Death for Madame

by Peter Main

  Chapter 16

  Blank Face Bet

  “I WON’T, of course, say that you fly in the face of the evidence, John.” The Chief Inspector was persistent as a drip of water from a faulty tap.

  “That’s awful generous o’ ye, considerin’ that there ain’t no real evidence to fly in the face o’,” the old man came back, swilling still more beer.

  We were back in the work-room in the Hampstead house. The old man had offered the Chief Inspector a lift towards his home and, being unable to escape, the Bishop had, perforce, accepted.

  For the last hour and a quarter he and the old man had been busy arguing the case of the murder of Lottie Rattigan this way and that, right way up and topsy-turvy. It had seemed to me that there was no possible ground for agreement in either of their arguments.

  “But,” the Chief Inspector began again at the beginning, “we now know that Roland Grimble was capable of murder, and that, in fact, he was a killer. But for your quickness of aim—you notice how generous I am, John?—he would have killed that man. I say that that, in the absence of any real evidence is enough for us to assume that, in fact and in deed, he murdered his aunt.”

  “Hell, dammit, man,” the Professor’s voice rose like the roaring of an irritated bull, “how often ha’ I got to tell ye that because a man’ll kill one way it don’t mean that he’d kill another. As I see Grimble, he took the chance o’ escape when it occurred an’ then, once he was free he began dramatisin’ himself an’ saw himself kinda as the lone wolf wi’ everyman’s hand against him. Once he’d got himself into this frame o’ mind he realised that the fictional lone wolf, on whom, o’ course, he was modellin’ himself, was always armed an’ sold his life pretty expensively. Ye see, I can talk here wi’ a kinda real authority, for I worked it out this far meself as soon as I’d heard he’d escaped. I knew he’d go for his gun. Ye see, I just played the idiot boy lookin’ for the horse, once more, an’ said to meself, ‘Now then, John, ye’re name’s Roland Grimble an’ ye’ve just escaped from the clutches o’ the law.’ An’ after that it was all plain sailin’. But, an’ it’s a whackin’ big BUT, I don’t think that the Grimble who was prepared to shoot his way out through all the police in London, an’ who killed himself rather than be caught, was the same Grimble who, full o’ fear an’ tremblin’, held up a taxi-driver wi’ a gun. No, Reggie son, he’d dramatised himself into a state where the melodrama ran away wi’ him an’ he had to go on in spite o’ himself. An’ I don’t think the undramatised Grimble could ha’ brought himself to the point o’ stranglin’ his aunt in cold blood.”

  “But,” the Chief Inspector who, I knew, was not the least weary, looked as tired as I felt, “if you will allow it that Grimble managed, more or less, to hypnotise himself into a state where he would shoot down an unarmed policeman, do you not agree that he might equally well have hypnotised himself into a state where he would have killed Mrs. Rattigan. You are trying to set him up as a Jekyll and Hyde sort of character, and you may remember that in the end Hyde got the better of Jekyll.”

  “Not at all,” the Professor protested. “I wasn’t tryin’ to do anythin’ o’ the sort. I was merely suggestin’ that, for once in his life, the late and on the whole unlamented Mr. Grimble managed to fill himself wi’ a kinda mental Dutch courage an’ set out to kill his enemies. Ye didn’t hear him squealin’ as he stood on the stairs. He was really seriously frightened o’ what he had set out to do—to shoot his way through whoever opposed him. If ye’d said I’d tried to make out that he was a Frankenstein, ye’d ha’ bin a bit nearer to the truth. He made himself into a kinda mental monster an’ then he found he could not control the flamin’ monster he had made o’ himself. That was his trouble. He’d worked himself up an’ started spinnin’ an’ he could not stop.”

  Hoisting himself heavily from his chair the old man stumped noisily across the floor to replenish the beer-mugs. The Chief Inspector, with a nearly full bottle of the best brandy placed strategically near him, puffed contentedly at his cigar.

