The Complete Short Stories (41 page)

‘My five Moon Brothers
left the earth secretly during the night. I could not, myself, face the Moon
without Dolores. I felt it necessary to remain on earth and die here where she
died.

‘Of course, I cleared
out of Hampstead.

‘But the strange thing
is, that our mission wasn’t a failure, after all. The revival of the tum tum
ya
cult did not last. It still crops up from time to time here and there, for
these things spread. But the absence of the Changing Drama of the Moon began to
be felt. The sense of loss led to a tremendous movement of the human spirit.
The race of the artist appeared on the earth, everywhere attempting to express
the lost Moon drama. Long after the people who had frequented the old
Remarkable Playhouse were dead and forgotten the legend survived; and long
after the legend was forgotten, the sense of loss survived.

‘So it happens,’ said
Moon Biglow, ‘that whenever the tum tum
ya
movement gets afoot, and the
monotony and horror start taking hold of people, the artists rise up and
proclaim the virtue of the remarkable things that are missing from the earth.

‘And so,’ said Moon
Biglow, ‘you owe your literature, your symphonies, your old masters and your
new masters, to the Six Moon Brothers and Dolores. It was a good thing we had
to go. We could never have induced you to shift for yourselves by any other
means.

‘You and your littery
friends,’ said Moon Biglow, ‘ought to know the true position, which is what I’ve
told you. And if ever you produce a decent poem or a story, it won’t be on
account of anything you’ve got in this world but of something remarkable which
you haven’t got. There is always a call for the Remarkable from time to time,
simply because we closed the doors of the Playhouse called Remarkable, and
because the Young Remarkables have gone off home, and because there is nothing
left Remarkable beneath the visiting Moon.’

Chimes

Tonight is the anniversary of one of my
most puzzling murders. It was the autumn of 1954, when life was sleepier than
it is now. Saturday, the second of October, to be exact.

For a detective, I haven’t
a particularly good memory as a rule. But you will see presently why I remember
this particular date. It was nearly an unsolved murder. Old Matthews was a
farmer of the village of Mellow in the West Country. He was found dead on the
morning of the third of October in an outhouse of his own farm, lying at the
foot of the ladder leading to the hayloft. He was eighty-two.

At the inquest the local
doctor gave evidence that Matthews’s death was due to a fractured skull. It was
assumed he had been up in the hayloft during the night and had fallen down the
ladder. The verdict was death by misadventure.

You will wonder what old
Matthews was doing in the hayloft during the night.

He slept in the hayloft.
It is true he owned the farm. And there was a large farmhouse where his wife
lived. You must understand that Matthews was rather peculiar. So was his wife.
They didn’t get on together and he preferred to sleep in the outhouse.
Situations like that are not unusual in the deep country.

The inquest was soon
over and Matthews was buried on the sixth of October. A fortnight after the
funeral the police received an anonymous letter accusing Harold Matthews, the
son, of having murdered his father.

It was not generally
known at the time, but in fact Harold was not old Matthews’s legitimate son.

The police frequently
receive anonymous letters and so they took no great notice of this one. They
tried to trace the author, whom they suspected to be some village woman, but
they were unsuccessful. Before long, however, rumours were going about the
village to the effect that Harold had murdered his father. The police
questioned Harold. He was unhelpful, but that wasn’t his fault, for he was
rather simple.

Within three months the
rumours had increased, and a reporter from a national newspaper was said to
have visited the area. The police had to act. They disinterred Matthews’s body.
The Home Office pathologist found that the fracture on his skull had been
caused by a blow. It was now certain that Matthews had been murdered during the
night of the second—third of October.

Poor Harold tried to
explain to the police that he could not have killed his father, since old
Matthews was
not
his father. That’s how the police came to know about
his illegitimacy. But in any case, they didn’t waste time trying to get sense
out of Harold, for the man had a perfect alibi.

