MR EGBERT LUCAS was speaking on the telephone to Superintendent Arnold Pike.
‘… You said something last night, when we spoke, about it being all right to ring you on this line. D’you mean I can say anything?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Myers, sir—the postmaster. I made an arrangement with him to use a line here which can’t be listened in to. Good job you rang up when you did. I was just going out … Anything wrong, sir?’
‘Don’t sound so anxious, man! No. We’re very pleased with you. You ought to’ve heard the Commissioner this morning … No, there’s nothing special. As a matter of fact, we’re getting so worked up that we keep expecting you to make an arrest at any minute …’
‘’Fraid you’ll be disappointed, sir.’
‘Eh? What’s that? Anything wrong at your end, then?’
‘Nothing exactly wrong, sir, except that the night before last Tuesday, we carried out the last of those searches—Rockwall’s house and Flushing’s. Flushing’s was very difficult but Blaine and Curtis managed it between them very well with Stallard tricking the servant out of the way and me talking to Sir Montague in the Station …’
‘Are you trying to tell me, Pike, that you didn’t find anything in any of these four houses?’
‘That’s it, I’m afraid, sir. Not a thing that shouldn’t be there. And nothing that would fit in with what the doctors say the weapon must be like. And no “Butcher” paper and no ink. Nothing!’
‘That shake your faith at all, Pike? In your own scheme, I mean.’
‘No, sir. It’s only made me, as you might say, all the more determined to get at him some other way. I’m sure I’m right …’
‘Look here, Pike, what’s your own idea about this? Which one of the four do you plump for?’
‘… I don’t think I’d like to say at the moment, sir.’
‘Go on, man. Go on! As a matter of fact the Commissioner asked me to ask you that question himself. You’re not bound to say, of course—anyway I don’t expect you would if you didn’t want to. But if you could give us a line on what you’re thinking we should be glad. Purely for our own information, of course.’
‘I’m afraid, sir, that I’m as divided in mind as you are yourself. I can’t say and that’s all. I don’t like Rockwall’s attitude; but then he’s what you might call an eccentric and it may mean nothing. And I don’t like …’
‘Hold on a minute, Pike. You’re going to say Jeffson. Am I right?’
‘Well … I won’t say you’re wrong, sir. It’s like what Colonel Gethryn’s always saying. If it was Jeffson it would be so improbable that it might very probably be true … But I’m not committing myself, you understand.’
‘Very cautious, Pike. But what are you going to do now? Seems to be a bit of a deadlock. There’s the “Butcher” having notified you that he’s going to rest and there’s you with four suspects that you can’t narrow down to one … Don’t think I’m blaming you or anything like that. It’s the devil of a job!’
‘I’ve got an idea, sir. Had it just before you rang up, as a matter of fact. I was just going out to see whether I couldn’t do something about it.’
‘Good man! What is it?’
‘I’d rather not say at this stage, sir, in case I don’t carry it out.’
‘All right, Pike. All right. Well, good-night and I hope we’ll hear from you soon.’
‘Good-night, sir, and thank you.’
The Chief Constable was astonished. Across his own study table he looked with bewilderment at Superintendent Pike.
‘I don’t understand!’ said the Chief Constable. ‘I don’t understand at all! … Damn it, I don’t understand!’
Pike was apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, sir; perhaps you’ll tell me what it is …’
‘But good God!’ the Chief Constable exploded. ‘Good God, Pike! When the damn thing was at its height, when people were being slit up right and left and I and my men suggested this curfew, you put your foot on it. Now, when there’s nothing doing and the damn lunatic’s told us there’s going to be nothing doing for a bit, you come here and calmly say that you agree at last to the curfew suggestion. Blast it, man. It’s like Alice in Wonderland or a kids’ pantomime, or something! It’s not sense!’
Pike was still apologetic, but none the less firm for that. ‘I can’t tell you how it is, sir, but I’ve got a feeling—I’ve got a sort of, well, I suppose you’d call it intuition—that that letter of the “Butcher’s” was a trick. I seem to sort of know that there’ll be another outrage soon. It’s too quiet now, that’s what it is. And I’ve been thinking over what you said—you and the two Inspectors—and I’ve come round to the opinion that a curfew is what we want.’
