Death of a Frightened Editor

by E.

  “Could you identify him?”

  “I doubt it. Probably the sergeant on the desk could.” He hesitated. “You say Mr. Moore died three days ago—”

  “Yes. Under his correct name of Alexis Mortensen.”

  “But—!” The man gasped.

  “Quite,” said Manson. “I will have to keep this letter for a few days. How many people have handled it by the way?”

  “Only myself and you.”

  Doctor Manson marked a corner of the sheet off with a pencil. “Will you press your left forefinger and thumb here so that we can identify your prints from any other that may be on the surface?” he asked. The man did so.

  “Well, the messenger will know who sent him. That’s something,” said Jones, as the car sped West End-wards again.

  Manson looked at him grimly. “I wonder?” he said; and added, “I have my doubts.”

  The director of the messengers company looked anxiously at the card of Superintendent Jones. He twiddled it between his fingers, and swallowed visibly.

  “Anything I can do will be a pleasure, of course,” he announced.

  “So!” Jones snorted. “It’s easy way . . . pleasin’ yourself. We’d like . . . see . . . messenger . . . went Security Safe Deposit offices . . . yesterday morning . . . collected parcel from secretary.”

  “Certainly, Super. Nothing wrong is there?” He registered anxiety.

  “Not so far as you are concerned,” Manson assured him.

  “Oh, good.” He opened the record sheet book of the previous day and ran a finger down the entry of journeys. At the bottom he paused, and then started again from the top. Doctor Manson watched the proceeding with a grim smile. The director looked up.

  “There seems to be a mistake,” he said. “We didn’t send a messenger to the firm yesterday.”

  “The messenger’s number was 172, if that’s any help,” suggested Jones.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “What!” Jones glared malevolently at the director.

  “I said his number wasn’t 172.”

  “Cor luvva duck,” roared Jones. “Look’ee, son. Gent . . . safe deposit . . . recognised number . . . man’s collar. Same number as his own car.”

  “Then he’d better have another look at his car, Superintendent. We haven’t a messenger of that number, and never have had.”

  16

  Inspector Kenway put his head into the room. “You want me, Doctor?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Manson picked out a letter from the dossier. “This reached Mortensen’s office the day after he died, and was addressed to the editor. Kenway read it:

  Dear Sir—In reply to your letter, the story is quite true. I shall be glad to see you and give further details if you are still interested, subject to suitable payment.

  Yours truly,

  Edna Playfield.

  116a, Mannion Street, W.1.

  Manson became apologetic. “I had forgotten all about it,” he said, “until something Crispin said this morning reminded me. The family at 116a Mannion Street are a Mr. and Mrs. Evernay, a rather well-known family. Go along and bring this girl here. I’d like to talk to her.”

  Kenway left, and Doctor Manson walked into the Laboratory. Wilkins, the chief assistant, looked up hopefully at a letter his chief was carrying—and produced a porcelain dish and a little iodine, in anticipation.

  With half-an-inch of iodine in the bottom, Manson covered the tray with the letter face downwards, pressing it flat with a glass bar at each end. Five minutes later Wilkins lifted the letter and turned it face upwards. Its surface showed half-a-dozen brown splodges, and one single splodge in the left-hand corner. Manson inspected them through a lens. He compared them with the single one made at his request by the secretary of the safe deposit. “The same,” he said. “The fellow wore gloves.”

  * * *

  Miss Edna Playfield sat in an armchair. She was about 27 years of age. As the Doctor entered, she smoothed a skirt over her knees with a modesty that did not at all coincide with the hardness of her face, the thin red line of her lips, and the calculating eyes which searched those of her host. Her hair was peroxided. “She looks like a tart,” Manson said to himself. He produced a letter.

  “You wrote this to the editor of Society,” he said. “The editor is dead, and we are inquiring into the circumstances of his death. You may be able to help us.”

  She looked up, startled. “I never met the man,” she said loudly, as does a person who is frightened, “and I don’t know anything about him.”

