First on the left, second on the right, and third on the left trudged Mr. Chitterwick, supported by the thought that he really was doing some indubitable detecting at last, and came out opposite a blot on civilization consisting of a red (or once red) corrugated-iron erection with dirtier windows than one would have thought possible. There was a notice board outside, and studying it Mr. Chitterwick absorbed the information that on the following Sunday Mr. Jas. Hall Ings would preach to his flock of the All-Square Gospel Church on the somewhat peremptory subject of “Repent or be Damned.”
Inside this excrescence even on the face of Ashton was lurking Mr. Ings, no doubt doing a bit of repenting in advance. A tentative knock with the head of his walking stick by Mr. Chitterwick, that reverberated on the corrugated iron like a whole succession of last trumps and must have considerably startled the All-Square Gospeller inside, brought the latter to the pitch pine door. He was a gaunt, tall man, with a semi-bald head and a straggling, discouraged-looking beard, and for some obscure but no doubt holy reason of his own he wore an aged frock coat and a stiff polo collar whose stud supported by a clip a made-up pale-blue bow tie, leaving a long stretch of stringy throat nude to the interested observer; he peered with mild inquiry at Mr. Chitterwick over a pair of steel spectacles.
“You are Mr. James Hall Ings?” nervously accused Mr. Chitterwick.
“I am, brother,” admitted the Gospeller.
Mr. Chitterwick staggered slightly, but recovered himself.
“I—er—hoped to catch you when you were staying at the Piccadilly Palace last June,” he said with complete untruth.
“Indeed?”
“Yes. You—er—you were there, were you not?”
“I was, brother,” said Mr. Ings, with a good deal of solemnity. “Why should I deny it? I went up to that city of unrighteousness to attend a conference called by our founder, Dr. Ezra Drigglington, whose name is no doubt familiar to you, alleluia.”
“I—I beg your pardon?” stammered Mr. Chitterwick, under the momentary impression that he had been called a rude name.
“I said, no doubt the name of our holy founder is familiar to you, praise the Lord. But come inside, brother, if you wish to see me; come inside.”
“No, thank you,” said Mr. Chitterwick hastily. “There is really no need. I have just run down from London, you see, to—to—– That is, I wished to present your fund with—– You—you have a fund?”
“Several, brother,” replied Mr. Ings complacently.
“Exactly. Precisely. Then I just wished to present your fund—that is, one of your funds, with this. A slight token of . . . Exactly. Not at all, not at all. Good afternoon.” And, having thrust a pound note into Mr. Ings’s surprised but ready hand, Mr. Chitterwick returned as quickly as he could to London.
I feared so, I feared so, ruminated Mr. Chitterwick later as with a sigh of contentment he watched the outskirts of Ashton slide for ever out of his sight. Dear me, this is very upsetting. Really, I had thought I was within measurable distance of . . . And now this makes it much more puzzling than it was before. I shall have to think very hard indeed.
And Mr. Chitterwick settled himself down in his corner and thought.
XIII
CLAY FEET TO A PARAGON
The next three days Mr. Chitterwick remained in London in a state of considerable agitation. Each day he knew he was breaking into smaller fragments the promise he had made to Mouse to follow the other two down to Dorsetshire as soon as he had discovered anything of interest; each day he could not make up his mind to fulfil it. Personally he was of the opinion that he had discovered something very important indeed, but, unable to look on one side of any picture only and disregard the other, he could not but harbour an uneasy feeling that he had unearthed nothing more substantial than a mare’s nest, built out of a chance remark which might or might not have held the significance that he had read into it. If he was right, then he had gone some considerable way toward confirming his private solution of the problem; and, to support his theory, such a solution as he had in mind, while still leaving another puzzle to be deciphered, did explain what both he and Mouse had felt to be the crux of their case, namely, the question of how the phial had been placed in Miss Sinclair’s unconscious hand.
