by Roy Vickers
“Forgive me! I was wool gathering, I fear. Well now, as you are obviously inclined to discuss this in a friendly manner, you will not, my dear Chief Constable, find me lacking in responsiveness. Tell me what else you have discovered, and then we will see if we can jointly put two and two together.”
Crisp felt a grudging respect for the man who could sustain his technique when he knew he was in deadly peril. The sword might yet be caught in the net of platitudes.
“Your conversation with Watlington in which you persuaded him to approve of Claudia did not take place. You invented it on the supposition that Ralph Cornboise had taken the letters from the safe. You did not find out until too late that Watlington had given them to Fenchurch.”
“Correct!” said Querk encouragingly. “Pray continue.”
The frankness of the avowal disconcerted Crisp. He was lolling in the swivel chair. The handcuffs in his hip pocket hurt him and he sat upright.
“Before I go any further,” said Crisp. “I intend to guard myself against the accusation of tricking you into making admissions. You are well aware that on this conversation will depend whether a charge is made. I will therefore warn you well in advance that anything you say may be used in evidence.”
“My dear Colonel! Your intention is most friendly and, believe me, I appreciate it. But—come now!—what charge do you think you could possibly make? That of being accessory to the murder of my poor old friend?”
Crisp evaded the question.
“In dealing with persons like yourself, Cornboise, Fenchurch,” he said, “it would be absurd to adopt the procedure followed with the uneducated criminal. I am going to tell you what I know about your actions, and how I know it. As you are aware, I don’t know everything, or I would have arrested you without talking about it.
“My starting point is the moment in which Watlington handed those letters to Fenchurch. That fact was unknown to the murderer and his associate, if any. Their ignorance of that fact vitally affects the logic of the murder. The murderer enters, strikes, and goes to the safe intending to destroy the letters. But the letters have already gone.
“Now, Ralph confessed to the murder. Whether he had an hallucination or not about the murder, he certainly had no hallucination about the letters. He was surprised when I handed him the sealed envelope containing the Will, because he detected that the letters were not inside. Further, in a conversation which we eavesdropped, he revealed that he was himself hopelessly puzzled as to what had become of the letters, fearing at that time that Claudia had taken them. So I was able to infer that Ralph was not the one who removed the seal from the dead man. If Ralph did not, I asked myself, who did?
“Now, removing that seal and re-sealing the Will had one purpose only—to convey to an innocent person, present in the library with Watlington after lunch, that Watlington had re-sealed the Will himself after destroying the letters.
“Claudia did not remove the seal. It would have been a senseless action on her part, because Watlington had already given her his blessing. That meant that only you could have removed the seal. From which it is a safe inference that you are either the murderer or an accessory of the murderer.”
“Not the murderer, my dear Colonel! Are you not forgetting the wig? That surely was the device of an accessory, not a principal!”
Crisp was momentarily immobilised. He was groping for the technique concealed in this apparently foolish tactic of making unnecessary admissions.
“The wig must have given you the clue to much that originally mystified you,” continued Querk, his tone suggesting that he was encouraging a promising youngster. “Now, I will tell you what I actually did and you shall tell me how near you came to solving the puzzle without my help! Well, when I reached the library, I saw Lord Watlington crumpled up in his chair, the sides of his wig protruding from behind his ears, like—like a bat’s wings. I mustn’t pass off that very expressive phrase as my own. I am plagiarising Miss Lofting. Ralph, in one of his semi-delirious moods had, by lifting her hair behind her ears, shown exactly how the wig appeared. The outline was very vividly impressed on the poor boy’s memory and I confirm that his recollection is correct.
