The Shop Window Murders

by Vernon Loder

  ‘I will arrange it at once,’ said Devenish, and took his leave.

  Having made arrangements for the carcass of a sheep to be sent to the Stores and delivered by way of the back entrance, Devenish got hold of Sergeant Davis and walked over. Davis had been busy over the case of the watchman, but had nothing of interest to relate.

  ‘I don’t think the fellow had a weapon, sir,’ he told Devenish as they went. ‘His wife never saw him with one, or heard of him buying one. She thinks he is too nervous to use one.’

  Devenish smiled. ‘Well, she ought to know, and her evidence given to you independently as to his lack of courage is helpful. But I am not going to accept the conclusion yet.’

  When they had reached the Store the carcass had not yet arrived, but Devenish arranged with two of the police on duty that the sheep should be taken up to the roof when it came.

  ‘I don’t know the relative resistance offered by the tissues and muscles of a sheep and a man, nor what difference the flesh being that of a dead animal makes,’ he told Davis, as they went to Mander’s flat and let themselves in, ‘but it is the best we can do at present, and may, as Mr Green says, give us a hint. We’ll make the experiment in the open, upstairs, in case of a richochet. By the way, I had forgotten the square from the lift—will you go down and get one?’

  ‘But won’t it spoil it as one of our exhibits, sir?’

  ‘I mean out of one of the other lifts. They are all the same pattern of thick pile carpet. Bring up the underlying square of lino too. We may as well have the conditions as nearly similar as possible.’

  ‘Then you think Mr Mander was shot in the lift, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know. No one does. But we are going to consider the possibility.’

  Davis nodded, and went away, to return in a few minutes with the objects asked for. Almost simultaneously, Mr Green turned up with two automatic pistols, one of .32 calibre, and two small boxes of ammunition. He was talking with Devenish and the sergeants when a policeman knocked at the door of the flat and came in to say that the sheep was now on that floor.

  ‘You’ll have to bring it in through here, Robbins,’ said Devenish. ‘I know there is only the one way up to the roof. Put it down near one of the sandbanks.’

  On the high roof the sound of shots was not likely to be heard very loudly by those in the streets, and would in any case be mistaken for the sound of a back-firing motor. With some trouble the lino was laid on the rooftop, the pile carpet square on top of that, and the carcass of the sheep laid upon it in such a position that a shot would be likely to strike the carpet, if it penetrated the body, and was not stopped on the way by bone or muscle.

  Using the two pistols in turn, with two kinds of ammunition, and firing into the sheep at ranges varying from three feet to ten, Mr Green conducted his rough test while Devenish observed closely and dictated his observations to Davis, who took them down in his note-book. After six rounds, two bullets had failed to emerge, two had struck a bone and glanced out, conveniently burying themselves in the sandbank; one had penetrated both the square and the carpet, the last had merely stuck in the carpet’s thick pile.

  ‘That is the sort of result you want, inspector,’ remarked the expert, as he exhibited this last bullet, ‘but one out of six is not good enough. We must have the sheep in another position and I’ll try again.’

  ‘It is just possible that the shot which struck Mander met the same resistance as this single bullet,’ observed Devenish, ‘but, as you say, it will be better to have another go.’

  The carcass was rearranged, and Davis was sent down to the butler below to get a kitchen table. When that was brought up, it was arranged to the side of the sheep, and Green, smiling a little as he did so, climbed on the table and resumed his tests.

  A second series of six shots gave two bullets that had got no farther than the pile of the carpet, and Devenish professed himself satisfied for the present.

  The table was taken away, the dead sheep removed, and the three men went down to the flat and sat smoking and talking things over.

  ‘If Mander was shot in that lift,’ said Green, ‘I think you would find that that thick carpet was thoroughly soaked. There might be enough blood to make a slight stain on the underside.’

  ‘But how was Mander shot in the lift, sir, when the woman was killed up here?’ asked Davis.

  ‘You are sure she was killed up here?’

