Lord Peter Views the Body · The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag (1/2)

The Fantastic Horror of the Cat in the Bag

The Great North Road wound away like a flat, steel-grey ribbon. Up it, with the sun and wind behind them, two black specks moved swiftly. To the yokel in charge of the hay-wagon they were only two of “they dratted motorcyclists,” as they barked and zoomed past him in rapid succession. A little farther on, a family man, driving delicately with a two-seater sidecar, grinned as the sharp rattle of the o.h.v. Norton was succeeded by the feline shriek of an angry Scott Flying-Squirrel. He, too, in bachelor days, had taken a side in that perennial feud. He sighed regretfully as he watched the racing machines dwindle away northwards.

At that abominable and unexpected S-bend across the bridge above Hatfield, the Norton man, in the pride of his heart, turned to wave a defiant hand at his pursuer. In that second, the enormous bulk of a loaded charabanc loomed down upon him from the bridgehead. He wrenched himself away from it in a fierce wobble, and the Scott, cornering melodramatically, with left and right footrests alternately skimming the tarmac, gained a few triumphant yards. The Norton leapt forward with wide-open throttle. A party of children, seized with sudden panic, rushed helter-skelter across the road. The Scott lurched through them in drunken swerves. The road was clear, and the chase settled down once more.

It is not known why motorists, who sing the joys of the open road, spend so much petrol every weekend grinding their way to Southend and Brighton and Margate, in the stench of each other’s exhausts, one hand on the horn and one foot on the brake, their eyes starting from their orbits in the nerve-racking search for cops, corners, blind turnings, and crossroad suicides. They ride in a baffled fury, hating each other. They arrive with shattered nerves and fight for parking places. They return, blinded by the headlights of fresh arrivals, whom they hate even worse than they hate each other. And all the time the Great North Road winds away like a long, flat, steel-grey ribbon⁠—a surface like a racetrack, without traps, without hedges, without side-roads, and without traffic. True, it leads to nowhere in particular; but, after all, one pub is very much like another.

The tarmac reeled away, mile after mile. The sharp turn to the right at Baldock, the involute intricacies of Biggleswade, with its multiplication of signposts, gave temporary check, but brought the pursuer no nearer. Through Tempsford at full speed, with bellowing horn and exhaust, then, screaming like a hurricane past the R.A.C. post where the road forks in from Bedford. The Norton rider again glanced back; the Scott rider again sounded his horn ferociously. Flat as a chessboard, dyke and field revolved about the horizon.

The constable at Eaton Socon was by no means an anti-motor fiend. In fact, he had just alighted from his push-bike to pass the time of day with the A.A. man on point duty at the crossroads. But he was just and God-fearing. The sight of two maniacs careering at seventy miles an hour into his protectorate was more than he could be expected to countenance⁠—the more, that the local magistrate happened to be passing at that very moment in a pony-trap. He advanced to the middle of the road, spreading his arms in a majestic manner. The Norton rider looked, saw the road beyond complicated by the pony-trap and a traction-engine, and resigned himself to the inevitable. He flung the throttle-lever back, stamped on his squealing brakes, and skidded to a standstill. The Scott, having had notice, came up mincingly, with a voice like a pleased kitten.

“Now, then,” said the constable, in a tone of reproof, “ain’t you got no more sense than to come drivin’ into the town at a ’undred mile an hour. This ain’t Brooklands, you know. I never see anything like it. ’Ave to take your names and numbers, if you please. You’ll bear witness, Mr. Nadgett, as they was doin’ over eighty.”

The A.A. man, after a swift glance over the two sets of handlebars to assure himself that the black sheep were not of his flock, said, with an air of impartial accuracy, “About sixty-six and a half, I should say, if you was to ask me in court.”

“Look here, you blighter,” said the Scott man indignantly to the Norton man, “why the hell couldn’t you stop when you heard me hoot? I’ve been chasing you with your beastly bag nearly thirty miles. Why can’t you look after your own rotten luggage?”

He indicated a small, stout bag, tied with string to his own carrier.

“That?” said the Norton man, with scorn. “What do you mean? It’s not mine. Never saw it in my life.”

This barefaced denial threatened to render the Scott rider speechless.

“Of all the⁠—” he gasped. “Why, you crimson idiot, I saw it fall off, just the other side of Hatfield. I yelled and blew like fury. I suppose that overhead gear of yours makes so much noise you can’t hear anything else. I take the trouble to pick the thing up, and go after you, and all you do is to race off like a lunatic and run me into a cop. Fat lot of thanks one gets for trying to be decent to fools on the road.”

“That ain’t neither here nor there,” said the policeman. “Your license, please, sir.”

“Here you are,” said the Scott man, ferociously flapping out his pocketbook. “My name’s Walters, and it’s the last time I’ll try to do anybody a good turn, you can lay your shirt.”