During the night of the
murder he had been watching the others playing cards in the kitchen, and then
had gone to bed in a room which he shared with one of the farm hands.

It was at this point in
the investigations that we from London were called in. First we were presented
with a number of established facts. On the afternoon of the second of October
Matthews had gone to a farm two miles from Mellow to help with a difficult
calving. He left this place just after nine that night and was seen to cross some
fields, slowly because of his age. This would bring him to the main road at
about 10.20. The doctor was passing in his car and stopped, apparently to give
Matthews a lift. Matthews entered the car, where he sat talking to the doctor.
A courting couple who passed them at 10.30 said they seemed to be arguing
rather violently. No one observed the car drive off.

You will wonder how the
witnesses remembered these encounters three months after the event. Well,
mainly because it
was
the night old Matthews was killed. People said,
when they heard the news of Matthews’s death, ‘Why, I saw him that very night!’
and so on. It’s surprising the things people remember and what they forget,
especially in this case, as you’ll see.

Everyone at the
farmhouse was equally clear about what had happened that night, with the
exception of Harold who wasn’t clear about much. They had been playing cards in
the kitchen — some farm labourers who lived at the house, and Mrs Matthews —
with Harold looking on. At midnight they heard a car drive up the farm lane and
stop outside the outhouse. They assumed that old Matthews had got a lift home.
They heard him, as they supposed, enter the outhouse, the door of which had a
noisy hinge. A few seconds later the car drove off.

This was at midnight.
They all swore they heard the church clock strike twelve when the car arrived.
By our reckoning, it was not old Matthews whom they heard entering the
outhouse, but the murderer dumping the body. A murderer with a car. Now
Matthews had been seen arguing with the doctor at 10.30, only a few minutes’
drive from the farm. Yet these noises were not heard till twelve.

We questioned the
doctor, of course. His name was Fell. He lived in another village — Otling,
three miles from Mellow along the main road. His story was that he had sat
chatting to Matthews — a patient of his —for over half an hour in the car. They
had had a little argument about politics. He had then driven Matthews to his
farm, arriving there at eleven o’clock. After that he had proceeded home where
he arrived at ten past eleven.

There he found an urgent
message to visit a sick patient, and set off immediately. He attended to his
patient — a childbirth case — and was home again just as the church clock
struck midnight.

Dr Fell’s manner was extremely
helpful. He actually wrote out a statement for us, giving all his movements
that night and citing his witnesses. We checked up on everything and could find
no flaw in his alibi. There was no doubt he had visited his patient at twenty
past eleven, for the child was registered as having been born at ten minutes to
twelve. His housekeeper’s niece, who had just returned home from a dance, as
well as his wife, gave evidence of his return home as the clock struck
midnight. He couldn’t have been both at Mellow and at Otling as the church
clock struck midnight.

And I was assured that
the church clock always kept perfect time.

And you will say, were
the farm people lying? Did they really hear those noises at the outhouse at
midnight?

Do you know, it was a
strange thing — we are all of us experienced in detecting lies — but we couldn’t
break down one of those witnesses, either at Otling or at Mellow, in the
slightest detail. We had no evidence against Dr Fell. It was quite a puzzle.
Three months after the event, you know, there isn’t much physical evidence to
go by — fingerprints and so on.

But we suspected Dr
Fell. Our investigations had brought another important fact to light. Old
Matthews had been receiving monthly payments from Dr Fell for thirty-odd years.

Of course, we thought of
blackmail. We questioned Mrs Matthews about this. She denied knowledge of the
money, but eventually told us that Dr Fell was Harold’s real father. It looked
very much to us that the monthly payments were made to keep old Matthews quiet.
A country doctor can’t afford to lose his reputation.

And we found that a few
months before the murder these payments had increased. The increase coincided
exactly with Dr Fell’s marriage to a much younger woman. If our theory was
correct Matthews had seized the opportunity of the marriage to increase his
demands, for in those days — perhaps even now — a doctor would not wish his
bride to know of an illegitimate son in the neighbourhood. Here, then, was a
clear motive for murder. But Dr Fell had his alibi. We could not prove it.

