Five Red Herrings Read online

  ‘Very sorry, sir. What can I do for you?’

  Wimsey brought out his brown-paper parcel from the attaché-case.

  ‘You’re agents for these magnetos?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That will be our Mr. Saunders. Excuse me one minute, sir. Call him down, sir.’

  The youth dashed to the frosted-glass door, leaving Wimsey to endure the furious stare of the specialist in shock-absorbers.

  ‘Will you come this way, sir?’

  Wimsey, attaching his party to him with a glance, plunged through the door and was conducted to a small office where ‘our Mr. Saunders’ sat, in company with a typist.

  Mr. Saunders was a fresh-faced young man with the Eton-and-Oxford manner. He greeted Wimsey like one welcoming an old schoolfriend after many years’ absence. Then he glanced beyond him to Sergeant Dalziel, and his breezy gusto seemed to suffer a slight diminution.

  ‘Look here, old horse,’ said Wimsey, ‘you’ve seen this magneto before, I fancy?’

  Mr. Saunders looked at the magneto and its number rather helplessly, and said:

  ‘Yes, yes, oh, yes, to be sure. Quite. Number XX/47302. Yes. When did we have Number XX/47302 through our hands, Miss Madden?’

  Miss Madden referred to a card-index file.

  ‘It came in for repairs a fortnight ago, Mr. Saunders. It belongs to Mr. Ferguson of Gatehouse. He brought it in himself. Defect in armature winding. Returned to him the day before yesterday.’

  ‘Yes – exactly. Our fellows at the shops reported a defect in the armature winding. Quite. I hope it is quite O.K. now, Mr. – er—’

  ‘After that,’ said Wimsey, ‘you may remember getting a visit from my friend here, Sergeant Dalziel.’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Mr. Saunders. ‘Quite so. You’re very well, I hope, Sergeant?’

  ‘You told him then,’ said Wimsey, ‘that Mr. Ferguson came in here about ten minutes to three.’

  ‘Did I? Oh, yes – I remember. Mr. Crisp called me in. You remember, Miss Madden? Yes. But I didn’t say that. Birkett said that – the young man in the show-room, don’t you know. Said the customer had been waiting ten minutes. Yes. I didn’t see the chappie when he came in, you know. I found him waiting when I got back from lunch. I was a little late that day, I think. Yes. Lunching with a customer. Business, and all that sort of thing. Yes. Mr. Crisp rather hauled me over the coals, I remember. Ha, ha!’

  ‘When exactly did ye come in, Mr. Saunders?’ asked the Inspector grimly.

  ‘Oh, well – must have been about three o’clock, I’m afraid. Yes. Half an hour late. Business, of course. Mr. Crisp—’

  ‘Wull ye no speak the truth, mon?’ said Inspector Macpherson, irritated.

  ‘Eh? Oh – well – as a matter of fact, I may have been a minute or two later. I – I rather avoided looking at the clock, I’m afraid. What time did I come in, Miss Madden?’

  ‘A quarter past three, Mr. Saunders,’ said Miss Madden concisely. ‘I remember the occasion perfectly.’

  ‘By jove, was it? Well, I thought it must have been somewhere about three or a little after. What a memory you’ve got, Miss Madden.’

  Miss Madden smiled faintly.

  ‘There you are, Inspector,’ said Wimsey. ‘Difference between five minutes to and five minutes past. All the difference, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ye may have tae swear tae this in a court of law, Mr. Saunders,’ said the Inspector, sourly. ‘So I’ll trouble ye no tae forget it again.’

  ‘Oh, I say, really?’ said Mr. Saunders, in some alarm. ‘Look here, shall I have to say who I was lunching with? Because, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t exactly business. At least, it was private business.’

  ‘That will be your own concern, Mr. Saunders. Ye may like tae know that we’re investigatin’ a murder.’

  ‘Oh, I say! Of course, I didn’t know that. Mr. Crisp just asked me when I came in. I said, about three – because it really was that, you know, more or less. Of course, if I’d known, I should have asked Miss Madden. She has such a wonderful memory for details.’

  ‘Ay,’ said the Inspector, ‘and I wad advise ye tae cultivate the same yersel’. Gude day tae ye.’

  The investigators were shown out by Mr. Saunders, who burbled unconvincingly all down the passage.