Ought he to see Moresby and put his new ideas before that sceptical official? But they were nothing more than ideas; there was practically nothing to support them; he had not been able to take the first step toward proving them. And would Moresby be impressed by a collection of mere ideas, however ingenious? To Mr. Chitterwick’s mind the question answered itself.
Ought he to see the solicitors for the defence and tackle them? Mr. Chitterwick did not know much about solicitors, but he had no difficulty in supplying from his imagination the gap in his knowledge. The solicitors would be jealous of an outsider’s intrusion. They would be dry, legal—demand facts; and Mr. Chitterwick had practically no facts to give them.
Ought he not to talk the whole thing over with Mouse and Judith, regardless of raising hopes that might never be substantiated, and put the responsibility of proof and future action upon them? After all, that was the obvious thing to do. It was their problem and not his. Nevertheless, Mr. Chitterwick would have liked something just a little more tangible to lay before them to strengthen his theory. He spent the greater part of the three days looking for it, poking about here and there, making fruitless inquiries, annoying a great many people with apparently irrelevant questions, but all without result; beyond the negative fact that no trace at all could be found of the waitress who had summoned him to the telephone, nothing emerged that helped in the least to confirm his ideas.
And then Mouse and Judith obligingly resolved his difficulty for him by appearing on the fourth morning at Chiswick and demanding lunch of a delighted Miss Chitterwick.
As soon as Mr. Chitterwick saw them he knew exactly what he should do: tell them exactly his new theory of how the crime was accomplished, and, pending confirmation, continue to conceal his opinion that he had arrived at the person of its perpetrator. How simple.
Having therefore hinted mysteriously at lunch of important developments, he withdrew them after the meal to his aunt’s study as being a place more fitting for momentous disclosures than a mere drawing room. It says much for Miss Chitterwick’s strength of mind that, bursting with curiosity though she was, she refused with resolution this time to attend the conference, saying she had no wish to learn things which everyone afterward might regret having divulged to her.
Mr. Chitterwick beamed upon the intent faces of his two coadjutors, crossed his legs, leaned back in his chair, and cleared his throat.
“The particular problems on which I have been concentrating since I saw you last,” he began, in somewhat didactic tones, “are the administration of the poison and the introduction of the poisoned phial into Miss Sinclair’s hand. Now you will remember that in the summary of the case which I drew up the night before you left here, I expressed the strongest doubts as to whether the coffee had been the vehicle of conveying the poison at all, in spite of the fact that the dregs in the cup were strongly impregnated with prussic acid. I had formed the tentative opinion that that cup might be yet another trap for the police.
“I therefore paid a visit to the Piccadilly Palace in order to ask the waitress who had served Miss Sinclair a few questions. I need not detail now the inquiries I made; it is enough to say that they did actually succeed in reminding the waitress of a circumstance she had quite forgotten. That circumstance was that she had actually fancied that she did see, at one period, a glass on Miss Sinclair’s table containing apparently some liqueur of a white colour.”
“Jolly good,” cried Mouse, smiting his knee. “Just as you guessed.”
“Exactly,” beamed Mr. Chitterwick, and went on to describe just what the waitress had told him.
“This seemed to clear up one point, you see
,” he continued. “I had no doubt that the waitress really did see that glass of liqueur, and that it really was the vehicle in which the poison was administered. But, as again you will see, all this simply presented another puzzle to be solved: who served Miss Sinclair with that glass of liqueur?
“That it could not have been one of the regular waitresses I felt certain. This particular girl seems to have derived a certain amount of—er—kudos through her connection with the tragedy, and I have no doubt at all that any other who could lay claim to a similar distinction would have come forward at once to share her honours; for the same reason it is inconceivable that the incident could have slipped the memory of the girl who had done so. On the other hand, we have a large and decided body of evidence to the effect that nobody at all went near Miss Sinclair between the man’s departure and my own move. Those were the Scylla and Charybdis of the new problem.
