The Man in the Queue

His thoughts went to Ray Marcable. This morning’s press had been full of her projected departure for America, the popular papers expressing themselves in lamentation and the more highbrow in bitterness and indignation that British managers should allow the best musical comedy star of a generation to leave the country. Should he go to her, Grant wondered, before she left and ask her bluntly why she had looked surprised at the description of the dagger? There had been nothing to connect her even remotely with the crime. He knew her history⁠—the little semidetached villa in a dreary suburb that she had called home, the council school she had attended, her real name, which was Rosie Markham. He had even met Mr. and Mrs. Markham over the affair of the suitcase. It was exceedingly unlikely that she could throw any light on the Queue Murder. And it was still more unlikely that she would if she could. She had had her chance to be frank with him over that tea in her dressing-room, and she had quite deliberately kept him outside any knowledge she might have had. That knowledge, of course, might be entirely innocent. Her surprise might have been due to recognition of the dagger’s description, and yet have nothing to do with the murder. The dagger was far from unique, and many people must have seen and handled similar weapons. No, either way he was not likely to get much satisfaction from another interview with Miss Marcable. She would have to depart for the United States uninterrogated.

With a sigh for its unproductiveness he locked the dagger away in its drawer again and set off for home. He came out on to the Embankment to find that it was a fine night with a light, frosty mist in the air, and he decided that he would walk home. The midnight streets of London⁠—always so much more beautiful than the choppy crowded ones of the daytime⁠—fascinated him. At noon London made you a present of an entertainment, rich and varied and amusing. But at midnight she made you a present of herself; at midnight you could hear her breathe.

When at length he turned into the road where he lived he had come to the stage of walking automatically, and a starry mist possessed his brain. For a little while Grant had “shut his eyes.” But he was not asleep, actually or metaphorically, and the eyes of his brain opened with a start at the dim figure that was waiting on the opposite corner just outside the lamplight. Who was hanging about at this hour?

He debated rapidly whether or not to cross and walk down the other side of the street, and so come within criticizing distance of the figure. But it was rather late to change his direction. He held on, ignoring the loiterer. Only when he was turning in at his own gate he looked back. The figure was still there, almost indistinguishable in the gloom.

It was after twelve when he let himself in with his latchkey, but Mrs. Field was waiting up for him. “I thought you’d like to know that there has been a gentleman here asking for you. He wouldn’t wait and he wouldn’t leave a message.”

“How long ago was that?”

More than an hour, Mrs. Field said. She didn’t see him rightly. He had stood well out beyond the step. But he was young.

“No name?”

No, he had refused to give a name.

“All right,” said Grant. “You go to bed. If he comes back, I’ll let him in.”

She hesitated in the doorway. “You won’t do anything rash, will you?” she said solicitously. “I don’t like the thought of you bin here all alone with someone who might be an anarchist for all we know.”

“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Field. You won’t be blown up tonight.”

“It isn’t blowing up I’m afraid of,” she said. “It’s the thought of you lyin’ here perhaps bleeding to death and no one knowing. Think how I’d feel when I came in in the morning and found you like that.”

Grant laughed. “Well, you can comfort yourself. There isn’t the slightest chance of anything so thrilling happening. No one has ever spilt my blood except a Jerry at Contalmaison, and that was more by luck than good management.”

She conceded the point. “See and have a bite before you go to bed,” she said, indicating the food on the sideboard. “I got you some English tomatoes, and the beef is Tomkins’ best pickled.” She said good night and went, but she could not have reached her kitchen before a knock sounded on the door. Grant heard her go to the door, and even while his brain was speculating about his visitor, the looker-on in him was wondering whether it was spunk or curiosity that had sent Mrs. Field so willingly to answer the knock. A moment later she threw open the sitting-room door and said, “A young gentleman to see you, sir,” and into Grant’s eager presence came a youth of nineteen or twenty, fairly tall, dark, broad-shouldered, but slight, and poised on his feet like a boxer. As he came forward he shot a furtive glance from his brilliant dark eyes into the corner behind the door, and he came to a halt some yards from the inspector in the middle of the room, turning a soft felt hat in his slim gloved hands.

“You are Inspector Grant?” he asked.

Grant motioned him to a chair, and the youth, with a completely un-English grace, subsided sideways on to it, still clutching his hat, and began to talk.

“I saw you tonight at Laurent’s. I am in the pantry there. I clean the silver and things like that. They told me who you were, and after I think for a while, I decided to tell you all about it.”

“A very good idea,” said Grant. “Carry on. Are you Italian?”

“No; I am French. My name is Raoul Legarde.”

“All right; carry on.”

“I was in the queue the night the man was killed.