The Perfect Murder

by Ruskin Bond

  Mrs Bunting listened in silence; she did not even open her eyes. ‘I can’t have the girl here just now,’ she said shortly; ‘I’ve got just as much as I can manage to do.’

  But Bunting felt pugnacious, and so cheerful as to be almost light-headed. Deep down in his heart he looked back to last night with a feeling of shame and self-rebuke. Whatever had made such horrible thoughts and suspicions come into his head?

  ‘Of course Daisy will come here,’ he said shortly. ‘If it comes to that, she’ll be able to help you with the work, and she’ll brisk us both up a bit.’

  Rather to his surprise, Mrs Bunting said nothing in answer to this, and he changed the subject abruptly. ‘The lodger and me came in together last night,’ he observed. ‘He’s certainly a funny kind of gentleman. It wasn’t the sort of night one would choose to go for a walk over Primrose Hill, and yet that was what he had been doing—so he said.’

  It stopped snowing about ten o’clock, and the morning wore itself away.

  Just as twelve was striking, a four-wheeler drew up to the gate. It was Daisy—pink-cheeked, excited, laughing-eyed Daisy, a sight to gladden any father’s heart. ‘Aunt said I was to have a cab if the weather was bad,’ she said.

  There was a bit of a wrangle over the fare. King’s Cross, as all the world knows, is nothing like two miles from the Marylebone Road, but the man clamoured for one-and-sixpence, and hinted darkly that he had done the young lady a favour in bringing her at all.

  While he and Bunting were having words, Daisy, leaving them to it, walked up the path to the door where her stepmother was awaiting her.

  Suddenly there fell loud shouts on the still air. They sounded strangely eerie, breaking sharply across the muffled, snowy air. ‘What’s that?’ said Bunting, with a look of startled fear. ‘Why, whatever’s that?’

  The cabman lowered his voice: ‘Them are crying out that ’orrible affair at King’s Cross. He’s done for two of ’em this time! That’s what I meant when I said I might have got a better fare; I wouldn’t say anything before Missy there, but folk ’ave been coming from all over London—like a fire; plenty of toffs, too. But there-there’s nothing to see now!’

  ‘What! Another woman murdered last night?’ Bunting felt and looked convulsed with horror.

  The cabman stared at him, surprised. ‘Two of ’em, I tell yer—within a few yards of one another. He ’ave got a nerve—’

  ‘Have they caught him?’ asked Bunting perfunctorily.

  ‘Lord, no! They’ll never catch ‘im! It must ’ave happened hours and hours ago—they was both stone-cold. One each end of an archway. That’s why they didn’t see ’em before.’

  The hoarse cries were coming nearer and nearer—two newsvendors trying to outshout each other.

  ‘Orrible discovery near King’s Cross!’ they yelled exultantly. And as Bunting, with his daughter’s bag in his hand, hurried up the path and passed through his front door, the words pursued him like a dreadful threat.

  Angrily he shut out the hoarse, insistent cries. No, he had no wish to buy a paper. That kind of crime wasn’t fit reading for a young girl, such a girl as was his Daisy, brought up as carefully as if she had been a young lady by her strict Methody aunt.

  As he stood in his little hall, trying to feel ‘all right’ again, he could hear Daisy’s voice—high, voluble, excited—giving her stepmother a long account of the scarlet-fever case to which she owed her presence in London. But, as Bunting pushed open the door of the sitting-room there came a note of sharp alarm in his daughter’s voice, and he heard her say: ‘Why, Ellen! Whatever is the matter? You do look bad!’ and his wife’s muffled answer: ‘Open the window—do.’

  Rushing across the room, Bunting pushed up the sash. The newspaper-sellers were now just outside the house. ‘Horrible discovery near King’s Cross—a clue to the murderer!’ they yelled. And then, helplessly, Mrs Bunting began to laugh. She laughed and laughed and laughed, rocking herself to and fro as if in an ecstasy of mirth.

  ‘Why, father, whatever’s the matter with her?’ Daisy looked quite scared.

  ‘She’s in ’sterics—that’s what it is,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll just get the water-jug. Wait a minute.’

  Bunting felt very put out, and yet glad, too, for this queer seizure of Ellen’s almost made him forget the sick terror with which he had been possessed a moment before. That he and his wife should be obsessed by the same fear, the same terror, never crossed his simple, slow-working mind.