“Walters,” said the constable, entering the particulars laboriously in his notebook, “and Simpkins. You’ll ’ave your summonses in doo course. It’ll be for about a week ’ence, on Monday or thereabouts, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Another forty bob gone west,” growled Mr. Simpkins, toying with his throttle. “Oh, well, can’t be helped, I suppose.”

“Forty bob?” snorted the constable. “What do you think? Furious driving to the common danger, that’s wot it is. You’ll be lucky to get off with five quid apiece.”

“Oh, blast!” said the other, stamping furiously on the kick-starter. The engine roared into life, but Mr. Walters dexterously swung his machine across the Norton’s path.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said viciously. “You jolly well take your bleeding bag, and no nonsense. I tell you, I saw it fall off.”

“Now, no language,” began the constable, when he suddenly became aware that the A.A. man was staring in a very odd manner at the bag and making signs to him.

“ ’Ullo,” he demanded, “wot’s the matter with the⁠—bleedin’ bag, did you say? ’Ere, I’d like to ’ave a look at that ’ere bag, sir, if you don’t mind.”

“It’s nothing to do with me,” said Mr. Walters, handing it over. “I saw it fall off and⁠—” His voice died away in his throat, and his eyes became fixed upon one corner of the bag, where something damp and horrible was seeping darkly through.

“Did you notice this ’ere corner when you picked it up?” asked the constable. He prodded it gingerly and looked at his fingers.

“I don’t know⁠—no⁠—not particularly,” stammered Walters. “I didn’t notice anything. I⁠—I expect it burst when it hit the road.”

The constable probed the split seam in silence, and then turned hurriedly round to wave away a couple of young women who had stopped to stare. The A.A. man peered curiously, and then started back with a sensation of sickness.

“Ow, Gawd!” he gasped. “It’s curly⁠—it’s a woman’s.”

“It’s not me,” screamed Simpkins. “I swear to heaven it’s not mine. This man’s trying to put it across me.”

“Me?” gasped Walters. “Me? Why, you filthy, murdering brute, I tell you I saw it fall off your carrier. No wonder you blinded off when you saw me coming. Arrest him, constable. Take him away to prison⁠—”

“Hullo, officer!” said a voice behind them. “What’s all the excitement? You haven’t seen a motorcyclist go by with a little bag on his carrier, I suppose?”

A big open car with an unnaturally long bonnet had slipped up to them, silent as an owl. The whole agitated party with one accord turned upon the driver.

“Would this be it, sir?”

The motorist pushed off his goggles, disclosing a long, narrow nose and a pair of rather cynical-looking grey eyes.

“It looks rather⁠—” he began; and then, catching sight of the horrid relic protruding from one corner, “In God’s name,” he enquired, “what’s that?”

“That’s what we’d like to know, sir,” said the constable grimly.

“H’m,” said the motorist, “I seem to have chosen an uncommonly suitable moment for enquirin’ after my bag. Tactless. To say now that it is not my bag is simple, though in no way convincing. As a matter of fact, it is not mine, and I may say that, if it had been, I should not have been at any pains to pursue it.”

The constable scratched his head.

“Both these gentlemen⁠—” he began.

The two cyclists burst into simultaneous and heated disclaimers. By this time a small crowd had collected, which the A.A. scout helpfully tried to shoo away.

“You’ll all ’ave to come with me to the station,” said the harassed constable. “Can’t stand ’ere ’oldin’ up the traffic. No tricks, now. You wheel them bikes, and I’ll come in the car with you, sir.”

“But supposing I was to let her rip and kidnap you,” said the motorist, with a grin. “Where’d you be? Here,” he added, turning to the A.A. man, “can you handle this outfit?”

“You bet,” said the scout, his eye running lovingly over the long sweep of the exhaust and the rakish lines of the car.

“Right. Hop in. Now, officer, you can toddle along with the other suspects and keep an eye on them. Wonderful head I’ve got for detail. By the way, that foot-brake’s on the fierce side. Don’t bully it, or you’ll surprise yourself.”

The lock of the bag was forced at the police-station in the midst of an excitement unparalleled in the calm annals of Eaton Socon, and the dreadful contents laid reverently upon a table. Beyond a quantity of cheesecloth in which they had been wrapped, there was nothing to supply any clue to the mystery.

“Now,” said the superintendent, “what do you gentlemen know about this?”

“Nothing whatever,” said Mr. Simpkins, with a ghastly countenance, “except that this man tried to palm it off on me.”

“I saw it fall off this man’s carrier just the other side of Hatfield,” repeated Mr. Walters firmly, “and I rode after him for thirty miles trying to stop him. That’s all I know about it, and I wish to God I’d never touched the beastly thing.”

“Nor do I know anything about it personally,” said the car-owner, “but I fancy I know what it is.”

