Georgette Heyer_Inspector Hemingway 03

by Duplicate Death

  The furniture in the room, besides the bed and the dressing-table, included an enormous wardrobe of Victorian design, the central division of which contained shelves and drawers; an upholstered day-bed, several chairs, and a small walnut bureau on cabriole legs, which stood on one side of the fireplace. The top of this contained nothing of more interest than two cheque-books; an engagement diary; a bundle of letters tied up with faded ribbon, which a cursory glance informed Hemingway were the letters Cynthia had written to her mother from school; and a quantity of writing-paper and envelopes. There were three drawers to the bureau, the two small top ones containing such oddments as sealingwax, a supply of postcards, stamps and telegraph-forms; the long drawer beneath them was, unlike them, locked. In it lay a piece of petit-point, with the needle still stuck in it, a sewing-bag, and, lying beneath the unfinished embroidery, a large black lace fan, mounted on ebony sticks.

  The sight of it most vividly conjured up the picture of Mrs Haddington, as he had first seen her, to Hemingway’s memory. She had been holding the fan between her ringed hands, gripping it rather tightly when some question he had asked her annoyed, or perhaps alarmed her. Hemingway lifted it out of the drawer, staring at it. Across the polished guards several deep scratches were visible, and where the lace-leaf protruded beyond them he saw that it had been slightly torn. Standing with his back to the room, he carefully opened the fan, observing as he did so that it had suffered some kind of a wrench which had thrown the sticks out of the straight. The tear in the lace cut irregularly across the leaf, small holes occurring here and there only, but always in the same diagonal line. He shut it, found Grant at his elbow, and gave it to him, muttering: ‘Take that, and keep your mouth shut!’

  ‘You won’t find anything in there,’ Cynthia said, over her shoulder. ‘That’s only where Mummy keeps her work!’

  Hemingway shut the drawer. ‘So I see, miss. Now, if you’ll be so good, I should like just to look inside the wardrobe.’

  ‘I find it most objectionable to have my poor sister’s clothing pawed about by Men!’ announced Miss Pickhill, her eyes snapping.

  ‘I shan’t disturb anything more than I need, madam. Yes, I see: dresses in the side-wings: I don’t want to touch anything there, thank you. If I may see inside the central division?’

  As he had expected, shelves, with drawers below them, were concealed by the double doors in the middle of the wardrobe. On one of the shelves a large jewel-box stood, beside a glove-box, and a quilted handkerchief sachet. Miss Pickhill, perceiving this, instantly called upon Mr Eddleston to open it, and to place in it the emerald brooch, which she was still holding. ‘And for the present,’ she said, ‘I consider the case ought to be in safe custody! Perhaps you will take charge of it! My sister possessed some very valuable jewels.’

  Cynthia at once protested, pointing out that it had nothing to do with her aunt. Miss Pickhill retorted that as her niece’s guardian it had everything to do with her, a pronouncement which caused Cynthia to express an impassioned wish that she too were dead. Meanwhile Mr Eddleston, carefully avoiding the Chief Inspector’s speaking eye, lifted the box out of the wardrobe, and asked for its key. Hemingway handed it to him, and he unlocked the box, disclosing a collection of ornaments of a fashionable rather than a valuable nature, tumbled into a velvet-lined tray.

  ‘That isn’t where Mummy puts her good stuff !’ Cynthia said scornfully. ‘Oh, couldn’t I just have those paste-clips to wear now? I don’t see why I shouldn’t! They aren’t real, but they’d look rather marvellous on this frock. Mummy used to wear them with it. They go with it!’

  ‘Jewellery is not worn with deep mourning!’ said Miss Pickhill. ‘Can you think of nothing but personal adornment, child?’

  ‘I think you’re most unfair!’ Cynthia cried, tears once more starting to her eyes. ‘You know I’m absolutely shattered, and you begged me to try not to think about it, and the instant I manage to take my mind off it you’re beastly to me!’

  Mr Eddleston, who was beginning to look harassed, lifted out the tray of the jewel-box, and laid it aside. A number of leather cases were stacked under the tray.

  ‘If you must put the brooch away, just as if you thought I meant to steal it,’ said Cynthia, ‘this blue case is where it lives.’ She lifted the case out as she spoke, and gave an involuntary exclamation. ‘My compact!’

