Murder of a Martinet

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “It doesn’t seem a very good idea to me,” said Macdonald; “but let’s get back to Tuesday morning: You say you got up before it was quite light and washed the glasses. Where did you wash them?”

  “In the bathroom on the next floor. Then I took them downstairs and put them away and locked the cabinet. After that I went down to the kitchen. I was cold and I thought I could find a hot-water bottle to take back to bed with me, but the one I sometimes borrow wasn’t there, so I went back to bed without it. When I got upstairs again I remembered I’d left the key of the cabinet on the kitchen table, but I was too tired to go downstairs again, so I just thought Madge would find it there. I was just getting sleepy when I heard Madge’s alarm clock go off, and a little later Father came upstairs to her room. I heard his voice. I went downstairs a little later. Madge was telephoning. I asked her what was the matter, but she only snapped at me, and I came upstairs again. I felt simply awful, but there wasn’t anything I could do because Madge was so hateful. Later on I went in and told Anne, and she said I’d better go back to bed because I was cold.

  She spoke like an unhappy child, and Macdonald’s mind was divided between irritation and a realisation that he was sorry for her. He did not believe that she was telling the truth, and she seemed so much too young to be involved in this sorry story.

  “Did you see a lot of your mother?” he asked gently, and to his surprise she answered quite composedly:

  “Oh, no. We didn’t get on very well. She didn’t understand the sort of world I know. She thought dancing was just pretty-pretty, and I had a tough time before I made her understand I was serious about it. 1 know she meant to be kind, but she just didn’t understand. I can’t think how she ever had children like Peter and me. We were all wrong. It was the war, partly, and we went to a crazy sort of school because it was in the Welsh mountains and so safe. And we just grew different.”

  “I think there is often a big gap between children and parents of today,” said Macdonald. “The war, as you say, does account for it in young people of your age. Getting back to your party again, I suppose that in the general movement it was impossible to say that everybody could be accounted for all the time?”

  She grasped his meaning immediately. “On. but we were all up here. Nobody went downstairs.”

  “Can that be true? You say the party went on from eight o’clock until two. Didn’t people go down to the bathroom, and if so, you wouldn’t have been likely to notice how long they were away, would you? It wasn’t even as though you all stayed in one room.”

  “I wish you’d say exactly what you mean.” This time the words were snapped out, in the manner of an angry child. “I suppose you’re suggesting that I, or Peter, could have gone downstairs without being noticed and gone into Mother’s room and jabbed a hypodermic into her while she was asleep.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything, Miss Farrington. I am giving you the opportunity to prove that such a thing was impossible if the suggestion is made. You have got to realise that someone did use a hypodermic on your mother.”

  “I do realise it, but it wasn’t done by Peter or by me. I was watching him nearly all the time. Peter gets drunk on about two gins, and I knew I’d got to watch him. And I did watch him. He wasn’t out of any sight long enough to have gone downstairs: you know how many stairs there are up to this floor. Anyway, he didn’t want to go downstairs, in case he met any of the family. They all fuss so when we have a party.”

  “And did Peter get drunk?”

  “Not really. Only sleepy. Actually he went to bed before they all went home.” She suddenly stood up. “Do you mind if we go downstairs? I’m frozen, and there isn’t a stove up here. It fused or something.”

  “Certainly. Will you just show me which is your room and which is your brother’s?”

  “All right.” She went to the door and pointed across the landing. “The first is mine. The second is Peter’s. The last one is a lumber room.”

  Paula moved to the stairs and went down a few steps, but Macdonald crossed the little landing and went on past Paula’s bedroom door, which stood open, to the next door. She called to him: “I told you Peter’s door was locked. He often locks it when he goes out. He hates having his things moved about.”

  Macdonald bent and looked in the keyhole of the bedroom door. Then he turned a torchlight on it and said: “But this door is locked on the inside. The key is still in the lock.”

  2

  It never took Macdonald long to make up his mind. While Paula was still calling out, “It isn’t. It can’t be,” the C.I.D. man took a pair of long, slender pliers from his pocket and got them inside the big old-fashioned keyhole and turned the key. Then he said to Paula: “If your brother has gone out, what is there to worry about? Somebody locked this door on the inside. Do you know who is here?”

  “Nobody. It’s all a silly mistake. You can’t go in—Peter hates people going into his room.”

  Macdonald opened the door: the curtains were across the window, but the light which filtered in from the open door showed him the boy’s slack figure lying across the disordered bed. A voice sounded on the stairs—Madge’s voice—cool and sensible: “What the matter, Paula? What are you arguing about?”

  Macdonald said: “Stay with your sister; the lad, here, is ill.”

  As Madge had done when called into her mother’s bedroom, Macdonald went and pulled the curtains apart swiftly and then came back to the bed. The bey was dressed, his limbs sprawled limply across the bed; he was breathing, but quite unconscious. When Macdonald lifted his hand it dropped limply back again on the bedclothes. He went and opened the window and leaned out. giving a long, clear whistle, and heard an answer from the street beneath. As he came back to the bed Madge entered the room.

  “I’ve taken her down to Anne,” she said as she came up to the bed.