I questioned him again.
His eyes fixed themselves on me. I was almost hypnotized. I must say I felt
very uneasy in his presence. But of course in our profession we are trained to
discount most of our personal feelings when dealing with a suspect. Still, the
old rhyme went round my head as I drove away from his house:

I do not like thee, Dr Fell.

The reason why I cannot tell.

But this one thing I know full well:

I do not like thee, Dr Fell.

Shortly after this a
member of the local police made a discovery which earned him promotion. He was
looking through the statement which Dr Fell had written out for us when he
noticed a peculiarity in the writing which coincided with that of the anonymous
letter they had received accusing Harold of the crime. The letter had been
written in a disguised hand, but still the experts confirmed the suspicions of
that clever policeman. Now, at least, we had something concrete to tax Dr Fell
with — and a concrete charge is always a help in a murder case.

He was, of course, upset
at our discovery. Eventually he admitted writing it, said he had genuinely
suspected Harold but could not bring himself to say so at the inquest. We
suggested to him that the letter was written as a defence against blackmail on
the part of Harold. The doctor denied it.

However, I went off to
interview Harold, hoping to discover what he knew about Dr Fell. With simple
people it is best to be direct. I said, ‘Harold, why did you try to get money
out of Dr Fell?’

He said, ‘Eh?’

I said, ‘You think he
killed the old man, don’t you?’

He said, ‘That’s right,
sir, I do.’

But, like ourselves,
poor Harold had no evidence to produce against the doctor. There were
probabilities, but simply no answer to the fact that he had been seen at Otling
at the very time the car had been heard at Mellow.

I can’t tell you how
disappointed I was after that interview with Harold. There was no further point
in our men hanging on at Mellow. We were to return to London next morning, our
criminal in sight but not brought to justice.

I was so disappointed
that I said, half to myself and half to Harold, ‘If only we could shake his
alibi for that particular midnight!’ Harold didn’t seem to take this in. I went
my way.

But in a moment Harold
was running after me. ‘You’ll never get him, sir,’ he said.

I said, ‘No, that’s just
what I mean.

He said, ‘You see, sir,
there was two midnights, like, that night. That’s why you’ll never get him. You
can’t get a man between two midnights.’

‘Two midnights?’ I said.

‘Right you are, sir,’
Harold said. ‘It was end of summer time, wasn’t it? And they put the clocks
back. Old Fell done it between the two midnights, and you’ll never get him.’

‘Harold,’ I said. ‘You’re
a genius.’

‘You’ll never get him,’
he said.

I went to see the verger
who recalled, yes, come to think of it, the church clock wasn’t put back till a
couple of days after the official date. The town clerk, on the other hand, was
proud to declare that he had arranged for the town hall’s clock to be put back
on the afternoon of the previous day, 1 October. ‘You don’t catch us napping!’
said the Clerk.

‘Won’t we?’ I said.

It didn’t take us long
to put our point of view over to Dr Fell. He confessed to the murder. It had
taken place in a field. He had hit old Matthews over the head with a wooden
leg. He had the wooden leg in his car, for earlier that week he’d been getting
it mended for an old pensioner in the village. In some ways Dr Fell was quite a
kindly man. Well, having killed old Matthews he dumped his body in the outhouse
at eleven o’clock by Winter Time, twelve by British Summer Time and the church
clock. These were the days of capital punishment, but his sentence was commuted
to life imprisonment. The law doesn’t like blackmail.

Ladies and
Gentlemen

Author’s note: The following is based on
a true incident, perhaps made more macabre by the fact that the man in question
was afraid of being seen with a girl by his mother, not his wife. In the true
version the man was not caught, only observed as he crept round the public
lavatory in a way that struck the author as being quite hilarious.