Murder of a Snob

by Roy Vickers

  In a spate of compliments to himself and the police, Querk bowed himself out.

  In a few minutes, Benscombe returned.

  “Trunk call from Edinburgh was put through at five-thirty-four, sir. It was not answered and the call was not charged.”

  “Which very strongly suggests that Watlington was dead by that time, Querk caught us out there, Benscombe. Contact the caller and see if he can tell us anything.” Crisp went on: “Did you notice that, while talking like a blithering idiot, he actually shattered the case against himself as nimbly as a first-class lawyer? And did you notice that not a single platitude was wasted?’

  “The only thing that feller doesn’t know we know,” he continued, “is that the signet ring was removed from Watlington’s finger after death—and replaced. Go on from there, Benscombe.”

  “The murderer destroyed the original envelope containing the Will. That is, he wanted to get hold of the Will—or put another Will in its place.”

  “That didn’t happen, boy! The Will we found was the Will Watlington read to the three of ’em in the study after lunch.”

  “Then the murderer wanted something that was in the envelope with the Will.”

  “That’s more like it—at a guess, something about Miss Lofting—probably those letters. I may guess—you mayn’t! But why all that how-d’ye-do with the wax and the signet ring? There was another empty envelope addressed to the solicitors. Good quality envelope. Good gum on the flap. If he felt he must use sealing wax, why add the family crest?”

  Benscombe wrinkled his brow.

  “I’ve got it, sir! Watlington sealed up the original envelope in the presence of the three of ’em as you say. So the substituted envelope had to be sealed too.”

  “Again, why? No one outside those three knew that the seal had been used.”

  “The answer to that one, sir, is Miss Lofting. She had seen the original envelope sealed. She would not have stood for murder, so she—”

  “Nonsense! You must try to leave your incurable romanticism out of your work, Benscombe.”

  “All right, sir! The inference is that the murderer acted on his own without consulting the others—which lines up with their telling different tales.”

  “You’re getting tired, my boy, and a bit woolly. The inference is that there must have been one innocent person and that there may have been two. If there’s one innocent person, the evidence to date indicates not Miss Lofting but Ralph Cornboise.”

  Benscombe would have protested but was given no chance.

  “Querk’s evidence clears Ralph,” said Crisp. “It’s corroborated in part by Watlington’s wife and negatively by Ralph’s own mis-statements—notably the statement that he struck through the wig, which we know he did not.”

  “Let’s have the other half, sir! Suppose there are two innocent persons?”

  “Most probably there are! There’s the difference in their respective tales. And there’s Querk’s point that they had no time in which to conspire. Yes—I think it’ll turn out to be a one-man job—or let’s say one-person job.”

  “You mean, sir, that Miss Lofting might have returned to the library after Querk left it?”

  “She might have. We know only that she was having a bath, round about five-fifteen. What’s a bath?—a couple of hours or a couple of minutes. She had opportunity plus motive. Querk had opportunity, but no motive, so far as we know.”

  “All I can say,” announced Benscombe, “is that if Miss Lofting is the chief suspect, I’m ready to follow Querk and plump for Watlington’s wife. That ‘woman scorned’ stuff!”

  “Women get scorned every day, but they don’t often commit murder about it. And don’t forget the penknife and the signet ring—which becomes an elaborate and pointless act from the wife’s point of view. To say nothing of ringing us up some hour and a half after the murder.”

  “But we don’t know that she did that, sir!”

  “We don’t. But it’s a working hypothesis that the murderer did, so as to get us bogged up with all those guests. Something may have happened then, which you and I missed. There’s a corker for you. But we don’t want corkers—we want facts. And we shan’t get any more here tonight. Come along!”

  As he gathered up the Chief Constable’s personal paraphernalia, Benscombe harked back.

  “I hope, sir, you don’t take your own little joke seriously. Miss Lofting means nothing to me. I don’t care tuppence whether she’s innocent or guilty. I just feel sure that she isn’t the type.”

  “Oh, I feel that too! That’s because we’re human. But, you know, there’s no such thing as a murderer type.”

