When the job was done, and Curly had helped him pull the boat up into the yard, they went up the stairs together.
“Don’t go getting any ideas about that stuff, Wally.” Curly said. “Two months from now, when everything’s nice and quiet again, you and me’s going to haul it up, and if it’s been touched you’ll finish up down there in place of it.”
Under the street lamp in front of the Black Swan, Curly stopped and looked at him. “Who’d have thought it? Wally the Beard,” he said, and gave him a playful jab to the mid-section that nearly doubled him up. Laughing, he vanished into the night.
It was a long time before Phillip Marshall could get to sleep that night and he awoke late, feeling tired and irritable. He decided he’d walk round to Noreen’s and take her out to lunch somewhere. After he’d dressed in his smart clothes and put on his beard he felt better. He was coming down the front steps when he saw Mrs. Jones, his sharp-eyed old landlady from Corson Street. He was hoping she wouldn’t recognize him and pretend not to see her, but she came right up to him.
“Aren’t you Mr. Marshall, Walter Mills’ friend? You visited him.”
He muttered something about having to catch a bus and hurried on, but not before Mrs. Jones had noticed he was wearing a belted raincoat belonging to Walter Mills. She was sure of it because she’d repaired the belt herself.
Wise in the way of lodgers, she wondered if perhaps Walter Mills was sharing a room here with Mr. Marshall, and if this wasn’t a good opportunity to get the rent that was owing to her when he left so suddenly. She rang the bell and spoke to Phillip Marshall’s landlady, and in no time the two of them were up in Phillip Marshall’s room indulging the favourite pastime of London landladies. Mrs. Jones immediately recognized all Walter Mills’ things.
“And look at this” she cried when they turned up a Savings Bank book showing he had had live hundred pounds but had drawn most of it out in the last few weeks.
When they found a canvas hold-all with reddish brown stains on it, that was enough for Mrs. Jones; she didn’t read the Police Court Gazette for nothing; in her vocabulary, stains went with only one other word — blood. She went to the police.
When he got back to his lodgings late in the afternoon, Phillip Marshall’s landlady met him in the hall with the news that a couple of plainclothesmen were waiting up in his room. “And I’ll trouble you to pack and get out. I keep a respectable house,” she told him.
Well, this is it, he thought. He wondered what the sentence was for embezzling funds. It had been a bad day from start to finish. Noreen hadn’t been at home; the place had seemed deserted. And when he had asked Mabel at the Black Swan if she’d been in, Mabel told him Noreen had sent a message by Curly that she’d had to go to Brighton for a few days to look after a sister who was sick.
But why Curly? That’s what he couldn’t understand. Mabel said he’d come in with the message about ten-thirty the night before, just about two hours after he had left Curly in the street.
Wally wondered if he should lust walk out the door and away from it all, when a voice called down the stairwell.
“Mr. Marshall, will you come up here, please?”
The man introduced himself. “I’m Inspector Marples and this is my assistant, Detective Sergeant Atkins.”
While the Inspector told him they were looking into the disappearance of Walter Mills, and would like to know why he had Walter Mills’ things, Phillip Marshall could hardly keep from laughing, in fact, it was such a relief that he felt slightly hysterical.
“That’s easily explained,” he said. “Wally went up north to get a job when he left Mrs. Jones’. He asked me to look after his stuff. Said he’d let me know when he got settled, and I could send it on to him.”
After more questions, the Inspector produced the canvas holdall. “And perhaps you could explain these stains, Mr. Marshall?”
“That’s blood. I cut myself — see,” and he rolled up a sleeve to show them.
“You are telling us this is your blood on Walter Mills’ bag, Mr. Marshall?” the Inspector asked quietly.
“That’s right. I cut myself working on my boat and it got on the bag,” he said brightly.
“So, you have a boat,” he said softly.
“Yes, it’s at Bunton’s yard, just at the bottom of the street.”
The Inspector and the Sergeant exchanged looks. “I think we had better see this boat,” the Inspector said.
Down in the yard they stood around looking at Phillip Marshall’s boat, while he lit a cigarette and thought what clunks these coppers are.
“It’s just been painted and varnished, sir,” said the Sergeant.
“It may seem strange, but I had noticed that, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Atkins was bent over, pulling at something. He straightened up with a section of the floorboards in his hand.
“Look at this, sir,” he pointed to some stains faintly visible on the surface of the wood.
“I was wondering about that, Sergeant,” said the Inspector, “but you failed to notice something very interesting; the wood is unvarnished.”
“You don’t varnish floorboards,” Phillip said.
“I’m not interested in that,” the Inspector said sharply. “Can you explain these stains?”
“Blood,” Phillip said impatiently. “I told you I cut myself and it went on the bag and the boards.”
“This wood shows evidence of a determined attempt to get rid of the stains; it’s been scoured, I should say...”
“With bleach,” Phillip cut in.
“Why did you want to get rid of the stains, Mr. Marshall?” the Inspector asked quietly.
Phillip gave a laugh. “Why? Because I didn’t want blood all over the boat.”
Inspector Marples stared out over the depressingly misty vista of the Thames. He could see signs of any sort of a case slipping away and was turning to go when he asked casually, “Do you always keep your boat up here?”
“Yes, but I’ve got moorings now and I’ll...” Phillip’s voice trailed off as he realized where it was leading. But Inspector Marples was leaning forward like a long, thin bird.
“You were saying, Mr. Marshall, that you have moorings.” He looked over the river at the boats tied up and then at the two float-cans some distance out. “Would those be they, Mr. Marshall?” he asked, pointing.
“Yes, but as I said, I haven’t used them yet.”
The Inspector gave a shrug as though it were of no importance. But as he turned to Sergeant Atkins, Walter had a feeling he was back on the scent.
“We’ll take the floorboard and the bag, Sergeant, and get the lab to run an analysis on them. Keep yourself available, Mr. Marshall. We’ll be back here in the morning.”
As he walked home, Phillip s first inclination was to take off. But they would soon catch up with him, he decided, and then it would be worse. Also, there was a chance that Inspector Marples might give up on the case, and then he wouldn’t have to disclose that he was Walter Mills. If the worst came to the worst and he had to tell them who he was, then he’d have to pick the moment before things went too far and they found out about Curly’s load at the bottom of the river. If there was one thing that scared him even more than Noreen and everyone at the Black Swan finding out about him, it was what Curly would do if the coppers dragged up that sack full of stuff.
Walter was in the boat-yard early next morning and hung around for more than an hour waiting for the sound of footsteps on the wooden stairs leading down from the Embankmen, when a River Police launch roared m towards the wooden jetty. Inspector Atkins jumped down and the launch turned away up river.
“I think we’d better find somewhere to talk, Mr. Marshall,” the Inspector said. So he led the way to the boathouse, and after he’d shut the door and sat down, the Inspector came straight to the point.