The Heel of Achilles: A Golden Age Mystery

by E.

  “It looks as though the thing is going to turn out into the Eternal Triangle with two men at the meeting sides,’ he mused. ‘And yet—”

  He switched off the lights and went to bed.

  “—and yet this kind of triangle does not usually result in this kind of murder,” he concluded, as he got between the sheets.

  He resumed his investigation, mentally refreshed, in the laboratory next morning.

  The laboratory, which was the domain of Superintendent Doctor Manson was a well-lighted room occupying almost the whole of the top floor of New Scotland Yard. Along one side and end of it ran a continuous bench, save where it was broken by sunken porcelain sinks under the windows.

  Bunsen burners, test tubes and beakers, evaporating apparatus and other chemistry appliances littered the shelves above the bench. Glass-fronted and indexed cases round the walls contained thousands of specimen microscope slides, including those of the blood corpuscles of almost every animal, fragments of cloth drawn from hundreds of makes of materials, hairs and samples of fur from animals of all countries, together with feathers of birds—enough material to identify by comparison alone nearly everything that could be brought to the laboratory for a verdict.

  Along the length of the room opposite the bench, doors opened off into dark rooms, enlarging rooms and X-ray, infra-red and ultra-violet ray rooms.

  Within the short space of three years Doctor Manson had built in the shell of the top floor of the Yard this formidable crime-fighting machine—the most complete scientific criminological laboratory in the world.

  In the centre of the room stood his own ‘bench’—a large square table with a white porcelain top. It was on this that he now placed the exhibits brought back from the cottage at Thames Pagnall—the envelopes containing the fluff from Canley’s overcoat, the fibres from the patterned rug in the cottage, the cigar ash from the ash tray. They were followed by the little cake of earth against which his foot had clicked, the thread caught in a rough splinter of the table, the cigar butt which Inspector Mackenzie had found on the railway line, the hairs taken from the hats of Canley which had been hanging on the hallstand, and also the hat which had been found in the garden of the cottage.

  Doctor Manson inspected them one by one, debating with himself. Finally, he pulled towards him the envelopes containing the cigar ash from the floor and looked around the laboratory.

  “Wilkins,” he called. The chief assistant of the laboratory came across. The doctor passed the envelope over. “Cigar ash is your hobby, is it not?” He laughed. “Here is a cigar and some ash. Give them a name, will you? And whether it has been recently smoked, or not? It belonged to a person who has died very suddenly. Any dampness about the cigar you may put down to the fact that it was lying out in the open all night.”

  Wilkins carried the exhibits to his own bench at the far end of the laboratory; and Doctor Manson, looking round, picked up the hat found in the cottage garden.

  When he had first seen the hat he had regarded it with a considerable surprise. This was transformed into astonishment by the more detailed examination.

  The hat was well worn, and not too clean. With a distinct air of distaste the doctor commenced foraging in the interior. It appeared to add to his surprise. Merry, entering the laboratory, noted the signs.

  “Anything wrong with the hat, Harry?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure, Jim. Didn’t Mackenzie say that Canley had no occupation?”

  “Except racing, Harry. Why?”

  Doctor Manson preferred the hat to his deputy, and indicated the inside. “It seems to be permeated with foreign matter of some kind,” he pointed out.

  Merry investigated. “Dust apparently,” he said. “But inside!”

  Exactly. Dust outside I can understand. But dust inside a hat savours rather of occupational contamination, and that in a man who had no occupation.” He turned back the inside leather band. “It’s even behind the band,” he emphasized. “What on earth is it?”

  Merry inspected the discoloration. It appeared to be minute grains of a whitish substance, mixed with grease and dirt. “Can’t make it out,” he said, “we’d better put it under the microscope.”

  The examination produced a little more information. “I should say that it is lime, Harry,” Merry reputed. “And what looks like—could it be stone?”

  “Cement!” Doctor Mason supplied the answer. “It’s cement dust.”

  “Now, what the blazes was Canley doing wallowing in cement?” asked Merry, in surprise.

