Nigel Moss - The Middle Temple Murder

‘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, and—

‘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 lodge last night—I’ll stand to that. And who is he, I should like to know? From what I see of him, not the sort to be about our place.’

‘That’s what we shall hear presently,’ said Spargo. ‘They’re going to search him.’

But Spargo was presently made aware that the searchers had found nothing. The police-surgeon said that the dead man had, without doubt, been struck down from behind by a terrible blow which had fractured the skull and caused death almost instantaneously. In Driscoll’s opinion, the murder had been committed for the sake of plunder. For there was nothing whatever on the body. It was reasonable to suppose that a man who is well dressed would possess a watch and chain, and have money in his pockets, and possibly rings on his fingers. But there was nothing valuable to be found; in fact there was nothing at all to be found that could lead to identification—no letters, no papers, nothing. It was plain that whoever had struck the dead man down had subsequently stripped him of whatever was on him. The only clue to possible identity lay in the fact that a soft cap of grey cloth appeared to have been newly purchased at a fashionable shop in the West End.

Spargo went home; there seemed to be nothing to stop for. He ate his food and he went to bed, only to do poor things in the way of sleeping. He was not the sort to be impressed by horrors, but he recognised at last that the morning’s event had destroyed his chance of rest; he accordingly rose, took a cold bath, drank a cup of coffee, and went out. He was not sure of any particular idea when he strolled away from Bloomsbury, but it did not surprise him when, half an hour later he found that he had walked down to the police station near which the unknown man’s body lay in the mortuary. And there he met Driscoll, just going off duty. Driscoll grinned at sight of him.

‘You’re in luck,’ he said. ‘’Tisn’t five minutes since they found a bit of grey writing paper crumpled up in the poor man’s waistcoat pocket—it had slipped into a crack. Come in, and you’ll see it.’

Spargo went into the inspector’s office. In another minute he found himself staring at the scrap of paper. There was nothing on it but an address, scrawled in pencil:

Ronald Breton, Barrister, King’s Bench Walk, Temple, London.

SPARGO looked up at the inspector with a quick jerk of his head. ‘I know this man,’ he said.

The inspector showed new interest.

‘What, Mr Breton?’ he asked.

‘Yes. I’m on the Watchman , you know, sub-editor. I took an article from him the other day—article on ‘Ideal Sites for Campers-Out’. He came to the office about it. So this was in the dead man’s pocket?’