Murder Will Speak

by J. J. Connington

  “That breakdown suggested that Telford’s message originated somewhere on the line of the mains cable that feeds Hyson’s house. It passes Hyson’s house and then turns down Vendale Road. Now there was a burglary that night in Vendale Road, you remember; but as nothing was stolen, it was concluded that the burglar had been interrupted and had got away empty-handed. Scarsdale is the name of the house-owner; and Scarsdale’s name cropped up in Netherby’s evidence as one of his amateur wireless cronies. So there was a transmitter on Scardale’s premises, in working order. Scarsdale cut off his house-current before he went away, but anyone could put it on again by throwing over the main switch.”

  “But from what you said before,” objected Wendover in a puzzled tone, “the frequency of the waves emitted by Scarsdale’s transmitter is fixed and is entirely different from the frequency of Telford’s Glen Terret transmitter, which is also fixed. And this man Netherby measured the frequency of Telford’s transmission that night and found it absolutely right. That seems to knock a hole in the hypothesis that Telford was using the transmitter in Scarsdale’s empty house, surely.”

  “That stumped me completely at the time,” Sir Clinton admitted frankly. “I know nothing about wireless. But my motto is: ‘When you don’t know, find out.’ So, as I told you, I rang up the Post Office, Wireless Department; and one of their experts came to see me. I put the thing to him, and he laughed, because in practice it’s so simple. The frequency of the waves from a transmitter is governed by a quartz crystal. If Telford took his own quartz crystal out of his Glen Terret transmitter and fitted it into Scarsdale’s transmitter, then Scarsdale’s transmitter would emit waves of a frequency identical with that of the waves from the Glen Terret transmitter. That’s all.”

  “But the exchange would take a long time, surely?” Wendover objected.

  “The quartz crystal’s a tiny little thing that you could carry in your waistcoat pocket. Thirty seconds would clip it in position and the transmitter could be re-tuned in another thirty seconds. I asked the Post Office expert about it, and that was his estimate. Besides, remember, Netherby told us that Telford had helped Scarsdale in designing the transmitter, so he knew it from A to Z and could do the job in next to no time.”

  “H’m!” Wendover grunted, “it seems very quick, but I suppose that’s all right. What next?”

  “Next I remembered another thing Netherby had said to Craythorn. When a short-wave transmitter is working, and there’s any old-fashioned poorly-selective receiver working on the medium-wave broadcasting band in the vicinity, the short-wave transmission is apt to interfere with the broadcast reception on the old receiver. We were lucky to find a listener with an old set who had been listening on the medium waves at the time of the mains breakdown; and he had heard part of the transmission from Scarsdale’s station, in Vendale Road. That seemed to clinch the business, since it proved that Telford had not been talking from Glen Terret but from Vendale Road, just round the corner from Hyson’s house.”

  Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette, but Wendover did not take the opportunity of making any comment.

  “Once I’d got that length,” Sir Clinton resumed, “it was easy enough to sketch out the probable sequence of events. Telford had learned from his wife’s letter and from Ruth Jessop’s anonymous screed exactly what part Hyson had played. Knowing how fond he was of Nancy, it’s not difficult to guess that he meant to take revenge. It wasn’t ordinary unfaithfulness, you know. I’m not a married man myself, but I can make a guess at his feelings. I think he was quite ready to run any risk on his own account to get the account squared. But if he had gone direct and killed Hyson, obviously the whole story would come out and Nancy’s affairs would have become public somehow during the trial. That was the last thing Telford wanted. So the obvious thing was to dispose of Hyson and not be caught.

  “Now Jim Telford, as we know, was a crime fan, which meant that he was accustomed to thinking about the weak points in cases. He hit on the wireless alibi, which must have seemed as sound a scheme as one could well devise. He had talked regularly with Scarsdale and knew of his plans for going abroad, which meant that his transmitter would be available at the cost of breaking a window. He also had Netherby actually on the spot here, to whom he could talk by previous arrangement at the very minute when he needed his alibi. And he knew the routine of Hyson’s house with the maid out on Thursday nights. All he had to do was to be sure that Hyson would be at home that night, and no doubt he could ascertain that easily enough through Barsett or even by writing to Hyson himself and making a fake appointment.

  “Now Telford had to account for his absence from his office on Thursday. He did that by feigning illness; and he made that serve a double purpose by mentioning his supposed sickness in his talk with Netherby, thus adding an extra touch of verisimilitude to the idea that he was at Glen Terret. Thus he had the whole of Thursday and Thursday night at his disposal, so long as he could get back to Glen Terret in time to reach his office as usual on Friday morning. It’s only a five-hundred-mile drive in all; and that’s nothing to a man in the best of condition, like Telford.

