Murder of a Snob

by Roy Vickers

  She was putting up a smoke screen, he decided. If Fenchurch’s story was true, he must surely have told Claudia he had destroyed the letters.

  “Leave Ralph’s mentality for a moment. Haven’t you yourself any theory as to how those letters vanished?”

  “I still think Watlington destroyed them himself. Otherwise, he would have given them back to me when he told me he had dropped his objection to our marrying—even though I didn’t ask for them.”

  Crisp could afford to ignore that explanation. If Watlington had destroyed them he could only have burnt them. And there were no ashes in the library. She was losing ground, letting him work her into a corner.

  “I can tell you definitely that Watlington did not destroy those letters.”

  “Oh?” She registered eager surprise. “I am glad you have found out something about them. I know I mustn’t ask you who did destroy them.”

  “I am asking you, Miss Lofting.”

  “But I can’t even begin to guess. As I see it, only Ralph and I would have cared whether the letters were there or not.”

  “What about the man to whom the letters were written?”

  “Arthur? Oh no! He would have told me. Apart from a telephone chat this morning, I had a long talk with him in the garden on Saturday night. That was before you interviewed us and brought the murder into the family, as it were. I told him Watlington had got the letters, that they were in his safe, and that, now that he had been murdered, they would probably be read by all sorts of people. He was very apologetic, and said he didn’t think they would be read, and that he’d see you and ask you to keep them out.”

  Crisp had the sensation of falling over himself. With it he became aware of an unreasonable resentment. Fenchurch’s infernal cleverness with a paint brush was making this girl seem larger than life size—a spiritual chameleon, able to colour her personality from the colour of those about her. For young Benscombe a straight sex appeal, the more potent for being screened with modesty and good manners. For himself a naif defencelessness, a subtle flattery of his powers by treating him as a kind, clever uncle who would make everything turn out nicely for her, provided she trusted him without reserve.

  “Suppose he did recover those letters? And didn’t want to tell you for fear of alarming you?”

  “That isn’t Arthur’s style!” She laughed. “He never wonders what others think. He doesn’t take any notice of persons as persons. Even when he was in love with me he hadn’t the least idea what kind of person I was.”

  “Hadn’t he?” Without intention, Crisp’s eyes were drawn to the picture. Claudia followed his glance.

  She looked back at Crisp, revealing her astonishment. He was prepared for the obvious question. Instead, she found her own explanation of the presence of those pictures at police headquarters.

  “So Watlington got hold of those, too?” Crisp did not correct her assumption. “That explains a lot!”

  “Not to me!” Crisp was puzzled.

  “He must have assumed that I sat in the nude. That would set a man like that sniggering and telling dirty stories. That kind always thinks that artist’s models are immoral. I wish he had mentioned it—we’d have had none of that dreadful bother with Ralph.”

  “But it is you, isn’t it?” Crisp got up and went over to the shelf. Claudia followed.

  “The head is mine. And I’m the inspiration, in a left-handed sort of way. One day, I saw an Italian beating a child, and I felt sick. Arthur raved about my expression and made several charcoal sketches. They weren’t very successful. But he couldn’t leave the idea alone. Months later, back in London, he ‘saw’ it as an allegorical study, and set to work in the ordinary way with a professional model. He actually used two. So there are three of us in that picture.”

  “I don’t believe you looked sick.”

  She turned sharply, surprised and resentful of his tone.

  His eyes met hers.

  “Fenchurch admitted this evening that he was at Watlington Lodge on Saturday afternoon and that he recovered those letters.”

  At last! With profound satisfaction, he watched her crumple under the blow, watched bewilderment give way to fear. She was making no attempt to conceal her distress. Her colour had gone. She moved one foot unsteadily.

  He took her by the arm, led her back to her chair.

  “When you feel well enough, perhaps you will tell me what really happened.”

  “I am trying to think.” Crisp would not prompt her. “Why didn’t he tell me? Because of the murder, of course! He didn’t want anybody to know he had been there. I expect he only told you because you frightened him.”

