The Piccadilly Murder

by Anthony Berkeley

  “Precisely,” said Mr. Chitterwick, and looked a little disappointed that Judith did not seem more impressed with his ingenious theory.

  There was a pause, rather an awkward one.

  Judith put an end to it, speaking in businesslike tones as if to hint that they would now pass from fantasy to fact. “I asked my husband about the points you raised, Mr. Chitterwick. I’d better tell you what he said. I’ve got it all here.” She rummaged in her bag and extracted a rather crumpled piece of paper, which she studied for a moment. “He has no idea why the Piccadilly Palace was chosen as the rendezvous. The suggestion did not come from him. He was surprised himself when Miss Sinclair named it.”

  “Ah!” Mr. Chitterwick crossed his legs and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s possible that I’m wrong, quite wrong; but I can’t help feeling this selection of the Piccadilly Palace is significant, if we could only see how. You see, it really isn’t the place Miss Sinclair would have chosen herself.”

  “You mean, she was prompted?” asked Mouse respectfully.

  “It does look like it. But by whom?”

  Nobody having any suggestions to offer, Judith passed to the next point. “Lynn has been allowed to see the phial that contained the prussic acid, and of course he didn’t recognize it. I asked him, as you told me, whether he can remember ever handling one like it, and he says he can’t, except perhaps one in our own bathroom at Queen Anne’s Gate that had some concentrated mouth-wash of mine in it. I took a taxi straight from the prison to Queen Anne’s Gate to see if that one is still there. It is; and in any case it’s a good deal bigger than the other.”

  “I must confess I can’t see my way round those fingerprints,” Mr. Chitterwick had to admit.

  “Fingerprints can be forged, I suppose, can’t they?” Mouse suggested.

  “Can they?” asked Mr. Chitterwick doubtfully. “Outside a detective story I very much doubt it.”

  “I know it’s a deadly point,” Judith said tonelessly, “and I pressed him. It’s a very ordinary shape of phial, and I told him he must have handled several; but the only other possibility he could suggest was that it’s rather like ones he’s seen at Earlshaze in which Miss Sinclair used to have drops for her eyes, but he couldn’t swear to the similarity. And even if they were alike, I don’t see how it would help.”

  “He might have handled one there,” Mr. Chitterwick pointed out. “Would almost certainly have done so. Brought it downstairs for Miss Sinclair, no doubt, or been sent to fetch it from somewhere.” If it were a question of probabilities concerning an aunt no one could speak with more authority than Mr. Chitterwick. “It might well have his fingerprints, you see. We must certainly take up that point.”

  “And if they are alike?”

  “Try to trace some connection between the two,” said Mr. Chitterwick more hopefully than he felt.

  “But that would hardly help Lynn, unless we can show that one of Miss Sinclair’s phials got into the possession of a third person. And I imagine,” said Judith with a mirthless smile, “that Miss Goole would not be very helpful if we called to ask her whether any phials lately containing Miss Sinclair’s eye drops have disappeared from the house recently in suspicious circumstances.”

  “Nevertheless,” maintained Mr. Chitterwick stoutly, “if she could tell us so, and into whose hands, we should know at once the identity of the murderer. In any case we must decidedly not forget the point.”

  Judith sighed. “Oh, such little things . . . Well, the next point. Lynn can’t add anything more to the description he’s given already of the man’s voice on the telephone. ‘An exaggerated Oxford accent’; that’s all he can say.”

  “And did it strike him as odd at the time?”

  “Only vaguely, that Eccles should not have got over his youthfully affected drawl even yet; nothing else. Certainly he suspected nothing. Point number four, he can’t add anything to his account of what he did during the time he was supposed to have been in the Piccadilly Palace, or suggest any way at all in which his alibi could be proved.”

  “Um! Something in that connection has occurred to me, though,” remarked Mr. Chitterwick modestly. “I thought we might at any rate take steps to prove a negative fact if not the positive one. You—er—you do wish to arrive at the truth, I take it? Just the bare truth, whatever it may be?”

