August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  I took The Times from the newspaper rack where Pons had deposited it until he had opportunity to take cuttings for his vast file, and re-examined the notice of Ahab Jepson's death. It was little more than a bulletin and was so presented. It said nothing but that the body of Ahab Jepson had been discovered "hanging above the staircase in the family home near Stoke Poges," and adding that an investigation was in progress. The only detail appended to this brief statement was a sentence or two identifying the victim as the son of a justly famed and popular actor of yesteryear.

  Pons watched me, his lean face agleam with interest. "A singularly barren account, is it not?" he asked, when I had finished re-reading it. "What do you make of it?"

  "Obviously, there is something here that does not meet the eye," I replied.

  "Ah, profound, Parker, profound," he observed with marked irony. "You will have noticed, too, there is nothing more in the Daily Telegraph. I submit that is a most uncommon circumstance. Not a word about the identity of the body's discoverer. Not a word, either, about the household. And did he have house-guests? One wonders. It was Sunday. I shall not be surprised if the police see fit to call upon Scotland Yard."

  Pons's intuition was not in error.

  Within the hour Inspector Jamison of the Criminal Investigation Department had telephoned to say that he was sending to Number 7B, Praed Street, Detective-Sergeant Peter Cobbett of Stoke Poges; he would be obliged to Pons if he would make such suggestions to Cobbett as Pons found possible.

  The sergeant himself followed hard upon Jamison's call. He was a gaunt young man with a harassed air. He had a clear-eyed, honest expression, his straw-coloured hair was somewhat disheveled — habitually so, it appeared—and his square-cut face was markedly freckled. Though a stranger to Pons, he knew him by sight, introduced himself without delay, and was in turn introduced to me.

  "Pray sit down, and tell me what it is about Ahab Jepson's death that disturbs you so deeply, Sergeant," invited Pons.

  "Inspector Jamison has told you, then?"

  Pons smiled. "Not a word. I shall hear it from you."

  Sergeant Cobbett thereupon began his account without delay. "There are certain circumstances about Jepson's death which are so puzzling as to be most disturbing," he admitted. "We have said very little to the press. That is not only because we know so little, but because what we do know involves some very prominent people."

  Pons raised his eyebrows. The ghost of a smile lay on his thin lips, and his almost feral face betrayed the keenest interest.

  "To begin with, the murder was reported to us on late Sunday night by a house-guest — Sir Malcolm McVeigh, whom you will know as the Shakespearean actor, discovered the body when he came downstairs at midnight for a book to read. That is, he allegedly came down for a book —permit me to put it that way. The body was hanging from a beam above the main stairs in a most extraordinary position, and we have not yet been able to ascertain just how anyone could have got him there. However, the police-surgeon reports that he had evidently been drinking: this may have been sufficient to have brought him close to unconsciousness; it is impossible to say. Certainly he was somehow placed in position. I should explain that he was hanging six feet from the stairs, directly above the sixth step, in the well of the stairs, which is broad and very gradual to the landing, from which it turns and goes on to the second floor, proceeding thereafter in similar fashion, though somewhat less broadly, to the third floor. The instrument of death, a chain, depended —and still depends —from a beam above the third floor, but appears to be fixed into the wall along the staircase there. There were other guests in the house."

  "And you are considerately keeping their names from the papers," interposed Pons. "I assume all have equal standing with Sir Malcolm McVeigh?"

  "Yes, Mr. Pons, it is so. The remaining three guests were Randolph Sutpen, Sir John Watkins, and Richard, Lord Barick."

  I understood Pons's smile; any one of these distinguished actors would have been sufficient to make the story of Jepson's death one of extreme prominence — but all four at one time verged on the sensational.

  "I'm sorry to have to add that at least one of the guests, Lord Barick, had a physical encounter with Jepson in the course of that evening, and apparently all the guests were on —shall we say uncertain terms? —with their host."

  Pons looked over at the mantel clock. "A train leaves Paddington in half an hour for Slough. I believe we can just make it. No doubt we shall be able to obtain some method of transportation from Slough to Stoke Poges."