  ‘The stains on the sand couldn’t come from Mander, if he was below,’ said Devenish, ‘and the bruises on her upper arms suggest to me that she was gripped from behind and pushed before someone up the stairway that leads to the roof.’

  Green shrugged. ‘But she would cry out?’

  Devenish smiled. ‘She might. But I doubt if she would be heard, or would bring anyone to her aid. If you shout as high up as this, your voice sounds pretty thin below.’

  ‘And if you hear a distant cry, you would hardly look up in the air to locate it on a dark November night, sir,’ added Davis. ‘It’s strange how hard it is to locate any sound at night. Then everyone would think the Stores was closed on Sunday and they would only look for the person who screamed in the streets about them, not up on top of this building.’

  Green agreed. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE report had come in with regard to the soil which had made the wheel marks on the roof, and with it a few notes made by the expert.

  It had been easy enough to analyse the dried mud, but a much longer business to discover certain districts from which it had come, and there was a remark in one of the notes that puzzled Devenish considerably.

  ‘It appears to me,’ said the writer, ‘that this soil has a certain admixture of soot and sulphurous matter that does not suggest a recent deposit on the roof of the Stores. I am inclined to think that this dried clay was deposited on the roof of the building for some time, alternately dried by the sun and wet by the very slight precipitation which has distinguished this year. In its damp state, it would catch and be contaminated by the products of city smoke. The clay itself occurs in a good many districts, but certainly over a fairly large area between London and Gelover. There is, for example, a tract near the village of Humbleby, in a cup-like depression on the reverse slope of the hill under which the village is built. Confirmation of this can be obtained from the geological survey.’

  ‘That sooty stuff couldn’t be from the cinder laid taking-off place at Gelover, I suppose?’ the inspector said to himself as he read. ‘Our people work much closer than that. Besides, if the tyres were already muddy, fine particles of cinder would be certain to show.’

  He had been studying this report while he ate his breakfast. Now he looked up a timetable to see how he could get to Humbleby, and found that the village was not on the railway map, being a tiny hamlet with about sixty inhabitants. In the end he took a police car down, Sergeant Davis accompanying him, left it in the village, and walked over the low hill towards the depression on the reverse slope, or rather at the bottom of it.

  Here there was a sort of pan, fairly flat and marshy in places, with little herbage towards the centre, and patches of exposed clay. Devenish got out a map, took compass bearings, and discovered that the spot lay nearly in the direct route between Gelover and London, being but slightly to the south-east of it.

  Without much hope of finding anything, the detectives quartered the ground carefully over an area of perhaps half a square mile, going right beyond the borders of the pan at times. At the end of an hour they drew together again, but could report nothing.

  ‘Not that I expected to find much,’ said Devenish, as they adjourned to a grassy bank, sat down, and began to smoke. ‘Now, let me see. I have got the newspapers which gave an account of the flight of the gyrocopter. I’ll read you out any salient points.’

  He read for some minutes in silence, then began aloud: ‘“Taking off like some great, lazy moth, rising in an almost vertical line, and appearing for a moment to h
over like a hawk above the Manor, the epoch-making machine drifted south, and after a perfect flight landed on the flat roof of the new mammoth Stores. The indignation of our hide-bound and red-tape strangled bureaucracy knew no bounds. ‘Let progress perish!’ they said in effect, ‘but observe the laws.’ But, in spite of them, the gyrocopter had triumphed. Slow but sure, it had made its way to London, and landed in a space hardly bigger than a tennis-court.”’

  Devenish looked up and laughed. ‘A giant’s tennis-court that roof,’ he said. ‘It would take two Tildens to reach the baseline with their hottest drives. Still, you notice the remark, “a perfect flight,” qualified by “slow but sure,” eh? Nothing to help us there. We had better get along to the village, and inquire at the pub. I bet the flight is talked of now, and will be for ten years. A small sensation is a long topic in a small place.’