“What’s that?” asked the superintendent sharply.

“I rather imagine it’s the head of the Finsbury Park murder⁠—though, mind you, that’s only a guess.”

“That’s just what I’ve been thinking myself,” agreed the superintendent, glancing at a daily paper which lay on his desk, its headlines lurid with the details of that very horrid crime, “and, if so, you are to be congratulated, constable, on a very important capture.”

“Thank you, sir,” said the gratified officer, saluting.

“Now I’d better take all your statements,” said the superintendent. “No, no; I’ll hear the constable first. Yes, Briggs?”

The constable, the A.A. man, and the two motorcyclists having given their versions of the story, the superintendent turned to the motorist.

“And what have you got to say about it?” he enquired. “First of all, your name and address.”

The other produced a card, which the superintendent copied out and returned to him respectfully.

“A bag of mine, containing some valuable jewellery, was stolen from my car yesterday, in Piccadilly,” began the motorist. “It is very much like this, but has a cipher lock. I made enquiries through Scotland Yard, and was informed today that a bag of precisely similar appearance had been cloak-roomed yesterday afternoon at Paddington, main line. I hurried round there, and was told by the clerk that just before the police warning came through the bag had been claimed by a man in motorcycling kit. A porter said he saw the man leave the station, and a loiterer observed him riding off on a motor-bicycle. That was about an hour before. It seemed pretty hopeless, as, of course, nobody had noticed even the make of the bike, let alone the number. Fortunately, however, there was a smart little girl. The smart little girl had been dawdling round outside the station, and had heard a motorcyclist ask a taxi-driver the quickest route to Finchley. I left the police hunting for the taxi-driver, and started off, and in Finchley I found an intelligent boy-scout. He had seen a motorcyclist with a bag on the carrier, and had waved and shouted to him that the strap was loose. The cyclist had got off and tightened the strap, and gone straight on up the road towards Chipping Barnet. The boy hadn’t been near enough to identify the machine⁠—the only thing he knew for certain was that it wasn’t a Douglas, his brother having one of that sort. At Barnet I got an odd little story of a man in a motor-coat who had staggered into a pub with a ghastly white face and drunk two double brandies and gone out and ridden off furiously. Number?⁠—of course not. The barmaid told me. She didn’t notice the number. After that it was a tale of furious driving all along the road. After Hatfield, I got the story of a road-race. And here we are.”

“It seems to me my lord,” said the superintendent, “that the furious driving can’t have been all on one side.”

“I admit it,” said the other, “though I do plead in extenuation that I spared the women and children and hit up the miles in the wide, open spaces. The point at the moment is⁠—”

“Well, my lord,” said the superintendent, “I’ve got your story, and if it’s all right, it can be verified by enquiry at Paddington and Finchley and so on. Now, as for these two gentlemen⁠—”

“It’s perfectly obvious,” broke in Mr. Walters, “the bag dropped off this man’s carrier, and when he saw me coming after him with it, he thought it was a good opportunity to saddle me with the cursed thing. Nothing could be clearer.”

“It’s a lie,” said Mr. Simpkins. “Here’s this fellow has got hold of the bag I don’t say how, but I can guess⁠—and he has the bright idea of shoving the blame on me. It’s easy enough to say a thing’s fallen off a man’s carrier. Where’s the proof? Where’s the strap? If his story’s true, you’d find the broken strap on my bus. The bag was on his machine⁠—tied on, tight.”

“Yes, with string,” retorted the other. “If I’d gone and murdered someone and run off with their head, do you think I’d be such an ass as to tie it on with a bit of twopenny twine? The strap’s worked loose and fallen off on the road somewhere; that’s what’s happened to that.”

“Well, look here,” said the man addressed as “my lord,” “I’ve got an idea for what it’s worth. Suppose, superintendent, you turn out as many of your men as you think adequate to keep an eye on three desperate criminals, and we all tool down to Hatfield together. I can take two in my bus at a pinch, and no doubt you have a police car. If this thing did fall off the carrier, somebody beside Mr. Walters may have seen it fall.”

“They didn’t,” said Mr. Simpkins.

“There wasn’t a soul,” said Mr. Walters, “but how do you know there wasn’t, eh? I thought you didn’t know anything about it.”

“I mean, it didn’t fall off, so nobody could have seen it,” gasped the other.

“Well, my lord,” said the superintendent, “I’m inclined to accept your suggestion, as it gives us a chance of enquiring into your story at the same time. Mind you, I’m not saying I doubt it, you being who you are. I’ve read about some of your detective work, my lord, and very smart I considered it. But, still, it wouldn’t be my duty not to get corroborative evidence if possible.”

“Good egg! Quite right,” said his lordship. “Forward the light brigade. We can do it easily in⁠—that is to say, at the legal rate of progress it needn’t take us much over an hour and a half.”