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CHAPTER II

I

THE next day—Saturday—was a windless day of hard frost and bright sunshine. The sort of day, in fact, which had been used to fill the placid heart of Mr Colby with boyish joy. But now Mr Colby’s heart was black.

Mr Colby sat, a huddled and shrunken little figure, at the table in his tiny dining-room. The chair upon the other side of the table was occupied by Miss Ursula Finch, the editor and owner of the Holmdale Clarion. Miss Finch was small and neat and brisk. Miss Finch’s age might have been thirty-three but probably was ten years more than this. Miss Finch was severely smart in a tweedy-well-tailored manner. Miss Finch’s pencil was busy among the rustling pages of her notebook, for Miss Finch was her own star reporter. But the eager, piquant face of Miss Finch was clouded with most unbusinesslike sympathy. And although her questions rattled on and on and her pencil flew, the eyes of Miss Finch were suspiciously bright.

It seemed suddenly to Mr Colby that he could not stand any more. Miss Finch had asked him a question. He did not answer it. He sat staring across the little room at the yellow distempered wall. First, all those policemen asking questions. What time did he leave? What time did you expect him back? Where was he going? What was he doing? Why was he doing it? What time did you start to look for him? Did anyone go with you to look for him? Where did you find him? How did you find him? Do you know anyone who bears enmity against yourself or him? If so, why? If not, why not? How? Who? Where? What? When? And now, this woman—although she was nicer than the policemen—now this woman, asking her questions. The same questions really, only put differently and more, as a man might say, intimate …

Mr Colby thought of the bedroom immediately above this room where he sat; the bedroom where, on the double bed, Mrs Colby lay a huddled and vacantly staring heap …

Mr Colby got to his feet. His chair slid back along the boards with a grating clatter. He said:

‘I’m sorry, miss. I can’t tell you any more. I want—I want—’ Mr Colby shut his mouth suddenly. He sat down again with something of a bump and remained sitting, his folded hands squeezed between his knees. He looked at the floor.

Miss Finch shut her note-book with a decisive snap and put round it its elastic band. She rose from her chair. Automatically Mr Colby, a well-mannered little person, got to his feet. Miss Finch came round the table in an impulsive rush. ‘I ought,’ said Miss Finch, ‘to have something awful done to me for worrying you, Mr Colby, upon such a dreadful day as this must be for you. But I would like you to understand, Mr Colby, that however much of a ghoulish nuisance I may seem, I may really be doing something to help. It may not seem like that to you at the moment. But it really is. You see, Mr Colby, nowadays the Press, by throwing what you might call a public light on things, helps authorities to … to … to find the monsters responsible for—’

‘Oh, please!’ said Mr Colby, holding out his hand as if to protect himself from a blow.

Miss Finch, with an impulsive gesture, seized the hand in both of hers and pressed it. ‘You poor man!’ she said.

Mr Colby withdrew his hand. Mr Colby opened the door for Miss Finch. In the hall Miss Finch halted and collected her stubby umbrella and tucked it martially beneath her left arm. She said:

‘If there is anything I can do for you or Mrs Colby—in a purely private capacity, I mean, Mr Colby—I do hope you will let me know … You wouldn’t like me, I suppose, to run up and sit with Mrs Colby for a little while? It would only be a little, because I’m so busy …’

Mr Colby shook his head dumbly. He opened the street door and shut it, a second later, upon the well-tailored back of Miss Finch. He wandered back to his dining-room and sat down once more at his dining-table and sighed and swallowed very hard and put his head in his hands.

II

‘Do they,’ asked Sir Montague Flushing of his manservant, ‘insist upon seeing me personally?’

Spender bowed gravely. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you have put them in …?’ said Sir Montague.

‘In the library, sir.’

Sir Montague blew out his cheeks and frowned. Sir Montague paced up and down the carpet. He said at last, half to himself:

‘These newspaper men are a public nuisance!’

‘Should I, sir,’ suggested Spender, ‘tell them that you are too busy to see them?’

‘No,’ said Sir Montague. ‘No. No. No. I suppose I must see ’em. What papers did you say they came from?’

‘One of the—er—gentlemen, sir,’ said Spender, ‘stated that he represented The Evening Mercury. The other was from The Wire.

‘I see. I see,’ said Sir Montague.

(Extract from The Evening Mercury, dated Saturday,

24th November.)

THE HOLMDALE MURDER

etc., etc.

(From our Special Correspondent.)

