Читать онлайн книгу "The Silk Stocking Murders"

The Silk Stocking Murders
Anthony Berkeley

Tony Medawar


A classic Golden Age crime novel, and one of the first to feature a serial killer.Investigating the disappearance of a vicar’s daughter in London, the popular novelist and amateur detective Roger Sheringham is shocked to discover that the girl is already dead, found hanging from a screw by her own silk stocking. Reports of similar deaths across the capital strengthen his conviction that this is no suicide cult but the work of a homicidal maniac out for vengeance – a desperate situation requiring desperate measures.Having established Roger Sheringham as a brilliant but headstrong young sleuth who frequently made mistakes, trusted the wrong people and imbibed considerable liquid refreshment, Anthony Berkeley took his controversial character into much darker territory with The Silk Stocking Murders, a sensational novel about gruesome serial killings by an apparent psychopath bent on targeting vulnerable young women.







�THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’

Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929

Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of Collins Crime Club reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.











Copyright (#ulink_fff0cc5d-e593-5cbe-8e17-9352ca91fe86)


Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by The Crime Club by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1923

Copyright В© Estate of Anthony Berkeley 1928

Introduction В© Tony Medawar 2017

Cover design В© HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1928, 2017

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008216399

Ebook Edition В© February 2017 ISBN: 9780008216405

Version: 2016-12-28




Dedication (#ulink_318362c6-93f7-50c6-b87b-3d9c6c46e892)


TO

A. B. COX

WHO

VERY KINDLY

WROTE THIS BOOK FOR ME

IN HIS SPARE TIME


Contents

Cover (#u4d9e7066-0740-56be-8a70-0951ec9a5811)

Title Page (#u091255db-bf16-55e9-ae34-710272081e1e)

Copyright (#ud2b87dda-14cb-5438-9ca9-d0a0e57087d5)

Dedication (#u1f75bf01-f340-5b84-be6a-c30c324872c8)

Introduction (#uc4a539bb-e4b0-53ed-a358-21a52a79bbbc)

I. A LETTER FOR MR SHERINGHAM (#ufb8c42d7-ebf5-59af-a293-d63d569f7ce8)

II. MR SHERINGHAM WONDERS (#u6cc700a3-3609-5e5b-aa8b-a05e0fa48293)

III. MISS CARRUTHERS IS DRAMATIC (#u7ce6e770-62df-54a1-9de6-0ca81575c631)

IV. TWO DEATHS AND A JOURNEY (#uab22dcaa-fcab-520f-afff-e885e8d37dcc)

V. ENTER CHIEF-INSPECTOR MORESBY (#ue9de7554-063b-57b8-8808-3ad3572b2a5d)

VI. DETECTIVE SHERINGHAM, OF SCOTLAND YARD (#u89a3f839-5545-5123-904c-c6877db5ed6e)

VII. GETTING TO GRIPS WITH THE CASE (#ubc10dc64-cc6b-5126-bd94-2ac0dec18db4)

VIII. A VISITOR TO SCOTLAND YARD (#litres_trial_promo)

IX. NOTES AND QUERIES (#litres_trial_promo)

X. LUNCH FOR TWO (#litres_trial_promo)

XI. AN INTERVIEW AND A MURDER (#litres_trial_promo)

XII. SCOTLAND YARD AT WORK (#litres_trial_promo)

XIII. A VERY DIFFICULT CASE (#litres_trial_promo)

XIV. DETECTIVE SHERINGHAM SHINES (#litres_trial_promo)

XV. MR SHERINGHAM DIVERGES (#litres_trial_promo)

XVI. ANNE INTERVENES (#litres_trial_promo)

XVII. AN UNOFFICIAL COMBINATION (#litres_trial_promo)

XVIII. �AN ARREST IS IMMINENT’ (#litres_trial_promo)

XIX. MR SHERINGHAM IS BUSY (#litres_trial_promo)

XX. ALARMS AND EXCURSIONS (#litres_trial_promo)

XXI. ANNE HAS A THEORY (#litres_trial_promo)

XXII. THE LAST VICTIM (#litres_trial_promo)

XXIII. THE TRAP IS SET (#litres_trial_promo)

XXIV. THE TRAP IS SPRUNG (#litres_trial_promo)

XXV. ROUND THE GOOD XXXX (#litres_trial_promo)

The Detective Story Club (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




INTRODUCTION (#ulink_51d30504-d8fe-5bbc-85ee-1c1d83d17fc5)


ANTHONY BERKELEY COX (1893–1971) was a versatile author who wrote under several names. Under his real name, he wrote humorous novels, political commentary and even a comic opera. As A. Monmouth Platts, he wrote a light-hearted thriller involving a vanishing debutante. As Francis Iles, he wrote the groundbreaking psychological crime novels Malice Aforethought (1931) and Before the Fact (1932). And, as Anthony Berkeley, he wrote 14 classic detective stories, many of which feature Roger Sheringham, an amateur investigator who works sometimes with—and sometimes against—Chief Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard.

In some senses, Anthony Berkeley was Roger Sheringham; at the very least the two have much in common. Roger, like his creator, was the son of a doctor and �born in a small English provincial town’. Both went to public school and then to Oxford, where Berkeley achieved a Third in Classics and Roger a Second in Classics and History. Both served in the First World War: Berkeley was invalided out of the army with his health permanently impaired, while Roger was �wounded twice, not very seriously’. Roger became a bestseller with his first novel, as did Berkeley, and both men spoke disparagingly of their own fiction while being intolerant of others’ criticism. Against this background, Berkeley’s comment that Sheringham was �founded on an offensive person I once knew’ is likely to have been an example of the writer’s often-noted peculiar sense of humour.

Humour, and above all ingenuity, are the hallmark of Berkeley’s crime fiction. While many of his contemporaries concentrated on finding ever more improbable means of dispatching victims and ever more implausible means of establishing an alibi, Berkeley focused on turning established conventions of the crime and mystery genre upside down. Thus the explanation of the locked room in Berkeley’s first Sheringham mystery, The Layton Court Mystery (1925), is absurdly straightforward. In another novel, the official detective is right while the amateur sleuth is wrong. In another, the last person known to have seen the victim alive is, after all, the murderer. Above all, facts uncovered by any of Berkeley’s detectives are almost always capable of more than one explanation and the first deductions they draw are rarely entirely correct. In this respect, Berkeley clearly took some of his inspiration from certain historical crimes, particularly those whose solution has never been clear-cut and where the facts, such as there are, routinely offer more than one possible explanation. The Silk Stocking Murders (1928) is one such title, inspired by the murder in 1925 of a young woman in London by a one-legged man; The Wychford Poisoning Case, which has also been reissued in this Detective Club series, is another.

In all, Roger Sheringham appears in ten novel-length mysteries—one of which Berkeley dedicated to himself—and Sheringham is also mentioned in passing in two other novels, The Piccadilly Murder (1929) and Trial and Error (1937). Perhaps the best-known of the Sheringham novels is The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) which, again, is based on a real-life crime. This was the attempt in November 1922 by a disgruntled horticulturist to murder the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, Brigadier-General Sir William Horwood, by sending him a package of Walnut Whips, laced with either arsenic or strychnine. The poisoning with which Cox’s novel is concerned is investigated not only by the police but by Sheringham and the other members of �The Crimes Circle’, a private dining club of criminologists. Each member of the Circle advances a plausible explanation of the poisoning but one by one the solutions fall, including—to the reader’s surprise—the solution proposed by Sheringham. Eventually the mystery is solved by Ambrose Chitterwick, an unassuming and aspergic amateur sleuth whose hobbies include philately and horticulture—tweaking the nose of anyone who remembered that it was a horticulturist who made the attempt to poison Sir William Horwood. As well as being a superb puzzle, with multiple solutions, The Poisoned Chocolates Case is fascinating for the links between the fictional �Crimes Circle’ and the Detection Club, which Berkeley had founded as a dining club for crime writers in 1929—the same year that The Poisoned Chocolates Case was published. The Detection Club, at least initially, comprised �authors of detective stories which rely more upon genuine detective merit than upon melodramatic thrills’, though that definition has been significantly stretched more than once over the nearly 90 years of the Club’s existence. Over the years, Cox would collaborate with members of the Detection Club on various fundraising ventures, including four round-robin mysteries beginning with The Floating Admiral (1931), whose entertaining sequel—The Sinking Admiral—was published by Collins Crime Club in 2016. And in 2016, playing Berkeley in a posthumous game of detective chess, Martin Edwards, the current President of the Detection Club, proposed a wholly plausible additional solution to the Poisoned Chocolates mystery in a British Library reprint.

But Berkeley eventually tired of playing games with detective stories and, though Sheringham would go on to appear in a few recently discovered wartime propaganda pieces, some shorter fiction and even a radio play, the last novel in which he appeared was published in 1934, less than ten years after his debut in The Layton Court Mystery. But Berkeley did not abandon crime fiction altogether. On the contrary, he decided to take crime fiction in what was then a radically new direction. For this new approach, Berkeley decided to use the name of one of his mother’s ancestors, a smuggler called Francis Iles. And, for three years, the real identity of Francis Iles was kept a secret. With Malice Aforethought, the first Iles novel, Berkeley broke the mould. At a stroke, he broadened the range—and respectability—of crime and detective fiction. Though the novel in part derives from an early short story and, while it could also be regarded as a variant of the inverted mystery popularised by Richard Austin Freeman’s Dr Thorndyke stories, Malice Aforethought is a much more complex proposition. For the first time Berkeley achieved what he had tried to do many times before: he focused on psychology. In Malice Aforethought it is the psychology of the murderer; and in the second Iles title, Before the Fact, it is the psychology of the victim. Characteristically, both are based on real-life crimes.

In all, three novels were published as by Francis Iles, with the third—As for the Woman (1939)—less successful than it might have been had it been presented as non-genre fiction, perhaps under yet another pseudonym. While a fourth �Francis Iles’ title was planned and even announced, Berkeley had published his last novel.

A few short stories appeared from time to time and, in the late 1950s, he completed two volumes of limericks, which were published under his own name. Berkeley also wrote some radio plays for the BBC, including one that, though credited to Anthony Berkeley, included two songs �by Anthony B. Cox’—and was introduced on its original broadcast by none other than Francis Iles!

In all, Anthony Berkeley published 24 books in a little over 14 years. He was also a prolific contributor to periodicals under his various names, authoring over 300 stories, sketches and articles; and he also reviewed crime fiction and other books up until shortly before his death in 1971.

To Agatha Christie, Berkeley was �Detection and crime at its wittiest—all his stories are amusing, intriguing and he is a master of the final twist, the surprise denouement.’ Dorothy L. Sayers also admired Berkeley and has Harriet Vane, in the Lord Peter Wimsey novel Have His Carcase (1932), describe the �twistiness’ of what she calls the Roger Sheringham method—�You prove elaborately and in detail that A did the murder; then you give the story one final shake, twist it round a fresh corner, and find that the real murderer is B.’ The last word can be left to the mystery novelist Christianna Brand, a friend and near neighbour of Berkeley’s in London, who when reminiscing about the early years of the Detection Club commented: �Sometimes I have thought he was really the cleverest of all of us.’

