Death for Madame

by Peter Main

  So far as I was concerned I would not have minded if this scene had been prolonged almost indefinitely. It fulfilled a good many of my requirements with regard to my ideal of a quiet life. I might have known that it was far too good to last. I sometimes feel that anything the Flying Dutchman suffers in the way of torment is nothing to what I go through.

  The telephone rang imperiously. There is something horrible about the ring of a telephone bell. One is always its slave. The old man sighed heavily and marked the place in his book with the dust-cover. He untangled the receiver from the books which had gathered on top of it since the last time it had been used.

  “Yes,” he said, “yes. It’s me.” “I,” I said and got a death-ray glare. “What do you want an’ who are ye anyhow. Oh, ye’re Scotland Yard are ye, an’ what do ye want from me.” His expression said that he was tired of being rung up by these Scotland Yard dunderheads to help them solve their petty puzzles. “Oh, so ye don’t want anythin’, then why the flamin’ hell do ye bother to ring me up? Oh, I see. His blinkin’ lordship the Bishop wants to speak to me? Hell, yes. I’m hangin’ on. What did ye think I was doin’? Ye thought I was talkin’, eh? Well, dammit if I was talkin’ I was hangin’ on, wasn’t I? I said I was hangin’ on. Oh, for godsake, come off it an’ let me through to the Bishop. That you, Reggie? Yes, it’s me,” he glared at me as if to dare me to say anything, “who the hell did you think it was? The Sultan of Zanzibar or the Great Panjandrum himself with the little round button on top. Well, what d’ye want me for? Oh, ye thought ye’d some news that I might find interestin’. Yes. Well if I might find it interestin’, ye might tell me, an’ I’ll let ye ha’ me opinion. What? Eh? How’d he manage it? Oh. Yes, I’ll let ye call that quite interestin’, even if I do ha’ to fight me way through a wilderness o’ fools to get at ye. Umhum. Well, what are ye doin’ about it?”

  He laid down the telephone triumphantly, pleased to think that he had succeeded in conquering the labyrinthine cords which usually beat him. He looked across at me with a smile which almost split his face.

  “There ye are, Max,” he said, as pleased as if he had done something himself, “things are always happenin’. Roland Grimble has just succeeded in escapin’!”

  “How the devil did he do that?” I wanted to know. From what I had seen of prisons and police stations I was of the opinion that they were difficult to escape from.

  “Ho,” the old man chortled, “he put a fast one over on the blinkin’ police. He was taken along to be charged an’ he was behavin’ like a lamb, an’ somehow or other, by wantin’ to go to the lavatory, or somethin’ o’ the kind, he managed to get out o’ sight o’ his poor blunderin’ mentors for a moment an’ he just kinda walked out, as bold as brass. I’ll bet there’s some bullyraggin’ goin’ on in the ranks o’ the coppers at the moment an’ that some poor feller don’t think his life is worth livin’, eh?”

  I nodded. I felt damned sorry for the policeman who had fallen down on the job of watching the slippery Mr. Grimble. The old man ruffled his hair.

  “Trouble is,” he went on, “that they never found the pistol which he an’ the Morgan girl used when they held up that taxi-driver, an’ the Bishop is only hopin’ that Grimble ain’t got it cached somewhere where he can lay his hands on it, an’ perhaps turn kinda nasty. Reggie says he knows his kind, whatever that may mean, an’ that when they’re cornered they’ll fight like perishin’ rats. I’m inclined to agree meself there, for I thought that Grimble, in spite o’ his vanity an’ willin’ness to weep about the loss o’ his beauty, was o’ the Dillinger kind. Ye see, his looks were all he cared about an’ if he thinks that the Morgan girl’s nail file has kinda spoiled them, he might go down rather nasty.”

  The look on the Professor’s face was rather serious. If there is one thing he loathes it is a gun-fight, or so he has told me. I’ve seen him shoot myself and I’d back him against nearly everyone I’ve seen with a rifle or a pistol.

  “Well,” I said encouragingly, “does this make you think that, perhaps, Grimble did, after all, murder Lottie Rattigan?”

  He scowled at me and his broad forehead was creased with deep wrinkles. I must admit that he really did succeed in looking very puzzled indeed.

