Case for Sergeant Beef, Chapter Five

Case for Sergeant Beef

CHAPTER FIVE

   

JOURNAL OF WELLINGTON CHICKLE
Continued

Thirteenth Entry

Another piece of luck has come my way, this time of a rather amusing kind.  That pasty-faced curate came and asked me if I could manage to look in at the Jumble Sale at the Village Hall, and true to my benevolent character I agreed.  There was the usual litter of rubbish—old books and clothes and ugly vases—and the usual crowd of tiresome people trying to find something on which they could spend a few shillings without wasting them.

There was a stall for old clothes over which the curate’s sister, a plain and meaty girl who resembles her brother, was presiding.  Right in front of her I saw a clothes-basket full of old boots and shoes, and on top of them a pair of the most enormous woman’s walking shoes I have ever seen.  They must have been size twelve at least, though there was a pretence of the feminine in their design.  Under them was a pair of carpet slippers of my own size which I picked up and in which I pretended to take an interest.

“How much are these?” I asked, though my brain was already busy with a new idea suggested to me by the woman’s shoes.

“Well, we were rather hoping to sell the whole basketful.  As a lot, you know,” said the curate’s sister.

Just what I hoped.

“Oh, dear!'” I said good-humouredly.  “Whatever should I do with all these?  How much would they be?”

“We hoped to get a sovereign, with the basket.”

“I think I could manage that,” I said, and gave her a pound note.

“It’s very good of you,” grinned the curate’s sister.  “All in a good cause, you know.'

Just as I was going away I picked up one of the woman’s shoes.

“That’s a big size,” I said.  “I wonder who wore those?”

The curate’s sister seemed to enjoy the mild malice in her reply.

“Miss Shoulter,” she whispered.  “Huge feet.  Haven’t you noticed?”

“No, I haven’t,” I said with just a suggestion of rebuke in my voice.  “I never notice that sort of thing.'

But my head was singing with excitement.  Now I shan’t even leave tracks on the Great Day.  My feet will go into these easily and I’ll keep them in the wood ready.  On the afternoon I’ll change into them for the task itself, then back into my own when it’s over.  The police, if they manage to find any footprints, will only know that Miss Shoulter has been near the scene of the crime.

So now I have defence in depth.  The first line is suicide.  The second Miss Shoulter.  No one can even break through to my citadel.  And there’s always Flipp who has the same kind of gun.

Every day now I conscientiously take my walk in the afternoon with my gun.  Now and again I get a rabbit and I’ve shot one pheasant already.  I have met almost everybody in the course of these walks—Flipp and his wife, Miss Shoulter, the curate, the postman and a number of other people.  Everyone knows that it’s the custom of that nice old gentleman Mr. Chickle to take a stroll with his gun in the afternoon.  Just as it should be.

Fourteenth Entry

The chief problem now is that of getting hold of Miss Shoulter’s gun.  So easy, and yet a matter for great care.  A slip over that would be disastrous—not for my safety but for the success of the present scheme.

She keeps it in the little front hall of her house.  I consider that most reprehensible, really.  A firearm is not a thing to leave lying about.  But there it is, leant against the wall as though it were a walking-stick.  All I have to do is to pick it up as I leave the house and walk away with it.  No one seeing me on my way back to “Labour’s End'” would find anything odd in it—indeed, it would be the most normal thing since they would not dream that it was not my gun.  And if by any chance Miss Shoulter herself should see me, or miss the gun so soon after my call that its disappearance would seem connected with me— then all I have to do is to plead absent-mindedness.  “How silly of me.  I’m so accustomed to carrying a gun.  Must have picked yours up by mistake.”

I shall have to become very friendly with Miss Shoulter, though.  On ‘popping-in’ terms.  I shall have to make her so accustomed to my visits that she won’t even bother to see me out.  That will be rather a bore.  Her house is painfully untidy.  She keeps no servant and her dining-room table nearly always has an opened tin on it.  And she shouts so that conversation is trying.  But she’s a good-natured woman.  It won’t be difficult to establish the kind of relationship I need.

Of course, when I do take the gun, if anything goes wrong I postpone the whole scheme and then think of a new method altogether.  No chances for me.  But if she misses it a few days later and informs the police, all the better.  They will have to discover after the murder how it came into the possession of the man who apparently shot himself with it.  That’s just the sort of thing that will suit the police.  They’ll work out some sort of theory to account for it, you may be sure.

Another thing I have to obtain in a way which will prevent its being connected with me is some kind of string, cord, tape, or ribbon with which to fake the suicide.  You see how careful I am?  Just that piece of cord could hang a man.  And I’ve had a delightful idea about this, too.  Red Tape!  My victim shall be killed with red tape, just as it will be the red tape of the police force which will prevent his murderer being caught.

There’s a lawyer in Ashley, and in a few days’ time I will call on him and arrange a new will.  I suppose I shall have to leave my money to my cousin’s son, Rudolph Gooding.  But I’ll find a few improbable charities to endow with some of it.  Gooding is such a prim conventional young man, engaged to an equally prim and colourless girl.  He would never have the imagination to spend a large sum of money at all happily.  But for the sake of form I will leave him the bulk.

Now while I’m in the solicitor’s office I can surely find some red tape.  I’ve often seen those little spools of it on lawyers’ tables.  If I don’t see any lying about—well, it will just be too bad.  I’ll think of something else.  As I assure myself again, there’s no hurry.  And red tape will add such a picturesque, such an ironic touch to my murder.  Quite a treat for the crime reporters.

Fifteenth Entry

I think Christmas Eve would be a good time.  Unless, of course, there is snow.  I do not want a so-called white Christmas; it would shew altogether too much of my movements.  But if it’s suitable weather, that would make a very good date, and another idea for the reporters.

All my preliminary preparations are made now, and we’re still in November.  Everyone is accustomed to seeing me with a gun and to hearing shots in Deadman’s Wood.  Miss Shoulter is so accustomed to my looking in on one pretext or another that she always leaves me to ‘see myself out’ as she calls it.  (Actually, I think she thinks I’m in love with her, poor woman.)  Flipp and his wife call on her nearly as often, and all three come to see me.  The shoes are locked up in a trunk in my room.  And Mrs. Pluck can be relied on to notice any time at which anything happens, besides being accustomed to seeing me ‘planning the garden’ with a line on two pegs which I’m always moving about as I discuss new flowerbeds and paths.  In another week’s time I can start really active measures.