TONY MEDAWAR

September 2016




CHAPTER I (#ulink_db415e84-6ced-5978-bd77-19e020601281)

A LETTER FOR MR SHERINGHAM (#ulink_db415e84-6ced-5978-bd77-19e020601281)


ROGER SHERINGHAM halted before the little box just inside the entrance of The Daily Courier’s enormous building behind Fleet Street. Its occupant, alert for unauthorised intruders endeavouring to slip past him, nodded kindly.

�Only one for you this morning, sir,’ he said, and produced a letter.

With another nod, which he strove to make as condescending as the porter’s (and failed), Roger passed into the lift and was hoisted smoothly into the upper regions. The letter in his hand, he made his way through mazy, stone-floored passages into the dark little room set apart for his own use. Roger Sheringham, whose real business in life was that of a best-selling novelist, had stipulated when he consented to join The Daily Courier as criminological expert and purveyor of chattily-written articles on murder, upon a room of his own. He only used it twice a week, but he had carried his point. That is what comes of being a personal friend of an editor.

Bestowing his consciously dilapidated hat in a corner, he threw his newspaper on the desk and slit open the letter.

Roger always enjoyed this twice-weekly moment. In spite of his long acquaintance with them, ranging over nearly ten years, he was still able to experience a faint thrill on receiving letters from complete strangers. Praise of his work arriving out of the unknown delighted him; abuse filled him with combative joy. He always answered each one with individual care. It would have warmed the hearts of those of his correspondents who prefaced their letters with diffident apologies for addressing him (and nine out of ten of them did so), to see the welcome their efforts received. All authors are like this—and all authors are careful to tell their friends what a nuisance it is having to waste so much time in answering the letters of strangers, and how they wish people wouldn’t do it. All authors, in fact, are—But that is enough about authors.

It goes without saying that since he had joined The Daily Courier Roger’s weekly bag of strangers had increased very considerably. It was therefore not without a certain disappointment that he had received this solitary specimen from the porter’s hands this morning. A little resentful, he drew it from its envelope. As he read, his resentment disappeared. A little pucker appeared between his eyebrows. The letter was an unusual one, decidedly.

It ran as follows:

The Vicarage,

Little Mitcham, Dorset.

DEAR SIR,—You will, I hope, pardon my presumption in writing to you at all, but I trust that you will accept the excuse that my need is urgent. I have read your very interesting articles in The Daily Courier and, studying them between the lines, feel that you are a man who will not resent my present action, even though it may transfer a measure of responsibility to you which might seem irksome. I would have come up to London to see you in person, but that the expense of such a journey is, to one in my position, almost prohibitive.

Briefly, then, I am a widower, of eight years’ standing, with five daughters. The eldest, Anne, has taken upon her shoulders the duties of my dear wife, who died when Anne was sixteen; and she was, till ten months ago, ably seconded by the sister next to her in age, Janet. I need hardly explain to you that, on the stipend of a country parson, it has not been an easy task to feed, clothe and educate five growing girls. Janet, therefore, who, I may add, has always been considered the beauty of the family, decided ten months ago to seek her fortune elsewhere. We did our best to dissuade her, but she is a high-spirited girl and, having made up her mind, refused to alter it. She also pointed out that not only would there be one less mouth to feed, but, should she be able to obtain employment of even a moderately lucrative nature, she would be able to make a modest, but undoubtedly helpful, contribution towards the household expenses.

Janet did carry out her intention and left us, going, presumably, to London. I write �presumably’ because she refused most firmly to give us her address, saying that not until she was securely established in her new life, whatever that should be, would she allow us even to communicate with her, in case we might persuade her, in the event of her not meeting with initial success, to give up and come home again. She did however write to us occasionally herself, and the postmark was always London, though the postal district varied with almost every letter. From these letters we gathered that, though remaining confident and cheerful, she had not yet succeeded in obtaining a post of the kind she desired. She had, however, she told us, found employment sufficiently remunerative to allow her to keep herself in comparative comfort, though she never mentioned the precise nature of the work in which she was engaged.

She had been in the habit of writing to us about once a week or so, but six weeks ago her letters ceased and we have not heard a word from her since. It may be that there is no cause for alarm, but alarm I do feel nevertheless. Janet is an affectionate girl and a good daughter, and I cannot believe that, knowing the distress it would cause us, she would willingly have omitted to let us hear from her in this way. I cannot help feeling that either her letters have been going astray or else the poor girl has met with an accident of some sort.

My reasons, sir, for troubling you with all this are as follows. I am perhaps an old-fashioned man, but I do not care to approach the police in the matter and have Janet traced when probably there is no more the matter than an old man’s foolish fancies; and I am quite sure that, assuming these fancies to have no foundation, Janet would much resent the police poking their noses into her affairs. On the other hand, if there has been an accident, the fact is almost certain to be known at the offices of a paper such as The Daily Courier. I have therefore determined, after considerable reflection, to trespass upon your kindness, on which of course I have no claim at all, to the extent of asking you to make discreet enquiries of such of your colleagues as might be expected to know, and acquaint me with the result. In this way recourse to the police may still be avoided, and news given me of my poor girl without unpleasant publicity or officialism.

If you prefer to have nothing to do with my request, I beg of you to let me know and I will put the matter to the police at once. If, on the other hand, you are so kind as to humour an old man, any words of gratitude on my part become almost superfluous.—Yours truly,

A. E. MANNERS.

P.S.—I enclose a snapshot of Janet taken two years ago, the only one we have.

�The poor old bird!’ Roger commented mentally, as he reached the end of this lengthy letter, written in a small, crabbed handwriting which was not too easy to decipher. �But I wonder whether he realises that there are about eight thousand accidents in the streets of London every twelve months? This is going to be a pretty difficult little job.’ He looked inside the envelope again and drew out the snapshot.

Amateur snapshots have a humorous name, but they are seldom really as bad as reputed. This one was a fair average specimen, and showed four girls sitting on a sea-shore, their ages apparently ranging from ten to something over twenty. Under one of them was written, in the same crabbed handwriting, the word �Janet’. Roger studied her. She was pretty, evidently, and in spite of the fact that her face was covered with a very cheerful smile, Roger thought that he could recognise her from the picture should he ever be fortunate enough to find her.

For as to whether he was going to look for her or not, there was no question. It had simply never occurred to Roger that he might, after all, not do so. Roger (whatever else he might be) was a man of quick sympathies, and that stilted letter through whose formal phrases tragedy peeped so plainly, had touched him more than a little. But for the fact that an article had to be written before lunch-time, he would have set about it that very moment, without the least idea of how he was going to prosecute the search.

As it was, however, circumstances prevented him from doing anything in the matter for another ninety minutes, and by that time his brain, working automatically as he wrote, had evolved a plan. He felt fairly certain that the girl was still in London, alive and flourishing, and had postponed writing home as the ties that bound her to Dorsetshire began to weaken; the old man’s anxiety was no doubt ill-founded, but that did not mean that it must not be relieved. Besides, the quest would prove a pretty little exercise for those sleuth-like powers which Roger was so sure he possessed. Nevertheless, unharmed and merely unfilial as he did not doubt the girl to be, it was easier to begin operations from the other end. If she had had an accident she would be considerably easier to trace than if she had not, and by establishing first the negative fact, Roger would be able the sooner to reassure the vicar. And as the only real clue he had was the snapshot, he had better start from that.

Instead, therefore, of betaking himself to Piccadilly Circus in the blithe confidence that Janet Manners, like everybody else in London, would be certain to come along there sooner or later, he ran up two more flights of stairs in the same building, and, the snapshot in his hand, sought out the photographic department of The Daily Courier’s illustrated sister, The Daily Picture.

�Hullo, Ben,’ he greeted the serious, horn-bespectacled young man who presided over the studio and spent most of his days in photographing mannequins, who left him cold, in garments which left them cold. �I suppose you’ve never had a photograph through your hands of this girl, have you? The one marked Janet.’

The bespectacled one scrutinised the snapshot with close attention. Every photograph that appeared in The Daily Picture passed, at one time or another, through his hands, and his memory was prodigious. �She does look a bit familiar,’ he admitted.

�She does, eh?’ Roger cried, suddenly apprehensive. �Good man. Rack your brains. I want her placed, badly.’

The other bent over the snapshot again. �Can’t you help me?’ he asked. �In what connection would I have come across her? Is she an actress, or a mannequin, or a titled beauty, or what?’

�She’s not a titled beauty, I can tell you that; but she might have been either of the other two. I haven’t the faintest notion what she is.’

�Why do you want to know if we’ve ever had a photograph of her through here, then?’

�Oh, it’s just a personal matter,’ Roger said evasively. �Her people haven’t heard from her for a week or two and they’re beginning to think she’s been run over by a bus or something like that. You know how fussy the parents of that sort of girl are.’

The other shook his head and handed back the snapshot. �No, I’m sorry, but I can’t place her. I’m sure I’ve seen her face before, but you’re too vague. If you could tell me, now, that she had been run over by a bus, or had some other accident, or been something (anything to provide a peg for my memory to hang on) I might have been able to—wait a minute, though!’ He snatched the photograph back and studied it afresh. Roger looked on tensely.

�I’ve got it!’ the bespectacled one proclaimed in triumph. �It was the word “accident” that gave me the clue. Have you ever noticed what a curious thing memory is, Sheringham? Present it with a blank surface, and it simply slides helplessly across it; but give it just the slightest little peg to grip on, and—’

�Who is the girl?’ Roger interrupted.

The other blinked at him. �Oh, the girl. Yes. She was a chorus-girl in one of the big revues (I’m sorry, I forget which) and her name was Unity Something-or-other. She—good gracious, you really don’t know?’

Roger shook his head. �No. What?’

�She was a friend of yours?’ the other persisted.

�No, I’ve never met her in my life. Why?’

�Well, you see, she hanged herself four or five weeks ago with her own stocking.’

Roger stared at him. �The deuce she did!’ he said blankly. �Hell!’

They looked at each other.

�Look here,’ said the photographer, �I can’t be certain it’s the same girl, you know. Besides, this one seems to be called Janet. But I tell you what: there was a photo of Unity Something published in The Picture at the time, a professional one. You could look that up.’

�Yes,’ said Roger, his thoughts on the letter he would have to write to Dorset if all this were true.

�And now I come to think of it, I seem to remember something rather queer about the case. It was ordinary enough in most ways, but I believe they had some difficulty in identifying the girl. No relatives came forward, or something like that.’

�Oh?’

�The Picture didn’t pay much attention to it, beyond publishing her photo; rather out of our line, of course. But I expect The Courier had a report of the inquest. Anyhow, don’t take it for certain that I’m right; it’s quite possible that I’m not. Go down and look up the files.’

�Yes,’ said Roger glumly, turning on his heel.

�I will.’




CHAPTER II (#ulink_6d722be2-dd36-5299-b76a-3ba75fa6d0f1)

MR SHERINGHAM WONDERS (#ulink_6d722be2-dd36-5299-b76a-3ba75fa6d0f1)


ACUTELY disappointed, and not a little shocked, Roger made his way downstairs. His thoughts were centred mainly upon that pathetic household in Dorsetshire, to whom his letter must bring such tragedy; but Roger, like most of us, while able to feel for other people strongly enough, was at heart an egoist, and it was this side of his nature which prompted the sensation of disappointment of which he was conscious. It was, he could not help feeling, most unfortunate that just when his help had been solicited as that of an able criminologist, the problem should be whisked out of his hands in this uncompromising way.

