Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

Dear Mr Cayman, I have just remembered that your brother-in-law did actually say something before he died. I think the exact words were, ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ I apologize for not mentioning this this morning, but I attached no importance to the words at the time and so, I suppose, they slipped my memory.

Yours truly,

Robert Jones.

On the next day but one he received a reply:

Dear Mr Jones (wrote Mr Cayman), Your letter of 6th instant to hand. Many thanks for repeating my poor brother-in-law’s last words so punctiliously in spite of their trivial character. What my wife hoped was that her brother might have left her some last message. Still, thank you for being so conscientious.

Yours faithfully,

Leo Cayman.

Bobby felt snubbed.

Chapter 6 End of a Picnic

On the following day Bobby received a letter of quite a different nature:

It’s all fixed, old boy, (wrote Badger in an illiterate scrawl which reflected no credit on the expensive public school which had educated him). Actually got five cars yesterday for fifteen pounds the lot – an Austin, two Morrises and a couple of Rovers. At the moment they won’t actually go, but we can tinker them up sufficiently, I think. Dash it all, a car’s a car, after all. So long as it takes the purchaser home without breaking down, that’s all they can expect. I thought of opening up Monday week and am relying on you, so don’t let me down, will you, old boy? I must say old Aunt Carrie was a sport. I once broke the window of an old boy next door to her who’d been rude to her about her cats and she never got over it. Sent me a fiver every Christmas – and now this.

We’re bound to succeed. The thing’s a dead cert. I mean, a car’s a car after all. You can pick ’em up for nothing. Put a lick of paint on and that’s all the ordinary fool notices. The thing will go with a Bang. Now don’t forget. Monday week. I’m relying on you.

Yours ever,

Badger.

Bobby informed his father that he would be going up to town on Monday week to take up a job. The description of the job did not rouse the Vicar to anything like enthusiasm. He had, it may be pointed out, come across Badger Beadon in the past. He merely treated Bobby to a long lecture on the advisability of not making himself liable for anything. Not an authority on financial or business matters, his advice was technically vague, but its meaning unmistakable.

On the Wednesday of that week Bobby received another letter. It was addressed in a foreign slanting handwriting. Its contents were somewhat surprising to the young man.

It was from the firm of Henriquez and Dallo in Buenos Aires and, to put it concisely, it offered Bobby a job in the firm with a salary of a thousand a year.

For the first minute or two the young man thought he must be dreaming. A thousand a year. He reread the letter more carefully. There was mention of an ex-Naval man being preferred. A suggestion that Bobby’s name had been put forward by someone (someone not named). That acceptance must be immediate, and that Bobby must be prepared to start for Buenos Aires within a week.

‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Bobby, giving vent to his feelings in a somewhat unfortunate manner.

‘Bobby!’

‘Sorry, Dad. Forgot you were there.’

Mr Jones cleared his throat.

‘I should like to point out to you –’

Bobby felt that this process – usually a long one – must at all costs be avoided. He achieved this course by a simple statement:

‘Someone’s offered me a thousand a year.’

The Vicar remained open-mouthed, unable for the moment to make any comment.

‘That’s put him off his drive all right,’ thought Bobby with satisfaction.

‘My dear Bobby, did I understand you to say that someone had offered you a thousand a year? A thousand?’

‘Holed it in one, Dad,’ said Bobby.

‘It’s impossible,’ said the Vicar.

Bobby was not hurt by this frank incredulity. His estimate of his own monetary value differed little from that of his father.

‘They must be complete mutts,’ he agreed heartily.

‘Who – er – are these people?’

Bobby handed him the letter. The Vicar, fumbling for his pince-nez, peered at it suspiciously. Finally he perused it twice.

‘Most remarkable,’ he said at last. ‘Most remarkable.’

‘Lunatics,’ said Bobby.

‘Ah! my boy,’ said the Vicar. ‘It is after all, a great thing to be in Englishman. Honesty. That’s what we stand for. The Navy has carried that ideal all over the world. An Englishman’s world! This South American firm realizes the value of a young man whose integrity will be unshaken and of whose fidelity his employers will be assured. You can always depend on an Englishman to play the game –’

‘And keep a straight bat,’ said Bobby.

The Vicar looked at his son doubtfully. The phrase, an excellent one, had actually been on the tip of his tongue, but there was something in Bobby’s tone that struck him as not quite sincere.