“I feel no shame in confessing, Chief Constable, that my first thought was that Ralph owed me a considerable sum—seventeen thousand three hundred, to be precise—which I could not then afford to lose. His running from the room suggested that he hoped to escape the consequences of his act. But I knew well that he would quickly break down under the police questioning and blurt out the truth. So I proceeded to make his truth untrue. He would say that he used the die-stamp, then lying on the floor. I wiped it and put in on the mantelpiece, leaving my own finger prints upon it. He would say that he struck through the wig. I remembered that package on the table in the hall. I unwrapped it in the morning-room—accidentally leaving the wrapping on a chair, a piece of carelessness, which, I fear, put you to some further trouble. I removed—and subsequently destroyed—the old wig, putting the new one in place—a little awry, to suggest haste on the part of the murderer who, I thought, would never be found.
“You have already described my actions with the Will—and with an accuracy which has certainly earned full marks. I have only to add that when I left the room I turned the key on the outside with a pair of pliers which I found in the drawer of the hall table, knowing that Ralph would deny that he had locked the door. I think you have found those pliers?”
As Crisp made no answer, Querk resumed:
“I was, of course, wholly unprepared for his repudiation of the alibi which I had so laboriously provided. Laboriously—and at no small personal risk! ‘The best laid schemes of mice and men,’ my dear Colonel. And if any of my own calculations had ‘ganged agley,’ I might well have found myself in a highly unenviable position. Fortunately, nothing did go wrong! Indeed, I had ‘builded better than I knew.’ The alibi remained unshaken by the repudiation. My plans, as we know, carried everything by its own impetus. Sir William Turvey was led to provide a convenient formula for saving everyone’s amour propre by—er—discovering an hallucination.”
“Then you admit the whole bag o’ tricks?” cried Crisp in amazement. “You admit being an accessory? And you are going to plead guilty too?”
“I admit the—er—whole bag o’ tricks, as you choose to express it—but, of course, in confidence.”
“Confidence be damned! I’m on duty!”
“I must point out, if you will not think me impertinent—that you have neglected to provide yourself with witnesses. Do not blame yourself, Chief Constable. I assure you that the question of my pleading to anything at all will not arise.”
As Crisp glared at him, Querk continued:
“Remember, poor Ralph repudiated the alibi which I provided, nor was he aware that I had deliberately performed a single act to protect him.”
“That won’t get you off!” snapped Crisp.
“It will not be required to do so. I mention it merely to emphasise that I am not quite the social type that conspires with another to break the criminal law.”
“I can prove that wig sequence,” said Crisp.
“If you will pardon me, you can prove a great deal more than that. My clumsiness with the penknife, my absentmindedness with the pliers and the brown paper, my forgetfulness that typescript can be identified—all can be welded into a formidable chain of circumstantial evidence, forged by my amateur efforts to deceive the police. Altogether, a vindication of the old adage that the cobbler, my dear Chief Constable, should stick to his last.
“Now, my own last is, as it were, a twin-last. Law and finance! Finance and the law!” He waited for Crisp’s assent, which was not forthcoming. He continued, with a touch of asperity: “Your wig, your penknife, your die-stamp are merely corroborative evidence. Your charge would have to be that I gave Ralph a false alibi by stating that Watlington was alive at five fifteen when, in fact, he was dead.”
“You’re pushing my barrow,” grunted Crisp.
> “But in the opposite direction! As you will find when you consult your legal department. They will tell you that a confession followed by sentence is the equivalent of a verdict returned by a jury. There can be no re-examination of fact.”
Again Querk had unconsciously echoed the words of Treasury counsel.
“The proceedings in court this morning, my dear Colonel, have established that the murder was committed at approximately five thirty. In law, my statement that Lord Watlington was alive at five fifteen is therefore unassailable.”
Crisp got up and paced the room. He had begun by manoeuvring for position and had so far failed. And now Querk had tripped him with a legal conundrum.
“You’ve been successful all along the line, Querk. You’ve crowned your success by admitting to me that you are an accessory, by snapping your fingers at the police and strangling the law in its own red tape. It must be the most elaborate monkey-trick in the history of crime. Yes, I said monkey-trick! By faking that alibi you saved Ralph—and your own seventeen thousand. By trotting up that car evidence you destroyed Ralph—and your own chance of collecting the seventeen thousand. It doesn’t make sense!”