Sixteenth Entry

I’ve got the gun!  It was really too easy.

Of course, I took the greatest care.  I did not leave my home without a gun, you may be sure.  I took my 12-bore, walked slowly away from “Labour’s End,” as I always do, and went to a spot in the wood I had already decided on.  There I wrapped my gun in an old sheet of mackintosh and concealed it in the undergrowth.  I walked on to Miss Shoulter’s bungalow and found her very busy with a revolting new litter of pups.  Also, she was concerned because her brother is expected this evening.  I chatted for about ten minutes, then rose politely.

“I can see you’re busy,” I said.  “So I won’t waste your time.  I do hope the puppies thrive.  No, don’t you move.  You know I can see myself out.”

I left her kneeling on the floor with her dogs, carefully closed the door of her sitting-room and walked away as unconcernedly as you please with her gun under my arm.  I did not meet a soul on my way to the place where my gun was hidden—not that it would have mattered if I had, for nobody could tell one gun from another.  Then I unwrapped my gun, and wrapping hers left it there.  I was home at my usual time.  It only remains to see how soon she misses it.  Personally, I doubt if she will, until her attention is called to its absence by events.  Those events!  Not far away now.

Seventeenth Entry

And now I’ve got the red tape, too.  I wonder why it’s called red?  It isn’t red at all, but pink.  However, I’ve got a dozen yards of it.

I called on Aston, the lawyer, by appointment yesterday.  I found that he has only two rooms, his own and one where his solitary clerk sits, with two extra chairs for clients, I suppose.  I sat in one of these waiting while Aston got rid of an imaginary visitor, and passed the time by chatting with the clerk.  We earnestly discussed the weather and shortages of food and fuel.  Then, touching some documents which were bound with the stuff, I asked whether that was what lawyers called red tape.

“Yes, indeed,” he said.

“But it’s not red at all,” I ventured.

“No.  Pink, isn’t it?”

“Do you really use much of it?”  I asked.  “Or is that just a joke in the comic papers?”

“We do use quite a bit,” he admitted.

“How is it sold to you?”

He pulled open a drawer and revealed a dozen or so spools of the stuff.  He handed one to me to look at.  I glanced at it but, seeming to lose interest, handed it back to him.

“I see,” I said indifferently.  “I should prefer paper-clips myself.”  Then I went off into a long discussion on stationery.

But when the buzzer went and he hurried through to Aston’s office my hand was in the drawer in a moment.  And now I have a nice new spool of red tape.

After that the making of my will was almost pleasant.  I’ve left sums of money to half a dozen obscure charities and £100 to Mrs. Pluck if she’s still in my service.  The rest to Rudolph Gooding.

Tomorrow will be December 20th.  I am getting very excited as the day draws near.  I went to see Miss Shoulter today for the first time since the afternoon on which I took the gun.  Her brother had come and gone, she said, adding that she was sorry I hadn’t met him.  It appears that he is coming again for Christmas.  About the gun she said nothing, though I gave her a lead by mentioning reported thefts in the district.  I feel sure she does not know it has gone.  How easy everything is made for me!

Case for Sergeant Beef, Chapter Four

Case for Sergeant Beef

CHAPTER FOUR

   

JOURNAL OF WELLINGTON CHICKLE
Continued

Ninth Entry

I met Flipp and his wife to-day.  Another piece of luck—Flipp is fond of shooting and goes down to the marshes, somewhere Rye way I gather, for duck when he can get petrol for his car.  Hasn’t done much since the war, but says he has a 12-bore.  So that’s three in the district—mine, Miss Shoulter’s, and his.  It begins to look as though the whole thing is being made too easy for me.

Flipp is a big man who is in some business in London which does not take too much of his time.  He goes up to town twice or three times a week, I gather, and does not worry if he misses even that.  If it is of any interest I can easily find out the nature of this business.  He looks more like a farmer, a heavy hard-drinking man, who swears too much, even using rather strong language in the presence of his wife.  She, poor woman, looks anæmic, a frost-bitten unhappy creature very much under Flipp’s thumb.

I met them on the road on their side of the wood.  I was taking a leisurely stroll and they came striding up behind me as though they were soldiers marching, at least Flipp walked like that and his wife hurried along beside him as though she was afraid of being left behind.

“You’ve just come to live at that bungalow with the silly name, haven’t you?” was Flipp’s greeting to me.  I shewed no annoyance.

“Good afternoon,” I said, raising my hat.  “Yes, I have just come to live here.  I suppose ‘Labour’s End’ does sound rather an odd name, but in my case it’s appropriate, you know.  My labours are ended, you see.”

“Lucky man,” said Flipp.  “How d’you like Barnford?”

“Charming.  Charming,” I told him.

Think so?  Bloody awful hole, I think.  Cold and damp.”

“I must say I haven’t found it so,” I said.

“But you haven’t spent a winter here yet, Mr. Chickle,” his wife put in as though she had to say something.

“That’s very true,” I smiled.

“Better come in and have a cup of tea,” said Flipp.  “Our place is just up the road.”

“I should be delighted.  I wonder what made you come here if you think so little of the place?”  He did not seem to like that question and answered it rather gruffly.

“Edith Shoulter found the place for us.”

“Oh, you knew Miss Shoulter before you came here?” I asked.  I was naturally interested.

“Known her for years,” grunted Flipp.  “That’s our place you can see ahead of you.”  And he began to take even longer strides so that I was quite out of breath when we arrived at “Woodlands”.

The first thing I noticed in the hall was his gun—a 12-bore.

“Fond of shooting?” I asked casually.

It was then that he told me about the duck.  I pretended to be only politely interested and soon changed the subject to gardening.

It was six o'clock when I got back to “Labour’s End”, having refused a drink from Flipp before leaving.  I found that the afternoon’s post had come in and there was a letter from the owner of Deadman’s Wood.  He says that he cannot honestly ask anything but a nominal rent for the shooting since I shall find nothing but a few rabbits, but if I like to send him a fiver each season I am welcome to pot what I like over his ground.  I chuckled at the phrase “pot what I like”.  He would be surprised if he knew its full implications for me.

