by Leo Bruce
“How?” asked Detective Inspector Whibley with a smile.
“Because when faced with the truth now one of the four survivors of that night will break down and tell you what happened. I, thank heavens, shall be a long way away.”
Mr. Gorringer cleared his throat.
“I feel,” he said, “that that is a signal for us to give Deene a little break from his exhausting task. Detective Inspector, may I offer you some refreshment?”
“Thank you. I’ll have a lager beer.”
“I hope the young lady downstairs can supply it. We will see. You doubtless find Deene’s exposition of interest?”
“There’s very little so far which we did not know or suspect.”
“Ah! For once the private investigator and the official police are in agreement. That is indeed a break from precedent.”
“There’s a long way to go yet,” warned Whibley.
Bomberger was seen to approach George Stump.
“I say, old man, is that right you’re one of the executors?”
“I am.”
“I’m her husband, you know. Otto Bomberger. Can you tell me if there’s anything for me in the will?”
“I prefer not to discuss it at present.”
“Oh, come on, old man. You can’t do that, you know. It means a lot to me. You must remember whether I’m in or not?”
“I will go so far as to say that I do seem to remember a sum being left to Otto Bomberger. Yes.”
“Do you really, old man? How much was it?”
“Silence, please,” said Mr Gorringer. “Deene is now ready to continue his most lucid … er … discourse.”
“So Lillianne Bomberger’s body was taken to a part of the sands which would be covered by several feet of water when the tide came in and buried there. It was almost directly opposite the house, the nearest point they could find. There was no attempt to forestall a discovery of the body—on the contrary, it was intended to be found next day. A deep enough hole was dug to bury her standing with her head protruding and she was lowered into it. The party then returned to the house, so far as we know unobserved.
“Then these people, who had no experience of crime, set about, in a very foolish and amateurish way, to eliminate the evidence of what they had done. They thought the glasses from which they had drunk during their conference would show that there had been a conference and carefully cleared them away and washed them up, cleaning out the ash-trays. They did not realize that this would be in itself suspicious and, characteristically, they forgot to lock up the drinks cupboard and return the key to Mrs Bomberger’s room. They knew that the sand and damp on the wheels of the bath-chair would be evidence that it had been down to the beach, but did not see that a noticeably clean bath-chair would call attention to itself. They arranged that all should have the same story, that they had gone to bed at eleven—in the cases of Alice Pink and Graveston rather later—and had heard nothing during the night, but they forgot to invent details for the morning. And so on.
“From then onwards it was obvious that they were frightened and guilty people. Even my cousin noticed it and was sorry for them. They agreed to my being sent for because they thought that in some mysterious way I could protect them from the police.
“I had another reason, which I do not propose to give now, for knowing that something had happened on the beach that night which the people at Trumbles had to conceal at all costs.”
Carolus carefully avoided looking towards Poxton. Whatever he felt about the man, he had given his word.
“I noticed, too, that they all made the most of the two events that night which were not concerned with them—the phone call from a stranger calling himself Green and Mr George Stump’s late call at the house. Finally there was Gracie Stayer’s slip of the tongue. In reply to a question as to whether the beach would be deserted that night she said, “There was no one about.” She tried to cover this by adding, “There can have been no one about. We should have heard. It would have come out at the inquest.” But the harm was done. One way or another, though I had no more than circumstantial evidence, I was pretty sure that I knew how and by whom and when Lillianne Bomberger was buried.
“But that was not to say I knew the details of her death. I was convinced it wasn’t suicide.”
“Why?” again put in Whibley disconcertingly.
“She was not a woman to commit suicide. In her appallingly selfish way she enjoyed life and enjoyed making other people miserable. She believed, like many of the most second-rate writers, that she was a great one. She had no reason to commit suicide. She was enjoying her row with George Stump. That very afternoon she had been—heaven save us—to the Spanish Patio of the Royal Hydro Hotel to an orchestral tea, or something of the sort. She was in a particularly good mood that evening. She had arranged by telephone to see her husband next day. No. Lillianne certainly did not mean to kill herself.”