  “You mean, even if it should turn out that Lynn did poison his aunt, after all?” said Judith calmly. “Certainly I do, my convictions being as they are.”

  “Then, I suggest,” beamed Mr. Chitterwick, “that you offer a big reward, a really handsome one, to anyone who can prove that he or she was on that landing during the period when Major Sinclair says that he was there. If nobody comes forward to claim it you have at least established that the landing was deserted during that very time, and I think that counsel might make a very big point of that indeed.”

  There was a pause.

  “You—really think that wise?” Judith faltered.

  Mr. Chitterwick lit a fresh cigarette. “I understand that you have no doubts,” he said quietly.

  Judith threw up her head. “I haven’t! Certainly I’ll do what you suggest, Mr. Chitterwick. I think it a very good idea.”

  “I thought it might be helpful,” admitted Mr. Chitterwick immodestly.

  But whether it would prove to be so or not nothing else of any importance arose from the rest of the evening’s discussion. Mr. Chitterwick could not help feeling that the atmosphere was not all it might be. It may have been the presence of his aunt, mostly silent, it is true, but nevertheless acutely felt; it may have been the fact that Judith, whom Mr. Chitterwick had hoped to cheer with the progress, interesting if somewhat problematical, that the case seemed to have made, grew undeniably more quiet and depressed as the evening wore on; certainly the general feeling grew less and less hopeful. The impression appeared to be that in all probability Mr. Chitterwick’s new theory was too farfetched to be true, and even if it were true it did not advance things, for nobody would ever believe it, nor would they themselves ever be able to prove it. Even Mouse became infected with the prevailing gloom, and the glances he threw from time to time at Judith were anything but brotherly in their intense concern.

  It was on this inauspicious note the party broke up, somewhat early, and dispersed to bed.

  Under pretext of making sure that his guest had everything he wanted, Mr. Chitterwick paid a visit to Mouse’s room.

  Mouse welcomed him warmly. “I was hoping you’d come along. Look here, I can’t possibly go to bed yet. Could you bear to carry on the pow-wow just between the two of us?”

  “I should be only too glad,” returned Mr. Chitterwick, no less warmly. “Indeed, it was with some such object ... I think we were all a little tired downstairs, perhaps.”

  “Things did get a bit damnable, didn’t they? Poor old Judy.” Mouse sighed, and then threw a quarter-smoked cigarette savagely out of the window. “You see, she’s far too sensible to build anything on delusions or guesswork, and I’m afraid she thinks things are pretty hopeless.”

  Mr. Chitterwick dropped gently into a chair. “She didn’t appear to be impressed with the new idea I put forward,” he regretted. “Of course, it is farfetched; fantastic, one might say; but really, I did feel that—”

  Mouse, who was strolling restlessly up and down the room, stopped opposite Mr. Chitterwick. “I think it’s defendable,” he said, almost challengingly. “Why not? One can argue on behalf of it. I was sorry Judy didn’t think more of it. Personally, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you haven’t put us absolutely on the right track. In any case, it was damned cunning of you to work it out.”

  “Do you really think so?” beamed Mr. Chitterwick, artlessly gratified. “Well, I certainly did hope . . . But the trouble is, you see, that it only leaves us at a dead end again. A different one this time, but just—as—er—dead.”

&n
bsp; “Does it, though?” Mouse frowned. “I’m not so sure.” He paused, leaning on the back of a chair and scowling quite ferociously at Mr. Chitterwick in the intensity of his thought. “You know, the more I look at it, the more I feel you’ve hit the mark.”

  “The idea grows on one,” agreed Mr. Chitterwick, with gentle pride.

  Mouse lit another cigarette. “You see,” he said between puffs, “if the fellow wasn’t a perfect fool (and it’s getting plainer every minute that he isn’t) he must have known that glaring like that would only make you look the harder, just as it did. If he didn’t want you to look at him he’d have tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible; avoided catching your eye, shifted his chair round a bit, all that. And then if, as you say, he really was quite ostentatious with his hand, over Miss Sinclair’s cup instead of being quick and surreptitious; and that mirror—— Chitterwick, I’m positive you’ve hit it!”