Tenth Entry

It is past midsummer now, and a long time since I added anything to my Journal.  The truth of the matter is I am in something of a quandary.  My scheme seems to be losing its most essential quality, that of spontaneity.  Willy-nilly I find myself making plans, just as lesser murderers must have done.  I have to keep reminding myself that the secret of my success will lie in the casual nature of the enterprise.  I still maintain that if I just go out and kill someone, anyone, without an elaborate design, I shall be safe from discovery; but that if I begin to play with strategy I shall call attention to myself.  The trouble is that the ordinary precautions need so much forethought.

I remember when I was a boy at school we used to be given essays on set subjects—“Duty”, “A Day in the Country”, and so on.  A teacher told us one week to write an essay on any subject we liked.  At first the very thought of this was thrilling.  What scope!  What a choice!  But as we sat down to think it over, hesitating between one subject and another, each so attractive, we found it almost impossible to decide.  I spent two days puzzling my head over it, and in the end did my essay on “A Day in the Country” or “Duty”, or one of the old stock subjects, I forget which.  It’s like that now.  I have a complete choice of time, place, method, and victim, and I find myself veering round inevitably to precedent, to planning my alibi and foreseeing police inquiries just as other murderers must have done.

However, other murderers had not the genius with which I approach the problem.

The gun for instance.  Suppose I just shoot a stranger at that point on the path I have chosen.  Well, it might have been Flipp with his gun, or anyone else with Flipp’s gun, Miss Shoulter with her gun, or someone else with her gun, or someone using my gun, or someone altogether different with another gun.  Nothing anyway to suggest that it could be me.

But another more interesting possibility occurs.  Suppose the stranger, whoever he is, is found with a gun beside him from which both barrels have been fired, and suppose there are strings attached to the triggers and his fingerprints on the barrels, who could possibly suggest that it wasn’t suicide?  After all, I could make sure that I shot him from in front and at very close range—and that would conform perfectly.  Everybody, for some queer reason, is more ready to believe in a man taking his own life than someone else’s.

What about the gun, in that case? It mustn’t be mine, that’s certain.  But it could very easily be either Miss Shoulter’s or Flipp’s.  Both keep them very carelessly.  With any luck I could come into possession of one or the other a week or so before the Great Day.  The chances are that they would never even notice that the gun had gone, and if they did and reported it, well, I can always postpone the murder and start on a wholly different tack.  It’s all getting very interesting, and I scarcely ever need to read at night now.  I just sit in the garden and dream of my triumph.

Eleventh Entry

Yes, that’s how I’ll do it.  It’s all clear now.  A fortnight before the provisional date I’ll get hold of either Miss Shoulter’s or Flipp’s 12-bore.  This I will hide under the leaves in Deadman’s Wood, wrapped up in an old piece of mackintosh I have.  Then, on the appointed day, I will await my victim.  If he comes, that is to say if anyone who is a stranger to me comes down the path, I will do it.  If not, I will wait till another day, or another, till just the right person comes at just the right time.  Then I will get him quite near me.  I can think of many ways of doing that.  I could pretend to have sprained my ankle and be flat on the ground waiting till he came close to me.  Or I could shew him something I was going to shoot and as he is looking let off the two barrels in his face.  Half a dozen ways.  Then get the other gun out of hiding and fix up the string as though he had shot himself.

Or maybe I might actually shoot him with the other gun.  Why not?  I should rather like to use my own trusty old 12-bore, but it would save an extra shot to use the other, because it would have to be fired off, anyway.  I will consider” the pros and cons of this.  But anyway, that’s the broad idea.

As soon as autumn comes I shall start going for a stroll with my gun every evening towards dusk, and bringing home a rabbit or two.  This must be known as my daily custom.  I must let off a few shots, too, even if I don’t see a rabbit so that people get used to the sound of a gun.  And, of course, I shall have to take the normal precautions—footprints, fingerprints, and so on.  Those will be child’s play to me.  And the question of time—I’ll be careful of that.  I shall have to make sure that a shot is fired after I’ve come in for the evening.  At present I don’t quite see how I’ll do that, but I shall think of a way.

Twelfth Entry

September already.  How this summer has flown.  I think time does pass quickly, though, when one has some absorbing interest.

I’ve had a brilliant idea during the last few days.  It is about the gun.  I realized that a shot must be heard in the wood after I had returned to “Labour’s End” on the Great Day.  How could I be sure of this?  My idea is simple, but very effective.  Suppose a gun were fixed to the branch of a tree a little way into the wood, and a ball of thin strong string passed round the trigger.  All I would need to do would be to pull the string while I actually remained at “Labour’s End”.  Complicated?  Not a bit.  The place for the gun would be about ten paces into the wood, far enough away for the report to come from the wood.  I am quite sure Mrs. Pluck could not gauge the actual distance.  She would simply say she heard a shot in the wood.  It must be in a straight line from the house—I don’t want my string passing over anything.  As for the string—its length inside the wood is no problem at all—I could ‘lay’ it on the night before the murder.  The length of string across the lawn would be another matter.  That afternoon I would be planning and laying out flower-beds and have a line running right across from my window to the wood, marking the edge of a path or a bed, or whatever you please.  When it grew dusk I would tie this line to the double ends of the string already round the trigger of the gun.  I would remain in the garden and look in at the window of the room to call Mrs. Pluck.  “Oh, Mrs. Pluck,” I would say, “have you the right time?  Half-past six?  Thank you.”  Then I would pull my line and away in the wood there would be a report.  “Someone shooting,” I would smile.  “They’ve no right to, but let it pass.  A rabbit or two won’t hurt us, will it, Mrs. Pluck?”  And later, when the body is found and it is believed that the man had been shot that afternoon—well, there’s my alibi!  Simple, isn’t it?

Of course I shall remark to Mrs. Pluck that I’ve stupidly left my line in the garden.  “Must bring it in,” I’ll say.  “Someone might trip over it.”  Always the considerate old gentleman, you see.  Then I’ll pop out and draw in the garden line and by drawing only one side of the double string pull in the other one from the gun.  Then all I’ll have to do is to go out that evening and get the gun or bring it back next day.  Wait, though.  I can choose my day.  So it will be on Mrs. Pluck’s evening out, and when she has gone to the pictures over at Ashley—as she always does—I’ll bring the gun in.  Splendid.  I'm beginning to enjoy this.

