Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 1. Whole No. 344, July 1972

Pickup on the Dover Road by Julian Symons{©1972 by Julian Symons.}

A pickup in the rain on a dark road late at night can be dangerous for a traveler. Julian Symons tells us about a case in point in a masterly study of suspense...

Now, join Donald en route to a gay holiday in France when suddenly he becomes involved in a deadly battle of wits...

The milestone, just visible in the rain, said Dover 41. Donald’s mouth pursed and he began to whistle The Song of the Skye Boatmen:

Not to Skye, but to Calais. In a light pleasant voice he fitted words to the tune:

To be young, he thought, to be young and happy. He remembered for a moment the row with Charles, but nothing could keep down for long the bubble of his high spirits. Rain splashed on the car’s windshield, the tires made sucking noises on the wet road, the wipers echoed his thoughts by saying a new life, a new life.

Quite wrong, of course; he would return to England — this was nothing but a short holiday. He said aloud, “One of the things about you, Donald, is that every time you do something fresh you think it’s the beginning of a new life.”

Perfectly true, but a little silent reproach was in order. He knew that talking to himself was a bad habit, so he turned on the radio and found the plum-voiced announcer halfway through the news:

Oastley, he thought, can’t be more than five miles from there now. He was listening abstractedly to an interview with a beauty queen when he became aware of something in the road and in the next moment he realized that the something was human. He began to go into a skid, corrected it, stopped, opened his window, and shouted, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

A grinning face appeared, wet, snubnosed, cheerful. “Flashing a torch.”

“I didn’t see it. I might have—”

“Can you help me? I’ve had a breakdown.” There was no car visible in the headlights. As though answering an unspoken question the man said, “Down that side road you’ve just passed. I think the rear axle’s gone,” he said and laughed again, the sound loud and meaningless. His voice was deep, coarse. “Look, can you give me a lift? There’s a café a few miles down the road. If you drop me off there I can make a phone call.”

Donald felt a momentary reluctance to let the man into the car, overcame it, leaned over, and opened the passenger door. The man took off a wet raincoat, threw it on the back seat, and got in. The interior light showed him as a rather squat figure, perhaps in his late twenties, a little younger than Donald, with thick brows and the corner of a thick mouth turned up in what seemed a perpetual smile. Then the door closed, the light went out, and he became just a darkly anonymous figure in the next seat.

“Dripping all over your car,” he said. “Sorry.”

Donald did not reply. The incident had somehow disturbed his serenity. He drove off and found himself whistling the song again. Then the voice beside him revived the euphoria he had felt a few minutes ago by saying, “Going far?”

“Into the sunset and beyond,” Donald said gaily. “That’s if it weren’t night and raining. Dover, then across to France. Driving off the quay in another country, that’s a wonderful feeling.”

“Must be. Never done it myself. You can do with a bit of a change in this weather.”

Sheer pleasure in what lay ahead made Donald talk. “You know, in England we always talk about the weather, I do it myself, it shows what a boring nation we are. In France that sort of thing simply couldn’t happen — there are a thousand better things to talk about. God, I shall be pleased to get out of this smug country.”

As soon as the words had been spoken he regretted them. “Not that I’m unpatriotic, mind you. This is just a holiday. Still, I shan’t be sorry to get out of England in March. It’s just that I know everything will be different in France — hotels, food, even the weather.”

“I know what you mean. Wish I was coming with you. Haven’t been abroad for five years, and then it was just for the firm to a sales conference in Frankfurt. Trouble is, when you’ve got a wife and two kids it comes expensive, going abroad. So it’s Littlehampton instead. Every year. Relatives there. You married?”

“No,” Donald said, a trifle sharply.

“Lucky man.” Again that laugh, loud and meaningless and somehow unlikable.

“Why lucky?”

“Don’t know, really. It’s just when I think of you single chaps, with a flat in London, time your own, do what you like, go where you like, I feel envious sometimes.”

“I didn’t say I had a flat in London.” Again Donald spoke more sharply than he had intended. “And I work, too. I’m a writer. A free-lance journalist.”

“Free lance, there you are. Free lance, freedom.” A smell of drying clothes pervaded the air. Donald could almost feel them steaming. “This breakdown’s serious for me, I can tell you. I’m a knight of the road.”

