The Piccadilly Murder

by Anthony Berkeley

  “So there was friction?” nodded Moresby with satisfaction.

  “A little, perhaps,” admitted Miss Goole, not without reluctance. “Miss Sinclair was not the only independent one, you see. The Major is just as much so. I understand that he told her quite definitely that he had no intention of marrying Miss Carey, and would certainly never do so, not even to please the—” Miss Miss Goole checked herself. “He’s had no intention of doing so,” she concluded.

  “So his aunt threatens to cut him out of her will and leave the money to the cousin in America?”

  “I can’t say that she ever definitely threatened to do so. I think she had hopes of bringing him round in the end. Wearing him down, one might say. That was why she arranged that interview at the Piccadilly Palace. A new point had just occurred to her, and she wished to put it to him at once. She wrote off to him and came up to town at once. Miss Sinclair was like that. Impulsive.”

  “But why the Piccadilly Palace?” ventured Mr. Chitterwick, opening his mouth for the first time. “Why not here? Or at Queen Anne’s Gate?”

  “Miss Sinclair never visited Queen Anne’s Gate,” replied Miss Goole drily. “It was her idea that bachelor establishments should be left entirely to their occupants.”

  “Yes, but why the Piccadilly Palace?” persisted Mr. Chitterwick. “I mean, the Piccadilly Palace seems so very—”

  “She made the appointment,” said Miss Goole with indifference. The inference was that no one could be expected to account for Miss Sinclair’s actions, and, in any case, the point was unimportant.

  Mr. Chitterwick retired, somewhat crushed.

  “I see,” said Moresby. “Now, had you heard anything about the appointment with Major Sinclair being altered? To half-past two instead of half-past three, for instance?”

  No, Miss Goole had not heard anything like that.

  When had she seen Miss Sinclair last?

  At lunch. Yes, Miss Sinclair had seemed perfectly normal. They had had some coffee afterward in the lounge, and Miss Sinclair had then gone up to her room soon after two o’clock saying that she would not want Miss Goole again until shortly before dinner.

  Had she said anything about going out early?

  Yes, Miss Goole could not be sure, but she rather fancied that Miss Sinclair had said something about having one or two small things to do. Yes, Miss Goole was sure she had, because she remembered now having offered to do them for her, and Miss Sinclair had replied that it did not matter, she could do them herself on her way to the Piccadilly Palace.

  Had she mentioned at all what the jobs were?

  No, she had not.

  Moresby stroked his moustache and gazed benignly at Miss Goole’s feet. They might have been quite nice-looking feet had they not been wearing shoes at least a size and a half too large for them. “This interview with the Major, now. Was it in any way a climax, as you might say? You mentioned that she’d thought of something to put to him about this marriage and came up to town on purpose to do so. That seems as if it was something pretty important, doesn’t it? I mean, too important to write. Well, was it anything like an ultimatum, so far as you know?”

  Miss Goole couldn’t say, she was sure.

  “Put it this way, then. Had the old lady said anything to you that might show she anticipated a stormy meeting? A quarrel, or anything like that?”

  For the first time Miss Goole hedged. “I take it that all these questions are relevant, Chief Inspector? I understand from what you hinted that Miss Sinclair had poisoned herself, though I must say that I find it almost impossible to credit. Are you suggesting that it could have been disappointment about Major Sinclair’s matrimonial awkwardness which induced her to go to the length of taking her own life? Because if so I must tell you that—”

  “I’m suggesting nothing, miss,” interposed Moresby with the utmost goodwill. “Nothing. And you can take it that anything I ask you is relevant. So suppose you tell me what you’d gathered the old lady was anticipating from this interview?”

  A brisk, tight little smile expressed at once Miss Goole’s recognition of this subterfuge and acquiescence in the assumption contained in it. “I’d gathered,” she said shortly, “that Miss Sinclair was expecting—shall we say, difficulties; and that in such an event she might issue something approaching an ultimatum.”