  Manson sat silent for the space of a minute or so, tapping the fingers of his right hand on the arm of his chair. He eyed the woman steadily until she began to fidget under the silence of his eyes. Then:

  “What was the story which you sent to the editor, and which you state here was quite true?” he demanded.

  The suddenness of the question shook her. Her bag dropped from her hand to the floor; she leaned forward and retrieved it. Her eyes wandered round the room, as though seeking a way of escape.

  “What was the story?” Manson asked again.

  “It . . . it was about a lady who had stayed in the house where I live.”

  “Where you are a maid?”

  “Yes.”

  “A story about a guest of Mr. and Mrs. Evernay?” The girl nodded.

  “What kind of a story that the editor should want it checked for its truth?”

  “Something she told Mrs. Evernay.”

  “And which you listened to, covertly? What kind of story?”

  “About a man and a woman they both knew.” She hesitated. “About their goings-on.”

  “Immoral goings-on?”

  “Yes—and other things.”

  “Such as?” Manson demanded. “Well, insurance money.”

  “And why should that interest Mr. Mortensen?”

  The girl jerked up in surprise. “Interest who?” she asked.

  “The editor of Society. His name was Mortensen.”

  “I didn’t know his name.” Her eyes flickered again round the room. “He liked those kind of things for the paper.”

  “In other words, you were spying on your employers and their guests, and passing stories on. Is that it?”

  The woman flared in anger. “If they didn’t do the things nobody could tell about them, could they?” she replied.

  “Any excuse is better than none. And any excuse is good enough to quiet a conscience. You had, of course, a reason other than moral indignation. Shall we say a pecuniary one? How much?” He pushed the question forcibly. “You’ve done it before, haven’t you. How much?”

  “It all depended on how—” She paused.

  “On how spicy the information was?” Manson suggested.

  “You could put it that way. But the people made a difference too.”

  “On their position in life, you mean. Who were these people?”

  “Oh no, you don’t.” The woman raised her voice. She shook her head, emphatically. “I’m not saying who they were, and you can’t make me, either.”

  “But you were prepared to tell the editor their names, I presume. The story wouldn’t have been any use to him without names, would it? How much was”—he referred to the letter—“the ‘suitable payment’?”

  “I wanted £50, and I’d have got it, too.” An air of sullenness, combined with rebellion spat out the words as though against the fate that had killed Mortensen at that particular time before she had had time to get her money.

  “Have you received a sum like £50 before for similar information?”

  “No. Not quite that much, but near it. I was asking £50 because it was the third tit-bit—that’s what he called the others.”

  “How much had you received previously?”

  “Once £25 and another time £30.”

  “From information gathered in the house of Mrs. Evernay?”

  “No. From other places.”

  “Do you know a Miss Mary Ross?”

  �
��Mary Ross?” The woman, Manson was sure, was sincere in her surprise at the name. “No, I’ve never heard of her. Who is she?” she asked, interestedly.

  “If you do not know of her, it doesn’t matter who she is.”

  That was the sum total of information they could gain from the woman. Doctor Manson gave her over to a constable to be escorted out of the building. He also gave her a warning. “If you continue in what you are doing while serving as a maid, my good woman,” he said, “you are liable to find yourself in prison before long.” The visitor gone, Doctor Manson pulled the telephone towards him and dialled a number. He detailed to the answering voice the information given him by Edna Playfield.

  The telephone talked laughingly back. “Sure, Doctor,” it said. “That’s how most of the information comes. I thought you had realised that.”

  “Quite so. But listen, Crispin.” He added a few words.

  The telephone yelped.

  “Poppycock, Doctor. Balderdash! Damn it all the Express or the Mirror couldn’t stand that, let alone us.” Doctor Manson replaced the receiver. He stood for a few moments in indecision beside his desk. Then he sat down. His eyes closed. His fingers began a tattoo on the arms of his chair.