  “I never frighten anybody!” bellowed Crisp.

  She ignored him, continued to utter her thoughts aloud.

  “He got my letter in the morning, and felt ashamed of himself. He guessed what had happened to the letters. Oh!”

  The exclamation was so sharp that Crisp jumped.

  “I see what must have happened!” she cried.

  “I don’t want to know what you think must have happened. I want to know what did happen.”

  She looked at him with mild reproof. Her confidence had come back and gaiety had been added.

  “What did happen was that at about half-past two I was the kind of hussy who will sit about in the nude to oblige her male friends. And at about five past five I had become a thoroughly nice girl, in every way suitable to be the ancestress of a long line of barons Watlington. That’s what did happen.

  “If I were allowed to tell what must have happened, I would point out that Arthur must have left Watlington a few minutes before I turned up. He explained about the nude, and made Watlington see that it is not a social crime to fall in love twice—consecutively, of course—nor even to write the sort of letters that sound appalling when read out in court.”

  Crisp drew down the corners of his mouth.

  “Preceded or followed by a discussion of rival wine merchants in Casa Flavia?”

  “Arthur will tell you when you’ve made him see there’s nothing to be afraid of. This is splendid, Colonel. When Ralph sends you his address, I hope you will let me go to him at once. Then we can try to clear that up, too!”

  “We have cleared nothing up.”

  Crisp let the silence lengthen. The only evidence that Watlington had changed his mind about her by five o’clock was her own statement—virtually contradicted by Querk’s statement. For the rest, it was certain that she would talk to Fenchurch, and that he would tell her that his flat had been searched.

  “Miss Lofting!” He swivelled in his chair so that he faced her, directly. “You stated that, when you picked up that die-stamp from the hall table, there was a registered package beside it. Do you confirm that statement?”

  “Yes.” Her voice held apprehension.

  “That was at a few minutes past five?”

  “Yes. Please hurry on.”

  “This piece of brown paper—as you will see if you care to examine it—was the wrapping of that registered package.” He paused for emphasis. “This piece of brown paper was found in Fenchurch’s flat.”

  Again, her reaction startled him.

  “How perfectly ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “As if Arthur would steal somebody’s parcel! He never steals anything. When he’s hard up, he borrows money. And he isn’t particularly hard up now.”

  “I didn’t suggest that he stole the package. I said only that this piece of brown paper—”

  “Did he tell you what he wanted a piece of brown paper for?”

  “He did not,” said Crisp. “That is beside the point—”

  “Not with Arthur Fenchurch! He never wraps anything up. He’ll walk through the streets with the most blush-making things in his hand, if you let him.”

  “Will you kindly fix your mind on the time at which—”

  “I can’t, Colonel! If you were to tell me that you thought Arthur had murdered Watlington, I should be horribly afraid you might be right, even if you were
wrong. But if the whole thing begins with Arthur picking up a piece of brown paper, I just laugh until you stop.”

  “You are very rude!” grunted Crisp. He was having no luck with that brown paper clue.

  She gave him an apology that was very nearly demure. It was she who ended the interview, and it was he who got up and bowed her out, not having intended to do anything of the kind.

  When she had gone, he took stock.

  Following the formula, he had let himself be impressed and must now rub out the impression. Not too easy! His impression of honesty on her part might turn out to be justified. To reject a good impression blindly would be as unreasonable as to accept it blindly. On the other hand, if Fenchurch had phoned her that the police had been quizzing him about a piece of brown paper—

  “Pure guesswork!” ejaculated Crisp. He turned to the basket of nominally urgent reports. “Better have another dip in the fact box!”

  Presently, he was studying a report marked with the code number of Ralph Cornboise, with a cross reference to the Three Witches.

  ‘Statement by John Elderman, 16, cycle delivery boy—’ There were details of the boy’s parents and employers. ‘I was passing the gates of Watlington Lodge in company with my friend, Albert Saunders, who was also delivering, when we saw a large two-seater car with gold and red bodywork standing just inside the gates. I recognised it as a Reindert which is a rare car which my friend did not know about. We stopped and looked at it from our cycles. I did not see anybody in the car nor standing near. When it struck half past five my friend said he must be getting on and I said I must, too.’

