Murder Will Speak

by J. J. Connington

  The cinema was a godsend to her. She could sit there hour after hour for sixpence in warmth and comfort, gazing at screen-heroes and putting herself mentally in the place of the heroines they embraced. That gave her the few thrills which she ever experienced. Gangster films merely bored her. She could not put herself in the place of people like that. Romance, for her, meant hot kisses, passionate embraces, and the world well lost, if need be: everything, in fact, which never came into her own emotional life. The silver screen was a fairyland where dreams came true, something completely divorced from the ordinary, everyday code.

  Balancing the cinema, St. Salvator’s Church filled the rest of her time. It formed the centre of her social life, such as that was; but even there, though some of the congregation spoke to her casually, they seemed to have no desire to deepen the acquaintanceship. The Vicar was much too exalted a person for her to feel at her ease with him. For the curate, Mr. Shinfield, she cherished a passion which she knew herself to be quite hopeless. He was always kind, ready to chat with her after a church function, and quite devoid of any habit of “talking down” to her.

  He occupied a good deal of her thoughts: a tall, handsome man in the late twenties, with a contented but not self-contented smile when he chose to use it. “He’s so clean-looking,” Cissie summed up his appearance to herself. Unmarried, of course. Cissie hated to think that he might even get engaged. All these young women, better-dressed than she — for St. Salvator’s had a mixed congregation — competing for his attention. And some of them not so young, either. That Miss Jessop was always hovering round with her: “Yes, Mr. Shinfield,” and “No, indeed, Mr. Shinfield,” as if no one else should have a chance of speaking to him. Pudding-faced old cat! For to Cissie, thirty-five seemed well past the prime.

  Her two acquaintances also attended St. Salvator’s. And if Cissie’s heaven was in the cinema, her purgatory came during her visits to them. Over their tea they would discuss the curate’s matrimonial prospects in the frankest manner, changing the runners and betting from week to week in the light of fresh information laboriously acquired and stored up in their minds. “Miss Oliver, she’s coming to the front now. He goes there once a week, I’m told. Visiting her invalid sister? Oh, I dare say. That’s as good an excuse as any. But she’ll find her nose out of joint, will Miss Oliver, for all her cleverness. Miss Buckland’s got more sex appeal by a long chalk, and she knows how to dress, too. She’s got her eye on Mr. Shinfield, as anyone can see. And then there’s Miss Shalstone, with a nice little income of her own. I don’t say he’d marry her for her money, but still, it helps. And besides them there’s Miss Hargwyne, with her uncle a Bishop, able to give a young man a helping hand if he chose. It would be a step up for Mr. Shinfield to marry into that circle.”

  Poor Cissie had to listen to this and much more, conscious all the while that she had no looks, no sex appeal, no private income, and no social standing. That made it more difficult to go on with those dreams of hers, even though she knew they were but dreams. A hard world.

  It was a Thursday evening. She had spent the afternoon at the cinema; and then, after a frugal meal at a tea-shop, had gone on to a meeting at St. Salvator’s. Now it was time to go home. She nodded to an acquaintance, without venturing to stop and speak. Then she took her way to Cowslip Avenue.

  There was a light in the drawing-room when she came to the gate. She was not supposed to use the front door, so she went round to the tradesmen’s entrance at the back of the house. To her surprise, she saw a light in the kitchen. Apparently Mrs. Hyson must have gone in there to boil a kettle or do some other task. Cissie opened the back door, and as she did so she was met by a strong smell of gas. The kettle must have been filled too full and when it boiled some of the water must have overflowed and extinguished the gas-ring. Cissie had seen that happen, so she thought nothing of it. She pushed open the door, went along the short passage, and entered the kitchen. Then, with staring eyes, she shrieked in panic.

  Asprawl on the floor lay the body of a man, with head and shoulders inside the gas-oven from which the fumes were escaping. Cissie recognised the clothes: it was Mr. Hyson. She shrieked again, involuntarily; then she rushed to the back door and screamed at the pitch of her voice. Then, with terror pursuing her, she fled round the corner of the house and down to the gate, screaming as she went.

