Death on the Last Train (12 page)

“What the hell is all this about?” he asked in shrill rage.

“Don't start swearing, dear,” protested Constance feebly.

“I'll bloody well swear if I want …”

Littlejohn decided that if he was to avoid a lot of domestic bickering and side-issues he had better establish control at once.

“You'll not swear whilst I'm here, Mr. Claypott. If I've any more exhibitions of truculence, I'll take you to the police station and you can cool off in a cell until you're fit to speak to …”

“Oh … oh, Inspector, don't, don't. He'll be good, won't you, Harold?”

Littlejohn came to the point. He put the six anonymous letters faces upwards on the table.

“Do you know anything about these, Mr. Claypott?” he asked.

Claypott fumbled with the papers in his hand, which trembled with nerves.

“No. Why should I? What is this, a guessing game?”

“No. Those are anonymous letters received by Mr. Timothy Bellis before he died. Read them.”

Claypott adjusted his pince-nez and putting the letters close to his face blinked at them and read them. His eyes watered with the effort and he had to pause to wipe them and his glasses.

His two sisters stood in frozen silence, for Leah, unable to contain her curiosity, had also risen and was craning her neck along with Constance to see what it was all about. There was no sound save the loud breathing of the Claypotts and the flapping of the paper as it trembled in Harold's fingers.

“Well! What's all this rubbish got to do with me?”

He faced Littlejohn unsteadily and glared at him with dim eyes.

“It has a lot to do with you, sir. Those letters were written on your typewriter!”

“What!! It's a lie! You're trying to accuse me of something I know nothing at all about. I'll see my
solicitor … You can't bully me. I know the law … Nearly qualified as a solicitor myself …I … I …”

It was dreadful. Harold befuddled, trying to think straight, Constance uttering little whimpering cries like an injured animal, and Leah, back on the couch, flat on her face, sobbing her heart out.

“It's a lie …”

“It's nothing of the kind, Mr. Claypott. The identity of the typewriter which wrote those letters has been definitely established. They have been compared with a sample of the type which I took from the machine on the desk there when I was last here …”

“It's a foul, dirty trick. I know nothing about it. You can't prove I did it; and I didn't. Somebody must have come in and done it when we were out … somebody … somebody … .”

He gave it up and stood there wild-eyed like a creature at bay.

“Now, tell me the truth, Mr. Claypott. You'll save us and yourself a lot of trouble. It doesn't necessarily follow that whoever wrote those letters killed Bellis, but unless you make a clean breast of it, I shall have to arrest you on suspicion …”

“You what!!! I didn't do it. I swear I didn't. Leah, fetch me father's bible. I'll swear to you on the bible …”

“No need for that, sir. These have been written on your machine and there's no getting round it. I must now ask you to accompany me to the police-station and give an explanation of it all.”

“But, I didn't …”

“I did it.”

Constance's lips seemed to open and close automatically. She stood there like a little doll, her mouth moving mechanically. Her face seemed carved out of cork, angular, craggy, and dark coloured from emotion.

“You what?”

Littlejohn himself was flabbergasted.

“
You
did it, Miss Claypott?”

“Yes, I did it.”

Harold began to flail the air with his arms.

“Oh, tommy rot. You're beside yourself. How could you have done it? Don't be silly, Connie. None of us did it.”

“I did it. I've seen you suffer so much, dear, from the way Bellis treated Helen, that I wanted to pay him back. I read in a book about a thing they called the poison pen …”

“But this is preposterous, Connie. You couldn't have.”

Claypott fumbled with the letters.

“Look here …! ‘By God, you'll pay' … . ‘You've paid, but not by a long chalk' … ‘You've paid with all except your life …' Those aren't the sort of things you'd write, Connie. You've not been brought up that way. You were always genteel in your talk …”

“All the same, I wrote them. I found them in Leah's books.”

Miss Claypott bent and from the bottom shelf of the whatnot produced a number of dog-eared paper-backed periodicals with lurid jackets and printed on coarse paper. Cheap novels. Gangsters. Romance. Blood and Thunder. The stuff in which Leah steeped herself in her plentiful spare time.