“What’s that? I didn’t quite—”

“Commercial traveler, old man, and the bus is my steed, as you might say. Without it I’m sunk. Point is, I’ve got to get to Folkestone tonight — got an appointment there in the morning. If they can get my car going, well and good, but I doubt it and if not I’m in trouble. I was wondering.” Donald sensed what was coming. “I was wondering if you could drop me off at Folkestone. Not out of your way, and it would be the most tremendous help to me.”

There was something about the man that did not seem genuine, and instinct told Donald to refuse; but that seemed churlish. “I suppose if your car’s still out of action — well, all right.”

“Very very decent of you, old man. We’ll just look in at that café for five minutes so I can phone a garage. Must go through the motions.”

Something was troubling Donald and suddenly he realized what it was. “What do you travel in?”

“Woolens, all sorts of woolens.”

A flurry of rain blurred his vision. Headlights loomed up dazzlingly and were gone. “Samples?” Donald asked.

“How d’you mean?”

“You’ve got no samples.”

The pause was fractional. “Left my case in the car. Overnight bag, too. Didn’t want to drag ’em up the lane. You get used to traveling light, you know, in my game.” Another pause, a longer one this time. Then, as though to divert Donald’s attention from the missing sample case, the stranger said, “Shocking business, that murder.”

For a moment Donald could not believe his ears. “What murder?”

“Just a few miles away, place called Oastley. Old woman had her head bashed in, nasty business from the sound of it. They’ll get the chap though. I wouldn’t mind betting somebody saw him leaving the house, and then we shall get ‘Police are anxious to interview Joe Doakes,’ and we all know what that means.” Donald said absently, “You seem to know a lot about it.”

“Only what I’ve heard. But I’m interested. I’ll tell you why. Murder is easy.” He gave that mechanical laugh, then said in a different tone, almost of alarm, “What are you stopping for?”

“You should keep your eyes open.” Donald could not keep a tinge of malice out of his tone. “There was a sign that said single lane traffic. Part of the road’s under construction.”

“Oh, is that all. Well, as I say, murder’s easy. I mean, look at the two of us. You give me a lift, you don’t know me from Adam. Nobody sees me get in. I put a gun in your ribs, tell you to pull over and stop. I shoot you, toss you out of the car, drive off, leave the car somewhere, take two or three train and bus rides to get rid of the fuss, and I’m away. With whatever’s in your wallet, of course. Don’t worry, old man.” His loud bark sounded like the rattling of keys. “But it’s been done, you know. Think of that A.6 job.”

“Hanratty, you mean? They caught him.”

“If he was the one who did it.” The laugh again, but this time it was only a chuckle. Then Donald felt a pressure on his arm from which he jerked away. “Sorry. Am I putting you off your stroke?”

“Every murderer makes a mistake. Fingerprints, footprints.”

“I ought to have put my gloves on.” The laugh now was like a donkey’s bray. “You’ve got to forgive me, it’s just my sense of humor. That café’s round the next bend if I remember right, on the left, stands back a bit. But murder is fascinating, don’t you agree?”

Donald did not reply. I want to get the night ferry, he told himself; whatever he says I must avoid becoming involved. He found himself whistling the song in an attempt to drown the other man’s words.

“I mean, the psychology of it,” his passenger said. “A chap goes in a house, bashes up an old woman in the hall, gets her money, fifty or a hundred quid. Do you reckon it’s going to worry him, what he did? I don’t.”

Along the road to the left, lights shone. It had stopped raining. There was no sound when he switched off the wipers, except the engine’s throb and the suck of the tires. Donald cut off the tune in mid-whistle.

“A case like that,” the other man went on, “it could be the good old tramp at the door who leaves his dirty paw marks or footprints over everything. Or it could be the real artist, the kind of thing that interests me. But as I say, this one doesn’t impress me that way. I reckon it was just run-of-the-mill and we’ll be reading that the police want to talk to a one-eyed farm laborer from Rutland.” He broke off and said in a tone of some anxiety, “Hey, here it is, here’s Joe’s.”