  ‘It’s not much good questioning this fellow Birkett, I suppose,’ said Sir Maxwell. ‘He probably spoke in perfect good faith. He’d be ready to swear today that he’d kept you waiting, Wimsey.’

  ‘Probably. Well, now, we’ve got to be up at the Exhibition at four. Not much time. However, I noticed a jobbing printer’s on the way up here. I daresay we shall find what we want there.’

  He led them at a quick pace along the street, and darted into a small printing-works.

  ‘I want to buy a few metal types,’ he said. ‘Rather like these. Must be this size, and as near in character as you can supply them.’ He produced a sheet of paper.

  The foreman scratched his head.

  ‘That’ll be 5 point,’ he said. ‘The nearest thing to it wad be Clarendon caps. Ay, we can gi’e ye that, if ye wasn’t wantin’ a great weight o’t.’

  ‘Oh, dear, no. I only want five letters – S – M and L – A and D and a complete set of figures.’

  ‘Will monotype castings do ye?’

  ‘I’d rather have foundry-metal if you have it. I want to use them as punches for a small piece of leather-work.’

  ‘Verra gude.’ The Foreman went to a case of type, extracted the required letters and figures and wrapped them up in a screw of paper, mentioning a small price.

  Wimsey paid for them and put the little parcel in his pocket.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘did you have a gentleman in here, asking for the same thing a fortnight ago?’

  ‘No, sir. I wad mind it weel eneugh. Na, na, it wad be a rather uncommon transaction. I havena been askit for sic a thing since I cam’ tae this business, an’ that’s twa year next January.’

  ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Thanks awfully. Good afternoon.’

  ‘Better get a trade directory, Inspector, and count out all the printers. And – yes – wait, – the people who sell book-binding materials. Ferguson must have got these – unless, of course, he brought them with him, which isn’t very likely.’

  Dalziel departed on this errand, while the rest took a taxi and hurried away to the Exhibition, which they reached a few minutes before four. Here they dallied till half-past four, making a hasty tour of all the rooms, and noting one or two striking pictures in each.

  ‘There,’ said Wimsey, as they passed the turnstile again. ‘Now, if we were to meet any inquisitive friends on the doorway, we could persuade them that we had visited the whole show and used our brains. And now we had better make tracks for a quiet place. I suggest a hotel bedroom.’

  LORD PETER WIMSEY

  In a remote bedroom in one of Glasgow’s principal hotels, Wimsey unwrapped his little parcel of types, together with Ferguson’s safety-razor, and a small hammer, which he had purchased on the way.

  Then, gathering his audience about him, he brought out from his pocket the outward half of his first-class ticket from Gatehouse to Glasgow.

  ‘Now, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘we come to the crucial point of our investigation.

  ‘If you had read that excellent work of Mr. Connington’s, to which I drew your attention, you would have found that it contained an account of how a gentleman forged a clip-mark on his railway ticket, by means of a pair of nail-scissors.

  ‘That was on an English line. Now, the Scottish railway authorities, possibly out of sheer tiresomeness, and possibly with the laudable idea of making the way of a ticket-forger hard, are not content with a simple triangular clip.

  ‘The other day I travelled – at great inconvenience to myself – from Gatehouse to Glasgow by the 9.8 a.m. train. I found that the brutal ticket-collectors actually inflicted three ferocious punches on my poor little half-ticket. The first was at Maxwell town, where they produced a ho
rrible set of indented letters and numerals, thus: . At Hurlford, they were content to take a large bite out of the ticket – not a simple triangular snip, but a disgusting thing like a squat figure I. Ferguson would probably have seen these marks, and having the artist’s eye and a remarkable visual memory, would no doubt be able to reproduce these things from memory. Personally, I took the precaution of drawing the mark left by the clipper. Here it is: -|. Then, at Mauchline, they went all cautious again, and disfigured the ticket with another cipher-code . Now, gentlemen, with your permission and these instruments, we will proceed to forge the punch-marks on this ticket.’

  He took up the safety-razor, detached the blade, and, laying the ticket down on the marble-topped washstand, proceeded to cut the Hurlford clip-mark out of the pasteboard.

