Crime at Christmas (3 page)

'A fine old Scots name,' said Mrs Grant.

'I for Ian,' said Mr Dukes. 'Or would it be Izzy?'

'Irving, if you want to know,' replied the young man. 'Any objection? You
like to make something of it?'

'Keep your hair on, young shaver.'

'So I'm a Yid, am I? That's your idea, uh?'

'If you get steamed up any more,' said Mr Dukes, 'it'll ruin that
permanent wave of yours.'

'It only remains for one of you to suggest a nice friendly game of cards,
now we've had the preliminary patter,' said Henry Stansfield.

This reference to the technique of card-sharpers who work the trains
silenced even Percy Dukes for a moment. However, he soon recovered.

'I see you weren't born yesterday, mister. We must've sounded a bit like
that. You can always tell 'em a mile off, can't you? No offence meant to this
young gent. Just P.D.'s little bit of fun.'

'I wish somebody would tell me what this is all about,' asked Inez Blake,
pouting provocatively at Mr Dukes, who at once obliged.

'They must be awfu' clever,' remarked Mrs Grant, in her singsong Lowland
accent, when he had finished.

'No criminals are clever, ma'am,' said Stansfield quietly. His ruminative
eye passed, without haste, from Macdonald to Dukes. 'Neither the small fry nor
the big operators. They're pretty well subhuman, the whole lot of 'em. A dash
of cunning, a thick streak of cowardice, and the rest is made up of stupidity
and boastfulness. They're too stupid for anything but crime, and so riddled
with inferiority that they always give themselves away, sooner or later, by
boasting about their crimes. They like to think of themselves as the wide boys,
but they're as narrow as starved eels—why, they haven't even the wits to alter
their professional methods: that's how the police pick 'em up.'

'I entirely agree, sir,' Mr Kilmington snapped. 'In my profession I see a
good deal of the criminal classes. And I flatter myself none of them has ever
got the better of me. They're transparent, sir, transparent.'

'No doubt you gentlemen are right,' said Percy Dukes comfortably. 'But the
police haven't picked up the chaps who did this train robbery yet.'

'They will. And the Countess of Axminster's emerald bracelet. Bet the gang
didn't reckon to find that in the mail-bag. Worth all of £25,000.'

Percy Duke's mouth fell open. The Flash Card whistled. Overcome, either by
the stuffiness of the carriage or the thought of £25,000-worth of emeralds,
Inez Blake gave a little moan and fainted all over Mr Kilmington's lap.

'Really! Upon my soul! My dear young lady!' exclaimed that worthy. There
was a flutter of solicitude, shared by all except the cold-eyed young Macdonald
who, after stooping over her a moment, his back to the others, said, 'Here
you—stop pawing the young lady and let her stretch out on the seat. Yes, I'm
talking to you, Kilmington.'

'How dare you! This is an outrage!' The little man stood up so abruptly
that the girl was almost rolled on to the floor. 'I was merely trying to—'

'I know your sort. Nasty old men. Now, keep your hands off her! I'm
telling you.'

In the shocked silence that ensued, Kilmington gobbled speechlessly at
Macdonald for a moment; then, seeing razors in the youth's cold-steel eye,
snatched his black hat and brief-case from the rack and bolted out of the
compartment. Henry Stansfield made as if to stop him, then changed his mind.
Mrs Grant followed the little man out, returning presently, her handkerchief
soaked in water, to dab Miss Blake's forehead. The time was just on 8.30.

When things were restored to normal, Mr Dukes turned to Stansfield. 'You
were saying this necklace of—who was it?—the Countess of Axminster, it's worth
£25,000? Fancy sending a thing of that value through the post! Are you sure of
it?'

'The value? Oh, yes.' Henry Stansfield spoke out of the corner of his
mouth, in the manner of a stupid man imparting a confidence. 'Don't let this
go any farther. But I've a friend who works in the Cosmopolitan—the Company where
it's insured. That's another thing that didn't get into the papers. Silly
woman. She wanted it for some big family do in Scotland at Christmas, forgot
to bring it with her, and wrote home for it to be posted to her in a registered
packet.'

'£25,000,' said Percy Dukes thoughtfully. 'Well, stone me down!'

'Yes. Some people don't know when they're lucky, do they?'

Dukes's fat face wobbled on his shoulders like a globe of lard. Young
Macdonald polished his nails. Inez Blake read her magazine. After some while,
Percy Dukes remarked that the blizzard was slackening; he'd take an airing and
see if there was any sign of the relief engine yet. He left the compartment.