The truth was that Roger had been longing for an opportunity to put his detective capabilities into action once more. The letter had acted as a spur to his desires, coming as it did from one who evidently held the greatest respect for his powers in this direction. Roger himself had the greatest respect for his detective powers; but he could not disguise from himself the fact that others were obtuse enough to hold dissimilar views. Inspector Moresby, for instance. For the last nine months, ever since they had parted at Ludmouth after the Vane case, Inspector Moresby had rankled in Roger’s mind to a very considerable extent.

And those nine months had been, from the criminologist’s point of view, deadly dull ones. Not an interesting murder had been committed, not even an actress had been deprived of her jewels. Without going so far as to question whether his detective powers might be getting actually rusty, Roger had been very, very anxiously seeking an opportunity to put them into action once more. And now that the chance had come, it had as swiftly disappeared.

He began gloomily to turn back the pages of The Daily Picture file.

It was not long before he found what he wanted. In an issue of just over five weeks ago there was, tucked neatly into a corner of the back page, a portrait of a young girl; the heading above it stated curtly: �Hanged Herself With Own Silk Stocking’. The letterpress below was hardly less brief. �Miss Unity Ransome, stated to be an actress, who hanged herself with her own silk stocking at her flat in Sutherland Avenue last Tuesday.’

Roger pored over the picture. Like amateur snapshots, the pictures in an illustrated paper are considered fair game for the humorist. Whenever a painstaking humorist has to mention them he prefixes one of two epithets, �blurred’ or �smudgy’. Yet the pictures in the illustrated dailies of today are neither blurred nor smudgy. They were once, it is true, perhaps so late as ten years ago, when the art of picture-printing for daily newspapers was an infant; nowadays they are astonishingly clear. One does wish sometimes that even humorists would move with the times. Roger had no difficulty in deciding that the two faces before him were of the same girl.

He turned to The Daily Courier of the same date.

There he found, unobtrusive on a page lined with advertisements, a laconic account of the inquest. Miss Unity Ransome, it seemed, had been a chorus-girl in one of the less important London revues. There was evidence that this was her first engagement on the stage, and she had obtained it, in spite of her inexperience, on the strength of her good looks and air of happy vivacity. Prior to this engagement, nothing was known about her. She shared a tiny flat in Sutherland Avenue with another girl in the same company, but they had met at the theatre for the first time. This girl, Moira Carruthers, had testified that she knew less than nothing about her friend’s antecedents. Unity Ransome not only volunteered no information concerning herself, but actively discouraged questions on that subject. �A regular oyster,’ was Miss Carruthers’ happy description.

This reticence the coroner had not been unwilling to emphasise, for on the face of it there appeared no reason for suicide. Miss Carruthers had stated emphatically that, so far as she knew, Unity had never contemplated such a thing. She had appeared to be perfectly happy, and even delighted at having obtained an engagement in London. Her salary, though not large, had quite sufficed for her needs. Pressed on this point, Miss Carruthers had admitted that her friend had more than once expressed a wish that she had been able to earn more, and that quickly; but, as Miss Carruthers pointed out, �Unity was what you might call a real lady, and perhaps she’d been accustomed to having things a bit better style than most of us.’ At all events, she had not complained unduly.

The police had made perfunctory efforts to trace her, Roger gathered, and attempts had been made, besides the publication of her professional portrait, to get into touch with any former friends or relations, but without success. To this also the Coroner called attention. In his concluding remarks, he hinted very delicately that the probability seemed to be that she had quarrelled with her family, left home (but not necessarily in disgrace, the Coroner was careful to add with emphasis, thereby showing quite plainly that this was precisely what he thought), and endeavoured to make a career for herself on the stage; and though she might appear to have met with unexpected success in this direction, who could say what remorse and unhappiness might not burden the life of a young girl cut off thus from all the comforts to which, it would seem, she had been accustomed? Or, again, she might have been an orphan, left penniless, and overcome by a loneliness which she felt, rightly or wrongly, to be unbearable. In other words, the Coroner was extremely sorry for the girl, but he wanted to get home to his lunch and the usual straightforward verdict was the best way of doing so.

He got his wish. Indeed, there was little likelihood of anything else, for Unity Ransome had simplified matters by leaving a little note behind her. The note ran briefly as follows: �I am sick and tired of it all, and going to end it the only way.’ It was not signed, but there was plenty of evidence that it was in her writing. A verdict of �Suicide during Temporary Insanity’ was inevitable.

Quite illegally Roger cut the little paragraph out of the file and put it away in his pocket-book. Then he went upstairs again and sought out the news-editor, with whom he usually lunched.

For some reason Roger did not say anything to the news-editor about his activities of the morning. News-editors, though excellent people in private life and devoted to their wives, are conscienceless, unfeeling bandits when it comes to news. Roger’s reticence was instinctive, but had he troubled to search for its cause he would certainly have found it in the fact that the Dorsetshire Vicarage would have enough to bear during the next few days without a pitiless and lurid publicity being added to the sum of their troubles. That, at any rate, he could spare them.

It was still with the secret of Unity Ransome’s identity undisclosed, then, that he returned later to The Courier’s offices and, having obtained from the bespectacled one a copy of the photograph which had appeared in The Daily Picture, prepared to write to Mr Manners and ask him, as gently as possible, whether he recognised his daughter in the portrait of the girl who had committed suicide in the Sutherland Avenue flat.

Yet, seated definitely at the task, his pen in his hands, the paper spread out in front of him, Roger found himself quite unable to make a beginning. The paper remained blank, the pen executed a series of neat but meaningless squiggles round the edges of the blotting-pad, and Roger’s brain buzzed busily. It was not the difficulty of the job which prevented him from forming even the initial �Dear Sir’ of the letter; it was something quite different.

�Hang it!’ burst out Roger suddenly aloud, hitting the desk in front of him a blow with his fist. �Hang it, it isn’t natural!’

It was an old cry of his, and in the past it had led to important things. His own spoken words made Roger prick up his own ears. He threw the pen absently from him, drew out his pipe and settled down in his chair.

Ten minutes later he struck the match he had been holding during that period in his hand. Five minutes later he struck another. Three minutes after that he applied the third match to his pipe.

�Now am I,’ communed Roger with himself, crossing his legs afresh and drawing deeply at his now lighted pipe, �am I getting a bee in my bonnet—am I getting hag-ridden by an idea—am I all that, or is there something funny in this business? I’m inclined (yes, most decidedly I’m inclined) to think there is. Let us, therefore, tabulate our results in the approved manner and see where they lead us.’

Picking up the pen again, he began to cover the blank sheet at last.

�Assuming that Janet Manners = Unity Ransome:

(1) Janet was not only a dutiful but an affectionate daughter. She was at pains to write cheerful letters home every week. She went out of her way not to distress her father in any manner, even concealing from him the fact that she had found work on the stage, because he probably would not like it. Is it not, then, almost inconceivable that she should have deliberately taken her own life without at least preparing him towards not hearing from her for a considerable time? The only explanation is that she acted on a sudden, panic-stricken impulse.

(2) So far as one can see, Janet had no possible reason for suicide. She had been unusually lucky in getting good work. Her object was firstly to keep herself and so save expense at home, and secondly to contribute to the Vicarage household upkeep. She had achieved the first, and she was on her way to achieving the second. Not only had she no reason for killing herself, but she had every reason not to do so. In short, on the facts as known, the only explanation for Janet’s suicide is that she suddenly went raving mad. This is in accord with the panic-stricken impulse, and both show that all the facts are not known.

(3) We know that Janet did commit suicide, because she tells us so herself. But in what a very stereotyped formula! Would a girl who had the initiative to leave a country parsonage and go on the stage express herself, in a note of such importance, in such a very hackneyed way? And what was she “sick and tired” of? Again, this can only mean that we do not know all the facts.

(4) Why did Janet not sign that note? The omission is more than significant; it is unnatural. To sign such a note as that, or at the least to initial it, is almost a sine qua non. There seems no obvious explanation of this, except, possibly, frantic panic.

(5) What do we know of Janet? That she was a young woman of considerable character and determination. Young women of considerable determination do not commit suicide. Moreover, allowing for a father’s prejudice, her photograph shows clearly that Janet was not a suicide type. Once more one is driven to the conclusion that events of enormous importance have not yet come to light.

(6) Janet hanged herself with her own stockings. In the name of goodness, why? Had she nothing more suitable? In fact, Janet’s method of suicide is more than strange; it is unnatural. A girl bent on suicide would adopt hanging as a very last resource. Men hang themselves; girls don’t. Yet Janet did. Why?

(7) Is Roger Sheringham seeing visions? No, he isn’t. Then what is he going to do about it?— Jolly well find out what had really been happening to that poor kid!’

Roger put down his pen and read through what he had written.

�Results tabulated,’ he murmured. �And where do they lead us, eh? Why, to Miss Moira Carruthers, to be sure.’

He put on his hat and hurried out.




CHAPTER III (#ulink_ddd8cc24-c220-5f73-bc1f-7e6b26aa3be4)

MISS CARRUTHERS IS DRAMATIC (#ulink_ddd8cc24-c220-5f73-bc1f-7e6b26aa3be4)


IT was with no definite plan in his mind, or even suspicion, that Roger jumped into a taxi and caused himself to be conveyed to Sutherland Avenue. All he knew was that here was mystery; and where mystery was, there was something in his blood that raised Roger’s curiosity to such a point that nothing less than complete elucidation could lower it. The affairs of Janet Manners had, he acknowledged readily, nothing whatever to do with himself, and it was very probable that their owner, had she been alive, would very much have resented the poking of his nose into them. He appeased his conscience (or what served him on these occasions for a conscience) by pretending that his real object in making the journey was to acquire positive proof that Unity Ransome really was Janet Manners before he wrote to Dorsetshire. He did not deceive himself for a moment.

His taxi stopped before one of those tall, depressed-looking buildings which line Sutherland Avenue, and a tiny brass plate on the door-post informed him that Miss Carruthers lived on the fourth floor. There was no lift, and Roger trudged up, to find, with better luck than he deserved, that Miss Carruthers was at home. Indeed, she popped out of a room at him as he reached the top of the stairs, for the flat had no front-door of its own.

Chorus-girls (or chorus ladies, as they call themselves nowadays) are divided into three types, the pert, the pretty and the proud, and of these the last are quite the most fell of all created beings. Roger was relieved to see that Miss Carruthers, with her very golden hair and her round, babyish face, was quite definitely of the pretty type, and therefore not to be feared.

�Oh!’ said Miss Carruthers prettily, and looked at him in dainty alarm. Strange men on her stairs were, it was to be gathered, one of the most terrifying phenomena in Miss Carruthers’ helpless young life.

�Good afternoon,’ said Roger, suiting his smile to his company. �I’m so sorry to bother you, but could you spare me a few minutes, Miss Carruthers?’