  For a while she lost track of events. People questioned her. Then a constable appeared, catechised her, made his way into the house and then returned, complaining that the telephone was out of order. She saw him run along the Avenue to a public-call kiosk. After that, with some gruff discouragement of by-standers, he retreated once more into the house and she heard the front door slam. And, meanwhile, the little crowd at the garden gate grew in numbers and strangers persisted in bothering her with questions.

  Why couldn’t they leave her alone? All she wanted was to be left in peace and to forget that ugly figure asprawl on the floor of her familiar kitchen.

  At last the strain grew too great and she collapsed in hysterics.

  When she recovered, she found that more police had arrived, among them a formidable-looking inspector who spoke in a rumbling bass and whose first orders succeeded in dispersing the group of Paul Prys at the gate. Then the inspector took her arm and, not ungently, led her up to the house and ushered her into the dining-room.

  “Sit down for a minute,” he suggested.

  As she collapsed into a chair, his glance went to the sideboard, and after rummaging for a moment he produced a tumbler which he charged from a decanter.

  “Had a bit of a shock, eh? Swallow this,” he directed.

  She gulped down the liquor mechanically and then spluttered at the unaccustomed strength of the dose. It sent a glow through her and seemed to bring back some of her courage.

  “Feeling better? Good. Now don’t get nervous. You’re all safe and in good hands. I’m Inspector Craythorn.”

  He glanced at her critically for a moment or two.

  “Now you’re all right, my girl,” he assured her. “And what’s your name?”

  “Cissie Worgate,” she managed to say. Then she put a question of her own. “Is he . . . is he dead?”

  “Quite,” said the inspector, with brutal conciseness. “Suicide. Made a clean job of it.”

  They heard a car drive up to the gate, and then, after a pause, voices in the hall outside.

  “That’ll be the police surgeon,” Craythorn surmised. “Wait here a moment. Try to get your wits together. We need them. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  He was out of the room for a few minutes. When he returned, he seemed less worried; and he sat down in a chair opposite to Cissie.

  “Let’s take it bit by bit,” he proposed genially, pulling a notebook from his pocket. “First of all, whose house is this?”

  “Mr. Oswald Hyson’s, Mr. Craythorn. That’s him in yonder.” She gave a timid nod towards the kitchen.

  “Sure of that? You didn’t see his face, did you? Didn’t move the body or anything like that?”

  Cissie shook her head with a shudder.

  “Oh, no! I never touched him. But it’s the suit he was wearing to-day.”

  “Right! You’re the maid here? Your night out?” He glanced at her dress as he spoke. “When did you leave the house?”

  Cissie explained that she had left the house about three in the afternoon, gone to a cinema, had tea, and then gone on to a church meeting. Craythorn jotted down a note or two. Then his eye went to the table.

  “What did you do just before you went out — after washing up the lunch-dishes and that sort of thing?”

  “I set the table for supper. They have a cold supper when it’s my afternoon off.”

  “They’ve had it,” the inspector confirmed, with another glance at the table. “Two of them. That would be Mr. Hyson and . . . ?”

  “Mrs. Hyson.”

  “Married, was he? And where’s Mrs. Hyson? She’s not on the premises.”

  Cissie shook
her head.

  “I dunno. I thought she was going to be in to-night.”

  “Any visitors expected?”

  “Not that I know of,” Cissie declared, after a pause for thought. “Sometimes there’s a Mr. Barsett drops in of an evening, but I don’t know if he was coming to-night or not.”

  “Barsett,” repeated the inspector, making a jotting. “His address? Thanks. Friend of Mr. Hyson’s, I take it?”

  Cissie’s hesitation made him suspicious.

  “Friend of Mrs. Hyson’s? Yes? What makes you say that, eh?”

  Cissie saw that evasion would do her no good.

  “Well, he used to come round often when Mr. Hyson was out, to see Mrs. Hyson. And he and Mr. Hyson never struck me as . . . I’m not good at explaining. I mean they didn’t seem the sort of men who would be very friendly, when I happened to hear them talking. You know what I mean?”

