Murder Most Merry

“Look,” he said. “Here is the Ashby road with a slight bend in it, and here, running at right angles slap through the curve, is the Benham road. As you know as well as I do, Sir Leo, they’re both good wide main thoroughfares, as roads go in these parts. This morning the Benham postman, old Fred Noakes. a bachelor thank God and a good chap, came along the Benham Road loaded down with Christmas mail.”

“On a bicycle?” asked Campion.

“Naturally. On a bicycle. He called at the last farm before the crossroads and left just about 10 o’clock. We know that because he had a cup of tea there. Then his way led him over the crossing and on towards Benham proper.”

He paused and looked up from his cigarettes.

“There was very little traffic early today, terrible weather all the time, and quite a bit of activity later; so we’ve got no skid marks to help us. Well, to resume: no one seems to have seen old Noakes. poor chap, until close on half an hour later. Then the Benham constable, who lives some 300 yards from the crossing and on the Benham road, came out of his house and walked down to his gate to see if the mail had come. He saw the postman at once, lying in the middle of the road across his machine. He was dead then.”

“You suggest he’d been trying to carry on, do you?” put in Sir Leo.

“Yes. He was walking, pushing the bike, and had dropped in his tracks. There was a depressed fracture in the side of his skull where something—say, a car mirror—had struck him. I’ve got the doctor’s report. I’ll show you that later. Meanwhile there’s something else.”

Bussy’s finger turned to his other line of cigarettes.

“Also, just about 10, there were a couple of fellows walking here on the Ashby road, just before the bend. They report that they were almost run down by a wildly driven car which came up behind them. It missed them and careered off out of their sight round the bend towards the crossing. But a few minutes later, half a mile farther on, on the other side of the crossroads, a police car met and succeeded in stopping the same car. There was a row and the driver, getting the wind up suddenly, started up again, skidded and smashed the car into the nearest telephone pole. The car turned out to be stolen and there were four half-full bottles of gin in the back. The two occupants were both fighting drunk and are now detained.”

Mr. Campion took off his spectacles and blinked at the speaker.

“You suggest that there was a connection, do you? —that the postman and the gin drinkers met at the crossroads? Any signs on the car?”

Bussy shrugged his shoulders. “Our chaps are at work on that now,” he said. “The second smash has complicated things a bit, but last time I ‘phoned they were hopeful.”

“But my dear fellow!” Sir Leo was puzzled. “If you can get expert evidence of a collision between the car and the postman, your worries are over. That is, of course, if the medical evidence permits the theory that the unfortunate fellow picked himself up and struggled the 300 yards towards the constable’s house.”

Bussy hesitated.

“There’s the trouble,” he admitted. “If that were all we’d be sitting pretty, but it’s not and I’ll tell you why. In that 300 yards of Benham Road, between the crossing and the spot where old Fred died, there is a stile which leads to a footpath. Down the footpath, the best part of a quarter of a mile over very rough going, there is one small cottage, and at that cottage letters were delivered this morning. The doctor says Noakes might have staggered the 300 yards up the road leaning on his bike, but he puts his foot down and says the other journey, over the stile and so on, would have been absolutely impossible. I’ve talked to the doctor. He’s the best man in the world on the job and we won’t shake him on that.”

“All of which would argue.” observed Mr. Campion brightly, “that the postman was hit by a car after he came back from the cottage—between the stile and the constable’s house.”

“That’s what the constable thought.” Bussy’s black eyes were snapping. “As soon as he’d telephoned for help he slipped down to the cottage to see if Noakes had actually called there. When he found he had, he searched the road. He was mystified though because both he and his missus had been at their window for an hour watching for the mail and they hadn’t seen a vehicle of any sort go by either way. If a car did hit the postman where he fell, it must have turned and gone back afterwards.”

Leo frowned at him. “What about the other witnesses? Did they see any second car?”

“No.” Bussy was getting to the heart of the matter and his face shone with honest wonder. “I made sure of that. Everybody sticks to it that there was no other car or cart about and a good job too, they say, considering the way the smashed-up car was being driven. As I see it, it’s a proper mystery, a kind of not very nice miracle, and those two beauties are going to get away with murder on the strength of it. Whatever our fellows find on the car they’ll never get past the doctor’s testimony.”

Mr. Campion got up sadly. The sleet was beating on the windows, and from inside the house came the more cheerful sound of tea cups. He nodded to Sir Leo.

“I fear we shall have to see that footpath before it gets too dark. In this weather, conditions may have changed by tomorrow.”

Sir Leo sighed.” ‘On Christmas day in the morning!’ “ he quoted bitterly. “Perhaps you’re right.”

They stopped their dreary journey at the Benham police station to pick up the constable. He proved to be a pleasant youngster with a face like one of the angel choir and boots like a fairy tale, but he had liked the postman and was anxious to serve as their guide.

They inspected the crossroads and the bend and the spot where the car had come to grief. By the time they reached the stile, the world was gray and freezing, and all trace of Christmas had vanished, leaving only the hopeless winter it had been invented to refute.

Mr. Campion negotiated the stile and Sir Leo followed him with some difficulty. It was an awkward climb, and the path below was narrow and slippery. It wound out into the mist before them, apparently without end.

The procession slid and scrambled on in silence for what seemed a mile, only to encounter a second stile and a plank bridge over a stream, followed by a brief area of what appeared to be simple bog. As he struggled out of it, Bussy pushed back his dripping hat and gazed at the constable.

“You’re not having a game with us, I suppose?” he inquired.

“No, sir.” The boy was all blush. “The little house is just here. You can’t make it out because it’s a bit low. There it is. sir. There.”

He pointed to a hump in the near distance which they had all taken to be a haystack. Gradually it emerged as the roof of a hovel which squatted with its back towards them in the wet waste.

“Good Heavens!” Sir Leo regarded its desolation with dismay. ‘Does anybody really live there?”

“Oh, yes, sir. An old widow lady. Mrs. Fyson’s the name.”

“Alone?” He was aghast. “How old?”

“I don’t rightly know, sir. Quite old. Over 75, must be.”

Sir Leo stopped in his tracks and a silence fell on the company. The scene was so forlorn, so unutterably quiet in its loneliness, that the world might have died.

It was Campion who broke the spell.

“Definitely no walk for a dying man,” he said firmly. “Doctor’s evidence completely convincing, don’t you think? Now that we’re here, perhaps we should drop in and see the householder.”

Sir Leo shivered. “We can’t all get in,” he objected. “Perhaps the Superintendent...”

“No. You and I will go.” Campion was obstinate. “Is that all right with you, Super?”

Bussy waved them on. “If you have to dig for us we shall be just about here,” he said cheerfully. “I’m over my ankles now. What a place! Does anybody ever come here except the postman. Constable?”

Campion took Sir Leo’s arm and led him firmly round to the front of the cottage. There was a yellow light in the single window on the ground floor and, as they slid up a narrow brick path to the very small door. Sir Leo hung back. His repugnance was as apparent as the cold.

“I hate this,” he muttered. “Go on. Knock if you must.”

Mr. Campion obeyed, stooping so that his head might miss the lintel. There was a movement inside, and at once the door was opened wide, so that he was startled by the rush of warmth from within.

A little old woman stood before him, peering up without astonishment. He was principally aware of bright eyes.