The Silk Stocking Murders

by Anthony Berkeley

  Certainly, if the case was to be considered as an isolated one, the French police had reason; as usual there were no signs of a struggle, no bruises either on the body or the wrists, and the farewell letter had been a good deal more explicit than the English ones, signed and, it seemed, perfectly convincing. A copy of it was attached, and Roger had to admit that, though a little vague, it might quite well have been genuine. In short, the French police not only still thought their own case one of suicide, but hinted with considerable delicacy that the English ones too might quite possibly (they were tactful enough not actually to write “probably”) turn out to be the same, and they added a few helpful remarks about neurotic women and suggestion.

  “Which I did much better in my own article,” commented Roger disgustedly. “Well, there certainly doesn’t seem to be much help there.”

  On the principle of returning good for evil, Roger mentioned to Moresby the theory that the wanted man might be an actor. Moresby received the suggestion with gratitude, but spoilt the effect by adding that such an idea had already occurred to Superintendent Green and himself.

  “Then I suppose you’re making your inquiries on those lines?” asked Roger.

  “We’re making inquiries on all lines, Mr. Sheringham,” said the Chief Inspector politely, and went on to talk about the weather.

  “Damn the weather,” said Roger, not at all politely, “and you too, Moresby.”

  On another occasion Roger tried to find out how the clue of the notepaper was progressing.

  Moresby was as evasive as ever. “We haven’t got all the reports in yet, Mr. Sheringham,” he said,

  “Well, can I see the ones that are in?”

  “Better wait till they’re all in; then you can look at them all together, can’t you?”

  “Well, hang it, tell me if you’ve found out anything from it.”

  “I’ve always said we should get results from that notepaper in the end, Mr. Sheringham,” beamed Chief Inspector Moresby.

  Roger went away in a naughty temper.

  But his temper did not remove his powers of thought. Moresby had found out something, and something rather important too. And he very much did not want to share his information. Why not? There must be something more in all this than the whims and preferences of Superintendent Green.

  He sought out Sir Paul and demanded to know why he was being shouldered out of the inquiry. Had Scotland Yard held out the sop of official recognition to him merely in order to pick his brains and, having discovered from him all they could, thrown him aside like a sucked orange? demanded Roger, not without warmth.

  “Nothing of the kind,” replied Sir Paul, with manifest uneasiness. Oh, no; oh, dear, no: he mustn’t think anything like that.

  “Well, what am I to think, then?” Roger wanted to know.

  Sir Paul hedged. The investigations were just reaching a very delicate stage; the official detectives had thought it best to keep things in their own hands just at present; the Home Office had enjoined particular secrecy for the moment; if Sheringham wouldn’t mind keeping in the background for just a very few days…

  Sheringham did mind, very much; but there was clearly nothing else for it. In the background, then, a distinctly fuming but undeniably helpless figure Sheringham remained.

  One morning, three days after his conversation to be precise, the telephone bell in the background rang. Answering it, Roger heard a feminine voice and groaned, for feminine voices on his telephone almost invariably meant invitations to dinners, dances or some other form of social torture, which Roger would give large sums of money to avoid; and that meant the manufacture on the instant of a credible excuse.

  “Hullo!” said the feminine voice. “Is that Mr. Sheringham?”

  “Yes,” groaned Roger.

  “This is Anne Manners speaking,” said the voice.

  Roger stopped groaning. “Miss Manners? Good gracious, are you speaking from Dorsetshire?”

  “No, from London; about half a mile away from you. Mr. Sheringham, are you busy this morning?”

  “Not in the least,” Roger replied promptly, and with perfect truth.

  “Well, I’m very sorry to bother you, but I want to see you. In fact, I’ve come up to London especially to do so. Could you meet me somewhere, where we could have a cup of coffee perhaps, and talk?”

  “I should be delighted,” said Roger. “Where do you fancy?”

  They arranged a place, in the restaurant of a big stores near Piccadilly Circus (the choice was Anne’s), and agreed to meet there in a quarter of an hour.

