BIGGLES INVESTIGATES

and other stories of the Air Police

by Captain W. E. Johns

6. THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT (Pages 105 – 116)

“It’s about time some of these star private detectives we see on the tele (sic) were dropped into the Force so they could try their hand at the real thing. It makes me laugh the way they find clues sticking out like organ stops – which, of course, the police were too dumb to notice”. The speaker was Detective-Inspector Gaskin, of Scotland Yard, and in his voice there was more than a hint of sarcasm. Biggles, who had gone to the canteen, and finding him there had joined him in a cup of tea, smiled sympathetically. “Don’t let it worry you,” he consoled. “How else would you have the story end? Let the crook get away with it? That wouldn’t do”. (Johns followed that philosophy all his life. The crooks never get away with it in his stories!). “You’re not forgetting I’m what you might call an amateur myself,” reminded Biggles. “I’ve only become, shall we say, semi-professional, by virtue of being an air pilot”. “What’s so wonderful about that?” asks Gaskin. “Nothing, unless it is that flying teaches a man to think fast”. Biggles sipped his tea and lit a cigarette. “Come on,” he invited. “Out with it”. “Something’s biting you. What is it?” “All this newspaper criticism because we haven’t been able to find the man who knocked this kid Nellie Tomkins on the head” says Gaskin. He then gives Biggles the details. “Nellie Tomkins was twelve. She was the only child of a couple who live in a cottage near Watton, in Hertfordshire, where she went to school. (Watton-at-Stone is a village and parish in Hertfordshire and is midway between the towns of Stevenage and Hertford. Johns would have certainly known it, as he was from Hertford). Actually the cottage is a lodge at the entrance to an estate. Last Monday she was walking home from school as usual, only a matter of a mile or so, when some devil hit her on top of the head and left her dying beside the road. In a matter of minutes she was seen and picked up by a passing motorist. By the time they’d got her to hospital she was dead. That’s as much as we know”. “No clue to the killer?” asks Biggles. “One. If you can call it a clue. A couple of yards from where the body was found lay a box of chocolates which she may have been carrying or holding when she was struck down. No cheap chocolates either. It was a two-pound box of high-class stuff, roses on the lid, gold ribbon and so on. The point is, they weren’t the sort that could have been bought in the village. In fact, we know they weren’t bought anywhere near. That’s been checked. Who would give that poor kid such a box of chocolates and why were they left lying beside the body?” “Had the girl any other injuries?” asks Biggles. “No. She’d simply been coshed with the proverbial blunt weapon”. Biggles wonders why the body wasn’t hidden. Gaskin says the murderer may have heard the other car coming – the one that found the body. Gaskin says you can rule out the man who found her as he was a parson with his wife returning from shopping in Hertford. The girl had been killed by a single blow that fractured her skull, there was no blood about. “There wouldn’t be if only one blow was struck. It’s a second blow in the same place that makes the splashes. But you’d know all about that” says Biggles. Biggles wonders if the girl was struck by a car, but Gaskin rejects that as there were no bruises on her body. Gaskin says that all local men who might have been there had convincing alibis. Gaskin’s theory is “some devil, presumably a stranger, in a car or on a motor bike, seeing the girl walking alone along the road, stopped her and gave her the chocolates, or offered them to her, hoping she’d go off with him. Obviously she refused, or her body wouldn’t have been where it was found. So he coshed her, maybe, if he had a car, intending to take her with him anyway. The trouble is I can’t find anyone who remembers seeing a car, or any other vehicle, about that time. Not that that’s conclusive”. Biggles wonders why he happened to have a box of chocolates handy, that couldn’t have been bought locally. “That sounds as if he knew what he was going to do; if so he must have known about the girl”. Gaskin says “He may not have been looking for Nellie. Maybe he didn’t care what girl it was”. Gaskin has not told the Press about the chocolates as it’s the only clue he has. “I’d say you’ve got the answer in that box of chocolates if you can winkle it out,” Biggles tells him. The box was one of ten thousand made for the Christmas trade. “I’ve been over that damn box a score of times looking for a mark that might tell me something. It's true one corner is dented, but that could have happened a hundred ways, even before it was bought”. There are no fingerprints on the outer wrapping of the box and the box itself has scores of fingerprints (a score is 20) as it must have been handled by loads of people, probably shop girls. Biggles asks how far away is the nearest house? The answer is a hundred yards, the cottage where the “poor kid” lived. Her parents heard nothing, no scream, no car. Biggles asks to go and look at the place.