  “I see,” said Moresby thoughtfully. “In a way, then, you might say the interview was to be the crux of all the discussions about this Miss Carey?”

  Miss Goole thought you could say that.

  “That on the result of it everything depended, both for the old lady’s matchmaking plans and the Major’s prospects?”

  “I see. She was expecting him to put forward some other matrimonial ideas of his own, perhaps?”

  No, Miss Goole did not think that.

  “But he had some, of course; a man of his age?”

  No, Miss Goole did not think he had.

  “What would his aunt have said about them if he had?”

  One gathered that Miss Sinclair’s attitude would have been by no means unworthy of her late father.

  “You’re quite sure the Major never said anything to her about his marrying anyone else, not Miss Carey?” persisted the chief inspector.

  Miss Goole, who appeared to think that the point was being laboured, said so once more, curtly.

  “Then what would you say,” observed Moresby with pleasure, “if I were to tell you that Major Sinclair’s got a wife of his own at Queen Anne’s Gate and has had for the last two years?”

  V

  MR. CHITTERWICK GOES A-VISITING

  And there for a time, so far as Mr. Chitterwick was concerned, the matter rested.

  A newspaper sensation was created, of course. Photographs of the Piccadilly Palace lounge, the Fatal Table, the smart waitress, the doorkeeper, and the wife of one of the charwomen’s brother, appeared in every journal worth its circulation. Mr. Chitterwick appeared too, decorated with a deprecatory beam. But the caption attached to him was only “Saw Suspected Man with Aunt”; the vital part of his evidence remained a secret between himself and the police.

  Sinclair was brought up before the magistrates the following morning, but only formal evidence of arrest was given, and he was remanded. As they left the police court together Moresby gave Mr. Chitterwick to understand that the police would now be concentrating their energies in finding other persons besides himself and the waitress who had seen the two together in the lounge during the crucial period between half-past two and three.

  “There should be no difficulty about that,” remarked Mr. Chitterwick. “A large number of people seemed to be watching me when I went over with the intention of stopping her snoring. Some of them must have noticed the two together.”

  “That’s right, sir; we expect plenty of confirmation on that point. Though, as I mentioned to you yesterday, that fact alone isn’t going to hang the Major.”

  “Chief Inspector,” observed Mr. Chitterwick, rather timidly, “I noticed yesterday when you and one of your colleagues were examining that phial. . . . You won’t tell me, of course, if you think it inadvisable, but—”

  “You mean, did we get any evidence from it?” kindly supplemented the chief inspector, who was getting used to Mr. Chitterwick’s ways. “Well, I’ve no objection to telling you, sir, though, of course, you’ll keep it to yourself. Yes, we did. Our expert found fingerprints on it. In fact, he managed to get a couple of quite good impressions from it. I’ve got the photographs in my pocket this minute. Care to see’ em?” He pulled them out and handed them to his companion.

  Mr. Chitterwick studied them with an air of great wisdom. “Ah!” he said profoundly. They conveyed nothing to him at all. “Of course, when these have been identified—”

  “Identified?” said the chief inspector happily. “They’ve been identified all right. No doubt abou
t that.”

  “Good gracious! They’re not really—?”

  “Well, here’s the Major’s prints, taken after he was arrested yesterday; and if you can find any difference between the two lots, you’re doing something more than our expert can.” The chief inspector pulled out another envelope and obligingly handed that over as well.

  Mr. Chitterwick stood in the vestibule and compared them. He had never examined fingerprints before, and they are not easy for the tyro to compare, but he was perfectly ready to accept the chief inspector’s word.

  “That’s really quite conclusive, I take it?” he said with solemnity as he gave them back.

  “Well, it’s a big point, a very big point; but a clever counsel could get round that alone. What we want to do now is to trace the purchase of the poison to the Major too. That’s going to be a bigger step still.”

  “And do you expect to be able to do so?”

  “Can’t hardly say that yet, sir. But it won’t be for want of trying,” added Moresby grimly, “if we don’t.”

  The case went on to run its usual course.

