Death on the Highway Read online

  “Dear, dear, Mr. Harrison, how dreadful,” was the mocking reply, “I expect you’ll be dragging in a few witches next.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Harrison, in a very apologetic tone; “I really deserved that. I suppose I spoke more strongly than I should have done.”

  “My dear Mr. Harrison,” said the old lady, “you make me quite ashamed. I didn’t realise that a detective like yourself would have strong convictions about anything. I always pictured you as cold, impassive, like one of those statues of justice with a pair of scales and a bandage. I didn’t think of you as human.”

  “Mr. Harrison human, I should say he is,” said Miss Docket, joining in. “A confirmed tea-drinker cannot be anything else. Indeed, I have thought about nothing else all day but his judgment of the cup he is going to have when he gets back home with me.”

  “Of course I knew all about that,” said Mrs. Crewe, her eyes twinkling again. “Indeed I almost brought a packet with me to present to him as a practical vote of thanks but I was afraid the Great Crockham audience might have thought it flippant. I know Mr. Harrison has human tastes. There is a certain matter of indulging in cigars which I also know about. What surprised me was that he had human feelings as we.”

  “I thought the vicar was suggesting that he was rather inhuman,” said Miss Docket.

  “I am certain Mr. Harrison knows what I mean,” added Mrs. Crewe. “He has the very human capacity of being able to hate something wholeheartedly instead of being sloppily sentimental about it. I’m like that myself.”

  “Well,” said Miss Docket, decisively, “whatever Mr. Harrison’s virtues or failings, I’m certain he must be tired, and I really must drag him away.”

  “Of course you must,” said Mrs. Crewe, “but I would like him to meet my daughter before he goes.”

  She turned to the attractive girl whom Henry had noticed sitting beside her. “Netta,” she said, “I want you to meet Mr. Harrison. You don’t meet much brain nowadays so have a good look at him. He’s brimful of it.”

  “Mother does say the most embarrassing things,” said the girl, holding out her hand to Harrison and slightly knitting her forehead as she spoke. “Still she is right. We don’t meet many intelligent people, and it was a real joy to listen to you.”

  The girl looked at him with eyes of a similar blue to her mother’s, and her smile added to her fascination. Harrison smiled back in return, and said that he was honoured to have two such people among his hearers.

  “I wish Archie had been here,” said Mrs. Crewe. “He would have loved it, wouldn’t he, Netta? My son, Harrison. I would like you to meet him. And he would to meet you, I know. You’re staying the night with Miss Docket, I suppose?” Harrison nodded. “Why not come to lunch with me tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid that’s out of the question,” answered Harrison. “I must get back to town.”

  “Really, Mr. Harrison, you should take pity on us,” said the girl, again knitting her brows slightly, and then giving him a glowing smile. “I wasn’t really trying to say something nice to you when I said we don’t meet many intelligent people. It’s the truth. You won’t refuse mother now, will you?”

  “Of course he won’t,” said the little old lady, decisively. “Miss Docket will bring him over.”

  “Well—” started that lady.

  “You don’t know what assistance you will be giving to the criminal world by persuading me to stay,” said Harrison. The girl knitted her brows and looked intently at him. “But if Mrs. Crewe commands, I am at her service.”

  “Excellent,” said Mrs. Crewe. “And now good night. We have kept you gossiping too long and Miss Docket will never forgive us. Come along, Netta.”

  The caretaker had already turned out most of the lights, and the two ladies disappeared down the empty hall. To Harrison’s surprise, Miss Docket seemed in no hurry to follow their example.

  “I want them to get well ahead,” she said, in explanation. “Really, I don’t know how I’ve kept things bottled up all the evening.”

  “Something wrong?” said Harrison.

  “You know you talked about something in the shadows,” she answered; “and nobody knowing what might be hidden by the night outside. Your words were truer even than you realised. There certainly is horror waiting for you outside.”

  “Horror?”

  “Yes,” replied Miss Docket. “A man was found murdered in this peaceful countryside today. The police are certain it was murder. Nobody else knows about it yet, but it will be everywhere by tomorrow morning. I suppose I was the only person at the meeting who had heard.”

