The Silk Stocking Murders

by Anthony Berkeley

  “Now it seems to me,” said Roger as he sat down again, “that we’ve been talking too much at random. Let’s take things under their proper heads, one at a time. First of all the deaths themselves. We’ve agreed that any other hypothesis but that of murder is putting too great a strain on coincidence, haven’t we? Well, then, let’s take a leaf out of the French notebook and reconstruct the crime.”

  “Very well, Mr. Sheringham, sir. I’d like to hear you do that.”

  “Well, this is how I see it. The murderer first of all selected his victim with a good deal of care. She must fulfil certain conditions. For instance, she must above all be so far familiar with his appearance, at any rate, as to feel no alarm on seeing him. Then the opportunity would be chosen with equal cunning. It must be when she is alone and likely to remain so for at least half an hour. But all that’s quite elementary.”

  “There’s never any harm in running over the elementary parts with the rest,” said the Chief Inspector, gazing into the fire.

  “Well, having got the girl and the opportunity together, he proceeds to overpower her. I say that, because no girl is going to submit tamely to being hanged, still less is she going to take off one of her stockings and offer it for the purpose; and yet none of them show any obvious evidence of a struggle. Even the marks on Lady Ursula’s wrists can’t be called that. Well, now, how did he overpower them?”

  “That’s it,” observed Chief Inspector Moresby.

  “He was devilish clever,” Roger continued, warming to his work. “You try overpowering an ordinary, healthy girl and see whether there isn’t going to be a deuce of a struggle. Of course there is. So it’s an elementary deduction to say that he must be a strong, and probably very big man. And they didn’t even cry out. Obviously, then, he must have stopped that first. I’m not so childish, by the way, as to suggest chloroform or anything fatuous like that; anybody but the writers of penny dreadfuls knows that chloroform doesn’t act like that, to say nothing of the smell afterwards. No, what I do suggest is a woollen scarf thrown unexpectedly across her mouth from behind and drawn tight in the same instant. How’s that?”

  “I can’t think of anything better, and that’s a fact.”

  “Well, a strong man could easily knot that at the back of her head, catch her wrists (her hands would be instinctively trying to pull at the stuff over her mouth) and twist them into the small of her back. I admit that it’s more of a job to fasten them there, but a knowledge of ju-jitsu might help; he could put her, I mean, in such a position that she couldn’t move without breaking an arm, hold both her wrists there with one hand and tie them together with the other. And as there are only the faintest bruises there, he would obviously have to fasten them with something that isn’t going to cut the skin—one end of the same woollen scarf, for instance.” Roger paused and moistened his clay.

  “Go on, Mr. Sheringham,” urged Moresby politely.

  “Well, then, of course, he’d got her where he wanted, her. It wouldn’t be difficult after that, I imagine, to remove one of her stockings; and then he could proceed with his preparations at leisure, screwing the hook in the door, arranging a chair to stand her on, and all the rest of it. And after he’d hanged her all he would have to do is to unfasten the scarf and untie her wrists and ankles.”

  The Chief Inspector nodded. “That’s about what happened, no doubt of it.”

  “Well, there’s the reconstruction, and I don’t see that it gives us anything fresh, except perhaps the woollen scarf, and that’s only a guess. As to the man’s psychology, that’s obvious enough. He’s mad, of course. His only possible motive, so far as one can see, is murder for love of killing. Homicidal mania, developed to hopeless insanity. The victim’s own stocking, for instance. And I imagine it would have to be silk. Yes, that brain of his must be full of strange twists; the idea of hanging a girl with a lisle-thread stocking would probably shock him as much as it would you or me.”

  “It’s on Jack the Ripper lines, right enough,” commented the Chief Inspector.

  “That’s another heading: Criminological Parallels. There’s Jack the Ripper, as you say, and Neill Cream, though he’s rather different psychologically. I never could understand him not wanting to watch his victims die, could you? I should have imagined that was the whole object of that type of murderer. Can you think of any other similar cases besides those two?”