“Must we always look to money, my dear Colonel, to rationalise human behaviour. Should we not sometimes look to—love?”
Crisp gaped at the preposterous echo of Claudia’s words in the mouth of Querk.
“Remember, I did not know that Miss Lofting was already a married woman, herself contemplating a bigamous marriage with fraudulent intent. I saw only a sweet English rose cruelly jilted by a selfish young man—who would probably marry a woman of no position and so fail to benefit under his uncle’s Will. On the other hand, I thought of the lady who had every right to call herself Lady Watlington, who had also been cruelly treated—er—having regard to the special circumstances, of course.”
“How on earth does Mrs. Cornboise come into it?” demanded Crisp.
“A man, as you know, may not profit by his own crime,” explained Querk. “When the Judge pronounced sentence this morning, poor Lord Watlington’s Will became null and void—he is deemed to have died intestate. His property will pass to his widow. After deduction of Crown dues, she will receive about a million and a quarter.”
Crisp looked out of the window. Mrs. Cornboise was still sitting on the bench. So that funny old baggage was now a very rich woman!
“Does she know that?”
“Not yet.” Querk picked up his attache case, preparing to leave. On his way to the door, he joined Crisp by the window. “She has suffered much from loneliness—but that, I hope, is at an end. We were married this morning.”
Crisp did not conceal his astonishment.
“At the registrar’s close to the Old Bailey,” added Querk. “After sentence had been pronounced.”
“A million and a quarter!” Crisp relaxed as if with personal relief. “And you will take care of her fortune and see she is not robbed. Magnificent!”
“Your congratulations, my dear fellow, are extremely acceptable. During the short time we have worked together—”
“I was congratulating myself!” interrupted Crisp. “You’ve taken a load off my mind. Frankly, the Ralph Cornboise business shook my nerve. I never actually believed in his innocence, but I was not convinced of his guilt. The same applied to you until a moment ago. I had built up a very strong case against you, but I needed a motive for my own satisfaction. I could see no reason why you should want to hound that boy to the gallows. Now I’ve got a million and a quarter reasons. You’re under arrest, Querk.”
“I am intrigued,” said Querk. “You must have discovered loopholes in the rules of evidence which have eluded me.”
Crisp grinned, and in the grin there was no pity.
“Querk!” There was a perceptible pause. “You’ve admitted to me that the conversation with Watlington at five fifteen did not take place, because Watlington was dead. In that imaginary conversation—which figured in your depositions—Watlington told you he was expecting a telephone call at five thirty. The conversation did not take place. But the telephone call did take place—at five thirty-four. How did you know Watlington was going to be called round about five thirty?”
Querk’s benevolent smile was undisturbed but his hands betrayed distress. Both hands were gripping the attache case as if he could barely sustain the weight.
“No doubt, he mentioned it to me earlier in the day.”
“He did not. We contacted that caller. His name is Tremayne. He was coming to the dinner party. On Saturday morning he flew to Edinburgh because his wife had been seriously injured in a street accident. Shortly after five, he remembered the dinner. He tried to ring Watlington to explain why he couldn’t turn up. So neither Tremayne nor Watlington knew that the call would be made.”
“Then let us say, my dear Colonel, that it was a little—er—constructive retrospection. From my bedroom, I heard the telephone ring—”
A second and a half later, there came a double click, as the handcuffs snapped into position. The attache case thudded mildly on the carpet.
“Our depositions will describe a test proving that you can’t hear that telephone in your bedroom. You knew about that telephone because you were in this room when it rang—at the time when Ralph was supposed to have left his car and come back here to commit the murder. It must have taken you a good twenty minutes to get that signet ring off and back again and change the wigs. The Home Secretary will dish out a Royal Pardon for Ralph on that telephone call alone. That will leave the field clear for your trial!”
“My trial as accessory—to a principal whom the Royal Pardon will have declared to be factually innocent?”
