The Silk Stocking Murders

by Anthony Berkeley

  But one thing was as certain as anything in this world not based upon evidence can be: Mr. George Dunning could be wiped forthwith off the list of suspects.

  So that left the Hon. Arnold Beverley and Gerald Newsome. And neither of them could possibly have done the thing.

  Roger took a taxi and drove back to Scotland Yard to report lack of progress. Moresby was out, and, somewhat disconsolately, Roger returned to his rooms, leaving a message that he should be rung up when the Chief Inspector returned, there to ruminate alone on the other possibilities presented by this annoying case.

  An hour later he was still in the same quandary. George Dunning could not be the man, and Jerry Newsome could not be the man; therefore, if one of those three it was, it must be Arnold Beverley. And Arnold Beverley could not be the man. The only conclusion seemed to be that it was none of them, and the whole case must be begun afresh. Chief Inspector Moresby, looking in on chance before returning to Scotland Yard, found his distracted colleague on the verge of pressing for the preventive detention of every person on either list.

  “Or would it be a woman, Moresby?” he asked despairingly, having given his account of the day’s results. “We’ve never considered that, have we?”

  “Now, Mr. Sheringham,” soothed the Chief Inspector, “you mustn’t get upset because results don’t fall into your hands right away. I shouldn’t be surprised if we don’t get hold of anything really definite for another month. These things have to be done gradually, Mr. Sheringham.”

  “Blast gradually!” returned his collaborator rudely.

  With imperturbability Moresby retailed his own activities since they parted. He had put men on to inquiring into the movements of the three suspects on and around the dates in question, and he had himself taken a hand in the investigation into the notepaper. The makers had been identified, and Moresby had been to see them and asked for a list of stationers, wholesale and retail, to whom it had been supplied. He remained confident of important results from this line of inquiry.

  “It’s our only clue, Mr. Sheringham, to say clue,” he pointed out. “We’re bound to follow it up as hard as we can.”

  “Of course,” said Roger thoughtfully, “it’s the Monte Carlo list that’s the really important one. The fellow must have been in Monte Carlo then, and assuming that he knew Lady Ursula (of which the probabilities are in favour, to put it at its lowest), he ought to figure on that list. But he needn’t be on the other one at all. There’s no reason why Miss Manners should know the names of all her sister’s male friends, however intimate the two were.”

  “Yes, and as to that, even if he isn’t on Mr. Pleydell’s list he’ll be on the one the French are getting out for us, of all English residents in and around Monte Carlo on February the ninth. That ought to be quite enough to check by, when we get our results from that notepaper.”

  “I suppose he is an Englishman?” queried Roger.

  The Chief Inspector laughed. “Oh, don’t go suggesting things like that, Mr. Sheringham. We’ve got all England to consider as it is before we lay our hands on him; don’t go making it the whole world.”

  “It is the whole world,” replied Mr. Sheringham, with gloom. “But at any rate don’t forget that the Germans go in for this kind of murder more than any other nation. Except perhaps America.”

  The Chief Inspector promised, not to lose sight of that point.

  They continued to debate, but nothing fresh seemed to emerge from the talk.

  “Well,” said Moresby, rising, “I must be getting back to the Yard. There may be a report or two in by now, though it’s a bit early. Care to come round on the off-chance, Mr. Sheringham?”

  Roger glanced at his watch. “Ten to four. Yes, I’ll come round with you; and the British nation can stand me a cup of tea in your office. There’s nothing like—— Excuse me a minute, there’s the telephone.” He crossed to the instrument. “For you, Moresby,” he said, laying down the receiver. “Scotland Yard. Well, let’s hope something’s turned up.”

  Moresby spoke into the telephone. “Hullo? Yes, Chief Inspector Moresby speaking. Oh, yes, sir.—Good gracious, sir, is that so?” He pulled out a notebook and pencil and began to jot down notes. “Yes. Yes. Six Pelham Mansions, Gray’s Inn Road? Yes. Inspector Tucker, yes. Very good, sir. And we’d better have Dr. Pilkington, hadn’t we? Superintendent Green will see to the rest. Very well, I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes. Oh, and you don’t mind if I bring Mr. Sheringham along, do you? Seeing that he’s been working with me on the other cases, I mean. Yes, exactly. Very well, sir. In twenty minutes.” He hung up the receiver.