  "I can wire for the trap to meet us, Mr. Pons," said Cobbett eagerly.

  "Very well. Let us be off."

  He suited his actions to his words as he spoke, rising and divesting himself of his dressing-gown. He put on his deerstalker cap and a checked jacket, over which he wore his Inverness.

  When we were seated in a compartment of the train bound for the half-hour run to Slough, Pons invited Cobbett to continue his account. The sergeant obeyed with alacrity, while the countryside flashed past and Pons sat with his sharp chin sunk upon his breast, and his eyes closed, listening.

  "In addition to Lord Barick, the fingerprints of Sir John Watkins appear on a box of veronal capsules. There is evidence to indicate, Mr. Pons, that Jepson was given whisky and veronal to make him sluggish, so that his murderers could the more easily make away with him. He had not been well. He had asked these gentlemen to be his guests for the weekend, begun with last night's dinner, because he wished to let bygones be bygones and to make amends for his conduct. We have the statements of the gentlemen, and two of them have produced letters from Jepson —identically worded —to substantiate that fact. All the gentlemen were in London, though only Sutpen was playing. Even he allowed his understudy to stand in for him and came down. All arrived just before dinner last night.

  "Apparently everything went well until dinner was almost finished; then some reference was made to an action at law which had been lost by Jepson. The action had been taken against Lord Barick. There was an acrimonious exchange. As they left the table, Jepson, who had fallen into step beside Lord Barick, is reported to have said, 'You didn't deserve to win that case, Barick. You know you copied those gestures from my father.' Barick struck him. The two were immediately separated. No apology was made. Barick does not deny the incident and is furious enough still to say that Jepson's death is no loss.

  "At or about ten o'clock in the evening, Jepson asked Sir John

  Watkins to look at something in his room. Sir John's brother is a distinguished doctor, and Sir John himself had had some medical training before he went on the stage. Sir John says that he was asked to examine some sleeping capsules. He says that he did so and approved their use. There was then some discussion of cures for insomnia, and by devious ways the conversation carried on to some reference to an action brought by Jepson against Sir John, and, of course, lost by Jepson. There were words. A passing servant heard Jepson say, 'Were I more fit, I would challenge you to sabres, sir!' To which Sir John made this answer: 'Say rather broomsticks, Ahab. Those are your forte when it comes to battle.' Sir John does not deny that there were words. He was apparently the last person to see Ahab alive. His fingerprints appear on the box of capsules, which was sheathed in waxed paper; no fingerprints lie over his. Yet it would appear that Jepson was given veronal before he was taken downstairs and hanged. It is doubtful that one man could have done it. It would appear to have taken place shortly before midnight, according to the medical evidence; the method seems to have been that two or possibly three men carried Jepson down the stairs while he was in a stupor, and that they managed to lift him high enough to remove the Caroline Islands mask which was suspended from the chain normally, and hang him there in its place."

  "Grotesquely elaborate," I observed.

  "But effective," added Pons. "There are certain challenging facets in your account, Sergeant. Pray inform me —is it customary for the chemists in Slough or the vicinity of Stoke Poges to dispense sed
atives in waxed paper?"

  "No, Mr. Pons. That was Mr. Jepson's idiosyncrasy."

  "Can the gentlemen account for their movements after ten o'clock?"

  "All but McVeigh maintain that they were asleep."

  "No witnesses."

  "None."

  Pons opened his eyes. He looked with intense speculation at Cobbett.

  "Here we are at Slough, sir," said Cobbett.

  The trap was waiting at the station. The three of us got in and set out through some of the most attractive country in the vicinity of London, hallowed by the memory of Thomas Gray, and long distinguished by the residence of Grote, the historian. The day was pleasant for March, and the open trap an ideal conveyance, though Pons was lost in meditation and oblivious to the beauty of the landscape.