  “I don’t,” Craythorn said bluntly. “But we’ll come back to that. What was Mr. Hyson’s business?”

  “He was in an office in town: Mr. Lockhurst’s. The stockbroker, you know. I think he was the manager or something. Mr. Lockhurst’s ill, just now.”

  “Right! Now how long have you been in this place?”

  “Three years, come Christmas,” Cissie replied, glad to have a definite question to answer.

  “H’m! Then you must have known the two of them pretty well. Get on with them all right? Obviously, or you wouldn’t have stayed so long. You liked Mr. Hyson?”

  Again Cissie’s hesitation betrayed her feelings.

  “You didn’t? Why not?”

  “He wasn’t . . . I mean, he never did anything to me that one could bring up against him. I just didn’t like him.”

  Craythorn tried a fresh line of approach.

  “Then you must have liked Mrs. Hyson, eh?”

  “Oh, yes, she is always nice to me.”

  “Then perhaps you didn’t like him because of her?” demanded the inspector, shrewdly. “Didn’t he treat her well?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Cissie broke out. “He was a beast to her, always sneering at her and making her unhappy, as far as he could. Or trying to, anyway. She was far too good for him, and that’s a fact, Mr. Craythorn. And he was a bad ’un, too. If all I’ve heard is true, she could have got a divorce easy enough, so she could. But she’s one of them Catholics and doesn’t believe in divorce, more’s the pity. She’ll be more than human, so she will, if she’s sorry to see the end of him.”

  “What age is she?” asked the inspector.

  “Just about thirty, I’d think. He was a bit older, getting on for forty.”

  “Any kids?”

  Cissie shook her head.

  “What was she like?” Craythorn asked. “Depressed? Look down in her luck?”

  Again Cissie shook her head, this time with decision.

  “Oh, no. She always seems trying to make the best of the world. That’s her photograph there.”

  The inspector picked up the framed photograph and examined it approvingly.

  “Better-looking than most,” he said. “Doesn’t look a sad kind of face, certainly.”

  He put down the framed photograph and began on a wholly fresh line.

  “Did you use the telephone to-day? Ring up the tradesmen?”

  “I rang up for some things in the morning. I got potatoes and apples from the greengrocer . . .”

  “Right! Don’t bother with details. Did anyone use the phone in the afternoon before you went out?”

  “I heard Mrs. Hyson ring up somebody, but I don’t know who it was.”

  “That would be before three? You went out at about three, you said.”

  Cissie was on sure ground here and contented herself with a nod.

  “When you went out, Mrs. Hyson was in the house? Yes? And Mr. Hyson was at the office, eh? When did he usually come home in the evening?”

  Cissie considered carefully, trying to strike a fair average.

  “About half-past six, he usually came in. That is, when he wasn’t at some meeting or other. Then he didn’t come home till late.”

  “Meetings?” queried the inspector. “What sort of meetings?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Them Masonic affairs, or something like them. I don’t know. He used to have one every Thursday evening for months on end, but that’s been stopped, lately.”

  “You remember it was on Thursdays? Sure?”

  “Of course I do. I’ll tell you why. Thursday’s my afternoon off, as I’ve been telling you, and I set out the supper before I go. Well, for weeks and weeks it was always supper for Mrs. Hyson alone. He wasn’t coming in. That’s why I’m sure about it, see?”

  “Right! And that’s been changed lately?”

  “Just in the last few weeks. But he’s been out a lot all the same, at nights, but not always the same day of the week, if you see what I mean.”

  The inspector nodded. This girl was turning out to be a better witness than he had expected.

  “You’ve no notion where Mrs. Hyson’s got to? No? Well, she’s bound to come back sometime. They keep a car, don’t they? Yes? Well, it’s out to-night. The garage is empty and the door’s open. Noticed that as I came in. She must have gone off in it. Back soon, perhaps. Does she often go out at nights?”

  Cissie reflected carefully.

  “Not what you’d call often. Not every second night, I mean. She has people here to play bridge in the evenings and she goes out to other houses once or twice a week, maybe.”

  “And Mr. Barsett drops in occasionally of an evening?”