  Roger was a firm bachelor. He knew very little about women in general, and cared less; his heroines were the weakest part of his books; the idea of meeting a girl in the restaurant of a big stores held not a single thrill for him.

  But even Roger, when brought face to face with her fifteen minutes later, had to admit that Anne Manners was a pleasant person to meet, even in the restaurant of a stores catering entirely for women. She was wearing a dark-grey tailored coat and skirt, and a close-fitting little grey felt hat without any ornamentation; in the enormous restaurant she looked smaller than ever. Roger discovered that he rather liked small women. They gave him a pleasing feeling of male superiority and capabilities of protection.

  Not that Anne Manners appeared to need any protection at all. If anything, it was Roger who needed the protection; for, as soon as the waitress had brought them their coffee and biscuits, Anne proceeded to attack her companion with calm vigour.

  “Why haven’t you written to me about Janet, Mr. Sheringham?” she demanded. “You promised.”

  Roger met the attack bravely. “I know. I ought to have done.”

  “You certainly ought,” Anne agreed with severity.

  “But I was waiting till a few more details were cleared up,” Roger continued, a little lamely.

  Anne pounced on this. “Oh! So you have found out something, then?”

  “A—a certain amount, yes,” Roger almost stammered. Really, this was going to be very difficult. What was he going to tell the poor child? Hardly the truth. At any rate, not yet.

  “What?” fired Anne, point-blank.

  “Oh, well, not very much, you know. Nothing quite definite. We haven’t—I mean, I haven’t been able to identify the man at the back of it yet.”

  “There was a man at the back of it, then?”

  “Oh, I think so. At least, it seems probable, doesn’t it? That is to say— well, I always thought that the most likely explanation.” It was not often that Roger found himself ill at ease, and to some persons (one Alexander Grierson, for instance) the sight would have been an enjoyable one. If he had been present in the restaurant department of those stores at this particular moment, Alec might have considered many old scores wiped out.

  Anne looked her blethering vis-a-vis in the eyes. “I’m not a child, Mr. Sheringham,” she said, the knuckles of her small gloved hand beating an impatient tattoo on the table. “Please don’t play with me in this silly way. I want you to tell me straight out—was my sister murdered?”

  Roger gaped at her. It was just by this same method that he had taken Moresby by surprise, but now that it had been used against himself he was equally taken aback. “What—whatever makes you think that, Miss Manners?” he said; trying to gain time.

  “By putting two and two together, of course,” Anne replied tartly. “Besides, there’s a certain amount of gossip, you know, on those lines.”

  “Is there?” Roger frowned. “Who told you so?” he asked, brought back to normal by this information.

  “That girl, Moira Carruthers, who lived with Janet.”

  “Ah! You’ve called there?”

  “I’m living there,” Anne returned.

  “You are? Good gracious! Why?”

  Anne did not reply at once. Her knuckles continued their tattoo for a few moments, while she seemed to be making up her mind on what course to pursue. She drew a little quick breath.

  “Look here, Mr. She
ringham,” she said quietly, “you’re not playing fair with me. If anybody has a right to know the truth about my sister’s death, I have; and I intend to discover it. I’ve come up to London and left things at home to Mary, although she’s barely eighteen, for that very purpose. Please don’t fence with me. I’m convinced that Janet was murdered. Was she?”

  “Yes,” Roger replied simply. “I’m afraid she must have been.”

  The girl’s small oval face whitened for an instant. “Thank you,” she said, biting her lip.

  Roger looked away while she recovered herself.

  “I was sure of it,” she said after a short pause, “but it’s good of you to be frank with me. Do they know who—who killed her?”

  “No, not yet. The police have it in hand, of course. I’ve been helping them as far as I could.”

  “Then all those other girls were murdered, too?”

  “I’m afraid so. Did you suspect all this before you left home, Miss Manners?”

