Murder Is Easy

At last, with immense importance the London train came in. The third-class carriages were crowded, and of firsts there were only three and each one contained a traveller or travellers. Luke scrutinized each compartment. The first, a smoker, contained a gentleman of military aspect smoking a cigar. Luke felt he had had enough of Anglo-Indian colonels today. He passed on to the next one, which contained a tired-looking genteel young woman, possibly a nursery governess, and an active-looking small boy of about three. Luke passed on quickly. The next door was open and the carriage contained one passenger, an elderly lady. She reminded Luke slightly of one of his aunts, his Aunt Mildred, who had courageously allowed him to keep a grass snake when he was ten years old. Aunt Mildred had been decidedly a good aunt as aunts go. Luke entered the carriage and sat down.

After some five minutes of intense activity on the part of milk vans, luggage trucks and other excitements, the train moved slowly out of the station. Luke unfolded his paper and turned to such items of news as might interest a man who had already read his morning paper.

He did not hope to read it for long. Being a man of many aunts, he was fairly certain that the nice old lady in the corner did not propose to travel in silence to London.

He was right—a window that needed adjusting, dropped umbrella—and the way the old lady was telling him what a good train this was.

‘Only an hour and ten minutes. That’s very good, you know, very good indeed. Much better than the morning one. That takes an hour and forty minutes.’

She went on:

‘Of course, nearly everyone goes by the morning one. I mean, when it is the cheap day it’s silly to go up in the afternoon. I meant to go up this morning, but Wonky Pooh was missing—that’s my cat, a Persian, such a beauty only he’s had a painful ear lately—and of course I couldn’t leave home till he was found!’

Luke murmured:

‘Of course not,’ and let his eyes drop ostentatiously to his paper. But it was of no avail. The flood went on.

‘So I just made the best of a bad job and took the afternoon train instead, and of course it’s a blessing in one way because it’s not so crowded—not that that matters when one is travelling first class. Of course, I don’t usually do that. I mean, I should consider it an extravagance, what with taxes and one’s dividends being less and servants’ wages so much more and everything—but really I was so upset because you see, I’m going up on very important business, and I wanted to think out exactly what I was going to say—just quietly, you know—’ Luke repressed a smile. ‘And when there are people you know travelling up too—well, one can’t be unfriendly—so I thought just for once, the expense was quite permissible—though I do think nowadays there is so much waste—and nobody saves or thinks of the future. One is sorry the seconds were ever abolished—it did make just that little difference.

‘Of course,’ she went on quickly, with a swift glance at Luke’s bronzed face, ‘I know soldiers on leave have to travel first class. I mean, being officers, it’s expected of them—’

Luke sustained the inquisitive glance of a pair of bright twinkling eyes. He capitulated at once. It would come to it, he knew, in the end.

‘I’m not a soldier,’ he said.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I just thought—you were so brown—perhaps home from the East on leave.’

‘I’m home from the East,’ said Luke. ‘But not on leave.’ He stalled off further researches with a bald statement. ‘I’m a policeman.’

‘In the police? Now really, that’s very interesting. A dear friend of mine—her boy has just joined the Palestine police.’

‘Mayang Straits,’ said Luke, taking another short cut.

‘Oh, dear—very interesting. Really, it’s quite a coincidence—I mean, that you should be travelling in this carriage. Because, you see, this business I’m going up to town about—well, actually it is to Scotland Yard I’m going.’

‘Really?’ said Luke.

He thought to himself, ‘Will she run down soon like a clock or will this go on all the way to London?’ But he did not really mind very much, because he had been very fond of his Aunt Mildred, and he remembered how she had once stumped up a fiver in the nick of time. Besides, there was something very cosy and English about old ladies like this old lady and his Aunt Mildred. There was nothing at all like them in the Mayang Straits. They could be classed with plum pudding on Christmas Day and village cricket and open fireplaces with wood fires. The sort of things you appreciated a good deal when you hadn’t got them and were on the other side of the world. (They were also the sort of thing you got very bored with when you had a good deal of them, but as has been already told, Luke had only landed in England three or four hours ago.)

The old lady was continuing happily:

‘Yes, I meant to go up this morning—and then, as I told you, I was so worried about Wonky Pooh. But you don’t think it will be too late, do you? I mean, there aren’t any special office hours at Scotland Yard.’

‘I don’t think they close down at four or anything like that,’ said Luke.

‘No, of course, they couldn’t, could they? I mean, somebody might want to report a serious crime at any minute, mightn’t they?’

‘Exactly,’ said Luke.

For a moment the old lady relapsed into silence. She looked worried.

‘I always think it’s better to go right to the fountain-head,’ she said at last. ‘John Reed is quite a nice fellow—that’s our constable in Wychwood—a very civil-spoken, pleasant man—but I don’t feel, you know—that he would be quite the person to deal with anything serious. He’s quite used to dealing with people who’ve drunk too much, or with exceeding the speed limit, or lighting-up time—or people who haven’t taken out a dog licence—and perhaps with burglary even. But I don’t think—I’m quite sure—he isn’t the person to deal with murder!’

Luke’s eyebrows rose.

‘Murder?’

The old lady nodded vigorously.

‘Yes, murder. You’re surprised, I can see. I was myself at first … I really couldn’t believe it. I thought I must be imagining things.’

‘Are you quite sure you weren’t?’ Luke asked gently.

‘Oh, no.’ She shook her head positively. ‘I might have been the first time, but not the second, or the third or the fourth. After that one knows.’

Luke said:

‘Do you mean there have been—er—several murders?’

The quiet gentle voice replied:

‘A good many, I’m afraid.’

She went on:

‘That’s why I thought it would be best to go straight to Scotland Yard and tell them about it. Don’t you think that’s the best thing to do?’

Luke looked at her thoughtfully, then he said:

‘Why, yes—I think you’re quite right.’

He thought to himself:

‘They’ll know how to deal with her. Probably get half a dozen old ladies a week coming in burbling about the amount of murders committed in their nice quiet country villages! There may be a special department for dealing with the old dears.’

And he saw in imagination a fatherly superintendent, or a good-looking young inspector, tactfully murmuring:

‘Thank you, ma’am, very grateful to you, I’m sure. Now just go back and leave it all in our hands and don’t worry any more about it.’

He smiled a little to himself at the picture. He thought:

‘I wonder why they get these fancies? Deadly dull lives, I suppose—an unacknowledged craving for drama. Some old ladies, so I’ve heard, fancy everyone is poisoning their food.’

He was roused from these meditations by the thin, gentle voice continuing:

‘You know, I remember reading once—I think it was the Abercrombie case—of course he’d poisoned quite a lot of people before any suspicion was aroused—what was I saying? Oh, yes, somebody said that there was a look—a special look that he gave anyone—and then very shortly afterwards that person would be taken ill. I didn’t really believe that when I read about it—but it’s true!’

‘What’s true?’