Have His Carcase

It was now clear enough, of course, why no reply to the S.O.S. message had been received from either Mr Perkins himself or from his associates at the time of broadcasting. It was now also made clear why nobody had made, any inquiry about Mr Perkin’s disappearance. Mr. Perkins was a teacher in an L.C.C. School, and had been granted leave of absence for one term on account of his health. He was unmarried, and an orphan with, no near relations, and he lived in a hostel in the neighbourhood of Tottenham Court ‘Road. He had left, the hostel in May, announcing that he was going on a tramping holiday and would have no settled, address. He would write from time to time, telling the staff of the hostel where to forward letters. As it happened, no letters had arrived for him since the last time he had written (on the 29th May, from Taunton). Consequently, nobody had thought to make any inquiry about him, and the S.O.S which mentioned only his surname had left it doubtful whether the Mr Perkins wanted by the police was the Mr Julian Perkins of the hostel. In any case, since nobody knew where he was supposed to be, there was no information that anybody could have supplied. The police got into touch with the hostel and had Mr Perkins’s mail sent down. It consisted of an advertisement from a cheap tailor, an invitation to secure a last-minute chance in the Irish Sweep, and a, letter from a pupil, all about Boy Scout activities.

Mr Julian Perkins seemed to be an unlikely sort of criminal, but one never knew. He was interviewed, propped up in bed in his little red hospital jacket, with his anxious and unshaven face surrounded with bandages, from which his large horn-rimmed glasses looked out with serio-comic effect.

‘So you abandoned your trip and walked back to Darley with this young lady,’ said Constable Ormond. ‘Now, why did you do that, sir?’

‘I wanted to do my best to help the young lady.’

‘Quite so, sir, very natural. But as a matter of fact, of course, you couldn’t help her much.!

‘No.’ Mr Perkins fumbled with the sheet. ‘She said something about, going along to look for the body, but of course I didn’t see that I was called upon to do that. I’m not a strong man; besides, the tide; was coming in I thought-’

P.C. Ormond waited patiently.

Mr Perkins suddenly relieved his mind with an outburst of confession.

‘I didn’t like to go on along that road, and that’s the truth, I was afraid the murderer might be lurking about somewhere.!

‘Murderer, eh? What made you think’ it was, a case of murder?’

Mr Perkins shrank among his pillows.

‘The young lady said it might be I’m not a very courageous person, I’m afraid. You see, since my illness, I’ve been nervous nervous, you know. And I’m not physically strong. I didn’t like the idea at all.’

‘I’m sure you can’t be blamed for that, sir.’’ The policeman’s bluff heartiness seemed to alarm Mr Perkins, as though he detected something false in the ring of it.

‘So when you came to Darley you felt that the young lady was in good hands and needed no further protection.’ So you went away without saying good-bye.’

‘Yes. Yes. I–I didn’t want to be mixed up in anything, you know. In my position it isn’t nice. A teacher has to be careful: And besides —’

‘Yes, sir?’’

Mr Perkins had another confessional outburst.

‘I’d been thinking it over. I thought it was all rather queer. I wondered if the young lady — one hears of such things — suicide pacts and so on — You see? I felt that I didn’t want to be associated with that kind of thing. I am rather timid by nature, I admit, and really not strong since my illness, and what with one thing and another-’

P.C. Ormond, who had a touch of imagination and a strong, though; elementary, sense of humour, smothered a grin behind his hand. He suddenly saw Mr Perkins, terrified, hobbling on his blistered feet between the devil and the deep sea; fleeing desperately from the vision of a homicidal maniac at the Flat-Iron only to be pursued by the nightmare that he was travelling in company with a ruthless and probably immoral murderess.

He licked his pencil and started again.

‘Quite so, sir. I see your point. Very disagreeable situation — Well, now — just as a matter of routine, you know, sir, we’ve got to check up on the movements of everybody who.passed along the coast-road that day. Nothing to be alarmed at.’ The pencil happened to be an indelible one and left an unpleasant taste in the mouth. He passed a pink tongue along his purple-stained lips, looking, to Mr Perkins’s goblin-haunted imagination, like a very large dog savouring a juicy bone. ‘Whereabouts might you have been round about two o’clock, sir?’

Mr Perkins’s mouth dropped open.

‘I–I—I—’ he began, quavering.

A nurse, hovering near, intervened.

‘I hope you won’t have to be long, constable,’ she said, acidly. ‘I can’t have my patient upset. Take a sip of this, No, 22, and you must try not to get excited.!