  The lodger’s bell rang. That, or the threat of the water-jug, had a magical effect on Mrs Bunting. She rose to her feet, still trembling, but composed.

  As Mrs Bunting went upstairs she felt her legs trembling under her, and put out a shaking hand to clutch at the bannister for support. She waited a few minutes on the landing, and then knocked at the door of her lodger’s parlour.

  But Mr Sleuth’s voice answered her from the bedroom. ‘I’m, not well,’ he called out querulously; ‘I think I caught a chill going out to see a friend last night. I’d be obliged if you’ll bring me up a cup of tea and put it outside my door, Mrs Bunting.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Mrs Bunting went downstairs and made her lodger a cup of tea over the gas-ring, Bunting watching her the while in heavy silence.

  During their midday dinner the husband and wife had a little discussion as to where Daisy should sleep. It had already been settled that a bed should be made up for her in the sitting-room, but Bunting saw reason to change this plan. As the two women were clearing away the dishes, he looked up and said shortly: ‘I think ’twould be better if Daisy were to sleep with you, Ellen and I were to sleep in the sitting-room.’

  Ellen acquiesced quietly.

  Daisy was a good-natured girl; she liked London, and wanted to make herself useful to her stepmother. ‘I’ll wash up; don’t you bother to come downstairs,’ she said.

  Bunting began to walk up and down the room. His wife gave him a furtive glance; she wondered what he was thinking about,

  ‘Didn’t you get a paper?’ she said at last.

  ‘There’s the paper,’ he said crossly, ‘the paper we always do take in, the Telegraph.’ His look challenged her to a further question.

  ‘I thought they were shouting something in the street—I mean just before I took bad.’

  But he made no answer; instead, he went to the top of the staircase and called out sharply: ‘Daisy! Daisy, child, are you there?’

  ‘Yes, father,’ she answered from below.

  ‘Better come upstairs out of that cold kitchen.’

  He came back into the sitting-room again.

  ‘Ellen, is the lodger in? I haven’t heard him moving about. I don’t want Daisy to be mixed up with him.’

  ‘Mr Sleuth is not well today,’ his wife answered; ‘he is remaining in bed a bit. Daisy needn’t have anything to do with him. She’ll have her work cut out looking after things down here. That’s where I want her to help me.’

  ‘Agreed,’ he said.

  When it grew dark, Bunting went out and bought an evening paper. He read it out of doors in the biting cold, standing beneath a street lamp. He wanted to see what was the clue to the murderer.

  The clue proved to be a very slender one—merely the imprint in the snowy slush of a half-worn rubber sole; and it was, of course, by no means certain that the sole belonged to the boot or shoe of the murderer of the two doomed women who had met so swift and awful a death in the arch near King’s Cross station. The paper’s special investigator pointed out that there were thousands of such soles being worn in London. Bunting found comfort in that obvious fact. He felt grateful to the special investigator for having stated it so clearly.

  As he approached his house, he heard curious sounds coming from the inner side of the low wall that shut off the courtyard from the pavement. Under ordinary circumstances Bunting would have gone at once to drive whoever was there out into the roadway. Now he stayed outside, sick with suspense and anxiety. Was it poss
ible that their place was being watched—already?

  But it was only Mr Sleuth. To Bunting’s astonishment, the lodger suddenly stepped forward from behind the wall on to the flagged path. He was carrying a brown-paper parcel, and, as he walked along, the new boots he was wearing creaked and the tap-tap of wooden heels rang out on the stones.

  Bunting, still hidden outside the gate, suddenly understood what his lodger had been doing the other side of the wall, Mr Sleuth had been out to buy himself a pair of boots, and had gone inside the gate to put them on, placing his old footwear in the paper in which the new boots had been wrapped.

  Bunting waited until Mr Sleuth had let himself into the house; then he also walked up the flagged pathway, and put his latch-key in the door.

  In the next three days each of Bunting’s waking hours held its mind of aching fear and suspense. From his point of view, almost any alternative would be preferable to that which to most people would have seemed the only one open to him. He told himself that it would be ruin for him and for his Ellen to be mixed up publicly in such a terrible affair. It would track them to their dying day.