“She was murdered, then?” asked George Stump calmly.
“Yes. But before going into that I should like to pass on to the death of Alice Pink.”
There was a gasp, partly of exasperation, partly of tense interest, which went through the room.
“Alice Pink became rather odd after Mrs Bomberger’s death. She took to drinking spirits, which she had never done to anyone’s knowledge before.”
“Certainly not,” put in her sister. “I can scarcely believe it of her now. She knew very well I would never put up with nonsense like that. I don’t like it in men, let alone women.”
“But there is evidence that she did. She also formed a habit of walking up to the shelter on the cliff in the evening and eating sandwiches there rather than dine with Babs and Gracie Stayer. It seems likely that on one afternoon she almost made up her mind to commit suicide and went so far as to type a letter saying what she was doing, but repented of it and returned to the house. On the same day, if Mrs Plum’s evidence is correct, she gave the impression that she was going to reveal what she knew.
“Then, on the afternoon of a misty day, she tried to reach me by telephone and left a message saying that she was coming to see me next day at a time when her absence would not be noticed. On the same evening she took her usual walk and never returned from it. Her body was found half-way down the cliff. She had been murdered. Later an autopsy revealed the same poison as the one which killed Mrs Bomberger.”
“But why poison, Deene?” boomed Mr Gorringer. “That is the inexplicable thing. If someone murdered this unfortunate lady by pushing her over the cliff, why was it necessary to administer poison? Or were two people determined to kill her?”
“Nobody murdered Alice Pink by pushing her over the cliff. That is the whole point. Surely you must see that it would be virtually an impossibility? And if it were attempted it would mean grave risk to the murderer. You try pushing someone over a cliff, someone active and wiry like Alice Pink. How would you get her to the edge, in the first place? And if you were large and powerful enough to achieve that, do you think she would remain silent? Her screams would have been heard for half a mile in that mist. And once there, how would you push her over without her trying to drag you over, and perhaps succeed in doing so? She wouldn’t be walking conveniently on the cliff edge on a misty night waiting for someone to rush up and shove her over. It’s all very well to talk glibly about murdering people by pushing them over a cliff, but in all the history of crime have you ever known it happen? Cliffs have been used, yes, but always to dispose of the body in a doubly convenient way, for if the victim was battered to death before being thrown over it would probably be impossible to distinguish between the two kinds of injury. That is altogether another matter. A person in his full senses and with the use of his limbs could not be murdered in that way; that is why I immediately suggested that the intestines in this case should be examined. No, somebody poisoned Alice Pink and when she was dead rolled her body down the slight slope from the shelter to the cliff and over its edge. It was intended to look like suicide.”
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“IT is exactly as I said.” Ethel Pink spoke loudly and decisively. “My sister was murdered because she knew too much.”
“Not so much that,” said Carolus, “as that she was about to reveal it to me. Surely we may take it that the knowledge she had would incriminate the murderer of Mrs Bomberger. I mean, a murder to silence someone (at least among normally non-criminal people) would scarcely be undertaken unless silence was a matter of life and death. So the murderer of Mrs Bomberger poisoned Alice Pink and rolled her body over the cliff to prevent her giving me a piece of information which would both identify and prove the case against him or her.
“The field is narrowing now. In a moment I am going to give the name of the murderer, and when I do so some of you will immediately say, ‘I knew it all along’. But you won’t really be speaking the truth, you know. What you’ll mean is that the person named is one of those who, at different times during this thing, you have suspected. If you knew who was the murderer, you would have known how the murders were committed. You could not know one without the other.