  Yard officers, had they been present, would have tiptoed quietly from the room. They would have known the signs. The Doctor, they would have said, was on the way to getting somewhere. For the space of some five minutes he continued his silent meditation. Then a curious expression chased away the wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, and the furrows from his brow. He came back to physical activity.

  From an inside jacket pocket he extracted a thin notebook, flicked over its pages and wrote in his small, neat handwriting some forty or fifty words . . .

  The book was his personal casebook on the Mortensen investigations.

  17

  Superintendent Jones took a cigarette from the box which the Assistant Commissioner pushed across the desk, and waddled across to a chair. Doctor Manson watched him with a critical eye.

  “You’re getting fatter, Old Fat Man,” he pronounced.

  “What!” Jones burst out. “I . . . lost . . . stone worrying. Burn me, I can’t eat for worrying . . .”

  “Well, it doesn’t look much like it. You’ll have to get this floor reinforced, A.C., if he’s here many more years.”

  “If we don’t find the answer to Mortensen none of us is likely to be here many more weeks, let alone years. The H.S. (Home Secretary) is getting a bit peevish and wants to know if we have narrowed down the suspects.” He glanced round the faces of Jones, Kenway, Merry and Manson, all facing him in front of the horse-shoe shaped table.

  Evening had strung a necklace of lights along the length of the Embankment. Superintendent Jones, gazing out of the window, ran his eyes along them until they merged into the clustering lamps on Westminster Bridge. He eyed them sombrely. Then he spoke:

  “Narrowed suspects?” His voice came shrilly.

  “Narrowed ’em down? Blister me, he’s added to ’em. Listen!”

  He related in detail the tours of the safe deposits, the finding of the cache of Arthur Moore, and the withdrawal of the contents of the safe.

  “So now,” he concluded, “instead of seven suspects . . . got eight.” He pointed at Doctor Manson.

  “Blister me,” he roared. “He manages to get us tangled up with the goddamnest cases we’ve ever had. We had, look at it, a nice comfy suicide as ever was . . . everything square and above board. So he makes it murder. Now look where we are.”

  Sir Edward looked—at Manson, who had spread his hands in protest.

  “I do not,” he protested, “get tangled up in Old Fat Man’s goddamnest cases, as he calls them. They get tangled up with me.”

  “What!” Jones squeaked. “You . . . go . . . hunting all round . . . underneath . . . all in corners . . . perfectly open happenings, lookin’ to see if you can’t find something you can cart to your damned laboratory. You know you do.”

  “Well!” Manson looked benignly round. “I like trying to find out things, and I’ve got a very suspicious mind.”

  “Is it a fact that the safe deposit business has added another suspect?” the A.C. asked.

  “I don’t know. On the face of it, yes. But I’d like to know where each of the seven Pullman passengers were when the pseudo messenger was collecting the swag.” He glanced at Kenway; the inspector nodded.

  “Supposing for the sake of argument, that it was suicide.”

  “Yes?”

  “Then the safe deposit affair could be equally credible as if it were murder. Somebody would want what was in the safe?”

  Manson considered the point. “Yes,” he said, “provided you acknowledge that someone knew Moore was Mortensen—a fact which he seems to have gone to great trouble to hide.”

  “But the collecting of Moore’s effects could have been done by the person even in the case of suicide; and if the effects are valuable, as we must presume they were in view of the circumstances, the thief would require the same secrecy as if he were the murderer?”

  “Quite so.”

  There was silence for a few moments. Doctor Manson lit a cigarette and waited. Then while he watched the smoke rise in a succession of smoke rings to the ceiling: “If you believe in second sight,” he said, breaking the silence himself, “then I’ll give you the suicide.”

  “Meanin’?” Jones asked.

  “How did X, our unknown quantity, know that Mortensen was going to commit suicide in the train that night?”

