The Middle Temple Murder J. S. Fletcher (the reading strategies book .txt) 📖

“Just to see⁠—what there was to see,” agreed the porter. “Then I saw there was blood. And then⁠—well, I made up the lane to tell one of you chaps.”

“Best thing you could have done,” said Driscoll. “Well, now then⁠—”

The little procession came to a halt at the entry. The entry was a cold and formal thing of itself; not a nice place to lie dead in, having glazed white tiles for its walls and concrete for its flooring; something about its appearance in that grey morning air suggested to Spargo the idea of a mortuary. And that the man whose foot projected over the step was dead he had no doubt: the limpness of his pose certified to it.

For a moment none of the four men moved or spoke. The two policemen unconsciously stuck their thumbs in their belts and made play with their fingers; the porter rubbed his chin thoughtfully⁠—Spargo remembered afterwards the rasping sound of this action; he himself put his hands in his pockets and began to jingle his money and his keys. Each man had his own thoughts as he contemplated the piece of human wreckage which lay before him.

“You’ll notice,” suddenly observed Driscoll, speaking in a hushed voice, “You’ll notice that he’s lying there in a queer way⁠—same as if⁠—as if he’d been put there. Sort of propped up against that wall, at first, and had slid down, like.”

Spargo was taking in all the details with a professional eye. He saw at his feet the body of an elderly man; the face was turned away from him, crushed in against the glaze of the wall, but he judged the man to be elderly because of grey hair and whitening whisker; it was clothed in a good, well-made suit of grey check cloth⁠—tweed⁠—and the boots were good: so, too, was the linen cuff which projected from the sleeve that hung so limply. One leg was half doubled under the body; the other was stretched straight out across the threshold; the trunk was twisted to the wall. Over the white glaze of the tiles against which it and the shoulder towards which it had sunk were crushed there were gouts and stains of blood. And Driscoll, taking a hand out of his belt, pointed a finger at them.

“Seems to me,” he said, slowly, “seems to me as how he’s been struck down from behind as he came out of here. That blood’s from his nose⁠—gushed out as he fell. What do you say, Jim?” The other policeman coughed.

“Better get the inspector here,” he said. “And the doctor and the ambulance. Dead⁠—ain’t he?”

Driscoll bent down and put a thumb on the hand which lay on the pavement.

“As ever they make ’em,” he remarked laconically. “And stiff, too. Well, hurry up, Jim!”

Spargo waited until the inspector arrived; waited until the hand-ambulance came. More policemen came with it; they moved the body for transference to the mortuary, and Spargo then saw the dead man’s face. He looked long and steadily at it while the police arranged the limbs, wondering all the time who it was that he gazed at, how he came to that end, what was the object of his murderer, and many other things. There was some professionalism in Spargo’s curiosity, but there was also a natural dislike that a fellow-being should have been so unceremoniously smitten out of the world.

There was nothing very remarkable about the dead man’s face. It was that of a man of apparently sixty to sixty-five years of age; plain, even homely of feature, clean-shaven, except for a fringe of white whisker, trimmed, after an old-fashioned pattern, between the ear and the point of the jaw. The only remarkable thing about it was that it was much lined and seamed; the wrinkles were many and deep around the corners of the lips and the angles of the eyes; this man, you would have said to yourself, has led a hard life and weathered storm, mental as well as physical.

Driscoll nudged Spargo with a turn of his elbow. He gave him a wink. “Better come down to the dead-house,” he muttered confidentially.

“Why?” asked Spargo.

“They’ll go through him,” whispered Driscoll. “Search him, d’ye see? Then you’ll get to know all about him, and so on. Help to write that piece in the paper, eh?”

Spargo hesitated. He had had a stiff night’s work, and until his encounter with Driscoll he had cherished warm anticipation of the meal which would be laid out for him at his rooms, and of the bed into which he would subsequently tumble. Besides, a telephone message would send a man from the Watchman to the mortuary. This sort of thing was not in his line now, now⁠—

“You’ll be for getting one o’ them big play-cards out with something about a mystery on it,” suggested Driscoll. “You never know what lies at the bottom o’ these affairs, no more you don’t.”

That last observation decided Spargo; moreover, the old instinct for getting news began to assert itself.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll go along with you.”

And re-lighting his pipe he followed the little cortège through the streets, still deserted and quiet, and as he walked behind he reflected on the unobtrusive fashion in which murder could stalk about. Here was the work of murder, no doubt, and it was being quietly carried along a principal London thoroughfare, without fuss or noise, by officials to whom the dealing with it was all a matter of routine. Surely⁠—

“My opinion,” said a voice at Spargo’s elbow, “my opinion is that it was done elsewhere. Not there! He was put there. That’s what I say.” Spargo turned and saw that the porter was at his side. He, too, was accompanying the body.

“Oh!” said Spargo. “You think⁠—”

“I think he was struck down elsewhere and carried there,” said the porter. “In somebody’s chambers, maybe. I’ve known of some queer games in our bit of London! Well!⁠—he never came in at my