  “I don’t suppose he was, Jim. This hat gets curiouser and curiouser. Let me have a look at it.”

  The doctor searched round the interior with a lens, and picked out two or three short hairs adhering to the grease. Carrying them to the sink, he placed them in a test tube, and washed them with a few drops of ether. Examination through the microscope again revealed the hairs now to be black in colour, from the head of a person, and with the tops square-cut.

  “He’d had a haircut within twenty-four hours of his death, anyway,” said Merry. “The points of the hair are not even starting to get rounded yet.”

  “But that doesn’t explain the cement dust, anyway.”

  “I suppose it is Canley’s hat?”

  Doctor Manson looked up in surprise. “The point had not occurred to me, Jim,” he admitted. “I had taken it for granted.” He made a gesture of annoyance at the oversight. “We’ve a few specimens of the hair of Canley somewhere, if I remember. Sort them out, and we’ll soon see if they agree.”

  Merry opened one of the seed envelopes and slipped on to a slide a couple of the hairs snipped from Canley’s head. They were brown, with the points fully rounded.

  “It is not his hat!” Doctor Manson exploded.

  “Then whose the devil’s is it?” said Merry. “And what’s it doing in Canley’s garden underneath a window where there are confused footprints?”

  “That, Jim, is a question which has to be investigated.” He rang a bell. “See if Inspector Kenway is in the Yard, Bellows,” he said to the constable who answered. “Tell him we want him here.”

  Kenway listened to the story of the hat. “Black hair and all mixed up with cement,” he repeated. “And dirty. It couldn’t be flour, I suppose, Doctor, could it, because that would just fit Appleton, who is a grocer.”

  Manson smiled. “You seem intent on hanging Appleton, Kenway, don’t you? No, it could not be flour, not unless Appleton mixes cement with his flour, and I expect the housewives would tell you that.”

  “Or their husbands,” suggested Merry. “That might be better.”

  Kenway giggled. “I’ll go down right away and scout round,” he said.

  Doctor Manson nodded agreement. He looked up and saw Wilkins hovering round the desk. The laboratory assistant was carrying in one hand a porcelain tray holding the cigar ash from the ashtray confined under a glass covering; in the other hand similarly protected was the cigar butt.

  “Settled it, Wilkins?” asked Manson.

  “No, Doctor.” The assistant paused. “Did you say that this ash came from this cigar?” he asked.

  “Presumably it does, Wilkins. I did not say that it did—that is what I wanted you to tell me—” He looked suddenly alert. “Is there something wrong with it?” he demanded.

  “Very much so, sir. There is too much ash.”

  “What!”

  “There is too much ash here to have come from the consumed portion of the cigar,” repeated Wilkins, patiently.

  Merry whistled through his teeth. “I smell a rat, I see him forming in the air, and darkening the sky, but we’ll nip him in the bud.” He misquoted Sir Boyle Roche.

  “I thought that you would like to know before I went further into the analysis,” added Wilkins. “Perhaps in the circumstances, you would like to take it over yourself, sir.”

  Doctor Manson sat down again at his bench. “This, Wilkins,” he says, “opens up possibilities.”

  “More than we have
yet realized, Doctor,” broke in Merry. He had looked over the covered tiles. “Because,” he pointed out, “there is still ash that Wilkins has not included—the clump we gathered from the floor, and presumably, the bit that was thrown away during the journey from the cottage to the railway.”[VI]

  “To be sure.” Doctor Manson’s voice had a timbre of annoyance at his oversight. He made no physical sign of it, however, but sat down and began peering at the ash through a lens. After a few moments he gave vent to a sharp exclamation, stood up, and motioned the chief assistant to take his place.

  “Have a good look at the ash, Wilkins,” he said. “Tell me if I am mistaken in thinking that there is something peculiar about it.”

  Wilkins pried among the carbon, separating a little of it from the remainder. After a pause he glanced up. “Can I use your microscope, Doctor?” Manson nodded, and watched with professional interest Wilkins place a little of the separated ash on a slide, cover it with a mica cup, and slip the slide under the eyepiece.

