by Cyril Hare
“Well, Rickaby thought her extremely funny. He is the type of gentleman who thinks that if there is one thing in nature more inherently amusing than an old maid it is a lunatic, and when the two are combined the joke is, of course, irresistible. I thought we had grown out of such things nowadays, but apparently I was wrong. Edelman can hardly be said to have shewn dislike to her at all. But then he is not the type to shew his feelings, anyway. He regarded her as an interesting psychological specimen and I think he was quite prepared to cause her any amount of pain just to observe her reactions. When I say pain, I don’t of course mean——”
“I quite understand, sir. Please go on.”
“Well, that only leaves Wood and Phillips. Phillips, as I have said, was to all appearances fond of her—as he ought to have been in all conscience, for I don’t think he’d have made much headway with Miss Brown without her. Wood seemed to consider her principally as a potential subject for a story, and if he disliked her, as I think he did, it was probably mainly on the score that she disapproved of him and his works. I’m afraid I’ve put all this very crudely,” Pettigrew concluded. “But what I find very difficult to convey is the atmosphere at the Fernlea. There was definitely an anti-Danville party, although all the members of it arrived at their position in different ways. But I should have thought the last thing any of them would have wanted was to murder the poor woman.”
“Motive known—none,” muttered Jellaby, writing as he spoke. “Next stage—opportunity.”
“This is where my own inquiry may be of some help,” observed Mallett. “It seems to me that the person who had the opportunity of intercepting my report on its way from Mr. Palafox to Mr. Pettigrew had also an opportunity to kill Miss Danville. The two things must have happened within a few yards of each other and within a very short space of time.”
“Doesn’t follow the same person did both,” Jellaby objected.
“Certainly not, although it is possible, and if so, perhaps it would shed some light on the motive. I think that the interests we are fighting would be prepared to use pretty drastic methods to prevent us exposing their means of breaking the control. But that isn’t my point. What I mean is that the same group of people fall under suspicion in each case as being likely to be on the spot at the right time. Now to begin with, Mr. Pettigrew, I am right in thinking that nobody, apart from the messenger, would normally have had any business there at that hour of the day?”
“So far as my knowledge of the office routine goes, no.”
“Except Mr. Pettigrew and Miss Brown,” said Jellaby.
“I apologize,” said Pettigrew. “I was forgetting that so far as opportunity goes, ours was as good as, or indeed better than anyone’s. It would be a little embarrassing to us all to discuss my own case, particularly as you haven’t administered a caution yet; but I am quite prepared to answer for Miss Brown.”
“Perhaps you’d better. I’ll be seeing her anyway,” Jellaby said with what seemed to Pettigrew unnecessary grimness.
“Well, to begin with, Miss Brown was actually with me when—— No, that’s wrong, I was forgetting.” He stopped, confused and angry with himself for being confused. “Let me get this right. First I heard the kettle starting to whistle. Then I heard what I took to be Miss Danville going to make the tea. The kettle went on whistling, and so when Miss Brown came into my room, I naturally assumed that it was her footsteps I had heard and not Miss Danville’s. I know now of course that my first supposition was right.”
“Do you?” said Jellaby.
“Well—dash it, Miss Danville was there. We know that now.”
“And where was Miss Brown?”
“I—I really have no idea, except that she came into my room while the kettle was whistling and I sent her to turn it off. She may have been in her room some time, of course, long enough to take off her hat and coat, anyway.”
“You didn’t hear her come into her room?”
“No. I wasn’t listening for her, naturally. I didn’t expect her at all that day. And she has very light footsteps anyway.”
“Rubber-soled shoes, perhaps?”
“I dare say. I have never troubled to find out.”
“And coming into the building by the ordinary entrance she would have to pass the scene of the crime to reach her room?”
