Philip MacDonald – Murder Gone Mad (страница 2)
My Reference ONE
R.I.P.
Lionel Frederick Colby,
died Friday 23rd November
THE BUTCHER
When a report is produced by the police examining the murders to date, the victims are listed under ‘clerical class’, ‘leisured class’, ‘labouring class’ and ‘skilled workman class’—a fairly nuanced series of distinctions. But, the police report concludes, the murderer ‘must belong to the clerical or governing class’ to have the opportunity to mix with all classes of the community—a member of the working classes simply wouldn’t have the contacts. When Dr Reade is suspected, somebody who knows him protests: ‘Blasted rot, my dear fellow! What I mean: a chap, a decent chap like Reade, the sort of chap who’s always good for a hand of Bridge and that sort of thing; the sort of chap one has dinner with and all that … he can’t possibly be this Butcher.’ But, of course, we all know that he or any of the citizens of Holmdale could be the killer. MacDonald also anticipates Nancy Mitford’s popularisation of U and non-U language by putting the word ‘lounge’ firmly in quotation marks.
All classes are however united in their horror at the unremitting succession of killings. ‘Is our city to be another Düsseldorf?’ asks the local paper, somewhat enigmatically—not just lower middle class then but, worse still, German?
The Düsseldorf references are almost certainly inspired by the case of Peter Kürten, the so-called Vampire of Düsseldorf or Düsseldorf Monster, who during the 1920s murdered at least nine people, mainly (like The Butcher) by stabbing, and who was executed the year
L.C. TYLER
September 2016
I
THERE had been a fall of snow in the afternoon. A light, white mantle still covered the fields upon either side of the line. The gaunt hedges which crowned the walls of the cutting before Holmdale station were traceries of white and black.
The station-master came out on to the platform from his little overheated room. He shivered and blew upon his hands. The ringing click-clock of the ‘down’ signal arm dropping came hard to his ears on the cold air.
‘Harris!’ called the station-master. ‘Six-thirty’s coming!’
A porter came out from behind the bookstall. He was thrusting behind a large and crimson ear a recently pinched-out end of a cigarette.
The six-thirty came in with much hissing of steam and a whistling grind of brakes. The six-thirty reached the whole length of Holmdale’s long platform. The six-thirty looked like a row of gaily-lighted, densely-populated little houses. The six-thirty’s engine, for some reason known only to itself and its attendants, let off steam in a continuous and teeth-grating shriek. The doors of the six-thirty all along the six-thirty’s flank began to swing open. Holmdale was the six-thirty’s first stop since leaving St Pancras, now forty miles and forty-five minutes behind it.
The station-master stood by the foot of the steps leading up to the bridge. He opened a square and bearded mouth and chanted his nightly chant, quite unintelligibly, of what was going to happen to the train. He should properly have walked up and down the train with his chant, but he knew only too well that to walk at all against this tide which now covered the platform like a moving carpet of black, huge locusts, was impossible.
The six-thirty’s engine ceased its hissing. There was a great slamming of doors which sounded under the station’s iron roof like big guns heard in the distance. There were indistinguishable cries from one end of the train to the other. The guard held up his lantern, green-shaded. The six-thirty settled down to her work. The little lighted houses, most of them now untenanted, began once more their rolling march … The six-thirty was gone.
But, as yet, only the very first trickles of the black flood were over the bridge and outside Holmdale station. They were so tight packed, the units which went to the making of this flood, that speed, however passionately each unit undoubtedly desired it, was impossible. They surged up the stairs. At the head of the stairs they split into two streams, one flowing right and east and the other left and west. Two streams flowed across the bridge and down other stairs. At the foot of each staircase stood a harassed porter snatching such tickets as offered themselves and glancing, like a distracted nursemaid, at hundreds of green, square pieces of pasteboard marked ‘Season’.
The left-hand staircase leads into the main booking hall of Holmdale station and this hall is lighted. As the flood, after the first trickling, really surges into the hall, it is possible for the first time fully to realise that not only are the component parts of the flood human, but that these humans are not uniform. Look, and you will see that there are women where at first you would have been prepared to take oath that there had been nothing save men. Look again, and you will see that all the hats are not, as you first supposed, bowler hats and from the same mould, but that every here and there a rebellious head flaunts cap or soft hat. Look again, and you will see that the men and the women are of different height, different feature and perhaps, even, different habit. But you will look in vain for man or woman who does not carry a small, square, flat case.
The flood pours through the booking hall and out through the double doors into the clear, cold night. In the gravelled, white-fenced, semi-circular forecourt to the station, wait, softly chugging, two bright-lighted omnibuses looking like distorted caravans. Each of these omnibuses is meant to hold—as he who peers may read—twenty-seven passengers. Each, not less than two minutes after the flood has begun to break about their wheels, grinds off through the night with fifty at least. The rest of the flood, thinning gradually into trickles and then, at last, into units, goes off walking and talking. Their voices carry a little shrill on the cold, dark air and the sound of their boot-soles rings on the smooth iron road. Between the forecourt and the station is a dark expanse edged at its far sides by little squares of yellow light where the houses begin.
II
‘Coo!’ said Mr Colby. ‘Sorry we couldn’t get the bus, ol’ man!’
‘Not a bit. Not a bit,’ mumbled Mr Colby’s friend, turning up the rather worn velvet collar of his black coat.
‘Not,’ said Mr Colby, ‘that I mind myself. Personally, Harvey, I rather look forward to a nice, crisp trudge. Seems somehow to blow away the cobwebs.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Harvey. ‘Quite.’
Mr Colby, having shifted his umbrella and attaché-case to his right hand, took Mr Harvey’s arm with his left.
‘It’s only a matter,’ said Mr Colby, ‘of a mile and a bit. Give us all the more appetite for our supper, eh?’
‘Quite,’ said Mr Harvey.
‘I wish,’ said Mr Colby, ‘that it wasn’t so dark. I’d have liked you to have seen the place a bit. However, you will tomorrow morning.’
Mr Harvey grunted.
‘There are two ways to get to my little place,’ said Mr Colby. ‘One’s across the fields and the other’s up here through Collingwood Road. Personally, I always go over the fields but I think we’ll go by Collingwood Road tonight. The field’s a bit rough for a stranger if he doesn’t know the ground.’ Mr Colby broke off to sniff the cold air with much and rather noisy appreciation. ‘Marvellously bracing air here,’ said he. ‘Didn’t you feel it as you got out of the train? You know we’re nearly five hundred feet up and really right in the middle of the country. Yes, Harvey, five hundred feet!’
‘Is that,’ said Mr Harvey, ‘so?’
‘Yes, five hundred feet. Why, since we’ve been here, my boy’s a different lad. When we came, a year ago, his mother—and his old dad too, I can tell you—were very worried about Lionel. You know what I mean, Harvey, he was sort of sickly and a bit undersized and now he’s a great big lad. Well, you’ll see him yourself … Here we are at Collingwood Road.’