At the window, the snowflakes danced in their tens now, not their
thousands. The time was 8.55. Shortly afterwards, Inez Blake went out; and ten
minutes later, Mrs Grant remarked to Stansfield that it had stopped snowing
altogether. Neither Inez nor Dukes had returned when, at 9.30, Henry Stansfield
decided to ask what had happened about the relief. The Guard was not in his
van, which adjoined Stansfield's coach, towards the rear of the train. So he
turned back, walked up the corridor to the front coach, clambered out, and
hailed the engine cab.

'She must have been held up,' said the Guard, leaning out. 'Charlie here
got through from the box, and they promised her by nine o'clock. But it'll no'
be long now, sir.'

'Have you seen anything of a Mr Kilmington—small, sandy chap—black hat
and overcoat, blue suit—was in my compartment? I've walked right up the train
and he doesn't seem to be on it.'

The Guard pondered a moment. 'Och aye, yon wee fellow? Him that asked me
about telephoning from the village. Aye, he's awa' then.'

'He did set off to walk there, you mean?'

'Nae doot he did, if he's no' on the train. He spoke to me again—juist on
nine, it'd be—and said he was awa' if the relief didna turn up in five
minutes.'

'You've not seen him since?'

'No, sir. I've been talking to my mates here this half-hour, ever syne the
wee fellow spoke to me.'

Henry Stansfield walked thoughtfully back down the permanent way. When he
had passed out of the glare shed by the carriage lights on the snow, he
switched on his electric torch. Just beyond the last coach, the eastern wall of
the cutting sloped sharply down and merged into moorland level with the track.
Although the snow had stopped altogether, an icy wind from the north-east still
blew, raking and numbing his face. Twenty yards farther on, his torch lit up a
track, already half filled in with snow, made by several pairs of feet,
pointing away over the moor, towards the north-east. Several passengers, it
seemed, had set off for the village, whose lights twinkled like frost in the
far distance. Stansfield was about to follow this track when he heard footsteps
scrunching the snow farther up the line. He switched off the torch; at once it
was as if a sack had been thrown over his head, so close and blinding was the
darkness. The steps came nearer. Stansfield switched on his torch, at the last
minute, pinpointing the squab figure of Percy Dukes. The man gave a muffled
oath.

'What the devil! Here, what's the idea, keeping me waiting half an hour in
that blasted—?'

'Have you seen Kilmington?'

'Oh, it's you. No, how the hell should I have seen him? Isn't he on the
train? I've been walking up the line, to look for the relief. No sign yet. Damn
parky, it is—I'm moving on.'

Presently Stansfield moved on, too, but along the track towards the
village. The circle of his torchlight wavered and bounced on the deep snow. The
wind, right in his teeth, was killing. No wonder, he thought, as after a few
hundred yards he approached the end of the trail, those passengers turned back.
Then he realised they had not all turned back. What he had supposed to be a
hummock of snow bearing a crude resemblance to a recumbent human figure, he now
saw to be a human figure covered with snow. He scraped some of the snow off it,
turned it gently over on its back.

Arthur J Kilmington would fuss no more in this world. His brief-case was
buried beneath him: his black hat was lying where it had fallen, lightly
covered with snow, near the head. There seemed, to Stansfield's cursory
examination, no mark of violence on him. But the eyeballs started, the face was
suffused with a pinkish-blue colour. So men look who have been strangled,
thought Stansfield, or asphyxiated. Quickly he knelt down again, shining his
torch in the dead face. A qualm of horror shook him. Mr Kilmington's nostrils
were caked thick with snow, which had frozen solid in them, and snow had been
rammed tight into his mouth also.

And here he would have stayed, reflected Stansfield, in this desolate
spot, for days or weeks, perhaps, if the snow lay or deepened. And when the
thaw at last came (as it did that year, in fact, only after two months), the
snow would thaw out from his mouth and nostrils, too, and there would be no
vestige of murder left—only the corpse of an impatient little lawyer who had
tried to walk to the village in a blizzard and died for his pains. It might
even be that no one would ask how such a precise, pernickety little chap had
ventured the two-mile walk in thin shoes and without a torch to light his way
through the pitchy blackness; for Stansfield, going through the man's pockets,
had found the following articles—and nothing more: pocket-book, fountain- pen,
handkerchief, cigarette-case, gold lighter, two letters and some loose change.