  “Sexual murders, Mr. Sheringham, or lust-murders, as the psychologists call them? Well, they’re not very common in this country, are they? Most of the foreign ones are like Jack the Ripper, too, aren’t they? Stabbing, I mean. I suppose, taking ’em all round, the best-known are Andreas Bickel, Menesclou, Alton, Gruyo and Verzeni. Then there was an outbreak of stabbing murders in New York in July 1902, and another in Berlin, funnily enough, the same month. Then there was Wilhelm Damian, In Ludwigshafen in Germany, in 1901, and——”

  “Great Scott, Moresby!” interrupted the astonished Roger. “You must have been sitting up late since they made you a Chief Inspector. How on earth do you know all this?”

  “It’s my business, Mr. Sheringham,” replied the Chief Inspector austerely, and drowned his smile in good XXXX.

  “Well, what I meant,” Roger continued, in somewhat chastened tones, “is, can we learn anything from these parallels?”

  “I doubt it, sir, except that of all murderers these are the most difficult to catch; and it won’t need any criminological parallels to teach us that, I’m afraid.”

  “Well, let’s go on to the next heading: Victims. What do they give us? The Monte Carlo woman—do you know anything about her?”

  “Not yet. I’ve written over for all details. But if it was the same man, we get that he must have been in Monte Carlo at the time, of course.”

  “Yes, that may help us a lot. What about getting hold of a list of all English visitors at Monte Carlo last February?”

  “I’ve done that, Mr. Sheringham,” replied the Chief Inspector with a tolerant smile; in matters of routine no amateur could teach him anything. “And in Nice, Cannes and all the other Riviera places as well.”

  “Good man,” said Roger, uncrushed. “Well, then there’s Janet Manners—or Unity Ransome, as I think we’d better go on calling her. The only thing I can see there is that he must have been known to her; and pretty well too for her to have taken him into her sitting-room when she was alone in the flat; that is, if I read her rightly. That may be a useful help to us.”

  “That’s true enough.”

  “Elsie Benham, so far as I see, gives us nothing at all. He might have been known to her or he might not. In the second alternative she must have picked him up between the club and her flat off the Tottenham Court Road; in the first, he might have been waiting for her at the flat. The only hope is that the constable on the beat caught sight of them together.”

  “And he didn’t,” put in the Inspector. “I’ve already ascertained that. But I’m having inquiries made as to anyone else having done so, though I don’t think there’s much hope.”

  “And that leaves Lady Ursula. Well, you know, I can’t see that there’s much more there. When one comes to think of it, he needn’t have known her at all. He could have introduced himself easily enough in the street as a friend of a friend of hers; a little thing like that wouldn’t have worried Lady Ursula. Or he might have been a friend of the girl who owns the studio, and knocked in passing on seeing a light inside. I can’t see that there’s much more.”

  “There’s the note, Mr. Sheringham,” the Chief Inspector reminded him. “In my opinion that shows that the thing was premeditated, and the note was brought for the purpose.”

  “But how could he have known that she was going to the studio? She never said anything about it to her friends. Probably she didn’t know herself. She passed by on her way out of London and called in to see if the girl would go for a run with her.”

  “That’s possible, of course, but we mustn’t lose sight of the notion that she had an assignation the
re, knowing her friend was going to be out, and all that talk about the run was to put the others off the scent. She’d guess well enough that none of them would go with her.”

  “Humph!” said Roger, who was quite willing to lose sight of that notion, in which he did not believe for a moment. “By the way,” he went on, as a memory occurred to him, “I’ve a shrewd idea that that fellow she was engaged to—what’s his name? Pleydell—has his suspicions. Did you notice him in the court this morning? Half a dozen times he seemed to me on the verge of saying something significant.”

  “Yes, I thought he might have something in his mind. I was going to have a talk with him to-morrow morning.”

  “It’s a rotten position for him,” Roger said thoughtfully. “And it’ll be rottener still if he has got a suspicion that everything isn’t as straightforward as it might be. To have one’s fiancée commit suicide is bad enough, but to have her murdered!… Look here, Moresby, why not hold up your talk with him for a day or two?”

  “Why, Mr. Sheringham?”