“A little more than an hour later, Inspector Gaskin, driving his own car, pulled up at the spot where the tragedy had occurred.” “This is it”, he said. It was a typical, rather narrow country road, little more than a lane, with a bank topped by a hedge on one side and a grass verge with a hedge beyond it on the other. Gaskin points out the gate of the cottage. The first thing that strikes Biggles is that no man in his right mind would commit murder in broad daylight so close to a house. Biggles wonders why the killer had chocolates. “We may wonder what he intended to do with them in a country lane such as this? Sit on the bank and eat them? All by himself! There may be men who do that sort of things, but I’ve never meet one”. They drive past the cottage, which stands beside the entrance to an estate of some size. One side of the drive was bounded by a stand of fine old beech trees. A cock pheasant flies out of the beeches with a cackle of alarm. “There’s somebody in the wood,” remarked Biggles. “Who is it, and what’s he doing there?” “Does it matter?” asks Gaskin. “It might. One never knows. I’m prepared to take an interest in anyone wandering about so close to where the girl was killed. Never leave a stone unturned”. They see a “well-dressed attractive young woman”. Gaskin recognises her as Diana Fairfax, the daughter of the man who owns the place. He had been to the big house and spoken to her father, Sir Eustace Fairfax, to check up on any men there. There was only the butler. “He’s over seventy, so we can forget him” adds Gaskin. Biggles thinks the woman has lost something. He asks Gaskin what he knows about her. “Only that she’s engaged, and last Monday when I called was her twenty-first birthday. When I went in she happened to be unwrapping her presents”. Biggles asks if Gaskin knows to whom she is engaged. “He’s a lad in the R A F. Flying Officer named Paget. (Johns was a Flying Officer in the R A F). Not the type to murder anyone, let alone a kid like Nellie, if that’s what you’re thinking”. Biggles asks Gaskin to go and ask Diana what she is looking for. “Let’s say I have a notion. I could be wrong” he tells Gaskin, adding “Possibly a box of chocolates”. Gaskin does what Biggles asks. When he returns, he confirms it is a box of chocolates. “Her fiancé rang up to ask her if she’d found the box he dropped for her. She’s been looking for it ever since. How the devil did you guess?” Biggles says Nellie was killed Monday, the day of Diana’s birthday. A common present for a girl is a good box of chocolates. Diana is engaged to a flying officer. “To my certain knowledge he wouldn’t be the first pilot, by a long chalk, to drop a present to his girl from an aircraft. It’s so much more romantic than having the postman deliver it”. He was wide of the mark and the box hit the road “or it would have done if it hadn’t landed on the head of that unlucky child”. The girl didn’t scream as she never knew what hit her. Had Gaskin not withheld the information about the chocolates from the Press, Diana would have put two and two together. Gaskin hasn’t told Diana. “What’s the use? he says. “The mischief has been done and there’s no sense in making anyone else miserable. It’ll have to be reported, of course. Well, let’s get home. I must say for an amateur you don’t do too badly. What beats me is that a box of chocolate could kill anyone”. Biggles says “That box would come down with the force of a brick”. “It would have killed a horse, never mind a child”. “I once saw an airman killed by a spent cartridge, weighing perhaps an ounce, that fell from an aircraft flying at under a thousand feet. It went through a sun helmet like a bullet and then into his skull, knocking him out cold. Maybe that experience counted today. If so, you’ve had the benefit of it. Now, as you say, let’s get along. As you’ve nothing on your mind we might stop for a snack on the way”. (There is no further information as to whether Paget was dealt with for manslaughter or gross negligence. Was he reprimanded for doing what he did? Throwing something out of an aeroplane creates an obvious risk to anyone below).