“Really,” said Pettigrew warmly, “I must protest. It is a ridiculous notion that Miss Brown could conceivably be guilty of an act of violence against anyone, let alone Miss Danville. It simply outrages reason to suggest that a girl like that——”
“Well, well,” Mallett interposed tactfully. “Suppose we go back to where I started just now. Apart from you two and the messenger, there was nobody who ought to have been in that vicinity at that time?”
Pettigrew, who was conscious of having made himself look rather foolish by his over-emphatic advocacy on his secretary’s behalf, considered the question as coolly as possible before replying.
“There are two possibilities which have just occurred to me,” he said. “One is that the Controller might have sent for some member of the staff who would normally take that route to his room. You can easily ascertain whether that happened on this occasion, of course.”
“Good. That point will be attended to. And the other possibility?”
“Next to the pantry where Miss Danville died, and on the side furthest from my room is a ladies’ cloakroom. That means of course that any woman working in that part of the building might properly be within quite a short distance of the pantry door at any time.”
“Thank you, sir. It looks as if a lot of ladies will have to be asked about their visits to that room on Friday afternoon. Well, that covers authorized persons. Now for the unauthorized. You had at different times had to suffer from the presence of intruders in your corridor?”
“Edelman, Wood, Hopkinson, Rickaby, Phillips,” Jellaby enumerated, reading from Mallett’s notes.
“That is right. But I don’t want to mislead you about this. I was several times aware of people fooling about outside my door, and on each occasion it was in the afternoon and about the time we are considering in this case—between half-past three and four. The only time I caught them in the act it proved to be Edelman, Wood and Mrs. Hopkinson. It doesn’t prove, of course, that it was the same three, or any of them, on the previous occasions. Phillips I found on the same day”—the recollection of the circumstances still made him feel uncomfortable—“but it was a good deal later, after tea. Rickaby was earlier, about one o’clock. And in both the last two cases, there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for their presence.”
“The explanation of the others did not strike you as so reasonable,” Mallett commented.
“No, it didn’t.”
“You told me a very odd story this morning, sir, about what became known as the Plot. What is your candid opinion of it?”
Pettigrew shrugged his shoulders.
“I gave up trying to form an opinion of it some time ago,” he said. “Except that it was a damned nuisance. It started as a quite amusing game, and seems to have ended as an obsession.”
“You didn’t think there was anything behind it?”
“Behind it?”
“Some ulterior motive on the part of the plotters?”
“I can’t say I did. The whole thing seemed to me completely purposeless and silly.”
“Purposeless or not,” interrupted Jellaby. “Look at the results.”
“Surely,” Pettigrew objected, “you can’t say that anything that happened was a result of the Plot. At least, you can’t prove it at this stage.”
“I never heard of the Plot till I read these notes over my lunch,” said Jellaby, “but I’ve found two results already. Miss Danville driven off her head—I call that one result. The other one is that all the plotters knew exactly what to expect in this part of the building at the exact time of the crime. Knowledge on the part of suspects—I call that another result, and maybe the bigger one of the two.”
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“There were only three present at the rehearsal which I interrupted,” said Pettigrew.
“They were all in the room plotting it out together on the Thursday evening, or so you told Mr. Mallett this morning.”
Pettigrew disliked Jellaby’s uncompromising methods of argument, but he was compelled to admit that he was right. Still he remained unconvinced on the main issue.
“It seems to me difficult to believe that such an elaborate pretence should have been built up over such a long period without anyone giving it away,” he said.
“The secret—if there was a secret—needn’t have been known to all of them,” Mallett pointed out. “Possibly the Plot came into existence quite accidentally, and then one or more of the plotters decided to make use of it as a convenient cover for other activities. But we’re straying into theory. At present, we do possess the two solid results of the Plot mentioned by Mr. Jellaby just now. How they fit in to the rest of the story we don’t know yet, but I think it’s asking rather a lot to believe that neither of them have anything to do with either my inquiry or Mr. Jellaby’s. Is there anything further you would like to tell us, sir?”
