The Shop Window Murders

by Vernon Loder

  ‘Naturally, sir.’

  ‘Whereas a landsman would not know all the tricks of the trade. If a man who did not know much about aeroplanes faked a landing here, he would not think of any difficulties made by the direction of the wind that night.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then the presumption is to my mind that an aeroplane did not land, but that a man who was not familiar with the machines tried to prove one had. That would let out both Webley and Cane.’

  ‘But Webley, being the man who could pilot this particular kind, the murderer must have tried to put it on him. But who would have a grudge against Webley?’

  ‘That I don’t know,’ said Devenish, getting up. ‘Now I am just going to see that the man is posted above, and the sand-bank made snug, and then I shall take a few hours sleep. I advise you to do the same, Davis.’

  ‘Very well, sir,’ said the sergeant.

  The superintendent did not come in next morning, but Mr Melis arrived, looking more eager and interested than usual, and explained that the superintendent was having an interview with Mrs Peden-Hythe’s lawyer, Mr Hay.

  ‘Mr Mander’s sins have been finding him out a bit,’ he added. ‘Mr Hay and the auditor grabbed what books they could yesterday, and started making hectic inquiries. Looks as if Mander had been raising some coin on the security of this show, and generally piling up a little mammon while the sun shone. There is no doubt he had a kind of genius for initiating big enterprises, but I imagine he wasn’t a stayer.’

  Devenish pursed his lips. ‘Really, sir? Preparing for a bolt, eh? I wonder if he was making a proposal to take Miss Tumour with him?’

  Melis shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose we shall ever know now. But let us have a look at your walrus-and-carpenter job upstairs.’

  They ascended the stairway to the roof and approached the sandbank, which was now sheeted over. Davis and a single detective were up there, and at a word from Devenish they took off the covering most carefully. Melis went over to look at the red-stained sand and then raised his eyebrows.

  ‘You didn’t see anything out of the way when you first saw this stuff on Monday, inspector?’

  ‘No, sir. Whoever did the job did it thoroughly. He must have removed the body, taking care to leave it there till all bleeding had stopped. Then he must have set to work to make the bank as tidy as before.’

  ‘Ever lie down in the sand at the seaside, inspector?’

  Devenish smiled faintly. ‘I must have done when I was younger, sir.’

  ‘You found sand in your boots and your clothes after, I’ll bet. I suppose it is your theory that Mander was either sitting or standing beside this bank—wait a moment! Taking the line of the bullet, he must have been sitting, unless the murderer was standing on the parapet opposite to get height?’

  Devenish reflected. ‘There is another way it may have happened, sir. Mander would not sit down for fun on a sandbank on a November night. That’s obvious. Isn’t it quite possible that he knew a man with a gun was after him, and backed slowly across the roof, until he fell over the bank—fell over the edge of it, and sat down I mean—as the shot was fired?’

  Melis nodded approvingly. ‘That’s a good idea. Mander wouldn’t shout for help, of course. He would know that he was shut away from help by his own silly private arrangements. He would hope the other man would not shoot. But why should the other man not have fired at first—why wait till he got as far as that? If you suspect Kephim, it was a crime of jealousy. A jealous man does not think out a plan.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘I can see two possible explanations, though both are speculative. The parapet round this roof is four feet high. Was the murderer driving him back, hoping he would try to climb to safety and fall over? That would, if it came off, suggest that Mander had committed suicide. Or was he a calculating ruffian, who knew that the best place for Mander to fall was on the sand, where the stains could be easily hidden for a time, and the bullet stop out of sight.’

  Melis laughed.

  ‘And make it difficult to decide on the manner and method of the murder for a little while till he got away?’

  Devenish bit his lip. ‘We still have the stray sand difficulty you mentioned. I quite see that. Our only help is our knowledge that the murderer may not only have been in the building for some considerable time, but may even have concealed himself till the store opened next day. That is to say, he had seven to eight hours to clear up the mess. It was only when he was actually in the lifts, or the departments below, that he was in danger of being seen.’

