Police at the Funeral

Chapter 21 The Owner of the Green Hat

Mr Campion sat on the end of his bed watching the moonlight streaming into his room through the wide-open window. The house was at last in silence and darkness. Cousin George had made the night hideous for a good hour after he had been locked safely in his room, and a shaken household had lain awake quaking in its beds while unexpurgated versions of various nautical and military ballads, punctuated by violent crashes of furniture and crockery, resounded through the house.

Gradually Cousin George had wearied of singing and had taken to shouting profanities and libels on his relatives at the top of his voice. Finally these also had ceased, and after much trampling a last stupendous crash had jarred the stately precincts of Socrates Close and silence had fallen, profound and soothing. Slowly the house had dropped off to sleep. Mr Campion alone sat watching.

The plain-clothes men had been removed from the garden two or three days before. Mr Oates's belief in his friend's intuition had not been sufficiently strong to warrant so expensive a guard.

Mr Campion sat silent in the moonlight. He had taken off his spectacles and also his coat and waistcoat. He wore a pullover tucked into his trousers, which were suspended by a belt. His sleeves were rolled up, and he had removed his watch and his signet ring. Arrayed thus, he had been sitting motionless on the end of his bed for perhaps two hours. Through the open window he could hear the chimes from the Roman Catholic church quite clearly.

He had just heard the clock strike a quarter to three, and the moonlight was waning, when he heard the sound which made him slip off his bed and creep stealthily to the window. Keeping close to the curtain, he waited, listening. The sound came again, a husky breathy whisper.

It was nearer now, and suddenly he made out the words, simple ludicrous words, but in the night strangely terrifying.

'Old Bee... Old Bee... Old Bee...'

Campion stretched out a hand and gripped the sill, and then, exerting a slow and even force, he drew himself silently out into the opening of the window and peered down.

The garden was still faintly lit by the waning moonlight, and the strip of grass beneath his window was clear. He noticed that there was still a light in George's room, but no sound issued therefrom. As he waited, his ears strained, he heard the whisper again, this time much closer.

'Old Bee... Old Bee...'

Then, even as he watched, a dark shape detached itself from the shadows beneath George's window, and the young man caught a glimpse of an uncouth stooping figure, doubly grotesque in the deceptive light. It might have been human, it might have been a gorilla fantastically clothed, but Campion saw it with a welcome quickening of his pulse. He leapt up on to the sill and stood for a moment poised above the apparition.

The figure on the ground twisted round and raised a white blur of a face to the window. In a moment he was off, streaking through the garden, a fantastic figure bounding along like a great black balloon on the end of a string.

Campion dropped to the ground, falling on his hands and knees upon the wet turf. He was on his feet again chasing after the fugitive, who led him unerringly towards the little gate into the lane at the far end of the kitchen garden. For so large a creature the quarry developed an extraordinary turn of speed, but Campion, his blood whipped by the cold air and his nerves strained by the hours of waiting, gained upon him, and on the stretch of rough grass before the gate he overtook the flying figure, and, hurling himself upon it, brought it heavily to the ground.

The stranger grunted, and the next moment Campion was seized in a steel grip and dragged ignominiously over his opponent's head. The mysterious visitor, whoever he was, was not a negligible adversary. However, Mr Campion seemed to have achieved some of Marcus's viciousness, and he felt his pent-up wrath concentrating upon this tangible enemy. He scrambled to his feet and caught the stranger round the legs in a rugger tackle just as he was about to make his escape, and it was at this point that Campion made the interesting discovery that the other's feet were bare.

The figure slumped to the ground again, Campion on top of him, and two immense hands came up out of the darkness and gripped the young man by the throat. In this moment of partial suffocation Campion realized with thankfulness that his opponent was unarmed. He struck out savagely, his knuckles coming into contact with a hard and stubbly chin. The stranger grunted and swore softly. Until now he had been terrifyingly silent.

Although he was lying upon his back his grip on Campion's throat did not relax, and he was revealing an almost simian strength. The grip was becoming a strangle-hold when Campion lurched forward, driving his knee into the other man's wind. The hold on his throat relaxed and the man doubled up, gasping.