  He ejaculated an amused guffaw. “Because, you know,” he went on, “within two or three hours of Mortensen’s death, and before anybody in London could have known of it, someone used his keys, walked into his office, ransacked it quietly and thoroughly and then threw the keys into a doorway. Since it is hardly likely that person could know that Mortensen was going to commit suicide we are left with the hypothesis that he did know that Mortensen was going to he murdered, or had been murdered, or was dead, and was present and able to get his keys, eh, Jones?”

  “No!” said the superintendent.

  “What!”

  “No.” The superintendent repeated his denial. “Supposin’ Mortensen lost his keys or had his pocket picked of ’em—”

  “Edgar says—” began Kenway.

  “He said . . . Mortensen . . . had keys . . . wound watch with watchkey . . . Says happened that night . . . Mortensen travelled every night. Memory . . . funny thing . . . memory . . . Funny thing . . . So are men . . . May . . . seen Mortensen use key . . . night before . . . gets days confused . . . Says that night.”

  “You mean,” the A.C. said, “that the burglary on the same night may have been a coincidence?”

  Superintendent Jones nodded vigorously.

  “It is sound reasoning Jones,” Manson admitted. “In the absence of other evidence I would have accepted it. But—” He turned on the superintendent a look of such ferocity that the superintendent shot an inch out of his chair.

  “I don’t mind people committing a murder if they have no more sense—” he went on. “I don’t mind them pitting their wits against the police, but when they start looking on the police and me as though we were all nitwits or half-wits, then I am apt to get my dander up.”

  “Meaning?” the A.C. queried.

  “When I examined the lavatory of the Pullman after we got the body out, I picked up a small crumpled ball of paper. It revealed itself when straightened out, as a square piece of the paper used by chemists to wrap up their bottles and boxes. And in the centre was a distinct impress of an oblong tablet—”

  “The tablet Mortensen is presumed to have taken,” the A.C. asked.

  “Precisely. We were meant to find it. Mr. X knew enough about police work to be sure that we would go over the lavatory with a fine comb, and would pick up the paper, see the oblong impression, and assume that Mortensen had gone there with the intention of swallowing the tablet after he had taken it from the paper, crumbled up the
paper and thrown it to the floor.” Manson lit a cigarette, and let smoke spiral to the ceiling. Then:

  “Now, let us look at what we are supposed to assume. Firstly, that the tablet wrapped in chemist’s paper was strychnine since it was by that poison that Mortensen died. Chemists do not sell strychnine tablets like they sell cachous, you know. Nor do they wrap them up in paper.

  “But never mind that. We will assume that Mortensen acquired a tablet of strychnine—incidentally, that would be a deuce of a job, since the stuff is not made up into tablets. He obtains a piece of chemist’s paper—perhaps from a bottle of medicine he has had at some time. He wraps the tablet in it for safety and slips it into his pocket. He is going to commit suicide some time. He says to himself at one stage in the journey: ‘This is the time’—in the middle of a story. He walks into the lavatory, takes the paper from his pocket, unwraps it and gains possession of the tablet, screws up the now useless paper—why he should screw it up, I don’t know—tosses it on the floor, swallows the poison and dies. That is the assumption is it not, Jones?”

  There came nods from the company, including Jones.

  “It seems a logical assumption,” the A.C. said.

  “All logical and Sir Garnet, A.C.—except for one thing.”

  “And that?” The A.C. sat up in his chair.

  “There wasn’t a single fingerprint on that piece of paper, not a vestige of one, and it did not react to strychnine tests.”

  “The person who planted that piece of evidence wore gloves. He had prepared it beforehand because he knew that Mortensen was going to die, and because he knew perfectly well we should find the paper—and assume exactly what Jones here, and you A.C., have assumed.” He turned and confronted Jones. “I do, indeed, Old Fat Man, as you said just now go hunting round, underneath and in corners looking to see if I can find something. So I find murder.”

  There was silence for a few moments. It was broken by the A.C.

  “And now we have to find the murderer,” he said. “And we do not seem to have made progress.”