  Melis hummed a disjointed tune for a few moments. ‘Then if Mander fell in the sand here, the other fellow must have taken considerable trouble to clear the clothes of the grains. His own clothes would not matter so much. He could shake those out at home.’

  Devenish stared about him. ‘That is true, sir. Let me think—There are all kinds of gadgets about in the flat below. Do you mind if we go below, sir?’

  Melis assenting, they descended to the flat, and rang for the butler.

  ‘Got a vacuum-cleaner up here?’ Devenish asked.

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ replied the man, with a puzzled air.

  ‘Use it lately here?’

  ‘No, sir. You see, you gentlemen locked up the flat, and—’

  ‘I know that, but don’t you use it for your own quarters?’

  To the amusement of both, the butler disclosed a fact that they might have known; that domestics, if left to themselves, often cherish a foolish grudge against labour-saving appliances. It appeared that the vacuum-cleaner was not used by them.

  ‘Where is it kept then?’ asked Devenish.

  The butler took them to a large built-in cupboard in a passage and produced an electric vacuum-cleaner.

  ‘This is it, sir.’

  Devenish promptly lifted and detached the bag which contains the dust collected. ‘It isn’t full, sir,’ he said to Melis.

  ‘I emptied it, of course,’ said the butler.

  ‘But not since Sunday,’ remarked Devenish. He took out his pen-knife, dismissed the butler, and carried the bag into the dining-room where he laid it on the table.

  ‘I may be wrong, sir,’ he said, ‘but it seems to me that this thing would clean clothes more effectually than any amount of brushing, and it wouldn’t scatter atoms of sand about as a brush would. I think I had better open it.’

  ‘Bright idea, my dear fella,’ said Melis. ‘Dissect the bag by all means. Any grains will show on this nice polished mahogany table.’

  Working very carefully, the inspector slit up the bag, all round the seams, and decanted its inconsiderable contents on the table. Then he shook it lightly, and laid it on a corner of the mahogany.

  ‘Not quite a beach, but sand enough,’ said Melis, patting him gently on the back. ‘There is half an ounce here with other matter.’

  Devenish looked eager now. ‘That’s right. It is sand, and some of it reddish, too, sir. Have a look at it through your magnifier, while I see what some of the other stuff is.’

  Melis studied a quantity of the sand, and Devenish, after a survey of the mixed dust and fibres from the bag, left him and made a tour of the other rooms of the flat, coming back to find Melis sitting smoking and reflecting at the table.

  ‘Putty medal for you, Devenish,’ he said as the inspector came in, ‘but what made you hop up just now?’

  Devenish sorted the dust again, and put apart from the rest a few fibres of wool.

  ‘Though Mr Mander went to lunch with Mrs Peden-Hythe that day, sir, we know that he was dressed in tweeds and had not dressed for dinner when he came back. Now the kind and colour of these wool-fibres suggests his suit. An analysis will probably show that they came from it. With the sand here, I think we can be pretty sure of this point.’

  ‘Callous devil,’ said Melis. ‘Just sat down as if he were going to tidy up, but, oh, help! Where does the girl in the lift come in?’

  Devenish sat down, and went over that point. ‘Ten to one
the cleaners on Saturday night took up the square of carpet in the lifts and did their job. Evidently they replaced the square that night, or we should have heard of the bloodstain sooner on the Monday.’

  ‘I see that.’

  ‘But the carpet square was not down in the lift when the girl was killed there—if she was killed there. If it had been, the stain would have been on, not under the square.’

  ‘Solomon,’ murmured Melis, ‘I am with you in your judgment—carry on.’

  ‘Which suggests to me that she was not killed in the lift,’ said Devenish. ‘I cannot imagine the murderer lifting the square, asking the girl to step into the lift, and then killing her.’

  ‘Then the stain was put there to confuse us? Maybe. It could be worked, for though this was not a very bluggy business, Devenish, it was to a certain extent. But all along, as you and I both agree, there is the jealousy feature in this case. We can’t get away from it. A murderer did hold his victims up to obloquy by sticking them in fancy-dress in the window. If killing Mander was the job intended, and the girl only an accidental victim, there would be no reason to put her there too.’