  ‘Confirmatory statement, independent, by Albert Saunders attached.

  Querk, reflected Crisp, could hardly have suborned two local errand boys. Therefore his statement and that of Mrs. Cornboise were true. Therefore Querk’s cultivation of the society of Mrs. Cornboise must be because he was attracted to Mrs. Cornboise. Which, as Claudia Lofting would say, was perfectly ridiculous.

  Chapter Fourteen

  On the following morning, as no communication was received from Ralph Cornboise, a description was sent to the Gazette for circulation to all stations.

  The report from Watlington Lodge stated that it was possible to walk from the gates to the west side of the house without being observed from the terrace.

  “Possible!” said Crisp. “But that doesn’t prove that Ralph did in fact go back to the house. Still less does it prove that he killed Watlington by striking through that wig.”

  “No, sir,” said Benscombe obediently. “Shall I prepare a message for broadcast?”

  “Yes. But ask the B.B. C. not to say ‘the police are anxious to get in touch with’—just ‘missing from his home,’ with that bit about losing his memory.”

  The police message was broadcast at six and at nine, yielding no result. Next day, through the Gazette, information reached Scotland Yard, which was telephoned to the Chief Constable.

  “At two o’clock on Monday, Ralph Cornboise sold his Reindert car for seven hundred pounds, paid in notes, after Cornboise had been identified by his branch bank manager. There is reason to believe that Cornboise at the same time drew some three hundred pounds in cash from his account.”

  “That young fool is forcing our hands again,” grumbled Crisp, after dictating a note of the message to Benscombe. “By the book of the rules, I have to apply for a warrant now. Get statements signed and witnessed from those two boys and from Querk and Mrs. Cornboise. And if you can’t contact Mrs. Cornboise today, it’ll leave our hands free for another twenty-four hours.”

  Benscombe loyally failed to contact Mrs. Cornboise. That night the evening papers took up the chase, and on the following morning two of the dailies carried a photo of Ralph, which the police had been unable to obtain.

  “We can’t hold up that warrant any longer,” said Crisp. “Come with me and take a statement from Mrs. Cornboise.”

  They were at the flat in Kilburn by half past nine. The front door was open, while a teen-age maid polished the brasswork.

  “Missis hasn’t only jest started dressin’ herself,” she explained. “P’raps you’d step back later.”

  Benscombe bent down and spoke confidentially:

  “Don’t you think Mrs. Cornboise would like to ask the Colonel to wait in the sitting-room?” he suggested.

  “I didn’t know he was a Colonel!” Crisp, who was in plain clothes of doubtful fit, was subjected to a sceptical scrutiny. “P’raps it’ll be all right. Pass right down the hall, please. I’ll tell her, so’s she can hurry up.”

  It was a trim, modern block of lower middle class flats. In the sitting-room, Crisp had expected a certain physical fustiness, in line with the personality of the tenant. Instead, he found a mental fustiness which startled his imagination.

  Facing him was a kitchen range, such as he had not seen since he was a small boy, with iron-doored ovens on either side of a fireplace. Along the opposite wall was a dresser, laden with willow pattern chinaware, with teacups hanging on hooks. In the centre was a white kitchen table with a wooden wheel-backed armchair at its head. A rocking chair, an upholstered wicker easy chair and three corner cabinets, crowded with photographs and knick-knacks, completed the compromise between kitchen and sitting-room of the late nineteenth century.

  “Look at this, sir!” whispered Benscombe. A red fire glowed and flickered in the fireplace until he switched it off. “You couldn’t so much as boil a kettle on that plant. The whole room is a stage set.”

  “I’ve heard of a cook pretending to be a baroness,” muttered Crisp. “But I’ve never heard of it the other way round.”

