The Threefold Cord

by Francis Vivian

  “And she couldn’t help you?”

  “Well, she suggested that we send for the police.”

  Knollis nodded. “A sensible suggestion. And you opposed the idea, hinting that she herself might be suspected. Peculiar remark to pass to her after asking her advice, surely? Are you certain that you went to ask her advice?”

  “What else could I have gone for?”

  “That is where I am interested,” said Knollis. “We will ignore that for a time. Why should Miss Vaughan stand in danger of being suspected?”

  Brailsford shuffled, and made a good pretence of being embarrassed by the question. “Oh come, Inspector! You can’t expect me to answer questions of that nature!”

  “I can,” said Knollis, “and I am waiting for the reply. Why should she be suspected? She hadn’t been downstairs—or had she?”

  “As a matter of fact, she had,” Brailsford replied slowly. “She went down to find Tanroy, but he had gone. Now whether she saw Fred while she was down is something I can’t say, and I’m not going to guess, nor have such an eventuality suggested to me.”

  “Very wise!” Knollis remarked quietly.

  “The main trouble with having Dana mixed up in the finding of the body was her illness,” Brailsford went on. He spoke reluctantly, as if the information was being forced from him under pressure. “You’ll know all this, or I wouldn’t mention it. Her sleep-walking, and all that, and those waking dreams she had before she packed up. I mean, it all looks so horrible for her, doesn’t it?”

  “It does! It does!” Knollis murmured sympathetically.

  “I mean,” continued Brailsford; “there was a hell of a row after she tried to strangle her maid, and it was only influence and wangling that persuaded the maid not to make a case of it.”

  “Terrible!” commented Knollis. “It must be quite disturbing to live in the same house with her.”

  “I always keep my door locked at night.” Brailsford laughed. “I take no risks whatsoever.”

  “I can well believe that,” said Knollis pointedly. “By the way, I take it that you are prepared to make a statement with regard to the finding of the body, and to sign it?”

  “If it will help you, yes.”

  “Decent of you,” said Knollis. “You won’t forget to mention the man who vanished behind the house?”

  “Oh dear, no! I suppose that is vital?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Knollis.

  He looked across to the door. “Ellis! Will you see if you can force up that lower sash? It’s only a test,” he assured Brailsford.

  Ellis passed over to the window, and grunted and pushed manfully, but all to no purpose.

  “Perhaps Mr. Brailsford will help you?” Knollis suggested.

  Brailsford was only too willing. While his back was turned, Knollis extracted a cigarette from his own case, and polished the silver surface with his handkerchief.

  “Oh, never mind! Leave the darn thing, Ellis.”

  As Brailsford turned away from the window Knollis extended his case with a muttered apology. “Do help yourself, Mr. Brailsford! I forgot my manners!”

  Brailsford fell for the oldest trick in the detective’s repertoire, and handed the case back, complete with his finger-prints. Knollis dropped it in his pocket. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Brailsford. We have had a useful chat, but I must ask you to keep to yourself everything we have talked about. You will appreciate the reason.”

  Brailsford laid a finger to the side of his nose. “You trust me, Inspector!”

  As Ellis closed the door behind them he said: “Mm!”

  “Mm!” Knollis echoed.

  “What about him?” asked Ellis.

  “I’d like to take hold of the back of his neck and kick his behind,” said Knollis. Then he smiled. “It isn’t often I get so vicious, is it? Oh well, let’s have another chat with Miss Vaughan. To-night, you will take the London train, conveying my cigarette case with you. You will see if he is in the records, and also find Miss Vaughan’s late maid, and her doctor. If the doctor won’t come clean with you, ask either Inspector Burnell or Inspector Frecklehurst to take over at that end—seeing the Super first! I want the whole of Miss Vaughan’s case-history, and I won’t take anything less. Got that, Watson?”

  “Every bit, sir,” replied Ellis. “There is a question in my mind.”

  “Got an idea?” asked Knollis. “Let’s have it.”

  “Have you noticed that the people in this house only meet at meal-times?”

  Knollis’s expression was a queer one as he stared at his sergeant. “Do you know, Ellis, that I hadn’t noticed it—but you are quite right!”