�Oh!’ fluttered Miss Carruthers again. �Was it—was it very important?’

�I am connected with The Daily Courier,’ said Roger.

�Come inside,’ said Miss Carruthers.

They passed into a sitting-room, the furniture of which was only too evidently supplied with the room. Roger was ensconced in a worn armchair, Miss Carruthers perched charmingly on the arm of an ancient couch. �Yes?’ sighed Miss Carruthers.

Roger came to the point at once. �It’s about Miss Ransome,’ he said bluntly.

�Oh!’ said Miss Carruthers, valiantly concealing her disappointment.

�I’m making a few enquiries, on behalf of The Courier,’ Roger went on, toying delicately with the truth. �We’re not altogether satisfied, you know.’ He looked extremely portentous.

Miss Carruthers’ large eyes became larger still. �What not with?’ she asked, her recent disappointment going the same way as her grammar.

�Everything,’ returned Roger largely. He crossed his legs and thought what he should be dissatisfied with first of all. �What was her reason for committing suicide at all?’ he demanded; after all, he was more dissatisfied with that than anything else.

�Well, reely!’ said Miss Carruthers. And then she began to talk.

Roger, listening intently, was conscious that he was hearing an often-told tale, but it lost none of its interest on that account. He let her tell it in her own way.

Uny, said Miss Carruthers (�Uny’! mentally ejaculated Roger, and shuddered), had absolutely no reason in the world for going and doing a thing like that. None whatsoever! She’d had a slice of real luck in stepping into a London show straight away; she was always bright and cheerful (�well, as happy as the day is long, you might say,’ affirmed Miss Carruthers); everybody liked her at the theatre; and what is more, she was marked out by common consent as one who would go far; it was generally admitted that the next small speaking part that was going, Uny would click for. And why she should want to go and do a thing like that—!

In fact, Miss Carruthers could hardly believe it when she came in that afternoon and saw her. Hanging on the hook on the bedroom door, she was, with her stocking round her neck, and looking—well, it very nearly turned Miss Carruthers up just to see her. Horrible! She wouldn’t describe it, not for worlds; it made her feel really ill just to think of it.—And here Miss Carruthers embarked on a minute description of her unhappy friend’s appearance, in which protruding eyeballs, blue lips and bitten tongue figured with highly unpleasant prominence.

Still, Miss Carruthers was by no means such a little fool as it apparently pleased her to suggest. Instead of screaming and running uselessly out into the street as, Roger reflected, three-quarters of the women he knew would have done, she had the sense to hoist Janet somehow up on to her shoulders and unhook the stocking. But by that time it was too late; she was dead. �Only just, though,’ wailed Miss Carruthers, with real tears in her eyes. �The doctor said if I’d come back a quarter of an hour earlier I could have saved her. Wasn’t that just hell?’

Wholeheartedly Roger agreed that it was. �But how very curious that she should have done it just when you might have been expected back at any minute,’ he remarked. �It couldn’t be,’ he added, stroking his chin thoughtfully, �that she expected to be saved, could it?’

Miss Carruthers shook her golden head. �Oh, no I’d told her I wasn’t coming back here, you see. I was going to tea with a boy, and I said to Uny not to expect me; I’d go straight on to the theatre. Well, now you know as much about it as I do, Mr—Mr—’

�Sheringham.’

�Mr Sheringham. And what do you imagine she wanted to go and do it for? Oh, poor old Uny! I tell you, Mr Sheringham, I can hardly bear to stay in the place now. I wouldn’t, if I could only get decent digs somewhere else, which I can’t.’

Roger looked at the little person sympathetically. The tears were streaming unashamedly down her cheeks, and it was quite plain that, however artificial she might be in other respects, her feeling for her dead friend was genuine enough. He spoke on impulse.

�What do I imagine she did it for? I don’t! But I tell you what I do imagine, Miss Carruthers, and that is that there’s a good deal more at the back of this than either you or I suspect.’

�What—what do you mean?’

Roger pulled his pipe out of his pocket. �Do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked, gaining a few seconds. He had to take a swift decision. Should he or should he not take this fluffy little creature into his confidence? Would she be a help or a hindrance? Was she a complete little fool who had had a single sensible moment, or was her apparent empty-headedness a pose adopted for the benefit of the other sex? Most of the men with whom she would come in contact, Roger was painfully aware, do prefer their women to be empty-headed. He compromised: he would take her just so far as he could into his own confidence without betraying that of others.

�I mean,’ he said carefully, as he filled his pipe, �that so far as I’ve been able to gather, Miss Ransome was not the sort of girl to commit suicide—’

�That she wasn’t!’ interjected Miss Carruthers, almost violently.

�—and that as she did so, she was driven into it by forces which, to say the least, must have been overwhelming. And I mean to make it my business to find out what those forces were.’

�Oh! Oh, yes. You mean—?’

�For the moment,’ said Roger firmly, �nothing more than that.’

They looked at each other for a moment in silence. Then Miss Carruthers said an unexpected thing.

�You belong to The Courier?’ she asked, in a hesitating voice. �You’re doing this for them? You’re going to publish everything you find out, whether—whether Uny would have liked it or not?’

Roger found himself liking her more and more. �No!’ he said frankly. �I am connected with The Courier, but I’m not on it. I’m going to do this off my own bat, and I give you my word that nothing shall be published at all that doesn’t reflect to the credit of Miss Ransome—and perhaps not even then. You mean, of course, that you wouldn’t help me, except on those terms?’

Miss Carruthers nodded. �I’ve got a duty to Uny, and I’m not going to have any mud slung at her, whether she deserves it or not. But if you’ll promise that, I’ll help you all I can. Because believe me, Mr Sheringham,’ added Miss Carruthers passionately, �if there’s some damned skunk of a man at the bottom of this (as I’ve thought more than once there might be), I’d give everything I’ve got in the world to see him served as he served poor old Uny.’

�That’s all right, then,’ Roger said easily. The worst of the theatre, he reflected, is that it does make its participants so dramatic; and drama in private life is worse than immorality. �We’ll shake hands on that bargain.’

�Look here,’ said Miss Carruthers, doffing her emotional robe as swiftly as she had donned it, �look here, I tell you what. You wait here and smoke while I make us a cup of tea, and then we’ll talk as much as you like. And I have got one or two things to tell you,’ she added darkly, �that you might like to hear.’

Roger agreed with alacrity. He had often noticed that there is nothing like tea to loosen a woman’s tongue; not even alcohol.

In a surprisingly short time for so helpless-looking a person, Miss Carruthers returned with the tea-tray, which Roger took from her at the door. They settled down, Miss Carruthers poured out, and Roger at last felt that the time was ripe to embark on the series of questions which he had really come to ask.

Miss Carruthers answered readily enough, leaning back in her chair with a cigarette between lips which even now must occasionally pout. Indeed, she answered too readily. Nevertheless, from the mass of her verbiage Roger was able to pick a few new facts.

In the main her replies bore out the brief account of her evidence at the inquest, though at very much greater length, and Miss Carruthers dwelt upon her theory that her friend was �a cut above the rest of us, as you might say. A real lady, instead of only a perfect one.’ To Roger’s carefully worded queries as to any indication of Unity Ransome’s real identity, Miss Carruthers was at first vague. Then she produced, in a haphazard way, the most important point she had yet contributed.

�All I can say,’ said Miss Carruthers, �is that her name may have been Janet, or she might have had a friend called Janet, or something like that.’

�Ah!’ said Roger, keeping his composure. �And how do you know that?’

�It’s in a prayer-book of hers. I only came across it the other day. Would you like to see it?’

�I would,’ said Roger.

Obligingly Miss Carruthers ran off to fetch it. Returning, she opened the book at the fly-leaf and handed it to Roger. He read: �To my dear Janet, on her Confirmation, 14th March 1920. “Blessed are the pure in heart.”’ The writing was small and crabbed.

�I see,’ Roger said, and took a later opportunity of slipping the book into his pocket. Miss Carruthers had definitely established the main point, at any rate.

He directed his questions elsewhere. Like Miss Carruthers, Roger had been struck with the idea that there might be a man behind things. He dredged assiduously in his informant’s mind for any clue as to his possible identity. But here Miss Carruthers was unable to help. Uny, it appeared, hadn’t cared for boys. She never went out with one alone, and would seldom consent to make up a foursome. She said frankly that boys bored her stiff. So far as Miss Carruthers knew, not only had she no particular boy, but not even any gentlemen-friends.

�Humph!’ said Roger, abandoning that line of enquiry.

They sat and smoked in silence for a moment.

�If you wanted to commit suicide, Miss Carruthers,’ Roger remarked abruptly, �would you hang yourself?’

Miss Carruthers shuddered delicately. �I would not. It’s the very last way I’d do it.’

�Then why did Miss Ransome?’

�Perhaps she didn’t realise what she’d look like,’ suggested Miss Carruthers, quite seriously.

�Humph!’ said Roger, and they smoked again.

�And with one of the stockings she was wearing,’ mused Miss Carruthers. �Funny, wasn’t it?’

Roger sat up. �What’s that? One of the stockings she was actually wearing?’

�Yes. Didn’t you know?’

�No, I didn’t see that mentioned. Do you mean,’ asked Roger incredulously, �that she actually took off one of the stockings she was wearing at the time, and hanged herself with it?’

Miss Carruthers nodded. �That’s right. A stocking on one leg, she had, and the other bare. I thought it was funny at the time. On that very door, it was; and you can still see the screw-mark the other side. The screw I took out, of course. I couldn’t have borne to look at it every time I came into the room.’

�What screw?’ asked Roger, at sea.

�Why, the screw on the other side of the door, that she fastened the loop to.’

�I don’t know anything about this. I took it for granted that she’d done it on a clothes’-hook, or something like that.’

�Well, I wondered about that,’ said Miss Carruthers, �but I expect it was because the hook in the bedroom was too low. And a stocking’d give a good bit, wouldn’t it?’

Roger was already out of his chair and examining the door. �Tell me exactly how you found her, will you?’ he said.

With many shudders, some of which may have been quite real, Miss Carruthers did so. Janet, it appeared, had been hanging on the inside of the sitting-room door, from a small hook on the other side, which had been screwed in at the right angle to withstand the strain. The stocking round her neck had been knotted together tightly at the extreme ends. As far as one could gather, she must have placed it like that loosely round her neck, then twisted the slack two or three times, and slipped a tiny loop on to the hook on the further side of the door, over the top. She had been standing on a chair to do this, and she must have kicked the chair violently away when her preparations were complete, with such force as to slam the door to, leaving herself suspended by the little hook that was now completely out of her reach, so that she could not rescue herself even had she wished. This was an obvious reconstruction on the two facts that Miss Carruthers had found the door shut when she arrived, and an overturned chair on the floor at least six feet away.

�Good God!’ said Roger, shocked at this evidence of such cold-blooded determination on the part of the unfortunate girl to deprive herself of life. But he realised at once that this version did not square with his theory of panic-stricken impulse. Panic-stricken people do not waste time adjusting things to such a nicety, screwing in hooks at just the right height and leaving every trace of thoughtful deliberation; they simply throw themselves, as hurriedly as possible, out of the nearest window.