  In the hall, Claudia Lofting was waiting. As Crisp came out of the morning-room she approached him. She had discarded the evening dress, was wearing a morning frock and an apron, presumably borrowed from Bessie.

  “Ralph is ill,” she said. “I want to take him away from here tomorrow. Is there any objection?”

  “What sort of ‘ill’?” asked Crisp.

  “That confession! He’s a bit delirious after his excitement. He keeps telling me—over and over again—how he killed his uncle.”

  Again Crisp lapsed into the perilous business of assessing a human being on appearances. If she had been putting on an act, that apron would be free from stains, which it wasn’t. She looked tired and pre-occupied. So he took her words at their face value.

  “I have no authority in the matter,” he told her. “I suggest that you leave the decision to the doctor. We’ve a lot of spadework to do yet. And perhaps it would be in his own ultimate interest if he were to stay close at hand.”

  Claudia nodded. Some of her fatigue vanished and she smiled.

  “And in my ultimate interest too, Colonel?”

  “Since you ask—yes. Goodnight, Miss Lofting.”

  With Benscombe beside him, Crisp drove back with more dash than was decorous in a Chief Constable.

  “Good women,” he remarked, “may conceivably commit crime for what they believe to be a good motive.”

  Benscombe was irritated into an outburst of respectful agreement.

  Chapter Seven

  On the following morning, an hour before he was due to report at headquarters, Benscombe was knocking at Arthur Fenchurch’s flat. Eventually, Fenchurch himself appeared, in a dressing gown which most courageous young men would have liked for their honeymoon, and pyjamas which had passed beyond effeminacy to surrealism.

  “Only the police would dare!” he exclaimed. “Please come in. My flat is yours. I will give you a latch-key. What do you want of me?”

  “Sorry to disturb you,” said Benscombe. “I want to see Mrs. Fenchurch.”

  “How disappointing!” They were in the hall. Fenchurch raised his voice. “Glenda! Glenda, darling, damn you! A really nice policeman has called for you!” He turned to Benscombe. “I believe she’s gone.” He opened the door of a bedroom. “Yes, she has. With suitcases. Come and see my studio before you go.”

  It was a top floor studio flat. The studio impressed Benscombe. Against the walls was a litter of unfinished canvases, some upside down. Those that were right way up were all pretty portraits of women, except those which were pretty portraits of men. Prominent was a nude without a face. There was a general effect of studied bohemianism and a good deal of untidiness, but the divans were roomy and well sprung, and the screens worked on electric rollers, controlled from a panel built into the easel.

  “Perhaps you would give me Mrs. Fenchurch’s address?”

  “I don’t know it. I don’t even know her name. I don’t know when she went. I last saw her about midnight. After that, I heard her packing.”

  “Then at least you knew she was going?”

  “Because she was packing?” Fenchurch laughed. “Why, during the few months we’ve been together she must have packed dozens of times, just as noisily as that. It was a sort of last-word technique, after a row. Good lord, she hasn’t left any coffee in the thermos! You’ll have to wait while I m
ake some.”

  “Don’t bother about me, thanks! I say, Mr. Fenchurch, this is on the serious side. We shall have to winkle her out.”

  “What a pity! If you find her, please don’t bring her back here. Frankly, the poor darling outstayed her welcome. Pray help yourself to any clues you want. I must heat up some coffee if I am to parry your deft questions.”

  Fenchurch disappeared kitchenwards. Benscombe went to the room that had been Glenda’s.

  He was surprised to find it so tidy. And so empty. Except that the dressing table was fitted with side mirrors, there was nothing to indicate that the room had been occupied by a woman. Glenda had cleaned up thoroughly, presumably in order to remove the kind of evidence for which Benscombe was looking.

  The scent of gardenia still hovered about the chest-of-drawers, which was as empty as the wardrobe. Sheets had been removed. The mattress was folded on itself. Through the springs, he saw, under the bed, a large cardboard dress-box, of the kind costumiers use to deliver dresses. He stooped down.

  The box was larger than any of its kind that he had ever seen. It was tied with thick string and the knots were sealed. As he pulled it from under the bed, he perceived that it did not contain dresses.