  “I am sorry my words were so true, Miss Docket, I can assure you,” said Harrison. “The police have it in hand, you say.”

  “They have,” was the answer; “but I need you very badly.”

  “You?” asked Harrison in amazement.

  “I suppose it does sound strange,” said Miss Docket, sadly. “A simple woman like myself in these quiet surroundings asking the help of a great detective like you in a case of murder. But I cannot help myself. And it is not really for myself either.”

  “It is all rather confusing, Miss Docket,” said Harrison.

  “Everything seems to point to a man who I swear is innocent,” said Miss Docket vehemently. “That’s why you must help me. I feel that it is almost providential that you came here tonight.”

  “I promise you I will do what I can,” said Harrison. “But a few facts would be useful to go on.”

  “You can’t think how grateful I am,” answered Miss Docket. “I don’t think that I personally had better tell you anything. I feel horribly mean at worrying you after such a tiring evening.” She blushed a little. “It was not quite the truth when I said I wanted to drag you away because you might be tired. I am rather afraid your work is only just beginning.”

  The caretaker was now standing impatiently by the door waiting for them to leave. Henry was sitting patiently on the chair he had occupied all the evening, wondering what on earth Harrison could find to talk about instead of going to the hospitality arranged for him like a normal individual. He rose as they left the platform and was greeted by Miss Docket.

  “There’s work for us here, Henry,” said Harrison.

  “Of what kind, sir?”

  “You’ll soon see,” was the answer.

  “He certainly will, Mr. Harrison,” said Miss Docket. “A police sergeant is patiently waiting to talk to you when you get back to my house.”

  The remark seemed to Henry to be so inconsequent as to justify a belief that Miss Docket had either a strange sense of humour or a disordered mind, and so, with a mental note that he knew Harrison had been quite wrong in coming to Great Crockham at all, he followed behind the others.

  Chapter II

  Miss Docket’s Kitchen

  Miss Docket’s home proved to be a substantial old house about five minutes from the hall in which the meeting had been held. It was approached by a fairly large drive, and Harrison was somewhat puzzled at the contrast of its size with the obviously limited needs of a single woman.

  Harrison was shown into a very comfortable lounge, but was not immediately followed by Henry and his hostess. In fact, he thought he heard a whispered conversation between them before Henry appeared with a smile of rather too heavily assumed innocence.

  “I don’t see the police sergeant, sir,” said Henry.

  “Lurking in some dark corner, Henry, I suppose,” was the reply.

  “I don’t want to ask questions, sir,” Henry began.

  “I appreciate your tact, Henry,” answered Harrison. “Anybody else would be bursting with impatience.”

  “But I would like to know—” Henry continued rather feebly.

  “Don’t spoil it, Henry,” said Harrison. “I can’t tell you things I don’t even know myself. All I can say is that we did right to come here, and we’re likely to have a busy time.”

  “Still, sir—”

  “You’re very annoying, Henry
. This third degree business is not what I expected of you. Well, have it your own way. You will have your job to do, too. There’s crime in the air.”

  Henry’s eyes opened wide and then a smile, almost of professional satisfaction, spread over his face. He asked no more questions and, in a few moments, Miss Docket came into the room with a box of cigars.

  “Miss Rich, my friend—we don’t have ‘companions’ nowadays, Mr. Harrison—is making you a cup of tea,” she said, “and you’re not going to be worried until you’ve had it. By the way, can I offer you a cigar?”

  “May I congratulate you on your taste, Miss Docket,” said Harrison, taking one and lighting it. “These are the particular brand I smoke myself.”

  “How very lucky,” commented Miss Docket, with a smile towards Henry.

  “A plot, of course,” said Harrison.

  “A happy arrangement, rather,” said Miss Docket. “Your reputation as a cigar smoker put me in rather a panic. I couldn’t buy the things myself and I was frightened to trust to the judgment of my men friends. I realised how good it was of you to come down here and I thought the least return I could make would be to give you a tolerable cigar. So I wrote very confidentially to Henry and asked him to bring me down a box of your own special kind. Of course I also knew that Henry could keep a secret.”