�Didn’t the police think all this very odd?’ he queried thoughtfully.

�No-o, I don’t think they did. They seemed to take it all for granted. And after all, as Uny did kill herself, it doesn’t matter much how, does it?’

Roger was forced to agree that it didn’t. But when he took his leave a few minutes later, to write that letter to Dorsetshire which must now put things beyond all hope, he was more than ever convinced that there was very, very much more in all this than had so far met the eye. And he was more than ever determined to find out just exactly what it might be.

The thought of that happy, laughing kid of the snapshot being driven into panic-stricken suicide had inexpressibly shocked him before. The thought of her now, driven into a deadly slow suicide, prepared with such tragic method and care, was infinitely more horrible. Somebody, Roger was sure, had driven that poor child into killing herself; and that somebody, he was equally sure, was going to be made to pay for it.




CHAPTER IV (#ulink_d9c3fe21-8d24-5293-8051-ba04b7118024)

TWO DEATHS AND A JOURNEY (#ulink_d9c3fe21-8d24-5293-8051-ba04b7118024)


NEVERTHELESS, during the next few days the case against the unknown made little progress. Roger received a reply to his letter from Dorsetshire which served to inflame his anxiety to get to the bottom of the affair, but his efforts in that direction seemed to be beating upon an impassable barrier. Try as he might, he could not connect Unity Ransome with any man.

He tried the theatre. Of any girl who had been at all friendly with her he asked long strings of questions, the eager Miss Carruthers constantly at his elbow. Under her protecting wing he interviewed stage-doorkeepers, stage-managers, managers, producers, stars, their male equivalents, and everybody else he could think of, till he had acquired enough theatrical copy to last him the rest of his life. But all to no purpose. Nobody could remember having seen Unity Ransome with the same man more than once or twice; to nobody had she ever mentioned the name of a male acquaintance in anything but a joking way.

He cast his net further afield. Armed with half-a-dozen pictures of Janet, enlarged from the groups outside the theatre, he sought out the restaurant-managers, waiters, tea-shop waitresses and hotel-keepers, whose various establishments Janet might have patronised. Here and there she was recognised, but it never went beyond that. Roger was discouraged.

One fact however, although it had no bearing on the subject of his search, did emerge during this busy week. Miss Carruthers having firmly appointed herself his theatrical guide and dramatic friend, Roger got into the habit of dropping in every other day or so at tea-time to report his lack of progress. The little creature with her preposterous name (she had confided by this time that her real one was Sally Briggs, �and what the hell,’ she asked wistfully, �is the use of that to me?’) both amused and interested him. It was a perpetual joy to him to watch how even in her most real moments she could not help being consciously dramatic: with genuine tears for her friend’s fate streaming down her cheeks she would yet hold them up for the admiration of an invisible gallery. In fact, Roger reflected, watching her, when she was at her most genuine, she was most artificial.

On one of these occasions he took advantage of her absence in the kitchen to study with minute care the fatal door. What he saw there upset him considerably. For it was obvious that, however anxious she might have been beforehand, when it actually came to the point Janet had not at all wanted to die. At the bottom of the door, only a few inches off the ground, was a maze of deep scratches in the paintwork, such as might have been made by a pair of high heels trying desperately to find some sort of foothold, however minute, by which to stave off eternity.

Roger’s imagination was a vivid one. He felt rather sick.

�But why,’ he asked himself, frowning, �didn’t she grip the stocking above her neck and pull on that, at any rate for a few minutes? She could have been saved if she had. But I suppose there wasn’t enough of it to grip on.’

He turned his attention to the top of the door. There at the sides, and some little way down as well, were other scratches, fainter, but not to be mistaken. He walked out into the kitchen.

�Moira,’ he said abruptly, �what were Unity’s nails like? Do you happen to remember?’

�Yes,’ said Miss Carruthers, with a little shiver. �All broken and filled with paint and stuff.’

�Ah!’ said Roger.

�And she used to keep them so nice,’ said Miss Carruthers.

London having thus proved blank, Roger determined to try the country. He felt a little diffident about intruding upon the grief-stricken family, and uncertain whether to acquaint the vicar with his suspicions or not. In the end he decided not to do so until he had more evidence to support them; what he possessed already would merely add to the old man’s distress without effecting anything helpful. He trusted to his usual luck to acquire the information he wanted (if it was to be acquired) by some other means.

Having made up his mind, Roger acted with his usual impulsiveness. If he were to go at all, he would go the next day. But the next day was a Friday, and Tuesdays and Fridays were the days on which he spent the morning at The Courier offices. Very well, then; he would write his article that evening, merely call in at The Courier building to leave it and collect his post, and so catch an early train down to Dorsetshire. Excellent.

To turn out two articles a week for several months on the subject of sudden death is not, after the sixth month or so, an easy task. Having exhausted most of the topics on which he had wanted to spread himself, Roger was beginning to find the search for fresh ones getting rather too arduous. And now that he was anxious to polish one off in a hurry, of course no subject would present itself. After nibbling the end of his fountain-pen for half-an-hour, Roger ran down into the street to buy an evening paper. When inspiration fails, a newspaper will sometimes work wonders.

This one certainly came up to expectations. On the front page, in gently leaded type to show that, while startling, it could hardly be considered important, were the following headlines:

LONDON FLAT TRAGEDY

GIRL HANGS HERSELF WITH OWN STOCKING

PATHETIC LETTER

Roger was able to write a very informative article indeed, all about mass-suggestion, neurotic types, predisposition to suicide and how it is stimulated by example, and the lack of originality in most of us. �Within a few weeks of the first genius discovering that he could end his life by lying with his head in a gas-oven,’ wrote Roger, �more than a dozen had followed his lead.’ And he went on to prove that a novel method of ending life, whether one’s own or another’s, acts in such a way upon a certain type of mind that it constitutes a veritable stimulus to death. He instanced Dr Palmer and Dr Dove, Patrick Mahon and Norman Thorne, and, of course, the twin stocking tragedies. Altogether the article was in Roger’s best vein, and he was not a little pleased with it.

The next day he set off for Dorsetshire.

In his morning paper (not The Daily Courier) which he had been saving up to read in the train, was a rather fuller account of the tragedy, though now relegated to an unimportant page. Roger was quite gratified to observe that such details as were given corresponded almost exactly with those of Janet’s case; its perpetrator evidently corresponded exactly to the type which he had described so meticulously last night. Whatever he might feel for Janet, Roger had no sympathy with this girl; she was of the kind which is far better out of this world than in it. And she had copied poor little Janet with a slavishness that was really rather nauseating: the silk stocking tied in a single loop and twisted over the door, the screwed hook on the further side, the bare leg, the unsigned note—they were all there.

Her name was Elsie Benham, �described as an actress’, as the paper cautiously put it. (�And of course we know what that means,’ Roger commented caustically. �Why do they always “describe themselves as actresses?” It’s uncommonly tough on the real ones.’) She was known as a habituée of night-clubs (�That’s more like it’) and had been seen at one on the night of the tragedy. She was alone, and a friend who spoke to her mentioned that she seemed depressed. She left alone, at two o’clock in the morning, and must have killed herself very soon after reaching the flat which she shared with another friend who is at the moment out of London (�Euphemism for weekending in Paris,’ observed the sarcastic reader), for when she was discovered yesterday afternoon by a man who possessed a key to the flat (�As I said’) the doctor who was hurriedly summoned gave it as his opinion that she had been dead for at least twelve hours. �Which is not a bad sentence, even for this rag,’ thought Roger.

He skimmed through the rest of the report, tossed the newspaper aside and opened a novel.

It was not till two hours later, as he was idly watching the fields fly past the window, that two things struck Roger. The evening paper had exaggerated when it spoke of the pathetic �letter’ left by the dead girl. It was not a letter; it was merely a quotation. �How wonderful is Death!’ she had written on a blank piece of paper. �Death and his brother Sleep.’

�How wonderful is Death.

Death and his brother Sleep,’

murmured Roger. �It’s curious that a lady “described as an actress” and known as a habituée of night-clubs should choose to quote Queen Mab on such an occasion. It’s curious that she could quote Shelley at all. It’s very curious that she would quote him correctly; I’d have taken a small bet that any lady “described as an actress” who might improbably have a nodding acquaintance with Shelley, would quote: “How beautiful is Death.” Very curious; but not, apparently, impossible. Well, well, there must be more things in our night-clubs, Sheringham, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

He watched a few more fields slide past.

�And here’s another funny thing,’ thought Roger. �All the papers this time feature the bare leg. But the bare leg wasn’t mentioned before, in any of the accounts I read. When Moira told me, it was complete news to me. I wonder how this woman got hold of that. I suppose it must have been alluded to in some paper I never saw; though I certainly thought I’d studied them all at one time or another. Curious.’

He went on watching the fields, and set to wondering what he was going to say to Mr Manners. The nearer he got to Dorsetshire, the more impertinent his mission began to appear.

In the end he decided not to try the village inn at Little Mitcham, as had been his first intention, but to put up in the neighbouring town of Monckton Regis. This would look less intrusive. He could then, finding himself so near to Mr Manners, go over to Little Mitcham to pay his respects with perfect propriety.

This course he duly followed. Mr Manners welcomed him eagerly, carried him off at once to his study, and plied him with questions which Roger found a good deal of difficulty in answering tactfully. The old man seemed very depressed, as was only to be expected, but his grief was dignified and unembarrassing. Pressed with warmth to stay to luncheon and meet the rest of the family, Roger acceded after protest, quietening his conscience with the reflection that at such a time as this the presence of a stranger might be a blessing in disguise to the stricken household; at the least it would take their minds for a few hours off their loss.

The other four daughters were aged respectively twenty-four, seventeen, fourteen and twelve, and with the eldest, Anne, Roger found himself almost immediately on terms of good friendship. She was one of those capable girls whom the emergency seems so often to produce; and unlike most capable girls, she was good to look upon as well. Not so pretty as Janet had been, perhaps, but in a way more beautiful, and built in miniature; and her air of reposeful efficiency (not the assertive efficiency which most capable women possess) Roger found extremely attractive. Making his mind up with his usual rapidity during lunch, he sought an opportunity after the meal was over to take her aside, and, under pretext of admiring the garden in its garment of budding spring, proceeded to tell her the whole story.

If Anne was shocked, she scarcely showed it; if she was much upset, she concealed her feelings. She merely replied, gravely: �I see. This is extraordinarily good of you, Mr Sheringham. And thank you for telling me; I much prefer to know. I quite agree with your conclusions, too, and I’ll do anything to help you confirm them.’

�And you can?’ Roger asked eagerly.

Anne shook her small head. She was small all over, delicately boned, with small, rather serious features set in a small, oval face. �At the moment,’ she confessed, �I don’t see that I can. Janet knew plenty of men round here, of course, and I can give you a list of the ones she knew best, but I’m quite sure that none of them could be at the bottom of it.’

�We could at any rate find out which of them had been in London since she went up there,’ Roger said, loath to abandon the line on which all his hopes were now pinned.