  Bunting was also always debating within himself as to whether he should tell Ellen of his frightful suspicion. He could not believe that what had become so plain to himself could long be concealed from all the world, and yet lie did not credit his wife with the same intelligence. He did not even notice that, although she waited on Mr Sleuth as assiduously as ever, Mrs Bunting never mentioned the lodger.

  Mr Sleuth, meanwhile, kept upstairs, he had given up going out altogether. He still felt, so he assured his landlady, far from well.

  Daisy was another complication, the more so that the girl, whom her father longed to send away and whom he would hardly let out of his sight, showed herself inconveniently inquisitive concerning the lodger.

  ‘Whatever does he do with himself all day?’ she asked her stepmother.

  ‘Well, just now he’s reading the Bible,’ Mrs Bunting had answered, very shortly and dryly.

  ‘Well, I never! That’s a funny thing for a gentleman to do!’ Such had been Daisy’s pert remark, and her stepmother had snubbed her well for it.

  Daisy’s eighteenth birthday dawned uneventfully. Her father gave her what he had always promised she should have on her eighteenth birthday—a watch. It was a pretty little silver watch, which Bunting had bought second-hand on the last day he had been happy; it seemed a long time ago now.

  Mrs Bunting thought a silver watch was a very extravagant present, but she had always had the good sense not to interfere between her husband and his child. Besides, her mind was now full of other things. She was beginning to fear that Bunting suspected something, and she was filled with watchful anxiety and unease. What if he were to do anything silly—mix him up with the police, for instance? It certainly would be ruination to them both. But there—one never knew, with men! Her husband, however, kept his own counsel absolutely.

  Daisy’s birthday was a Saturday. In the middle of the morning Ellen and Daisy went down into the kitchen. Bunting didn’t like the feeling that there was only one flight of stairs between Mr Sleuth and himself, so he quietly slipped out of the house and went to buy himself an ounce of tobacco.

  In the last four days Bunting had avoided his usual haunts. But today the unfortunate man had a curious longing for human companionship—companionship, that is, other than that of Ellen and Daisy. This feeling led him into a small, populous thoroughfare hard by the Edgeware Road. There were more people there than usual, for the housewives of the neighbourhood were doing their marketing for Sunday.

  Bunting passed the time of day with the tobacconist, and the two fell into desultory talk. To the ex-butler’s surprise, the man said nothing at all to him on the subject of which all the neighbourhood must still be talking.

  And then, quite suddenly, while still standing by the counter, and before he had paid for the packet of tobacco he held in his hand, Bunting, through the open door, saw, with horrified surprise, that his wife was standing outside a green-grocer’s shop just opposite. Muttering a word of apology, he rushed out of the shop and across the road.

  ‘Ellen!’ he gasped hoarsely. ‘You’ve never gone and left my little girl alone in the house?’

  Mrs Bunting’s face went chalky white. ‘I thought you were indoors,’ she said. ‘You were indoors. Whatever made you come out for, without first making sure I was there?’

  Bunting made no answer; but, as they stared at each other in exasperated silence, each knew that the other knew.

  They turned and scurried down the street.

  ‘Don’t run,’ he said suddenly; ‘we shall get there just as quickly if we walk fast. People are noticing you, Ellen. Don’t run.’

  He spoke breathlessly, but it was breathlessness induced by fear and excitement, not by the quick pace at which they were walking.

  As last they reached their own gate. Bunting pushed past in front of his wife. After all, Daisy was his child—Ellen couldn’t know how he was feeling. He made the path almost in one leap, and fumbled for a moment with his latch-key. The door opened.

  ‘Daisy!’ he called out in a wailing voice. ‘Daisy, my dear, where are you?’

  ‘Here I am, father; what is it?’

  ‘She’s all right!’ Bunting turned his grey face to his wife, ‘She’s all right, Ellen!’ Then he waited a moment, leaning against the wall of the passage. ‘It did give me a turn,’ he said; and then, warningly, ‘Don’t frighten the girl, Ellen.’