“I got the words from these. I wouldn't have known how to express it frightfully enough otherwise.”

Littlejohn mopped his forehead. What a case!

“So you admit that you wrote the letters, Miss Claypott?”

“Yes, Inspector. Are you going to arrest me?”

She was quite calm and seemed relieved that she had got it all off her mind.

Her brother looked at her dumbfounded. Leah lay, face down, like one dead.

“But Constance, you surely didn't bring all these things on Bellis and then kill him?”

“Of course not, dear. I just brought them more vividly to him by reminding him of his sins. I thought to terrify him. I was intent on avenging you for all you'd suffered by the way he treated Helen. His behaviour broke her heart and you know it broke yours when she died. You were just beginning to break off your drinking … . Then you broke out worse than ever …”

Claypott burst into tears. Harsh, noisy sobs, mostly of self pity. The tears ran down his cheeks and mingled with his ragged moustache and ran off his bit of chin. He took no heed. Constance put her arms round him and patted his head.

“Poor dear …”

“I'll never touch another drop. I promise, Constance. I won't. I'm sorry … Leah, get me the bible …”

“Come, come, come,” said Littlejohn, intensely embarrassed by this sentimental domestic scene. “Sit down Mr. Claypott and calm yourself whilst I talk to your sister …”

“I won't have you bully her … I know the law. I was in the law myself once. So you can't …”

“Sit down!”

Claypott sank on the faded velvet and put his head in his hands.

“Now, Miss Claypott. Tell me all about this, please.”

“You might think it very wicked, but I'm not sorry. No. I don't regret it in the least. Bellis made my brother suffer terribly and I made up my mind he should do the same.”

Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright and she seemed to have grown taller in added dignity. There was no sign of guilt about her.

“After Helen died, I was so angry at Harold's grief that I sent the first message. I copied it, suitably altered, from one of Leah's books. I daresay I could find the passage …”

“Don't bother, Miss Claypott. Go on, please.”

“Well, by luck or providence, just after I'd written the
letter, there was the building society crash. It looked as though the letter had been a warning. I sent another then to press home the point.”

“My God!”

“No need to take God's name in vain, Harold. Then, I sent another. I'd seen a passage in one of my favourite books, by dear Charles Lamb. He suffered like we have done from family troubles. Speaking of the Duchess of Malfi, he says : ' To move horror skilfully, to touch the soul to the quick, to lay upon fear as much as it can bear, to wear and weary a life till it is ready to drop … '.” Constance Claypott recited it pat in her gentle voice. The whole business seemed incompatible with her nature. “. . . I made up my mind that I would do that to Bellis for all he'd done to Helen and Harold. Not that Helen deserved much from us. She refused Harold long ago and broke his life. But she did it kindly and afterwards was his constant inspiration. We felt that whilst she was alive and happy, he had someone to live for. Then Bellis married and killed her. Nothing was too much for him to suffer.”

She snapped her jaws and gnashed her teeth.

“Then, by another strange freak, his house was burned down. I was quick to send another note. And one day as I was out shopping, I saw him coming from the police station looking afraid to death. I guessed he'd been asking for protection. I sent him a letter mocking him.”

“I can't believe it, Constance …”

“It's true and I don't regret it. I'd known of his affair with that horrible Emmott woman, even when Helen was alive. Harold used to rave about it. I saw something in one of Leah's novelettes … something about a man who committed suicide because his mistress was unfaithful to him. I sent a letter about Bessie Emmott, although I knew nothing of her. Do you know the end of the quotation from Charles Lamb? Well, it's this: ‘and then step in with mortal instruments to take its last forfeit'.”

She stood erect like an avenging little Nemesis.

“I didn't intend to kill him, of course. How could I have done? But I made up my mind to exact the utmost fear. I wrote the last letter threatening his life. I would at least give him the final turn of the screw, as Mr. Henry James has it.”