  “That is exactly how it strikes me,” nodded Mr. Chitterwick vigorously.

  “Well, let’s see exactly what that gives us.” Mouse looked very earnest indeed and very young as well.

  Mr. Chitterwick’s heart grew still warmer toward him. He was almost as anxious to solve the case on Mouse’s behalf as on Judith’s own. And having tucked away somewhere behind his criminological and stamp-collecting passions a strong feeling for romance, hitherto ungratified, it touched him to see the desperate eagerness with which this young man was bent on saving from the gallows the husband of the woman with whom he was, undoubtedly, in love, thus robbing himself for good and all of any possibility that might exist of getting her for himself.

  He recapitulated exactly what, in his opinion, his new theory gave them.

  “Yes,” Mouse nodded, “this idea of yours about the action of prussic acid doesn’t really help Lynn much at present, of course, because it’s impossible to prove when Miss Sinclair swallowed her coffee; and though counsel ought to make a nice point of it, the jury can’t be expected to attach much importance to psy—psychological possibilities.”

  “Or the judge,” lamented Mr. Chitterwick, thinking of a recent and now notorious miscarriage of justice, brought about in very large measure by the learned judge’s sturdy refusal to recognize any such un-British values. “The legal mind, you know,” he added, as one apologizes for an unsightly boil on a child’s face.

  “But the other thing, the piece of evidence which you think exists to clear this man, and Lynn with him——”

  “Well,” modified Mr. Chitterwick, “I can’t really say with confidence that it exists at all, you know; only on the balance of probabilities. And even if it does, I should doubt whether it would clear either of them from suspicion, and very grave suspicion. In my opinion,” ruminated Mr. Chitterwick, “all it would do would be to introduce such an element of uncertainty as to make it impossible for a jury to say beyond all reasonable doubt that Miss Sinclair did not commit suicide (for it is little beyond my own evidence, you see, that really establishes that she did not), with the result that the police, recognizing the extreme difficulty of obtaining a conviction, would probably not prosecute. But beyond that I think it would be injudicious to go.”

  “Well, at any rate,” said Mouse with some impatience, “it would save Lynn’s neck.”

  “Oh, yes,” assented Mr. Chitterwick, who seemed rather to have lost sight for the moment of the main point, “I think we might say it would do that.”

  “Well, what about concentrating on that, then?”

  “It would be remarkably gratifying to find the real murderer as well, though,” sighed Mr. Chitterwick. “Even if we were able to ensure Major Sinclair’s acquittal, you see, suspicion of having poisoned his aunt would still rest on him; and with so many people suspicion is tantamount to certainty.” Mr. Chitterwick’s tone apologized for the base tendencies of so many people.

  “Yes, of course. But let’s clear Lynn first. I vote for directing our forces to seeing whether we can unearth any piece of evidence to do that.” Mouse was so determined to carry his point, which at least was reasonable enough, that he took Mr. Chitterwick’s agreement for granted. “Now, how are we going to do that?”

  “We must put ourselves in the criminal’s place,” promptly replied Mr. Chitterwick, who had not read so many detective stories for nothing, “and see what he would do.”

  They put themselves, presumably, in the criminal’s place, and Mouse, at any rate, saw nothing. He said as much.

  “Nor do I,” Mr. Chitterwick confessed. “Dear me, this is extremely baffling. I wonder—I wonder whether we are possibly becoming too muddled. I feel that I may be, for one. Do you know what I feel inclined to do, Mouse? Retire to the study and put the whole case into writing, tabulate what conclusions we have agreed on as certain, what conclusions are still speculative, what deductions may legitimately be drawn from every one of the very few points that the case presents, and from that,” said Mr. Chitterwick, recalling the brilliant methods of some of his collaborators in his last case, which had led them to such surprisingly wrong conclusions, “endeavour to form some idea of the mental processes of the murderer which might enable us to estimate those of his actions which remain unknown to us.”