  “A very charming idea,” said Harrison. “Your hospitality is perfect, Miss Docket.”

  “But you will believe me that I had not the ghost of an idea that I should be asking you to help me,” she answered. “I still feel frightfully mean.”

  “A very unselfish kind of meanness,” said Harrison. “A good cigar was farthest from my thoughts when I gave you my promise, Miss Docket.”

  At that moment the tea made its appearance, carried by a nondescript-looking young woman. She had a diffident and somewhat lackadaisical manner which was in strong contrast with her employer’s vitality and energy.

  After introductions had been made and the tea handed round, Miss Docket told her friend that she could go to bed. “You won’t stay up late yourself, will you?” said Miss Rich, in a gentle, far-off voice. “You know it isn’t good for you.”

  “I’m having a night off, May,” was the cheerful answer. “I may not go to bed at all.”

  “You couldn’t do that, Julia,” said Miss Rich, in a pained tone.

  “I would if you dared me to,” replied Miss Docket. “But you run along yourself and I’ll come as soon as I can;” whereupon Miss Rich effaced herself from the room rather than walked out of it.

  “I am really rather an unpleasant old woman,” said Miss Docket. “The poor girl can’t answer me back. She might lose her job. Anyhow I don’t suppose she would ever try to. But an employer like myself is given an awful lot of power and we don’t always realise it.”

  “I know you won’t mind my saying so, Miss Docket,” said Harrison, “but Miss Rich does not strike me as quite the kind of companion I should expect you to have.”

  “Maybe not,” answered Miss Docket. “I didn’t think I needed one at all, but two or three years ago my very interfering family, especially the younger portion of it, made up their minds that I could not live here alone. So, of course, I had to do what I was told. I interviewed quite a number of women and the more I saw of those who were like myself the more I realised that I should never get on with them. Somebody quite unlike myself seemed the most suitable. May Rich came along and, although I was not impressed, I like her name. It seemed so very satisfactory. I engaged her and she has turned out a treasure. She is not a bit like me. In fact, I am certain that she disapproves of me very strongly. But you can’t imagine how restful she is. And she has a fund of common sense. Whenever I am going off the deep end, she gives my skirt a tug.”

  “And rescues you?”

  “Not always,” said Miss Docket, with a twinkling eye. “It usually comes off in her hand. But I sometimes wish I had taken her advice a bit more often. I might not have been so worried tonight if I had.”

  “I apologise for misjudging Miss Rich,” said Harrison. “She must be a very remarkable woman.”

  “By no means,” answered Miss Docket decisively. “I said she has common sense. I myself haven’t any. I’m impulsive, and the result is that I do things without an idea of the result—and then May Rich has to come along and sweep up the pieces. You noticed that I have a very large house here—”

  “Of course.”

  “And you wondered why an old woman like myself lived in it.”

  “Your choice rather surprised me, Miss Docket.”

  “And you assumed that I was a bit of a sentimentalist and kept up the old place after my parents died because I could not bear to leave it—”

  “Perfect logic,” replied Harrison, with a laugh.

  “Of course there was a little in that,” said Miss Docket. “But even if I’m an impulsive old woman, I won’t be thought a silly old woman. The real reason is something quite different, Mr. Harrison. I seem to have any number of nephews and nieces. I believe some of them are actually related to me, but most of them seem to be adopted. I adopted some and the others must have adopted themselves. Anyway, they’re all rather dears. And somehow I find myself sitting down to write to them to ask them to come here for the holidays. Then I forget how many letters I have written and a fearful number seem to arrive. I expect I asked them all, but I’m never quite certain. And then May Rich has to sort them all up and, when the right moment arrives, send them home again. You see, she has all the dirty work to do and I get all the credit. She warns me about it every time the holidays seem to be coming near, but I don’t seem to improve. So I must keep up a big place, with plenty of rooms, or they would be frightfully disappointed.”

  “But I cannot imagine,” said Harrison, “that Miss Rich’s advice regarding these young people can have anything to do with the tragedy you mentioned.”