  “Pictures! An oleograph of Queen Victoria!” Benscombe passed on to the next. “This one strikes a new note.” Set in a large picture frame were some forty or fifty photographs of different shapes and sizes cut from newspapers.

  “All of Watlington! In the pre-baronial era! Telling ’em the tale at Board meetings, banquets, flower shows!”

  Crisp’s attention was on one of the upright cabinets where a buxom wench sat hand in hand with a flamboyant young man against a Johannesburg photographer’s back-cloth. On a lower deck of the cabinet was another framed cutting, with the fragment of a letter pasted beside it.

  The photograph was of a public house: the printed underline read: ‘The Goat-in-Flames Tavern, North London, now offered for sale after passing from father to son for five generations.’

  With difficulty Crisp deciphered the faded handwriting: ‘We lived in a slum behind this. My brother became head potman. Makes you think.’

  It made Crisp think that, if ever a woman lived in her past, that woman was Mrs. Cornboise. As a cook she had met and been loved by Cornboise. The kitchen became a psychological bridge to the happiness she had lost. After thirty years of it, she still wanted him enough to go uninvited to his garden—

  “Good morning! I’m sorry you’ve had to wait. Mr. Querk told me you might call, but I must say I didn’t expect you as early as this!”

  Mrs. Cornboise had adorned herself in a dress of black satin. While Crisp assured her that he had not been inconvenienced, she sat in the wheelback chair.

  “Please be seated, both,” she invited. From her manner it was plain that she had lost any sense she might have had of the room being unusual. “Mr. Querk said you’d want to talk about what I told him about Mr. Ralph’s motor car. Only, I can’t see why you’ve bothered if he’s told you already.”

  Thus she shattered Crisp’s plan for approaching the subject. “He didn’t tell me much, Mrs. Cornboise, but it seemed to be not quite the same as you told me.”

  “Well, I didn’t tell you I thought I heard the car coming back, because it didn’t come back. If I’d told you all I thought we’d never have finished. I wish now I’d never mentioned it. No one is sorrier than Mr. Querk that it’s kicked up all this dust. It all came of him saying to me: ‘Now, Mrs. Cornboise, I want you to close your eyes and listen to that car again.’ Then I remembered how it had
stopped instead of fading away. It makes a mingy sort of noise, that car—sets your teeth on edge. So I noticed it when it started up again. And now you know as much as I do.”

  “How long afterwards did you hear it start up again?”

  “That’s what Mr. Querk wanted to know and I couldn’t tell him. It may have been ten minutes or it may have been a bit more. But you won’t be able to make bother out of that,” she added. “It’s my belief that, when he got to the gate, he remembered he was short of petrol and took some out of his spare can.”

  “Ten minutes or more would be a very long time for a job like that,” suggested Crisp.

  “Not if he’d never done it before and didn’t know how the screws worked that held the spare can. I know. Because it happened once with a gentleman who was giving me a lift. In the end, I could have done better in a bus.”

  “Let’s see if I’ve got it right,” said Crisp. “Shortly after five fifteen, you saw Ralph Cornboise drive out of the garage. The car stopped—as you suppose—at the end of the drive. Did you see Ralph Cornboise again?”

  “No—else I’d have told you in the first place. Wait a minute! Mr. Querk told me something to say if you talked like that. Oh yes! ‘I have nothing to add to my previous statement covering the events observed by me!’ That’s right—I haven’t!”

  Unaware of any inconsistency, she went on:

  “And there’s something else I’ll tell you—with you hounding that poor boy when he’s innocent! He’s not run away for what you think he has—asking me questions about his petrol can taking too long! If you want to know, he’s running away from that Miss Whatsername. She’d got her claws in, so’s she was going to marry him next Monday. P’raps you didn’t know that. And what’s more, it’s no use that young man you’ve brought with you looking as if he didn’t believe me. You ask at the district registrar’s and they’ll tell you.”

  “Really?”. Crisp was treading carefully. “Have you seen the notice on the registrar’s board. then?”

  “I don’t say that I’ve seen it with my own eyes, but you’ll find it’s true, all the same.”