  “That,” said Mouse with some awe, “is a dashed good idea.”

  So Mr. Chitterwick retired to his aunt’s study.

  He seated himself at his aunt’s table and recklessly grasped his aunt’s favourite pen. He wanted first of all to jot down an idea which had occurred to him within the minute. “If I were the murderer,” wrote Mr. Chitterwick improbably. . . .

  XI

  MR. CHITTERWICK SOLVES THE PROBLEM

  Having got his notes, Mr. Chitterwick proceeded with his summary as follows:

  General Conclusions.

  That this is a carefully planned murder, probably prepared for a considerable time, involving impersonation and a deliberate attempt to throw the blame on another person.

  That, if this object is gained and Major Sinclair is hanged in accordance with the murderer’s intention, a double murder will have been achieved. (That Major Sinclair himself is innocent is the basis on which these remarks are made.)

  That the chief object of the murderer is the death of Miss Sinclair.

  That the fixing of the crime on Major Sinclair and his subsequent death is an extremely important objective, but subordinate to the safeguarding of the actual murderer in the event of suspicion ever attaching to himself. (This, assuming that my theory of the murderer’s behaviour is correct.)

  That, in this event also, my connection with the case is due solely to the three facts that I was alone, that I was in a position to observe the murderer’s actions, and that he could see me in the mirror. Any other person fulfilling these conditions would have done equally well. (N.B. This explains the choice of the Piccadilly Palace from the murderer’s point of view, as at that time it would be almost certain that someone would be there who could do so. Indeed, from the murderer’s standpoint the Piccadilly Palace is ideal for the achievement of his various objects. But apparently Miss Sinclair, and not the murderer at all, chose the Piccadilly Palace. There should be helpful significance here.)

  That, in this event, further, a vital piece of evidence which would almost certainly acquit and perhaps exonerate Major Sinclair remains to be discovered.

  That, in this event, I myself, the police, and everyone else, have fallen into a trap very cleverly laid by the murderer.

  That, after serious consideration, I have decided that my theory is correct, and the remainder of these remarks will be based on that supposition.

  Deductions from the Administration of the Poison.

  That the vehicle in which the poison was administered has probably not yet been discovered. That it was in the coffee seems extremely doubtful. (Was anything else ordered by Miss Sinclair, perhaps, or by the man with her? E.g., a liqueur? Such a liqueur as kirsch or
kummel would probably disguise both the taste and smell of prussic acid. Inquiries must be made on this point.)

  That, as the murderer left the lounge very shortly after myself and would not do so until he had made sure that the swallowing of the poison by Miss Sinclair was certain, then the means of administration must have been to hand at just about the very moment when I was called to the telephone. (N.B. Perhaps the waitress who called me could help on this point.)

  That, as it seems probable, if not certain, that the poison was not swallowed by Miss Sinclair till at least ten minutes later, then the vehicle containing the poison must either have been a drink of a cold nature (such as the liqueur), or else something which the murderer knew Miss Sinclair would be taking before she left the Piccadilly Palace, such as a dose of medicine. (Make inquiries about this.)

  That some means must have been adopted by the murderer to ensure her remaining there after he himself had gone. No doubt he simply made some excuse to leave her temporarily, and she was expecting his return.

  Deductions from what I saw of the Interview.

  That Miss Sinclair had her doubts at one time that the man really was her nephew, but that he was able to remove any such doubt. This explains her peering at him doubtfully at first (as suggested by Mrs. Sinclair) and subsequently talking to him with animation.

  That the leaving of one pair of spectacles behind and the breaking of the others happened most fortunately for the murderer; so fortunately that design rather than luck would seem to be behind it. (N.B. This might be a most hopeful line of investigation.)

  That the man I saw with Miss Sinclair was not Major Sinclair is supported by the feeling I had, on seeing the latter later at close quarters, that he differed, though only very slightly and very subtly, from the impression I had formed of him earlier; namely, that he was somewhat older, somewhat broader, and possessed of rather more natural dignity. These differences, though far too slight to affect the question of indentification, do remain in my mind.