  “Well, it’s rather a nice point. If he has got his suspicions, you see, would he let things stay as they are, to save her family any further scandal, or would he do his damnedest to get at the truth? In my opinion he’d want the truth. But he’s not going to be quite sure at first what he wants. Well, if you descend on him before he’s made up his mind, he might be driven into holding his tongue. A sort of counter-instinct, you know. And if he’s got anything to tell us that would be a pity. On the other hand, if you leave him till he’s quite clear about it, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he doesn’t come to you; and in that case you’d get far more out of him than in any other way. This is all on the assumption that he is suspicious, of course, which may not be the case at all.”

  The Chief Inspector consumed a little more beer. “There’s a good deal in that,” he admitted, wiping his mouth delicately on a large blue silk handkerchief. “Yes, perhaps I was a little hasty, and that’s the one thing we ought not to be. Very well, I’ll give him three days and see if you’re right. It’ll be a feather in your cap if you are.”

  Roger looked over the notes he had been taking of the conversation. “Well, what it seems to amount to,” he said, “is that we’ve got to look for a man who touches our circle at various points, including Monte Carlo last February. He’s probably a hefty fellow, and a gentleman (or passing for one), and we can’t necessarily expect anything abnormal in his mental make-up except on this one topic. If we narrow our search down to one man, I shall try to get him to talk on that topic (which won’t be too easy to introduce, by the way), and if he gives himself away we can be pretty certain we’re on the right track.”

  “And then we’ve got to prove it against him,” added the Chief Inspector with gloom, “and that’s going to be the most difficult job of the lot. If you’d been at the Yard as long as I have, Mr. Sheringham, you’d know that—— Hullo, isn’t that your telephone?”

  Roger rose and went to the instrument in his study adjoining. In a moment he was back. “For you, Moresby,” he said. “Scotland Yard.”

  Moresby went out of the room.

  When he returned a few minutes later, his face bore an expression of rather reluctant admiration. “That was a smart bit of psychological deduction you put in only a few minutes ago, Mr. Sheringham,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Roger asked, agog.

  The Chief Inspector stooped and plucked out a feather which, was protruding from the cushion in his chair. “Here you are, sir,” he said. “Put it in your cap. Mr. Pleydell’s waiting at the Yard to see me at this, minute. Care to come round too?”

  “You bet I would,” said Roger, with fervour.

  CHAPTER VIII

  A VISITOR TO SCOTLAND YARD

  PLEYDELL was in a waiting-room when Roger and the Chief Inspector arrived in Scotland Yard. There had been some discussion between the two on the way, as to whether Roger should appear at this first interview or not; and it had been decided that, as Pleydell would probably be still a little torn between reticence and the reverse, the presence of a third person might tend to tip the balance in favour of the former. In order that Roger should not, however, miss any of the conversation, he was to lurk behind a screen in a corner of the room.

  Moresby had given instructions over the telephone that no hint should be given to Pleydell that the police were already taking an interest in his fiancée’s death, so that whatever he had come to say should be completely spontaneous. It was therefore with eager anticipation that Roger retired into his corner, where he was pleased to find that, by applying an eye to a carefully cut aperture in the screen, he could watch the proceedings as well as hear them. A few moments later Pleydell was shown in.

  Roger wondered at first whether their precautions had been unnecessary, for Pleydell seemed perfectly composed. “Good evening,” he said, in reply to Moresby’s greeting. “I know nothing about the procedure here, but I wish to see somebody on a highly delicate matter.”

  “That’s right, sir,” Moresby assured him. “You can say whatever you wish to me.”

  Pleydell looked a little doubtful. “I was thinking that perhaps the Assistant Commissioner…”

  “Sir Paul is out of town this evening, sir,” Moresby replied untruthfully. “At the moment I’m in charge. You can say anything you wish to me. Take a chair, won’t you?”

  Pleydell hesitated a moment, as if still not quite contented with a mere Chief Inspector, then seemed to accept the inevitable. As he turned to take the chair, Roger was not quite so sure of his composure; there were little lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes that might indicate mental strain. His self-control, however, was strong. Now that Roger could observe him more nearly than in the court, he saw that the Jewish blood in him was not just a strain, but filled his veins. Pleydell was evidently a pure Jew, tall, handsome and dignified as the Jews of unmixed race often are. Roger liked the look of him at once.