  They returned to the village over the hill, and had a talk with the landlord of the ‘Snig and Spear’ (‘Snig’ meaning a small eel, which accounted for the strange sounding name). Borlas, who kept the place, was a fat man with a cheery expression, and they found him immediately interested in their queries.

  ‘Flight, gentlemen,’ he observed. ‘Why, I saw it proper. I heard a great shouting and screeching, and out I ran, to see the thing like a whirrling bum-bee overhead. It didn’t look like any aeryplane I ever saw, and most of them here was out staring too, till it went over the hill, like.’

  ‘And vanished from view,’ said Devenish, smiling.

  ‘That it did,’ said the landlord. ‘It wasn’t so high neither, and old John Higgs, who does mostly no work, but a bit of poaching, he came in that evening, and said he saw it come down over the hill and get up again. But no one else saw it, and he’s reckoned a great liar; and is too, surely. Anyway, he told one reporter from the local paper so, and that one put it in, and then old John he came down, and said it was made up, and he never saw it come down, but just wanted something to talk about, and perhaps get half a pint for telling of it.’

  Devenish thanked him, and he and Davis went off to interview the poacher. But the poacher was surly. He stuck to his amended story, and they had to leave him without obtaining any information of value.

  ‘Did he make it up, sir, do you think?’ asked Davis, as they travelled back to town in the car.

  ‘I have an impression that his first yarn was the true one,’ Devenish replied thoughtfully. ‘I look at it this way: he does not deny that version until it has appeared in a local paper after an interview with a reporter. Why give the news and then deny it—or, more correctly, give the news to the public and then deny it to his cronies at the pub?’

  ‘That does seem odd.’

  Devenish nodded. ‘Yes, until you reflect that this was to be a record feat for the gyrocopter, and was featured in the London papers as a “perfect” flight. If it had to descend on the way, even for a short time, that would spoil the perfection, and also make the machine appear less safe than it really was. If only the poacher saw it drop, he may have been squared. No doubt Mander gets press-cuttings, or did, about all the stunts to advertise the Stores.’

  ‘And may have had one from this local paper?’

  ‘That’s it. He may have sent someone down diplomatically to quash this evidence of an eyewitness. A fiver would go a long way with Higgs. Otherwise he would have been like a single gallery interruptor at a perfect first-night. It is the only way I can explain his sudden change of front.’

  ‘What is the next move then, sir?’

  ‘I am going to call at the Metereological Record Office and get a chart for the day of the flight. We want to know weather conditions between here and town, and here and Gelover, and the prevailing wind in London and en route that day. Then I am going to see the butler at the flat again.’

  ‘Shall you want me with you, sir?’

  ‘No. I shall drop you at the Yard. I have no time to spare there, but you might see the superintendent and tell him what we have discovered today.’

  Davis got down later, and when Devenish resumed his journey afoot, and had studied the weather charts supplied him by the experts at the Record Office, he looked a little happier.

  ‘Unless there is a snag in the butler’s statement, I have cleared that point up,’ he said to himself, and hurried away to the Stores and went up to Mander’s flat. Here he interviewed the butler.

  ‘I am anxious to know if the roof above was much used,’ he said to the man.

  ‘I couldn’t say that it was, sir,’ replied the butler. ‘You see, Mr Mander meant it for a place for aeroplanes to land, and when there was that trouble over it, he kind of lost heart. But he may have gone up there in the summer evenings, without me knowing.’

  ‘I remember that he tried to get the place legalised, pointing out that the gyrocopter had reversed all the views with regard to the safe landing of a plane on confined spaces.’

  ‘Yes, he did, sir. He was much put out when they wouldn’t agree. But then I don’t know much about the roof, sir. I never go up there, and there isn’t any way from our quarters.’

  Devenish saw that point. He knew that Mander had really expected to create a sensation, and make wonderful sales by beginning a mail-order business to be conducted by gyrocopters flown from the roof of the Store, but he had not allowed for the conservatism of the authorities. It was quite likely that he had taken little further interest in the roof, which had been designed for one purpose only, and was not even accessible from the Store, save through the flat.

