Thirteen Guests by J Jefferson Farjeon

Author:J Jefferson Farjeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2015-07-30T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter XVIII

Enter the Police

Detective-Inspector Kendall made no secret of the fact that he never did things by halves. He left nothing to chance—or so he boasted—and his methods, with which he permitted no interference from anybody, were almost blatantly complete. “If I’d been born with a kink in my brain,” he said, “I’d have been one of the big criminals, but fortunately for law and order my brain is not pathological, so I catch ’em instead.” That was why he was moved from place to place when a district needed gingering up, and how he happened to be in Churleigh when an agitated country doctor phoned to the station one grey October evening. He had been doing some gingering up just before the bell had tinkled.

He stretched out a large hand and picked up the receiver. He listened intently for a few seconds without any change of expression, then said, “Wait a moment,” pulled a pencil and note-book towards him, and called, “Now begin all over again.” The agitated doctor at the other end stifled his indignation and obeyed. Kendall could send his compelling personality even along a wire. As the doctor spoke, the detective wrote, interrupting occasionally to ask a question, but never an unnecessary one, and when the conversation was over, with every detail recorded in shorthand, Kendall had given his first practical demonstration of the completeness that was his official religion.

“Half a dozen men, yourself, and a car to take the lot of us to Flensham,” he barked to a sergeant.

“Are we going to raid the Black Stag?” inquired the sergeant.

“No, we’re going to call on Lord Aveling at Bragley Court,” replied Kendall. “Look lively. Particulars on the way. And a bad mark to you for letting your police surgeon get ill when he’s wanted.”

Sergeant Price looked lively. He was already reacting to the gingering-up process. But when he had learned the particulars, while obeying instructions to “keep her at sixty,” he could not quite understand the tearing hurry, and decided in his own mind that this new hustler was rather overdoing it.

“I thought it was a fire or civil war or something,” he permitted himself to comment.

“No, only a couple of murders,” replied Kendall.

“Alleged.” Kendall nodded. “The last alleged murder I looked into turned out to be an accident,” said the sergeant.

“After a month of pottering,” answered Kendall scathingly. “Well, now we’re reversing the process. The accidents are turning into murders. And we’ll see whether we can do the clearing up in thirty hours instead of thirty days.”

“Why not make it minutes?” murmured the sergeant.

Kendall smiled.

“Might even do that—you never know,” he remarked. “But we’re up against one handicap from the start, and mind we all see eye to eye about it. This is for you boys behind there, too,” he called over his shoulder.

“What’s the handicap?” asked the sergeant.

“Journalist.”

“Ah.”

“And Bultin, of all journalists! He’s dropped in on the ground floor, and he’s probably planted there now with both feet.”

“Is that why you’ve brought along the army?”

“What’s your opinion of journalists, Price?” inquired Kendall.

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