“Your trial for the murder of Watlington.”
With one eye on Querk, Crisp dialled headquarters.
“Chief Contable, speaking from Watlington Lodge. Send an escort here to take away a prisoner!”
Querk had listened in pained silence.
“I had hoped, Chief Constable, to preserve your dignity no less than my own. Whatever the charges you may prefer against me—conscientiously if mistakenly—can you honestly say that you believe I would attempt to run away? Escort! Prisoner! Handcuffs! I will not allow myself to suspect that you are animated by a malicious desire to inflict personal humiliation.”
It had been the soldier in Crisp rather than the policeman that had whipped out the handcuffs—an intuitive sense of danger to come, of the exact moment at which to avert that danger.
“You’re such a tough customer, Querk, that I’m not risking anything.”
“Yet you seem to my ignorance to be risking your whole career. For instance—if I may ask—what proof have you that I killed Watlington?”
“Bat’s wings!” ejaculated Crisp.
As Querk registered only anxious bewilderment, Crisp went on:
“You accused yourself of physical clumsiness. You are not particularly clumsy. But you are physically uneducated. A man wears a wig. Hit him on the head, you think, and the sides of the wig will stick out like a bat’s wings—and that’s the end of your speculations about the wig!”
“But I described what I saw with my own eyes! I do not press the simile of the bat’s wings—”
“Bat’s wings is good enough. Only you put ’em in the wrong place. Plectyt, the canvas stuff on which the wig is mounted, is cut on a double cross. If you hit a man on the crown of the head—where the silver plate is, and smash the plate—the wig juts out at the temples. If you hit him on the back of the head—the occiput—the wig juts out behind the ears—which is what you saw when you entered the library after Ralph had left it.”
The sword had cut through the net. Crisp drove it home:
“It’s what Ralph saw when he thought he had killed his uncle. He will be convicted of attempting grievous bodily harm, but he’ll get off lightly. He will tell your jury all about the bat’s wings.”
Querk had lost awareness of the handcuffs. His hands were folded on his chest. He was nodding his head
as if in agreement.
“We’ve taped out the sequence of events pretty closely, Querk. First, Ralph probably did not know where the plate was located. In a fit of hysteria, he swung blindly at the head and struck the occiput. The wig muffled the blow, which did no injury to that very strong bone. It was as if he had punched it with a boxing glove. But concussion followed.
“You came in, saw the bat’s-wing effect, but you also saw that Watlington was breathing. You reckoned that, when Watlington recovered consciousness, his first act would be to disinherit the nephew who had tried to kill him. Bang would go your seventeen thousand. So you struck the unconscious Watlington where you knew the plate was—and killed him within a couple of minutes of Ralph’s dud blow.
“You unlocked the wall safe with Watlington’s key, The sealed envelope—bulging with Claudia’s letters enclosed with the Will—had gone. In its place was another of those same printed envelopes. But it was gummed, not sealed. You could feel that it contained a single folded sheet—obviously the Will.
“You drew the reasonable conclusion that Ralph had taken the letters and forgotten the significance of the seal. So you tackled the job of sealing it yourself, with Watlington’s signet ring—what’ve you got in that waistcoat pocket, Querk? Keep your hands still!”
Crisp swooped—had time to spare, for Querk was slow-moving, even when unencumbered with handcuffs.
Crisp captured a tiny phial—held it to the light for inspection.
“Cyanide!” explained Querk. “How can I ever thank you, my dear Colonel! At this very moment, as we stand looking at each other, it has broken upon me that I have a priceless asset in the person of Miss Lofting. Every essential act of the murder might have been committed by her. When ‘my’ jury learn that she was about to contract a bigamous and fraudulent marriage with Ralph—that she had equal opportunity with myself—you will find that they will give me the benefit of the doubt.”
Claudia’s fraudulent intent! So that was the straw at which the drowning man clutched! The task of snatching it away could be left to Querk’s lawyers. For the moment, it would be only decent to allow him to save his face.