  After a prolonged look, he rose, crossed the room to a cabinet, and from a drawer extracted half a dozen slides, each containing a few grains of some object.

  One by one he placed the slides under the microscope. Finally, using the double eyepiece, he compared one simultaneously with the Canley sample.

  The result satisfied him, for he sat back. “Yes, Doctor, there is a peculiarity about it,” he announced. He was dogmatically emphatic in his decision. “There are two kinds of ash here—one from this cigar, which is a Havana blend of leaf. The other came from a Jamaican cigar. The two ashes under the microscope are quite distinct and different.” He waited for any comment.

  Doctor Manson nodded. “That was my own conclusion, Wilkins,” he said. It was characteristic of the scientist that he would not rely on his own unsupported view, though he prided himself on being able to distinguish sixty different kinds of cigar and tobacco ash.

  “And what about the ash from the floor?” he asked.

  “It did not come from the cigar we have here. It is Jamaican.”

  “A bit of good thorough analysis, and helps me considerably,” commended the scientist.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Inspector Mackenzie scratched his head and let his slow-moving mind dwell on the story that Kenway had told him about the peculiar hat. A minute or two passed, and then he looked up from his aimless circumambulations. “That’s funny,” he said. “I never heard of Canley being anything to do with cement.”

  “I didn’t say it was Canley,” replied Kenway, patiently. “All I have said is that the hat seems to have belonged to somebody who has something to do with cement.” Kenway was beginning to despair of Mackenzie altogether. “In fact, he seems to have lived among cement,” he added.

  “You mean that the hat doesn’t belong to Canley at all?” The truth seemed to be sinking into the inspector’s mind. “That’s about it,” replied Kenway.

  “Then who the devil does it belong to?” Exasperation raised his voice to soprano pitch that made Kenway think of eunuchs.

  “Who would make a habit of hanging up their hats in Canley’s garden?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to get from you, Mackenzie,” Kenway gestured impatiently. “Is there any cement mixing works round here?”

  The inspector shook his head. “Nothing like that,” he announced. He thought for a moment. “Best we can do is a concrete works,” he announced. Kenway jumped. He recalled the stone dust found in the hat.

  “Concrete!” he ejaculated. “That’s our pigeon. That’s even better. Where are these works?”

  “Out towards Walton. London firm. Make paving slabs, and wall sections that look like bricks, and—er—all that kind of thing.”

  “Then we’d better hurry along there and make some inquiries.”

  The manager of the London Concrete Company sighed mournfully. “You really can’t expect me, Inspector, to identify the hats of each of 200 employees, now can you?” he protested. He inspected the headgear, plaintively. “I can’t possibly say if it belongs to one of our men.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Kenway agreed. “Do you happen to know if anyone here had any associations with Canley?”

  The manager shook his head, negatively. “I don’t even know all the people we employ here,” he replied. “The best I can do is to pass you on to our yard foreman. He might be able to help you.”

  The officers found the foreman ensconced in the yard office. He listened to the recital of their worries and rubbed a hand over a chin which looked blackly dirty, but wasn’t; Mr. Bailey was a dark man who had to shave twice a day in order to present a respectable appearance!

  “Not exactly an association with Canley,” he said, and seemed to be picking his words carefully.

  “Something to do with Canley, then, eh?” suggested Kenway.

  “No, Not ’im . . . his daughter,” replied Mr. Bailey.

  “His daughter!” Kenway sat up and took notice. “I think, Mr. Bailey,” he said, “that you ought to tell us the story from the beginning. Who is the man you have in mind and what has his daughter to do with Canley?”

  The man hesitated. “I don’t want to say anything that will do him any harm, sir,” he explained. “I don’t really know much about it meself, only what I’ve heard in gossip in the pubs, and so on.”

  “Bill,” interrupted Mackenzie, “you’d be doing him more harm in not telling us anything you know. We’ve nothing against the man, only we found his hat in a funny place, and we want to know how it got there. Who is he?”

  “It’s William Harker, Inspector. The gossip is that his daughter, Elsie, has been going round with Canley on the quiet, and he ain’t got too good a reputation with women, as perhaps you’ve found out.”