  He had left the door open. He could hear a faint, distant clatter of crockery.

  “Funny how fond these chaps are of coffee!” he muttered, as he cut the string and removed the lid.

  The next moment he caught his breath, but not as policemen catch their breath—if, indeed, they ever do.

  “God, he can paint! You can recognise her at once, though it isn’t really like her to look at.”

  Claudia Lofting gazed at him out of the canvas. As a picture, it had nothing in common with the pretty portraits lying about in the studio. Benscombe, who knew nothing of art idioms, became aware that this artist could paint personality. Mood, too, subordinated to personality.

  In the first, Claudia was gazing at him as if he were her lover. In the second, a full-length study, with an Italian background, showed her an attractive, everyday girl, thinking of amusing trivialities. Two more had the same kind of background: on one of them, which might have been symbolic, the words ‘Casa Flavia’ were scrawled across the corner.

  Casa Flavia sounded familiar. He closed his eyes, visualised the Chief Constable in the morning-room reading to Querk, from the typed sheet, a row of figures and words pencilled on Watlington’s blotting pad.

  Watlington — Querk — Fenchurch — Claudia — Casa Flavia? Work that out later.

  The last of the canvases stung him to anger. Claudia in the nude! Some devilishly clever trick with shadow made her body seem hard as armour, her hands the hands of a strangler, while the eyes, indubitably hers, looked out of the picture with fierce contempt—as if at something she had killed. In the corner was scrawled: ‘O madre mia.’

  “Mothers aren’t murderers. The thing doesn’t make sense!”

  He replaced the canvases in the cardboard dress box, turned it so that the uncut string was outermost, and slid it back under the bed.

  He went back to the studio, had to wait a couple of minutes, during which he composed himself, before Fenchurch came in, with a breadboard acting as a tray for two cups of coffee.

  “Thanks awf’ly!” Benscombe accepted the cup out of policy. “I found nothing I was looking for in that room. I suppose she has some friends, or a family or something?”

  “She must have,” agreed Fenchurch impartially. “She used to tell some obvious lies about the social standing of her people. I never listened. She picked me up one evening at Clapham Junction, where I had no defence. Her past did not interest me, as she had no future. D’you mind keeping still for a minute?”

  Fenchurch, forgetting his coffee, was making line-notes in a sketch book.

  “There’s no sense in your painting my portrait—” Benscombe began.

  “Portrait be damned!” He was sketching rapidly. “You can’t suppose, my dear fellow, that I am touting you for a commission. It is I who should offer a fee. I can get into the Royal Academy on your head. Under a fancy title. ‘Streamline.’ The modern policeman. Science, poise, breeding! Don’t be offended with me. If a doctor were to tell you that your liver was marvellously interesting, you would not quarrel with him.”

  “Go ahead—I’m not quarrelsome on duty,” said Benscombe. “As you’ve spoken pretty freely about Glenda, you won’t mind telling us what her relations were with Watlington?”

  “There weren’t any relations. I don’t believe he wanted her. And I’m certain she wasn’t trying for him … Can you look a tiny bit to your left? Thanks … One acquires an ability to read women’s intentions by what they think they’re doing with their dress. Few have the sense to employ an artist to advise on how to dress for seduction. If it’s any help to you, I’m sure Glenda didn’t murder Watlington. She was too lacking in temperament.”

  Benscombe, forgetting that he had been overawed by the skill revealed in the pictures of Claudia, now discovered in himself a sneaking respect for this man who was so adept at slithering off the point. To nail him down it would be necessary to take a risk. He waited until there came a pause in the sketching.

  “Last night,” said Benscombe, “we found a cheque to her, signed by Watlington, for five hundred pounds.”

  “God damn the dirty little crook!” The sketch book went flying. A half second later, Fenchurch looked ashamed at having made a fool of himself.

  “Crook?” echoed Benscombe.

  “No—no, of course not! Mercenary, not crook! Evidently I was wrong in what I said about her relations with Watlington.”