  “It doesn’t matter, John,” he said, “what arguments you have to show me that I am wrong. If you can produce direct and tangible evidence that I am wrong, I will consider it and see what your evidence is worth as evidence, but until that time, in a case like this, where evidence is scanty, I just have to go ahead on the assumption that the law of probabilities is right. The probabilities here are two. The first is that a man who would shoot a policeman was also capable of murdering his aunt while she slept and the second is that it seems obvious to me that, to lead him to escape in that manner, Grimble must have had some more serious crime on his mind, which he was afraid might have been uncovered. He made his mistake when he and the Morgan girl got together and concocted that story about seeing Carr. Oh, yes, I’m willing to admit that you were very quick in realising that that was a story and not a statement of fact. But I don’t know whether it has ever occurred to you that perhaps Grimble, who was not without a certain low cunning, had worked that out as a way of defence. He meant us to stumble to the fact that his story was a lie and he was prepared to go to prison for it. Oh yes, I know we’ve been through this before, but there’s a point I want to add to it. This is that once Grimble was in prison, he started worrying about the way he had murdered his aunt. You know as well as I do, John, that many an otherwise perfect—perfect that is from the criminal’s point of view—crime is spoilt by either an over-elaboration of detail, or a sudden fear on the part of the criminal that he may have left a clue, and a consequent return to the scene of the crime to make certain that he has not left one. That is where, I think, Grimble went wrong and where you are wrong. You are assuming that he returned to the hotel to try and get hold of his pistol. Well, I think he went back there to destroy something that he thought might be a clue against him. What it was we shall never know.”

  “Bah!” the old man was more contemptuous than usual, and that is saying something. “I’ll tell ye what, Reggie, ye can just go ahead yer own way, an’ I’ll go mine, an’ I’ll bet ye that I’ll find an answer that’ll surprise ye.”

  The Chief Inspector looked at him dubiously. He inhaled the smoke from his cigar and blew it out in a series of perfect rings.

  “You are not, by any chance, holding anything back from me, are you, John?” he asked. The Professor shook his head heavily.

  “I don’t know anythin’ that ye don’t,” he said, “but I kinda got one or two ideas an’ I’d like to try ’em out before I say anythin’ about them. No, I’m quite sure that I don’t know anythin’ pertinent that ye don’t, an’ if ye’d a pennyworth o’ brains in yer head, ye’d ha’ the same disquietenin’ ideas that I got. Tell ye what, Reggie, if I can prove, beyond all possible shadow o’ a doubt, that someone else did kill Lottie Rattigan, next time ye get an’ interestin’ case, ye let me in on it, wi’out havin’ me force me way into it in a way that’s kinda unbecomin’ in a man o’ me age an’ figure. Is it a bet?”

  The Chief Inspector took quite a time about answering. If I had been in his position I would have felt the same way. I’d have felt that the old man was capable of murdering someone else and leaving a false confession beside the body, just to win his bet. In the end the Bishop smiled his benediction on the old man.

  “All right, John,” he said, “it’s a bet.”

  The old man beamed all over his face. It looked as though, at last, he stood a chance of being called in by the police in consultation. It has always been one of his beliefs that the police treat him in a very scurvy fashion. When it turns out that he has been connected with a murderer or a murderee, the police are inclined to take a pretty dim view of it. The Chief Inspector has been known to groan and call on the gods on Olympus to deliver him from this pestilential Professor.

  Now, he hoped, he would have a really official standing. The only trouble about this, from my point of view, was that there was not the slightest guide to show who, except the late Roland Grimble, might have murdered Lottie Rattigan. I hoped, for h
is own sake, that Mr. Ben Carr had not murdered his aunt, for, with a reward like that at the far end of it, the old man would have thrown me to the hounds if he had thought it would help him.

  On the other hand, too, I thought, I wonder how, should he win his bet, the old man will like working with the Chief Inspector. It seemed to me that, on the whole, they both of them gained from the fact that they were in opposition to one another. When they bickered and the sparks flew wildly all round the place, it sometimes happened that one of these sparks landed on a trail of gunpowder and started the fuse which led to the final exposure of the criminal.

  Anyhow, I consoled myself with the thought that I did not care for murder cases personally, and that, so far as I was concerned, the old man could work out the rest of the case by himself. I would try and get back to work in the morning. And by work, I mean my job as a botanist and not as a rather irritable Watson to the old man’s Holmes.