“Nothing,” said Pettigrew, and rose to go.
“Good afternoon, sir. By the way, I have just heard from London that summonses are being issued against Blenkinsops under Article 7 (I) (d) of the Order, just as you advised.”
“That is a tremendous consolation, isn’t it?” said Pettigrew.
Chapter 13
TALKING ABOUT IT
“This fellow,” observed Mallett to Jellaby, as he entered the latter’s office next morning, “really had the most astonishing luck.”
Jellaby looked up from his desk, on which were laid the first fruits of his inquiry, a set of photographs of the scene of Miss Danville’s death, and another of the body of the lady herself.
“What fellow?” he asked absently.
“Our murderer, of course—or murderess, as the case may be.”
Jellaby grunted and resumed his study of the photographs.
“Ought to be a close up of the window,” he murmured. Then he looked up suddenly. “Did you say our murderer?” he asked.
Mallett nodded. “Ours now,” he said. “It came through to my digs just after breakfast. Your chief must have been pretty emphatic on the telephone yesterday evening to get it arranged so quickly. I am to be in charge of this investigation, subject to my continuing to do what I can in the Blenkinsop affair—which is pretty well cleaned up, anyway—and the enquiry into the leakage of information from the Control. That’s an affair I have very small hopes of now, unless this one throws some light on it. So there we are. I hope you have no objections.”
“Objections? No. Glad to have you. Don’t care for Yard men butting in as a rule, but this is different. Not a local business, properly speaking. All foreigners involved. You’ll understand ’em better than I should.”
“I’m glad you feel that way about it,” said Mallett. “I hoped you would.”
“Matter of fact,” Jellaby grunted, rather as though a confession was being forced from him, “matter of fact, I asked for you myself. Well,” he went on hastily, before Mallett could thank him, “you’ll want to see what I’ve got so far. Haven’t had much time since our talk with Mr. Pettigrew yesterday, but such as it is, it’s here.”
Mallett drew up a chair to the desk and read with concentrated attention the papers which Jellaby placed before him. At the end of ten minutes, he pushed his chair back and lighted his pipe.
“Well, you’ve cleared the ground a bit, Mr. Jellaby,” he observed. “Let’s summarize what you’ve got here. Statement from Establishment Officer—pure routine, and nothing of any value in it. Statement from her brother: his sister had no enemies that he knew of; she had suffered from melancholia in the past, but had been apparently cured several years ago; no suicidal tendencies, so far as he is aware. Well, this isn’t a case of suicide, we can bank on that. It doesn’t look like a self-inflicted wound anyhow, and apart from that, if she killed herself, how did she manage to dispose of the weapon? Statement from pathologist: The wound is certainly consistent with the use of a paper piercer of the type now produced and shewn to him. That’s one up to Mr. Pettigrew, anyway. Statement from Miss Hawker, assistant principal in charge of the Stationery Department at the Control: Eighty-seven paper piercers (known colloquially as ‘bodkins’) large, have been issued for the use of the officers of the Pin Control; these are distributed according to demand among all the sections in the office; number now accounted for, sixty-eight; it is against the rules to remove these for personal use, but she fears it is done. It doesn’t look as if we shall get very far in that direction. Now if Miss Clarke had been in charge of the Stationery Department, I don’t expect a single paper clip could have been moved from one room to another without a requisition form in triplicate. What’s next? This is interesting—Statement from John Peabody, messenger: Further to previous statement, he adds that, according to usual routine, after depositing his papers on the shelf and before proceeding upstairs to his tea, he went into the pantry, filled the kettle and lighted the gas-ring; the room was then empty, and he observed nothing and nobody suspicious. Lastly, Statement from Elizabeth Evans, landlady of the Fernlea Residential Club: At the request of Detective-Inspector Jellaby, she now hands to him all books, papers and documents in the room lately occupied by Honoria Danville, deceased—which have not been disturbed in any way since her death. What about the books and documents, Mr. Jellaby. Is there anything of interest there?”