  At the inquest, after a couple of adjournments for the purpose of allowing the autopsy to take place and the analysis of certain organs, death was proved conclusively to have been due to prussic-acid poisoning. Curiously enough it was shown that Miss Sinclair suffered from an organic disease of the heart and could in any case have lived not much longer than six months. It was proved, too, that Major Sinclair had no definite knowledge of this.

  The police succeeded in finding a dozen or more people who had seen the two together, and the evidence of selected members of this collection and Mr. Chitterwick, together with the overwhelming motive, sufficed to produce a verdict of “Wilful Murder” against Major Sinclair. The latter’s efforts to prove an alibi, which he could not substantiate by any independent testimony, fell completely to pieces.

  The same ground was gone over again, in more detail, before the magistrates, and though the police had failed so far to connect the Major with the purchase of the prussic acid or even to prove any previous possession of it on his part, his committal for trial at the Old Bailey was a foregone conclusion.

  “But, mark you, Mr. Chitterwick, sir,” observed Moresby, as they sat over a bun and a cup of coffee in a neighbouring tea shop after the conclusion of the proceedings, “if it wasn’t for your evidence he’d get off, almost for certain.” Mr. Chitterwick’s story of the Hovering Hand had not been told before the magistrates, but was being reserved for the trial.

  “You think so?” said Mr. Chitterwick rather doubtfully. “Even in spite of these fingerprints on the phial?”

  “Even in spite of them. They’re not conclusive, you see, not when the relationship’s so close. What’s to prevent him saying, for instance, that the phial was his (there’s no label or identification mark on it, you see) and he’d left it in the bathroom last time he went to stay with his aunt? There’s a dozen different ways of accounting for those fingerprints innocently enough.”

  “Oh! I see,” nodded Mr. Chitterwick.

  “But with your story—! I can tell you, Mr. Chitterwick, sir,” said Moresby unfeelingly, “it wasn’t half a facer for the defence. The Major’s solicitor was cocksure of an acquittal, but when he’d heard about the evidence you’re going to give for us—well, he began to think a bit, I can tell you.”

  “You told him?” said Mr. Chitterwick, surprised. “I had fancied you were going to keep my evidence till the trial.”

  “Secret from the public, but not from the defence. We never do that, sir; wouldn’t be fair to the prisoner. Always let’ em know in good time before the trial just what they’re up against.”

  Mr. Chitterwick nodded and not for the first time marvelled at the fairness of the English judicial system.

  “Yes, Mr. Chitterwick, sir,” summed up Moresby, regarding that gentleman with pride, “without you I’m very much afraid we should be in the soup; with you we’re as sure of a verdict as one can be of anything in this world.”

  “I see,” said Mr. Chitterwick, and wriggled slightly.

  They went on to discuss the case and all its various ramifications. Moresby, who exhibited no feelings of any sort where the Major himself was concerned, displayed unexpectedly strong sympathy with that erring gentleman’s wife, whom he described as a “proper lady.” “And bowled over though you might say in a way she is,” he added, “she doesn’t sit wringing her hands and doing nothing about it. Working like a Trojan, she is, for her husband, and I hadn’t the heart to tell her it wasn’t no manner of use at all.”

  “Poor lady, poor lady,” chuckled Mr. Chitterwick, shaking his head. “Is she very charming?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I’d say charming was quite the right word,” said the chief inspector doubtfully. “Handsome she is, but—well, no; I’d say determined more than charming. I remember once I had to see her when I was checking up that secretary, Miss Goole’s, account of herself. She kept me—”

  “Do you mean the story of her life Miss Goole told us?” interrupted Mr. Chitterwick, mildly surprised. “Surely you didn’t bother to check that?”

  “Certainly I did, sir. I verified every single thing she told us about herself.”

  “Good gracious! But why? Surely it was quite irrelevant to the main issue?”

  “It is one of our rules, sir,” said Moresby severely, “never to accept any statement, however apparently unimportant, without confirmation, whenever such confirmation is possible.”

