Luke had the grace to blush.
“Well,” he said. “So many murders! Rather hard to do a lot of murders and get away with it, eh?”
Miss Pinkerton shook her head.
She said earnestly:
“No, no, my dear boy, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s very easy to kill—so long as no one suspects you. And you see, the person in question is just the last person anyone would suspect!”
“Well, anyway, good luck,” said Luke.
Miss Pinkerton was swallowed up in the crowd. He himself went off in search of his luggage, thinking as he did so:
“Just a little bit batty? No, I don’t think so. A vivid imagination, that’s all. Hope they let her down lightly. Rather an old dear.”
Two
OBITUARY NOTICE
I
Jimmy Lorrimer was one of Luke’s oldest friends. As a matter of course, Luke stayed with Jimmy as soon as he got to London. It was with Jimmy that he sallied forth on the evening of his arrival in search of amusement. It was Jimmy’s coffee that he drank with an aching head the morning after, and it was Jimmy’s voice that went unanswered while he read twice over a small insignificant paragraph in the morning paper.
“Sorry, Jimmy,” he said, coming to himself with a start.
“What were you absorbed in—the political situation?”
Luke grinned.
“No fear. No, it’s rather queer—old pussy I travelled up with in the train yesterday got run over.”
“Probably trusted to a Belisha Beacon,” said Jimmy. “How do you know it’s her?”
“Of course, it mayn’t be. But it’s the same name—Pinkerton—she was knocked down and killed by a car as she was crossing Whitehall. The car didn’t stop.”
“Nasty business,” said Jimmy.
“Yes, poor old bean. I’m sorry. She reminded me of my Aunt Mildred.”
“Whoever was driving that car will be for it. Bring it in manslaughter as likely as not. I tell you, I’m scared stiff of driving a car nowadays.”
“What have you got at present in the way of a car?”
“Ford V 8. I tell you, my boy—”
The conversation became severely mechanical.
Jimmy broke it off to ask:
“What the devil are you humming?”
Luke was humming to himself:
“Fiddle de dee, fiddle de dee, the fly has married the bumblebee.”
He apologized.
“Nursery rhyme remembered from my childhood. Can’t think what put it into my head.”
II
It was over a week later that Luke, carelessly scanning the front page of The Times, gave a sudden startled exclamation.
“Well, I’m damned!”
Jimmy Lorrimer looked up.
“What’s the matter?”
Luke did not answer. He was staring at a name in the printed column.
Jimmy repeated his question.
Luke raised his head and looked at his friend. His expression was so peculiar that Jimmy was quite taken aback.
“What’s up, Luke? You look as though you’d seen a ghost.”
For a minute or two the other did not reply. He dropped the paper, strode to the window and back again. Jimmy watched him with increasing surprise.
Luke dropped into a chair and leaned forward.
“Jimmy, old son, do you remember my mentioning an old lady I travelled up to town with—the day I arrived in England?”
“The one you said reminded you of your Aunt Mildred? And then she got run over by a car?”
“That’s the one. Listen, Jimmy. The old girl came out with a long rigmarole of how she was going up to Scotland Yard to tell them about a lot of murders. There was a murderer loose in her village—that’s what it amounted to, and he’s been doing some pretty rapid execution.”
“You didn’t tell me she was batty,” said Jimmy.
“I didn’t think she was.”
“Oh, come now, old boy, wholesale murder—”
Luke said impatiently:
“I didn’t think she was off her head. I thought she was just letting her imagination run away with her like old ladies sometimes do.”
“Well, yes, I suppose that might have been it. But she was probably a bit touched as well, I should think.”
“Never mind what you think, Jimmy. At the moment, I’m telling you, see?”
“Oh, quite—quite—get on with it.”
“She was quite circumstantial, mentioned one or two victims by name and then explained that what had really rattled her was the fact that she knew who the next victim was going to be.”
“Yes?” said Jimmy encouragingly.
“Sometimes a name sticks in your head for some silly reason or other. This name stuck in mine because I linked it up with a silly nursery rhyme they used to sing to me when I was a kid. Fiddle de dee, fiddle de dee, the fly has married the bumblebee.”
“Very intellectual, I’m sure, but what’s the point?”
“The point, my good ass, is that the man’s name was Humbleby—Dr. Humbleby. My old lady said Dr. Humbleby would be the next, and she was distressed because he was ‘such a good man.’ The name stuck in my head because of the aforementioned rhyme.”
“Well?” said Jimmy.
“Well, look at this.”
Luke passed over the paper, his finger pressed against an entry in the column of deaths.
HUMBLEBY.—On June 13, suddenly, at his residence, Sandgate, Wychwood-under-Ashe, JOHN EDWARD HUMBLEBY, MD, beloved husband of JESSIE ROSE HUMBLEBY. Funeral Friday. No flowers, by request.
“You see, Jimmy? That’s the name and the place and he’s a doctor. What do you make of it?”
Jimmy took a moment or two to answer. His voice was serious when he said at last rather uncertainly:
“I suppose it’s just a damned odd coincidence.”
“Is it, Jimmy? Is it? Is that all it is?”
Luke began to walk up and down again.
“What else could it be?” asked Jimmy.
Luke wheeled round suddenly.
“Suppose that every word that dear bleating old sheep said was true! Suppose that that fantastic story was just the plain literal truth!”
“Oh, come now, old boy! That would be a bit thick! Things like that don’t happen.”
“What about the Abercrombie case? Wasn’t he supposed to have done away with a goodish few?”
“More than ever came out,” said Jimmy. “A pal of mine had a cousin who was the local coroner. I heard a bit through him. They got Abercrombie for feeding the local vet with arsenic, then they dug up his wife and she was full of it, and it’s pretty certain his brother-in-law went the same way—and that wasn’t all, by a long chalk. This pal of mine told me the unofficial view was that Abercrombie had done away with at least fifteen people in his time. Fifteen!”
“Exactly. So these things do happen!”
“Yes, but they don’t happen often.”
“How do you know? They may happen a good deal oftener than you suppose.”
“There speaks the police wallah! Can’t you forget you’re a policeman now that you’ve retired into private life?”
“Once a policeman, always a policeman, I suppose,” said Luke. “Now look here, Jimmy, supposing that before Abercrombie had got so foolhardy as fairly to push his murders under the nose of the police, some dear loquacious old spinster had just simply guessed what he was up to and had trotted off to tell someone in authority all about it. Do you suppose they’d have listened to her?”
Jimmy grinned.
“No fear!”
“Exactly. They’d have said she’d got bats in the belfry. Just as you said! Or they’d have said, ‘Too much imagination. Not enough to do.’ As I said! And both of us, Jimmy, would have been wrong.”
Lorrimer took a moment or two to consider, then he said:
“What’s the position exactly—as it appears to you?”
Luke said slowly:
“The case stands like this. I was told a story—an improbable, but not an impossible story. One piece of evidence, the death of Dr. Humbleby, supports that story. And there’s one other significant fact. Miss Pinkerton was going to Scotland Yard with this improbable story of hers. But she didn’t get there. She was run over and killed by a car that didn’t stop.”
Jimmy objected.