He was by no means beaten, however. He rained unscientific blows with his huge flails of arms, battering the young man's lean sides and unprotected head. Campion straddled himself across the great body, and exerting every ounce of his strength, drove punch after punch into the man's face. He was fighting like a maniac, and the other, although he certainly possessed the greater strength, was evidently out of training. Gradually the rain of flail blows slackened, and Campion, driving his knee steadily into the other's wind, had him gasping and writhing like a fish out of water. Without relinquishing his position, Campion bent forward.

'Had enough?' he whispered.

'Yus,' said the voice huskily, and relapsed into breathless grunting.

'You're Old Bee, aren't you?' said Mr Campion, risking yet another shot in the dark.

'I'm no one,' said the man suddenly, and exerting an unexpected reserve of strength, pitched his captor on to the turf again, at the same time catching him a blow on the side of the head which made the bones of his skull crunch together.

It did not knock him out, however. Through a maze of eddying blackness Campion lurched back and caught the panting creature just as he rose again to the attack. This time luck rather than judgment favoured him. He stumbled, cannoning into the other and catching him in the pit of the stomach with his head. His opponent let out a roar and doubled up. Campion wriggled from beneath the choking mass, which threatened to suffocate him, and staggered to his feet at the precise moment that a third figure loomed up out of the half darkness and turned a torch full upon his face.

'Hullo, sir, what's up?'

It was young Christmas, whose cottage faced on to the lane at the corner of the garden, not twenty yards distant. Campion pulled himself together with an effort. He was still dizzy, but his purpose remained clear in his mind.

'Bring that torch over here,' he said breathlessly. 'Let's see what we've got.'

Young Christmas, a large, raw-boned young man of thirty or so, advanced cautiously towards the writhing object on the ground and turned his torch full upon it. Mr Campion's antagonist lay revealed.

He made an extraordinary spectacle lying spreadeagled upon the ground, gasping as though his last hour had come. He was a shortish man, powerfully built, with immense arms. His face was surrounded by creases of fat and almost covered with a short, stubbly beard of indeterminate hue, while his long matted hair was plentifully flecked with grey. For the rest, he was indescribably dirty, and blackened lips and broken nose did not add to the charm of his appearance. He was dressed in ragged green-black garments, none of which made any pretence of fitting him. But it was at his feet, sticking out from beneath his ragged trouser legs, that young Christmas was staring.

'Lumme!' he said. 'Look at 'em. It's him!'

One glance at the monstrous extremities half covered by the remnants of odd socks was sufficient. Here, without doubt was the origin of the print upon the flower-bed.

The sight of these feet seemed to restore Mr Campion's mental balance.

'Here, I say,' he said, 'can you let me bring this fellow into your place? I fancy he's going to have a good deal to say.'

'Why, yes, sir, I'll get a light.' Young Mr Christmas was a little startled, but eminently obliging. 'I 'eard a bit of a noise, sir,' he said, 'so I come out to see what was up. What about this chap 'ere?'

'I'll bring him in,' said Mr Campion grimly.

Seated in a chair by the side of Mr Christmas's table, and seen by the light of a swinging oil lamp, the intruder looked even less prepossessing than he had done in the garden. His small, grey-green eyes shifted furtively from side to side, and he stirred uncomfortably, half rubbing, half scratching the injured portions of his unpleasant self somewhere within the rag-bag drapery which was his costume.

'I wasn't doing anything,' he began, revealing the familiar mendicant whine. 'You didn't ought to 'ave touched me. I can get you into trouble for this.'

'Shut up,' said Mr Campion from the sink where he had been putting his head under the pump, and from which he now emerged rubbing himself vigorously with a towel. 'Is your father about, Christmas?' he murmured. 'I don't want to wake him if we can help it.'

'Oh, no, sir, that's all right. It'll take more than this to disturb the old 'un.' Young Christmas seemed convinced on this point, and Mr Campion was satisfied.

Their visitor, who was growing momentarily more and more disturbed, began to whine again.

'I can 'ave the police on yer if yer touch me again,' he said.

'I am the police,' said Mr Campion fiercely. 'Ever heard of a plain-clothes man? Well, here is one. You're under arrest, and if you don't talk I'll see that you're strung up. You're wanted. We've been waiting for you.'