The young man, however, appeared to be perfectly serious.

‘All the same, Dad,’ he said, ‘why me?’

‘What do you mean – why you?’

‘There are a lot of Englishmen in England,’ said Bobby. ‘Hearty fellows, full of cricketing qualities. Why pick on me?’

‘Probably your late commanding officer may have recommended you.’

‘Yes, I suppose that’s true,’ said Bobby doubtfully. ‘It doesn’t matter, anyway, since I can’t take the job.’

‘Can’t take it? My dear boy, what do you mean?’

‘Well, I’m fixed up, you see. With Badger.’

‘Badger? Badger Beadon. Nonsense, my dear Bobby. This is serious.’

‘It’s a bit hard, I own,’ said Bobby with a sigh.

‘Any childish arrangement you have made with young Beadon cannot count for a moment.’

‘It counts with me.’

‘Young Beadon is completely irresponsible. He has already, I understand, been a source of considerable trouble and expense to his parents.’

‘He’s not had much luck. Badger’s so infernally trusting.’

‘Luck – luck! I should say that young man had never done a hand’s turn in his life.’

‘Nonsense, Dad. Why, he used to get up at five in the morning to feed those beastly chickens. It wasn’t his fault they all got the roop or the croup, or whatever it was.’

‘I have never approved of this garage project. Mere folly. You must give it up.’

‘Can’t sir. I’ve promised. I can’t let old Badger down. He’s counting on me.’

The discussion proceeded. The Vicar, biased by his views on the subject of Badger, was quite unable to regard any promise made to that young man as binding. He looked on Bobby as obstinate and determined at all costs to lead an idle life in company with one of the worse possible companions. Bobby, on the other hand, stolidly repeated without originality that he ‘couldn’t let old Badger down’.

The Vicar finally left the room in anger and Bobby then and there sat down to write to the firm of Henriquez and Dallo, refusing their offer.

He sighed as he did so. He was letting a chance go here which was never likely to occur again. But he saw no alternative.

Later, on the links, he put the problem to Frankie. She listened attentively.

‘You’d have had to go to South America?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you have liked that?’

‘Yes, why not?’

Frankie sighed.

‘Anyway,’ she said with decision. ‘I think you did quite right.’

‘About Badger, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘I couldn’t let the old bird down, could I?’

‘No, but be careful the old bird, as you call him, doesn’t let you in.’

‘Oh! I shall be careful. Anyway, I shall be all right. I haven’t got any assets.’

‘That must be rather fun,’ said Frankie.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know why. It just sounded rather nice and free and irresponsible. I suppose, though, when I come to think of it, that I haven’t got any assets much, either. I mean, Father gives me an allowance and I’ve got lots of houses to live in and clothes and maids and some hideous family jewels and a good deal of credits at shops; but that’s all the family really. It’s not me.’

‘No, but all the same –’ Bobby paused.

‘Oh, it’s quite different, I know.’

‘Yes,’ said Bobby. ‘It’s quite different.’

He felt suddenly very depressed.

They walked in silence to the next tee.

‘I’m going to town tomorrow,’ said Frankie, as Bobby teed up his ball.

‘Tomorrow? Oh – and I was going to suggest you should come for a picnic.’

‘I’d have liked to. However, it’s arranged. You see, Father’s got the gout again.’

‘You ought to stay and minister to him,’ said Bobby.

‘He doesn’t like being ministered to. It annoys him frightfully. He likes the second footman best. He’s sympathetic and doesn’t mind having things thrown at him and being called a damned fool.’

Bobby topped his drive and it trickled into the bunker.

‘Hard lines,’ said Frankie and drove a nice straight ball that sailed over it.

‘By the way,’ she remarked. ‘We might do something together in London. You’ll be up soon?’

‘On Monday. But – well – it’s no good, is it?’

‘What do you mean – no good?’

‘Well, I mean I shall be working as a mechanic most of the time. I mean –’

‘Even then,’ said Frankie, ‘I suppose you’re just as capable of coming to a cocktail party and getting tight as any other of my friends.’

Bobby merely shook his head.

‘I’ll give a beer and sausage party if you prefer it,’ said Frankie encouragingly.

‘Oh, look here, Frankie, what’s the good? I mean, you can’t mix your crowds. Your crowd’s a different crowd from mine.’

