that loose in a road with a car just coming, but I reckon all Laws really wanted was a chance to listen in to the fun when you and your husband met. He couldn't've done it if he let you meet at home. The only murder he ever tried to commit was when he tried to get you jerking at the end of a rope. That was his real murder, not the other—and nasty enough, if you ask me, to deserve getting shot.'

She was watching his face detachedly. ‘But if you're right, and I'd be glad to think you were, why did Adrian shoot himself? It looked, it's been accepted, as a complete confession of guilt.'

He gave a lop-sided grin. ‘Yes, and who's clever enough, I'd like to know, to think that it would be? And who knew the police were going out to the cottage with more than half an idea in their minds that it was a murderer they were calling on? Who heard Toby tip the so-called murderer off that he was caught—so that Toby himself wasn't going to be at all surprised at a suicide? Who'd snitched a revolver that morning in case she got into such bad trouble it might be worth having handy? Who's got a Bentley that could get round by the other road to Purbrook, even if it's a bit longer that way, in half the time the old Sunbeam could make it in? Who's got a daughter she loves near to craziness, who swears she's going to marry the man who's been trying to land her mother on the gallows?
Who doesn't mind taking long chances
?'

There was a silence. From the short, brown catkins in the hedges, drops of moisture splashed down upon the grass of the verge.

‘You've absolutely no proof of any of this,' said Anna Milne.

‘And that clears the air a whole lot, don't it?' said George. ‘But you know, Tobe was right about one thing, anyway. He kept saying that girl was in it somewhere. So she was, the poor kid, bang in the middle of it.'

He raised his flowered cap. But just as he was starting down the road towards Chovey he hesitated before her. ‘You know,' he said, ‘Tobe's got a quick sort of brain and lots of imagination, and that's how he takes himself in. Because it don't occur to him, see, that anyone could expect what he's expecting until he starts expecting them to expect it. What I mean is—'

‘Yes, yes,' she said, ‘I see. Goodbye, Mr Pinkerton.'

‘Prendergast,' he corrected her, and set off down the road.

‘The writer who may be the closest of all to Christie

in style, plotting and general milieu'

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

‘There are few detective story writers as consistently

good as Miss Ferrars'

The Sunday Times

On a cold winter's night, a man is run over while lying drunk in the middle of a Devon lane. Driving the car is local resident Anna Milne, an attractive widow from South Africa. It could be an unfortunate accident, but strange coincidence hints at more. For the dead man also comes from South Africa. And he has Anna Milne's address in his pocket…

In conjunction with the police, it is Toby Dyke, ex-reporter and man of no fixed occupation, who investigates the curious circumstance of the stranger's death.

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