  Under the blue-leather case lay a powder-compact, its lid covered in petit-point.

  Cynthia dropped the blue case on the floor, and eagerly snatched the compact from the box. Her cheeks were suddenly flushed, and her eyes sparkling. She cast a quick look at Hemingway, and said: ‘It’s the one I lost. My favour ite one! Mummy must have found it, and – and put it here to be safe!’

  ‘Nonsense, child!’ said Miss Pickhill. ‘Why should your mother have done any such thing? Put it back, for goodness’ sake!’

  ‘It’s mine, I tell you! It’s mine!’ Cynthia declared clasping it tightly to her bosom. ‘It’s the one Dan gave me! No one but me has any right to it!’

  ‘May I see it, miss?’ said Hemingway, holding out his hand.

  She backed away from him, frightened, staring at him. ‘No! Why should you? It isn’t my mother’s! Send for Miss Birtley! She’ll tell you it’s truly mine!’

  ‘I’m not doubting that, miss, but I should like to see it.’

  Rather unexpectedly, Miss Pickhill took her niece’s part. ‘There is no need to be hysterical, Cynthia, but I’m bound to say I can see no reason why you should want to look at a powder-compact, Chief Inspector!’

  ‘No, madam, very likely not. Come, miss! Mr Eddleston here will tell you that you mustn’t try to obstruct me in the performance of my duty.’

  ‘But it has nothing to do with you! Look, I’ll put it back in Mummy’s box, and Mr Eddleston can keep it! I don’t mind doing that!’

  ‘Miss Haddington,’ said Hemingway, ‘I don’t want to make things any more unpleasant for you than what they are already, but if you don’t give me that compact I shall have to. You see, I’m going to inspect it, whether you want me to or not, and it will be very much better for you to give it to me without any more fuss.’

  She began to cry again, but when Hemingway unclasped her fingers from about the compact she only feebly resisted.

  Inspector Grant said: ‘Will you give it to me, if you please, sir?’

  He took it from Hemingway, and walked over to the window with it, standing there with his back to the room, his head a little bent. After a moment, he glanced over his shoulder. Hemingway went to him, while Miss Pickhill and Mr Eddleston stared at him. Cynthia had collapsed on the day-bed, and was sobbing into one of its opulent cushions. The Inspector said nothing at all, but showed Hemingway the compact, lying in the palm of his hand. He had opened it, but no little powder-puff and mirror were disclosed. A very small quantity of white powder was all that met Hemingway’s gaze. He looked up questioningly, and the Inspector nodded, shut the case, and opened it again, this time revealing mirror, puff, and powder-filter. Hemingway turned from him.

  ‘Miss Haddington,’ he said, ‘I want to have a word with you. Now, I think it would be best if I saw you privately, but if you wish it you may have your aunt or Mr Eddleston with you.’

  She raised her head, gazing up at him out of terrified, tear-drowned eyes. ‘What are you going to do to me?’

  ‘I’m going to ask you one or two questions, miss, and you may take it from me that if you answer me truthfully you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.’

  She seemed to be undecided; Miss Pickhill exclaimed: ‘I demand to be told what all this means!’

  ‘No, no, don’t!’ shrieked Cynthia. ‘Please don’t!’

  ‘No, miss, I’ve no wish to do so. Suppose we were to go down to the drawing-room – just you and me, and Inspector Grant?’

  ‘I think,’ said Mr Eddleston, clearing his throat, ‘that I ought to be present, Chief Inspector, if you wish to question Miss Haddington on any serious matter.’


  ‘I have no objection to your presence, sir.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t want him!’ Cynthia said. ‘I’ll go with you, if you swear you aren’t going to do anything to me!’

  ‘No, miss, I’m not going to do anything to you at all.’

  ‘Well!’ said Miss Pickhill. ‘I’m sure I don’t know what the world is coming to! I consider this most extra ordinary!’

  Nobody paid any attention to this, Hemingway merely opening the door for Cynthia to pass out of the room, and Mr Eddleston looking as though he were uncertain what to do.