“We are faced then with the necessity of finding a person who fits a number of qualifications. Who had a motive for murdering Mrs Bomberger and seeing that she was buried in the sand where the tide would cover her. Who could persuade the rest of those concerned to carry this out. Who knew that Alice Pink was going to tell me something incriminating. Who had an opportunity of poisoning Alice Pink’s flask. Who could have been out on the cliff on the night of Alice Pink’s murder. One would suppose that these must limit the choice to one or at the most two people, but on the contrary they do nothing of the sort. At least five people fit them all: Gracie Stayer, Babs Stayer, Ron Cribb, Gloria Cribb, Graveston—it could have been any of these. It could conceivably have been one of those in the outer ring of suspects—George Stump or Primmley, for instance.
“I’ll try to let you see how I arrived at it. I went back to the very core of the thing, and remembered afresh that Mrs Bomberger had died from swallowing six sleeping-pills when two or three would have been fatal. Alice Pink in her letter to her sister said, ‘It was I who gave Mrs Bomberger her sleeping-pills that night.’ Was Alice Pink the murderer, then? Yes, unless she did not know that those six pills would be fatal. It was then that the thing flashed home. Everything was accounted for: the suddenly increased consumption of Komatoza, the availability of morphine poisoning for Alice Pink (a point which had troubled me a great deal)—everything fell beautifully into place.
“Mrs Bomberger was not killed by an overdose so much as by a long period of underdoses. I remembered something said by Gracie Stayer which made an instant impression on me. She was speaking of the Komatoza tablets taken by her and Babs—’we sometimes believed they were just as good as Aunt Lillianne’s, though they were a tenth of the price. They looked the same, anyway.’
“I doubt if Mrs Bomberger, until the night of her death, took more than one or two of the sleeping-tablets prescribed for her by Dr Flitcher. I don’t see how she can have. According to Mr Cupperly there were twenty tablets in each box, and only two boxes were supplied. From the second box she took the six that killed her, while the remaining fourteen were at once removed by the police, of course. From the first box there were enough left to kill Alice Pink and Babs Stayer, so if Mrs Bomberger ever had any of them, it was very few. What she took was Komatoza, increasing her doses until she had reached the total of six. Komatoza, which ‘looked the same’. Komatoza put in the box supplied for her prescribed pills. Until one night when everything was ready for it, when there were six possible murderers in the house, when a strange phone call had come and George Stump, with whom Lillianne was quarrelling, had called—on this night instead of Komatoza was put the real thing. ‘I’ll take six,’ Mrs Bomberger may have said to Miss Pink, whom she had called. Perhaps Miss Pink protested against the number. ‘Nonsense,’ one imagines Mrs Bomberger saying. ‘I often take six.’ Which was true when they were Komatoza. These killed her, of course.
“It was the murderer who went to her room and found she was dead. It was the murderer who, though well covered by the fact that Mrs Bomberger had taken an overdose of her own free will and not in the murderer’s presence, yet felt that it might be safer to let the tide go over Mrs Bomberger and—the murderer believed—eliminate all trace of poison from the intestines. It was the murderer who persuaded the others, therefore, to undertake that extraordinary form of burial….”
“Oh, come on, sir,” said Priggley impatiently. “You’re twisting yourself into knots trying to avoid mentioning the name or even use a masculine or feminine pronoun. Who was it?”
“Babs Stayer,” said Carolus, and was silent.
There was general relief when Mr Gorringer again, and with a cavernous rumbling, cleared his throat.
“Let us once again allow Deene to relax for a few moments. I’m sure that the strain must be a telling one.”
The waiter was summoned and a few drinks ordered, but the gathering remained subdued. The only person to move was Otto Bomberger, who again crossed to where George Stump was sitting.
“Look here, old man, this is a serious matter. It means a great deal to me. Surely you can remember how much it was she left me?”
George Stump raised his hand.
“Not now. Not now,” he said solemnly. “This is not the moment.”
“It is for me,” said Bomberger. “It couldn’t be a better moment for me. Would it have been five hundred, would you say?”
