Detective and mystery stories; England -- Fiction; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction
“Is there somebody dead?” asked Marryatt. “I say, how awful.” He kept
on walking up and down as if thoroughly unnerved, repeating to
himself, “How awful.” Carmichael, for once, was dumb. It was a new
voice that summed up the situation, in the words, “’E’s got ’is
properly, ain’t ’e?” and they turned round to find the caddie
obviously enjoying a new sensation.
“Look here, we must move this somehow,” suggested Gordon. “What about
the tool-house under that arch?”
“I’m not quite sure I could lift it,” said Reeves.
“That’s all right, sir,” said the caddie, “I’ll whistle across to
Ginger; in the scouts ’e was; they teach ’em what to do with bodies
and that. ’Ere, Ginger!” and as his fellow-caddie approached, “Bloke
fell off of the railway-line and smashed hisself up something cruel.”
Ginger whistled: “Dead, is ’e?” “Not half ’e ain’t; shamming, that’s
what ’e is; go and ’ave a look at ’im.”
Ginger satisfied his curiosity on the point; and these two
cold-blooded young persons proceeded to hoist the body on to an
ingenious arrangement of sticks, and so carried it off, under Gordon’s
directions, to the tool-house.
As the spell of the uncanny presence was removed, Reeves’s horrified
embarrassment ebbed from him a little, and left him with the sense
that he ought to take command of the proceedings.
“Where’s Beazly likely to be?” he asked—Beazly was the doctor.
“He went out in the rain,” said Marryatt; “I should say he’d be about
the tenth or eleventh by now. Look here, I’ll nip across and get him,”
and in a moment he was running across the fairway.
“Seemed glad to get away,” said Reeves; “well, it’s too late for
visiting the sick, and too soon for burying the dead. Carmichael,
you’re looking a bit on edge, too; would you mind going across to
Paston Whitchurch station and ’phoning up the police? Binver, I
suppose, is the nearest place to get a bobby from. You will? Good.”
And as Carmichael too made off, “Look here, Gordon, what are we going
to do about it? I’ve got the feeling that there’s something wrong
here. What do you say to doing a bit of detective work on our own—or
are you feeling rotten?”
“Oh, I’m feeling all right,” said Gordon, “only what about the police?
Won’t they want to look through the man’s things first? It would be
awkward if we put ourselves on the wrong side of the law. Funny thing,
I’ve no idea whether there’s any law against searching a dead body;
yet, if there isn’t, how do the police ever get their clues?”
“Oh, rot, the police can’t be here for a good half-hour, and Beazly
won’t mind if he comes along. Let’s take a bit of a look round,
anyhow. He fell off the arch, and smashed up his face against the
buttress, that looks pretty clear. Now, did he fall off the line, or
off a train?”
“If you ask me, I should say he fell off the parapet. I’ve noticed,
sometimes, what a long way it really is from the door of one’s
carriage to the parapet—a man falling from a carriage would never
reach the edge.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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