In the succeeding weeks I was a good deal bored.
Mrs. Flemming and her friends seemed to me to be supremely
uninteresting. They talked for hours of themselves and their
children and of the difficulties of getting good milk for the
children and of what they said to the Dairy when the milk wasn’t
good. Then they would go on to servants, and the difficulties of
getting good servants and of what they had said to the woman at
the Registry Office and of what the woman at the Registry Office
had said to them. They never seemed to read the papers or to care
about what went on in the world. They disliked travelling—everything
was so different to England. The Riviera was all right, of course,
because one met all one’s friends there.
I listened and contained myself with difficulty. Most of these
women were rich. The whole wide beautiful world was theirs to
wander in and they deliberately stayed in dirty dull London and
talked about milkmen and servants! I think now, looking back, that
I was perhaps a shade intolerant. But they _were_ stupid—stupid
even at their chosen job: most of them kept the most extraordinarily
inadequate and muddled housekeeping accounts.
My affairs did not progress very fast. The house and furniture had
been sold, and the amount realized had just covered our debts. As
yet, I had not been successful in finding a post. Not that I really
wanted one! I had the firm conviction that, if I went about looking
for adventure, adventure would meet me halfway. It is a theory of
mine that one always gets what one wants. My theory was about to
be proved in practice.
It was early in January—the 8th, to be exact. I was returning from
an unsuccessful interview with a lady who said she wanted a
secretary-companion, but really seemed to require a strong charwoman
who would work twelve hours a day for £25 a year. Having parted
with mutual veiled impolitenesses, I walked down Edgware Road (the
interview had taken place in a house in St. John’s Wood) and across
Hyde Park to St. George’s Hospital. There I entered Hyde Park
Corner Tube Station and took a ticket to Gloucester Road.
Once on the platform I walked to the extreme end of it. My inquiring
mind wished to satisfy itself as to whether there really _were_
points and an opening between the two tunnels just beyond the
station in the direction of Down Street. I was foolishly pleased
to find I was right. There were not many people on the platform,
and at the extreme end there was only myself and one man. As I
passed him, I sniffed dubiously. If there is one smell I cannot
bear it is that of moth balls! This man’s heavy overcoat simply
reeked of them. And yet most men begin to wear their winter
overcoats before January, and consequently by this time the smell
ought to have worn off. The man was beyond me, standing close to
the edge of the tunnel. He seemed lost in thought, and I was able
to stare at him without rudeness. He was a small thin man, very
brown of face, with light blue eyes and a small dark beard.
“Just come from abroad,” I deduced. “That’s why his overcoat smells
so. He’s come from India. Not an officer, or he wouldn’t have a
beard. Perhaps a tea-planter.”
At this moment the man turned as though to retrace his steps along
the platform. He glanced at me and then his eyes went on to
something behind me, and his face changed. It was distorted by
fear—almost panic. He stood a step backwards as though involuntarily
recoiling from some danger, forgetting that he was standing on the
extreme edge of the platform, and went down and over.
There was a vivid flash from the rails and a crackling sound. I
shrieked. People came running up. Two station officials seemed to
materialize from nowhere and took command.
I remained where I was, rooted to the spot by a sort of horrible
fascination. Part of me was appalled at the sudden disaster, and
another part of me was coolly and dispassionately interested in
the methods employed for lifting the man off the live rail and back
onto the platform.
“Let me pass, please. I am a medical man.”
A tall man with a brown beard pressed past me and bent over the
motionless body.
As he examined it, a curious sense of unreality seemed to possess
me. The thing wasn’t real—couldn’t be. Finally, the doctor stood
upright and shook his head.
“Dead as a door-nail. Nothing to be done.”
We had all crowded nearer, and an aggrieved porter raised his
voice.
“Now then, stand back there, will you? What’s the sense in crowding
round.”
A sudden nausea seized me, and I turned blindly and ran up the
stairs again towards the lift. I felt that it was too horrible. I
must get out into the open air. The doctor who had examined the
body was just ahead of me. The lift was just about to go up,
another having descended, and he broke into a run. As he did so,
he dropped a piece of paper.
