Smallbone Deceased

He jumped for the door. Hazlerigg got up and warmed the seat of his trousers at the hob. He heard Bob pick up the receiver and say: “Sevenoaks—Oh! Is that you, Miss Cornel? It’s Bob Horniman here… Could I speak to Miss Mildmay?” Then a pause. Then Bob’s voice: “Anne, darling, it’s all right.”

Hazlerigg shut the door, and returned to his place in front of the fire. He could no longer hear what Bob was saying, but he judged from the tone of his voice that everything was all right.

III

“God’s fresh air,” said the stout girl in hiking shorts.

“That’s right,” said her companion.

“God’s free fresh air,” said the stout girl. “That’s what they say, don’t they?”

“That’s right.”

“Like hell it’s free,” said the stout girl. “Railway fares up, purchase tax on walking shoes, four and sixpence for a so-called lunch.”

“That’s right,” said the Yes-girl.

“Before the war,” said the stout girl, “I walked through the Lake District. Right through it. I stayed at Youth Hostels. I took ten days and it cost me three pounds sixteen shillings and eightpence, including fares.”

“Well, I never,” said the Yes-girl. “You’d hardly credit it.”

It was nine o’clock that evening. Hazlerigg was sitting in a third-class railway carriage, on his way back to London. When he had got into the carriage it had been empty, but he had been vaguely aware that two girls had got in at Ipswich. He was deeply engaged with his own thoughts.

He was reviewing the case to see how it looked without its central character. For Bob Horniman, in his opinion, was out of it. Not that his Saturday morning alibi was worth much. He could have murdered Smallbone and been in plenty of time to catch the midday train for Chaffham. Nor could you describe as strong corroboration the evidence of the girl with whom you were in love. But on one factor of certainty, on one base of the living rock, Hazlerigg rested his conviction of Bob’s innocence. The same pair of hands had committed both murders. No one, be they never so crafty or calculating, could have reproduced that fractional left-handed pull which hall-marked both killings. And if Bob had been at his Soho restaurant at a quarter to seven he could not have killed Miss Chittering. The alibi had to be verified, but he was certain he would find that it was so.

It was true, also, that Bob’s explanation had not covered everything. Any explanation would have been, perhaps, open to suspicion if it had. On the subject of the letter discovered in the typists’ room, for instance. Bob had simply said that he knew nothing about it. He had never received it. If he was speaking the truth, it began to look very much as if the letter might be a plant. The possibility had been in Hazlerigg’s mind all along; ever since he had noticed those pin-marks in the top left-hand corner of the paper. He had remembered that it was quite a common habit for a busy man to pin cheques or receipted bills to blank pieces of notepaper with or without the addition of a signature. Lawyers got them every day. Indeed, now he thought of it, had not Plumptree told him that Smallbone had pinned his last rent cheque to a piece of notepaper and left it on the hall table for Mrs. Tasker to find. Anyone in the office might therefore have received such a missive from Smallbone. They would only have to remove the cheque and they could then type in what message they liked in the space between the address and the signature. Forgery without tears.

“You see them going off from Paddington,” said the stout girl. “Torquay, Paignton, and places like that. Piles and piles of luggage. I don’t call that a holiday.”

“Nor do I,” said the Yes-girl.

“But take a nice large rucksack,” said the stout girl, nodding down at hers, where it stood, bulging formidably, on the seat beside her.

With a sweet click the last tumbler fell into place.

“God in heaven, what idiots we’ve been,” said Hazlerigg loudly.

Both girls jumped. Hazlerigg, who was a bit of a lip-reader, saw the stout girl forming the word “Drink”. Her companion, for once, had an opinion of her own: “Barmy.”

“When does this train stop next?” he demanded.

The stout girl felt for her alpenstock and estimated with a quick glance the distance to the corridor door. “It doesn’t stop,” she said. “It goes straight through to London.”

“Then stop it we must,” said Hazlerigg. Out of the window he saw the lights of a fair-sized town approaching.

He got to his feet and before either of his travelling companions could guess his intention, he had reached up and jerked the communication cord.

He could not have timed it more perfectly. There was a momentary pause as the vacuum brake took charge: then a series of shuddering jolts, a sharp decrease in momentum. The dark world outside slowed down, the blur of lights separated out into individual windows, and with a long, indignant hiss, the train slid to a halt opposite the deserted platform of a fair-sized station.

Hazlerigg was out before it had fairly stopped.