  This done, he laid the ticket on the blotting-pad provided by the hotel, placed the type-metal figure 2 carefully just above the edge of the ticket, and delivered a smart tap with the hammer. The figure appeared, when the type was lifted, sharply incised on the face of the ticket, which, on being turned over, showed a thicker and blunter version of the figure in relief on the reverse.

  ‘Eh, mon!’ exclaimed Macpherson, ‘but ye’re ower clever tae be an honest mon.’

  Wimsey added the figure 3 and an A, taking care to keep the feet of the letters parallel – a task easily accomplished by setting the beard of the type in line with the edge of the pasteboard. Then, with careful attention to spacing and uprightness, he punched in the letters LMS over the 23A. This completed the Mauchline punch-mark. In the third place he forged the for the Maxwelltown mark, and laid his tools aside with a sigh of satisfaction.

  ‘It’s a wee bit groggy here and there,’ he said, ‘but it would probably pass on a casual inspection. Now, there’s only one thing to do, and that is, to get it back into the hands of the railway company. I’d better take only one witness to this. We don’t want to create a sensation.’

  The Inspector was chosen to accompany him, and, taking a taxi, they bustled down to St. Enoch Station. Here Wimsey inquired, in a fussy manner, for the collector who had been on duty when the 2.16 came in from Dumfries. The man was pointed out to him at one of the barriers. Wimsey, wreathing his features into a kind of peevish smile, approached him with an air of worried kindliness.

  ‘Oh, good evening. I think you were at the barrier when I came in on the 2.16 this afternoon. Now, do you know that you let me get past without giving up my ticket? Yes, yes, he-he! I might have been defrauding the company and all that. I really think you ought to be more careful. Yes. I’m a shareholder on this line, and my cousin is a director, and I do think it’s dreadfully careless. There’d be an inquiry when they found a ticket short at the audit-office, of course, but, you know, he-he. I could have escaped by that time, couldn’t I? Tut, tut – no wonder dividends go down. But I don’t want you to get you into trouble, my good fellow, so I’ve brought you the ticket, and if I were you I’d just slip it in with the others and say no more about it. But you’ll be more careful in future, won’t you?’

  During this harangue, which was poured out all in one breath, allowing no time for reply, the ticket-collector’s face changed gradually from weary courtesy to astonishment and from astonishment to anger.

  ‘Eh, sir,’ said the man, the moment he could get a word in edgeways, ‘I dinna ken what ye’ll be up to, but I’ll no be had twice that way within the fortnight.’

  Inspector Macpherson here intervened.

  ‘My mon,’ said he, ‘I’m a police-officer, an’ I’ll trouble ye tae attend tae me. Have ye had this same thing happen tae ye before?’

  The ticket-collector, now thoroughly alarmed, excused himself, stammered and then let out the whole story.

  He had been on duty just about this time exactly a fortnight earlier. A gentleman had come, just as Wimsey had done, and produced a ticket, explaining that he had somehow slipped through the barrier without having to give it up. He (the collector) had examined the ticket, and seen that it had been properly clipped at Maxwelltown, Hurlford and Mauchline, and he had seen no reason to doubt the passenger’s story. Not wishing to be reprimanded for negligence, he had thanked the gentleman, taken the ticket and carried it to the clerk who was making up that day’s tickets for dispatch to the audit-office. The clerk had obligingly added the ticket to the appropriate bundle, and no more had been heard about it. The collector was sorry, but in view of the fact that the ticket appeared perfectly in order in every way, he had not thought he could be doing any harm. On being shown the photograph of Ferguson, the collector rather tentatively identified him as the passenger who had brought back the ticket.

  The clerk confirmed the collector’s story, and all that remained was to visit the audit-office and obtain a view of the ticket itself. This, owing to the fact that there had already been one police inquiry about it, was fortunately still in existence. A careful examination showed a slight difference between the form of lettering and that of the correctly-punched tickets in the same bunch, and also that, whereas the figures purporting to have been punched on it at Mauchline were the other tickets bore the cipher . It was explained that in each case the letter following the numerals denoted the particular collector who clipped the tickets on that train, each man having his own pair of clippers. The Mauchline numbers ranged from 23A to 23G. Therefore, while in itself the punch-mark was perfectly correct and in order it was suspicious that collector A should have punched only that one ticket out of all the tickets punched on that train. The previous inquiry had, of course, merely been directed to ascertain that the ticket had actually reached Glasgow, and therefore no special attention was paid to the punch-marks. Now, however, it was evident enough that the punch-marks were forgeries, very neatly executed.