�We could, of course,’ Anne agreed. �And we will, if you think we should. But I’m convinced, Mr Sheringham, that it isn’t here that we must look for the cause of my sister’s death. When she left here she hadn’t a care in the world, I know. Janet and I—’ Her voice faltered for a moment, but recovered immediately—�Janet and I were a good deal more than sisters; we were the most intimate of friends. If she’d been worried before she left here, I’m certain she would have told me.’

�Well,’ said Roger, with more cheerfulness than he felt, �we’ll simply have to see what we can do; that’s all.’

The upshot was that Roger spent a very pleasant weekend in Dorsetshire, saw a great deal of Anne, who, to his great delight, did not seem to have the faintest wish to discuss his books with him, and returned to London on the Monday apparently not an inch nearer his objective. �Though a weekend in Dorsetshire in early April,’ he told the lady in the office as he paid his hotel-bill, �is a thing no man should be without.’

�Quate,’ agreed the young lady.

Roger strolled down to the station. He had made a point of mentioning to Anne the time of his train, in case anything cropped up that she might want to communicate to him at the last moment. As he walked on to the platform, he looked up and down to see if she were there. She was not.

With a sense of disappointment which he could not remember having experienced for at least ten years, and of which he became instantly as near to being ashamed as Roger could concerning anything connected with himself, he made his way to the bookstall and bought a paper. Opening it a few minutes later, his eye at once caught certain headlines on the centre page. The headlines ran as follows:

ANOTHER SILK STOCKING TRAGEDY

SOCIETY BEAUTY HANGS HERSELF

LADY URSULA GRAEME’S SHOCKING FATE

�This,’ said Roger, �is becoming too much of a good thing.’




CHAPTER V (#ulink_7df3c2f5-1ec9-5ef7-98d6-abe37f0a5d53)

ENTER CHIEF-INSPECTOR MORESBY (#ulink_7df3c2f5-1ec9-5ef7-98d6-abe37f0a5d53)


SEATED in the train, Roger began to peruse the account of Lady Ursula’s death. Now that it had to deal with the daughter of an earl instead of an obscure habituée of night-clubs, the story had been allotted two full columns on the centre page, and every detail, relative or not, that could be hastily scraped together had been inserted. Briefly, the facts were as follows.

Lady Ursula had left her home in Eaton Square, where she lived with her widowed mother (the present Earl, her eldest brother, was in the Diplomatic Service abroad), shortly before eight. She dined with a party of friends at a dance-club in the West End, where she stayed, dancing and talking, till about eleven. She then began to complain of a headache and tried to induce one of the others to accompany her for a little run in her car; the rest of the party refused, however, as it was raining and the car was an open two-seater. Lady Ursula then left the club, saying that she would go for a run alone to blow her headache away, if no one would accompany her.

At half-past two in the morning a girl called Irene Macklane, an artist and a friend of Lady Ursula’s, returned to her studio in Kensington from a party in a neighbouring studio and found Lady Ursula’s car outside. She was not surprised at this, as Lady Ursula was in the habit of calling on her friends at the most unusual of times of the day and night. On going inside and calling, however, she could at first see no sign of her.

The studio had been made out of the remains of some old stables, and spanning its width in the centre was a large oak beam, some eight feet above the ground, in the middle of which, on the underside, was a large hook, from which Miss Macklane had hung an old-fashioned lantern. This lantern contained an electric light bulb which was connected by a flex to a light-point farther down the room. On turning the switch at the door, Miss Macklane was surprised to see the lantern light upon the floor some distance away from the beam instead of in its normal position. She lifted it up and was then horrified to see Lady Ursula hanging in its place from the hook in the beam.

The details of her death corresponded almost exactly with those of Janet’s and the other woman’s. An overturned table lay on the floor a few feet away, and Lady Ursula had made use of one of the stockings which she was wearing at the time; the leg from which she had taken it was bare, though the foot still wore its brocade slipper. A loop had been formed by tying the extreme ends of the stocking together, this had been passed over Lady Ursula’s head, the slack twisted round three or four times, and a tiny loop at the end slipped over the hook. She had then apparently kicked the table away and met her death, like the other two, from slow asphyxiation.

The note she had left for Miss Macklane, however, was a little more explicit than those of the others, though its wording gave scope for conjecture. It ran:

I’m so sorry to have to do this here, my dear, but there’s simply nowhere else, and mother would have a fit if I did it at home. Don’t be too terribly furious with me!

U.

There followed a eulogistic account of Lady Ursula, �by a friend,’ expatiating on her originality, her lack of convention and her recent engagement to the wealthy son of a wealthy financier. Whether it was the engagement, or her determination at all costs to be original, that had led Lady Ursula to dispense with a life with which, as she was in the habit of informing her friends, she had for many years been bored stiff, the writer obviously found some difficulty in avoiding.

Roger put the paper across his knees and began absently to fill his pipe. This was, as he had commented, too much of a good thing. It was becoming a regular epidemic. Fantastic pictures floated across his mental vision of the thing becoming a society craze, and all the debutantes suspending themselves in rows by their own stockings. He pulled himself together.

The real trouble, of course, was that this did not square with the article he had written before leaving London. It upset things badly. For though the unknown habituée of night-clubs might have possessed the predisposition to suicide about which he had expatiated so glibly, he was quite sure that Lady Ursula Graeme did not. And from what he knew about the lady, even apart from the friend’s article upon her, he was still more sure that, if by any strange chance she had decided to do away with herself, she would most certainly not imitate the method of an insignificant chorus-girl and a wretched little prostitute. If she were to imitate anybody it would be in the grand manner. She might cut an artery in a hot bath, for instance. But far more probably she would evolve some daringly unconventional method of suicide which should ensure her in death an even greater publicity than she had been able to attain in life. Lady Ursula, in short, would set the fashion in suicide, not follow it.

And that letter, too. It might be more explicit in its terms than the other two, but it was even more puzzling. Whatever one might think about them in other ways, one does give our aristocracy credit for good manners; and by no stretch of etiquette can it be considered good manners to suspend oneself by one’s stocking in somebody else’s studio. Indeed, it would be far more in keeping with the lady’s character that she should have chosen a lamp-post. And would the dowager have no fit so long as her daughter did not suspend herself actually in Eaton Square?

It was all very curious. But it wasn’t the least good arguing about it, Roger decided, turning to another page of the paper, for there was no getting away from the fact that Lady Ursula had done all these things which she couldn’t possibly have done.

He proceeded to wade through the leading articles with some determination.

Lady Ursula’s death provided, of course, a three-days’ wonder. The inquest was fixed for Wednesday morning, and Roger made up his mind to attend it. He was anxious to see whether any of these little points which had struck his own attention, so small in themselves but so interesting in the aggregate, would strike that of anyone else.

Unfortunately Roger was not the only person who had conceived the idea of attending the inquest. On a conservative calculation, three thousand other people had done so as well. The other three thousand, however, had not also conceived the idea of obtaining a press-pass beforehand; so that in the end Roger, battered but more or less intact, was able to edge his way inside by the time the proceedings were not much more than half over. The first eye he caught was that of Chief Detective Inspector Moresby.

The Chief Inspector was wedged unobtrusively at the back of the court like any member of the public, and it was plain that he was not here in any official capacity. �Then why in Hades,’ thought Roger very tensely, as he wriggled gently towards him, �is he here at all?’ Chief Detective Inspectors do not attend inquests on fashionable suicides by way of killing time.

He grinned in friendly fashion as he saw Roger approaching (so friendly, indeed, that Roger winced slightly, remembering what must be inspiring most of the grin), but shook his head in reply to Roger’s raised eyebrows of inquiry. Brought to a halt a few paces away, Roger had no option but to give up the idea of further progress for the moment. He devoted his attention to the proceedings.

A man was on the witness-stand, a tall, dark, good-looking man of a slightly Jewish cast of countenance, somewhere in the early thirties; and it did not need more than two or three questions and replies to show Roger that this was the fiancГ© to whom allusion had been made. Roger watched him with interest. If anybody ought to have known Lady Ursula, it should be this man. Would he give any indication that he considered anything curious in the case?

Regarding him closely, Roger found it difficult to say. He was evidently suffering deeply (�Poor devil!’ thought Roger. �And being made to stand up and show himself off before all of us like this, too!’), and yet there was a subtle suggestion of guardedness in his replies. Once or twice he seemed on the verge of making a comment which might be enlightening, but always he pulled himself up in time. He carried his loss with a dignity of sorrow which reminded Roger of Anne’s bearing in the garden when he had first told her of his suspicions; but it was clear that there were points upon which he was completely puzzled, the main one being why his fiancée should have committed suicide at all.

�She never gave me the faintest indication,’ he said in a low voice, in answer to some question of the Coroner’s. �She seemed perfectly happy, always.’ He spoke rather like a small boy who has been whipped and sent to bed for something which for the life of him he can’t understand to be a crime at all.

The Coroner was dealing with him as sympathetically as possible, but there were some questions that had to be asked. �You have heard that she was in the habit of saying that she was bored stiff with life. Did she say that to you?’

�Often,’ replied the other, with a wan imitation of a smile. �She frequently said things like that. It was her pose. At least,’ he added, so low that Roger could hardly hear, �we thought it was her pose.’

�You were to have been married the month after next—in June?’

�Yes.’

The Coroner consulted a paper in his hand. �Now, on the night in question you went to a theatre, I understand, and afterwards to your club?’

�That is so.’

�You therefore did not see Lady Ursula at all that evening?’

�No.’

�So you cannot speak as to her state of mind after five o’clock, when you left her after tea?’

�No. But it was nearer half-past five when I left her.’

�Quite so. Now you have heard the other witnesses who spent the evening with her. Do you agree that she was in her usual health and spirits when you saw her at tea-time?’

�Absolutely.’

�She gave you no indication that anything might be on her mind?’

�None whatever.’

�Well, I won’t keep you any longer, Mr Pleydell. I know how distressing this must be for you. I’ll just ask you finally: can you tell us anything which might shed light on the reason why Lady Ursula should have taken her own life?’

�I’m afraid I can’t,’ said the other, in the same low, composed voice as that in which he had given all the rest of his evidence; and he added, with unexpected emotion: �I wish to God I could!’

�He does think there’s something funny about it,’ was Roger’s comment to himself, as Pleydell stepped down. �Not merely why she should have done such a thing at all, but some of those other little points as well. I wonder—I wonder what Moresby’s here for!’

During the next twenty minutes nothing of importance emerged. The Coroner was evidently trying to make the case as little painful for the Dowager Countess and Pleydell as possible, and since it was apparently so straightforward there was no point in spinning out the proceedings. The jury must have thought the same, for their verdict came pat: �Suicide during temporary insanity caused by the unnatural conditions of modern life.’ Which was a kind way of putting �Lady Ursula’s life.’

There was first the hush and then the little stir which always succeeds the delivery of a verdict, and the densely packed court began slowly to empty.

Roger saw to it that the emptying process brought him in contact with Moresby. Having already tested the strength of that gentleman’s official reticence, he had not the faintest hope of expecting to crack it on this occasion; but there is never any harm in trying.

�Well, Mr Sheringham,’ was the Chief Inspector’s genial greeting as they were brought together at last. �Well, I haven’t seen you for a long time, sir.’