  A fire was burning in the drawing-room, and Hemingway suggested to Cynthia that she should sit down beside it. She seemed relieved by this humane invitation, but poised herself on the very edge of one of the deep armchairs, and, for once in her life, sat bolt upright. Her eyes watched the two detectives warily, with something in them of a child caught out in wrongdoing. Hemingway said: ‘Now, miss, we won’t beat about the bush. I know just what you’ve been up to and very wrong of you it was, which I’ll be bound you know already, for I think Mr Seaton-Carew warned you that there would be bad trouble if anyone found out you had cocaine in your possession, didn’t he?’

  She gave a frightened nod, catching her breath on a sob.

  ‘When did he start giving you the stuff ?’

  ‘I don’t know. I only tried it for f-fun, at first! Only I felt so marvellous afterwards – It’s my nerves !’

  ‘It precious soon would be, if you went on at that game!’ said Hemingway dryly. ‘What made Mr Seaton-Carew give it to you at all?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know! It was the night of the Gem Ball, and I felt so bloody, and I looked haggish, and my head was splitting, and Dan was utterly divine to me! Actually, he always rather bored me before – I mean, definitely old, and uncle-ish, besides being Mummy’s boy-friend, which made me choke him off, on account of its being so dim to get a Thing about one’s Mother’s boy-friend! Of course, I just didn’t know him properly, because really he utterly understood about my nerves, and always being tired to death, and he was too cherishing!’ Her eyes filled. ‘It’s awful now he’s dead! I can’t bear it! Mummy never understood a bit, but Dan did!’

  ‘When did he give you that powder-compact?’

  ‘Oh, it was a Christmas present! He made me promise not to use it unless I felt absolutely finished, and he swore he wouldn’t refill it till Easter, but I expect he would have, if I’d been nice to him, because, if you want to know, he had a complete yen for me!’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Hemingway said, more dryly still. ‘When did your mother discover that you were taking drugs, Miss Haddington?’

  ‘Mummy never knew a thing about it!’ she exclaimed. ‘She couldn’t have known!’

  He gave her an appraising look. ‘No! Well, when did you lose the compact, miss?’

  ‘It was the day of that ghastly Bridge-party. I don’t know when Mummy found it, because she hadn’t the least idea – really she hadn’t! I can’t think why she locked it up in her jewel-box! Unless she wanted to get back on me for going out with Lance Guisborough, when she said I wasn’t to, which is quite likely, because she simply loathed him, God knows why!’

  ‘I see. Now, I understand that Dr Westruther called here yesterday, at lunch-time, miss. Did you see him?’

  ‘Yes, he gave me a prescription for my nerves.’

  ‘Wasn’t what he gave you a prescription for someone who’d been taking dangerous drugs?’

  She looked startled. ‘No!’

  ‘Are you quite sure of that, miss? Didn’t Dr Westruther ask you certain questions about the length of time you’d been –’

  ‘No, no, no! I swear he didn’t! He just went over me like they do, and said I had been overdoing things, and he was going to give me some dope or other which would make me feel utterly different, and Mummy said we’d go to some marvellous place he knew of, where I could ride, and get absolutely fit before the Season starts – and he never said one single word about – about that! I promise you he didn’t!’

  ‘Very well, miss. Don’t get all worked-up! You take the doctor’s medicine, and I daresay you’ll find, after a bit, that you don’t hanker after that filthy drug any more. I don’t know if Mr Seaton-Carew told you this, but in case he didn’t, I will! It’s an offence against the law to have that kind of drug in your possession. You could get into very serious trouble, let alone ending up as a hopeless addict – and if you’d ever seen anyone in that state, believe you me, you’d take good care never to let the habit get a hold on you! I’m not going to take any steps, because I can see you’re only a kid that didn’t know any better, and I’ve got a pretty good idea that now Mr Seaton-Carew’s dead, you don’t know how to get hold of the stuff. What I am going to do, and I know you won’t like it, is to tell your aunt.’ Cynthia uttered a shriek of dismay. ‘No, don’t start to carry on, miss! It’s my belief Miss Pickhill’s very fond of you: I wouldn’t mind betting she’ll do everything she can to help you – and it’s that or worse! You wouldn’t want to be prosecuted, would you?’

  ‘You promised!’ panted Cynthia.