  Devenish nodded. ‘There is this chance, sir, that Mander and the girl were lovers. Also, if Mander was meditating a bolt, either because he foresaw eventual failure for this place, or had intended all along to scoop a pile and get off, he may have fixed it with her to go with him. Wasn’t there something in the papers about Mr Mander going to South America to look into the possibilities of starting another establishment there? I think there was. At any rate, for one reason or another, Miss Tumour came here to visit Mander.’

  ‘I’ll grant it. Go on!’

  ‘Say she is in this flat when a bell rings. It would have to be the bell either of the door at the back or the one opposite the lift. It would certainly not be one that would call the butler.’

  ‘Not at night—no.’

  ‘Well, Mander perhaps tells Miss Tumour to hide out of the way. He goes down, or goes to the other door on this level. Say he meets at the door a man with a gun. This man makes him open under threat of firing. Mander has to admit him to the flat. They have a parley up here, probably a scene.’

  ‘Very likely, if it ended in shooting.’

  ‘Very well, sir. Either Mander takes his visitor up to the flat roof, or bolts, and tries to escape up there. He is followed, and Miss Tumour, hearing the noise of the altercation, and the running footsteps, comes out, and follows. When she gets up there, Mander has backed on to the sand, and falls over it. The man shoots him. Perhaps the girl gives a cry, and the murderer knows he is discovered. He gives chase, and stabs her. In the dark he might strike at random, lower than a man would in daylight—as we know in the small of the back. If he is the jealous lover, he would then discover who Mander’s visitor was, and that would account for his later action in sticking both in the window.’

  ‘I believe you did it yourself, Devenish,’ said Melis. ‘If we can trust our writers of detective fiction, detectives are a most dangerous and deceitful lot!’

  CHAPTER XI

  THE afternoon of the day that found Mr Melis and Inspector Devenish on the roof of Mander’s Stores also found Mr Kephim taking tea in Mrs Hoe’s flat. The Stores, at the request of Mr Hay and the auditor, had not been reopened that day, as promised by Devenish, but were not to begin business again until the following Monday. Everyone agreed that the establishment would lose nothing by the tragedy, for half London was determined to shop at the first opportunity in the place which had witnessed the event. ‘Mander had such a genius for réclame that he couldn’t help advertising the Stores when he died!’ said a minor wit.

  Whether it was that his love for the dead woman had turned to hate, or that Mrs Hoe’s attractive sympathy was helpful, Mr Kephim seemed to be in better spirits that day, though he was actually disturbed in mind.

  ‘A man is watching me everywhere,’ he said fretfully, as he ate a little cake.

  ‘I have a strong suspicion that a woman is doing the same for me,’ she replied, smiling faintly, ‘but I suppose it is part of the routine.’

  He looked almost resentful. ‘Do you mean to say that they are justified in thinking I may be guilty?’

  ‘Not guilty—no,’ she nibbled a cake too, and dropped her long eyelashes as she spoke, ‘but they have to do it, you know. Everyone connected with the Stores—’

  ‘But you’re not connected with them,’ he interrupted.

  ‘I was a friend of Effie’s,’ she said.

  He laughed bitterly. ‘I was a—friend of Effie’s.’

  ‘And they’re watching you, aren’t they? It’s natural.’

  Kephim asked her if he might smoke, and lit up. ‘I might have been jealous if I had known.’

  ‘Didn’t you know, suspect even a little?’ she remarked.

  He stared at her. ‘No, I didn’t. What an odd thing to say.’

  ‘I don’t think I was a friend of hers, or of yours,’ said the little widow solemnly. ‘I did suspect once or twice, but I said nothing. Do you think I ought to have done?’

  Kephim was not looking at her. Devenish, if he had been an invisible spectator, would have said that, if Mrs Hoe was not a friend of the man’s, it was because she wanted to be something more—was already something more in mind and hope.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Kephim, puffing out a cloud of smoke and staring into it as it floated up, ‘if she was like that; marriage wouldn’t have helped. I am an odd fellow in some ways. It seems funny telling you, but this has killed it—killed it dead as dead,’ he added rather vaguely.

