Trent Intervenes

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘Why were all the other gates in working order—the top gate, where the lift was, unlocked; the other two locked?

  ‘On this very vital point I have had some conversation with the expert who was sent to investigate by the firm which built and installed the lift. The mechanism, he told me, was tested by the makers at monthly intervals, and had been in perfect order at the last examination, ten days before. The system was as nearly fool-proof as it could be. “But,” he added, “it isn’t tool-proof. Any engineer could see with half an eye that both those locks have been forced.”

  ‘Here are the elements of a very sinister mystery. Someone who was not Mr Hermon forced the ground-floor gate. Presumably he forced the other. The only persons known to have been in the house from three o’clock onwards were the caretaker in the basement, the French manservant in M. Binet-Gailly’s flat, and the housekeeper in Mr Haggett’s. Did someone enter the house before Mr Hermon; or did someone accompany him? To this point the inquiries of the police are being directed—so far, I believe, without result.

  ‘If Mr Hermon was a victim of violence, it is hard to think that any feeling of ill-will could have been at work. It is true that he was a man of strong opinions, often violently expressed in public controversy—the hard knocks exchanged between him and his tenant, Mr Clayton Haggett, in their dispute over vivisection last year will be remembered. But he was always a fair and even a chivalrous fighter, on the friendliest footing with opponents to whom he was personally known. His nature was kindly and generous, his great wealth was largely devoted to works of benevolence; the hospital endowments made by him as memorials to his late wife are but a part of his service to humanity.’

  Trent did not try to intrude on the sorrow of Anthony Maxwell; but he had from the young man’s valet, Joseph Weaver, some material information. He learned that the nephew felt his loss very deeply indeed; that he did not look like the same man. He had, Weaver said, a feeling heart. A little wild he might have been—young gentlemen would be young gentlemen—but he had what they call a nice nature. He owed everything to Mr Hermon, who had been a father to him after his parents died when he was a child. Naturally he was very much upset.

  Trent reflected privately on the deceitfulness of appearances; for he knew Anthony Maxwell by sight, and would not have said that either his eye, his mouth, or his bearing proclaimed the niceness of his nature. Perhaps Weaver was being loyal to his employer. He did not look particularly loyal; but then he did not look anything to speak of. He had the expressionlessness of his calling. His quiet voice, neat clothes, and sleek black hair suggested nothing but discretion. Trent asked a question.

  Mr Hermon, Weaver said, came up fairly often on business from his place in Surrey, and when he did so always visited his nephew. Sometimes he came on purpose to see him. No; Mr Maxwell had not been expecting him on the day of the accident; he had given no notice that he was coming. If he had done so, Mr Maxwell would naturally have been at home. Weaver thought it unlikely that Mr Hermon had been intending to call on any of the other tenants. He did do so from time to time, to talk about some matters of repairs or other landlord’s business; but that would always be by appointment, and not during the working day. All the tenants, Weaver pointed out, were busy men, with the exception of Mr Maxwell; they would seldom be at home until the evening.

  Yes; Mr Hermon attended personally to the management of all his house property in the West End. There was a good deal of it, and it gave him occupation. No; he was not what they call a hard landlord; quite the contrary, Weaver would say. Mr Hermon liked to do things for people, being a very generous man, as Weaver had good reason to know.

  ‘You mean that he was generous to you,’ Trent suggested. ‘A present for you when he called here—that sort of thing?’

  ‘Mr Hermon always behaved like a gentleman,’ Weaver said demurely. ‘But I meant more than that, sir. You see, I was two years in his service before I came to Mr Maxwell; that is how I came to know so much about his habits, and to appreciate his kindness. Then when Mr Hermon went on a tour round the world, he suggested I should go to Mr Maxwell, who was not satisfied with the valet he had then; and I have remained in his service since then—about nine months ago it would be.’

  When Trent went to talk it over with his friend Chief Inspector Bligh, he found that officer cheerfully interested in what he described as a very nice case.

  ‘There’s nothing easy,’ he said, ‘about it so far. Of course, it’s a murder—that’s certain. You have heard what the lift company’s man says. And, of course, it was meant to look as if it might be an accident.’

