The Silk Stocking Murders

by Anthony Berkeley

Roger examined the part of the paper indicated by Moresby’s broad thumb. The extreme end of a pencilled line was distinctly discernible. He nodded. “And the paper’s been carefully cut with a knife,” he observed, turning it on edge.

  The Chief Inspector leaned back in his chair. “This is how I look at it, Mr. Sheringham. If you study the creases in that paper, you’ll see that the fold across the centre doesn’t exactly bisect its length. Look, it’s nearly an inch out. Well, to do that is all wrong; it——”

  “It isn’t natural,” Roger interjected.

  “No, it isn’t; it’s almost an instinct to fold a piece of paper as nearly mathematically exact as possible. Therefore that paper was folded before the top was cut off. Therefore we can tell from that the exact size of the missing bit. Therefore we can tell also the exact size of the original sheet.”

  “I get you,” said Roger.

  Moresby pressed a bell on his table. “This is where Scotland Yard has the pull over an outsider,” he said, and pulled a sheet of paper towards him.

  When the messenger appeared in answer to the bell, Moresby sent him in search of Sergeant Burrows.

  “Morning, Burrows,” he nodded a minute later, as a man with a particularly alert face entered the room. “This is Mr. Sheringham, who’s attached to us for a time. Here’s a job for you. Burrows I want you to find out everything about the paper this note’s written on. Take a look at it. I’ve noted down the description and watermark for you here, and the size of the original sheet; this one’s been cut, you can see. Let me know who makes it, what stationers in London stock it, especially in the West End, and find out also the names of any clients who buy it, and still more, any who have an address printed on it as well. I’ve noted all that down for you too. That’s going to take you some time, so put five men on to it. I want the full lists as soon as possible.”

  “Very good, sir,” said Sergeant Burrows, and made a smart exit.

  “Yes,” Roger agreed. “That’s where Scotland Yard has the pull.”

  The Chief Inspector pulled out his pipe, and Roger offered his pouch. He was impressed. Moresby was going to play that note for all it was worth, and Roger could not help feeling that it was going to lead to discoveries in which he could claim no share.

  “By the way,” he said, thinking it time that his own end of the investigations was brought a little more to the fore. “By the way, here’s that list of names I told you about, that Miss Manners made out for me.” He produced the list from his pocket and handed it across. “That’s a copy for you to keep. I’ve got the original.”

  The Chief Inspector ran his eyes down the thirty-odd names as he filled his pipe. “Um!” he commented. “Seems to have moved in pretty good society at home. Lord This and Sir Somebody That and the Honourable The Other.”

  “Her family was a pretty good one, and I expect they know most of the county set in those parts,” Roger answered carelessly. “There are a lot of big houses in the neighbourhood, and the children would mix.”

  “Seems funny none of those big pots did anything for her when she came up to London to get a job.”

  “I don’t suppose for a moment that she asked them. They probably didn’t even know she was looking for work. The Manners may be poor, but they’re probably devilish proud, if I know the type.”

  “Not too proud to show herself off on the stage as a show-girl though?” Moresby suggested, applying a match to Roger’s tobacco.

  “What’s that nowadays?” Roger retorted, a little irritably. “Don’t be so infernally Victorian, Moresby.” But the thought occurred to him that he would be very sorry to see Anne following in her younger sister’s footsteps.

  “Um!” grunted Moresby, and went on studying the list in silence.

  Roger kicked his heels against the table-leg. He had a strong feeling that he ought to be out and doing something, but for the life of him he could not see what. Moresby seemed to be doing all that could be done at the moment. That infernal note. Was it going to take things out of his hands by providing the solution after all? Roger had an uneasy premonition that it was. Not without exasperation he picked it up and examined it again.

  “Yes, this edge has been carefully cut with a sharp knife,” he announced. “That argues premeditation, doesn’t it?”

  The Chief Inspector looked up from his list. “Premeditation?” he echoed. “Why, yes. That’s what I said last night.”

  “So you did. And I was inclined to query it. Well, I think the cutting clinches that, though I still don’t think that the place was premeditated, although the crime was. I should say that whoever did kill Lady Ursula had had the intention of doing so for some days, and carried the note about with him for the purpose of using it whenever an opportunity presented itself. The meeting at the studio was simply a chance one.”