  Roger, who had hardly been able to contain himself in the background, gushed forth into a stream of questions.

  The Chief Inspector nodded with a grave air. “Yes, this is a nasty business, Mr. Sheringham. There’s been another girl murdered in just the same way, in one of those blocks of flats in the Gray’s Inn Road. We’re going round at once.”

  Roger opened the door into the passage feeling, in spite of all sense, as if he were personally to blame for the death of this further victim.

  The Chief Inspector, however, retained his professional outlook. “It’s only once in a lifetime that one meets with these mass murderers, you know, Mr. Sheringham,” he said conversationally, as they put on their coats. “It’s a real experience. I’m glad they put me in charge of the other investigations.”

  CHAPTER XII

  SCOTLAND YARD AT WORK

  TO one who, like Roger, has never seen his country’s criminal-hunting machine in action, the spectacle of Scotland Yard’s first concentration upon the scene of a murder is extraordinarily impressive. It is often said that the detection of crime has been reduced to a science, but it would perhaps give a clearer impression to say that it has been expanded into a business, with its card-indexes, its heads of departments, its experts in various branches, and its smooth-running efficiency; the way in which it is organised is, in fact, far more closely related to that of a commercial enterprise than to the more rigid and less imaginative efficiency of the Army or the other administrative governmental departments. If the murderer himself could catch a glimpse of the activity which prevails upon the spot he has recently left, all hopes he had fondly entertained of escaping arrest must abruptly disappear; he would watch the skilled and methodical pains that are taken to ensure his capture with a feeling of helpless despair.

  When Roger and Moresby arrived the business was just getting into its stride. From the moment that an agitated girl had run out into Gray’s Inn Road, clutched the arm of the first constable she could find, and gasped out that the friend who shared a flat with her had hanged herself on the sitting-room door while she herself was out at lunch—from that moment the machinery had been set in motion. The constable had hurriedly reported the news to a policeman on point duty within a few yards before accompanying the girl back to the flat, and he had got in touch with his station; the sergeant there had telephoned through to the Divisional Inspector, who had immediately communicated with Scotland Yard before jumping into a car and going round to the block in person. Scotland Yard had notified the Chief Inspector who had the other investigations in hand, luckily finding him at the first number they called, and had already rushed round the necessary experts; a superior officer or two, including perhaps the Assistant Commissioner himself, were following in a few minutes. The Divisional Surgeon was summoned, and constables told off to guard the entrance to the flat and stand by for any further orders.

  The constable who was the first on the scene had lifted the body down from the door on which it was hanging, having first been careful to form a mental picture of its exact position and appearance, and had laid it on a divan which filled one corner of the small room; otherwise nothing else had been touched. Everybody was anxiously excited. All stations had already been acquainted with the tentative conclusions reached by Headquarters in the other cases of this nature, and a warning had been issued that any further deaths in the same c
ategory were to be regarded prima facie as murder, evidence in the form of farewell letters to the contrary notwithstanding. Considerable anxiety therefore existed as to whether this case might provide a definite clue at last.

  It seemed to Roger, as he entered the little sitting-room in Moresby’s wake, that the confusion prevailing was such that any possible clues must be obliterated. It took him exactly thirty seconds to realise that exactly the opposite was the case; the small room was full of men, it was true, but there was no confusion; each had his own job and he was doing it quietly and methodically, and without getting in the way of anybody else. Roger, feeling exceedingly unimportant in the middle of all this scientific bustle, stepped unobtrusively into the nearest corner, where he might be more or less out of the way, and watched what was happening.

  Moresby had joined the Divisional Inspector by the divan, and they were bending over the body; a photographer was setting up his camera near them; a finger-print expert was closely examining all the shining or polished surfaces in the room; a constable, evidently used to the job, was making notes for the plan he was going to draw; in the bedroom adjoining another constable had even been told to look after the dead girl’s friend, and was there administering what consolation he could.