“And you did turn it, Miss Claypott. He became a nervous wreck in terror of his own shadow.”

“Then I am satisfied. But I didn't kill him. How could I be stopping trains and climbing in and out of railway carriages, to say nothing of firing a revolver? I've never even seen a revolver.”

“I think, madam, that if someone else hadn't done it, Bellis would have killed himself.”

“He is better dead, whatever way it is accomplished. But I was quite incapable of doing it.”

Claypott raised his haggard, tear-stained face.

“What are you going to do, Inspector?”

“Nothing for the present. But I want you to call at the police station in the morning, Miss Claypott, and sign a statement. We will then decide what to do further. Needless to say, I have your word not to try to leave town?”

“Why should I want to leave town? Or even the house? All I love is here. And I promise not to try to do myself any violence. I see from Leah's books that that sometimes occurs with
criminals.
”

She smiled grimly. The word seemed to please her.

“Very well, madam. I will now be getting along. I have your promise?”

“I promise.”

Littlejohn gathered up his hat and cold pipe and Constance saw him to the door. He left Harold still dumbfounded in the chair, but as he bade Constance good-night, he heard him ordering Leah about.

“Bring me father's bible, Leah. I'm going to swear to Constance …”

Littlejohn decided to sleep on it. The discovery that the murderer had not been responsible for stopping the 10.55 nor for writing the anonymous letters turned the case upside down. No use beginning afresh at that time of night.

The Inspector felt a bit more energetic when he turned in at the police-station the following morning.

In the charge-room a portly sergeant was bending over a little girl wearing a pair of large spectacles. She was lost, but very self-possessed.

The bobby, heavily paternal, was questioning her.

“Now do you live in Albany Street …? Apple Street …? Appleby Street …? Applegarth Road …?”

“What's going on here?” asked Forrester, coming out to greet his colleague.

“She can't remember where she lives, sir. So I'm jest runnin' through a few streets alphabetic …”

“Good Lord! You'll be at it all week! Have you been through the list of districts?”

The small child, conscious that she was the centre of attraction, preened herself daintily.

“Yus, sir. Doesn't seem to remember any?”

And then he added under his breath. “I'm fed-up with this.”

The child regarded him reproachfully through her owl-like lenses.

“Do you live in Snutton?” said Littlejohn.

It was the only suburb he'd heard of.

“I live there,” said the child, very pleased with it all,
and smiling at Littlejohn for having won the guessing game.

“So does
he
,” growled Forrester, disgustedly, pointing at the shamefaced sergeant, who looked down at his big feet as though imploring the floor covered by them to open and swallow him up.

“I know him,” added the child, by way of a
coup de grace
.

Littlejohn and Forrester combed through the list of those concerned with the fatal train, station staffs and travellers.

“Is Mereton a closed station?” asked the Inspector.

“Yes.”

“What about the ticket collector? He doesn't seem to be here.”

Forrester slapped the table in disgust.

“I put my hand up. We'd all missed him. I'll just 'phone the station.”

Yes. The ticket collector had been a fellow called Hiss. Lambert Hiss. He was off duty taking a rest. Hadn't been well since the crime. Lived at 43, Albany Street, Mereton.

“I'll go there right away” said Littlejohn.

It turned out to be a mixed business; sweets and tobacco. HISS painted large over the window and advertisements in white letters for chocolates and cigarettes stuck on the plate-glass panes. Some of the letters were missing. FO LES CH COLATE. SWE T ROS MARY CIGARE T S. The windows were full of dummy packets.

Two women were minding the shop. One was small and obese, with a red face, mouth, nose and eyes like buttons of various shapes, and her hair elevated on two pads like little fat horns. The other was tall, skinny, thin lipped and long in the face and nose.

“Mrs. Hiss?” said Littlejohn to the fat one, thinking what a good test it would be for sobriety.

“She'd like to be,” said Skinny, peevishly.

“How
dare
you, Mildred,” replied the heavyweight, now livid with rage.