  ‘What?’ she asked, absent-mindedly reaching for his cup and refilling it.

  ‘I was madly in love with her. People knowing how I feel now—if anyone could know—would say it wasn’t real love. Love, they say, goes on and on, even if you get smacked in the face, cheated and beaten—I don’t believe it, I never did.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just convention,’ she murmured, watching him. ‘I don’t believe it either. Most of the world is pacifist nowadays; in love and war. I admit I like to hit back. Even in the courts they ask if the witness is not vindictive. Vindictive? As if it was a crime. If other people kept off one’s toes, one would have nothing to be vindictive about.’

  He hardly seemed to be listening to her. ‘No, when I heard that, and knew what she had done, it all went. She got what she was asking for. It sounds beastly to say it, but there it is. She got what she was asking for. I was ready to let her walk over me. She could have had everything she wanted then. Now I am not even sorry.’

  ‘No woman is worth it,’ said Mrs Hoe. ‘Do you think she could have fooled someone else too?’

  ‘Mander? But it couldn’t have been murder and suicide. The police are sure of that.’

  ‘But anyone else—someone you don’t even know,’ she persisted. ‘I think it possible. For I don’t know who could have killed her.’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know either. But I think the police are making a mistake when they say they don’t think that gyrocopter landed on the roof. How do they know? No one heard a shot, but there was a shot fired—’

  ‘Hardly anyone lives in Gaffikin Street,’ she said; ‘you know that. If it had been the old days of living in—’

  ‘I know. And then people think any bang is a burst tyre somewhere, but according to Cane there were marks of tyres on the roof. The inspector told him so. And an engine was heard running. Who can swear that fellow Webley didn’t come over.’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s rather a mystery, isn’t he?’

  ‘I don’t know much about it. Cane says he is evidently a mechanical genius, though an ignorant man. You know what Mander did. He sucked people’s brains. He would have let us all down later, as I see now. He stole what he couldn’t get decently,’ he added with bitterness.

  ‘But this man Webley?’ she hinted discreetly.

  Kephim pursed his lips for a moment, then noticed the tea in his cup and drank it before he resumed. ‘Mander co
uldn’t have invented that gyrocopter. I often wondered about that. Just after I joined, he took me for a drive in his car to talk things over. We broke down, and I’m hanged if he knew what to do. He fiddled about a bit, and then got a man from the garage.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Mrs Hoe eagerly as he paused.

  ‘Well, I mean to say, couldn’t Webley have invented it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why not. That’s what I think. Cane thinks so too. Webley would have no money for experiments. Mander could buy him cheap, and tell him to keep his mouth shut about it. He’s not the first inventor choused out of a patent, and not knowing how to prove his claim. Mander would have seen to that before he took out patents.’

  ‘Even then—’ said his companion timidly.

  ‘Someone did it,’ said Kephim, as if in a sort of desperation. ‘You see that. They may say there is an adequate motive in jealousy. Isn’t there one if a man invents a famous machine and gets cheated over it? I should say there was.’

  ‘I wish I had thought of that and told the detective when he came to see me,’ murmured Mrs Hoe sympathetically. ‘I shall if he comes again. Uneducated people are so, shall I say, unrestrained. They see red when we would keep control of ourselves.’

  ‘There’s only the question of—Effie,’ said Kephim, looking at her furtively. ‘Why should he kill Effie?’

  Mrs Hoe blushed slightly. ‘If it worries you to talk about her, do let us drop it.’

  He reddened. ‘It doesn’t. I told you I had no feelings about her now. None! What I mean is this. I am worried about being followed. I suppose innocent people have been arrested before now. If I could only think of some way to explain why she was killed, it would relieve my mind. I wasn’t doing any harm. It was she got me into this mess.’

  ‘You? Why, you wouldn’t kill a fly,’ said Mrs Hoe.

  ‘I wouldn’t have killed her, though I suppose I should have felt like it, if I had been the man in the flat.’