  “Umm,” he grunted to himself, “umm. That’s kinda worryin’ me. I’d ha’ sworn he wasn’t the guilty person. I could not see him creepin’ around in the middle o’ the night, murderin’ his aunt. Then ye see we got Annie Aspinall’s evidence. She says that no one ever felt very angry wi’ the old girl for long, an’ I rather gather from her behaviour as well as from what we know, that Lottie might ha’ altered her will to frighten her nephew, but given a few days she’d ha’ bin wheedled round into makin’ it back the way it was. Ye must remember all the time that we’re dealin’ wi’ the murder o’ a person whose will was just as if it was written on water. It was never the same for a couple o’ weeks. O’ course, Grimble might ha’ come down to try an’ pacify his aunt an’ ha’ had a flamin’ row wi’ her, an’ ha’ strangled her out o’ hand. She was so dam’ slow movin’ that it must ha’ bin an easy job for the murderer, even if she was awake.”

  He lit his pipe and grimaced at the smoke. I waited for him to go on, for the flaw in the possibility which he had just laid down was obvious to me.

  “Uhuh. That ’ud be a fine idea, but there again we got the Aspinall woman; she swears, an’ I see no reason to doubt her word, that she’d ha’ heard any noise out o’ the ordinary in the hall where Lottie was sittin’ an’ dozin’ an’ I suppose she’d ha’ included a row between the old girl an’ her nephew in the category o’ unusual. We got to look into this a bit more thoroughly. I’m goin’ out. Are ye coming’?”

  I looked affectionately at the crackling logs in the hearth and at my half-read copy of Nature. There was nothing I would have enjoyed more than a quiet evening at home. When I had finished with Nature, I had planned to spend the evening re-reading Canon Raven’s excellent Life of John Ray. I had been compiling a list of Ray’s plants and had been trying to identify them with the modern names of the same plants, and I remembered that Canon Raven had managed to solve one or two rather ticklish problems of nomenclature in his book. I looked wistfully at the Hirtoria Plantarum, three immense folio volumes of it, lying on my work-table. I sighed almost as heavily as the Chief Inspector does. I rose slowly and unwillingly.

  “I suppose so,” I said ungraciously. “If I don’t come with you you’ll get into some hellish trouble. What the hell are you doing now?”

  I really was startled. The old man had opened a cupboard and had taken out a tiny .22 revolver which he was busy cleaning. He ran the rod, wrapped in a fragment of two by four, down the barrel, and then squinted down it himself. It seemed to satisfy him. Then he proceeded to fill all six chambers of the thing with the little bullets.

  “Damn it,” I expostulated, “you’re not going out on a Wild West expedition. What kind of trouble do you think we are going to run into?”

  “Oh,” he waved the loaded revolver carelessly and I ducked. I had suddenly recalled that there was no safety-catch on the dangerous little weapon. “Oh, I dunno, but there’s no harm in goin’ prepared for trouble. It won’t do any harm to carry this wi’ me.”

  “Not unless it goes off in your pocket,” I said, “and blows a hole in your stomach.”

  He glared at me. He did not like being reminded of the time when he had carelessly put a saloon pistol in his pocket and then, feeling for something or other, had pulled the trigger without thinking. He had escaped with a scratch on the thigh, but he certainly did not like to remember the occasion.

  “Are ye sayin’ I ain’t safe wi’ a gun? “he demanded hotly, “for if ye are ye’re a blinkin’ thunderin’ flamin’ liar. I was totin’, that’s the word, guns before ye were weaned, an’ I know all about ’em. I like the things, but I don’t like usin’ them seriously. All the same, I think I’d like to have one on me. Ye see, Max,” his face was serious, “I’m kinda responsibl
e for the hole in which Grimble has found himself, an’, if he’s laid his hands on his own gun, he might think that I was a pretty fair target. Eh?”

  He patted himself comfortably. As targets go he was one of the biggest I could imagine and, however thick his hide might be when faced with conversational darts, I had my doubts as to whether the elephantine quality would be so much in evidence when trying conclusions with a .38 bullet. The little revolver, though it looked little more than a toy, was in fact a precision-built masterpiece and, at any distance up to about twenty feet, was just as deadly as a heavier weapon.