  “That’s likely enough,” Moresby agreed. “In fact I wasn’t too keen myself on the idea of an assignation at that studio. I just put it forward as a possibility we mustn’t overlook. Well, that might help things. You mean, we could have a look round for someone with a good motive for killing Lady Ursula?”

  “No, I don’t,” Roger thumped the table crossly. “That’s just the devil of this case; motive doesn’t help! We’ve got the motive for Lady Ursula’s death. There it is—that note. When Lady Ursula dashed off that little note, she signed her own death-warrant, as the story-books say.”

  “Ah!” said the Chief Inspector with interest. “Yes, I hadn’t looked at it that way. That’s very ingenious, Mr. Sheringham.”

  “But very obvious,” Roger retorted, though not ill-pleased. “This maniac is on the constant look-out for victims, you see. A girl whose death he can’t twist into the appearance of suicide is no use to him. He’s very fond of killing, but he’s running no risks himself—so far as he knows. And devilish cunning he is at avoiding them! Of course, for his particular methods, suicide is the safest camouflage. Well, when that note of Lady Ursula’s falls into his hands, she’s simply a gift, isn’t she? There’s his next victim booked at once. All he’s got to do is to wait for his opportunity, and in the meantime carry that note about with him everywhere so as not to miss it when it comes. Elementary, my dear Moresby.”

  “But still leaving us pretty well where we were before, Mr. Holmes. But you’re right about motive in this case, Mr. Sheringham, sir; it means we’ll have nothing but circum stantial evidence about movements and that sort of thing to found our case on. In fact, however sure we may be one day of knowing between ourselves who the guilty party is, about all we’ll ever be able to prove is opportunity. And what’s the good of that?”

  “Not much,” Roger confessed.

  They looked at one another gloomily.

  “Without, that is,” added the Chief Inspector, “we have a bit of better luck next time.”

  “Next time?” echoed Roger.

  “Yes,” said the Chief Inspector matter-of-factly. “The next girl that’s murdered.”

  “Oh!” said Roger.

  The telephone-bell interrupted his unhappy musings. “Yes?” Moresby answered it. “Yes, this is Chief Inspector Moresby speaking.—Oh, yes. Good morning, sir.—You have? Good—If you wouldn’t mind, sir. Yes, as soon as you like—Very well, sir.” He hung up the receiver. “Pley-dell,” he said. “Coming round with that list.”

  “Ah! Well, let’s hope and pray we have a bit of luck there. I don’t like sitting still like this while that brute may be planning to attack another girl at this very minute.”

  “But what can we do, sir,” Moresby reasonably pointed out, “not even knowing who he is yet?”

  “Humph!” said Roger. There is nothing so irritating as reason, when it does not happen to fit in with desire. “I suppose he will go for another girl?”

  “Not a doubt of it, sir,” responded the Chief Inspector, with the greatest cheerfulness. “Bound to; they always do. Especially at this sort of stage. He’s just tickled to death now with the idea of killing, hasn’t had time to cool off y
et. They,” added the Chief Inspector with a judicial air, “kill about a dozen before they get tired of it.”

  “The deuce they do!” Roger said violently. “But look here, yon can’t leave this maniac loose without warning the public against him. You must put these wretched girls on guard, at least.”

  “And put him on his guard, too? No, sir; that’s no good. We’d never catch him that way, and he’s too dangerous to be left without being caught, even if it does mean one more girl being killed before we get him.‘Her death may save a dozen others. But what we want to do is to get him first, and I’m going to push on my inquiries as fast as ever I can, now that I’m fairly certain that it is murder and a homicidal maniac that we’re up against.”

  Roger was unconvinced. He thought that a warning of some sort ought to be given, if only to unprotected girls, girls living alone, prostitutes and so on; he thought so strongly, and he said so with equal strength. The Chief Inspector remained adamant, and pointed out from a long experience that it never does any good to warn prostitutes of anything; they rarely pay the slightest attention. In the middle of their argument Pleydell was announced.