Donald took the car into the open space in front of the café. He sat with his hands on the wheel uncertain what to do.

“Thought you’d missed it.” His companion stepped out. “Coming?”

Donald decided there were things wrong with the man’s story. He would have to do something about it. Reluctantly, he got out. The night air was fresh, cool. As he followed the other man into Joe’s he could not help noticing his shoes. They were thickly caked with mud. Had that come just from walking up a lane?

Plastic-topped tables with sauce bottles on them, a few truck drivers sitting on tubular chairs, a smell of frying food — Joe’s was not the sort of place to which Donald was accustomed. His companion, however, seemed quite at home.

“Two cups of tea, nice and strong. And can you do us sausages and chips?”

The man behind the counter had a squashed nose and a cauliflower ear. “Right away.”

As his passenger turned, red-faced and smiling, Donald felt angry. “Nothing to eat, thank you.”

“We’ll both feel better with something hot inside us.” Sitting down at a corner table, smiling across it, his face was revealed as round and ingenuous. It was given a slightly sinister look by a cast in the left eye.

“I told you,” Donald said, “I don’t want anything to eat. And anyway, I never eat sausages.” He was dismayed to hear his own voice come out as shrill, pettish.

“Right, old man, don’t fret. Just one order of bangers and chips, not two,” he shouted across the room. The ex-boxer raised a hand like a veined slab of beef in acknowledgement. “The name’s Golightly, by the way. Bill before it, but friends call me Golly.”

That is a familiarity to which I should never aspire, Donald thought. The phrase pleased him. He said rather less aciduously, “I thought you came in here to telephone.”

“That’s right.” Golightly got up, but seemed reluctant to leave the table. “I’ll just make that call, ask Joe there if he knows a garage.” He went over and spoke to Joe, nodded, and crossed to a telephone in a comer. Was he really intending to make a call? Would it be a good thing just to walk out and leave him, or would that be too barbarously uncivilized? Donald liked to think of himself as above all a civilized man, and as Joe brought over the sausages and chips, with two cups of tea in thick mugs, he remembered something Golightly had said that jarred on him.

“Do you have an evening paper, by any chance?” Donald asked the café owner.

“Yeah, a driver brought one in. Late edition you want, is it, got the racing results?” Donald said that was what he wanted. Joe waddled across the room, came back with the paper, leaned over the table, and said confidentially, “Had Rolling Home for the second leg of a double. Third at a hundred to eight. Still, you can’t beat the bookies all the time, can you? Know what I took off ’em last week? Forty nicker.”

“Oh. Congratulations. You said this is the last edition?”

“That’s what I said, mate.”

He really did not know how to talk to people like Joe. He looked through the paper carefully, then folded it, still not knowing quite what to do. Was Golightly — if that was his ridiculous name — telephoning or just standing there pretending to do so? Donald pursed his mouth in thought, stopped himself from whistling, sipped his strong tea. Golightly came over, rubbing his hands and smiling.

“Bangers and chips, I love you.” He poured purplish sauce around and over them, began to ply knife and fork, spoke between mouthfuls. “Tried a couple of garages — the second one’s going to tow my old bus away and look after it for the night. I’ll go on to Folkestone with you, since you were kind enough to offer. I mean, it’s going on for eleven now, and I don’t want to get stranded.”

“What are you going to do, stay at a hotel?”

“Not exactly. I’ve got a friend there.”

“Like your relatives in Littlehampton?”

“No, no.” Golightly did not seem to appreciate that this was sarcasm. He closed the eye with the cast in it. “This is a lady friend. A commercial traveler’s a bit like a sailor, you know, a girl in every port. As a matter of fact, that’s the real reason I want to get to Folkestone tonight, and can you blame me? Why should you single men have all the fun? I suppose you’ve got a little bit o’ fluff waiting for you across the Channel? Or perhaps you’re not that way inclined.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. No offense meant and none taken, I hope. Talking too much. I always do. Shan’t be a couple of minutes now.” There was sweat on Golightly’s forehead.

“I’m not taking you,” Donald said flatly.

“Not taking me!” The knife and fork clattered on the table. The hand that held the cup shook slightly. Donald felt calm, in complete control of the situation.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to do anything about it. I’ve thought it out and I don’t want to get involved.”