  ‘Then how about the ground-floor gate being forced as well as the other? That doesn’t look like an accident.’

  ‘Well, what does it look like?’ Mr Bligh wanted to know.

  ‘It looks to me as it looks to you, I suppose. When the old man had been pushed into the lift shaft, the murderer realized that something had gone wrong with his plan. Hermon had had something on him that might give the murderer away if it was found on the body. The only thing for him to do was to run downstairs, prise open the bottom gate, and take what he wanted off the body. If Pimblett or anybody appeared while he was doing so, he could say he had seen the old man open the gate and fall down the shaft, and had rushed down and forced the gate to see if he was still alive.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘Yes; that’s the idea. And he did get what he wanted, presumably; and nobody did see him. Of course, it’s the sort of place where nobody is about most of the time, and the man who did the job knew that.’

  ‘Well, how about the people who live here? Are they all above suspicion?’

  ‘There is no such thing,’ Mr Bligh declared, ‘as being above suspicion—not if I do the suspecting. And it just happens that most of them haven’t an alibi. The Museum man has, of course; his flat was shut up, and is still. And the Corderoys were at their dress shop till after six. But the Frenchman was alone when he came in and reported having found the body; and his story of how he found it, and what time he entered the house, is quite unsupported. Maxwell says he lunched at his flat, went out immediately afterwards, and spent all the afternoon at Lord’s watching Lancashire take a licking from Middlesex; then went to his club with some other bright boys, had drinks, and came home to dress for dinner. But Lord’s is a place you can dodge out of and return to later, and it’s no distance for a car to Rigby Street. Then there’s Clayton Haggett, the surgeon. He had lunch in his flat too, after a morning at the hospital; went down to his car at 2:30, had an operation at a nursing-home and another at a private house; finished by 4:15, had a cup of tea, and then spent two hours driving about down Richmond way—just to take the air, and nobody with him all that time, which is a pity.’

  ‘He didn’t like Hermon,’ Trent remarked. ‘He was very bitter in that tussle they had over vivisection.’

  ‘Yes, and he’s got a naughty temper when he’s crossed. Loses his self-control. He had to resign from the Hunter Club for knocking a man down in the smoking-room. Nobody would have anything to do with him if he wasn’t such a wizard with the knife.’

  ‘And what about the servants in the building? Do they come into the picture at all?’

  ‘All I can tell you is that none of their stories can be checked. Pimblett says he was in the basement all the afternoon until the Frenchman shouted for him; his wife was away calling on her sister in Highbury. The French manservant and Haggett’s housekeeper say they never opened the doors of their flats until the police looked them up after the finding of the body. Maxwell’s man says he had the afternoon off, went out after his master had gone, and sat through the cinema programme at the Byzantine, getting back a little before Anthony did. Well, what good’s that? Like the other three, he can’t prove anything at all about where he was for some hours before the police were called in.’

  ‘Any of them ever been in trouble?’

  ‘Nothing known against any of them. Ex-Sergeant Pimblett—excellent record. Mrs Hargreaves, t
he housekeeper—ditto. Weaver used to be employed at Harding’s, the big barbershop in Duke Street, where old Hermon used to go when he was in town. He always had Weaver to attend to him, and at last he took him on as his valet. Afterwards—’

  ‘Yes, he told me; he was switched onto Anthony. Perfectly respectable. And the French domestic?’

  ‘All I know about Aristide Recot is that he has a wooden face and side-whiskers, and doesn’t mind being seen in an apron. What I’m told by his master is that he has been with him for some years, and given every satisfaction. But what’s the use? We had to consider the servants, of course; but what motive could any of them have had? It’s a different thing when you come to their employers. Haggett, for instance.’

  Trent looked the inspector in the eyes. ‘You were talking about motive,’ he said gently. ‘Is Haggett’s resentment really the strongest you can think of? I don’t like being teased.’