  “Dear me!” said Mr. Chitterwick and marvelled again, this time at the painstaking thoroughness of the English police system. In his wonderment unfortunately the chief inspector’s anecdote was lost.

  “You mentioned,” said Mr. Chitterwick a few moments later, “that you had been seeing Major Sinclair’s solicitor. Did he tell you whether he had succeeded in finding the missing heir yet?” It had been considered proper by the Major’s legal adviser to get into touch with the only surviving relative on the Sinclair side, that same cousin in America whom Miss Sinclair had been reputed to hold up as a threatened alternative heir, but considerable difficulty had been experienced in doing so. His career had been traced, by the solicitor’s American representative, for a couple of years after Miss Sinclair had last heard of him, during which time he had apparently gone on the stage; but his present whereabouts could not be discovered or even the question determined of whether he was alive or dead. Discreetly worded advertisements in selected journals had brought no reply.

  It was not a question of any benefits under Miss Sinclair’s will, for that document left everything unconditionally to Major Sinclair; but the latter had stated bluntly to his solicitor that, in the impossible event of his being hanged, as he had no children of his own he would like the estate, after proper provision had been made for his own wife, to revert to this cousin, although the fellow bore the name of the unspeakable journalist instead of that of Sinclair. Mr. Chitterwick had been following at second-hand the progress of the search, which appealed to him as more than a little romantic, with considerable interest.

  Moresby told him that the solicitor had not mentioned the matter.

  Shortly afterward, rewarded with buns and coffee, Mr. Chitterwick was benevolently dismissed until the trial, which was to take place in seven weeks’ time, with instructions not to fall down a precipice or get run over by a bus in the interim.

  From the beginning Mr. Chitterwick had been observing with no little interest, and some awe, his aunt’s reactions to the affair.

  At first, for a week or so, she had refused to hear a single word about it, flatly denying the truth of anything that Mr. Chitterwick tried to tell her on the subject; her grounds for doing so appeared to be the utter impossibility of any nephew of hers ever entering such a place as the Piccadilly Palace lounge at all, from which it plainly followed that the whole story of Mr. Chitterwick’
s connection with the case must be a complete fabrication.

  Having been maneuvered over this stage (on being discovered avidly reading the latest news of the case in the morning paper), and indeed being unable to maintain such a position any longer when actually confronted in that same paper with Mr. Chitterwick’s unmistakable portrait as that of a star witness in the affair, she then professed to be overcome with the disgrace of seeing a Chitterwick mixed up in such a vulgar and sordid thing as a murder trial, and proceeded to treat her nephew with as much scorn as if he had been the witless victim of a sort of gigantic confidence trick. This attitude did, however, allow her to listen at last to Mr. Chitterwick’s story, to make him tell it over and over again, and to cross-question him on the details to her heart’s content. At this point the secret that had been shared so closely between Mr. Chitterwick and the police alone obtained a third confidant.

  This second stage lasted nearly a week, during which Miss Chitterwick on three occasions ordered round the carriage and pair (she not only refused to keep a car, but somehow managed to convey the impression that she actually disbelieved in the existence of such things) for the purpose of driving down to Scotland Yard in order to intercede with the authorities on her nephew’s behalf, putting forward her conviction that by some peculiar misfortune it would not be the red-haired man at all who would finally end up on the gallows, but Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick.

  Mr. Chitterwick had the greatest difficulty in dissuading her from this course and only succeeded the third time by voluntarily suggesting that they should go together instead to the butcher’s with the monthly collection of newspapers, a task which he was usually ready to perjure his eternal soul to avoid. (It was one of Miss Chitterwick’s smaller economies to preserve carefully all her newspapers in order to sell them to the butcher at the rate of a halfpenny a pound, and a solemn progress was made on the last day of each month in the carriage and pair to Chiswick High Street to do so. On the last day of each month Mr. Chitterwick generally had either a simply terrible headache or else an appointment elsewhere of quite remarkable importance.)