There was a blast of cold air as the door opened to let in two truck drivers in overalls. Golightly looked down at the table and spoke in a low voice. “What d’you mean, involved?”

“I mean you’ve been telling me a pack of lies. Come along now, admit it.” Donald cocked one leg over the other, admired the sheen on his shoes.

“How d’ you make that out, old man?”

“I’ll tell you, old man. You say you’re a commercial traveler and you’ve got an important appointment tomorrow morning. Now, I’ve met one or two commercial travelers, and I’ve never known one who let himself be parted from his sample case. Natural enough, because without it they’ve got nothing to show. But you not only leave it in your car — so you say — but you don’t even bother to have the garage that’s collecting the car drop the bag in here.”

“I shan’t need the samples tomorrow.” Golightly spoke without conviction.

“And then you don’t really sound like a traveler. All that knight-of-the-road and girl-in-every-port stuff, it’s out of date. You sound like an actor, not a very good one, pretending to be a commercial traveler. I don’t believe you’ve got a car, let alone a sample case. What’s your car number?”

“AKT 113 H”

“Make?”

“Triumph Herald.”

“Firm?”

“Universal Woollens.”

“Prove it.” Donald uncrossed his legs. “Show me your business card.”

Slowly Golightly’s hand went into his jacket. He kept his eyes on Donald, those slightly crossed eyes, until he had drawn out a wallet. He looked through the contents, wiped his brow with his sleeve, then said, “No business card.”

“No card! Why, without a card a commercial traveler doesn’t exist.”

“All right, I haven’t told the exact truth, but I still want to get to Folkestone. I still need a lift.”

It was the moment at which Donald had planned to walk out, but something about Golightly’s manner made him abruptly change his mind. “Come on then.”

His reward was the other man’s startled look. “You’re taking me?”

“That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it.”

Golightly said nothing more. He paid the bill and they walked to the car in silence, with Donald a couple of steps behind. The ruddiness had drained from Golightly’s face, leaving it pale. Donald, as he drove away, said, “There’s more to come.”

“How do you mean?”

“About you. Who you are, what you’ve been doing. I want an explanation.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your shoes. The mud on them. That hasn’t come from walking up a lane. More like walking, or maybe running, across fields.”

“It was a muddy lane.”

Donald took his right hand from the wheel, felt in his jacket pocket, then took it out again. “I pick you up near Oastley where that old Mrs. Ford was murdered. You tell me this cock-and-bull story about being a commercial traveler and you talk about murder in a very queer way. How did you know about the murder?”

“Read it in the paper.”

“No. I borrowed the last edition in the café and there was nothing in it. How could there be, when it didn’t happen till seven o’clock. I heard it on the ten o’clock news, on my car radio. But how about you?”

“Must have heard it the same way. On my car radio.”

“That won’t wash. I picked you up a couple of minutes after I heard it. And I’ll tell you something else. On the radio they didn’t say anything about her being killed in the hall.”

Silence. The lights showed Ashford ahead, the Folkestone bypass to the left. They took the left turn to the dual highway. Donald thought triumphantly: that’s shown him, that’s shaken him up, now perhaps I’ll get the truth. And sure enough, it was in a tone much less boisterous than usual, in a tone almost meek, that Golightly said, “I made a mistake there, didn’t I?”

“You certainly did.” Donald began to whistle sweetly, melodiously. And then — he could hardly believe it — Golightly’s voice took on a jeering tone.

“You think I was the one who did for her, so why not tell the police then?”

Donald was so shaken that he could not reply.

“All right, I did it. I killed the old girl,” Golightly said.

“You—”

“Let’s say I did. So why not ring the police from Joe’s, when you’ve got it worked out so nice and logical?”

“I’ll tell you why,” Donald said. His voice shook with the emotion he had been suppressing. “I hate England — everything about this smug country, the filthy weather, places like that disgusting café, people like you. If I call the police it means I’ll have to make a statement give evidence. I shan’t be able to leave for — oh, perhaps not for days, weeks. So I don’t care, I just don’t care what you’ve done.”

