Beware of the Trains by Edmund Crispin Read Free Book Online Page B

, with that background.”
    “I was banking on that, yes,” said Fen. “And when I saw the panic in his eyes— his eyes, not hers —at my mention of the boots, I knew my guess about the blackmail was right: knew that he’d realised her guilt as soon as the body was recovered, and was putting a price on his silence and protection. It was just chance, of course, that he happened to be personally in charge of the case. But once he was in charge of it, his position was pretty well impregnable: since even if any of his subordinates had wondered about the boots, they’d have assumed there was some perfectly good explanation which he knew of and they didn’t—and in any case, they’d have thought more than twice about voicing suspicions against that particular quarter…”
    Fen sighed. “Hence my interference. And now what are we left with?”
    “Bowen will have to resign,” Best told him. “That’s the least that can happen. And there’ll be a charge of manslaughter—murder, perhaps—against her.”
    “She’ll get off lightly, though.” Fen spoke with confidence which the event was to justify. “And when she comes out, I’ll make a point of doing anything for her that I can… I say, Best, do you think she’d have preferred the other thing—Bowen, I mean?”
    “You heard the way she accused him, sir,” Best pointed out. “If you ask me, she wasn’t looking forward to their friendship one little bit… No, sir, you can make your mind easy as regards that matter, I’m sure. I wouldn’t be knowing if a certain fate’s really worse, as they say, than actual death . But if I was a woman—well, sir, as between Bowen and a couple of years in Holloway, I know which I’d choose.”

“Lacrimae Rerum”
    “You chatter about ‘the perfect crime,’” said Wakefield irritably, “but you seem incapable of realising that it isn’t a topic one can argue about at all. One can only pontificate, which is irrational and useless.”
    “Have some more port,” said Haldane.
    “Well, yes, I will… The perfect murder, for instance, isn’t known to be a murder at all; it looks like natural death, and no suggestion of foul play ever enters anyone’s mind. Only the imperfect murders are known to be murders. And consequently, to argue about ‘the perfect murder’ is to argue about something which you cannot, by definition, prove to exist.”
    “Your logic,” said Fen, “isn’t exactly impeccable.”
    Wakefield gazed at him stonily. “What’s wrong with my logic?” he demanded.
    “Its major premise is wrong. You’ve gone astray in defining the perfect murder.”
    “I have n—How have I gone astray?”
    “The sort of thing you suggest—the apparently natural death—has one disadvantage from the murderer’s point of view.”
    “And that is?“ Wakefield leaned forward across the table. “That is?”
    “At the risk of boring you all, I could illustrate it.” Fen glanced at his host and his fellow guests, who nodded a vinously emphatic approval; only Wakefield, who hated losing the conversational initiative, showed any sign of restiveness. “What I have in mind is a murder which was committed several years before the war—the first criminal case, as it happens, with which I ever had anything to do.”
    “Quite a distinction for it,” Wakefield muttered uncivilly.
    “No doubt. And it was certainly the most daring and ingenious crime I’ve ever encountered.”
    “They all are,” said Wakefield.
    “It succeeded, did it?” Haldane interposed rather hurriedly. “That’s to say, the criminal wasn’t discovered or punished?”
    “Discovered,” said Fen, “but not punished.”
    “You mean there was no case against him?”
    “There was a cast-iron case; conclusive proof, followed by a circumstantial confession. But the police couldn’t act on it.”
    “Oh, well,” said Wakefield disgustedly, “if all you mean is that he escaped to some country he couldn’t be extradited