  “I’ll get an ambulance,” said Macdonald. “Can you tell what’s the cause of this?”

  She stood with her fingers on his pulse and then raised one of the eyelids. “I think it’s drugs. Not insulin again. Oh, God, what possessed him to do it, poor silly boy?”

  Macdonald had heard the front-door bell ringing far below, then Mrs. Pinks’ voice was raised in audible protest, and swift footsteps sounded, taking the stairs three at a time. Macdonald went to the door. “Reeves? Good. Ambulance and surgeon. The phone’s in the drawing room on the ground floor. Stay downstairs and bring the men up when they come.”

  He went back into the room. “Had you any idea the lad took drugs?” he asked.

  Madge took her time in answering. “I don’t know, but I wondered. I hardly ever see him. He’s out a lot, and he doesn’t ever speak to me if he can help it. He’s never had a chance to be a reasonable person.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mothered to death, almost. He was a delicate child, the second of the twins, always ailing. He never went to school until the war started; too delicate. It was all rot, of course. He’d have been much better at school. At home he just malingered the whole time. Then he was sent to one of those freak schools, with Paula. When be left he was more impossible than ever. Then be began to hate his mother. The Services wouldn’t have him because of his poor physique, and his mother got him a job in a lawyer’s office, which I believe he hates. Anyway, he’s been a neurotic mess for months. I suppose he got in a panic when he heard you were in the house, and this is the result.” Her voice was slow and reflective, a brooding voice. She stood and looked down at the boy lying on the bed, and then her eyes roamed round the littered, untidy room, as though looking for something, and Macdonald watched her in turn.

  “You say he began to hate his mother?” he asked. “Why was that?”

  “A perfectly natural revulsion from being alternately petted and bullied. He got away from it while he was at school, and when he came back home again he resented it, and eventually it nauseated him. Paula knows much more about him than anybody else, but she won’t tell you anything. She’s always got hi
m out of his messes. She’d do anything for him. She knows if he’s taken to drugs, but she won’t tell you. She’ll probably say I poisoned him.”

  3

  “Morphia, or one of its derivatives. Where did he get it from?”

  The police surgeon cocked an eye at Macdonald, and the latter replied: “It seems likely that it was obtained from the same source as the insulin which killed his mother. It’s my job to check that. It’s yours to tell me if he’s an addict, or if this is an isolated instance. Either way, it’s better for him to be kept under observation for the time being. When you’ve got him away I want to search this room.”

  “You have some lively jobs, Chief. And this house looks the very essence of dignified middle-class prosperity.”

  Macdonald glanced round the slovenly, littered room; clothes and painting materials, books, papers and paper bags, toilet articles and dirty shoes, modelling clay, charcoal, and drawing inks were strewn in grubby confusion over chairs and chest and table and floor. A half-packed suitcase lay by the bed, piles of torn-up papers were under the bed; the walls were scrawled over with grotesque drawings and the grate was filled with a noxious mess of burnt papers and dirty paint rags.

  “The dignified middle-class prosperity seems to have gone haywire,” said Macdonald, “but this room seems to me to be more representative of the minds of the inmates of the house than does the orderliness of the lower floors.”

  He broke off as Colonel Farrington appeared at the door. Whatever the Colonel had been about to say, the sight of the room and the boy’s figure on the bed deprived him of speech. He turned mutely to Macdonald.

  “He’s not in any danger, sir. Just drugged. I’m having him sent to hospital. The stretcher men will be here any minute.” “But what happened? Why . . . and who did it?”

  “So far as I can tell, he must have doped himself, sir. The door was locked on the inside and the key was still in the lock. The only person who could have locked the door was the boy himself, because the window was latched and nobody could have got out that way. Ah, there’s the ambulance—”

  “But surely he could be looked after here—in his own home,” cried the Colonel. “We could move him into another room, get a nurse; surely you needn’t—”

  “He’ll be better in hospital, sir. Now, if you’ll wait outside while the men come up—there’s not too much room in here.” After the stretcher had been carried downstairs, Macdonald left Detective Inspector Reeves in Peter’s bedroom and told Colonel Farrington that he wanted to see Paula again. The Colonel said: “Can I be with you while you talk to her? She’s only a child, and Anne says she seems numbed with the shock of finding Peter like this.”

  “I think it would be wiser if you let me talk to her without any of her own family present, sir. If you prefer it, a woman officer can be present. There is a very sensible, kindly woman waiting in the car outside. You see, you naturally regard your daughter as still a child. I know she is young, hut she is old enough to be held responsible for what she says and does.”

  “But she hasn’t done anything,” said the old man despairingly. “You have just said that Peter himself must have been responsible for his condition. He had locked himself in that room.”

  “Yes, but I think his sister knew what had happened to some extent. I’m sorry, sir, but she has got to answer some questions—or be given the chance of answering some questions.”

  4

  Paula faced Macdonald with a set face, her lips in a tight line, her eyes dark.

  “You told me that your brother had gone out while Mrs. Pinks was talking to me in the box room,” said Macdonald. “Why did you say that?”

  “Because I thought he had gone out. I called to him and he didn’t answer. I tried his door and it was locked. He only locks it when he goes out, so I supposed he had gone out.”