  “Would you like to have a gun, too?” the old man asked me anxiously.

  “Not in the least,” I said with fervour. It would be bad enough having to look after the old man if he was armed without having to think at the same time of the weapon I carried myself.

  The Professor looked fondly at the little gun which was dwarfed by the hand that held it. He slid it into the right-hand pocket of his jacket.

  “All right?” he asked, looking at me, and I nodded my obedience to his whims and orders. Bang goes dinner, I said to myself, and groaned. I did not know where we were going, though I might have made a good guess.

  As we were on our way out I suddenly had an idea. It was one of those ideas which come to one after one has worried about a problem for hours and then given it up as impossible of solution. The answer suddenly comes to one when one’s thoughts are concerned with something else.

  “Got it,” I exclaimed, and the Professor looked at me with surprise and an expression on his face that declared that sudden strokes like that were his prerogative.

  “What is it, Max?” he asked encouragingly. I’d had enough of his playing mystery man so I thought I’d keep my wheeze to myself.

  “Ha,” I said, trying to look deep and full of ideas, “it’s my turn. I’ve had an idea and I want to know if it is correct. Would you mind dropping me somewhere so that I can go to Scotland Yard?”

  “I’ll come wi’ ye,” he said eagerly, “what I got to do can wait! What ha’ ye got up yer sleeve?”

  “I’m not telling you,” I said severely, “you know how you like to keep your secrets to yourself. I don’t want you at Scotland Yard and I’ll join you later. You see, if my idea is no good, I don’t want to make a fool of myself, and if it is good I’d like to find out what it means.”

  He looked at me with the pleading eyes of an Airedale which has just been sent home from a long-promised walk, but I was adamant.

  I might have guessed that he would get his own back on me. By the time he dropped me at the top of Whitehall I was almost sick with nervous excitement. He drove worse than usual, which is saying something, and seemed to take a fiendish delight in narrow shaves which brought my heart into the pit of my bowels. Several times I almost cried “Pax” and offered to tell him my idea if only he would be more careful, but on each occasion a thinner hair’s-breadth escape made me clench my teeth and I could not speak.

  The Chief Inspector was not in, but I found several people whom I knew and who all seemed to be willing to help me.

  The idea that had come to me was that I knew exactly who it was I had been reminded of by the portrait of Lottie Rattigan as a girl. The portrait, allowing for differences in hair style and the quirks of a bad miniaturist, might have passed as a portrait of Janet Morgan.

  I spent over an hour in Scotland Yard and we rang up the police in the girl’s home town of Llareggub, but I could find nothing to help me prove or disprove my idea. There was nothing that positively said that the girl was the child of her registered parents, a coal miner and his wife, but, then, there was nothing to disprove the honesty of the registration papers. Her parents were both dead, so that they could not be questioned.

  By the time I left the Yard I was feeling pretty low. My idea had seemed so bright that I had been sure that it was correct. There did not seem to be anything which I could do about it, however.

  Then I had another idea. It was so simple, I wondered why I had not thought of it first. I got on a bus and made my way to Bayswater.

  In the hall of The Boudoir Professor Stubbs was standing with Mr. Carr. From some source or other they had unearthed a miniature electric train and had swept the contents of the table on to the floor to set up a permanent way.

  When I arrived there was a mildly heated argument going on.

  “Dammit, Carr,” the old man was roaring, “if ye’d had the sense to change these points,” he gestured at them with a blunt thumb, “ye’d ha’ got past me all right, and now look at that.”

  He pointed. That was a mass of tangled coaches and engines. There certainly had been the devil of a smash.

  “O.K., cock,” Mr. Carr said, “let’s have another shot. I’ll change these points all right this time, but if I do that you’ll have to remember to change these and these and these,” he pointed them out, “in very quick succession.”

  The rolling stock was replaced upon the track and the Professor and Mr. Carr, breathing heavily, stood on opposite sides of the table.

  “Are you ready? “Carr spoke, “then, steady, GO!”

  The two miniature trains set off in opposite directions. They got past the first set of points where the previous accident had been, but the old man only managed one of his sets of points and there was another derailing.