Stansfield started to return for help. But, only twenty yards back, he
noticed another trail of footprints, leading off the main track to the left.
This trail seemed a fresher one—the snow lay less thickly in the indentations—and
to have been made by one pair of feet only. He followed it up, walking beside
it. Whoever made this track had walked in a slight right-handed curve back to
the railway line, joining it about 150 yards south of where the main trail came
out. At this point there was a platelayers' shack. Finding the door unlocked,
Stansfield entered. There was nothing inside but a coke-brazier, stone cold,
and a smell of cigar-smoke . . .

Half an hour later, Stansfield returned to his compartment. In the
meanwhile, he had helped the train crew to carry back the body of Kilmington,
which was now locked in the Guard's van. He had also made an interesting
discovery as to Kilmington's movements. It was to be presumed that, after the
altercation with Macdonald, and the brief conversation already reported by the
Guard, the lawyer must have gone to sit in another compartment. The last coach,
to the rear of the Guard's van, was a first-class one, almost empty. But in one
of its compartments, Stansfield found a passenger asleep. He woke him up, gave
a description of Kilmington, and asked if he had seen him earlier.

The passenger grumpily informed Stansfield that a smallish man, in a dark
overcoat, with the trousers of a blue suit showing beneath it, had come to the
door and had a word with him. No, the passenger had not noticed his face
particularly, because he'd been very drowsy himself, and besides, the chap had
politely taken off his black Homburg hat to address him, and the hat screened
as much of the head as was not cut off from his view by the top of the door.
No, the chap had not come into his compartment: he had just stood outside,
inquired the time (the passenger had looked at his watch and told him it was
8.50); then the chap had said that, if the relief didn't turn up by nine, he
intended to walk to the nearest village.

Stansfield had then walked along to the engine cab. The Guard, whom he
found there, told him that he'd gone up the track about 8.45 to meet the
fireman on his way back from the signal-box. He had gone as far as the place
where he had put down his fog-signals earlier; here, just before nine, he and
the fireman met, as the latter corroborated. Returning to the train, the Guard
had climbed into the last coach, noticed Kilmington sitting alone in a
first-class compartment (it was then that the lawyer announced to the Guard his
intention of walking if the relief engine had not arrived within five
minutes). The Guard then got out of the train again, and proceeded down the
track to talk to his mates in the engine cab.

This evidence would seem to point incontrovertibly at Kilmington's having
been murdered shortly after 9 p.m., Stansfield reflected as he went back to his
own compartment. His other fellow-passengers were all present and correct now.

'Well, did you find him?' asked Percy Dukes.

'Kilmington? Oh yes, I found him. In the snow over there. He was dead.'

Inez Blake gave a little, affected scream. The permanent sneer was wiped,
as if by magic, off young Macdonald's face, which turned a sickly white. Mr
Dukes sucked in his fat lips.

'The puir wee man,' said Mrs Grant. 'He tried to walk it then? Died of
exposure, was it?'

'No,' announced Stansfield flatly, 'he was murdered.'

This time, Inez Blake screamed in earnest; and, like an echo, a hooting
shriek came from far up the line: the relief engine was approaching at last.

'The police will be awaiting us back at Tebay, so we'd better all have our
stories ready.' Stansfield turned to Percy Dukes. 'You, for instance, sir.
Where were you between 8.55, when you left the carriage, and 9.35 when I met
you returning? Are you sure you didn't see Kilmington?'

Dukes, expansive no longer, his piggy eyes sunk deep in the fat of his
face, asked Stansfield who the hell he thought he was.

'I am an inquiry agent, employed by the Cosmopolitan Insurance Company.
Before that, I was a Detective Inspector in the C.I.D. Here is my card.'

Dukes barely glanced at it. 'That's all right, old man. Only wanted to
make sure. Can't trust anyone nowadays.' His voice had taken on the
ingratiating, oleaginous heartiness of the small businessman trying to clinch a
deal with a bigger one. 'Just went for a stroll, y'know—stretch the old legs.
Didn't see a soul.'

'Who were you expecting to see? Didn't you wait for someone in the
platelayers' shack along there, and smoke a cigar while you were waiting? Who
did you mistake me for when you said "What's the idea, keeping me waiting
half an hour"?'

