Siegfried: “What does this mean?”
Isbrand: “A pretty piece of kidnapping, that’s all.”
Beddoes, Death’s Jest-Book
Parker, too, had spent a disappointing half-hour. It appeared that Miss Whittaker not only disliked having her photograph taken, but had actually destroyed all the existing portraits she could lay hands on, shortly after Miss Dawson’s death. Of course, many of Miss Whittaker’s friends might be in possession of one—notably, of course, Miss Findlater. But Parker was not sure that he wanted to start a local hue-and-cry at the moment. Miss Climpson might be able to get one, of course. He went round to Nelson Avenue. Miss Climpson was out; there had been another gentleman asking for her. Mrs. Budge’s eyes were beginning to bulge with curiosity—evidently she was becoming dubious about Miss Climpson’s “nephew” and his friends. Parker then went to the local photographers. There were five. From two of them he extracted a number of local groups, containing unrecognisable portraits of Miss Whittaker at church bazaars and private theatricals. She had never had a studio portrait made in Leahampton.
Of Miss Findlater, on the other hand, he got several excellent likenesses—a slight, fair girl, with a rather sentimental look—plump and prettyish. All these he despatched to Town, with directions that they should be broadcast to the police, together with a description of the girl’s dress when last seen.
The only really cheerful members of the party at the “George” were the second policeman, who had been having a pleasant gossip with various garage-proprietors and publicans, with a view to picking up information, and the Chief Constable, who was vindicated and triumphant. He had been telephoning to various country police-stations, and had discovered that XX9917 had actually been observed on the previous Monday by an A.A. scout on the road to Crow’s Beach. Having maintained all along that the Crow’s Beach excursion was a genuine one, he was inclined to exult over the Scotland Yard man. Wimsey and Parker dispiritedly agreed that they had better go down and make inquiries at Crow’s Beach.
Meanwhile, one of the photographers, whose cousin was on the staff of the Leahampton Mercury, had put a call through to the office of that up-to-date paper, which was just going to press. A stop-press announcement was followed by a special edition; somebody rang up the London Evening Views which burst out into a front-page scoop; the fat was in the fire, and the Daily Yell, Daily Views, Daily Wire and Daily Tidings, who were all suffering from lack of excitement, came brightly out next morning with bold headlines about disappearing young women.
Crow’s Beach, indeed, that pleasant and respectable watering-place, knew nothing of Miss Whittaker, Miss Findlater, or car XX9917. No hotel had received them; no garage had refuelled or repaired them; no policeman had observed them. The Chief Constable held to his theory of an accident, and scouting parties were sent out. Wires arrived at Scotland Yard from all over the place. They had been seen at Dover, at Newcastle, at Sheffield, at Winchester, at Rugby. Two young women had had tea in a suspicious manner at Folkestone; a car had passed noisily through Dorchester at a late hour on Monday night; a dark-haired girl in an “agitated condition” had entered a public-house in New Alresford just before closing-time and asked the way to Hazelmere. Among all these reports, Parker selected that of a boy-scout, who reported on the Saturday morning that he had noticed two ladies with a car having a picnic on the downs on the previous Monday, not far from Shelly Head. The car was an Austin Seven—he knew that, because he was keen on motors (an unanswerable reason for accuracy in a boy of his age), and he had noticed that it was a London number, though he couldn’t say positively what the number was.
Shelly Head lies about ten miles along the coast from Crow’s Beach, and is curiously lonely, considering how near it lies to the watering-place. Under the cliffs is a long stretch of clear sandy beach, never visited, and overlooked by no houses. The cliffs themselves are chalk, and covered with short turf, running back into a wide expanse of downs, covered with gorse and heather. Then comes a belt of pine-trees, beyond which is a steep, narrow and rutty road, leading at length into the tarmac high-road between Ramborough and Ryders Heath. The downs are by no means frequented, though there are plenty of rough tracks which a car can follow, if you are not particular about comfort or fussy over your springs.
Under the leadership of the boy-scout, the police-car bumped uncomfortably over these disagreeable roads. It was hopeless to look for any previous car-tracks, for the chalk was dry and hard, and the grass and heath retained no marks. Everywhere, little dells and hollows presented themselves—all exactly alike, and many of them capable of hiding a small car, not to speak of the mere signs and remains of a recent picnic. Having arrived at what their guide thought to be approximately the right place, they pulled up and got out. Parker quartered the ground between the five of them and they set off.
Wimsey took a dislike to gorse-bushes that day. There were so many of them and so thick. Any of them might hold a cigarette package or a sandwich paper or a scrap of cloth or a clue of some kind. He trudged along unhappily, back bent and eyes on the ground, over one ridge and down into the hollow—then circling to right and to left, taking his bearings by the police-car; over the next ridge and down into the next hollow; over the next ridge—
Yes. There was something in the hollow.
