The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey Read Free Book Online Page A

sincerely hoped they never would.
    Before he opened the letter that awaited him he dusted it with powder and found it covered with fingerprints. He slit the top delicately, holding the letter, which was fat and softish, in a pair of forceps, and drew out a wad of Bank of England five-pound notes and a half-sheet of notepaper. On the notepaper was printed: "To bury the man who was found in the queue."
    There were five notes. Twenty-five pounds.
    Grant sat down and stared. In all his time in the C.I.D. a more unexpected thing had not happened. Somewhere in London tonight was some one who cared sufficiently for the dead man to spend twenty-five pounds to keep him from a pauper's grave, but who would not claim him. Was this corroboration of his intimidation theory? Or was it conscience money? Had the murderer a superstitious desire to do the right thing by his victim's body? Grant thought not. The man who stuck another in the back didn't care a hoot what became of the body. The man had a pal man or woman in London tonight, a pal who cared to the tune of twenty-five pounds.
    Grant called in Williams, and together they considered the plain, cheap, white envelope and the strong, plain capitals.
    "Well," said Grant, "what do you know?"
    "A man," said Williams. "Not well off. Not used to writing much. Clean. Smokes. Depressed."
    "Excellent!" said Grant. "You're no good as a Watson, Williams. You get away with all the kudos."
    Williams, who knew all about Watson—at the age of eleven he had spent hunted moments in a hayloft in Worcestershire trying to read The Speckled Band without being discovered by Authority, who had banned it smiled and said, "I expect you have got far more out of it, sir."
    But Grant had not. "Except that he's a poor hand at the business. Fancy sending anything as easily traced as English five-pound notes!" He blew the light, soft powder over the half-sheet of notepaper, but found no fingerprints. He summoned a constable and sent the precious envelope and the bundle of notes to have all fingerprints photographed. The sheet of notepaper bearing the printed message he sent to the handwriting expert.
    "Well, the banks are shut now, worse luck. Are you in a hurry to get back to the missus, Williams?"
    No, Williams was in no hurry. His missus and the baby were in Southend with his mother-in-law for a week.
    "In that case," Grant said, "we'll dine together and you can give me the benefit of your ideas on the subject of murders in queues."
    Some years before, Grant had inherited a considerable legacy—a legacy sufficient to permit him to retire into idle nonentity if such had been his desire. But Grant loved his work even when he swore and called it a dog's life, and the legacy had been used only to smooth and embroider life until what would have been the bleak places were eliminated, and to make some bleak places in other lives less impossible. There was a little grocer's shop in a southern suburb, bright as a jewel with its motley goods, which owed its existence to the legacy and to Grant's chance meeting with a ticket-of-leave man on his first morning out. It was Grant who had been the means of "putting him away," and it was Grant who provided the means of his rehabilitation. It was owing entirely to the legacy, therefore, that Grant was an habitué of so exclusive an eating place as Laurent's, and—a much more astonishing and impressive fact—a pet of the head waiter's. Only five persons in Europe are pets of Laurent's head waiter, and Grant was thoroughly conscious of the honour, and thoroughly sensible of the reason.
    Marcal met them halfway down the green-and-gold room, with his face screwed to an expression of the most excruciating sorrow. He was desolated, but there was not a table worthy of Monsieur left. There were no tables at all except that much-to-be condemned one in that corner. Monsieur had not let him know that he was to be expected. He was desolated, desolated simply.
    Grant took the table without a