“Nothing at all. They’re all here if you want to look at ’em, but you’d be wasting your time. Very few letters, and they were of no consequence. There was a fattish note-book, labelled ‘Journal’, which I had hopes of. But there was nothing in it but prayers and so forth. I didn’t like it at all, I can tell you, though I thought it my duty to read every word of it. Nasty stuff. Very high, she must have been. Very high indeed—almost Romish. I’m a Free Churchman myself.”
“Well,” said Mallett, “you’ve certainly wasted no time up to date. But I’m afraid we’re going to have our work cut out to make up the three days we lost before we ever began.”
“That’s true. As you said just now, this chap’s had the devil’s own luck. Could hardly have relied on getting away with a start like that, could he?”
“No,” Mallett agreed. “And I think that’s rather an important point. Because, assuming, as he must have assumed, that the murder was going to be discovered as soon as anyone went into the room, he was obviously taking a tremendous risk. At the most, he could only count on a few minutes to make his getaway. The fact that there was only one wound, which he couldn’t have been sure would be fatal, shows what a hurry he was in. Every murder is a risk, of course, but anyone planning in advance to dispose of Miss Danville could, I should have thought, have devised something with a greater margin of safety. Why was it done this way, then?”
“Unpremeditated attack, perhaps,” suggested Jellaby. “Sudden quarrel and a flare up—like nine murders out of ten are, anyhow.”
“A sudden quarrel with a deafish woman in a room with all that row going on from the kettle? It doesn’t seem very plausible to me.”
“Sudden emergency, then.”
“That’s what I’m looking for. I think it looks as though he (and in ‘he’ I’m always including ‘she’, of course) took this quick opportunity to get rid of Miss Danville because he had to. In other words, something had happened, or was just going to happen, which made it urgently necessary for him to kill her.”
“Such as——?”
Mallett left the question in the air while he knocked out his pipe.
“One could imagine half a dozen situations in which the removal of someone might become suddenly necessary,” he said, “but I don’t think there’s much to be gained by starting from that point. I’d rather begin at the other end—which was where the murderer began, after all, with Miss Danville. What are the salient f
acts about her, and what new development, if any, had recently occurred with regard to those facts? If we examine those, we may get a clue to what was in our fellow’s mind.”
“First salient fact,” said Jellaby. “She was mad.”
“Yes, that certainly leaps to the eye as the most important thing about her. Not that she was mad in the ordinary sense of the term—I don’t suppose any doctor would have certified her. But she was unquestionably abnormal in some ways.”
“She had been in an asylum, hadn’t she?”
“Yes, but as a voluntary patient only. I checked that up when I was looking into the antecedents of the Fernlea crowd. Even the Government in war-time would hardly have given her a job if she had actually been certified insane. Well, that’s our first point, I don’t know that it carries us much further. As Mr. Wood seemed to think, madness may be a good reason for committing a murder, but I don’t see that it provides a motive for anyone else to kill the mad person—unless the insanity is of a very different type to Miss Danville’s.
“But it is interesting to note that there had been a recent development affecting her mental condition, or rather two, one on top of the other. Firstly, the night before her death she had had what seems to have been a bad, though temporary, mental breakdown, and secondly, as a result of that, she had published the fact of having been in a mental hospital.”
“Second salient fact,” Jellaby went on, “and the only other one that I can see is—a lot of people disliked her.”
“M’m,” said Mallett doubtfully, “I’d rather prefer to split that one up. It’s a bit broad for our purposes. Besides, it’s the facts behind the dislike I want to look at. Shortly, I can see only two of substance. One is that she wanted Miss Brown to marry this man Phillips.”
“Nothing occurred lately to affect that,” said Jellaby.
“No, unless you count the fact that Miss Clarke and Mrs. Hopkinson had publicly quarrelled with her the night before on that subject.”