Holmdale, Saturday

Stranger and stranger grows the mystery of the murdered schoolboy, whose body was found at ten o’clock last night in the middle of a peaceful roadway in Holmdale Garden City. The problem that faces the police is no small one. The boy—Lionel Frederick Colby, of 4 The Keep, Holmdale—had left home at about 7.30 p.m. to visit the Boys’ Club, whose meetings are held in the Trumpington Hall. He had been in good spirits when he left home and had arrived at twenty-five minutes to eight at the Boys’ Club. Here he had spent the evening in the usual way, and had notably distinguished himself in the boxing competition which was held that night. He left the Hall with a number of companions when the Club meeting closed at 9.20. Half-way back towards his home—The Keep, which is off Heathcote Rise, is not more than five or six minutes’ walk from the Hall—Lionel remembered, according to two of his friends who have been interviewed by the Police, that he had left his gymnasium shoes and sweater behind. His companions had tried to dissuade him from going back, telling him that he would not find the place open. Lionel, who was a boy of great determination, stated that he had promised his mother not to forget the sweater as she wanted to wash it the next day. One of the boys, Charles Coburn (13) of 28 Lochers Avenue, Holmdale, stated to the police that he remembered Lionel saying that he would be able to climb in at a window. He left Coburn and the other boys in the middle of Heathcote Rise at approximately 9.25. At about a quarter past ten, Mr Colby, the boy’s father, together with a guest (Mr Harvey) went out to see whether they could find Lionel. They walked down Heathcote Rise towards Trumpington Hall, but half-way on this journey—beside a street lamp—they made the appalling discovery.

Police Theories

As was reported in earlier editions, the wound which caused Lionel Colby’s death had apparently been made by a very sharp implement, probably a long knife. The stomach had been slit open from bottom to top. Death must have been instantaneous. The night was hard and frosty, and it was not possible therefore to find any trace such as footmarks, etc. The police are certain, however, that the murder was done on the spot where the body was found, as all traces of blood, etc., point to this conclusion.

People resident in the houses which line both sides of Heathcote Rise have, of course, been questioned, but none of them can testify to having heard any disturbance. Dr F. W. Billington of Holmdale, who acts as Police Surgeon to the Holmdale and Leewood district, examined the body at 11.30 p.m. last night. Dr Billington gives it as his opinion that life had not then been extinct for more than two hours. The police are of the opinion that Lionel was killed on his return from the gymnasium whence, as all windows were locked, he had been unable to fetch the shoes and sweater. The police are completely puzzled by the absence of a motive for such a terrible crime.

Mr and Mrs Colby are extremely popular in their own circle and have no enemies. Lionel, too, was a very well liked boy. He had no enemies at school, and was a prominent and popular member of the local Boys’ Club and also of the Holmdale troop of Sea Scouts. At present the police theory is that the crime was committed by a pervert, or homicidal lunatic.

They have, of course, several clues which they are following up.

Mrs Colby, Lionel’s mother, is prostrate from shock, but I managed to secure an interview with Mr George Colby, the father. He could give me no help, but stated that all he lived for now was to see the capture of the wretch who had robbed him of his only child.

Grave Concern in Holmdale

Sir Montague Flushing, K.B.E., the prominent Managing Director of the Holmdale Company Limited, stated in an interview today that he was himself deeply and terribly shocked by the tragedy.

‘How such a thing,’ said Sir Montague, ‘could take place in this happy little town of ours is utterly beyond my imagination!’

Sir Montague added that he would be only too grateful if the London Press would give full publicity to his statement, ‘that not only the citizens of Holmdale, but mothers and fathers throughout England could rest assured that the Holmdale Company (who are, of course, the proprietors of the whole Garden City) would do everything in their power to aid and assist the regular authorities in tracking down the author of the outrage.’

III

That was in The Evening Mercury late afternoon edition. Similar writings were in the other evening papers. The station, usually deserted upon a Saturday afternoon, was besieged at the time of the paper-train’s arrival by a crowd fully a third as big as that which upon weekdays left the six-thirty. Within four minutes of the arrival of the papers, the book-stall had not one left.

There was, in Holmdale today, only one topic of conversation. Holmdale was duly horrified. Holmdale was duly sympathic. Holmdale was inevitably a town in which every third inhabitant was satisfied that, given the job, he could lay his hands upon the criminal in half the time which it would take the police. Holmdale was also, though it would have vilified you for making the allegation, very delightfully excited. It was not every day that Holmdale came into the public eye. Holmdale looked forward to Monday morning when once more ‘up in town’ it would be the centre of a hundred interested groups all asking— ‘I say, don’t you live in that place where that boy’s been killed?’

Something, in short, had happened in Holmdale. Holmdale was News. Holmdale was on the Front Page.

The papers came down on Saturdays by the train arriving at Holmdale at 6.20. By 6.45 all Holmdale knew what London was saying of it. But all Holmdale did not know that at 6.45, Holmdale’s postman was carrying in his bag three letters for which the London Press would have given the heads of any of their reporters. The first of these letters was delivered at The Hospice. The second at The White Cottage, Heathcote Rise, which was Holmdale’s Police Station, and the third at the office of the Clarion in Claypits Road. In that order—because that was the way the postman went round—they were delivered, and in that order they were read.

Sir Montague Flushing, going through his evening’s post, came suddenly across a yellow linen paper envelope. He was a man who always speculated about a letter before he opened it, and this letter he turned that way and the other between his fingers. He did not know the paper. He did not know the minute, backward-sloping writing. He had never seen ink so shinily black. He slipped an ivory paper knife under the flap of the envelope …

He found himself staring, with wide and startled eyes, at a single sheet of paper of the same texture and colour as the envelope. Upon this sheet was written, in the same ink and writing, but with larger characters:

My Reference ONE

R.I.P.

Lionel Frederick Colby,

died Friday, 23rd November …

THE BUTCHER