  “All right, John,” the Chief Inspector returned to the attack, “now you have made up your mind that Grimble did not murder Mrs. Rattigan, who do you choose?”

  The Professor emerged from the bottom of his quart tankard. He scowled horrifically at the Bishop and then winked. When the old man winks it is a matter of watching the whole of one side of his face disintegrate. It did it now.

  “Ho, no, Reggie,” he said, as pleased with himself as if he’d just been offered the Presidency of the Royal Society. “Ho, no. Just ye keep yer fingers out o’ me pie. Ye’ve made up yer mind, so see that ye stick to it. Me, I got the scientific approach an’ I can see that young Grimble as murderer don’t stick, but I got to find out who done it wi’out the help o’ the police. D’ye think they could ha’ caught up wi’ Grimble an’ the Morgan girl wi’out me help?” He paused and answered his own question. “No, o’ course not. You’ll find that you need to get up dam’ early to put salt on me tail. It’s no use yer protestin’, Reggie, that the magnificent,” he said it in a tone that made it sound tawdry, “organisation o’ Scotland Yard ’ud ha’ got there in the end. They might ha’, but on the other hand it seems to me to be more likely that they’d still be fishin’ aroun’, tryin’ to put me friend Mr. Carr behind the bars o’ the gaol. I’m goin’ to be cunnin’, as cunnin’ an’ as shy as a blinkin’ otter, an’ I’ll be claimin’ me reward afore ye know where ye are.”

  The Chief Inspector seemed to be slightly startled by the cocksureness in the old man’s voice. I think he was already beginning to regret the rashness which had made him accept the Professor’s wily challenge.

  He fortified himself with a sip of brandy, and I did not blame him for needing it. I only have to deal with the old man at home, and even there his disruptiveness is terrific. What it would be like in a place which ran according to organised rules did not bear thinking about.

  “What have you got up your sleeve?” There was an undertone of pleading in the Chief Inspector’s sleepy voice.

  The old man grinned. “Nothin’ but me arm, the sleeve o’ me shirt, an’ a pair o’ cuff-links I stole from a duke,” he replied. He did not add that the duke from whom he had stolen the cuff-links had been a very dead duke indeed and had not been in a position to complain. When the old man had pinched them, I had wondered vaguely whether the law about looting from bombed buildings was also applicable to looting from dead bodies. Of course, the old man had, by some jiggery pokery, made it appear that the cuff-links were an essential clue in the case and after he had finished with running down the murderer, he had offered the links to the heir. The tone in which he does such offering is a very cunning one. I do not believe that there are more than half a dozen people in the British Isles, upon whom it has been tried, who have been able to resist it. It more or less says outright, “Oh, yes, these trinkets belong to you. I’m sure you don’t need them and you see if I take them out I’ll have no cuff-links. Poor me.” The old man is, without doubt, an appalling scoundrel.

  “Well, Max,” the Professor turned to me, “what are ye thinkin’ about?”

  I was honest. I told him that I’d been thinking that he was, at bottom, an unmitigated scoundrel. He looked as pleased as if I had told him that his last scientific paper marked a stage in the history of science.

  He rose to his feet and collected my beer mug to refill it. I thought of protesting, but I realised that I had only been drinking about two pints to every gallon that he put down, and to have refused would have been a sign of weakness.

  The Chief Inspector rose to depart. He collected his overcoat and his black trilby hat which gives him the appearance of a not unsuccessful barrister. He turned back to the old man before he left the room.

  “There’s just one thing, John,” he said seriously, “which I feel I should worry you about, and that is that if there is any interference with the course of justice, I will be quite unable to raise a finger to help you. I don’t mind your amusing yourself by trying to solve murder cases the difficult way, but I have noticed a slight tendency on your part to treat the law of the land as something which was made to control other people than yourself. If you get into trouble I will not help you, and, in fact, I think I’ll turn up to see you being sentenced. The law applies to every one of us. Don’t you forget that.”

  I realised that the old man was almost choked with unseemly mirth.