  “I’m taking a bet you were not wrong,” said Benscombe. “And another bet that you wouldn’t care tuppence if she had sold herself to Watlington, or anyone else. Yet you jumped out of your pyjamas when I mentioned that cheque. What did she sell him for that five hundred?”

  Fenchurch stood up, thrust his hands into the pockets of his dressing gown as if he were hiding them.

  “How the hell do I know!”

  “Weak!” scoffed Benscombe. “If you’d known nothing, you wouldn’t have damned her so energetically.”

  “My reaction, surely, was obvious! If she did succeed in nobbling Watlington, I felt she ought to have split the cash with me.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Fenchurch,” grinned Benscombe, rising. “I’ll be getting along.”

  “Possibly—” began Fenchurch “—with your more regular way of life and unsmirched ideals—you’re revolted?”

  “Not revolted—a bit sore because you think I’m so green that I don’t know a gigolo when I see one.”

  “Science, poise, breeding!” muttered Fenchurch. “God, I must paint that picture!”

  “Good luck, then! You’ve helped us a lot.”

  “By trying to mislead you?”

  “By just that! You would rather brand yourself a so-and-so than tell us what Glenda sold Watlington. That narrows the field down splendidly. Cheerio!”

  Chapter Eight

  The Chief Constable was waiting for Benscombe on the steps of the Town Hall.

  “Sorry, sir! I’ve been chasing Fenchurch’s girl and tumbled on something else. She’s bolted, by the way.”

  “Let’s have the ‘appreciation’ first,” said Crisp, as they got into his car.

  “Appreciation!” echoed Benscombe. “Fenchurch didn’t know Glenda was doing a deal with Watlington. Glenda sold Watlington something belonging to Fenchurch. Probably letters proving that Fenchurch and Claudia Lofting knew each other pretty well. On one of the many pictures of Claudia—some with an Italian-looking background—Fenchurch had written ‘Casa Flavia’.”

  “Watlington’s blotting pad! Good!” said Crisp. “Now the details!”

  Benscombe reported everything, except the nude study of Claudia.

  “Does it add up, sir?”

  “You’ve earned your pat on the back.” Crisp was pondering as he spoke. “It’s a loop-line, of course. If you can find out w
hen and why Watlington noted Casa Flavia, you’ll come back to the main line. You see what the main line is, don’t you, boy?”

  “To discover who had the greatest interest in Watlington’s death.”

  “Not a bit of it! The main line is the clock. That’s what we keep barking our shins on. There’s a catch somewhere in all these clock-times, and so far we haven’t spotted it.”

  He negotiated a corner and continued:

  “Look how we’ve had our noses rubbed in the time! That chiming stable clock works out as a sort of ballet master. Mrs. Cornboise, Claudia, Ralph, Querk! Each of ’em hears it strike before or after doing or seeing something, so that we can fit everything into place. The wrong place! It strikes five o’clock and the curtain rises, with Claudia going into the library. We hang on to that clock until it strikes five-thirty—when we find we’ve by-passed the murder.”

  About to turn into the drive, Crisp was held by a Rolls coming out.

  “That’s probably the specialist she sent for to look at Cornboise,” said Crisp. “Sanson phoned me about it. Maybe she’s playing for insanity—prevent him giving evidence.”

  The front door was open, as usual. In the hall, they heard Querk’s voice coming from the first, floor landing.

  “I would never have suggested it, my dear Miss Lofting, if I had the slightest fear that I would excite him. On the contrary, I feel confident—absolutely confident—that I can help the poor fellow to clarify his thoughts. Sir William has told us how important that is. I’m so glad he was able to come to our help—I admit I had to put it to him as a special favour.”

  “Very well, Mr. Querk. I don’t want to be difficult, especially as you’ve been so kind about Sir William. But I do think Ralph ought to rest this morning. Say four o’ clock this afternoon. I’ll take tea to his room for the three of us.”

  Crisp passed to the gunroom, Sanson’s office. After hearing a routine report, which included the stalling of Pressmen, he asked:

  “What about that registered parcel? Nothing eh? Stir up the servants. Send a man with them to search every room again—except Cornboise’s. Lock all unoccupied rooms, label the keys and bring ’em to me.”