‘I assure you,’ said Frankie, ‘that my crowd is a very mixed one.’

‘You’re pretending not to understand.’

‘You can bring Badger if you like. There’s friendship for you.’

‘You’ve got some sort of prejudice against Badger.’

‘I daresay it’s his stammer. People who stammer always make me stammer, too.’

‘Look here, Frankie, it’s no good and you know it isn’t. It’s all right down here. There’s not much to do and I suppose I’m better than nothing. I mean you’re always awfully decent to me and all that, and I’m grateful. But I mean I know I’m just nobody – I mean –’

‘When you’ve quite finished expressing your inferiority complex,’ said Frankie coldly, ‘perhaps you’ll try getting out of the bunker with a niblick instead of a putter.’

‘Have I – oh! damn!’ He replaced the putter in his bag and took out the niblick. Frankie watched with malicious satisfaction as he hacked at the ball five times in succession. Clouds of sand rose round them.

‘Your hole,’ said Bobby, picking up the ball.

‘I think it is,’ said Frankie. ‘And that gives me the match.’

‘Shall we play the bye?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I’ve got a lot to do.’

‘Of course. I suppose you have.’

They walked together in silence to the clubhouse.

‘Well,’ said Frankie, holding out her hand. ‘Goodbye, my dear. It’s been too marvellous to have you to make use of while I’ve been down here. See something of you again, perhaps, when I’ve nothing better to do.’

‘Look here, Frankie –’

‘Perhaps you’ll condescend to come to my coster party. I believe you can get pearl buttons quite cheaply at Woolworth’s.’

‘Frankie –’

His words were drowned in the noise of the Bentley’s engine which Frankie had just started. She drove away with an airy wave of her hand.

‘Damn!’ said Bobby in a heartfelt tone.

Frankie, he considered, had behaved outrageously. Perhaps he hadn’t put things very tactfully, but, dash it all, what he had said was true enough.

Perhaps, though, he shouldn’t have put it into words.

The next three days seemed interminably long.

The Vicar had a sore throat which necessitated his speaking in a whisper when he spoke at all. He spoke very little and was obviously bearing his fourth son’s presence as a Christian should. Once or twice he quoted Shakespeare to the effect that a serpent’s tooth, etc.

On Saturday Bobby felt that he could bear the strain of home life no longer. He got Mrs Roberts, who, with her husband, ‘ran’ the Vicarage, to give him a packet of sandwiches, and, supplementing this with a bottle of beer which he bought in Marchbolt, he set off for a solitary picnic.

He had missed Frankie abominably these last few days. These older people were the limit … They harped on things so.

Bobby stretched himself out on a brackeny bank and debated with himself whether he should eat his lunch first and go to sleep afterwards, or sleep first and eat afterwards.

While he was cogitating, the matter was settled for him by his falling asleep without noticing it.

When he awoke it was half-past three! Bobby grinned as he thought how his father would disapprove of this way of spending a day. A good walk across country – twelve miles or so – that was the kind of thing that a healthy young man should do. It led inevitably to that famous remark: ‘And now, I think, I’ve earned my lunch.’

‘Idiotic,’ thought Bobby. ‘Why earn lunch by doing a lot of walking you don’t particularly want to do? What’s the merit in it? If you enjoy it, then it’s pure self-indulgence, and if you don’t enjoy it you’re a fool to do it.’

Whereupon he fell upon his unearned lunch and ate it with gusto. With a sigh of satisfaction he unscrewed the bottle of beer. Unusually bitter beer, but decidedly refreshing …

He lay back again, having tossed the empty beer bottle into a clump of heather.

He felt rather god-like lounging there. The world was at his feet. A phrase, but a good phrase. He could do anything – anything if he tried! Plans of great splendour and daring initiative flashed through his mind.

Then he grew sleepy again. Lethargy stole over him.

He slept …

Heavy, numbing sleep …

Chapter 7 An Escape from Death

Driving her large green Bentley, Frankie drew up to the kerb outside a large old-fashioned house over the doorway of which was inscribed ‘St Asaph’s’.

Frankie jumped out and, turning, extracted a large bunch of lilies. Then she rang the bell. A woman in nurse’s dress answered the door.

‘Can I see Mr Jones?’ inquired Frankie.

The nurse’s eyes took in the Bentley, the lilies and Frankie with intense interest.