“Now, according to Chief Inspector Moresby those witnesses of his are very positive on this point, and the evidence of the first four is certainly remarkably confirmed by that of the fresh two. We may take it as pretty sure, I think, that they honestly believe themselves to be speaking the truth. On the other hand the facts indicate that they are mistaken. How are we to reconcile this discrepancy?” Mr. Chitterwick looked inquiringly at his audience.
The audience looked at each other, and Mouse spoke for both. “Don’t ask me,” he said helplessly.
“I asked myself,” proceeded Mr. Chitterwick. “Not once, but many times. And at first I must admit I could find no answer at all. Then all at once, just as I was on the point of leaving the hotel, a remarkable idea occurred to me. Or perhaps I should say, more accurately, two separate ideas, but so blended together that it took me a moment or two to disentangle them. The first one was this: Might not all these witnesses have actually seen something which they did not, so to speak, perceive?” Again Mr. Chitterwick paused.
“What exactly did you say, Mr. Chitterwick?” asked Judith.
“Don’t quite get that,” mumbled Mouse.
Mr. Chitterwick looked slightly distressed. “Dear me, I am afraid I am explaining this rather badly. But it is difficult to put in general terms. Perhaps I may express it something like this: Could the eyes of those witnesses have rested on something so commonplace that their brains refused to register the impression? In other words, could they be quite correct in stating that no other visitor to the Piccadilly Palace approached Miss Sinclair during the critical period, and yet incorrect in stating that no person did?”
“Put it in words of one syllable,” Mouse begged. “I must be terribly dense to-day.”
“You still don’t see my meaning? Then I’ll state it bluntly. Suppose it was a waitress who went up to Miss Sinclair. That would be so commonplace an occurrence in that particular locality that the witnesses, although seeing it perfectly well, might retain no impression of it at all and be quite ready to swear that nobody had done so. I think,” said Mr. Chitterwick diffidently, “that that is a feasible suggestion.”
“It’s very ingenious,” said Judith, not exactly grudgingly, but as if not yet quite convinced.
“But doesn’t it still leave you up against the trouble that it couldn’t have been a waitress after all?” Mouse asked, evidently suspending judgment.
“It does, yes; and that is where the second part of my blended idea comes in. You will see how the two parts work in together. This was my second idea: Suppose the murderer had a female accomplice, disguised as a waitress!” Mr. Chitterwick beaned round in undisguised pride.
This time Judith was impressed as well as Mouse. She sat up sharply in her chair and looked at Mr. Chitterwick with big eyes. “Have you any evidence to support that?” she asked, almost peremptorily.
“Only negatively, I am afraid,” lamented Mr. Chitterwick. “But, as you will see, so far as argument goes there is everything in its favour. Just think how that fact would simplify matters. Why, it solves nearly all the small puzzles connected with the actual death of Miss Sinclair. The serving of the liqueur, the removal of the glass after it had served its purpose, the pouring of a few drops of the poison into the empty coffee cup, the placing of the prepared phial in Miss Sinclair’s hand, to say nothing of the death occurring so long after the man’s departure and his subsequent ability, should it ever come to the point, to clear himself of the crime. Why, all those little difficulties disappear like magic.”
“But how could such a thing have been done?” asked Judith, who had become quite tense. “I quite see that it should simplify matters from our point of view, but—but surely the difficulties would have made it impossible. How could anyone have masqueraded as a waitress for two minutes without being detected? It’s a marvellous idea, but—–” She shook her head regretfully.
“Really, I don’t think it would be impossible at all,” argued Mr. Chitterwick with energy. “I have devoted considerable thought to the point, as you may imagine, and the more I ponder on it the easier I feel the plan would have been to carry out. Just consider. The accomplice has not to mingle with the other waitresses at all. A careful time-table would of course have been made in advance, or some arrangement whereby she would need to spend only the minimum amount of time in the danger zone, so to speak. She would be concealed somewhere, no doubt, till the man emerges from the lounge and tells her that everything is ready, and after that all she has to do is to carry the glass in on a tray (and who is going to question that?), deliver it to Miss Sinclair, wait until the latter had drunk the requisite amount of it (that would be the only really dangerous period), remove it, and at the same time slip the phial that she had with her into Miss Sinclair’s hand, and make good her retreat. What could be simpler?