  ‘All right; I was coming to it,’ Mr Bligh responded with a faint grin. ‘Yes, I suppose the expectation of coming into the greater part of a very large fortune might operate as a motive. That is what Maxwell will do, according to our information. Unless something happens to him. His uncle made him a very generous allowance, and he lived rent-free, and Weaver’s wages were paid by the old man. Maxwell ought to have been grateful, and perhaps he was; but there you are—he’s a vicious young brute, and always in debt; and though Hermon wasn’t strong, he might have lived to any old age. Now then! Will that do for you?’

  ‘Something of the sort had crossed my mind,’ Trent admitted. ‘Certainly it will do—until something better comes along.’

  Mr Bligh raised an impressive finger. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you something that hadn’t crossed your mind. It’s information received. If it’s right, the coroner will hear it at a later stage, but at present we would rather the murderer didn’t know about it. You remember I mentioned that Clayton Haggett left his flat at 2:30 that afternoon. Well, he had more to tell us than that. He went down by the lift, he said. It’s rather a slow-motion lift. As it passed down by the floor below—Anthony’s floor—Haggett heard some words spoken. He could see as he passed that the door of the flat was just being opened from inside, and as it opened he heard a loud, bullying voice call out, “You do what I say, and look sharp about it. If you get on the wrong side of me, you know what to expect.” That is as near as Haggett can go to the actual words he heard—I asked him to be particular.’

  Trent stared at the inspector with kindling eyes. ‘You do like saving up the best bit to the last, don’t you? And you had this—this!—simply handed to you. On a plate.’

  ‘With parsley round it,’ added Mr Bligh, unashamed.

  ‘I have heard you use that phrase before,’ Trent said thoughtfully. ‘It meant, I think, that you were rather mistrustful of good things that came so easily. But now, what about this remarkable addition to the record? Did Haggett recognize the voice? Did he see anybody?’

  ‘No. Haggett says it might have been Maxwell he heard talking; but he only knows Maxwell by sight, has never spoken to him, and has no idea what his voice would sound like if it was raised. And, of course, it might have been anybody else in the world. Then I asked him what class of voice it was—like a curate’s, or a dustman’s, or what. All he could tell me was that it was not a coarse voice, and not a refined one; just middling. Very useful! But that isn’t all. As the lift got to the bottom, he heard a door above slam violently, which he assumed to be the one he had just seen being opened; and as he was getting into his car, Maxwell came out of the street door, with his hat on, looking furiously angry and very red in the face, and walked away rapidly.’

  Trent considered this. ‘So this is Haggett’s information. And what does Maxwell say about it?’

  ‘He hasn’t been asked—yet. He is being given a little more time to make mistakes. But, of course, it may all be a lie. Yes, you may look surprised; but Haggett isn’t out of it yet, as I told you. There’s another piece of news I’ve got for you, which certainly isn’t a lie. When Jackson did the post mortem, he found something that wants a lot of explaining.’

  ‘What! Another thing you are keeping dark?’

  ‘For the present. He noticed that the fingernails of the right hand looked as if they had been scratching hard at something, and there was a very faint odour that he couldn’t place; so he took some scrapings from the nails to be analysed. They found some tiny scraps of human skin; also traces of some things with hydrocarbo scientific names that don’t seem to tell you much, and one thing that I have heard of quite often before.’

  ‘Yes. What?’

  ‘Chloroform.’

  Thinking it over in his studio, Trent could make no more of this at first than Mr Bligh and he had made between them. If there had been a struggle, and if chloroform had been used, it did seem to point to the one resident in the house who might be presumed to know all about chloroform and what could be done with it. And Haggett was known to be a hot-tempered man and a good hater, as well as a very able and successful professional man—not an unknown combination of qualities. But Trent found it hard to believe in such a character expressing its dislike in murder done by tricky and treacherous means. A quarrel; yes. An assault; possibly. As assault with a fatal result, legally a murder; such things did happen. But a planned and cold-blooded crime, with the murderer scheming to avoid detection by means of a trumped-up tale—Trent did not see it. In his experience, trained faculties, high responsibility, and professional distinction did not go with dirty actions and circumstantial lying.