❦

Case for Sergeant Beef, Chapter Three

Case for Sergeant Beef

CHAPTER THREE

   

JOURNAL OF WELLINGTON CHICKLE
Continued

Fifth Entry

I have been unpacking and arranging my books.  It is a pleasant task, although my anxiety to get them all into place so that I can refer to them easily has made me overtire myself a little.  My library consists entirely of criminology in all its forms and I have spent a great deal of money over many years in accumulating it.  Old Trials, the Newgate Calendar, Lives of the Highwaymen, a formidable row of books on Criminal Jurisprudence, and everything that is worth while in modern detective fiction, from Poe and Gaboriau down to Bentley and Agatha Christie.  I am really proud of some of the more unusual items, and get great amusement from dipping into the Famous Trials series and seeing the idiotic mistakes made by blundering murderers of the past.  How little finesse most of them possessed.  They approached the delicate matter of murder as though it were a pick and shovel job and allowed their passions to betray them into every kind of impatience and risk.  I smile when I realize my superiority over that sort of violence, for in my crime there will be no passion and so no risk at all.

I took a walk along the footpath through Deadman’s Wood to-day, and found it bright with bluebells.  I should like my murder to be in spring, I think, while these beautiful blue flowers make a shining carpet underfoot.  Only I should have to be careful of trampling them in any indicative way.  However, I have not begun to consider such details yet.  I am still concerned with the Place and I think I have found it.  A fallen tree beside the path would give excellent concealment and it is roughly half-way through the wood at a point where the trees on either side are thickest.  With tremendous inward excitement I decided to test the hiding-place behind that tree and to find out whether one could see a person approaching.  I crouched down and peered over the trunk.  Excellent.  At dusk I should be quite invisible and should see anyone from at least twelve yards away.  Exactly as I hoped.

My enjoyment was irritatingly interrupted by someone approaching from the other direction, and you may imagine my annoyance when I found it was the pasty-faced curate from Barnford walking alone through the wood.  And he was tactless enough to smile when he saw me crouching there.  Really it is a good thing for him that I have decided that my victim shall be quite unknown to me, for I could have killed him for his cheerful loquacity.

“How do you do?” he asked.  He might as well have said, “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”

“How d’you do?” I answered with assumed good humour.

“Picking bluebells?” he asked.

“I was just about to,” I said.  “Lovely, aren’t they?  As a Londoner I find your countryside most attractive.'

And what must he do but start a long conversation while I brushed the leaves and a little dirt from my clothes.  He came from London too it appeared, from Sydenham to be precise.  He had only been here two years and remembered his first spring in Kent, so he knew just how I felt.  The fool.  If he knew just how I felt he would know that I wanted to assassinate him for his smugness then and there.

And of course he turned the conversation to me.  Where did I live?  What was my name?  Would I be attending his church?

To the last question I replied solemnly that indeed I should, every Sunday, for I realize that this will be an important part of the character I am creating for myself.  A nice old church-going retired tradesman.  Not chapel, I feel, and certainly not Roman Catholic.  Too suggestive of earnestness or even violence.  Church of England is the safest bet—so wholly non-committal and yet so thoroughly respectable.  I invited the curate back to tea and flattered myself that I appeared delighted to watch him satisfying a phenomenal appetite.  No wonder he has a pasty look, and that his ears are bright red.  Constipation, undoubtedly.

Sixth Entry

Really, considering it’s only about six weeks since I first began to make definite plans, I think I have done very well.  I have found the district, and the very point in that district for my purpose.  Though I had all the British Isles to choose from I am satisfied that the spot I have finally selected could not be better.  And I have so arranged matters that I have a perfectly natural reason for being near that spot at any time of day or night.  I live here.  Not bad for so short a time.

I must now go on to consider the method, and I need scarcely say that I have been giving very careful thought to that.  Poison is out of the question, for the thing must of course be spontaneous.  Poison means endless preparation and precaution for the layman, endless risk in obtaining it, endless trouble in administering it, and endless difficulties in making it appear as suicide.  Besides if I am to murder my man at that point in Deadman’s Wood (how I delight in that name) poison is unthinkable.  What would I be doing standing there offering prussic acid to a chance pedestrian?  It’s absurd.

Nor do I need to employ any of those elaborate death machines so popular in murder stories, poisoned darts blown from pipes, injections, or poisoned scratches, weights timed to drop on unsuspecting crania—these are all the inventions of less fortunate murderers who have to wipe out a certain person at a certain time and place, and establish their own alibis.  All quite unnecessary for me.

Strangling and suffocation are ‘out’ too, if for no other reason than that of my inadequate height and strength.  Drowning is of course out of the question, and such chancy things as bows-and-arrows or boomerangs I prefer not to consider.  Then again I am not powerful enough for clubbing or smashing the head with some gardening tool like a spade, and an axe seems to me a clumsy weapon more suited to early warfare than to a brilliantly-planned twentieth-century murder.

This brings me to a choice of two classes of weapon, a blade or a firearm.  Each has its advantages of course.  The blade, whether sword, spear, knife, dagger, or razor, is silent, but the gun is sure.  At least it will be in my hands.  For twenty years the only relaxation I have known from the work of my shop has been a little rough shooting I have had in Essex.  I hired it with an old friend called Whitman, and we would miss very few week-ends.  With a good 12-bore on that path I could be as sure of my man as the hangman is of his.  But of course, there’s the noise, and the possession of a gun and many other factors.  It will need a great deal of consideration.

Meanwhile Miss Shoulter has called—at least I suppose it was a call.  I was working in my garden this afternoon when I heard what I took to be a man’s voice shouting from the gate.

“Hullo!  Are you Mr. Chickle?”

I straightened up and saw a woman with a long sunburnt face and shapeless check tweeds standing there with two spaniel puppies on leads.  I never forget my character as that of an amiable old gentleman, and walked across to her smiling in the most friendly way.  “I am, and you must be Miss Shoulter.  Do come in.”

“’Fraid I can’t,” she yelled in that ear-splitting male voice of hers.  “Got the pups with me.  Thought I’d just come and say hullo, as we’re neighbours.”