He saw it first sticking out round the edge of a gorse-bush. It was light in colour, and pointed, rather like a foot.
He felt a little sick.
“Somebody has gone to sleep here,” he said aloud.
Then he thought:
“Funny—it’s always the feet they leave showing.”
He scrambled down among the bushes, slipping on the short turf and nearly rolling to the bottom. He swore irritably.
The person was sleeping oddly. The flies must be a nuisance all over her head like that.
It occurred to him that it was rather early in the year for flies. There had been an advertising rhyme in the papers. Something about “Each fly you swat now means, remember, Three hundred fewer next September.” Or was it a thousand fewer? He couldn’t get the metre quite right.
Then he pulled himself together and went forward. The flies rose up in a little cloud.
It must have been a pretty heavy blow, he thought, to smash the back of the skull in like that. The shingled hair was blonde. The face lay between the bare arms.
He turned the body on its back.
Of course, without the photograph, he could not—he need not—be certain that this was Vera Findlater.
All this had taken him perhaps thirty seconds.
He scrambled up to the rim of the hollow and shouted.
A small black figure at some distance stopped and turned. He saw its face as a white spot with no expression on it. He shouted again, and waved his arms in wide gestures of explanation. The figure came running; it lurched slowly and awkwardly over the heathy ground. It was the policeman—a heavy man, not built for running in the heat. Wimsey shouted again, and the policeman shouted too. Wimsey saw the others closing in upon him. The grotesque figure of the boy-scout topped a ridge, waving its staff—then disappeared again. The policeman was quite near now. His bowler hat was thrust back on his head, and there was something on his watch-chain that glinted in the sun as he ran. Wimsey found himself running to meet him and calling—explaining at great length. It was too far off to make himself heard, but he explained, wordily, with emphasis, pointing, indicating. He was quite breathless when the policeman and he came together. They were both breathless. They wagged their heads and gasped. It was ludicrous. He started running again, with the man at his heels. Presently they were all there, pointing, measuring, taking notes, grubbing under the gorse-bushes. Wimsey sat down. He was dreadfully tired.
“Peter,” said Parker’s voice, “come and look at this.”
He got up wearily.
There were the remains of a picnic lunch a little farther down the hollow. The policeman had a little bag in his hand—he had taken it from under the body, and was now turning over the trifles it contained. On the ground, close to the dead girl’s head, was a thick, heavy spanner—unpleasantly discoloured and with a few fair hairs sticking to its jaws. But what Parker was calling his attention to was none of these, but a man’s mauve-grey cap.
“Where did you find that?” asked Wimsey.
“Alf here picked it up at the top of the hollow,” said Parker.
“Tumbled off into the gorse it was,” corroborated the scout, “just up here, lying upside down just as if it had fallen off somebody’s head.”
“Any footmarks?”
“Not likely. But there’s a place where the bushes are all trodden and broken. Looks as if there’d been some sort of struggle. What’s become of the Austin? Hi! don’t touch that spanner, my lad. There may be finger-prints on it. This looks like an attack by some gang or other. Any money in that purse? Ten-shilling note, sixpence and a few coppers—oh! Well, the other woman may have had more on her. She’s very well off, you know. Held up for ransom, I shouldn’t wonder.” Parker bent down and very gingerly enfolded the spanner in a silk handkerchief, carrying it slung by the four corners. “Well, we’d better spread about and have a look for the car. Better try that belt of trees over there. Looks a likely spot. And, Hopkins—I think you’d better run back with our car to Crow’s Beach and let ’em know at the station, and come back with a photographer. And take this wire and send it to the Chief Commissioner at Scotland Yard, and find a doctor and bring him along with you. And you’d better hire another car while you’re about it, in case we don’t find the Austin—we shall be too many to get away in this one. Take Alf back with you if you’re not sure of finding the place again. Oh! and Hopkins, fetch us along something to eat and drink, will you, we may be at it a long time. Here’s some money—that enough?”
“Yes, thank you, sir.”
The constable went off, taking Alf, who was torn between a desire to stay and do some more detecting, and the pride and glory of being first back with the news. Parker gave a few words of praise for his valuable assistance which filled him with delight, and then turned to the Chief Constable.
“They obviously went off in this direction. Would you bear away to the left, sir, and enter the trees from that end, and Peter, will you bear to the right and work through from the other end, while I go straight up the middle?”
The Chief Constable, who seemed a good deal shaken by the discovery of the body, obeyed without a word. Wimsey caught Parker by the arm.
“I say,” he said, “have you looked at the wound? Something funny, isn’t there? There ought to be more mess, somehow. What do you think?”
“I’m not thinking anything for the moment,” said Parker, a little grimly. “We’ll wait for the doctor’s report. Come on, Steve! We want to dig out that car.”