‘What name shall I say?’

‘Lady Frances Derwent.’

The nurse was thrilled and her patient went up in her estimation.

She guided Frankie upstairs into a room on the first floor.

‘You’ve a visitor to see you, Mr Jones. Now, who do you think it is? Such a nice surprise for you.’

All this is the ‘bright’ manner usual to nursing homes.

‘Gosh!’ said Bobby, very much surprised. ‘If it isn’t Frankie!’

‘Hullo, Bobby, I’ve brought the usual flowers. Rather a graveyard suggestion about them, but the choice was limited.’

‘Oh, Lady Frances,’ said the nurse, ‘they’re lovely. I’ll put them into water.’

She left the room.

Frankie sat down in an obvious visitor’s chair.

‘Well, Bobby,’ she said. ‘What’s all this?’

‘You may well ask,’ said Bobby. ‘I’m the complete sensation of this place. Eight grains of morphia, no less. They’re going to write about me in the Lancet and the BMJ.’

‘What’s the BMJ?’ interrupted Frankie.

‘The British Medical Journal.’

‘All right. Go ahead. Rattle off some more initials.’

‘Do you know, my girl, that half a grain is a fatal dose? I ought to be dead about sixteen times over. It’s true that recovery has been known after sixteen grains – still, eight is pretty good, don’t you think? I’m the hero of this place. They’ve never had a case like me before.’

‘How nice for them.’

‘Isn’t it? Gives them something to talk about to all the other patients.’

The nurse re-entered, bearing lilies in vases.

‘It’s true, isn’t it, nurse?’ demanded Bobby. ‘You’ve never had a case like mine?’

‘Oh! you oughtn’t to be here at all,’ said the nurse. ‘In the churchyard you ought to be. But it’s only the good die young, they say.’ She giggled at her own wit and went out.

‘There you are,’ said Bobby. ‘You’ll see, I shall be famous all over England.’

He continued to talk. Any signs of inferiority complex that he had displayed at his last meeting with Frankie had now quite disappeared. He took a firm and egotistical pleasure in recounting every detail of his case.

‘That’s enough,’ said Frankie, quelling him. ‘I don’t really care terribly for stomach pumps. To listen to you one would think nobody had ever been poisoned before.’

‘Jolly few have been poisoned with eight grains of morphia and got over it,’ Bobby pointed out. ‘Dash it all, you’re not sufficiently impressed.’

‘Pretty sickening for the people who poisoned you,’ said Frankie.

‘I know. Waste of perfectly good morphia.’

‘It was in the beer, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes. You see, someone found me sleeping like the dead, tried to wake me and couldn’t. Then they got alarmed, carried me to a farmhouse and sent for a doctor –’

‘I know all the next part,’ said Frankie hastily.

‘At first they had the idea that I’d taken the stuff deliberately. Then when they heard my story, they went off and looked for the beer bottle and found it where I’d thrown it and had it analysed – the dregs of it were quite enough for that, apparently.’

‘No clue as to how the morphia got in the bottle?’

‘None whatever. They’ve interviewed the pub where I bought it and opened other bottles and everything’s been quite all right.’

‘Someone must have put the stuff in the beer while you were asleep?’

‘That’s it. I remember that the paper across the top wasn’t still sticking properly.’

Frankie nodded thoughtfully.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘It shows that what I said in the train that day was quite right.’

‘What did you say?’

‘That that man – Pritchard – had been pushed over the cliff.’

‘That wasn’t in the train. You said that at the station,’ said Bobby feebly.

‘Same thing.’

‘But why –’

‘Darling – it’s obvious. Why should anyone want to put you out of the way? You’re not the heir to a fortune or anything.’

‘I may be. Some great aunt I’ve never heard of in New Zealand or somewhere may have left me all her money.’

‘Nonsense. Not without knowing you. And if she didn’t know you, why leave money to a fourth son? Why, in these hard times even a clergyman mightn’t have a fourth son! No, it’s all quite clear. No one benefits by your death, so that’s ruled out. Then there’s revenge. You haven’t seduced a chemist’s daughter, by any chance?’

‘Not that I can remember,’ said Bobby with dignity.

‘I know. One seduces so much that one can’t keep count. But I should say offhand that you’ve never seduced anyone at all.’

‘You’re making me blush, Frankie. And why must it be a chemist’s daughter, anyway?’

