Death on the Last Train by George Bellairs Page A

have it with me, I’ll wish you good-day … Well, what are you standing there for, Connie? Get my egg on …”
    â€œWe haven’t any eggs … You’ve had your ration for the week and the new ones don’t come till tomorrow.”
    â€œYou mean the pair of you’ve eaten ’em …”
    â€œYou know you’ve had ours as well as your own …” Littlejohn might not have been there at all.
    â€œI don’t want any tea, then …”
    â€œExcuse me. I must be off. Thank you very much. …”
    Littlejohn made an exit like an amateur actor who’s forgotten his lines.
    â€œI never saw such a swine in my life,” he told Forrester when he reached the police station. “How they put up with his tantrums, I don’t know. They ought to hit him on the head with the poker …”
    â€œInspector!!”
    Littlejohn grinned.
    â€œBy the way, Claypott has a typewriter. I got a sample of the type …”
    He handed Forrester the envelope he had stolen from the pile on the desk, hoping inwardly that Constance didn’t suffer thereby.
    Forrester took the anonymous letters from his drawer and with a magnifying glass compared them with the sample.
    â€œBy Jove, Littlejohn! Just look here. We’ve found out who wrote these letters. They were done on Claypott’s machine!”

Chapter VIII

Brewerton Camp
    Cromwell threaded his way through the mud of the camp like a cat on hot bricks. When he reached the orderly room where Harry Luxmore was a clerk, they told him Harry wasn’t in.
    â€œHe’s probably down at the
Green Man
in the village,” said an upstanding young sergeant. “That’s his haunt, I believe, when he’s off duty.”
    The
Green Man
was packed to the door with service men and girls. Cromwell was passed from one to another in his search for his quarry. Finally he ran him to earth at a table with two Waafs. They were all drinking double whiskies. Luxmore was doing all the talking, swanking to the girls who giggled and rolled their eyes at him.
    Luxmore was tall, thin and pasty faced, like a second rate dance-band maestro. Black hair, plastered down and combed back from a narrow forehead, straight nose slightly askew, little heavy-lidded eyes, a big mouth with loose lips and a streak of black moustache on the top lip, and hardly any chin.
    The main thing you noticed about his companions was their elaborate coiffures, straw-coloured and escaping from beneath their service caps.
    â€œWant me?”
    Luxmore gave Cromwell a bold look, fortified by the drink he had absorbed.
    â€œI’m from the police. I’d like a word with you.”
    That took the wind from Luxmore’s sails. There was apparently a soft spot somewhere in his conscience.
    â€œCan we talk privately?”
    â€œCome outside. We’ll sit on the bench by the ’bus stop. Won’t be long, girls. Order again if you like …”
    Cromwell told Luxmore what he wanted. The man’s confidence returned when he found he wasn’t involved.
    â€œBellis? Oh yes, little Alice Bryan’s fairy grandfather. Saw in the paper that somebody’s done for him. But I don’t know a thing about it.”
    â€œI didn’t say you did. But we want to know as much as we can about the life Bellis was leading. You were once friendly with Alice Bryan, weren’t you? Perhaps she said something at one time or another that might throw light on the case …”
    Luxmore grew quite matey. He put his hand on Cromwell’s shoulder, breathed whisky in his face and looked sorry for himself.
    Cromwell didn’t even trouble to look at him.
    â€œNice little gel, Alice. In fact, I quite fell for her in a big way. A chap’s got to have a bit of feminine company in a dump like this, but I could have gone a long way with Alice. Thought she was the same, but after her illness, she kind of got queer