  The more Roger looked, the smaller he felt. It was not difficult, in face of this sort of thing, to understand something of Scotland Yard’s good-humoured scorn for the amateur detective.

  From the conversation about him Roger gathered the main facts. The circumstances of the death were almost exactly the same as those of the others, Lady Ursula’s excepted. The hook screwed into the further side of the door, the overturned chair, the silk stocking and bare leg, the way in which it had been arranged round the victim’s neck, all were precisely the same. The only minute points of difference, so far as he could hear, were that the girl was dressed only in her underclothes and that the usual farewell notice instead of being written consisted of a printed line or two of poetry, apparently cut from a book, and was pinned on to her clothes at the breast with a brooch. A mauve silk wrapper lay across the back of an armchair.

  Roger’s lonely vigil did not last long. He had hardly had time to realise what was going on around him and take in these few facts before Moresby beckoned to him to join them by the divan, where he proceeded to introduce him to the Divisional Inspector, a soldierly-built figure with a carefully-waxed moustache.

  “You take a look at her, Mr. Sheringham,” said the Chief Inspector, “and see if you can make anything fresh of her, because I’m blessed if I can.”

  Roger had seen plenty of violent death during his service in France during the War, but dead men are different from dead girls, and girls dead through slow strangulation are different from any others. He shuddered in spite of his efforts to control himself as his gaze rested on the distorted face. She may have been pretty in life, but she certainly was not pretty in death. By her sides lay her hands, tightly clenched.

  She was a small girl, not much more than five feet in height and slightly built, and she was dressed in her underclothes only, with a lightcoloured silk stocking on one leg; the other stocking still lay, though now loosely, round her neck.

  “Who was she?” Roger asked, in a low voice.

  The Divisional Inspector answered him. “Name of Dorothy Fielder, sir,” he said briskly. “An actress, she was. Had one of the small parts in that play at The Princess’s, Her Husband’s Wife. The other girl, Zelma Deeping, she’s in it too; understudying, I believe.”

  “I see,” said Roger. He bent over the body and read the wording on the little piece of paper pinned to her breast:

  One more unfortunate

  Weary of breath,

  Rashly importunate,

  Gone to her death.

  “Hood.” he said. “The Bridge of Sighs. Well, that’s certainly a little more usual than Queen Mab, but I don’t see how it’s going to help.”

  “Now you see the advantage of having a literary gentleman to help us, Tucker,” said Moresby jovially to the Divisional Inspector, who smiled politely. “By a poet called Hood, is it, Mr. Sheringham? Now, I wonder whether they’d be likely to have a volume of his works here. You might look in that bookcase, Tucker. And be careful, of course, if there is one.”

  Tucker nodded, and crossed the room.

  The photographer came forward. “The doctor’ll be here any minute, Chief Inspector. Shall I take my photographs now?”

  “Yes, Bland, you may as well. I shall want the usual, and you’d better take one or two close-ups of the face and neck. Don’t touch her till the doctor’s finished, of course. And stand by when you’re through; we may want some more later, if there’s any bruises on the body.” Roger had already noticed that, though the two Inspectors had bent over the body and examined it as closely as possible, they had been careful not to touch it.

  “This is pretty damnable, isn’t it?” Roger muttered, as the photographer, who had focused his camera in advance, now proceeded to expose his plates.

  “It is that, Mr. Sheringham. But even now there doesn’t seem any way of proving murder. It still might be suicide, you know.”

  “It might, but it isn’t,” snapped Roger, whose nerves were beginning to feel the strain.

  “Well, Tucker tells me Superintendent Green (he’s the Superintendent of this district; one of the Big Four you newspaper men are always talking about)—he may be coming. And I shouldn’t be surprised if the Assistant Commissioner (it was him who spoke to me on the telephone) didn’t turn up too. If these are murders, and I’m not saying you’re not right about ’em, then we’ve got to get busy at the Yard. You don’t know Sir Paul Graham, do you?”