I stopped, picked it up, and ran after him. But the lift gates
clanged in my face, and I was left holding the paper in my hand.
By the time the second lift reached the street level, there was no
sign of my quarry. I hoped it was nothing important that he had
lost, and for the first time I examined it.
It was a plain half-sheet of notepaper with some figures and words
scrawled upon it in pencil. This is a facsimile of it:
[Indistinct cursive script which appears to say something like:
"1 7 . 1 2 2 Kilmorden Castle"]
On the face of it, it certainly did not appear to be of any
importance. Still, I hesitated to throw it away. As I stood there
holding it, I involuntarily wrinkled my nose in displeasure. Moth
balls again! I held the paper gingerly to my nose. Yes, it smelt
strongly of them. But, then——
I folded up the paper carefully and put it in my bag. I walked home
slowly and did a good deal of thinking.
I explained to Mrs. Flemming that I had witnessed a nasty accident
in the Tube and that I was rather upset and would go to my room
and lie down. The kind woman insisted on my having a cup of tea.
After that I was left to my own devices, and I proceeded to carry
out a plan I had formed coming home. I wanted to know what it was
that had produced that curious feeling of unreality whilst I was
watching the doctor examine the body. First I lay down on the floor
in the attitude of the corpse, then I laid a bolster down in my
stead, and proceeded to duplicate, so far as I could remember,
every motion and gesture of the doctor. When I had finished I had
got what I wanted. I sat back on my heels and frowned at the
opposite walls.
There was a brief notice in the evening papers that a man had been
killed in the Tube, and a doubt was expressed whether it was
suicide or accident. That seemed to me to make my duty clear, and
when Mr. Flemming heard my story he quite agreed with me.
“Undoubtedly you will be wanted at the inquest. You say no one else
was near enough to see what happened?”
“I had the feeling some one was coming up behind me, but I can’t
be sure—and, anyway, they wouldn’t be as near as I was.”
The inquest was held. Mr. Flemming made all the arrangements and
took me there with him. He seemed to fear that it would be a great
ordeal to me, and I had to conceal from him my complete composure.
The deceased had been identified as L. B. Carton. Nothing had been
found in his pockets except a house-agent’s order to view a house
on the river near Marlow. It was in the name of L. B. Carton,
Russell Hotel. The bureau clerk from the hotel identified the man
as having arrived the day before and booked a room under that name.
He had registered as L. B. Carton, Kimberley, S. Africa. He had
evidently come straight off the steamer.
I was the only person who had seen anything of the affair.
“You think it was an accident?” the coroner asked me.
“I am positive of it. Something alarmed him, and he stepped
backwards blindly without thinking what he was doing.”
“But what could have alarmed him?”
“That I don’t know. But there was something. He looked
panic-stricken.”
A stolid juryman suggested that some men were terrified of cats.
The man might have seen a cat. I didn’t think his suggestion a very
brilliant one, but it seemed to pass muster with the jury, who were
obviously impatient to get home and only too pleased at being able
to give a verdict of accident as opposed to suicide.
“It is extraordinary to me,” said the coroner, “that the doctor
who first examined the body has not come forward. His name and
address should have been taken at the time. It was most irregular
not to do so.”
I smiled to myself. I had my own theory in regard to the doctor.
In pursuance of it, I determined to make a call upon Scotland Yard
at an early date.
But the next morning brought a surprise. The Flemmings took in the
_Daily Budget,_ and the _Daily Budget_ was having a day after its
own heart.
EXTRAORDINARY SEQUEL TO TUBE ACCIDENT.
WOMAN FOUND STABBED IN LONELY HOUSE.
I read eagerly.
“A sensational discovery was made yesterday at the Mill House,
Marlow. The Mill House, which is the property of Sir Eustace
Pedler, M.P., is to be let unfurnished, and an order to view this
property was found in the pocket of the man who was at first
thought to have committed suicide by throwing himself on the live
rail at Hyde Park Corner Tube Station. In an upper room of the Mill
House the body of a beautiful young woman was discovered yesterday,
strangled. She is thought to be a foreigner, but so far has not
been identified. The police are reported to have a clue. Sir
Eustace Pedler, the owner of the Mill House, is wintering on the
Riviera.”