“That’s very good of you,” I smiled.

Then she kept me talking there for five minutes, though I was impatient to get back to my flower-bed.  Maddening woman.  Why should she think I am interested in her dogs?  I asked her at last why she didn’t breed retrievers.

“Why?  Fond of shooting?” she said.  Such a direct question.  I was taken off my guard.

“No,” I said.  Then I built up a bit more of my character.  “I couldn’t bear to hurt live creatures,” I added.

“No need to do that,” she shouted.  “Been shooting all me life and don’t believe I've caused any pain.  Not as much as nature causes with her ways of killing, anyway.'

“Do you do any shooting now?” I asked.

“Not much.  I've got a couple of guns still.'

“Perhaps you feel that living alone . . .” I began.  But she gave a great vulgar hoarse laugh.

“Me?  I can look after myself without guns,” she said.  And looking at her I thought it only too likely to be true.

A minute later she was gone, leaving me quite a lot to think about.

Seventh Entry

I have engaged a housekeeper, an excellent woman named Mrs. Pluck.  I am paying her rather large wages, but she is more than worth it, for she is not only a splendid cook with a passion for keeping the house scrupulously clean, but she has what almost amounts to a mania for punctuality.  Although she carries a wrist-watch her first request was for a kitchen alarm clock and she seems always to keep an eye on the time.  This will one day serve my purpose, I feel sure.  If I can depend on her to notice the times of my comings and goings the day will come when she will provide an alibi.

She is, I must admit, slightly forbidding in manner and appearance, nearly six feet in height and with a face that might justly be called gaunt.  She appears to be extremely muscular and her hands are as large as those of a man, with powerful bony wrists and fingers.  However, I have no wish for personal beauty in a housekeeper.  Her other qualities are an ample compensation for her severe mien.

I thought I would test her to-day.

“What time was it when I came in?” I asked very casually when she was laying the table for my simple evening meal.

“Just five minutes to six,” she said sharply, without pausing to remember or consider at all.

What could be more precise or satisfactory?

“Thank you, Mrs. Pluck,” I said.  “I’m afraid I’m a bit vague about time.  You must keep me up to scratch, you know.”

“Your meals will always be ready on time,” she said rather grimly and left me to sip the sweet sherry of which I have always been so fond.

Eighth Entry

I learnt something to-day which, if it is true, will mean that my decision in the matter of weapons has been made for me.  A man called Richey, whom I have engaged to work in the garden two days a week, mentioned that the last tenant of “Labour’s End” had rented the shooting in Deadman’s Wood for an absurdly small price from the owner, who lives a dozen miles away.

“He only paid a pound or two for it,” Richey said.  “Because there’s nothing there.  A few rabbits you might get and a left-over pheasant or two from the time they did preserve.  But nothing to pay money for.  Still if you think you could find any sport.'

I laughed inside myself.  If I think I could find any sport.  Richey would be surprised if he knew what sport I think I could find.

But it’s an idea.  If I do decide that a gun is the best weapon—well, there I am with a gun, and every right to be there.  And if a man is found shot in Deadman’s Wood it would have been an accident, or suicide, or somebody else.  It could not possibly have been that little quiet studious man Mr. Wellington Chickle.  Why should it have been?  What motive could he possibly have had?

I only wonder whether perhaps I’m getting away a little from my original conception—the spontaneous crime.  I remember writing in this Journal that if a man of good character suddenly killed the first person who came along, unless he was actually seen in the act he could not be suspected.  But am I beginning to complicate matters?  I don’t think so, really.  I’m giving myself a reason for being in the place with the weapon in case I should be observed.

I am writing this evening to the owner of the shooting rights to see whether an arrangement can be made.  If it can I think I’ll decide on the gun.  All details can wait for that.

Mrs. Pluck gave me an excellent soufflé this evening.  Really, that woman’s a treasure.  And when I enquired gently what time it was when I went to bed last night she answered me pat—“Eleven-twenty, sir.  I heard you close your door.”  So even in the night hours she notices what time things happen.

Some new books arrived from Bumpus’s to-day, or rather some old books they had been able to obtain for me.  Among them some detective novels by a writer new to me—Leo Bruce.  He relates the investigations of a certain Sergeant Beef, through an observer called Townsend.  Very ingenious.  But not as ingenious as I’m going to be.  I should like to see Sergeant Beef at work on my crime!

❦

Case for Sergeant Beef, Chapter Two

Case for Sergeant Beef

CHAPTER TWO

   

JOURNAL OF WELLINGTON CHICKLE

About a year earlier Mr. Wellington Chickle had begun to write his Journal.  This Journal is now one of Sergeant Beef’s most prized souvenirs, though it only came into his hands long after the Shoulter Case was concluded, and no one knew of its existence, still less had any access to it, while the investigation was proceeding.  It is an astonishing document written in large curious handwriting, full of flourishes so ornamental and detailed that they are almost like the illuminated capitals of an old manuscript.  It is clear at a glance that the man who wrote it loved his work and probably had nothing to do but perfect it.  The Journal opens in March 1945.  Its first entry gives the key to the whole thing.

First Entry

I have decided to commit a murder.  And before I go any farther I want to try to give my reasons for this as accurately as possible.  They will be so very important to the psychologist of the future when the Wellington Chickle Murder Case has taken its right place as one of the great historical crimes, when such names as Crippen and Landru will be obscure in comparison with my name.  Not, of course, that my name will be associated with the crime during my lifetime.  After I have finished my days in peace this Journal will be given to the world and then for the first time it will be realized that the brains of Scotland Yard have been outmatched by the genius of one who seemed no more than a sober, gentle, retired watchmaker.

The reasons, then.  But again I must digress to explain what are not the reasons.  I shall not commit murder for gain, for revenge, for love, for the sake of brutality, for escape from a blackmailer or bully, for spite, for hatred or as a protest against anything whatsoever.  In fact—and this is the very crux of the matter—I shall have no motive.  And because I shall have no motive I shall never be found out.  In other words my murder will be art for art’s sake, murder merely and entirely for the sake of murder.  It sounds simple.  So do all great ideas.