  He greeted them with his usual grave, collected courtesy, which had an old-fashioned air in so young a man, and produced the list he had brought. Without even glancing at it Moresby tossed it carelessly on to his desk and engaged Pleydell in a brief conversation, asking what his movements were going to be that day in case Moresby wanted to get hold of him suddenly. Pleydell outlined them roughly, and promised to ring up Scotland Yard and leave word should he change his plans to any extent during the day. He had seemed a little surprised at the request to do so, but had complied with the utmost readiness. Roger, watching him, saw that he had not yet arrived at the full truth concerning his fiancée’s death.

  He stayed about five minutes only, and immediately the door had closed behind him the two laid out the lists side by side and pored over them eagerly.

  “Ah!” said Roger an instant later.

  “Hullo!” exclaimed Moresby the next moment.

  “Great jumping Jupiters!” shouted Roger within a second.

  There was not merely one name that coincided on both lists, but three.

  CHAPTER X

  LUNCH FOR TWO

  “AFTER all,” Roger was saying a few minutes later, “it isn’t such a coincidence as it seemed at first sight, you know. Half the Dorsetshire list are the sort of people who go to Monte Carlo in the season. Now one realises, it would have been even stranger if there hadn’t been any name to coincide.”

  “Well, it isn’t what I was expecting,” said Moresby. “Not three.”

  “No, but it isn’t any more odd than that I should know two of the three myself. It’s a pretty small crowd, you know, the Ascot, Goodwood, Hurlingham, Monte Carlo lot; and if you get mixed up with them at all, it doesn’t take long to run up against most of them. Not that I’ve had much to do with them myself, but I’ve met a few at various functions, and just as it happens Beverley is one of them. I don’t know him at all well, of course. Personally, I’m afraid I can’t stand the man.”

  “Ah!” said the Chief Inspector interestedly. “What’s the matter with him, Mr. Sheringham?”

  “Oh, nothing. He’s just precious. Very tall, very slim, very beautiful, very fair hair, very blue eyes, and insufferably conceited. He writes poetry. Not that I’ve any prejudice against poetry, Moresby, or even the people who write it (I used to try my hand at it myself, before I discovered that nature never intended me for a poet); but he calls his stuff poetry, and I don’t.”

  “What do you call it, then, Mr. Sheringham?”

  “Tripe. Also the fellow wears a beard, which no decent, self-respecting modern poet ought to do. In fact, Moresby, I won’t disguise from you the fact that the man is a poisonous creature, although, I fear, hopelessly harmless. The one thing I’d swear in his favour is that he couldn’t kill a fellow-creature to save his own life. No, I wish he was our man, but he can’t be, not possibly. He’s a son of Lord Beverley, of course.”

  “Um!” observed Chief Inspector Moresby. “And this other one you know, Gerald Newsome?”

  “Jerry Newsome? Oh, he used to be a great friend of mine. We were at school together, and then Oxford. Yes, I remember he came from Dorsetshire. Oh; Jerry’s out the question. A charming fellow, without a kink in his length or breadth. He got a half-blue for tennis, I remember. Smote a very vicious ball indeed.”

  “Ah!” said Moresby, with an expressionless face. “Strong sort of chap?”

  “Very wiry, yes; not particularly big, but— Oh, I see. No, Moresby, I don’t think you need worry about Jerry. He’s even more out of the question than Beverley.”

  “Then that seems to leave only George Dunning.” said the Chief Inspector, consulting the lists.

  “Then George Dunning it is, whoever he may be,” replied Roger with complete conviction. “We concentrate on George Dunning, Moresby.”

  “Um!” said Chief Inspector Moresby, and reached for Who’s Who.

  Of the three suspects only Beverley figured in Who’s Who, but beyond the fact that the poet had been educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and had published two volumes of verse and one of plays, that omniscient volume added little to their knowledge. As to Newsome, Roger had fallen out of touch with him of recent years, but had an idea that he had retired to look after his estate in Dorsetshire on the death of his father. A slip of paper despatched by Moresby to some unknown destination brought the information in a very short time that this was the case, and the place in question was found to be within ten miles of Little Monckton. The same slip also brought the information, a few minutes later, that George Dunning was a bachelor, about thirty years old, with a large private income, who occupied a flat in one of the expensive streets off Piccadilly; he was a member of several clubs, duly mentioned, had been educated at Rugby and Cambridge, and had played Rugger several times for the latter without, however, obtaining his blue.

