Read Beware of the Trains for Free Online

his breath, expelled it in a sigh.
    “Rather a remarkable woman,” he commented. “How did her husband come to be drowned? Accident?”
    Best shook his head. “It was the idiot. The idiot pushed him in—according to her, that is: there wasn’t any other witness, and the idiot can’t talk at all, can’t even understand what you’re asking him, most of the time…” Best crossed to the body of Foley, and uncovered the dead face; Fen joined him. “Not pretty, is he? Wasn’t any too pretty when he was alive, either.”
    “M’m,” said Fen. “It looks as if he must have been in the water a week or more.”
    For a moment Best was surprised; then abruptly he smiled.
    “I was forgetting,” he said, “that you knew about these things… Six days, actually.”
    “And badly knocked about, too.” Fen had pulled the sheet further down and was contemplating the body with some interest. “Rocks, I suppose: currents.”
    “Rocks,” said Best. “And currents and rapids and weirs and deep pools.”
    “Rapids? Weirs?” Fen looked up. “The river, you mean? I was imagining he’d been drowned in the sea.”
    “No, no, sir. What happened—d’you know Yeopool?”
    “I’m afraid not.”
    “Well, you probably wouldn’t: it’s only a tiny village, just down off the edge of the moors. Anyway, Yeopool’s where Foley and his wife lived, and that’s where he got pushed in. It’s a treacherous bit of the river there, even for anyone who can swim—and he couldn’t: so I don’t imagine he lasted long. … Afterwards, he must have got tangled up under water somehow or other. It was fifteen miles downstream, at a village called Clapton, that they picked him up yesterday, and by that time he’d been so battered that he didn’t have a shred of clothing left on him anywhere… That’s not uncommon, sir, as you’ll know.”
    “In a fast-moving river,” Fen agreed, “you could almost say it was the rule. Except of course for the—”
    But at this point a Mortuary attendant looked in; and: “O.K., Frank,” called Best. “All finished. Has that other lot gone?” Frank indicated that it had. “Then we’ll go, too.” Best pulled the sheet back into position. “Don’t you waste your pity on Foley, though,” he said to Fen as they left the room. “If you should feel like being sorry for him, just keep in mind what he was doing at the time the idiot shoved him in.”
    “Which was?”
    “He’d hit his wife and knocked her on to the ground,” said Best calmly, “and he was kicking her with his heavy boots. Not for the first time, either… Yes. He’s where he belongs. And if his widow isn’t exactly inconsolable, you can hardly blame her, can you?”

    In the police-car, on the way back to the police-station, Fen remained mute; it was only when they were actually pulling into the yard that he spoke again.
    “This Foley business,” he said: “are you handling it yourself?”
    “No. The Chief’s handling it.”
    “The Chief Constable, you mean?”
    ‘That’s it: Commander Bowen.”
    “But does he often do that sort of thing?”
    Best parked the car tidily, switched off the engine, and leaned back. “No, thank God,” he said with candour. “Point is, though, he himself lives at Yeopool. So when Mrs. Foley reported the accident—or the murder, call it what you like—to the village constable, the village constable went straight to the C.C.; and he, seeing it had to do with some of his own people—he rather fancies himself playing the Squire with ‘em—he decided he’d deal with it personally. A good thing, too,” Best added, “that it isn’t anything more complicated than what it is. A year and a half in the Thames police, thirty years ago, isn’t much training for serious C.I.D. work these days.”
    “That the only qualification he has, then?”
    “The only practical qualification, yes. And he’s probably forgotten most of that during the time he was in the Navy. He’s all right, of