  He seated himself on a linen chest and grunted. “Now I wonder why that is? Interesting!”

  “You did say,” Ellis pointed out, “that Freeman and Smithy were the only two people in the house who loved each other.”

  Knollis nodded. “Yes, I did! I hadn’t taken the notion any further. I observed, and didn’t reflect, which isn’t a bit like me. Well, thanks for the notion, Ellis. I’m grateful. I’ll think about it, as I’ll do with Brailsford’s phoney story.”

  “You ribbed him very nicely, sir.”

  Knollis allowed himself a smile. “I’m going to write a book one day, Ellis. I shall call it How to Twist Friends and Flannel People. Poor old Brailsford sucked it up like a sponge—or did he? He’s deep, Ellis, deep as the very devil. You know, he’s provided us with one of the worst dilemmas we meet in this game.”

  “Such as?” Ellis asked laconically.

  “The lack of an alibi. If there is anything worse than an alibi which proves that your man wasn’t there, it is the lack of evidence proving that he was there when he has no alibi at all.”

  “Yes,” Ellis agreed. “There is a chance of breaking down an alibi, but you’re completely beaten when you haven’t a witness of any sort.”

  Knollis rose. “Miss Vaughan, Ellis.”

  He walked to her door, and knocked upon it. It was opened by Freeman.

  “Ah, Freeman the ubiquitous!” Knollis greeted her.

  “That doesn’t sound nice,” she retorted.

  “I assure you that it is nice,” Knollis said in reply. “Can I see Miss Vaughan, please?”

  “I’ll ask, sir, if you’ll wait a minute.”

  Miss Vaughan deigned to see them. She laid her novel face down on the divan, and once more became an actress with a scene to be played.

  “You wish to speak to me?” she asked vaguely.

  “Er—yes,” Knollis replied lamely. “You see, Mr. Brailsford tells me that he found Manchester’s body, and came to ask your advice about what he should do with it. You can verify his statement?”

  He saw Freeman start, but he also saw Ellis catch her eye and give her a comforting wink.

  “Yes,” Dana Vaughan replied, “if he says that I can verify it, Inspector. He did come to see me, about twenty minutes to six it would be.”

  “He also tells me that you went down to the Green Alley some time previously to look for Sir Giles Tanroy. Is that statement correct?”

  Her nostrils suddenly became pinched, and it was only too obvious that she was trying to control herself. “He—told—you—that!” she said slowly.

  “He did, Miss Vaughan. My sergeant was a witness to the statement. I presume that he was correct?”

  “Sir Giles? No, no! I didn’t see him.”

  “Ah!” sighed Knollis. “In that case, we may assume that it was you whom Mr. Brailsford heard talking to Mr. Manchester under his window!”

  Dana Vaughan jumped to her feet, her eyes shining indignantly. “I didn’t go down to the Green Alley, Inspector. I never left this room. Freeman—you were with me all the time, were you not?”

  Freeman, thus appealed to, looked from Dana Vaughan to Knollis, and thence to Ellis. “I—I wasn’t here all the time, Miss Dana. You know that I wasn’t!”

  “But you were, Freeman. You were!”

  “Please make up your minds
,” Knollis said impatiently. “Miss Freeman has made one statement which accounts for all her movements between four o’clock and six o’clock, and nowhere in that statement does she mention spending more than a few minutes in your company. Did you, or did you not, go down to the Green Alley, Miss Vaughan? And I must have a truthful answer.”

  She drew herself up with regal indignation. “You dare to suggest that I should be guilty of a lie!”

  “Not necessarily a lie,” Knollis replied diplomatically. “A half-truth, or an evasion, or even a mistake. Now you did go down to the Green Alley?”

  She hesitated, for perhaps a second, and then lowered her head gracefully. “Yes, I did, Inspector. I went down about five minutes past five, and returned some time later.”

  “Then you saw Sir Giles?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “May I ask how you passed the time before you returned to this room, Miss Vaughan?”

  “I cannot answer that question, Inspector. My movements, as you call them, can have no bearing whatsoever on the matter you are investigating.”