  “The Assistant Commissioner? No. He’s new, isn’t he? It was Sir Charles Merriman I came up against, over that Wychford business eighteen months ago. What’s he like?”

  “You’ll like him, Mr. Sheringham. A very nice gentleman. But of course he hasn’t hardly shaken down yet. Hullo, here’s the doctor. Afraid you’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Sheringham. Good afternoon, Dr. Pilkington. Nasty business this, by the look of it.”

  Roger turned away and saw Inspector Tucker approaching with a book held gingerly in one hand. “Would this be the one, sir?” he asked.

  Roger glanced at the title and nodded. “Yes, that’s the man. Let’s see if that passage has been cut out of this copy.”

  “One minute, sir, first, please.” Tucker beckoned to the finger-print expert and held out the volume. “Just take a look at this, Andrews, will you?”

  Andrews took the book in a cautious grasp and examined it minutely. Sprinkling over one corner a little light-grey dust out of a receptable like a pepper-box, he scrutinised the result, then shook his head regretfully and gave the book back. “Nothing, I’m afraid. Or anywhere else either, except the two girls’. Why, did he handle this?”

  “Half a minute, and I’ll tell you. Could you find the place, Mr. Sheringham, sir?”

  Roger glanced at the index and turned to a page. Neatly cut out of it were the lines in question. He pointed to the blank space in silence.

  Andrews nodded and made a rueful grimace. “That establishes that he worked in gloves, then, at any rate. And those’ll be the scissors he cut it out with.” He gestured towards a small pair of nail-scissors lying on a side-table. “I’ve examined them already and there’s not a mark. No, I’m afraid there’s nothing for me here.”

  “You seem to be taking it for granted that there is a ‘he,’” Roger remarked mildly. “I thought Scotland Yard hadn’t made up their minds on that point yet?”

  Andrews regarded him with a smile of amusement, in which Tucker joined. Roger had an uncomfortable feeling that he must have made a fool of himself somehow, but could hardly see how. Andrews proceeded to enlighten him.

  “There’s no prints at all on that book, sir,” he pointed out gently. “If the girl had cut it out herself she’d have been bound to leave her own prints. And so would anyone else. But somebody cut it out, d
idn’t they? Therefore that somebody must have been wearing gloves.” He spoke as to a very small child, grappling with its ABC.

  “Oh—um—yes,” Roger agreed. “Well, anyhow, that certainly does clinch the fact of the extra ‘he,’ doesn’t it?”

  “It does that, sir,” said the Divisional Inspector grimly, and went over to report to Moresby, who was talking to the doctor as the latter bent over the body.

  A minute later the door opened and three further men came in. Two of these Roger was able to identify as Detective Superintendent Green, whom he had met for a few minutes once before, and Sir Paul Graham; the other, he learned on enquiry of Andrews, was an Inspector who was an expert in strangulation cases. Roger gathered that Scotland Yard was now seriously perturbed about this unknown maniac and his gruesome work, whatever its representatives might pretend to himself.

  He listened to the conversation which followed.

  “Found anything, Moresby?” the Superintendent asked laconically, after a cursory glance at the body.

  Moresby shook his head. “I haven’t been here long. Tucker tells me he had a look round before I came, but couldn’t get hold of anything.”

  “I’ll look round myself,” remarked the Superintendent, who was a large man beginning to show signs of corpulence. Without more ado he dropped on his hands and knees. “Haven’t opened the hands yet, I see,” he grunted as he did so.

  “Been waiting for the doctor,” Moresby replied. “He’s only just got here.”

  Roger watched the large form of the Superintendent with interest. While Sir Paul joined the doctor and Moresby by the divan, he began to crawl with lumbering agility up and down the carpet, subjecting every square inch of it to a minute examination; and when the carpet was exhausted, he examined the boards round it with equal care, poking his head under tables and chairs, but never shifting any piece of furniture from its position. At the end of seven or eight minutes he arose and shook his head at Moresby. “Not a sign,” he wheezed.