  “Now, sir,” Moresby resumed when they were both seated, “what did you want to see us about?” He spoke in easy, conversational tones, as if his visitor might have come, for all he knew to sell him a drawing-room suite on the instalment system.

  “My name is Pleydell,” said the other. “I don’t suppose that conveys anything to you, but I am—I was,” he corrected himself painfully, “engaged to be married to Lady Ursula Graeme.”

  The Chief Inspector’s face took on the correct look of condolence. “Oh, yes. A shocking business, that, sir. I needn’t say how I sympathise with you.”

  “Thank you.” Pleydell fidgeted for a moment in his chair. And then his composure and his self-control alike disappeared. “Look here,” he blurted out abruptly, “this is what I’ve come round for—I’m not satisfied about it!”

  “Not satisfied, sir?” The Chief Inspector’s voice was a model of polite surprise. “Why, how do you mean?”

  “I’m not satisfied about my fiancée’s death. I’m sure that Lady Ursula would have been the last person in the world to kill herself like that, without any reason. It’s—it’s grotesque! I want you to look into it.”

  The Chief Inspector drummed on the table with his knuckles. “Look into it, sir?” he repeated. In cases such as this Chief Inspector Moresby carried on most of his share of the conversation by echoing, in an interrogatory form, the last two or three words of his companion’s last speech. It was a good method, for it saved him from sitting dumbly and it also saved him from contributing anything of his own to the conversation. Moreover, it is an excellent way of drawing out one’s interlocutor.

  “Yes.” Now that his outburst was over and Pleydell had got his chief trouble off his chest, his calm was returning. “I’m convinced there’s something behind all this, Inspector. My fiancée must have had some good reason for doing what she did. She must have been threatened or blackmailed, or—or something horrible. I want the police to find out what that reason was.”

  “I see, sir.” Moresby continued to drum absently
on his table. “But that’s really hardly a matter for us, is it?” he suggested.

  “How do you mean?” Pleydell retorted, his voice indignant. “I tell you, Lady Ursula must have been hounded into taking her life. She was driven into suicide. She must have been. And isn’t that tantamount to murder? Supposing it was blackmail, for instance. That’s a matter for you, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, quite, sir, if you put it like that. What I mean is, this is all too vague. It’s only what you think, after all, isn’t it? Now if you could give us some evidence, to support what you’re saying—well, that might be a different matter.”

  Roger smiled. He appreciated the Chief Inspector’s method. By pretending to make light of his visitor’s suspicions he was hoping to goad him into revelations concerning his fiancée which otherwise he might be most reluctant to make.

  It seemed, however, as if Moresby’s subtlety was not to be rewarded. “Evidence?” said Pleydell, more calmly. “That’s difficult. I don’t think I’ve got any evidence to give you. Lady Ursula never gave me the slightest hint that anything was amiss. In fact, the whole dreadful business is a complete mystery to me. All I know is that she wouldn’t have done a thing like that without reason, and we don’t know of any reason. Therefore that reason ought to be found. Surely it’s up to you to unearth the evidence, not me.”

  Roger reflected that, up to the present, Pleydell’s suspicions almost exactly corresponded with his own concerning Janet Manners. Indeed, had not that chance bombshell flung vaguely in Moresby’s direction blown away the cobwebs from his own brain in its bursting, they would probably be the suspicions that he still held. And what would Pleydell say when he found that it was not a case of hidden reasons for suicide at all, but of simple murder?

  Roger studied him carefully through the little aperture. Under that normally composed, almost cold exterior, no doubt the fires of passion could burn as fiercely as anywhere else. More fiercely perhaps; for it is those who habitually keep a tight hand on their emotions, whose outburst, when it does occur, is far more violent than that of the normal individual. And after all, in this case the blood was Oriental in origin, however remote that origin might be. With the lust for vengeance which must sweep over him as he learnt the truth, Pleydell might prove a useful help in the investigation. Roger decided that he ought to be told the truth at once.