  ‘Who was responsible for keeping the roof clean?’ he asked after a moment.

  The butler shook his head. ‘We were never asked to see to it, sir, and I don’t think anyone else did.’

  ‘Perhaps some of the cleaners of the Stores?’

  ‘Not that I heard of, sir. They would have had to be let in, and I never saw any of them up here, or heard of them coming either.’

  Devenish thanked and dismissed him, and went up on the roof alone. Here he leaned against one of the parapets and studied a weather chart with intent interest.

  ‘By Jove! The wind was wrong for a landing on the Sunday of the murder, but right on the day of the first landing,’ he mused. ‘On that first occasion Webley could have landed as these wheel-tracks show. The only points against it are: first, that it is a question if the mud would have remained here all that time—though there was little rain this year—and, secondly, how is it that the tracks are narrower than the tyres fitted to the gyrocopters in the department below? The edges of the mud may have weathered off, of course, but I am not sure of that.’

  He made a further examination of the tracks on the roof, and saw that the clay was of a peculiarly clinging kind. Further, he descended to the ironmongery department, and brought up a large watering-can which he filled with water, and carried to the roof. Selecting a small section of the tracks, he watered it steadily, and then left it to dry a little in the cool easterly breeze that was now sweeping across the roof, and visited Mander’s flat again, where he looked in the study until he came upon some bound numbers of Flight. Here he discovered a pretty full account of the marvellous roof landing, and, at the end of the article, a specification of the machine, as far as details had been allowed to leak out.

  ‘I believe that settles it,’ he said, as he took a note of the size of the tyres, and went up again to the roof. ‘That day was dry, but the previous day there had been heavy rain in the home counties. I’ll just see how the tracks look, then ring up Cane.’

  To his gratification, the watering had not removed much of the clinging clay on the section he had watered. Most of it had dried again in the cold air. To a certain extent, of course, the flat of the roof was protected by the parapets from anything but a gale.

  ‘Naturally I thought this roof would be regularly cleaned and swept, or I should have thought of it before,’ he mused, as he descended for the last time that day to the flat, ‘but better late than never.’

  A minute later he rang up Cane and told hi
m his views. Cane laughed. ‘I could have told you that we found it better to put larger tyres on the landing-carriages of the later machines,’ he replied. ‘I did not mention the fact, because I thought you were referring to a flight made on the Sunday night when Mander was murdered.’

  ‘And I never looked for it, because I fully believed that the machine on its first flight here came straight across from the hard landing ground at Gelover, Mr Cane. I see now that Webley must have made a forced landing, and the matter was hushed up when it leaked out in that country paper. I’ll see Webley again, make sure of that, and then know where I am. The evidence of those wheel-tracks has been one of the complicating features of the case. Once it is cleared away, I shall be able to state that the murderer, however he came here, did not come by air.’

  ‘I felt sure he couldn’t, at night, and without landing lights,’ said Cane.

  Devenish rang off, went to the street, and at once hurried to Gelover. He returned in a more leisurely way, having got what he wanted. When Webley heard that this evidence would exculpate him, he at once admitted the truth of the theory. On the day of the sensational flight, he had landed near Humbleby, but, finding the trouble was not as serious as he thought, had put it right, and managed to rise again within twenty-five minutes. Only the help of the gyrocopter lift, he said, enabled him to rise off that soft clay. He had communicated the fact to Mr Mander, and Mr Mander had told him to say nothing about it.

  ‘But someone else did,’ said Devenish. ‘Did you go over to Humbleby?’ Webley nodded. ‘Yes, the guv’nor gave me a fiver, and I saw an old man called Higgs, who told the reporter he had seen me come down, and got a promise from him to say he made it up. It wouldn’t have done the machine any good, sir, if it was known it had come down the first time.’

  CHAPTER XXIV

  MR GREEN had a gun-shop in New Bond Street, and Devenish called upon him next day and had a short talk. He was emerging from the shop when someone touched him on the shoulder, and he turned to face Jameson Peden-Hythe.