I am perfectly sane, of course.  I am considered rather a nice old gentleman, fond of books and gardening and devoted to children.  A hundred people could testify to my sanity.  I am not even an eccentric or a solitary.  I am generally liked, even respected.

So my reasons are these.  I am going to commit a murder because I have found the key to successful murder—to have no discoverable motive.  Because I want to achieve some-thing before I die which will make my rather odd name live in the annals of time, and murder seems the surest way of achieving this.  Because I really have nothing much to do with the remaining years of my life, no absorbing interest, and I think that the planning and carrying out of this will give me what I need.  Because I think that there’s too much fuss made about life and death and cannot see that it matters that death should come to one man or woman a few years before it would normally have happened.  Because it will be fascinating to watch the police blundering in all the wrong directions, and to know that I, and I alone, am aware of the truth:  and because I remember, fifty years ago, a schoolmaster saying to me in class that I should never set the Thames on fire, never amount to anything much, never achieve anything worth while; and if I were to die now it would be in the knowledge that he was right, whereas if I carry out my plan and do what so many others have failed to do and commit a successful and undetected murder I shall know that I have proved him a hundred times wrong.

So that is why I am going to do it.  And as time goes by I shall make up my mind where, how, when, and to whom it shall be done.  I shall not hurry these decisions.  I shall take my time to think, to plan, to ensure absolute success.  Even the thought of the great day, towards which I am already looking eagerly, on which I can say that I have done it, that I have achieved the all-but-impossible, shall not cause me to rush or scamp my preparations.  It is said that a murderer always makes one mistake.  I shall be the exception.  I shall make no mistake.

Second Entry

It is a week since I wrote the above.  I have decided not to put dates in this Journal, but to let it be a more or less continuous narrative.  It will be easier to read like that.  Not that it will in any case lack eager readers, for to know the truth at last about a mystery which has baffled the world for years will be incentive enough to scan even duller stories.  And to the psychologist this could not be dull.  Think, my friend, you are looking into the mind of Wellington Chickle, the man who beat detection, the coolest and most brilliant murderer of the century.  You have the chance to study and analyse a brain more complex than that of a great poet or statesman.  Do you not realize your good fortune?

So I will make it a straightforward story.  And I start with this premise.  Murder without motive, if a few simple precautions are taken, is a problem impossible to solve.  If a man of good character waited in a suitably lonely spot and murdered the first person who came along, his guilt would never be suspected.  Why? Because even if he shouted and called a dozen witnesses and so was known to have been on the scene of the crime, there would be nothing to connect him with it.  Motive is always the connecting link.  Always.  So my first resolution is to murder someone I don't know, someone in whose death I could not possibly have any interest.  That will not be difficult.

The next thing is to find the place.  What a huge advantage I have over other mere slaves in the art of murder.  They, poor fellows, are tied down by necessities.  Where their victims are their crimes must be.  They must, either by artificial means—and everything artificial is easily discovered—bring their victim to the spot, or choose a spot to which their victim goes.  For me there are no such limitations.  I choose my spot from the wide map of the earth and wait for the first arrival.  And in case I am seen I give myself a good everyday reason for being in that spot.  Too easy, once I have the crucial idea.

Now I remember many years ago during a walking tour in Kent finding a village called Barnford.  It was a pleasant village with oldish red-brick houses and a square church tower.  And near it was a wood through which ran a public footpath.  I have been thinking that this will make the ideal spot.  Lonely, but one could be sure of someone coming along sooner or later.  Plenty of cover, before and after.  The body to be found quickly if one wanted it found quickly, or not for a long time, if one wanted it concealed.  And the sort of area in which I might well be living in the unlikely event of my having to give an account of myself.  I shall go down there tomorrow and prospect.

Third Entry

I have been luckier than I could have hoped.  I found an empty bungalow at Barnford, right on the outskirts of Deadman’s Wood.  (Yes, that is actually its name.  Is it not appropriate?  I could scarcely repress a smile when I heard it!)  The bungalow is called “Labour’s End”, which again is very fitting, as I said quite truthfully that I wanted to retire and grow roses.  The soil, I am told, is splendid for them.  I have bought the little place not too expensively—I am in any case not perturbed by the outlay as I shall certainly stay there even after the Great Event.  It will be pleasant in my declining years to visit the scene of my triumph.

I shall have a few neighbours.  On the other side of the wood lives a Miss Shoulter who breeds spaniels—far enough away, I learn, for their yelping to be inaudible.  And in the wood itself there is a larger house in which a family named Flipp lives.  But they have their own way in from the road and do not use the footpath I remembered.

That footpath is just as I hoped—a narrow rather winding track between the trees which cuts right across the wood from near Miss Shoulter’s bungalow to mine.  I could be walking along it at any time of day or night without arousing the faintest suspicion, even on the night of a murder.  Yet it is lonely enough to provide a dozen points at which the thing could be done, and done in the confidence that there were no witnesses.  Ideal.  I hope to move in next week.

Fourth Entry

I am comfortably established at Labour’s End.  It is really a very pleasant little house overlooking a sweep of country only cut by the railway line nearly a mile away.  I have brought my own furniture down after it had been in store three years, since, in fact, I sold my business.

Mentioning that reminds me that I should give some account of myself, for when the facts about my murder come out after my death, it is certain that there will be a good deal of research into my past and the results may not be accurate.  I want the true facts to be known.

I was an only son.  My father was employed by a firm of stonemasons, and spent his life in chipping at memorial crosses for people who deserved no memorial.  He was, by the standards of his time, well paid, and our little home in South London though dingy and cramped never knew the miseries of want or hunger.

I was given a better education than most sons of artisans and remained at school till I was nearly seventeen.  Then I was apprenticed to an old watchmaker, a friend of my father, who taught me the trade which has served me ever since.

My father was an honest decent man, but an incurable sentimentalist with a taste for military history.  He could reconstruct almost every battle fought by British armies and would bore his fellow customers in the saloon bar of the Mitre, which he ‘used’ for forty years, with detailed accounts of Waterloo or the Nile, until they told him to come off it.  It was this passion of his which caused him to name me after the Iron Duke, and it was an unfortunate choice considering our curious surname.  And when I failed to grow above five feet four inches it seemed even more out of place.  However, both my father and my mother, a plump easy-going woman who took me to chapel on Sundays, delighted in it, never abbreviated it and could be heard shouting “Wellington!” down our back-garden when they wanted me to come indoors.