  Knollis bowed his head. “Perhaps you will answer one other question. On Sunday morning last, did you happen to call in Mrs. Manchester’s bedroom on your way down to breakfast?”

  “I did, Inspector, in the hope of catching Mrs. Manchester and going down with her.”

  “I see,” said Knollis. “I suggest that she was not there?”

  “She was not.”

  “You were the last down for breakfast? Is that correct, Miss Vaughan?”

  “That is also correct, Inspector.”

  Knollis took out his notebook, and consulted it.

  “Am I correct in assuming that the budgerigar was dead when you were in the room?”

  Dana Vaughan shook her head. “The budgerigar was not dead, Inspector. It was enjoying an early morning bout of liveliness.”

  “You actually saw the bird?” asked Knollis.

  “Yes, I went through to the boudoir when I saw that Mrs. Manchester was not in the bedroom, and the bird was in its cage, and quite happy.”

  “And,” said Knollis, “you will pardon the implications of this question, but was it alive when you left?”

  “I do not kill pet birds, nor anything else, Inspector!” she replied loudly.

  “Thank you,” said Knollis. “Do you happen to walk in your sleep, Miss Vaughan?”

  “I have never been aware of doing so,” she replied with a puzzled frown. “Why do you ask?”

  “And you have never suffered from loss of memory?”

  “Me? An actress, Inspector!”

  Knollis smiled. “It would seem incredible, would it not, Miss Vaughan? Nevertheless, I have good reasons for asking you.”

  “You ask very impertinent questions, Inspector.”

  Knollis nodded as he turned to the door. “Yes, Miss Vaughan, but you must remember that Death has no manners as a general rule. In this instance he was a reformed character, and knocked twice before entering.”

  CHAPTER X

  THE CURIOSITY OF KNOLLIS

  Knollis lunched in Trentingham, and then went to the Guildhall to report to Colonel Mowbray. The Chief Constable was showing signs of anxiety, and asked with some exasperation in his voice if Knollis was any nearer to a solution of the case.

  “We are still in the fact-finding stages of the case,” Knollis replied quietly. “This is the stage where we are only possessed of facts, lies, and mistaken impressions all supplied without labels, and mixed up in one box for the poor detective to sort out. I’ll give you what I have at the moment. May I borrow your ruler and a sheet of paper?”

  He took out a pencil and drew a square, and a compass indication beside it. On the north side of the square he drew a small oblong.

  “This is supposed to be Baxmanhurst,” he said with a smile, “even if it is not recognisable as such. To save confusion, and more work, I’ll shade the upstairs rooms that are vitally concerned; that is, the bedroom on the north-east corner, and the next one to it, which is Dana Vaughan’s three-in-one suite. The sitting-room lies directly beneath those shaded rooms. Here is the cactus house. This is the garage, and here we have the woodshed. X, as usual, will mark the spot where the body was found.”

  “That’s quite clear,” said the Chief Constable.

  “Now according to the original statements,” Knollis explained, “Mrs. Manchester was in the sitting-room under those two bedrooms. Brailsford was in his own room on the corner, and the Vaughan woman was also in her own room. Smith was in the kitchen, with Mrs. Redson. Freeman was either in the kitchen, on her way to Miss Vaughan’s room, or actually in that room. Temple was unconscious in the woodshed, and—oh yes, Sir Giles was on his way home through the hurst, which lies to the south of the house, and is a quarter of a mile long and two hundred yards wide.”

  “So, on the face of it, all the people of the house were safely disposed?” the Chief Constable remarked.

  “That is the way it looks,” said Knollis, putting emphasis on the last word.

  “Have you taken into account the possibility of a stranger having done the job?”

  “I have,” Knollis said frankly, “and I am still satisfied that one of those six people killed him.”

  “Seven,” the Chief Constable corrected.

  “Count Freeman out, sir. She’s the only person who couldn’t have done it.”

  The Chief Constable fiddled with his monocle. “Six suspects, eh? That makes it rather hard going, Inspector!”

  “It looks tough until we start checking the statements, and then we find that the original view has to be modified. The modifications are the result of this morning’s work.”

  The Chief Constable edged forward in his seat. “Come on, man. Let’s have the story.”