  “Once a week or so.”

  “And probably on the nights when you’re out, my lass, as well,” Craythorn said to himself. “H’m! Once a week bridge here, twice a week elsewhere, Barsett calls, say, twice a week. Knock off the week-end when Hyson was at home, probably, and her nights are well filled up.”

  He reflected for a moment before putting a fresh question.

  “When Mrs. Hyson goes out to play bridge, when does she get home — late?”

  “I’m usually in bed when she comes in, but it’s not what you’d call really late,” Cissie explained. “Round about midnight or so. Not three in the morning.”

  “Then she ought to be back in an hour or two at the outside,” Craythorn commented. “Have you any notion when the two of them used to eat their supper on the nights you were out?”

  “About seven or so, I think,” Cissie decided after reflection. “Leastways, when she has people in here to play bridge they come about eight o’clock; and the same when she goes out to play at her friends’ houses. So she’d have to get her meal over early.”

  “They don’t keep fashionable hours, evidently,” Craythorn concluded. “And that tallies with what you say about them getting home round about midnight. You’ve seen some of these parties here. Do they play high — big stakes, I mean?”

  “Threepence a hundred, I’ve heard them say.”

  “One’d hardly call that desperate gambling,” Craythorn said with a grin. “No roulette — the thing you play with a spinning wheel, you know? Or poker? Nothing but bridge? Right! Now another question. Did Mr. Hyson bring his own friends to the house much?”

  Cissie shook her head.

  “I don’t remember him ever bringing anyone here. It was always her friends that came.”

  “When did you come in yourself to-night?”

  Cissie tried to reckon up how long she had taken after leaving St. Salvator’s.

  “It would be round about a quarter-past ten; between that and ten past most likely.”

  “And you went straight out and screamed as soon as you saw his body? You didn’t faint, or anything of that sort?”

  “Oh, no, I just turned and ran out of the house as soon as I saw him.”

  Craythorn seemed to be getting near the end of his interrogation.

  “Right! Now another question. You’re doing very well. Have you seen anything in Mr. Hyson’s manner that made you think he was worried lately?
Snappy, depressed, bothered-looking . . . you know what I mean.”

  Cissie gave this problem a longer consideration than the others.

  “No,” she said at last, “I can’t say as I did. He looked just as usual, to me. He was never very nice, you know, about the house. Found fault with you as soon as look at you, always, if things weren’t just to his liking. But bothered-looking . . . no, I didn’t see it.”

  “Right, then,” the inspector concluded, turning back a few pages in his notebook. “Now I’ll read over what I’ve put down and you must sign your name at the end if it’s all right. Listen carefully.”

  He read over his précis of her evidence and she put her name to the end of it.

  “Now, one thing more,” he cautioned her. “Don’t you go talking to all and sundry about this affair. See? There’ll be an inquest, and if you begin talking to reporters and your friends, you’ll end by getting all muddled up and then you’ll make a mess of it when you come before the coroner. Keep your mouth shut and try to remember things exactly. Then you’ll be all right. It’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  He patted her shoulder encouragingly.

  “Now you’d better stay here for a bit. We’ll have to do one or two things in the house, and you’re safer in here. Mrs. Hyson ought to be back sometime, and then we can arrange whether you stay here or sleep out.”

  He left her and went into the kitchen where he found the police surgeon and a couple of constables. Hyson’s body was on the floor and apparently they had been trying artificial respiration without any success.

  “He’s a goner?” Craythorn asked in a rather incurious tone.

  The surgeon, who was kneeling beside the body, glanced up in response.

  “Oh, yes. Not a chance of pulling him round, but we had to give it a trial, for form’s sake. We got his lungs filled with the proper mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide” — he nodded towards two steel cylinders on the floor — “but there wasn’t the slightest sign of reaction.”

  “He hasn’t been dead long, has he?” queried the inspector.

  “A couple of hours at most, at a guess,” the surgeon decided. “The body-temperature’s about 80°, but you know that doesn’t mean much. Rigor hasn’t set in to any extent, even in the orbicularis palpebrarium.”