  “Did Harker know about this association, Mr. Bailey?” Kenway waited interestedly for the answer.

  “That’s the point, sir. Although damn near everybody else seems to have known of it, daddy didn’t. But he overheard some of the men talking about it here the other day, and there was a bit of a row.”

  “What kind of a row?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I wasn’t here. But his pal, Harry Johns, was there.”

  “Can we see Johns?”

  “Sure, I’ll get him.” He went into the yard and returned with a stockily built man, and made the introduction. The line of inquiry was conveyed to him by Mackenzie.

  “Well, Mr. Mackenzie, it wasn’t exactly a row,” Johns explained. “William didn’t know anything of Elsie and Canley, but overheard two of the men discussing it in the canteen. They didn’t know that he was on the other side of the wooden partition.”

  “What happened when he overheard?” asked Kenway.

  “He came round and went for them as gossip-mongers. They said that he was so bloody sanctimonious about other people that he ought to look after his own folk better. William looked at me and asked me if it was true what the men said. I had to say as ’ow it was, me having seen ’em together on two or three occasions at night.”

  “And what did Harker say to that?”

  “Nothing. He put on his hat and pushed off.”

  “Ah!” said Kenway. “His hat.” He uncovered the head-gear and displayed it. “Do you know if this is his hat?” he asked.

  Johns nodded. “I reckon it is,” he said. “It’s the one he generally wears.”

  “Was he wearing it when he left after that bit of a row?” Johns nodded.

  With that the two officers had to be satisfied.

  “Now what do we do?” asked Mackenzie.

  “Well, Mac there may be some reason for the hat being in the garden. Perhaps we’d better see Mrs. Skelton. She might know something about it.”

  The doorbell clamoured vociferously at the little house of Mrs. Skelton, and the Skelton household assembled little by little—Mr. Skelton, his wife and five children. They huddled round the doorway.

  Inspector Kenway opened the conversation. “Had Mr. Canley any callers during the ev
ening before his death, Mrs. Skelton?” he asked.

  The woman shook her head. “No,” she said.

  “No tradesmen, for instance, or messengers?”

  “Nobody at all. Why? What’s the matter now?”

  Kenway produced the hat. “Do you know anything about this?” he demanded.

  “Oh, aye. That’s Mr. Harker’s hat.”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “Sure? O’ course I’m sure. I’ve seen William Harker at choir practice twenty year or more. And always in that same hat. He never wore no other as I knows of ’ceptin’ Sunday best.”

  “And where did you last see him wearing it?” quizzed the inspector.

  “Why, the last day as I cooked for Mr. Canley. I remembers as I’d just left his supper all ready and was finishing a nice cup of tea, which same was me perks, when William comes to the front door.”

  “What!” Kenway was startled into a shout. “But you’ve just said that nobody visited the house on that evening.”

  “O’ course nobody particular come, but William did. I don’t reckon him as visitors. I’ve known him too long.”

  Inspector Kenway threw up his hands at the queer reasoning of the feminine mind, which distinguished between visitors and people they knew! He returned to the attack. “So Harker was at the cottage on the night that Canley was killed, eh?” he asked. “Would you be kind enough to tell me as accurately as possible when he came and what happened. This, by the way, is important.”

  “Well, as I said, I was just finishing a cup of tea when there was a whacking bang on the front door. I opens it, and there stands William. And in a tearing rage he was, too.

  “‘Where’s your master?’ he yells at me. ‘Master, I says. I got no master. No man masters me. Just let one try.’

  “‘Where’s Canley?’ he roars at me. ‘’Ow would I know,’ I says. ‘Anyway he ain’t in.’ ‘Then what time will he be in?’ he says. ‘I don’t know’ says me, ‘and I’ll be much obliged if you’ll get off the doorstep and let me go home.’ ‘You tell him I’ll be back,’ he says. ‘Whatever’s the matter with you,’ I says. ‘I’ve knowed you this twenty year, William Harker, and never see’d you in such a wicked temper. Can’t be civil, you can’t.’”