  ‘Yes, I know I did, and I’ll keep it, if I can. But you’ve got to pull up, and maybe it won’t be easy, not at first. And if you didn’t pull up – well, then, it wouldn’t rest with me any longer, but you’d wake up to find yourself in a Home, undergoing the sort of treatment you wouldn’t like at all, with a prosecution looming on top of that!’

  The warning frightened Cynthia so much that she only cowered in her chair. Hemingway then left her, and, encountering Miss Pickhill on the landing, took her into the boudoir, and embarked on an extremely trying half-hour with her. However, after running the gamut of shock, horror, revulsion and condemnation, the good lady dissolved into tears, saying into a large linen handkerchief: ‘I blame my sister! Anyone could have seen with half an eye the child was never robust, and what did she do but drag her from party to party? Over and over again did I tell her that she was heading for trouble, and now we see how right I was! If I have to devote the rest of my life to her, I shall cure her! No principles, of course! Brought up in that Godless way! It doesn’t bear thinking of !’

  ‘Och, I am sorry for the lassie!’ said Grant, as they passed out of the house.

  ‘Well, I’m not!’ said Hemingway. ‘A proper little detrimental, that’s what she is, and she’s getting off lightly! Sandy, what we’ve discovered this morning is nobody’s business! Haven’t I told you, time and again, that when a case gets properly gummed up something’ll break?’

  ‘You have,’ agreed the Inspector gravely. ‘Now, I have not had the opportunity to look at that fan you gave me. What is it you have in your head?’

  ‘You’ll see!’ Hemingway said. ‘We’re going to do a little experiment with that fan and a bit of wire, my lad!’

  ‘Ah!’ said the Inspector. ‘I thought it would be that, maybe.’ He added, with a half-smile: ‘You have always believed it was Mrs Haddington murdered Seaton-Carew, have you not?’

  ‘I never believe anything until I get proof,’ replied Hemingway. ‘But what I’ve got is flair!’

  ‘I have heard you say so,’ meekly responded his subordinate.

  The experiment, conducted in the Chief Inspector’s room, with a length of wire and Mrs Haddington’s fan, caused the cautious Gael to say: ‘Gle mhath! I do not doubt it was the fan she used for her tourniquet. That –’ he pointed to where Cynthia’s compact lay – ‘gives us the motive, which before we never had. But what possessed that man to give snow to a bit lassie like yon?’

  Hemingway shrugged. ‘I daresay we shall never know. My guess is that he fell heavily for her, and she wasn’t having any. He didn’t give her much of the stuff – just enough to make her dependent on him. May have meant to break her of it, once he had her where he wanted her; may not have cared, as long as he did have her. You ought to know what effect the stuff would be likely to have! Only he reckoned without her mother. Now, you may think Miss Pickhill’s nothing
more than a pain in the neck, but that’s because you haven’t got flair! I got a lot of very valuable information out of Miss Pickhill, and the most important was that the late Mrs Haddington pretty well doted on that daughter of hers. All right! Nobody knew better, if you were to ask me, than Mrs Haddington what becomes of people who get the drug habit. Don’t you run away with the idea that she was a plaster-saint! She wasn’t! She knew what Seaton-Carew’s little racket was, and cashed in on it! She knew the signs all right, and I’d be willing to stake a month’s pay she spotted them in the fair Cynthia! It wouldn’t surprise me if I had proof given me – which I shan’t have, the way things are – that she’d made up her mind to eliminate the boy-friend long before that party of hers.’ He paused. ‘No, I’m wrong there. Didn’t that silly girl say she only lost the compact on the day of the party? All the same, Mrs Haddington may have had her suspicions before that. Why else did she pinch the compact? For what we can’t doubt she did! She found what she was looking for, and she knew there was only one thing to be done: wipe out Seaton-Carew! And she was longheaded enough to see that she couldn’t have a better opportunity than at her own Bridge-party! I daresay she got the idea as soon as he told her he was expecting a ‘phone-call. She was clever enough to have staged that, I daresay, but maybe she didn’t. Lots of other ways of getting him away from the rest of the party. As for the wire, I always did think it must have been she who took it out of the cloakroom. Whether she did that only to tidy the place, which seems likely; or whether she did it with the murder in her mind is another of the things we shall never know. Bit of both, perhaps.’