  “Oh, no. But I knew you were right when you said there must be something behind it all, and as I didn’t hear from you I came up to see if I could find out what it was. Then Moira told me what they were saying at the theatre, and I felt I must ask you if it was true.”

  “They’re saying that at the theatre, are they?” Roger asked quickly.

  “I think they’re saying it everywhere, aren’t they?” Anne replied, with a dreary little smile. “Everywhere except in the newspapers, and some of those have hinted. Of course nobody at the theatre has said anything to me about it, but Moira told me because she thought I ought to know. She was very fond of Janet, in her own queer way, and she’s almost as anxious as I am that the horrible business should be cleared up and the— the murderer (if Janet was murdered) caught.”

  “Yes,” Roger murmured, “she’s a good little soul—in her own queer way, as you say. She did her best to help me at the beginning, but nothing seemed to emerge from that line of inquiry.”

  “Yes, she told me. And I think the others, or the management at any rate, have a pretty shrewd idea of what I’m after, because they let me join the chorus at once as soon as they heard I was Janet’s sister. Luckily a girl wanted to leave to get married, so there was a vacancy; but she would have stayed on ordinarily till the end of the run. She guessed too, I’m sure.”

  “But you’re not in the chorus of Thumbs Up! are you?” asked Roger in astonishment and not a little dismay. Of all the girls in this world Anne Manners looked the least fitted to be a show-girl in a not very high-class revue.

  Anne nodded. “I’m stepping into Janet’s shoes both on and off the stage, and there I stay till the devil who killed her is caught.”

  “But—but why?”

  “Because there’s always the possibility that he might try to attack me too, you see; and then I should know who he was. That’s my great hope. I want to catch him myself. Oh, Mr. Sheringham, if I only could!” Her normally rather elfin face wore the rapt fierceness of a tigress contemplating the tearing to bits of the hunter who had shot one of her cubs.

  Roger respected her lust for vengeance. He had no use for the watery theory that man should not ensure his own revenge. He wanted vengeance on this brute himself, quite impersonally, on behalf of society in general, and he applauded the same sentiment in those who, like Anne and Pleydell, had a closer claim upon it. And both those two, in their own individual ways, seemed determined to achieve it. Well, if he could help them towards it, so much the better.

  He spoke on impulse. “Shall I tell you exactly how the case stands at present, so far as I know?”

  “If you will, please,” said Anne, quietly, as if it was her right to know—as indeed, Roger thought, it was; hers and Pleydell’s and anybody else’s who was wearing mourning on account of it at the present moment. He had no qualms in telling her. By their own action the police had as good as absolved him from loyalty to them; he was going to work this case as a free-lance now, enlisting such recruits to help him as he, and he alone, considered suitable. He had already enlisted Pleydell; now he would enlist Anne Manners.

  He gave her a brief account of the state of affairs to date and of the hopes, official and otherwise, for the future. She only interrupted once, when he came to mention the original three suspects whose names had been on both her own and Pleydell’s lists. “I know Mr. Dunning, and Mr. Newsome very slightly,” she said. “It couldn’t be either of them. And I’ve met Mr. Beverley once or twice too; he’s certainly not the man. No, it’s none of those three.”

  “Exactly what I said; we were on the wrong lines if the possibilities had been narrowed down to those three; they could none of them be the fellow, I’m convinced,” Roger agreed, and went on with his outline.

  Anne sat for a few moments considering, when he had finished, her chin on her hands. Apparently there had been little in Roger’s narrative that was unexpected to her, but she wished to assimilate the facts she had heard before relating them to her own course of action.

  “My idea, when I joined Moira and secured Janet’s place at the theatre,” she said slowly at last, “was to set myself up as a kind of decoy. I wanted to make myself as like as possible to the sort of girl who seems to attract him. I shall go on with that idea.”