“You will hear in due course.”
Mrs Plum could repress herself no longer.
“There!” she said, “what did I tell you? It’s enough to make anyone sign the pledge, isn’t it? I feel giddy like, as though the room was going round. That Babs, the sly thing, murdering her auntie like that. No wonder they wanted to get rid of me. You can’t wonder at it, can you? I could scream when I remember it. And to think of me working in that house! How I escaped with a whole skin I don’t know!”
“Hush,” said Mr Gorringer. “Deene, we’re all agog.”
“I said that many people had a motive for murdering Lillianne Bomberger, and it was true. There never was such a natural-born murderee. But those were the muddled motives of hatred and greed which produced muddled schemes and hopes. Babs had a fierce and urgent motive which produced a clever plan. When I asked her how her aunt could prevent her marrying the man she loved, she spoke indefinitely about her aunt. ‘She would find a way’ were Babs’ words, but I was pretty sure that Lillianne had already found a way. When I received information that there was inherited lunacy in the family I perceived what this way was. Mrs Bomberger was blackmailing her niece by threatening to tell her fiance this fact. It is probably the only one which can be guaranteed to break off an engagement at once.
“After motive—opportunity. Who had better? It was she who took the prescription to Cupperly, she who received Cupperly’s warning about the pills, she who noticed their similarity in appearance to Komatoza. I do not know whether she started by giving Mrs Bomberger one or two of the prescribed pills and then, relying on the psychology of self-persuasion, filled her box with Komatoza, or whether she started with Komatoza from the first. At all events she put Komatoza tablets in place of the prescribed ones, then encouraged Mrs Bomberger to increase the number she took until it was five or six. Thus the Komatoza consumption in the house rose steeply, as Cupperly said it did.
“Babs kept in her own possession the prescribed pills and used them later, as we shall see. Meanwhile, everything was prepared for the night on which Mrs Bomberger was to kill herself. Babs kept carefully away from her room that night, but unexpectedly Mrs Bomberger sent for Miss Pink and told her to give her the pills. This was unfortunate. It meant that Miss Pink’s evidence could be dangerous. For a woman who takes a fatal dose, knowing it to be one, is scarcely likely to call someone else in to give it her, or to say on the phone, as she did to her husband, ‘Come tomorrow because I have just taken my sleeping-pills�
�. That ‘S’ on pills when Bomberger told me his wife had spoken of her sleeping-pills, instead of the one pill she was supposed to take, I thought was one of the most useful bits of information I had at the time.
“I feel pretty confident that it was Babs who went to Mrs Bomberger’s room during the night and found her dead, but of course she may have been subtle enough to cause someone else to go. I even wondered whether Alice Pink’s ‘voice on the wind’ may have been a device to get her to make the discovery, but that is far-fetched.
“Then came the toughest job for Babs: to frighten and persuade everyone to carry out her purpose. It was interesting that each of them had had a scheme for killing Mrs Bomberger but that only Babs had to put it into operation, yet Babs over-ruled all their objections and got the thing done as she wanted it. I think she believed that all trace of poison would be out of the body after some hours in water. In that case Mrs Bomberger would appear to have been drowned, and whoever could be blamed for that she, Babs Stayer, could not be. She had her second line of defence if the poison was discovered, for there was no way of proving that she had juggled the two kinds of sleeping-pills.
“On the whole she succeeded fairly well. When the body was buried they all felt thoroughly guilty, and I shouldn’t be surprised if Babs pointed out that they were all accessories now. They, on the other hand, had no reason to suspect Babs and were pleased with her lead and confidence.
“Everybody came down late next morning, including Graveston, whose snoring Mrs Plum heard after nine o’clock. But even that did not seem to matter for a while until I began asking awkward questions about it. The bath-chair, Gracie’s shoes—none of these seemed very important. Mrs Bomberger was safely dead and nobody had an inkling of how it had happened.