  “That brings us to his actual procedure on the night of Hyson’s death. He arrived here and most probably parked his car in some side street. He wouldn’t be fool enough to take it to a garage or put it in a public park, because somebody might remember it or its number if he had done that. Then he went to the kiosk which is just down the road from Hyson’s house and rang up Mrs. Hyson. He did his best to disguise his voice, but he wasn’t entirely successful for she was reminded of him when we asked if she knew the speaker. He told her his yarn about the burglary at her sister’s flat; and then he kept watch on Hyson’s house — you can see the gate of it from the telephone kiosk — until he saw her go off in the car. Then, possibly, he rang up again to make sure Hyson was alone. After that, he cut the Hyson’s telephone wire to make sure of no interruption from Mrs. Hyson which might have put Hyson on his guard. He’d have been suspicious, perhaps, if she had got through and told him that the burglary yarn was a fake; and you may remember that she did actually try to ring Hyson up from her sister’s flat.

  “What happened after Telford called on Hyson is pretty plain. He must have talked to Hyson for a short time, otherwise he wouldn’t have knocked out his pipe on the hearth. But it wasn’t a long conversation, and eventually they got to their feet and Telford knocked Hyson out as he could easily do, being an expert boxer. That accounts for the two bruises on Hyson, one on the chin and one on the back of the head. It also accounts for the upsetting of the occasional table. Then, clearly, he dragged him to the gas-oven, put his head inside, and turned the tap on. Hyson would be incapable of helping himself; and I’ve no doubt Telford waited to see the business thoroughly done before he let himself out of the house again. The next stage was all thought out carefully. It only meant breaking into Scarsdale’s house through any convenient window, switching on the current, putting his own quartz crystal into Scarsdale’s transmitter, and re-tuning a bit. Then he was ready to talk to Netherby.”

  Sir Clinton broke off his narrative and glanced at Wendover with a smile.

  “Know your Hamlet, Squire? Remember that quotation: ‘Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak with most miraculous organ’? Telford, sitting at the transmitter, reminds me of that. A wireless set has no tongue, and to Shakespeare it would certainly have seemed a ‘most miraculous organ.’ And it was through that ‘organ’ that the murder revealed itself, as you’ve seen. Shakespeare had an uncanny knack of making his words applicable to things undreamt of in his philosophy.”

  “It’s apt enough,” Wendover admitted. “But get on with the story.”

  “Well, after he’d finished his talk with Netherby, Telford had only to replace Scarsdale’s quartz crystal in the transmitter, switch off the house-current, make sure the coast was clear, and get away. Beyond a pencil flash-lamp he hadn’t needed to show a light in the house. Then he had to get back to his car and go off o
n his two-fifty-mile drive to Glen Terret. And, so far as I can see, he’d have been absolutely safe but for two things which he could not possibly have foreseen. It was as clever a bit of work as I’ve come across yet.”

  “What were the two things?” demanded Wendover.

  “One was the mains breakdown, which happened at an unlucky moment. The other was the poison-pen stuff which suggested the connection between Hyson and Nancy Telford. Without that, we’d never have thought of associating Telford with Hyson’s murder. And without the mains breakdown we could never have proved that the wrong transmitter had been used, no matter what suspicions we might have harboured.”

  “I see that,” Wendover admitted. “But you’ve left one loose end. What about your inquiries from tobacconists?”

  “The Scottish police did that for us. They found out where Telford dealt. And they discovered that he used to smoke Wainwright’s Trafalgar brand up to the date of Hyson’s death, but immediately afterwards he changed his taste and bought Algonquin A. Only a detail, of course, but details count. He must have remembered that he’d knocked out his pipe in Hyson’s drawing-room. That was a bit of carelessness on his part, but he did his best to cover it up by choosing a new tobacco.”

  Wendover made no comment but apparently cogitated over something which puzzled him.

  “But you said you weren’t thinking of arresting young Telford,” he recalled. “And yet you’ve proved that he murdered Hyson. You’re not going to . . .”

  “Let my employers down?” Sir Clinton filled in the gap. “No, Squire. Whatever I think privately does not affect me when it comes to doing what I’m paid to do. I’d arrest young Telford this moment, if I could.”

  “Then he’s got away?” ejaculated Wendover without troubling to mask his relief at this. “That’s not like you either, Clinton.”

  The Chief Constable took another cigarette before answering.

  “When I’d made up my mind about the case,” he explained slowly, “I sent Telford a wire: ‘HYSON CASE PRACTICALLY COMPLETE BUT NEED YOUR EVIDENCE. PLEASE COME HERE TO SEE ME.’ By the way, I ought to have told you that I got Craythorn to let out about Ruth Jessop being identified as the poison pen, so as to get that news into the papers; and I saw to it that Telford got a copy of one of them with that paragraph marked. That would make him all the more eager to come down here. He’d want to see Ruth Jessop and tell her a few things about herself, even if he went no further than that. I may say that we had her under observation, just in case Telford felt inclined to treat her as he did Hyson.”