  “Nothing whatever,” answered Miss Docket, “but I thought it might give you an idea how useful May Rich is to me. Of course she gives me advice about other things, too. About almost everything, really. And if I had only taken her advice about the kitchen. But, there again, my impulses have got the better of me every time. And you see they were so genuinely grateful.”

  “They?”

  “Yes, Mr. Harrison, the tramps who used it. I am afraid I must be a bit of a vagabond myself for I have always rather liked tramps. The real tramp is a much misjudged individual. A Bohemian who can‘t fit in with city life, that’s what I’ve found him to be. But there I am, putting the cart about half-a-mile before the horse. I had made a mental vow that I would not try to tell you myself and I’m muddling it all up already. Besides, poor Sergeant Griskin has been waiting a terrible time. I think I’d better call him in. He’ll do it so much better.”

  She left the room for a moment and Henry looked sadly at Harrison.

  “An awful lot of talk, sir,” he said.

  “Really, Henry, I’m surprised at you,” replied Harrison; “Miss Docket is the sort of woman one doesn’t get the chance of meeting every day.”

  “I’d rather go to bed,” said Henry, gloomily.

  “Not a hope, Henry,” was the answer. “I’m sorry if you’re tired but the notebook and pencil will be needed very soon.”

  “I don’t mind staying up, sir, if there’s something to do,” said Henry. “But notes of a conversation like this don’t seem very useful. Still, there may be something very deep in it all.”

  Henry’s tone suggested that the possibility was hardly credible and that his opinion of his master’s actions was extremely low.

  “Pull yourself together, Henry,” said Harrison, in a gentle voice; “I don’t like to hear you grumbling. It’s not like you, even if you are tired. I promise you we are going to listen to something extremely interesting.”

  Henry’s look of gloom departed almost entirely as Miss Docket returned with a pleasant-looking sergeant, middle-aged and with outline growing steadily more comfortable.

&
nbsp; “This is Sergeant Griskin, Mr. Harrison,” said Miss Docket. “He will tell you everything he can. And I am certain,” with this she looked at Henry, “he will not bore you as much as the silly chatter of a rambling person like myself must have done.” Whereupon Henry looked as happy as an easily aroused conscience would allow.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Harrison,” said the sergeant, shaking his hand heartily. “And you, too.” He shook Henry’s hand warmly. “I may be only a country policeman now, sir, but I haven’t always been here, and most of us know a bit about Clay Harrison. Still, sir, you’re mixed up with such important cases that I am a bit afraid to tell you about this one at all.”

  “All murder is important,” said Harrison.

  Henry pricked up his ears and the whole of his atmosphere of lack of interest vanished.

  “In a manner of speaking you’re right, sir,” replied the sergeant; “but I know your time is valuable, and there seems little mystery about this particular case. I wish there was more. The only mystery is that the particular man did it—”

  “I can’t believe he did,” interrupted Miss Docket. “And you don’t really think so either, Sergeant.”

  “I hardly know what to think, Miss Docket,” said the sergeant, “but facts are facts.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help at all, Sergeant Griskin, if I don’t know the facts,” said Harrison.

  “I’m so sorry, sir,” answered Griskin.” I don’t quite know where to start.”

  “Background first, then,” said Harrison. “Explain the tramps and the kitchen and Miss Docket’s connection with it all, and then it will be easier for me to understand things. And Henry will make a few notes.”

  “Well, sir, if you will pardon my saying so, you must be a stranger to these parts not to have heard of Miss Docket’s kitchen,” answered Griskin. “It’s famous all around here. You might almost call it a private hotel for tramps—”

  “Hardly that,” said Miss Docket. “It’s really a very large cellar, Mr. Harrison, which I have made as comfortable as possible for any stray tramp to sleep in. It has an entrance of its own at the back of the house and I trust to the men themselves to keep it decent. Sergeant Griskin knows them all and so I don’t run any risk. There is an entrance from the house but it isn’t often used. I go down sometimes just to see how they are getting on, and Miss Rich goes there occasionally to make certain they are duly grateful to me.”