Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 1. Whole No. 344, July 1972

A pickup in the rain on a dark road late at night can be dangerous for a traveler. Julian Symons tells us about a case in point in a masterly study of suspense ...

Now, join Donald en route to a gay holiday in France when suddenly he becomes involved in a deadly battle of wits ...

The milestone, just visible in the rain, said Dover 41. Donald’s mouth pursed and he began to whistle The Song of the Skye Boatmen:

Not to Skye, but to Calais. In a light pleasant voice he fitted words to the tune:

To be young, he thought, to be young and happy. He remembered for a moment the row with Charles, but nothing could keep down for long the bubble of his high spirits. Rain splashed on the car’s windshield, the tires made sucking noises on the wet road, the wipers echoed his thoughts by saying a new life, a new life.

Quite wrong, of course; he would return to England — this was nothing but a short holiday. He said aloud, “One of the things about you, Donald, is that every time you do something fresh you think it’s the beginning of a new life.”

Perfectly true, but a little silent reproach was in order. He knew that talking to himself was a bad habit, so he turned on the radio and found the plum-voiced announcer halfway through the news:

“... yet another government scandal. Mr. Michael Foot called on the government to resign.” Pause, slight change of tone. “ A murder in Kent. An elderly woman, Mrs. Mary Ford, was found murdered this evening in her house on the outskirts of the village of Oastley in Kent. She had been brutally attacked and beaten, and the house had been ransacked. Mrs. Ford was something of a recluse, and it is believed that she kept a considerable sum of money in the house. Police investigations are continuing. ”

Oastley, he thought, can’t be more than five miles from there now. He was listening abstractedly to an interview with a beauty queen when he became aware of something in the road and in the next moment he realized that the something was human. He began to go into a skid, corrected it, stopped, opened his window, and shouted, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

A grinning face appeared, wet, snubnosed, cheerful. “Flashing a torch.”

“I didn’t see it. I might have—”

“Can you help me? I’ve had a breakdown.” There was no car visible in the headlights. As though answering an unspoken question the man said, “Down that side road you’ve just passed. I think the rear axle’s gone,” he said and laughed again, the sound loud and meaningless. His voice was deep, coarse. “Look, can you give me a lift? There’s a café a few miles down the road. If you drop me off there I can make a phone call.”

Donald felt a momentary reluctance to let the man into the car, overcame it, leaned over, and opened the passenger door. The man took off a wet raincoat, threw it on the back seat, and got in. The interior light showed him as a rather squat figure, perhaps in his late twenties, a little younger than Donald, with thick brows and the corner of a thick mouth turned up in what seemed a perpetual smile. Then the door closed, the light went out, and he became just a darkly anonymous figure in the next seat.

“Dripping all over your car,” he said. “Sorry.”

Donald did not reply. The incident had somehow disturbed his serenity. He drove off and found himself whistling the song again. Then the voice beside him revived the euphoria he had felt a few minutes ago by saying, “Going far?”

“Into the sunset and beyond,” Donald said gaily. “That’s if it weren’t night and raining. Dover, then across to France. Driving off the quay in another country, that’s a wonderful feeling.”

“Must be. Never done it myself. You can do with a bit of a change in this weather.”

Sheer pleasure in what lay ahead made Donald talk. “You know, in England we always talk about the weather, I do it myself, it shows what a boring nation we are. In France that sort of thing simply couldn’t happen — there are a thousand better things to talk about. God, I shall be pleased to get out of this smug country.”

As soon as the words had been spoken he regretted them. “Not that I’m unpatriotic, mind you. This is just a holiday. Still, I shan’t be sorry to get out of England in March. It’s just that I know everything will be different in France — hotels, food, even the weather.”

“I know what you mean. Wish I was coming with you. Haven’t been abroad for five years, and then it was just for the firm to a sales conference in Frankfurt. Trouble is, when you’ve got a wife and two kids it comes expensive, going abroad. So it’s Littlehampton instead. Every year. Relatives there. You married?”

“No,” Donald said, a trifle sharply.

“Lucky man.” Again that laugh, loud and meaningless and somehow unlikable.

“Why lucky?”

“Don’t know, really. It’s just when I think of you single chaps, with a flat in London, time your own, do what you like, go where you like, I feel envious sometimes.”

“I didn’t say I had a flat in London.” Again Donald spoke more sharply than he had intended. “And I work, too. I’m a writer. A free-lance journalist.”

“Free lance, there you are. Free lance, freedom.” A smell of drying clothes pervaded the air. Donald could almost feel them steaming. “This breakdown’s serious for me, I can tell you. I’m a knight of the road.”

“What’s that? I didn’t quite—”

“Commercial traveler, old man, and the bus is my steed, as you might say. Without it I’m sunk. Point is, I’ve got to get to Folkestone tonight — got an appointment there in the morning. If they can get my car going, well and good, but I doubt it and if not I’m in trouble. I was wondering.” Donald sensed what was coming. “I was wondering if you could drop me off at Folkestone. Not out of your way, and it would be the most tremendous help to me.”

There was something about the man that did not seem genuine, and instinct told Donald to refuse; but that seemed churlish. “I suppose if your car’s still out of action — well, all right.”

“Very very decent of you, old man. We’ll just look in at that café for five minutes so I can phone a garage. Must go through the motions.”

Something was troubling Donald and suddenly he realized what it was. “What do you travel in?”

“Woolens, all sorts of woolens.”

A flurry of rain blurred his vision. Headlights loomed up dazzlingly and were gone. “Samples?” Donald asked.

“How d’you mean?”

“You’ve got no samples.”

The pause was fractional. “Left my case in the car. Overnight bag, too. Didn’t want to drag ’em up the lane. You get used to traveling light, you know, in my game.” Another pause, a longer one this time. Then, as though to divert Donald’s attention from the missing sample case, the stranger said, “Shocking business, that murder.”

For a moment Donald could not believe his ears. “What murder?”