  “Hullo,” said Roger, studying this record with attention, “he’s a member of the Oxford and Cambridge, is he? I wonder if he ever goes there. I could scrape acquaintance with him, perhaps.”

  “Do, if you can, Mr. Sheringham,” approved Moresby. “But don’t give anything away, of course,” he added, not without a certain anxiety. “He mustn’t know we’re on his track.”

  Roger looked at his collaborator with dignity.

  “And don’t start trying to pump him till I give you the word,” added the Chief Inspector, unabashed by the look. “I don’t want him frightened. And remember, we haven’t finished checking yet. There’s the results of that notepaper inquiry to come in first, and that’s pretty sure to knock two of ’em out.”

  “Leaving George Dunning in,” Roger retorted. “Very well, Moresby, I’ll try to refrain from telling him everything about us the first time I meet him, and I think it’s very good of you to trust me so far.”

  Chief Inspector Moresby beamed paternally.

  Leaving shortly after, Roger made his way to the Oxford and Cambridge Club for lunch, feeling that he could not get on Mr. Dunning’s trail too soon. As he walked briskly along he had not the least doubt that the murderer had been identified; now all that remained was proof. And in the collecting of proof Roger was glad not to be hampered by the restrictions set on the professional detective. He saw the glimmerings of one or two pretty little plans to that end which would certainly not have met with official approval.

  On enquiring of the porter he learned that Mr. Dunning was not in the club at the moment. Enquiring further, he was told that Mr. Dunning did not come very often, not above two or three times a month. This was discouraging. However, Roger adhered to his scheme, feeling that after all it was quite time he did lunch at the Oxford and Cambridge, not having done so for at least a year, and soon found himself seated in the dining-room in solitary state. He chose a fillet steak and fried potatoes, with a pint of old beer, and looked round for a friendly face. Not one
was in sight.

  Nevertheless, Roger was not to lunch alone that day. Just as his steak was being set before him ten minutes later a voice hailed him, a little doubtfully, from behind his left shoulder. Spinning round he saw Pleydell standing by his chair and jumped up at once.

  “You’ve saved me,” he said swiftly, grasping the opportunity before it could elude him. “I was frightened to death that I’d got to eat my lunch in complete silence, a thing I abhor. If you’re not meeting anyone, come and lunch with me, won’t you?”

  “I should be very glad,” returned Pleydell courteously, and took the opposite chair.

  “You’re Roger Sheringham, the novelist, aren’t you?” he went on, when they were seated. “I thought your face was familiar to me when I met you at Scotland Yard yesterday.”

  “And I had a vague idea I’d seen you before, too,” Roger agreed. “I remember now; it was here, of course, though I didn’t know your name. Didn’t we meet in a rubber of bridge about two years ago? I remember Frank Merriman was playing.”

  “That’s right,” Pleydell acquiesced with a smile. “It’s extraordinary how one meets fellows like that for a short time, without gathering their names or anything about them, and then perhaps doesn’t see them again for years, isn’t it?”

  They exchanged a few conventional reminiscences, and Roger learnt that his guest had been at Cambridge but had had to leave early owing to the War. Having exhausted reminiscences the conversation hovered uneasily, while the minds of both were full of all the things that were not being said. Roger knew that the other must be wondering how he could tactfully find out how on earth such a person as Roger Sheringham could have come to be mixed up in a police inquiry into the circumstances of his own fiancée’s tragic death; and Roger himself was wondering what in the world he was going to reply when the feeler was inevitably put forth.

  Pleydell led up to it gradually. “That Chief Inspector I saw at Scotland Yard,” he remarked, almost carelessly, after the conversation had stumbled, paused, tried desperately to plod on again, and finally halted. “Moresby, his name was, wasn’t it? Is he a sound sort of chap?”