  “But what was the point of sending that wire?” demanded Wendover. “You could have had him arrested up in Scotland, couldn’t you?”

  “Yes. And had a lot of bother with a Scottish warrant, and more trouble in bringing him down under guard. Much easier to let him drive down in his own car and then arrest him when he came within my own jurisdiction. Besides, I wanted his car here to see if anyone could identify it as having been on the streets that night. There was always the chance that someone might have noticed it and could identify it if they saw it again.”

  “There’s something in that,” Wendover conceded. “But he might have given you the slip.”

  “Why should he? He imagined that his alibi stood fast. Besides, Squire, although young Telford was a murderer, he was a decent fellow from all I ever heard about him. He wouldn’t have let an innocent person be hanged in his stead. Rather than that, he’d have made a full confession and suicided. At least, that’s how I read his character. So you see my wire was couched in such terms as to make him fear that someone else was actually in danger. That would bring him down quick enough, I guessed. He’d want to know how the land lay. Besides, of course, we had the police on the alert for his car all the way down his route, reporting to us when it turned up; so he couldn’t have got far away even if he had decided to make a bolt.”

  “Go on,” urged Wendover.

  “Well, one can provide against most things,” said the Chief Constable, “but one can’t provide against a jay driver trying to pass a lorry on a blind corner of a narrow road. Young Telford met the two of them, and there was a regular mix-up. He was dead when they picked him out of the wreckage. And in his pocket were Ruth Jessop’s poison-pen letter to Nancy and the letter Nancy wrote to him before she committed suicide. That’s how they came into my hands. He’d kept them; and I expect he was bringing them down to show them to Ruth Jessop, if he could get hold of her.”

  “I’m thankful it ended that way,” Wendover admitted with immense relief. “One can’t blame young Telford, somehow, even if he did take the law into his own hands. And Hyson deserved all he got. It’s perhaps the happiest ending one could expect in a case of that sort.”

  “Except for the Chief Constable,” Sir Clinton reminded him dryly. “There will be the usual outcry: ‘Hyson Mystery Still Unsolved’; ‘More Police Inefficiency’; ‘Urgent Need of Reform at Headquarters.’ Well, well, we shall just have to sit tight and bear it, since we can’t try a dead man. Or even tell our story. Your withers are unwrung, Squire, and I expect you’ll get a lot of pleasure in reflecting that Mrs. Hyson and Barsett can now get married and live happily ever after.”

  THE END

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  J. J. Connington (1880–1947)

  Alfred Walter Stewart, who wrote under the pen name J. J. Connington, was born in Glasgow, the youngest of three sons of Reverend Dr Stewart. He graduated from Glasgow University and pursued an academic career as a chemistry professor, working for the Admiralty during the First World War. Known for his ingenious and carefully worked-out puzzles and in-depth character development, he was admired by a host of his better-known contemporaries, including Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr, who both paid tribute to his influence on their work. He married Jessie Lily Courts in 1916 and they had one daughter.

  By J. J. Connington

  Sir Clinton Driffield Mysteries

  Murder in the Maze (1927)

  Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (1927)

  The Case with Nine Solutions (1928)

  Mystery at Lynden Sands (1928)

  Nemesis at Raynham Parva (1929)

  (a.k.a. Grim Vengenace)

  The Boathouse Riddle (1931)

  The Sweepstake Murders (1931)

  The Castleford Conundrum (1932)

  The Ha-Ha Case (1934)

  (a.k.a. The Brandon Case)

  In Whose Dim Shadow (1935)

  (a.k.a. The Tau Cross Mystery)

  A Minor Operation (1937)

  Murder Will Speak (1938)

  Truth Comes Limping (1938)

  The Twenty-One Clues (1941)

  No Past is Dead (1942)

  Jack-in-the-Box (1944)

  Common Sense Is All You Need (1947)

  Supt Ross Mysteries

  The Eye in the Museum (1929)

  The Two Tickets Puzzle (1930)

  Novels

  Death at Swaythling Court (1926)

  The Dangerfield Talisman (1926)

  Tom Tiddler’s Island (1933)

  (a.k.a. Gold Brick Island)

  The Counsellor (1939)

  The Four Defences (1940)

  An Orion ebook

  Copyright © The Professor A. W. Stewart Deceased Trust 1938, 2013

  The right of J. J. Connington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This ebook first published in Great Britain in 2013

  by Orion

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK company

  A CIP ca
talogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 4719 0614 5

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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