  “Hell,” he said crossly, “I don’t believe it’s possible to get them all the way round changing points like that.”

  “I’ll take your end,” Mr. Carr volunteered, “and you take this one. Maybe I’ll be able to work these points.”

  “Eh? “the old man was indignant. “Ye think I can’t get past them by meself do ye? Bah! I tell ye I got a mechanical mind an’ there ain’t a toy yet bin invented which can defeat me. I can get these points right if ye’ll just let me have another shot.”

  He had another shot, but the results were the same. I stood watching this idyllic scene entranced. Neither of them had noticed me come in. The old man grunted and grumbled as he stooped to pick up the rolling-stock which had fallen on to the floor. He placed the trucks, carriages and engine on the rails again.

  “All right, Carr,” he said gloomily, “you have a shot that end an’ we’ll see whether ye can make the things go. I don’t believe it’s possible.”

  They changed ends again. The trains got most of the way round, but finally the points became too much for the amateur pointsmen and there was another crash.

  “We’ll get it goin’,” declared Professor Stubbs, “if it takes us all night.”

  He picked up the rolling stock once more and tried again. This time he sent his engine off with such acceleration that it upset on the first curve. He turned round and saw me.

  “Hullo, Max,” he said cheerfully, “d’ye want a shot? Best fun I’ve had in the whale o’ a long time. Think I’m goin’ to buy a set o’ these things an’ put them up in the house at home.”

  “God forbid,” I said piously. The mess in the house is quite bad enough without the old man importing a toy railway into the set-up. The yards of glass tubing employed by Mr. Carr in his repetitions of Stephen Hales’s Statical Experiments would pale into insignificance beside the complexities of track and points which the old man would import. Not only would the garden be a death trap to the unwary walker, but the house also.

  I looked at the Professor sternly. He was not the least aware of the sternness in my glance, but beamed back at me with a heartful of amiability showing in his face.

  “You may have forgotten,” I said, a trifle pompously, “that I have been engaged in working on an idea. I thought that you, too, were doing some work and instead I find you amusing yourself with a child’s toy.”

  “Child’s toy be damned,” protested the old man. “There was no child ever pupped which could ha’ worked the points the way we’re workin’ ’em. You should have a shot an’ see what ye can do.”

  The temptation to show the Professor that I could manage better than he could wa
s almost overwhelming, but I mastered it. It would have been too bad if I had failed on the first lot of points. Anyhow, I recalled, I had come to the hotel with a definite purpose in mind. My chase, as Douglas Newsome would have been sure to have said, quoting Dryden, had a beast in view.

  “Where is Miss Aspinall?” I addressed myself to Mr. Ben Carr, who looked up from his examination of the tiny electric motor hidden in the guts of one of the miniature engines.

  “Annie, Oh, Annie,” he called, rather like a Swiss shepherd trying out a yodel.

  Miss Aspinall emerged from her room. She looked as though she had been expecting to be called, but then, I gathered, she had never been known to look as though she had not expected it. She was one of those people who was perpetually prepared. I would not have been surprised to have heard that she kept a suitcase packed with all her most precious belongings, just in case there was a fire in the hotel.

  “Yes, Ben,” she said softly and she smiled as her eyes fell on the railway track. “You are just the same as you always were, Ben, always ready for a game or any sort of toy.”

  Ben Carr was not displeased by this. He gestured to me and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, Annie, but I’m afraid that Max here wanted to ask you something.”

  The old man looked at me curiously. I think he was dying to know what I wanted to ask Miss Aspinall. He started to edge round the table towards us.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Aspinall,” I said, giving one of my best sealed-lips Baldwin looks at the Professor, “but I wondered if you could help me?”

  “Certainly,” she replied, “if I can, but I think I have now said everything which could be of any use to you.”

  I led the way down the corridor to the large dining-room. It was empty. I shut the door and then opened it again to make certain that the old man had not followed me and was not listening at the keyhole. He had apparently decided that it was not worth doing. It may seem odd that I took such precautions, but then I have to plead that my vanity was to blame. It is so seldom in a murder case that I have an idea which shows the remotest tendency to jell, that when I do have one I think I can be excused for trying to turn it out as a proper shape before I show it off.