  In a short time we arrived at the country home in which Sir Hesketh Jepson had spent his last years. It was a large and imposing house, set in the midst of oaks, interspersed with yews and ornamental shrubs. Entrance to the estate was by means of a gate set into the stone wall which went round it. A constable on guard at the door threw it open at our approach.

  We entered a spacious hall and found ourselves at the scene of the murder, for the stairs were before us, the noosed chain was suspended there above the sixth step, darkly suggestive of the burden which had been removed from it before our arrival. The scene, however, was not without an aspect of the bizarre, for both walls of the hall were lined with the trappings of the days of chivalry— suits of armour, hauberks, glaives, jousting lances, helmets, and similar paraphernalia, all of which had been added to the souvenirs and mementoes of the late Sir Hesketh's years on the stage — the signed photographs of his companions of the footlights, of fellow playwrights, and England's great at the turn of the century; an imposing array. Various other ornaments decorated the walls, and the Polynesian mask of which Cobbett had spoken still lay on the stairs where it had evidently been thrown by the murderers who detached it —a great, colourful, almost gaudy representation of some ancient demon feared or worshiped by the natives of the Carolines.

  "As a crime," I said, "it has elements which make it seem flamboyant."

  "Could one expect other from the stage?" asked Pons, who had mounted the stairs and now stood looking upward at the chain, following its course to the great beam overhead and the extension over the beam toward the wall along the stair. "Or would you say it is unworthy of Lord Barick and his companions?" He flashed a provocative glance at me. "Is this not a most singular method of murder, Parker?"

  I agreed soberly that it was.

  "I can hardly recall anything similar among the little adventures with which I have been privileged to be associated. I daresay only a very determined man could manage to reach that chain. I measure it at eleven feet above the stair on which I am standing."

  "That's right, Mr. Pons," corroborated Cobbett.

  "Though from a few stairs up it might be possible to reach it in nine feet. At the same time the mask might bring it still lower. Presumably, then, it would be necessary to raise Jepson sufficiently to slip the chain over his head and tighten it on his neck. I observe there is an adjustable loop or noose there. Has anyone examined the chain?"

  "Yes, Mr. Pons. There appears to be some give in it."

  "Indeed," said Pons, raising his eyebrows. "Let us just have a closer look at it."

  So speaking, he ran up the stairs to the third floor, where the chain was in easy reach from the narrow hallway. He took hold of it eagerly and began to draw it in over the beam, where it was held in place by two iron rods.

  "Ah, what have we here?" he cried. "The chain has been oiled." He looked at Cobbett keenly. "Would you say it suggests premeditation, Cobbett?"

  "It would seem so, sir."

  "Come, come, do not be so cautious."

  He released the chain and turned his attention to the bolt to which it was fixed in the wall. The bolt was formidable; it projected just under the ceiling, and the chain was not just hooked to it, but appeared to be an integral part of it, emerging not from the rounded extremity of the bolt, but from the thick stem itself. Pons went catlike down the hall for a chair and brought it back; he mounted it and scrutinized the bolt with attentive fascination, his sensitive fingers exploring the wall around it. Then he grasped the chain at the bolt in both hands and gave it a sharp tug outward.

  It gave four inches, bringing with it not only the bolt but a rounded piece of the paneled wall, which fell back into place against the studding there as soon as Pons released it. He leaped off the chair, rubbing his hands together in pleasure.

  "It would appear that this is not, after all, the end of the chain. We shall have to look elsewhere for it. Let us just glance into the cellar."

  "We have been there, Mr. Pons."

  "I daresay a return journey will not be amiss, Sergeant. Lead the way."

  The sergeant obediently trudged down the stairs, one flight after another, to the main floor, where he went around to the kitchen, from which a stairway opened into the cellar under the house. With the aid of the sergeant's torch, we made our way down into the damp rooms below.

  "Just about here," said Pons, "we are under the bolt. What have we on this wall?"

  "A cupboard," offered Cobbett.

  "So the eye sees it. But the eye is limited by the surface, is it not so?"

  As he spoke, he opened the cupboard and disclosed shelving bearing narrow rows of jam and marmalade pots. I was so injudicious as to smile. Pons's serenity was undisturbed.