  “You went to his room and talked to him before you had your bath, after you had been told that a detective was in the house?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Very well. Did you know that he was taking drugs, or that he possessed any drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know that he was in trouble of any kind, that he had any money troubles or any other worries?”

  “He was always hard up, but I was so used to it I didn’t take much notice.”

  “Then what was he referring to when he said, ‘I’ve got to have that money and to have it quickly. Can’t you borrow it under the will?’ ”

  “He never said anything of the kind.”

  Macdonald paused for a moment, and the woman officer, having finished her competent line of shorthand, waited with pencil poised.

  “At the moment, you are not on oath,” said Macdonald. “I shall simply ask you to sign a statement of what you have just said. But at some future time you may be asked the same questions when you are on oath in the witness box. Do you understand what perjury is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I advise you to think things over. If it be proved that your brother is in serious financial difficulties—and such things are very easy to prove—no judge or jury will believe that you knew nothing about it. I don’t believe it. I realise fully how hard things are for you, but no hard situation is ever simplified by lying about it.”

  Paula sat perfectly still and made no answer.

  Macdonald went on: “When I first saw you upstairs this morning you said, ‘Shall we go downstairs?’ Later you said, ‘Do you mind if we go downstairs? I’m frozen stiff.’ When I asked which was your brother’s room you said. ‘Peter’s door is locked. He often locks it when he goes out.’ Weren’t you doing your best to get me away from the top floor because you knew your brother had doped himself?”

  She made no answer, and Macdonald went on: “Earlier you had said, ‘Peter has gone out.’ Not ‘I think he has gone out.’ Doesn’t he generally speak to you in the morning before he goes out?”

  “No. I’m generally asleep when he goes out.”

  “Once again, have you any idea he took drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Then do you believe that someone else drugged him deliberately for their own ends?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Paula signed her statement later, and the woman officer said to Macdonald: “Of course she did know that her brother had doped himself. If she hadn’t known she would have been bursting with questions. One can always tell when a witness of that type is obstinately telling lies, they’re so utterly unnatural.”

  “She hasn’t had much practice, poor child,” said Macdonald. “The boy is her twin, and she’s trying to do her best for him.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  MACDONALD went up to the attics again, where Reeves was coping with the disorder of Peter’s room.

  “I’ll lay any money the boy dopes,” said Reeves. “That’s why his room’s in such a filthy muck. It always takes them that way. It’s quite a decent room, nicely decorated and furnished, and he’s turned it into a fair shambles. Mind what you touch. There are burst tubes of paint all over the show.”

  “Any sign of drugs?”

  “I don’t think so, though there’s a lot of stuff in bottles which might be anything—powder paint or medium or what not. I’m bunging it all into that case. And there’s a hypodermic. Hallo, who’s that shouting downstairs? Some chap in a bate. It’s always a good sign in our job when somebody starts creating. Shows we’re getting somewhere. I don’t like these standstill cases.”

  “It’s certainly not Colonel Farrington, and we know it’s not Peter Farrington,” said Macdonald, his head cocked to one side as he listened to the man’s voice which came from a lower floor, “so presumably it’s one of the younger husbands—Anthony Strange or Philip Duncan. It sounds as though he’s coming up here. Well, you’ve got enough to do in this room to keep you busy for a bit.”

  “That’s about it,” said Reeves. “That char ought to be grateful to me. I’m saving her a packet. Grand old girl she is, too. Didn’t
half say her bit when I dashed up her stairs with never a by-your-leave.”

  A sharp knock sounded on the door and Reeves grinned to himself. He always said you could tell the state of a person’s nerves by the way they knocked on a door. There was the timorous tap, the blatant bang, the approach apologetic, and the tap proprietary. Reeves judged the present summons to come under the last heading. Macdonald opened the door and found a tall, well-groomed fellow on the landing.

  “Chief Inspector Macdonald? My name is Strange. My wife telephoned to me saying that you were here, and I have only just heard the circumstances which brought you here. It’s really imperative that I should give you the facts which I happen to know. If you could come downstairs a moment?”

  He spoke very quickly, evidently in considerable agitation, though also making an effort to speak clearly and calmly.

  “A civil servant, or I’ll eat my hat,” was Reeves’ reaction to the newcomer. Agitated he might be. but the precision and slight pompousness of the official still sounded through the man’s obvious excitement. He was a good-looking fellow, too, admirably tailored in a dark suit, with an immaculate white collar and wide black tie.

  “Certainly, Mr. Strange,” Macdonald was replying in his quiet, deliberate way. “I am glad you came home so promptly. It is a great help to get all the facts as quickly as possible in a case like this.” His steady voice and even speech helped Strange to recover his own aplomb, and as he preceded Macdonald down the stairs he said:

  “I realise that, and so few people are capable of being accurate. It’s a thing we’re always up against in my department; I suppose it’s not to be wondered at that everybody in this house seems to have lost their heads today. Come in here, will you?” He led the way into the same sitting room where Macdonald had already seen Anne Strange that morning. Anne herself was standing by the window, and her husband spoke to her as he entered the room.