�Since last summer, no,’ Roger agreed. �And you’ll oblige me by not talking about last summer over the drink we’re now about to consume. Any other summer you like, but not last one.’

The Chief Inspector’s grin widened, but he gave the necessary promise. They walked sedately towards a hostelry of Roger’s choosing; not the nearest, because everybody else would be going there. The Chief Inspector knew perfectly well why he was being invited to have a drink; Roger knew that he knew; the Chief Inspector knew that Roger knew that he knew. It was all very amusing, and both of them were enjoying it.

Both of them knew, too, that it was up to Roger to open the proceedings if they were to be opened. But Roger did nothing of the kind. They drank up their beer, chatting happily about this, about that and about the other, but never about Coroner’s inquests and Chief Detective Inspectors from Scotland Yard at them; they drank up some more beer, provided by Moresby, and then they embarked on yet more beer, provided again by Roger. Both Roger and the Chief Inspector liked beer.

At last Roger fired his broadside. It was a nice, unexpected broadside, and Roger had been meditating it at intervals for three glasses. In the middle of a conversation about sweet-peas and how to grow them, Roger remarked very casually:

�So you think Lady Ursula was murdered too, do you, Moresby?’




CHAPTER VI (#ulink_5516140e-72cd-5c62-8c74-ff2d8a3c3117)

DETECTIVE SHERINGHAM, OF SCOTLAND YARD (#ulink_5516140e-72cd-5c62-8c74-ff2d8a3c3117)


IT is given to few people in this world to see a Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard start violently; yet this was the result which rewarded Roger’s broadside. With intense gratification he watched the Chief Inspectorial countenance shiver visibly, the Chief Inspectorial bulk tauten, and the Chief Inspectorial beer come within an inch of climbing over the side of the glass; and in that moment he felt that the past was avenged.

�Why, Mr Sheringham, sir,’ said Chief Inspector Moresby, with a poor attempt at bland astonishment, �whatever makes you say a thing like that?’

Roger did not reply at once. Now that he had got over the slight numbness that followed the success of his little ruse (he had hoped perhaps to make the Inspectorial eye-lid quiver slightly, but hardly more), he was filled with a genuine astonishment of no less dimensions than that which Moresby was so gallantly attempting to simulate. In attributing Lady Ursula’s death to murder he had not so much been drawing a bow at a venture as deliberately making the wildest assertion he could think of, in order to shock the Inspector into giving away the much more insignificant cause of his presence at the inquest. But, perhaps for the first time in his life, the Chief Inspector had been caught napping and given himself away, horse, foot and artillery. The very fact that he had been on his guard had only contributed to his disaster, for he had been guarding his front and Roger had attacked him in the rear.

In the meantime Roger’s brain, jerking out of the coma into which the Inspector’s start had momentarily plunged it, was making up for lost time. It did not so much think as look swiftly over a rapid series of flashing pictures. And instantly that which had before been a mystery became plain. Roger could have kicked himself that it should have taken a starting Inspector to point out to him the obvious. Murder was the only possible explanation that fitted all those puzzling facts!

�Whew!’ he said, in some awe.

The Chief Inspector was watching him uneasily. �What an extraordinary idea, sir!’ he observed, and laughed hollowly.

Roger drank up the rest of his beer, looked at his watch and grabbed the Chief Inspector’s arm, all in one movement. �Come on,’ he said. �Lunch time. You’re lunching with me.’ And without waiting for a reply he began marching out of the place.

The Chief Inspector, for once at a decided disadvantage, was left with no option but to follow him.

Quivering all over, Roger hailed a taxi and gave the man the address of his flat.

�Where are we going, Mr Sheringham?’ asked the Chief Inspector, whose countenance bore none of the happily expectant look of those about to lunch at another’s expense.

�To my rooms,’ replied Roger, for once economical of words. �We shan’t be overheard there.’

The groan with which the Chief Inspector replied was not overheard either. It was of the spirit. But it was a very substantial spiritual groan.

In an extravagant impulse not many months ago Roger had walked into the Albany, fortified by a visit to his publisher’s and the news of the sales of his latest novel, and demanded rooms there. A set being fortunately vacant at the moment, he had stepped straight into them. Thither he led the helpless Chief Inspector, now gently perspiring all over, thrust him into a chair, mixed him a short drink in spite of his protests in which the word �beer’ was prominent, and went off to see about lunch. During the interval between his return and the serving of the meal, he regaled his victim with a vivid account of the coffee-growing business in Brazil, in which he had a young cousin.

�Anthony Walton, his name is,’ he remarked with nonchalance. �I believe you met him once, didn’t you?’

The Chief Inspector had not even the spirit left to forget his earlier promise and retort in kind.

Let it not be thought that Chief Inspector Moresby shows up in an unworthy light in this episode. Roger had him in a cleft stick, and Moresby knew it. When police inquiries are in progress that necessitate the most profound secrecy, the smallest whisper of their existence in the Press may be enough to destroy the patient work of weeks. The Press, which may be bullied on occasions with impunity, must on others be courted by the conscientious Scotland Yard man with more delicate caution than ever lover courted the shyest of mistresses. Roger knew all this only too well, and only too well Chief Inspector Moresby knew that he knew it. But this time the situation was not amusing at all.

In the orthodox manner Roger held up any discussion of the topic at issue until the coffee had been served and the cigarettes were alight, just as big business men always do in the novels that are written about them (in real life they get down to it with the hors d’œuvres and don’t blether about, wasting valuable time). �And now,’ said Roger, when that stage had arrived, �now, Moresby, my friend, for it!’

�For it?’ repeated Chief Inspector Moresby, still game.

�Yes; don’t play with me, Moresby. The boot’s on the other foot now. And what are we going to do about it?’

The Chief Inspector tidily consumed the dregs in his coffee-cup. �That,’ he said carefully, �depends what we’re talking about, Mr Sheringham.’

�Very well,’ Roger grinned unkindly. �I’ll put it more plainly. Do you want me to write an article for The Courier proving that Lady Ursula must have been murdered—and not only Lady Ursula, but Elsie Benham and Unity Ransome as well? Am I to call on the police to get busy and follow up my lead? It’s an article I’m simply tingling to write, you know.’

�You are, sir? Why?’

�Because I’ve been following up the Ransome case since the day after the death,’ said Roger with emphasis, but without truth.

In spite of himself, and the traditions of Scotland Yard concerning amateurs, the Chief Inspector was impressed. Nor did he take any trouble to hide it. �You have, sir?’ he said, not without admiration. �Well, that was very smart of you. You tumbled to it even then that it was murder?’

�I did,’ said Roger, without blenching. �Ah, now we’re getting on. You agree that it was murder, then?’

�If you must know,’ said the harrassed Chief Inspector, seeing nothing else for it, �I do.’

�But you didn’t realise it as soon as I did?’ pursued the unblushing Roger. �You didn’t realise it, in fact, till Lady Ursula’s case came along?’

�It’s only suspicion, even now,’ replied Moresby, adroitly avoiding a direct answer.

Roger drew for a few moments at his cigarette. �I’m sorry Scotland Yard’s tumbled to the idea of murder,’ he said, after a pause. �I’d been looking on this as my own little affair, and I’ve been putting in some hard work on it too. And you needn’t think I’m going to drop out just because you’ve stepped in. I’m determined to get to the bottom of the business (I’ve something like a personal interest in it, as it happens), with or without the police. And at present I’m far and away ahead of you.’

�How’s that, Mr Sheringham?’

�Well, to take only one point, do you know Unity Ransome’s real identity?’

�Not yet, we don’t, no,’ the Chief Inspector had to confess.

�Well, I do,’ said Roger simply.

There was another pause.

�What’s in your mind, Mr Sheringham?’ Moresby broke it by asking. �There’s something, I can see.’

�There is,’ Roger agreed. �It’s this: I want us to work together on this case. I wanted to at Ludworth last summer, but you wouldn’t. Now I’m in a much stronger position. Because don’t forget that I can help you very considerably as your assistant. I don’t mind your looking on me as an assistant,’ he added magnanimously.

�You could help me, could you, Mr Sheringham?’ the Chief Inspector meditated. �Now I wonder exactly how?’

�No, you don’t,’ Roger retorted. �You know perfectly well. In the first place there’s the material I’ve got together already. But far more than that, there’s the question of the murderer. The circumstances of Lady Ursula’s death make it quite obvious to me that the murderer is a man of good social position, or, at the least, somebody known to her (all Lady Ursula’s friends weren’t of good social position, I admit). Well, now, this is going to be a very difficult case, I think. We’re dealing, I take it, with a homicidal maniac who is probably quite sane on all other subjects. There are only two ways of getting him: one is to catch him red-handed, and the other is to get into his confidence and attack him from behind (and we needn’t have any sporting scruples in this case). Do you agree so far?’

�All that seems reasonable enough,’ Moresby conceded.

�Quite so. Well, as to the first method, does one usually take homicidal maniacs of the sexual type red-handed? You people at the Yard ought to know, with your experience of Jack the Ripper. And I’m assuming that our man isn’t quite such a dolt as Neil Cream, who almost invited the police to come and investigate him. Then only the second method remains. Well, now, Moresby, I don’t want to be offensive, but are you the fellow to get into the confidence of such a man? Let’s look at it quite reasonably. We narrow our suspicions down, say, to an old Etonian, who is a member of, perhaps, the Oxford and Cambridge Club. Do you think you could induce a man like that to confide anything further to you than the best thing for the three-thirty? You can’t join his club, you see, and get at him that way, can you?’

�I see your point all right, Mr Sheringham,’ Moresby smiled. �Yes, there’s a good deal in that. But of course we’ve got plenty of people at the Yard who could do all that. What about the Assistant Commissioner? He was at Eton himself.’

�Do you really imagine,’ said Roger with fine scorn, �that a man who has committed at least three murders is going to confide in the Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard? Don’t pretend to be puerile, Moresby. You know well enough that nobody even remotely connected with Scotland Yard is going to be any good for that. It’s just there where my position is so useful to you. I’m not connected with Scotland Yard. I’m known to the general public simply as a writer of fiction. Why, the man we’re looking for has probably never seen even a copy of The Courier in his life.’

�Well, as I said, there’s plenty of sense in all this, Mr Sheringham. And if I do refuse to take you on as an assistant, I suppose you mean you’ll blow the gaff and do your best to queer our pitch?’

�I shall hold myself free to write what I choose about these cases,’ Roger corrected with dignity.

�Um!’ The Chief Inspector tapped absently on the table and appeared to be ruminating. �I’m in charge of the investigation at present, of course. But we’re not by any means certain yet that they are murders. There’s a lot in that stuff you wrote in The Courier the other day about suggestion acting on a certain type of mind, you know.’

�Ah! So you read my articles, do you?’ said Roger, childishly pleased. �But Lady Ursula’s wasn’t that type of mind, you know. That’s the whole point. Still, we’ll go into that later. Are you or are you not going to take me on?’

�We’re not allowed to do anything like that, not without permission, you know,’ the Chief Inspector demurred.

�Yes, and I know equally well that you’ll get the permission in this case for the asking,’ Roger retorted, without modesty.