  But if Haggett’s story of what he had heard and seen was true, how could it be fitted to the known facts? Maxwell’s own statement about the time at which he had left the building agreed with Haggett’s. Weaver’s statement was that he had, as was natural, gone out a little later. Both of them had said nothing of this loud-voiced unknown who had used threatening language in Maxwell’s flat. It might have been Maxwell himself. Could it have been Hermon? But Hermon had been fond, even foolishly fond, of his nephew. Unless—and here opened a new vista of ugliness—both Maxwell and his servant had been concealing the truth on that point, building up the fiction of a generous benefactor whom for worlds Maxwell would not have injured. There might be purpose enough in their doing so. The inspector had not thought of that; at least (Trent reflected with a wry smile) he had not mentioned it. Hermon’s visit, by the way, had been a surprise visit, according to Weaver.

  Trent, at this point in his meditations, rose and began to pace the studio. Soon he went across to the model’s dressing-room and examined his appearance in the mirror there. His hair had been cut fairly recently, but another trimming would not upset the balance of nature, he thought. Within the hour he was one of a dozen sheeted forms, sitting in a strange chair before a tall mirror, and had met the attendant’s opening comment on the warmth of the day with the due rejoinder that it looked like rain later on.

  Trent, like many other men, found his thoughts the clearer for being written down, and would often prepare for the drafting of a dispatch that could be published by a private memorandum including all that could not. That evening he sat at his bureau, and did not rise until the account of what he had discovered, and the conclusions drawn, was complete in black and white.

  ‘Starting with the belief that Haggett’s story was true’ (he wrote), ‘I had to make out who the person in Maxwell’s flat was who gave some order, in offensive words, coupled with a vague threat; and who the person ordered about and threatened was. As Bligh said, it might have been anyone who used those words; someone who had not as yet come into view in the case. But it was as well to consider first those who were known to have been in the place; and one of these was Hermon. But the accounts we had of Hermon made this seem unlikely; and they were not only the accounts given by Maxwell and his valet. Hermon’s general reputation was that of a man who would be the last in the world to bully and threaten. As for the others who had been in the other flats, there was no
visible shadow of a reason for suspecting anyone of them.

  ‘There remained Maxwell and his valet.

  ‘Maxwell might be capable of bullying and threatening. He is not a nice young man. Could he have been the speaker, and either Hermon or Weaver the man spoken to?

  ‘Well, is it likely? Maxwell is not a lunatic. No man in his senses would talk like that to his rich uncle, whose fortune he expected to inherit; nor to his valet unless he was prepared for the man leaving him on the spot, and for being obliged to do his own valeting and cooking and housework until he could get another servant. Unless, of course, he had got either of them under his thumb in some way. Has Hermon, or Weaver, a guilty past, known to Maxwell?

  ‘I had got as far as this when a new point occurred to me. Weaver, when I saw him, had told me that Maxwell had not been expecting his uncle’s visit. As this looked very much like a plain lie, I thought some attention paid to Weaver might be worth the trouble; and so I went and had my hair cut at Harding’s.

  ‘The man who cut it was as ready for conversation as barbers usually are. I spoke of the fatal accident to Mr Hermon, and the barber, who may have been reading my own remarks on the subject, said that it was a funny sort of accident, giving his reasons for that view. Then I mentioned that I knew Mr Hermon’s former valet had once had a job at Harding’s. The man remembered both of them very well. He only wished he had the chance of bettering himself as Weaver had done. He had not known that Weaver had become Mr Maxwell’s valet; but he had known that Weaver had done very well for himself. Besides that, Weaver had come into a bit of money of his own; he had mentioned it confidential. He was quite the gentleman now, especially in the last six months. He had taken to having his hair done at Harding’s once a fortnight, probably just to show off a bit among his old pals. Gold wristwatch, diamond tie-pin, quite the swell. Liked to do himself well, too, in his time off; and why not if you could run to it? Sometimes he would have my barber and other friends from Harding’s to meet him after hours, and would stand drinks like a lord; and you could always see he had had a few beforehand.