‘Free access to morphia. It’s not so easy to get hold of morphia.’

‘Well, I haven’t seduced a chemist’s daughter.’

‘And you haven’t got any enemies that you know of?’

Bobby shook his head.

‘Well, there you are,’ said Frankie triumphantly. ‘It must be the man who was pushed over the cliff. What do the police think?’

‘They think it must have been a lunatic.’

‘Nonsense. Lunatics don’t wander about with unlimited supplies of morphia looking for odd bottles of beer to put it into. No, somebody pushed Pritchard over the cliff. A minute or two later you come along and he thinks you saw him do it and so determines to put you out of the way.’

‘I don’t think that will hold water, Frankie.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, to begin with, I didn’t see anything.’

‘Yes, but he didn’t know that.’

‘And if I had seen anything, I should have said so at the inquest.’

‘I suppose that’s so,’ said Frankie unwillingly.

She thought for a minute or two.

‘Perhaps he thought you’d seen something that you didn’t think was anything but which really was something. That sounds pure gibberish, but you get the idea?’

Bobby nodded.

‘Yes, I see what you mean, but it doesn’t seem very probable, somehow.’

‘I’m sure that cliff business had something to do with this. You were on the spot – the first person to be there –’

‘Thomas was there, too,’ Bobby reminded her. ‘And nobody’s tried to poison him.’

‘Perhaps they’re going to,’ said Frankie cheerfully. ‘Or perhaps they’ve tried and failed.’

‘It all seems very far-fetched.’

‘I think it’s logical. If you get two out of the way things happening in a stagnant pond like Marchbolt – wait – there’s a third thing.’

‘What?’

‘That job you were offered. That, of course, is quite a small thing, but it was odd, you must admit. I’ve never heard of a foreign firm that specialized in seeking out undistinguished ex-Naval officers.’

‘Did you say undistinguished?’

‘You hadn’t got into the BMJ, then. But you see my point. You’ve seen something you weren’t meant to see – or so they (whoever they are) think. Very well. They first try to get rid of you by offering you a job abroad. Then, when that fails, they try to put you out of the way altogether.’

‘Isn’t that rather drastic? And anyway a great risk to take?’

‘Oh! but murderers are always frightfully rash. The more murders they do, the more murders they want to do.’

‘Like The Third Bloodstain,’ said Bobby, remembering one of his favourite works of fiction.

‘Yes, and in real life, too – Smith and his wives and Armstrong and people.’

‘Well, but, Frankie, what on earth is it I’m supposed to have seen?’

‘That, of course, is the difficulty,’ admitted Frankie. ‘I agree that it can’t have been the actual pushing, because you would have told about that. It must be something about the man himself. Perhaps he had a birthmark or double-jointed fingers or some strange physical peculiarity.’

‘Your mind is running on Dr Thorndyke, I see. It couldn’t be anything like that because whatever I saw the police would see as well.’

‘So they would. That was an idiotic suggestion. It’s very difficult, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a pleasing theory,’ said Bobby. ‘And it makes me feel important, but all the same, I don’t believe it’s much more than a theory.’

‘I’m sure I’m right.’ Frankie rose. ‘I must be off now. Shall I come and see you again tomorrow?’

‘Oh! Do. The arch chatter of the nurses gets very monotonous. By the way, you’re back from London very soon?’

‘My dear, as soon as I heard about you, I tore back. It’s most exciting to have a romantically poisoned friend.’

‘I don’t know whether morphia is so very romantic,’ said Bobby reminiscently.

‘Well, I’ll come tomorrow. Do I kiss you or don’t I?’

‘It’s not catching,’ said Bobby encouragingly.

‘Then I’ll do my duty to the sick thoroughly.’

She kissed him lightly.

‘See you tomorrow.’

The nurse came in with Bobby’s tea as she went out.

‘I’ve seen her pictures in the papers often. She’s not so very like them, though. And, of course, I’ve seen her driving about in her car, but I’ve never seen her before close to, so to speak. Not a bit haughty, is she?’

‘Oh, no!’ said Bobby. ‘I should never call Frankie haughty.’

‘I said to Sister, I said, she’s as natural as anything. Not a bit stuck up. I said to Sister, she’s just like you or me, I said.’

Silently dissenting violently from this view, Bobby returned no reply. The nurse, disappointed by his lack of response, left the room.