  “We start with the morning paper in which the axe was wrapped,” said Knollis. “In fact we can start with the axe itself, because it is going to be the eventual means of getting our man—or woman.” ·

  “But Clitheroe says that a woman couldn’t have swung the thing!” protested the Colonel.

  Knollis laughed shortly. “Wasn’t it Napoleon who said that the word impossible was only to be found in the vocabulary of fools?”

  The Chief Constable looked surprised. “True! True! You are a wide reader, Inspector?”

  “So-so,” Knollis replied casually.

  “Hm! We’ll assume then that a woman could have killed him. What comes next?”

  “Here is the picture as I see it at the moment, sir. Smith brings Manchester back from town to Baxmanhurst. Manchester is expecting a visit from Sir Giles. Now Sir Giles has already arrived, and has walked round to the cactus house to pass the time. That is five-ish. He gets fed up with waiting, and walks off through the hurst, so that when Manchester seeks him he is not to be found. Miss Vaughan admits, now, that she went down to the Green Alley, and refuses to give a reason or to state how she passed the time—that is a blank we have to fill in for ourselves.”

  “Interesting point, that,” said the Chief Constable.

  “Here is a more interesting one,” went on Knollis. “Brailsford says that he heard voices under his window just before the time we have assessed for Manchester’s death. In his own words: Someone was talking under my window round about the time that Fred was killed. One was definitely Fred’s. The other sounded like a woman’s voice.”

  “That surely coincides with the Vaughan hiatus.”

  “It appears to do so,” Knollis replied ambiguously. “At a quarter to six, Brailsford entered Vaughan’s room and told her that Manchester was dead. He advises her to let a member of the staff find the body, adding significantly that she surely does not want to be suspected. That suggests to me that Brailsford is satisfied in his own mind that it was Vaughan who was talking to Manchester. I have examined the windows, and found that Brailsford could not have seen the body from his room. Therefore, he must have gone down to the Green Alley. He admitted this after a certain amount of pressure had
been brought to bear upon him. He also asserts that he saw a man vanishing round the back of the house, that he was so upset that he did not give chase, and that he slunk back to his room, warned Vaughan, and otherwise kept quiet.”

  “Freeman was in the dressing-room, unknown to Vaughan, and overheard the conversation. She appears to be devoted to Vaughan, and had no intention of giving her away if she was mixed in the affair, so she went down to the garage and told Smith that there was something horr—”

  “Something nasty in the woodshed?” the Chief Constable chuckled.

  “This is Baxmanhurst, sir, not Cold Comfort Farm,” Knollis reminded him. “No, she had heard that there was something horrible in the Green Alley, and would he please ‘discover’ it for her, and not let anybody know that she was aware of its presence. She was scared stiff, and would not tell him how she had come to learn about it. Smith discovers the body, and rings for us and the doctor.”

  “A clear enough picture—or is it?” asked the Colonel.

  “The colours overlap,” said Knollis, “and they have to be separated so that we can assess the true value of each. On the face of it, Temple is responsible, and yet according to all the medical evidence available he was out, stone cold.”

  “Brailsford could have done it,” said the Chief Constable. “Yes, he could have killed Manchester when he went down.”

  Knollis nodded. “I’ve thought of that, sir, but if he is the guilty party he left himself remarkably open. Why didn’t he arrange an alibi for himself? It would have been fairly easy.”

  “Quite so. There is that objection. So at the moment Temple is our star turn?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Knollis replied. “He may be causing us the most trouble.”

  “What about the axe and the newspaper?”

  “Ah, the axe!” Knollis exclaimed. “That is interesting. It wandered from the woodshed to the annexe door, and from the Green Alley to Temple’s dustbin. If anybody can explain who conducted it on those two journeys I can complete the case—providing that it is also explained who took the copy of the newspaper from the sitting-room. Freeman says it was there at tea-time, because she was tidying up, and read an article in it. After tea, it was missing, and she commandeered Smith’s copy to replace it. Now Brailsford and Vaughan were in the room together after tea, and I don’t want to ask either of them if they saw the other pick it up, because of starting a train of thought which might develop against us.”