“Very decent of you, old man.” Still that jeering tone. “We haven’t been introduced, have we? I mean, you know my name, you haven’t told me yours. But I think I know it.”

“What is it?”

“Donald Grant, right?”

With anger that was half assumed and half real Donald said, “You’ve been looking at my logbook.”

“I haven’t, you know.” Somewhere in the far distance there was furious hooting, then it stopped. “I’ll tell you a bit of a story, shall I? About an old lady named Mrs. Ford. Quite a nice old lady, but a bit close with her money. No sons, no daughters, so what did it matter, who cared? Nobody, you might think.”

Donald pressed his foot on the accelerator. He did not usually drive fast, but it was as if pushing up the needle from 70 to 80 and nearly to 90 helped him to get away from the voice, although of course in fact it didn’t; the voice was like a needle digging into his skin.

“One person did care, though. That was her nephew. I expect the sort of thing she said was, ‘You’ll get every thing when I’m gone, dear, now here’s a five-pound note to be going on with.’ Very annoying to a young man, especially one without much money. He was a sort of free-lance writer, though people don’t seem to think he made much of a living at it. Not enough to keep up the nice little pad he shared with his boy friend.

“So one fine evening — a wet evening, as a matter of fact — Mrs. Ford is murdered. Quite a nasty murder — everything turned upside down to try and make it look like a hurried job. Wasn’t, though.” With a sound like a sigh he added, “I don’t have to tell you the name of the nephew.”

Donald’s mind was empty of thought, except that of the need for action. Golightly went on talking.

“We found out quite a bit about you when we rang your flat, and the young man you share it with — Charles is his name? He said you’d decided to take off quite suddenly on a holiday abroad. Seemed peeved you didn’t take him along, too — quite a row you had, according to him. So we’ve been looking for you. You’d have done better to stay put. Didn’t know which road you’d take, so there was poor Golly, Detective Sergeant Golightly as you’ll have guessed by this time, getting wet. Could have taken you in for questioning, but I thought you might have a gun. Have you, by the way?”

Behind were the lights of a car, flashing on, off, on again. Donald’s fingers moved over the hard curves of the metal in his pocket, and he kept one comforting hand there while he said in a distressed falsetto: “Why shouldn’t I go abroad? It’s not a crime.”

“No, but you made one or two mistakes. Not deliberate ones like mine. You said Mrs. Ford was killed around seven o’clock. So she was, but it didn’t say so on the radio.”

“Your word against mine. I should deny saying it.”

“Something else. A witness saw you leave the cottage. Didn’t know you, but gave us a description, said he’d know you again.”

“One witness. A good counsel would—”

“You were whistling that catchy little tune. Favorite of yours, isn’t it? The witness got it loud and clear.” Golightly began to sing, loudly, but in tune:

Two things happened together. The car that had been flashing drew level, switched on a spotlight, began blaring away with a hooter. And Golightly, in a quite different voice, loud and angry, cried, “Give me that gun,” and threw himself across the steering wheel, pinioning Donald’s right arm to his pocket.

Donald just had time to realize that he was not able to control the car with his left hand, and to think about the bad luck that seemed to have dogged his whole life, and then there was nothing...

Golightly woke up in a hospital bed. The Superintendent was glaring down at him. “You’re a fool, Golly. Only cuts and bruises, but you’re lucky to be alive. Grant isn’t.”

“He bought it?”

“A sliver of glass through the neck when you crashed. You had no need to get into his car, no need at all. Just let us know what road he was on, that’s all you had to do.”

“Yes, sir. It seemed a good idea at the time.”

“And why the hell did you have to leave that café with him?”

“He’d have taken me along anyway, sir. I’d been needling him and I made a slip. He was on to me.”

“Don’t expect any medals. What was the slip?”

Golightly told him. “He made one, too — mentioned the time she was killed; but of course he’d have denied it. He broke when I told him we had a witness who’d seen him leave the house and heard him whistling that song — you know, song of the Skye boatmen. One of the villagers said he was fond of it.”

“We had no witness.”

“No, sir. But he didn’t know that. And he was fond of that song, kept whistling in the car.” Virtuously Golightly said, “I don’t like whistling. Bad manners, bad habit. Can get you into trouble.”