The Man in the Queue (Musaicum Vintage Mysteries). Josephine Tey
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some yards from the inspector in the middle of the room, turning a soft felt hat in his slim gloved hands.
“You are Inspector Grant?” he asked.
Grant motioned him to a chair, and the youth, with a completely un-English grace, subsided sideways on to it, still clutching his hat, and began to talk.
“I saw you tonight at Laurent’s. I am in the pantry there. I clean the silver and things like that. They told me who you were, and after I think for a while, I decided to tell you all about it.”
“A very good idea,” said Grant. “Carry on. Are you Italian?”
“No; I am French. My name is Raoul Legarde.”
“All right; carry on.”
“I was in the queue the night the man was killed. It was my night off. For a long time I was standing next the man. He trod on my foot in accident, and after that we talked a little—about the play. I was on the outside and he was next the wall. Then a man came to talk to him and came in in front of me. The man who was new wanted something from the other man. He stayed until the door opened and the people moved. He was angry about something. They were not quarrelling—not as we quarrel—but I think they were angry. When the murder happened I ran away. I did not want to be mixed up with the police. But tonight I saw you, and you looked gentil, and so I made up my mind to tell you all about it.”
“Why didn’t you come to Scotland Yard and tell me?”
“I do not trust the Sûreté. They make very much out of nothing. And I have no friends in London.”
“When the man came to talk to the man who was murdered, and pushed you back a place, who was between you and the theatre wall?”
“A woman in black.”
Mrs. Ratcliffe. So far the boy was telling the truth.
“Can you describe the man who came and went away again?”
“He was not very tall. Not as tall as me. He had a hat like mine, only more brown, and a coat like mine”—he indicated his tight-fitting, waisted navy-blue coat—“only brown too. He was very dark, without moustache, and these stuck out.” He touched his own beautifully modelled cheek and chin bones.
“Would you know him again if you saw him?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well enough to swear to?”
“What is that?”
“To take your oath on.”
“Oh, yes.”
“What did the two men quarrel about?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear. I was not deliberately listening, you understand, and though I speak English, I do not understand if people talk very quickly. I think the man who came wanted something that the man who was killed would not give him.”
“When the man went away from the queue, how is it that no one saw him go?”
“Because just then the policeman was walking down saying ‘Stand back’ to the people.”
That was too glib. The inspector took out his notebook and pencil and, laying the pencil on the open page, held it out to his visitor. “Can you show me how you stood in the queue? Put marks for the people, and label them.”
The boy stretched out his left hand for the book, took the pencil in his right, and made a very intelligent diagram, unaware that he had at that moment defeated the distrusted Sûreté’s attempt to make something out of nothing.
Grant watched his serious, absorbed face and thought rapidly. He was telling the truth, then. He had been there until the man collapsed, had backed with the others away from the horror, and had continued backing until he could walk away from the danger of being at the mercy of foreign police. And he had actually seen the murderer and would recognize him again. Things were beginning to move.
He took back the book and pencil that the boy extended to him, and as he raised his eyes from the consideration of the diagram he caught the dark eyes resting rather wistfully on the food on the sideboard. It occurred to him that Legarde had probably come straight from his work to see him.
“Well, I’m very grateful to you,” he said. “Have some supper with me now, before you go.”
The boy refused shyly, but allowed himself to be persuaded, and together they had a substantial meal of Mr. Tomkins’ best pickled. Legarde talked freely of his people in Dijon—the sister who sent him French papers, the father who disapproved of beer since one ate grapes but not hops; of his life at Laurent’s and his impression of London and the English. And when Grant eventually let him out into the black stillness of the early morning, he turned on the doorstep and said apologetically and naïvely, “I am sorry now that I did not tell before, but you understand how it was? To have run away at first made it difficult. And I did not know that the police were so gentil.”
Grant dismissed him with a friendly pat on the shoulder, locked up, and picked up the telephone receiver. When the connexion was made, he said:
“Inspector Grant speaking. This to be sent to all stations: ‘Wanted, in connexion with the London Queue Murder, a left-handed man, about thirty years of age, slightly below middle height, very dark in complexion and hair, prominent cheek and chin bones, clean-shaven. When last seen was wearing a soft brown hat and tight-fitting brown coat. Has a recent scar on the left forefinger or thumb.’ ”
And then he went to bed.
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