“Let’s have a look at the cap. H’m. Sold by a gentleman, resident in Stepney. Almost new. Smells strongly of California Poppy—rather a swell sort of gangsman, apparently. Quite one of the lads of the village.”
“Yes—we ought to be able to trace that. Thank Heaven, they always overlook something. Well, we’d better get along.”
The search for the car presented no difficulties. Parker stumbled upon it almost as soon as he got in under the trees. There was a clearing, with a little rivulet of water running through it, beside which stood the missing Austin. There were other trees here, mingled with the pines, and the water made an elbow and spread into a shallow pool, with a kind of muddy beach.
The hood of the car was up, and Parker approached with an uncomfortable feeling that there might be something disagreeable inside, but it was empty. He tried the gears. They were in neutral and the handbrake was on. On the seat was a handkerchief—a large linen handkerchief, very grubby and with no initials or laundry-mark. Parker grunted a little over the criminal’s careless habit of strewing his belongings about. He came round in front of the car and received immediate further proof of carelessness. For on the mud there were footmarks—two men’s and a woman’s, it seemed.
The woman had got out of the car first—he could see where the left heel had sunk heavily in as she extricated herself from the low seat. Then the right foot—less heavily—then she had staggered a little and started to run. But one of the men had been there to catch her. He had stepped out of the bracken in shoes with new rubbers on them, and there were some scuffling marks as though he had held her and she had tried to break away. Finally, the second man, who seemed to possess rather narrow feet and to wear the long-toed boots affected by town boys of the louder sort—had come after her from the car—the marks of his feet were clear, crossing and half-obliterating hers. All three had stood together for a little. Then the tracks moved away, with those of the woman in the middle, and led up to where the mark of a Michelin balloon tyre showed clearly. The tyres of the Austin were ordinary Dunlops—besides, this was obviously a bigger car. It had apparently stood there for some little time, for a little pool of engine-oil had dripped from the crank-case. Then the bigger car had moved off, down a sort of ride that led away through the trees. Parker followed it for a little distance, but the tracks soon became lost in a thick carpet of pine-needles. Still, there was no other road for a car to take. He turned to the Austin to investigate further. Presently shouts told him that the other two were converging upon the centre of the wood. He called back and before long Wimsey and Sir Charles Pillington came crashing towards him through the bracken which fringed the pines.
“Well,” said Wimsey, “I imagine we may put down this elegant bit of purple headgear to the gentleman in the slim boots. Bright yellow, I fancy, with buttons. He must be lamenting his beautiful cap. The woman’s footprints belong to Mary Whittaker, I take it.”
“I suppose so. I don’t see how they can be the Findlater girl’s. This woman went or was taken off in the car.”
“They are certainly not Vera Findlater’s—there was no mud on her shoes when we found her.”
“Oh! you were taking notice, then. I thought you were feeling a bit dead to the world.”
“So I was, old dear, but I can’t help noticin’ things, though moribund. Hullo! what’s this?”
He put his hand down behind the cushions of the car and pulled out an American magazine—that monthly collection of mystery and sensational fiction published under the name of The Black Mask.
“Light reading for the masses,” said Parker.
“Brought by the gentleman in the yellow boots, perhaps,” suggested the Chief Constable.
“More likely by Miss Findlater,” said Wimsey.
“Hardly a lady’s choice,” said Sir Charles, in a pained tone.
“Oh, I dunno. From all I hear, Miss Whittaker was dead against sentimentality and roses round the porch, and the other poor girl copied her in everything. They might have a boyish taste in fiction.”
“Well, it’s not important,” said Parker.
“Wait a bit. Look at this. Somebody’s been making marks on it.”
Wimsey held out the cover for inspection. A thick pencil-mark had been drawn under the first two words of the title.
“Do you think it’s some sort of message? Perhaps the book was on the seat, and she contrived to make the marks unnoticed and shove it away here before they transferred her to the other car.”
“Ingenious,” said Sir Charles, “but what does it mean? The Black. It makes no sense.”
“Perhaps the long-toed gentleman was a black man,” suggested Parker. “Or possibly a Hindu or Parsee of sorts.”
“God bless my soul,” said Sir Charles, horrified, “an English girl in the hands of a black man. How abominable!”
“Well, we’ll hope it isn’t so. Shall we follow the road out or wait for the doctor to arrive?”
“Better go back to the body, I think,” said Parker. “They’ve got a long start of us, and half an hour more or less in following them up won’t make much odds.”
They turned from the translucent cool greenness of the little wood back on to the downs. The streamlet clacked merrily away over the pebbles, running out to the southwest on its way to the river and the sea.
“It’s all very well your chattering,” said Wimsey to the water. “Why can’t you say what you’ve seen?”