  Daisy was standing before the fire in the sitting-room, admiring herself in the glass. ‘Oh, father,’ she said, without turning round, ‘I’ve seen the lodger! He’s quite a nice gentleman—though, to be sure, he does look queer! He came down to ask Ellen for something, and we had quite a nice little chat. I told him it was my birthday, and he asked me to go to Madame Tussaud’s with him this afternoon.’ She laughed a little self-consciously. ‘Of course I could see he was ’centric, and then at first he spoke so funnily. “And who be you?” he said, threatening-like. And I said to him, “I’m Mr Bunting’s daughter, sir.”

  ‘“Then you’re a very fortunate girl”—that’s what he said, Ellen—“to ’ave such a nice stepmother as you’ve got. That’s why,” he said, “you look such a good, innocent girl.” And then he quoted a bit of the prayer-book at me. “Keep innocency,” he said, wagging his head at me. Lor’! It made me feel as if I was with aunt again.’

  ‘I won’t have you going out with the lodger—that’s flat.’ He was wiping his forehead with one hand, while with the other he mechanically squeezed the little packet of tobacco, for which, as he now remembered, he had forgotten to pay.

  Daisy pouted. ‘Oh, father, I think you might let me have a treat on my birthday! I told him Saturday wasn’t a very good day—at least, so I’d heard—for Madame Tussaud’s. Then he said we could go early, while the fine folk are still having their dinners. He wants you to come, too.’ She turned to her stepmother, then giggled happily. ‘The lodger has a wonderful fancy for you, Ellen; if I was father, I’d feel quite jealous!’

  Her last words were cut across by a loud knock on the door. Bunting and his wife looked at each other apprehensively.

  Both felt a curious thrill of relief when they saw that it was only Mr Sleuth—Mr Sleuth dressed to go out: the tall hat he had worn when he first came to them was in his hand, and he was wearing a heavy overcoat.

  ‘I saw you had come in’—he addressed Mrs Bunting in his high, whistling, hesitating voice, ‘—and so I’ve come down to ask if you and Miss Bunting will come to Madame Tussaud’s now. I have never seen these famous waxworks, though I’ve heard of the place all my life.’

  As Bunting forced himself to look fixedly at his lodger, a sudden doubt, bringing with it a sense of immeasurable relief, came to him. Surely it was inconceivable that this gentle, mild-mannered gentleman could be the monster of cruelty and cunning that Bunting had but a moment ago believed him to be!

  ‘You’re very
kind, sir, I’m sure.’ He tried to catch his wife’s eye, but Mrs Bunting was looking away, staring into vacancy. She still, of course, wore the bonnet and cloak in which she had just been out to do her marketing. Daisy was already putting on her hat and coat.

  Madame Tussaud’s had hitherto held pleasant memories for Mrs Bunting. In the days when she and Bunting were courting they often spent part of their ‘afternoon out’ there. The butler had an acquaintance, a man named Hopkins, who was one of the waxworks’ staff, and this man had sometimes given him passes for ‘self and lady’. But this was the first time Mrs Bunting had been inside the place since she had come to live almost next door, as it were, to the big building.

  The ill-sorted trio walked up the great staircase and into the first gallery; and there Mr Sleuth suddenly stopped short. The presence of those curious, still figures, suggesting death in life, seemed to surprise and affright him.

  Daisy took quick advantage of the lodger’s hesitation and unease.

  ‘Oh, Ellen,’ she cried, ‘do let us begin by going into the Chamber of Horrors! I’ve never been in there. Aunt made father promise he wouldn’t take me, the only time I’ve ever been here. But now that I’m eighteen I can do just as I like; besides, aunt will never know!’

  Mr Sleuth looked down at her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘let us go into the Chamber of Horrors; that’s a good idea, Miss Bunting.’

  They turned into the great room in which the Napoleonic relics are kept, and which leads into the curious, vault-like chamber where waxen effigies of dead criminals stand grouped in wooden docks. Mrs Bunting was at once disturbed and relieved to see her husband’s old acquaintance, Mr Hopkins, in charge of the turnstile admitting the public to the Chamber of Horrors.

  ‘Well, you are a stranger,’ the man observed genially. ‘I do believe this is the very first time I’ve seen you in here, Mrs Bunting, since you married!’

  ‘Yes,’ she said; ‘that is so. And this is my husband’s daughter, Daisy; I expect you’ve heard of her, Mr Hopkins. And this,’ she hesitated a moment, ‘is our lodger, Mr Sleuth.’