The Chief Inspector ruminated further. �Well,’ he said at length, �I’m not saying that you might not be able to help me, Mr Sheringham, in this particular case. Quite a lot. And certainly you’re no fool,’ he added kindly. �I thought that at Ludmouth, though you were a bit too clever there. But it was really smart of you to tumble to murder in the Ransome case, before those others. I’ll admit that it never occurred to us at all. Yes, very well, then, sir; we’ll consider that settled. I’ll apply for permission to take you in with us as soon as I get back to the Yard.’

�Good man!’ Roger cried in high delight. �We’ll open a bottle of my precious ’67 brandy to celebrate my official recognition.’

Over the reverent consumption of a couple of glasses of the ’67, Roger made known to his new colleague the result of his researches into the case of Unity Ransome, first stipulating that her real identity should not be made public unless circumstances absolutely necessitated it; he was resolved to use any influence he had to save that unhappy family from further trouble. The Chief Inspector agreed readily enough and, now that it was no longer a case of rivalry but of collaboration, complimented his companion ungrudgingly on his astuteness. He had himself already paid a couple of visits to the Sutherland Avenue flat, but had made little progress from that end of the complicated case.

�What put Scotland Yard finally on the suspicion of murder?’ Roger asked, having told all he knew.

�Something beyond your own knowledge, Mr Sheringham,’ replied the Chief Inspector. �On examining Lady Ursula’s body, our surgeon reported that there were distinct signs of bruises at her wrists. I had a look at them myself, and though they were faint enough, I’m ready to swear to my belief that her hands had been tied together at some time. Well, she wouldn’t have tied her own hands, would she?’

Roger nodded. �And the other cases?’

�Nothing was noticed at the time, but we’re taking steps to find out.’

�Exhumation? Yes. Well now, Moresby, let’s hear your theory about it all.’

�Theory, sir? Well, I suppose we do have theories. But Scotland Yard works more on clues than theories. The French police, now, they work on theories; but they’re allowed a good deal more latitude in their inquiries than we are. They go in a lot for bluff, too, which we can’t use. All we can do is to follow up the pointers in a case, and see where they lead to.’

�Well, let’s examine the pointers, then. What do you consider we’ve got to work on, so far?’

Inspector Moresby looked at his watch. �Good gracious, sir,’ he exclaimed, in artless surprise, �I’d no idea it was as late as this. They’ll be wondering whatever’s happened to me. You’ll have to excuse me, Mr Sheringham. I must get back to the Yard at once.’

Roger understood that not until official permission had actually come through would the Chief Inspector discuss the case with him further than to pick his brains. He smiled, well enough content with the result of his lunch-party.




CHAPTER VII (#ulink_5912c8d8-fff0-5991-bef9-dcf0130c74c3)

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH THE CASE (#ulink_5912c8d8-fff0-5991-bef9-dcf0130c74c3)


SOON after eight o’clock that same evening, in response to a telephoned hint from Roger, Chief Inspector Moresby again visited the Albany, official permission to discard his reticence at last duly obtained. Roger welcomed him with a choice of whisky or beer, pipe, tobacco or cigarettes, and they settled down in front of the fire, pipes alight and a pewter tankard at each elbow, to go into the case with real thoroughness.

�By the way, have you seen The Evening Clarion?’ Moresby remarked first of all, pulling the paper in question from his pocket. �You journalists do give us a lot of trouble, you know.’ He handed it over, marking a certain paragraph with his thumb.

The paragraph was at the end of an account of the inquest on Lady Ursula that morning. Roger read: �From the unobtrusive presence among the spectators at the back of the court of a certain highly placed official at Scotland Yard, it may be argued that the police are not altogether satisfied with the case as it stands at present. Certainly there seem to be many obscure points which require clearing up. It must not be supposed that the said official’s interest in the proceedings necessarily means that Scotland Yard definitely suspects foul play, but it is not too much to assume that we have not yet heard the last of this tragic affair.’

�Very cleverly put,’ was Roger’s professional comment. �Damn the fellow!’ he added, unprofessionally.

�It’s a nuisance,’ agreed his companion. �I’ve put a stop to any more, of course, and I daresay there’s no harm done really; but that sort of thing’s very annoying when you’re doing all you can to keep your inquiries a close secret. Anyhow, there’s one blessing; nobody’s brought up the Monte Carlo business yet.’

�Monte Carlo? What’s that?’

�Oh, didn’t you know about that, Mr Sheringham?’ asked the Chief Inspector, his eyes twinkling. �I made sure you had that at your fingers’-ends. Why, a French girl—a croquette, or whatever they call ’em over there—’

�A cocotte,’ Roger corrected without a smile. �Described as an actress. Yes?’

�Well, a French cocotte was found dead in her bedroom in February in just the same way. She’d lost a good deal of money in the Casino, so of course they assumed she’d hanged herself. It was more or less hushed up (those things always are there) and I don’t think it was even mentioned in the papers over here. We heard about it, unofficially.’

�Monte Carlo this February, eh?’ Roger said thoughtfully. �That ought to be a bit of a help.’

�It’s about all we’ve got to go on,’ said the Chief Inspector, rather dolefully. �I mean, assuming that this is murder at all and that the same man’s responsible for it. That, I should say, and the note.’

�The note? Oh, you mean the note Lady Ursula left. Yes, I’d realised of course that if it was murder, all those notes must have been written with quite a different meaning than the one everybody gave them later. The murderer’s a clever man, Moresby, there’s no getting away from it.’

�He is that, Mr Sheringham. But there’s a bit more to be got out of Lady Ursula’s than the others. If it was murder, then that note must have meant something quite different, as you say. But its importance to us is that it was creased. You can see it at the Yard any time.’

�I see,’ Roger nodded. �And it hadn’t been left in an envelope, you mean. In other words, it must have been in another envelope at one time, and therefore was definitely not written on that occasion.’

�Or in somebody’s pocket. The paper’s a tiny bit rubbed at the creases as if it had been in a pocket. Well, Mr Sheringham, find the person to whom that note was written, and we’ve gone a long way towards solving the mystery. It’s the only clue we’ve got, but I shouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t going to be the only one we shall want. Mark my words, sir, it’s that note that’s going to clear up this affair for us, if we can only find out who it was written to.’

�I shouldn’t be surprised,’ Roger replied non-committally. Privately, however, he did not feel so sure. He recognised that Scotland Yard was going to regard the letter as the Dominant Clue; but the method of the Dominant Clue, though often brilliantly successful (or rather, not so much brilliantly as painstakingly) was liable to fall to the ground when the clue in question did not come up to scratch. By disregarding the side-issues in these latter cases Scotland Yard had many failures in its records which a less single-aimed method, such as the French with its inductive reasoning, would almost certainly have solved; and it was no palliative to point out that the reverse also was equally true, and that there are unsolved mysteries in the French annals which the more laborious method of Scotland Yard would probably have cleared up.

A really rogue-proof detective-service, Roger had long ago decided, should not stick to one method at all, but make use of them all; and he determined that the partnership between himself and Moresby should be such a service in miniature. Let Moresby pursue the Dominant Clue and call on the organised resources of Scotland Yard to help him do so; he himself would look at the problem as a whole, from every possible side, and do his best to combine the amazing deductive powers of the Austrian criminological professors with the imaginative brilliance of the star French detectives. It is characteristic of Roger that he took this tremendous task on his shoulders with complete composure, between two pulls at his tankard.

The two settled down into a steady talk.

During the next half-hour Roger found himself much impressed with the common sense level-headedness of his colleague, whom he had been inclined to regard, in consequence of his preference for a Dominant Clue, as lacking in perception of the finesses of scientific criminology. He was also a little chagrined to find that Moresby’s knowledge of criminal history was even more complete than his own.

As the discussion progressed Roger was not the only one to make discoveries. The Chief Inspector, too, hitherto disposed to regard Roger as a volatile-witted amateur intent only upon proving impossible theories of his own erection, now found himself considerably more impressed than he had anticipated by his companion’s quick grasp of essentials and the vivid imagination he was able to bring to bear on the problem. If he had felt any misgivings about taking a leaf out of the story-books and admitting an amateur into his councils, they were not long in disappearing. By the end of half an hour the partnership was on a firm basis.

As if to mark the fact, Roger rose and replenished the tankards. The beer, it may be remarked, was a good sound XXXX, of a dark fruity colour, from a cask in the next room, Roger’s study. Oh, all you young women, distrust a man who does not drink good sound fruity XXXX with zest as you would one of your own sex who did not care to powder her nose.

�Now it seems to me,’ said Roger as he sat down again, �that we’ve been talking too much at random. Let’s take things under their proper heads, one at a time. First of all the deaths themselves. We’ve agreed that any other hypothesis but that of murder is putting too great a strain on coincidence, haven’t we? Well, then, let’s take a leaf out of the French notebook and reconstruct the crime.’

�Very well, Mr Sheringham, sir. I’d like to hear you do that.’

�Well, this is how I see it. The murderer first of all selected his victim with a good deal of care. She must fulfil certain conditions. For instance, she must above all be so far familiar with his appearance, at any rate, as to feel no alarm on seeing him. Then the opportunity would be chosen with equal cunning. It must be when she is alone and likely to remain so for at least half an hour. But all that’s quite elementary.’

�There’s never any harm in running over the elementary parts with the rest,’ said the Chief Inspector, gazing into the fire.

�Well, having got the girl and the opportunity together, he proceeds to overpower her. I say that, because no girl is going to submit tamely to being hanged, still less is she going to take off one of her stockings and offer it for the purpose; and yet none of them show any obvious evidence of a struggle. Even the marks on Lady Ursula’s wrists can’t be called that. Well, now, how did he overpower them?’

�That’s it,’ observed Chief Inspector Moresby.

�He was devilish clever,’ Roger continued, warming to his work. �You try overpowering an ordinary, healthy girl and see whether there isn’t going to be a deuce of a struggle. Of course there is. So it’s an elementary deduction to say that he must be a strong, and probably very big man. And they didn’t even cry out. Obviously, then, he must have stopped that first. I’m not so childish, by the way, as to suggest chloroform or anything fatuous like that; anybody but the writers of penny dreadfuls knows that chloroform doesn’t act like that, to say nothing of the smell afterwards. No, what I do suggest is a woollen scarf thrown unexpectedly across her mouth from behind and drawn tight in the same instant. How’s that?’

�I can’t think of anything better, and that’s a fact.’

�Well, a strong man could easily knot that at the back of her head, catch her wrists (her hands would be instinctively trying to pull at the stuff over her mouth) and twist them into the small of her back. I admit that it’s more of a job to fasten them there, but a knowledge of ju-jitsu might help; he could put her, I mean, in such a position that she couldn’t move without breaking an arm, hold both her wrists there with one hand and tie them together with the other. And as there are only the faintest bruises there, he would obviously have to fasten them with something that isn’t going to cut the skin—one end of the same woollen scarf, for instance.’ Roger paused and moistened his clay.




Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/anthony-berkeley/the-silk-stocking-murders/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.



Если текст книги отсутствует, перейдите по ссылке

Возможные причины отсутствия книги:
1. Книга снята с продаж по просьбе правообладателя
2. Книга ещё не поступила в продажу и пока недоступна для чтения