'Here, draw it mild, old man.' Percy Dukes sounded injured. 'I certainly
looked in at the hut: smoked a cigar for a bit. Then I toddled back to the
train, and met up with your good self on the way. I didn't make no appointment
to meet—'

'Oo! Well I
must
say,' interrupted
Miss Blake virtuously. She could hardly wait to tell Stansfield that, on
leaving the compartment shortly after Dukes, she'd overheard voices on the
track below the lavatory window. 'I recognised this gentleman's voice,' she
went on, tossing her head at Dukes. 'He said something like, "You're going
to help us again, chum, so you'd better get used to the idea. You're in it up
to the neck—can't back out now." And another voice, sort of mumbling,
might have been Mr Kilmington's—I dunno—sounded Scotch anyway—said, "All
right. Meet you in five minutes: platelayers' hut a few hundred yards up the
line. Talk it over".'

'And what did you do then, young lady?' asked Stansfield. 'You didn't
return to the compartment, I remember.'

'I happened to meet a gentleman friend, farther up the train, and sat with
him for a bit.'

'Is that so?' remarked Macdonald menacingly. 'Why, you four-Hushing
little—!'

'Shut up!' commanded Stansfield.

'Honest I did,' the girl said, ignoring Macdonald. 'I'll introduce you to
him, if you like. He'll tell you I was with him for, oh, half an hour or more.'

'And what about Mr Macdonald?'

'I'm not talking,' said the youth sullenly.

'Mr Macdonald isn't talking. Mrs Grant?'

'I've been in this compartment ever since, sir.'

'Ever since—?'

'Since I went out to damp my hankie for this young lady, when she'd
fainted. Mr Kilmington was just before me, you'll mind. I saw him go through
into the Guard's van.'

'Did you hear him say anything about walking to the village?'

'No, sir. He just hurried into the van, and then there was some havers
about it's no' being lockit this time, and how he was going to report the Guard
for it—I didna listen any more, wishing to get back to the young lady. I doubt
the wee man would be for reporting everyone.'

'I see. And you've been sitting here with Mr Macdonald all the time?'

'Yes, sir. Except for ten minutes or so he was out of the compartment,
just after you'd left.'

'What did you go out for?' Stansfield asked the young man.

'Just taking the air, brother, just taking the air.'

'You weren't taking Mr Kilmington's gold watch, as well as the air, by any
chance?' Stansfield's keen eyes were fastened like a hook into Macdonald's,
whose insolent expression visibly crumbled beneath them.

'I don't know what you mean,' he tried to bluster. 'You can't do this to
me.'

'I mean that a man has been murdered: and, when the police search you,
they will find his gold watch in your possession. Won't look too healthy for
you, my young friend.'

'Naow! Give us a chance! It was only a joke, see?' The wretched Macdonald
was whining now in his native cockney. 'He got me riled—the stuck-up way he
said nobody'd ever got the better of him. So I thought I'd just show him—I'd
have given it back, straight I would, only I couldn't find him afterwards. It
was just a joke, I tell you. Anyway, it was Inez who lifted the ticker.'

'You dirty little rotter!' screeched the girl.

'Shut up, both of you! You can explain your joke to the police. Let's hope
they don't die laughing.'

At this moment the train gave a lurch, and started back up the gradient.
It halted at the signal-box, for Stansfield to telephone to Tebay, then
clattered south again.

On Tebay platform, Stansfield was met by an Inspector and a Sergeant of
the County Constabulary, with the Police Surgeon. No passengers were permitted
to alight till he had had a few words with them. Then the four men boarded the
train. After a brief pause in the Guard's van, where the Police Surgeon drew
aside the Guard's black off-duty overcoat that had been laid over the body, and
began his preliminary examination, they marched along to Stansfield's
compartment. The Guard who, at his request, had locked this as the train was
drawing up at the platform and was keeping an eye on its occupants, now
unlocked it. The Inspector entered.

His first action was to search Macdonald. Finding the watch concealed on
his person, he then charged Macdonald and Inez Blake with the theft. The
Inspector next proceeded to make an arrest on the charge of wilful murder. . .

B
ut WHO DID
the Inspector
arrest for the murder of the disagreeable Arthur J. Kilmington? And why?
Nicholas Blake placed eight clues to the killer's identity in the text (two
major clues; six minor ones); they cover motive as well as method.

Baffled? Read the story again—or meander through the rest of the stories
in the book (there's never any hurry over Christmas) and then read it once
more.

If you still can't identify the who, the how, and the why—
click here to go to the end of the book
where all is
revealed.

Back
to Table of Contents