At twenty-five I started my own watchmaking business in what was then a little town separated from London by open country, but which became, I’m glad to say, one of the busiest suburbs.  My little shop thrived, and a quarter of a century later, when I was employing a dozen men and women and had a fine establishment, I sold it at the top of the market and retired on the proceeds, together with my not inconsiderable investments.

I forgot to say that I married at thirty a girl who brought me the initial capital I needed for enlarging my business.  She failed to bear me a child and died some years before I retired.

Since I sold the shop I have been living in rooms, waiting for a chance to settle in the country.

That is my uneventful story and from it you will see, perhaps, why I have made up my mind to distinguish myself now.  The man who bought my business has already changed the name, so that unless I achieve my great ambition no one twenty years hence will have heard of Wellington Chickle.  But I shall achieve it.

❦

Case for Sergeant Beef, Chapter One

Case for Sergeant Beef

by

Leo Bruce

CHAPTER ONE

   

BY WAY OF PREAMBLE

I had made up my mind to have no more to do with murder.  Before the war I had faithfully chronicled the investigations of Sergeant Beef into five mysteries and had enjoyed watching him, whose great quality as a detective was his sturdy common sense, find his way among the maze of evidence and eventually, and always, get his man.

When I had first met him he had been no more than a village policeman, and it was my ability to record his work in a series of novels which had raised him to the level of a famous investigator.  But he had shewn little or no gratitude and had frequently complained that the books I had written about him were not widely enough read.  So now that the war was over and I had decided to abandon the work of a crime novelist for the more secure and profitable profession of marine insurance, I had no scruple in telling him so.  He had never appreciated me, I felt, and I wondered whom he would find to replace me as his Boswell.

Whoever it might be would have no easy job.  For Beef, burly, red-faced, heavy of hand and humour, with that dark ginger moustache of his which straggled over his lips and looked as though its tips were nourished on beer, with his portentous announcements and his irritating complacency, was not a man to appeal to the great public as an inspired investigator.  And although I had to admit that he always did find the answer where others failed, and that under his solid exterior there was something akin to genius, and that he had a kind of boyish enthusiasm which was very infectious, still I rather wondered whether he would find another writer to take him up.  The fashion was for detectives of high social standing and large private incomes, while Beef was dependent on what he actually earned in his cases.

At any rate, I had had enough. It is true that I had not seen very much bloodshed during the war, though as an officer in the R.I.A.S.C. I had been, as they say, not a thousand miles from the fighting, but still I felt I wanted a rest from murder, and I decided to tell Beef frankly that if he intended to return to detection he would have to find a replacement for me.

I had heard from him once or twice during the war.  He had joined the Special Investigation Branch of the Corps of Military Police, and had doubtless had his little successes in tracing missing stores, examining questionable imprest returns and arresting officers who had written phoney cheques.  I was prepared to find him just as pleased with himself as ever.  And I set off on the afternoon of New Year’s Day to see him, break the news of my new profession, and wish him luck in finding my successor.

His home he had found before the war when he had first retired from the Force, and was lucky enough still to possess intact.  I smiled as I remembered his first search for it, and his insistence that it must be near Baker Street, which he described as the Harley Street of detection.

“Never do to be out of the swim,” he said, and when he had settled in his house in Lilac Crescent he had stuck up an absurd brass plate with W. Beef: Investigations on it in giant letters.  I was not surprised to find this in its place, and freshly polished, when I reached his house that day.

He opened the door himself and greeted me with his big slow grin.

“Hullo,” he said.  “I was wondering when you’d turn up.  Come along in.  And a happy New Year!”

He led the way to what he always called his ‘front room,’ a place of Spanish mahogany, sentimental engravings, and an atmosphere in which the stale smoke of Beef’s pipes blended with the last meal eaten at the plush-covered table.  Beef pointed to a horse-hair chair for me and slowly lowered himself into his own favourite one, then lit his pipe.

“I suppose you’ve come round to see if there’s anything doing in the way of a murder story for you to write?” he grinned.

I explained rather tartly that I had come for nothing of the sort, that I had quite made up my mind to have nothing more to do with detection.

“That’s all right,' he said, as though I had been apologizing.  “I can soon get someone else to write up my cases.  I shouldn’t be surprised but what it mightn’t be just as well, all things considered.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?” I asked icily.

“Well, you never made much of a success of it, did you?  Not to say success,” he added.

“I don’t understand you, Beef,” I retorted.  “When I met you you were a village policeman. I turned you into a famous detective.  I wrote each of your cases.”

“But who worked them out?” asked Beef with a triumphant grin.  “Who found the answers?”

“I’m not denying that you did.  But you should understand that it’s no use being a good detective nowadays unless you’ve got someone to write you up.  Publicity’s the thing.”

“That’s what I say,” said Beef.  “And I want someone who’ll give it me.  I solve the mysteries, don’t I?  Have I ever failed?  I ask you.  And some of them have been pretty tricky and left the Yard wondering.  But what do I get?  A few copies of your books in the lending libraries.  My wife’s sister who’s always reading, always got her nose in a book she has, says that the young lady at the library she goes to has never heard of Sergeant Beef.  What do you think of that?'

I was too angry to speak at first.  Then I said ironically—“I suppose I’m to blame?”

“’Course you are,' said Beef.  “Why, I ought to be right up with the top-notchers now.  Lord Simon Plimsoll and M. Amer Picon and them.  I get at the truth just as clever, don’t I?”

“You may,’ I admitted.  “But you lack the polish, Beef.  These modern detectives are mostly related to Dukes, or if not they know everyone.  They’re welcomed in the best houses.  They’re always invited to those house-parties at which all the best murders happen.  Not to put too fine a point on it, Beef, you’re crude.  Rough and ready.  Bourgeois.”

“Now you're coming to it!” said Beef.  “That’s why I’m not as famous as the rest, is it?  Class distinction, again.  Well, if that’s the case it’s your fault.  You ought never to have made me out no more than what I was.  Suppose you’d written me up as Lord William Beef.  What then?  We’d have had them reading fit to bust themselves.”

“Please don't be nonsensical,” I said, for I saw the satisfied grin on his red face.