“It would be difficult in a smaller place, I admit, but in the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace, without even considering the restaurant and grillroom, there are so many waitresses that they can hardly all know each other even by sight. New faces are appearing every day. She would choose her moment of course when the correct waitress for that table had just gone to the service quarters. It would be easy for her to do so. She would only have to walk about busily with her tray, and no one is going to question her presence. It seems to me a plan that is ingenious only in its utter simplicity.
“I am taking certain things for granted, of course, such as that the man would have prepared the way for a liqueur to arrive and ensured Miss Sinclair’s drinking it, and that the amount of poison contained in it would have been enough to ensure death after quite a small sip. I can see no other obstacles. The phial she would hold by its cork, to avoid fingerprints. Any stooping over Miss Sinclair could have been effected under the pretence of picking something up from the floor, or some such subterfuge. I am convinced this is the truth about the way the murder was committed.” Mr. Chitterwick was quite red in his earnestness.
“I agree,” said Mouse solemnly. “I think you’ve proved your point, Chitterwick. By Jove, we shall owe you something by the time we’re through with this affair.”
But Judith, it seemed, was not quite so readily convinced. “But how could she have got into the clothes, Mr. Chitterwick? She could hardly have changed on the premises, surely, and it would have been far too dangerous to arrive ready dressed for the part. I’m afraid I can see a good many more difficulties, from the woman’s point of view, than may have occurred to you.”
“That one had, however,” said Mr. Chitterwick, more mildly. “The question of adopting her disguise I have certainly considered. Here I must admit I’m on merely supposititious ground; but putting myself so far as one can in her place, one course seems to me to stand out as quite obvious, and that would be to hire, in propria persona, a room in the hotel. She could then change there in security and wait safely until the man came to tell her the coast was clear; while he, for his part, could adopt there any disguise, such as a wig, which he had found necessary, and prepare the various poisoned utensils. In my opinion
that course is so obviously advantageous that, assuming I am not completely mistaken from beginning to end, this is almost certainly what occurred.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Mouse. “She can be traced and identified if she did.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Chitterwick, though somewhat dubiously. “So I had thought too, and have even gone so far as to examine the register with that intention. But the Piccadilly Palace is a very large hotel. There are over a thousand bedrooms, and all occupied every night. On that particular day no less than two hundred and seventeen women, according to my calculations, were occupying single rooms there. To pick this particular one out of that number, would, I fear, be quite beyond an amateur detective’s powers.”
“Oh!” said Mouse.
“We must try to discover her identity by other means: her association with the murderer, for instance.”
“Having first discovered who the murderer is,” put in Judith, somewhat drily.
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Chitterwick, and looked a little guilty. “Having first discovered that, no doubt.”
“And having discovered, too, that there ever was such a person at all,” added Judith, who still seemed sceptical. “As I said, Mr. Chitterwick, it’s a very ingenious theory of yours, but I can’t see that there’s the faintest jot of evidence to support it. Of course, it does simplify some of our problems, but we mustn’t regard as fact, or even as probable fact, everything that does that, must we?”
“Oh, no; certainly not. But you see, there is a tiny shred of evidence to support it.”
“There is?” Judith was alert again. “What, then?”
“Well, as I think I mentioned, only a little bit of negative evidence, and indeed it may turn out to be nothing more than a coincidence after all, but this is how it struck me. The waitress who called me to the telephone spoke to me in the vestibule afterward, asking if I had got my call. There was nothing odd in that, of course. When I remarked that it seemed to have been a mistake, and there was apparently no call for me at all, she asked me if I was not Number 473; when I said I was not, she observed casually that I was as like Number 473 as two peas. And that,” apologized Mr. Chitterwick, “is really all the evidence I can produce.”
The Piccadilly Murder Page 20