A crafty light appeared in the stranger's face. 'You can't tell me,' he said. 'I know a "busy" when I see one. I 'aven't been on the road for thirty years without gettin' inside once or twice. You're no policeman. Besides,' he added triumphantly, 'I know every "busy" from 'ere to York.'

'I am Chief Detective Inspector Campion of Scotland Yard,' said the young man brusquely. 'I am down here to investigate the murder of Andrew Seeley on a footbridge over the Granta on Sunday 30 March. I have reason to believe that you are the man I want. But I am going to give you a chance, although your confederate has already been arrested. He has told his story, and unless yours tallies with it in every detail, you'll find yourself in the dock before you know where you are.'

The man who had listened to this harangue in silence and had clearly understood about half of it, sucked in his breath noisily.

'You 'aven't cautioned me yet,' he said suspiciously.

'Cautioned you?' said Mr Campion, with consummate contempt. 'We Scotland Yard men don't behave like lock-up sergeants. You're coming across with all you know and you're coming across immediately. Ever heard of the third degree?'

'I got a friend,' the other answered sullenly. 'A proper gentleman 'oo knows about these things. And 'e says the third degree ain't allowed any longer. I can 'ave my lawyer if I like.'

'Your friend George Faraday is under lock and key,' said Mr Campion truthfully. 'That's where his erroneous information has taken him. Look here, my man, do you want another fight?'

The young man's threatening attitude, together with his uncanny knowledge of his visitor's acquaintance, had their effect. The disreputable old bundle fidgeted uneasily.

'Do you want another thrashing?' the young man repeated, entirely disregarding the other's anthropoid physique.

'No,' said the stranger. 'And I'm not sayin' nothin', see?'

Mr Campion consulted young Christmas's washing book, which he had taken from a shelf by the sink.

'Let me see, we have your name,' he said. 'Address none. Alias Old Bee.'

'That's not an alias,' said the bundle, falling into the trap. That's a sort of nickname--you know, among friends. I'm Thomas Beveridge, and I'm registered at Warley Workhouse in Kent, and there's nothin' known against me.'

'We know all about that,' said Mr Campion, having apparently appointed Mr Christmas, junior, as a member of His Majesty's Police Force. 'Now then, before I take you down to the station I'll have your statement here. You are charged, together with George Makepeace Faraday, whose statement we already have, with wilfully murdering Andrew Seeley by shooting him, afterwards binding his body and hurling it into the River Granta. Now what have you got to say?'

It was Mr Campion's manner, together with the terrifying and unfounded charge brought so suddenly against him, which undermined Mr Beveridge's morale.

'I never!' he said indignantly. ''Ere, you got this all wrong. George never told you that.'

'The police draw their own conclusions,' said Mr Campion loftily. 'Are you coming clean or have I got to beat it out of you?'

'I'd like a cup o' coffee,' said Mr Beveridge unexpectedly. 'I've been man'andled--that's wot. And I'd like my boots, too. I took 'em orf by the gate--wishin' not to disturb anyone. Can't say fairer than that, can I?'

'Fetch me that bit of bike tyre,' said Campion to young Mr Christmas.

''Ere!' protested Mr Beveridge hastily, 'wait a minute. Wait a minute. I 'aven't said I won't say nothin'.'

Mr Campion raised his hand with a magnificently conceding gesture, and young Christmas, who was proving himself a resourceful assistant, stopped in his tracks and returned to the table.

Mr Beveridge spread out his immense and dirty hands. 'I don't know anythink, and I want my boots,' he said. 'Matter of fact, I was at Norwich that Sunday.'

'What?' said Mr Campion, with scorn. 'Don't waste my time, my man.' He leant across the table and his hard, grey eyes fixed his victim's. 'You dare to put forward a statement like that when you came into this garden tonight wearing the hat of the murdered man?'

This unparalleled piece of bluff was Mr Beveridge's last straw. He crumpled.

'I didn't kill 'im,' he said. 'George and I didn't touch the gun till afterwards, that's a fact.'

Mr Campion heaved a sigh of relief and consulted the washing book again.

'I suppose you realize,' he said coldly, 'that you've said either too much or not quite enough?' The great form in the little wooden chair shivered and his dirty eyelids drooped.

'All right,' he said. 'I'll tell you. But it wasn't me--so 'elp me Gawd, it wasn't George nor me.'