  On their return to the hotel, Wimsey and the Inspector were met by Dalziel, with additional confirmation. A man corresponding to Ferguson’s description had, on the Tuesday in question, visited a firm that sold book-binders’ tools, and purchased a set of letter-punches, similar in character and size to the letter on the tickets. He had explained that he was doing a little amateur book-binding, and wanted the punches for the spines of a set of volumes, which were to be labelled SAMUEL, 1, 2, 3 and 4 – this series containing all the letters and numbers necessary for faking the ticket-punches. The case against Ferguson was complete.

  Wimsey was rather silent as they took the last train back from Glasgow.

  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘I rather liked Ferguson, and I couldn’t stick Campbell at any price. I rather wish –’

  ‘Can’t be helped, Wimsey,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Murder is murder, you know.’

  ‘Not always,’ said Wimsey.

  They came back to find Ferguson under arrest. He had endeavoured to take out his car – had found the magneto missing and had then attempted to make a bolt for the railway-station. Ross and Duncan had then thought it time to intervene. He had made no reply when arrested and cautioned, and was then in the Newton-Stewart police-station, awaiting examination. On being confronted with the forged tickets, he gave in, and, despite the warnings of the police, decided to tell his story.

  ‘It wasn’t murder,’ he said. ‘I swear to God it wasn’t murder. And I told you the truth when I said it didn’t happen in the least like your reconstruction.

  ‘Campbell came back at 10.15, just as I said. He barged into my place and began boasting about what he had done to Gowan and what he was going to do to Farren. He had been drinking again after he came in. He used filthy expressions to me and told me he was going to have it out with me, once and for all. He was damnably offensive, I tell you, it wasn’t murder. It was Campbell’s night to howl, and he got what was coming to him.

  ‘I told him to get out of my house. He wouldn’t go, and I tried to push him out. He attacked me, and there was a struggle. I’m stronger than I look, and he wasn’t sober. There was a rough and tumble, and I got a heavy punch in on his jaw. He went over and caught his head on the rounded top of the st
udio stove. When I went to pick him up, he was dead. That was at 11 o’clock.

  ‘Well, I was frightened. I knew I’d often threatened to do him in, and I’d got no witnesses. Here he was, in my house, dead, and I had certainly used force to him first.

  ‘Then I began to think that I might make it look like an accident. I needn’t go into the details. You seem to know them all. My plan worked perfectly, with one exception, and I got over that, and as a matter of fact, it did me good. I meant to start from Barrhill, but I missed the train, and then I hung on to old Ikey-Mo, which made my alibi much better, because it didn’t look, on the face of it, as though I could have got to Girvan in time, especially when I’d heard from Jock Graham that you knew I couldn’t have started from the Minnoch before 11.30.

  ‘It was bad luck, of course, that the body was found quite so soon. I knew there might be trouble over that rigor mortis business. Was that what put you on to the idea of murder in the first place?’

  ‘No,’ said Wimsey. ‘It was your habit of putting paints in your pocket. Did you realise that you had carried off Campbell’s flake white?’

  ‘I didn’t notice it till I got back home. But it never occurred to me that anybody would spot that, I suppose you were the intelligent sleuth, Wimsey. I’d have taken it up to the Minnoch and dropped it somewhere, only that you had seen it the day you came to the studio. That was the first real fright I got. But afterwards I thought I could rely on the alibi, I was rather proud of that ticket-forgery. And I hoped you would overlook the possibilities of Ikey-Mo.’

  ‘There’s only one thing I don’t understand,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘why didn’t you start out earlier from the Minnoch? There wasn’t any need to do such a lot to the painting.’

  Ferguson smiled faintly.

  ‘That was a big bloomer. You reconstructed the events of the night, and you know what a lot I had to do? Well – I forgot one thing. I forgot to wind up my watch, which I usually do at bedtime. I was going to pack up my painting things, after I’d done a goodish bit, when I heard a lorry coming along. I waited for that to go by and looked at my watch. It said half-past ten. I thought I could easily give it another half-hour. I didn’t want to hang about at Barrhill for fear of being recognized. I estimated another half-hour, and looked at my watch again. It was still half-past ten.