The Chief Constable, slightly mollified by the deferential tone, was still bewildered.
‘I don’t see how I can now,’ said the Chief Constable. ‘When the thing was at its height I could’ve enforced any measure. Now, it’s all eased off and they’re all lax instead of tense, well, a thing like that’ll take a bit of enforcing. They’ll all be wanting to go to the pictures and out to the pub, and that sort of thing every evening. Don’t see how we can do it, Superintendent. Damned if I do! And I’m not sure that we ought to!’
‘I don’t mean, sir,’ Pike explained, ‘that we ought to make the curfew compulsory. What I meant was that I’d like you to issue a Police request, as you might say, asking people “in view of certain knowledge which has come into the hands of the Police”—or something like that—asking people to help by not going out at all after, say, eight o’clock at night …’
The Chief Constable hummed. The Chief Constable hawed. The Chief Constable was most puzzled, and almost epileptic by turns. But at last, under Pike’s urbane persistence, he gave way.
The ‘voluntary curfew’ had been in operation for two nights. And so it was that Curtis, driving much too fast through the thick white mist which shrouded the Main Road, was stopped at the junction of the Main Road with the Dale Road entrance to Holmdale.
The Police car pulled up with a whining of brakes. The white mist eddied in smoky whorls about the black world. Curtis, rubbing the window with his sleeve, looked out. He saw the outline of a uniformed constable who held a bull’s-eye lantern. Curtis, with two turns of his wrist, lowered the car’s window and produced from his pocket something which he shewed.
The constable, peering, looked first at this, and then, carefully, at its presenter … The constable fell back, raising a hand to his helmet.
‘Beg pardon,’ said the constable, ‘but we’re gettin’ very ’ot specially now the fogs’re beginnin’.’
Curtis nodded and slipped the car into gear and was off down Dale Road.
Ten minutes later—the fog in the valley of Holmdale was so dense that it took ten minutes to cover a distance usually killed in two—he pulled the car up outside Number Twelve Fourtrees Road.
As he got out of the car the fog caught him by the throat. He coughed and his eyes shed involuntary tears. He had to grope his way to the gate. The fog seemed thicker, somehow, off the road. It seemed to Curtis that he took all of five minutes between the car and Miss Marable’s front door. He rang the bell. He rang, not without diffidence because the hour was, he judged, long past that when Miss Marable and the most of her lodgers would be in bed. But the ring was answered with almost uncanny promptitude. The door was flung open and Curtis stepped across the threshold.
‘Got it?’ said Pike.
Curtis nodded. He stood in the lamplight, blinking. His eyes still streamed with tears, and the fog still tickled his throat, so that it was some moments before he could get words out between coughs. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Think he’s made a good job of it, too.’
‘Come up,’ said Pike. ‘Tread soft, though.’
They sat before a blazing fire in Miss Marable’s best front room. ‘Now,’ said Pike, and held out his hand.
Curtis rose, went to his heavy frieze overcoat which lay across a chair and from the pocket of the overcoat produced a square, foolscap-sized envelope, protected by thin sheets of cardboard and bound about with string. He took out a pocket-knife and cut the string. From the envelope he took, gingerly, something which he laid upon the little table which his superior had set down before the hearth.
Pike got to his feet and bent over the table and examined a square sheet of yellow paper upon which there were many lines of writing—peculiar writing in peculiar ink.
Pike grunted; raised his head; bent again to his examination.
‘Not bad!’ he said. ‘Not bad at all!’ He took from his pocket a wallet and from the wallet another sheet, neatly folded, of the same coloured paper—the original of the first ‘Butcher’ letter. He unfolded it and smoothed it out with careful hands and laid it beside the sheet already on the table.
Curtis came and stood beside him and now they both pored.
‘It’s good!’ said Pike at last … ‘Who did you get to do it? Carruthers or Maxwell?’
‘In the end,’ said Curtis, ‘Mr Maxwell did it. He didn’t seem very satisfied with it himself, but I thought it was a real winner, sir.’
‘Got the envelope?’ said Pike.