“What I need is someone to take me seriously,” he said.  “It’s no good you trying to make people see I’m a great detective if you’re giving them a laugh half the time.”

“I write about things as I see them,” I said.

“Literary conscience, eh?” laughed Beef.  “All I can say is it doesn’t pay.”

“At any rate, you needn’t worry any more,” I said bitterly.  “You are certainly at liberty to find someone else to record any further cases you may get.  Someone who’ll present you as slim and aristocratic, with a keen eye and excellently cut clothes, if you like.  I’m going to do other work.”

“Well, that’s your business.  I dare say it will pay you better.  You’re not really cut out for writing, are you?”

I treated this with silent scorn.

“Not according to some of the reviewers you're not, anyway,” concluded Beef.  “Still, it’s a pity in a way, particularly just now.”

“Why just now?” I could not help asking.

“Because there’s a lady calling round presently with what looks like a nice little case.  A very nice little case.’

“I couldn’t be less interested,’ I said, using, rather effectively, I thought, some of the idiom I had learnt in the army.

“No?  Well, that’s all right.  Because if this case is what I think of it, it’s serious.  Nasty.  Murder, or suicide that’s been forced on a man to make it almost murder in itself.  And I want to get at the truth with no larking about.”

“Are you inferring that I have ever done any ‘larking about’, as you call it, while we have been investigating?”

“No, but the way you've told the story anybody would think that I had.  This case is serious.  It wants serious handling.  So perhaps it’s just as well that you’re not going to write it up.  Still, you may as well stay and have a cup of tea.”

Frankly I did not know what to do.

“What is her name?” I asked Beef.

“Whose name?”

“The name of the lady who’s coming to see you.”

“Miss Shoulter.”

It meant nothing to me.  I had not been studying the news of crime in newspapers lately.

“She’s the sister of a man found dead in a wood in Kent last week,” said Beef.

“Sounds pretty commonplace.”

'Well, what do you expect?  Frills on?  He was dead, wasn’t he?  Shot with a 12-bore.  Half his head shot away.  What more do you want?”

I was about to say that I wanted nothing except to start my daily work in a quiet office.  But at that moment the front-door bell rang and Beef went out to return a moment later with Miss Shoulter.

“This is Mr. Townsend,” he said, “who does the clerical side of my work.  Miss Shoulter.”

I was furious, but I managed to conceal it as I shook hands with Beef’s client.

She was a horse-faced woman in her forties.  Really horse-faced.  It was impossible to look at her without thinking of stables.  And she wore the kind of severe tweeds and shapeless felt hat which went with her equine features.  She sat on a straight chair, accepted a cigarette from me, and began to talk in a loud, cheerful voice.

“I want you,” she said, “to investigate the death of my brother.  The fools think it was suicide.”

“What fools?”

“Everyone.  I’m told you’re more competent than you look.  The police will do nothing, and I won’t have one of these pansified snobs who are supposed to be brilliant investigators hanging around.  You can count on me for your fees and expenses.  And you can bring your boy-friend with you.”  She gave me a jerk of her head.  “Only you must get cracking.”

“I think I ought to explain . . .” I began.

But Beef boomed out before I could finish.

“No need for explanations now,” he said.  “I’ll take the case.  Now what’s the address?”

So against my better judgement, against all my resolutions, I found myself back in the world of crime, found myself following Beef down to Barnford in Kent, and once more watching while he set about the elucidation of a mystery.  And a mystery it really looked.

❦

Blurbs of Case for Sergeant Beef and Contents

From the dust jacket of the first edition of Case for Sergeant Beef by Leo Bruce, published by Ivor Nicholson & Watson (London, 1947):

In the cleverly plotted Case for Sergeant Beef, Mr. Wellington Chickle, a retired watchmaker, plans the perfect murder, but he chooses the wrong victim.  The dead man’s sister refuses to accept the idea that her brother committed suicide and calls in the unprepossessing Sgt. Beef who unravels the plot with the aid of the local police.  Meanwhile, Townsend, Beef’s indefatigable chronicler, comes to a completely different—and completely wrong—conclusion.  A delightful read by one of the best mystery plotters who ever lived.

From the inside front cover of the first Penguin edition  of Case for Sergeant Beef by Leo Bruce, published by Penguin Books (London, 1951):

Sergeant Beef was a burly, red-faced, complacent ex-village-policeman with a huge dark ginger moustache.  He inspired very little confidence—in fact he himself was one of the few people who believed in his genius—but, in his own blunt and logical way, he was a remarkable efficient detective.  As a private investigator he joined forces with the police over the difficult Shoulter murder case, and faced problems which, he insisted, would have been far too formidable for the smart amateurs of detective fiction, such as M. Amer Picon and Lord Simon Plimsoll.  For Case for Sergeant Beef, while full of its own excitements and complications, enjoys a number of friendly and lightly veiled digs at the plots and characters of other famous writers.

—§§§—

  LIST OF CHAPTERS 

 

1	By Way of Preamble
2	Journal of Wellington Chickle
3	Journal of Wellington Chickle (cont.)
4	Journal of Wellington Chickle (cont.)
5	Journal of Wellington Chickle (cont.)
6	Journal of Wellington Chickle (cont.)
7	Jack Ribbon Goes to Church
8	It Was Murder
9	Police Confidences
10	Flipp Was Not at Home
11	Mrs. Pluck Could Shoot
12	Mr. Chickle Heard Shots
13	Mrs. Pluck Makes Revelations
14	Elevenses with the Curate
15	Beef Borrows a Raincoat
16	Inspector Chatto’s Theory
17	Joe Bridge at Last
18	A Lawyer and Some Boy Scouts
19	Night in Deadman’s Wood
20	Boy Scouts at Work
21	A Nice Young Couple
22	Mrs. Pluck’s Past
23	The Marriage Register
24	The Inevitable Second Corpse
25	Chatto Gets His Warrant
26	Mr. Flusting Talks
27	Chatto States His Case
28	Beef Spills the Beans

Another Text Forthcoming

Since Leo Bruce’s Case for Sergeant Beef now seems to be out of print, we shall provide the text of that novel, chaptermeal, during August, 2017.

Later, we might consider providing the out-of-print novels in other formats.