  “But look here, Miss Manners,” Roger was beginning, “you might be running into real danger. I don’t see——”

  “Except that now,” Anne continued, as if he had not spoken at all, “I shall place myself at your disposal as well. Under your orders, if you like. I quite agree that Scotland Yard, tied as they are, are quite likely to fail in this case; but I think that a combination of you, Mr. Pleydell and myself, not tied in any way, might have a chance of success. And any rate, it’s worth trying.”

  “But,” began Roger again.

  “You’ll be in charge, of course, as you’ve done this sort of thing before; Mr. Pleydell will certainly agree to that. And I shall be on hand when required. There may be something in this idea about an actor, you see, and if you two are able to narrow your suspicions down to a few people, then you’ll be able to make use of me for the final weeding-out.”

  “But Miss Manners—hang it all—Anne!—I can’t allow——”

  “What I mean is that we must advertise the information, in an unobtrusive way, to all the people we suspect, that at certain times of the day (the late mornings and the afternoons, say) I shall be alone in our flat. Moira will go out ostentatiously every day. Then I shall simply sit in my parlour and wait for the fly. He won’t be able to take me by surprise, you see, which must be his usual method, so it’s no good talking to me about danger; there won’t be any. And even if there, were, what on earth does that matter? In any case, there won’t.”

  “But the responsibility——”

  “You’ll be somewhere within call, you see. We can arrange a code of signals, or something like that. Well, now, Mr. Sheringham, can you suggest a better plan than that? And do you agree to make use of me? Because if you don’t, I shall simply do it on my own, and that will be much more dangerous.”

  “You put me in a very difficult position, Anne,” said Roger, with some feeling.

  “I mean to,” replied Anne serenely. “Well, is it a bargain, and do I join your combination?”

  “You jolly well do!” Roger cried, casting all scruples to the winds. “Between the three of us we’ll take a leaf out of the French notebooks and teach Scotland Yard a thing or two they never knew.”

  CHAPTER XVII

  AN UNOFFICIAL COMBINATION

  BEFORE leaving her, Roger had arranged with Anne to meet again at teatime when he would try to get hold of Pleydell so that the two lieutenants of the combination could be introduced; but fate, in the curious way it so often has on such occasions, forestalled him. Walking down Piccadilly soon after lunch with Pleydell, and having just that minute told him of this new development and ensured his presence at tea, Roger ran into Anne and Miss Carruthers coming straight towards them, and introduced Pleydell to th
e former then and there. And because Miss Carruthers was present, he could do no less than introduce Pleydell to her too.

  “So pleased to meet you,” languished Miss Carruthers, with all the respectful deference due from a chorus-girl to an extremely rich young bachelor. “So you’re Mr. Pleydell. Well, fancy that!”

  “And you’re Miss Carruthers,” responded Pleydell gallantly. “I should have recognised you at once.”

  “I say, would you really?” simpered Miss Carruthers, looking incredibly young and innocent.

  “Hullo, do you two know each other already?” Roger asked.

  “Well, not to say know, exactly,” murmured Miss Carruthers in ladylike accents. “But I’ve often seen Mr. Pleydell in front when we were rehearsing.”

  Pleydell nodded. “I told you I’d got theatrical interests,” he said to Roger. “Thumbs Up! is one of them. But, for heaven’s sake, don’t mention it beyond our four selves,” he added, smiling, “or my reputation as a business-man would be exploded for ever. No really good business-man ever touches the theatre, you know.”

  “Well, I never knew you were the Mr. Pleydell, and that’s a fact,” fluttered Miss Carruthers.

  “Nor does the stage-doorkeeper, nor the box-office manager, nor even the producer himself,” Pleydell laughed. “I’m strictly incognito as soon as I step into a theatre, I can tell you. So now you see what a weighty secret you have in your keeping. If the newspapers got hold of the fact that I’d put money into a revue, I should be ruined in twenty-four hours.”

  “Well, I never!” said Miss Carruthers, much impressed.

  Roger had been confirming the tea-appointment with Anne during this exchange, and the four now split into two again and resumed their respective ways.