Curtis nodded and produced from another pocket in the overcoat another and similar packet. ‘All three envelopes are here, sir,’ he said, ‘and the other two copies of the letter.’
‘Are they all as good as this?’ said Pike.
‘Every bit,’ said Curtis, ‘no difference between ’em. Not that a man’s eye could tell anyhow … And I saw Mr Lucas, sir, and he said to tell you that he thought your draft was very good. He only altered a couple of words.’
Pike grunted. ‘Yes, I saw that. He’s right. Just read it out, Curtis, and let’s listen to it …’
The telephone in Miss Marable’s hall rang shrilly. Miss Marable went to it herself and within a moment was running up the stairs.
Miss Marable knocked at Pike’s door and, most unusually, not awaiting reply, walked in.
Pike was in his favourite position upon the window seat. He turned and looked at the sound of the door opening and got to his feet. ‘Good-morning,’ he said.
‘Oh, Mr Pike!’ said Miss Marable. ‘They’ve just telephoned from the Police Station. It was the Chief Constable himself speaking.’ Miss Marable was a little breathless. ‘He seemed very urgent. Would you go round at once, please. He said that three times.’ Miss Marable was a little pinker than usual in the cheeks. ‘He said that three times,’ she repeated, ‘and then rang off.’
Miss Marable departed. Pike leisurely changed slippers for the boots with the very shiny toe-caps. He smiled to himself; a smile which was, at first, merely a twitching of the corners of his mouth, but which, by the time that the boots were on and he was descended Miss Marable’s stairs, was almost a grin.
But there was no smile, nor hint of a smile, upon his brown, lean, lantern-shaped face as he went in to the room which, for weeks which seemed to Mrs Jeffson as many years, had been no use as a parlour at all.
The Chief Constable was there, and Davis and Farrow were there and, of course, Jeffson. They all, even Jeffson, were crowded round the deal table. So intent were they that Pike stood there for fully a minute before anyone noticed his presence. It was the Chief Constable who saw him first.
‘There you are!’ said the Chief Constable. He seemed changed. His heavy face was lean and sagging and now it had lost all of its colour. The pouches under his eyes were like black bruises. His voice, which trembled like his hands, seemed to be hiding fear under a mask of irritability. ‘Look at this, Superintendent. Look at this!’
Pike came nearer to the table, halted suddenly and stared in excellent astonishment. ‘Another “Butcher” letter!’ he said.
The Chief Constable nodded. Brought round by hand about half an hour ago, he said.
Farrow, without a word, picked up the yellow sheet by its corner; held it so that Pike could read. Pike read, half-aloud:
DEAR POLICE,—I regret to say that I find this life of inactivity quite insupportable. You may or may not be glad to hear this. I fancy that you will be both. You will be sorry because you will doubt your ability to prevent my activities and glad because you will not be kept in this dreadful suspense.
In order to make things really pleasantly easy for you I hereby announce my intention of carrying out the seventh of my—shall we call them removals?—tomorrow (Monday, the 16th December).
I am afraid that last time I gave you warning of a day my sense of humour got the better of me, and knowing that you would be expecting me to carry out my work at night, I carried it out in broad daylight, thus completely confounding you.
This time, however, I will descend to no such mean tricks and I hereby give you full warning that the times between which my work will be executed (‘executed’ is rather good, don’t you think?) will be 7 and 10 p.m.
As usual I have sent copies of this letter to dear Sir Montague and to the Holmdale Clarion.
Tolerantly yours,
THE BUTCHER
P.S.—I find myself in an extraordinarily kind mood today. I cannot bear to think of you poor Police trying, in despair, to cover the whole of Holmdale for three hours on Monday night. So, in addition to telling you the date and time, I will tell you, approximately, the place. The job will be done between the junction of Market Road and Forest Road at the north-western end and the Wooden Shack at the southern end. Don’t worry about your curfew. Nothing like this is going to stop me!
THE BUTCHER
‘Well!’ said Pike. ‘I’ll be jiggered!’
He thought for one horrid instant that the astonishment and concern in his voice had been overdone, but he looked round at the faces of the other men and found in them no suspicion …