  "Some of the country virtues have survived the war, I see," he said. "But I submit that a cupboard tall enough and deep enough to hold two or three men must contain something more than a single row of jam-jars."

  He was already working at the shelving, moving the jars about to peer behind them; but, not satisfied, he seized hold of the shelf and pulled it back. It receded from its depth, six inches or thereabouts, and held there. He gave it an experimental push away from the outer side wall of the cupboard, and it slid noiselessly into place behind the shelving which looked out of the other door of the cupboard. In doing so, it disclosed a space recessed from the cupboard into the wall at that point, and harbouring an ordinary winch, fixed to a concrete block. Around the winch was wound a section of chain, one end of which reached tautly upward, the other end being bolted to the concrete. There were several devices attached to the winch suggesting automatic mechanism of some kind.

  Pons stepped into the aperture thus revealed and, moving into the wall space, looked upward.

  "The chain reaches to the third floor without obstruction," he announced. "Just as I thought. The floor has been cut away widely enough to allow for ease of passage, and the chain is fixed between the joists."

  He gave his attention then to the mechanism. After studying it for a few moments in silence, his keen eyes twinkling with fascinated appreciation, he turned the winch by its handle and unwound the chain; it unwound but eight feet, no farther. Then he wound it up once more; it wound up only the eight feet he had unwound it. He examined the automatic device, unwound the chain once more, set the device, and gave a sharp tug at the taut end of the chain. Instantly the device whirred, the winch moved, and the chain wound itself up once more.

  "Capital! Capital!" exclaimed Pons delightedly. "Now you will have observed, Sergeant, that one man could very well effectively have hanged Jepson. All he need have done was to unwind the chain, thus letting it down to within easy reach of the steps, slip the noose over Jepson's neck, and pull at the chain sufficiently to start the mechanism. Let us just set it once more and test it for ourselves."

  Accordingly, he did so. Then the three of us returned to the main hall. The chain had been lowered, as Pons had foreseen; it hung now only three feet above the sixth stair. Pons looked upward into the gloom of the ceiling at the far end of the stairwell; nothing of the false bolt with its circular piece of the wood paneling was visible in that murk, quite possibly because it was in the shadow of the great beam over wh
ich the chain passed. He mounted the stairs, grasped the chain in both hands, and gave it a sharp tug; the chain moved steadily back into its former position eleven feet above the stairs. Only a sharp ear could have heard the sound of the winch below.

  Detective-Sergeant Cobbett stared hard at the chain. "Well, all I can say, sir —only an actor would have worked out something like that!"

  "Quite right," agreed Pons.

  "It would have been simpler to dispatch him almost any other way."

  "But not nearly so effective," replied Pons instantly. "And actors are notoriously fond of their entrances and exits." He favoured me with an enigmatic, almost sly glance. "Would you not be inclined to say, Parker, that a good entrance or a good exit more adequately affords us the measure of the actor than any given set of lines?"

  I agreed that it was so.

  "Now then," Pons continued, "we shall need to examine the problem of how the veronal was administered."

  "Evidence indicates that it was given to him in whisky and soda, sir," said Cobbett. "Perhaps you would like to examine Jepson's room? We've left it precisely as it was found."

  In Jepson's room, too, a constable was on guard. Cobbett instructed him to stand before the door while we were in the room. The room itself was decorated with all manner of heraldic emblems, oddly mingled with Polynesian masks, considerably smaller than the one which had customarily hung from the chain over the stairs. The bed was a canopied four-poster, an obviously old piece of furniture; it had been turned back, in readiness for occupancy, but it had not been occupied. There was some evidence to show that someone had sat on one end of it.

  Pons glanced only cursorily at the room in general, his eyes lingered a few moments on the bed, darting here and there, from pillows to posts, and then he gave his undivided attention to the dressing-table beside the bed. A decanter of whisky, a soda-water bottle, and two glasses stood there; two brushes had been pushed back to make room for the tray on which the bottles and glasses stood.