He seemed still for a whole minute. And nothing speaking about him but that expression. Like a man that’s seen a ghost, one is tempted to write. But it wasn’t really at all. I’ll tell you what he looked like. Like a man that’s seen something that no one has ever looked at before, something he thought couldn’t be.
And then he said in a voice that was all quite changed, more low and gentle and quiet it seemed, ‘No good for vegetables, eh?’
‘Not a bit,’ I said.
And at that he gave a kind of sob in his throat. I hadn’t thought he could feel things like that. Of course I didn’t know what it was all about; but, whatever it was, I thought all that sort of thing would have been knocked out of him at Eton and Harrow, an educated man like that. There were no tears in his eyes but he was feeling something horribly.
And then he began to speak with big spaces between his words, saying, ‘A man might make a mistake perhaps, and use Numnumo with vegetables.’
‘Not twice,’ I said. What else could I say?
And he repeated that after me as though I had told of the end of the world, and adding an awful emphasis to my words, till they seemed all clammy with some frightful significance, and shaking his head as he said it.
Then he was quite silent.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Smethers,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Smethers,’ said he.
And I said, ‘Well?’
‘Look here, Smethers,’ he said, ‘you must ’phone down to the grocer at Unge and find out from him this.’
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Whether Steeger bought those two bottles, as I expect he did, on the same day, and not a few days apart. He couldn’t have done that.’
I waited to see if any more was coming, and then I ran out and did what I was told. It took me some time, being after nine o’clock, and only then with the help of the police. About six days apart they said; and so I came back and told Linley. He looked up at me so hopefully when I came in, but I saw that it was the wrong answer by his eyes.
You can’t take things to heart like that without being ill, and when he didn’t speak I said: ‘What you want is a good brandy, and go to bed early.’
And he said: ‘No. I must see someone from Scotland Yard. ’Phone round to them. Say here at once.’
‘But,’ I said, ‘I can’t get an inspector from Scotland Yard to call on us at this hour.’
His eyes were all lit up. He was all there all right.
‘Then tell them,’ he said, ‘they’ll never find Nancy Elth. Tell one of them to come here and I’ll tell him why.’ And he added, I think only for me, ‘They must watch Steeger, till one day they get him over something else.’
And, do you know, he came. Inspector Ulton; he came himself.
While we were waiting I tried to talk to Linley. Partly curiosity, I admit. But I didn’t want to leave him to those thoughts of his, brooding away by the fire. I tried to ask him what it was all about. But he wouldn’t tell me. ‘Murder is horrible’ is all he would say. ‘And as a man covers his tracks up it only gets worse.’
He wouldn’t tell me. ‘There are tales,’ he said, ‘that one never wants to hear.’
That’s true enough. I wish I’d never heard this one. I never did actually. But I guessed it from Linley’s last words to Inspector Ulton, the only ones that I overheard. And perhaps this is the point at which to stop reading my story, so that you don’t guess it too; even if you think you want murder stories. For don’t you rather want a murder story with a bit of a romantic twist, and not a story about real foul murder? Well, just as you like.
In came Inspector Ulton, and Linley shook hands in silence, and pointed the way to his bedroom; and they went in there and talked in low voices, and I never heard a word.
A fairly hearty-looking man was the inspector when they went into that room.
They walked through our sitting-room in silence when they came out, and together they went into the hall, and there I heard the only words they said to each other. It was the inspector that first broke that silence.
‘But why,’ he said, ‘did he cut down the trees?’
‘Solely,’ said Linley, ‘in order to get an appetite.’
THE SHOOTING OF CONSTABLE SLUGGER
I ONCE told a story about a murderer called Steeger. It got into Time and Tide, and rather shocked some people: quite right too. Smethers is my name. And my friend Mr Linley found out how Steeger did it. But they couldn’t hang him: that was another matter. So of course the police watched him, and waited. And one day Inspector Ulton called at our flat and shook hands with Mr Linley, and said: ‘Steeger’s done it again.’
Linley nodded his head and said, ‘What is it now?’
And Inspector Ulton said: ‘He has killed Constable Slugger.’
‘What?’ said Linley. ‘The man that helped you so much over the other murder?’
‘Yes,’ said Ulton. ‘He had retired. But Steeger never forgave him. And now he’s killed him.’
‘What a pity,’ said Linley.
‘It’s a damned shame,’ I said.
And then the inspector saw me. I’m a small man, myself, and he hadn’t noticed me.
‘I speak quite suppositiously,’ he said. ‘You understand that it’s purely a suppositious case.’
‘Oh, quite,’ I answered.
‘Because it wouldn’t do to go saying outside this room,’ he went on, ‘that anyone said as Steeger had murdered anyone. Wouldn’t do at all. Render yourself liable. Besides, I never told you anything of the sort.’
‘Quite,’ I repeated.
‘He quite understands,’ said Linley. ‘How did Steeger kill poor Slugger?’
The inspector paused a moment and looked at me, then at Linley, and then he went on. ‘That’s what we can’t make out,’ he said. ‘He lived in the house opposite Slugger’s, in the village of Otherthorpe, only four or five miles away from the scene of his other crime. And we’d have said he shot Slugger across the street as he sat at an open window. And he had a big shot-gun that could have done it, an eight-bore, and there was a ghastly great wound in Slugger’s neck, going downwards into the lung.’
‘Did they find the gun?’ asked Linley.
‘Oh, yes,’ said the inspector. ‘Of course it was all clean and packed away in its case by the time the village constable got in, and he had heard a shot; it was that that made him go, and he went at once; he went to Slugger’s house first. Yes, he found the gun all right; but our difficulty is that whether the doctor got the bullet out and was careless enough to lose it, though he says he didn’t, or whatever happened, there’s no sign of any bullet; no exit wound and no bullet in the body, just the one enormous wound, the sort of thing you might make with a crowbar, and no weapon of that sort discovered, so we can’t prove anything and we’ve come to you again. We must get Steeger this time.’
‘What did he want an eight-bore for?’ Linley asked.
‘Well, to shoot Slugger really,’ said the inspector. ‘But unfortunately he’s got a perfectly good excuse for it; he does actually shoot ducks with it on Olnie Flats, and sells them. We can’t go into Court and say what