  “Reggie, old son,” he said affectionately when he had regained control of himself, “ye’re a pompous old ass sometimes. What the flamin’ hell d’ye think the law was made for but to be broken. If we all stuck by the letter o’ the law ye’d be out o’ a job yerself. No, no, Reggie, I’ll respect the law as far as I can wi’out inconveniencin’ meself, but if it should help me an’ I should think I could get away wi’ it, I’ll break the thunderin’ law. There’s nothin’ like a little bit o’ law breakin’ to cheer a man up. I got no respect for anythin’ that ties me down too much. But thanks all the same, son, for the well-meant warnin’.”

  “Good night,” the Chief Inspector smiled. “You can’t say I haven’t warned you, anyhow. Don’t you come running to me when you get into trouble. As for you, Max, you do your best to keep him out of mischief, won’t you?”

  “My God, yes,” I said, “his troubles always seem to land on my back. Good night.”

  Chapter 17

  Running Wild

  THE MORNING papers were full of Roland Grimble. There seemed to be a shortage of spectacular crime. The Daily Push had a particularly nice article which finished with the Words, “but Professor Grub, a friend of the family, happened to have his service revolver with him and shot Grimble through the heart before he had time to fire again.”

  This pleased me immensely. I cut it out and pasted it on a large card and left it on the Professor’s plate, to greet his eyes when he came to breakfast.

  He looked extremely ferocious as he entered the room swathed in his tartan dressing-gown. He looked even more ferocious when he read through the billet-doux I had left on his plate. Without speaking to me he rose and swept into the work-room. He was in such a towering fury that he managed to get through to the offices of the Daily Push without the usual business of wrong numbers and false scents.

  I left my breakfast to fend for itself and went into the hall to pick up the extension receiver.

  “Hell,” said the Professor. “Is that the Daily Push or Mush or whatever you call yourselves. It is, is it, eh? Well, I want to talk to the floundering flat-faced fool who wrote the article about me in yer dam-fool paper. What’s my name? Blast it. My name is Stubbs. NO. NO. NO. Not Grubs or Pubs or Tubbs or Rubbs, but plain ordinary Stubbs. S for sanguinary, T for tommy-rot, U for unspeakable, B for bloody, and B for balderdash. What the hell. You say the man’s in bed. At least you hope so. Bah! I always thought your paper plumbed the depths of inanity and now I know it.”

  The receiver went down with a slam that nearly dislocated my eardrums. The old man stormed out of the room and back to his breakfast. The only remark he made which had the least bearing on the Daily Push was as h
e reached out for The Times; he growled, “For God’s sake let me read something that at least verifies it’s dam’ quotations. I’m gettin’ so I cannot stand the penny Press.”

  It was hardly what might have been called a propitious start to the day. After breakfast I made a move to start some serious work. I laid out the bibliographical notes which I had so carefully compiled a few evenings before. The old man took one look at them and turned away.

  “Dammit, Max,” he complained bitterly, “I got a bet on wi’ Reggie an’ I don’t want to lose it. I got to do somethin’ about winnin’ it. The only trouble is I don’t know where to start. Can ye give me a lead?”

  It isn’t often that the Professor applies to me for help. I may say that I was so astonished that I nearly fell off my chair. I looked at him to see if he was breaking up. There didn’t seem to be any sign of it apart from the furious temper that was still simmering in the back of his mind.

  “The only thing I can think of,” I said helpfully, “is that perhaps, after all, there was something in my story about Janet Morgan looking so like Lottie Rattigan as a young woman. It occurred to me that there was no real reason why Lottie Rattigan should have told Annie Aspinall all the true facts. Say, just for the sake of argument, that Janet Morgan was the old girl’s granddaughter, either legitimate or illegitimate. Well, you see, she might have had some other reason for killing her grandmother, besides the money that she came into. You see, that might provide you with a case which would be rather like the naked chap walking down the Strand inside the cab. It might be that you were right and that the will is hiding the truth from us. We have looked for motives in the changes of her will, and have not been able to find any, so perhaps we should cast around and see whether anyone had any other motive that was strong enough to drive them to murder the old girl. I know, of course, that the trouble with doing this is that it is apt to bring the whole wide world, which you have so carefully excluded, back into the case. But perhaps something might come of trying to look at the case from a different angle.”