Death for Madame

by Peter Main

  Professor Stubbs grinned mysteriously. “That ’ud be tellin’,” he grumbled, “an’ I can’t tell ye for a little time. Ye see, I kinda don’t want to make trouble until it is really necessary.”

  “That,” the Chief Inspector pointed his cigar at the old man, “doesn’t sound like you. I thought you revelled in making as much trouble in as short a time as possible. Are you sure that you are feeling quite well?”

  His look of mock solicitude seemed to aggravate the Professor. He glared like a mad bull at the comfortable Bishop. He took a long pull at his quart of beer. “Dammit, son,” he complained, “I got a right to me own secrets, ain’t I? I don’t hold back on ye for long, an’ when I do tell ye the answer ye always say that it was obvious. So I’m damned if I ain’t goin’ to keep ye stewin’ in yer juice till it suits me to take ye out. I know exactly what I’m doin’ an’ ye best let me play me hand me own way. Ye’ll be told about it as soon as I dam’ well can. I’m just kinda waiting for somethin’ to happen an’ as soon as it happens I’ll spill all the beans I ha’. Just to while away the time o’ waitin’ I’d like to ask ye who, apart from Roland Grimble, was the one person who could ha’ murdered the old lady?”

  The Chief Inspector puffed reflectively at his cigar. “My dear John, is this a guessing game?” he asked. “You know as well as I do that there was adequate opportunity for every single person in that house to have done the murder. Why it might have been the cook or the waiter or the lady companion, or,” he laughed, “your friend Mr. Carr. There was nobody with an alibi, and I don’t suppose that it took very long to kill the old lady. She’d die pretty easily. I’d say that, although she was very old and good for several more years, she’d have collapsed under any rough treatment. Having to carry all that weight about with her can’t have been good for her heart.”

  The Professor looked complacently at his own bulk.

  “Oh, I dunno,” he protested, “there’s nothin’ wrong wi’ a bit o’ good honest weight, an’, if it comes to that, Reggie, ye’re no sylph.”

  The Chief Inspector sipped his brandy appreciatively. He looked very sleepy indeed, and I would not have been surprised to have heard purring snores coming from him. It is a curious habit he has of looking very tired when he is trying to think hard. I knew that he was busily engaged in going over the facts in his mind, trying to pick on those which the old man had noticed.

  I myself had ceased wondering about the case. I realised that the old man was serious, and I realised also that there was, after all, some prospect of getting back to work without distractions.

  The evening hung around us like the tawdry cloak of a stage princess. We inside it could be aware of the wearing and the holes and the darns, although it might look all right to others at a distance.

  The old man was getting restive. He kept on letting his pipe go out and then carefully refilling it before lighting it. Whenever it was not his pipe it was his beer mug. He rose and stumped over to the barrel so often that I began to wonder how he hoped to contain all the beer he was taking.

  Conversation was desultory and unreal. There were long patches of silence, and when either the Professor or the Chief Inspector at last made up their minds to speak, they both started at the same moment and then fell silent, as if it was not worth the effort to sort out their fragments of conversation and start again.

  I felt pretty bored and remembered that I had still part of the current number of Nature to read. I took that down from my table and rather rudely retired behind it. At least I knew where I was and was spared the agonies of trying to make conversation.

  I suppose we sat like this for an hour or more. Then I heard a ring at the front door. I rose slowly to go and answer it, to save Mrs. Farley a journey from her quarters, but to my surprise the old man shot out of his chair like a mad elephant and went charging across the room before I had time to move.

  “That’s all right, Max,” he grunted, “I’ll answer it. I’m expectin’ a call.”

  I wondered who on earth he was bringing back into the room, for I could hear the mumble of voices in the hall. To my disappointment, for I had at least hoped for some excitement in the shape of a new face, it was nobody more than Mr. Ben Carr.

  Both Mr. Carr and Professor Stubbs became silent as they entered the room.

  “I suppose ye know Chief Inspector Bishop?” he asked, indicating the weary looking figure. Mr. Carr gravely assented that he did, indeed, know the Chief Inspector. His tone said that, while as a rule he might not have much use for policemen, the Chief Inspector just managed to pass muster as a human being.

  Making Mr. Carr comfortable seemed to take an interminable time. I had rarely seen the Professor fuss over a guest to the same extent. The brandy was poured for him and the cigars were laid out in neat array.

  “Hum, ho, humph,” the old man made a series of noises. He was back in his own chair with a full beer mug and his pipe going full blast. “I’m now proposin’ to win me bet, the bet I had wi’ Reggie, here,” he turned to Mr. Carr as if he owed him an explanation, “an’ I’m not goin’ to try pullin’ murderers like rabbits out o’ me hat. I want ye,” he gestured fiercely at the Chief Inspector, “to understand clearly that I didn’t work this case out by guess work, but by dam’ good deduction. Ye had the same facts as I had to go on, an’ I’ll give ye the answer now. All I’ll ask ye first is one or two questions.”

  He looked at us. I marked my places in Nature and laid it down. I still had a good many private doubts about the old man’s abilities as a magician, and I wanted to know what he had had to go on that we had not noticed, or as I thought more likely, that he’d forgotten to tell us. The Chief Inspector was still lolling in his chair, gazing with half-closed eyes at the blue smoke drifting up from his cigar. He did not seem to be really interested in what the old man was saying. Mr. Carr sat at comfort, watching the old man eagerly. He seemed to think that his audience was prepared for his epoch-shaking announcements.

  “Harumph,” he snorted, “well, there’s two questions I’d like to ask ye before I start to tell ye how thunderin’ cute I am.” He glared at the impervious figure of the Chief Inspector. “Firstly, I’d like ye to remember that Annie Aspinall was in a room just beside Lottie Rattigan, an’ she said she heard nothin’. Well, what d’ye think of that?”

  The Chief Inspector opened one weary eye. “Perhaps,” he said gently, “she said she heard nothing, because, as a matter of strict truth, she did hear nothing. You are not, by any chance, going to try and suggest to me that she is the murderer, or that she was in league with the murderer and is not telling the truth?”

  “No, no, son, I ain’t goin’ to try an’ come that over ye. I was just tryin’ ye out there, anyhow, when I said she said she remembered hearin’ nothin’. It shows how dam’ unobservant ye are. What she said as a matter o’ strict truth was that she heard nothin’ out o’ the ordinary. Now ye’d better do a bit o’ thinkin’ on that before I come back to it.”

  He grinned at us with fiendish malice. I still couldn’t see that I had missed anything in Miss Aspinall’s statement, and I thought the old man had merely been pulling a quick one on us by saying that we had not paid attention to her statement. Speaking personally, I could remember exactly what she said. He was, of course, right in his repetition of her words, but it didn’t seem to me to get us anywhere at all.

  “Uhhuh,” he grunted, “an’ the second question is equally simple. It has to do with the bell, that oddly carved knob on the table.” He looked round at us. “Now what ’ud ye say was strange about that bell. Max, if ye were a proper Watson to me Holmes ye’d remember the case o’ the dog an’ the question which asked, what was the odd thing about the dog? The answer bein’ that nobody heard the dog, an’ that the blinkin’ animal had not barked. Well, there ye are, what was the strange thing about the bell?”

  “I suppose,” I said diffidently, for it seemed to be expected of me, “that the strange thing about the bell was that the bell did not rin
g. Is that right?”

  “Exactly,” said the old man with an almost overpowering air of the most superior triumph. He was enjoying himself. “Now then, to return to the statement o’ Annie Aspinall, I’ll ha’ to take ye further into the realms o’ detective fiction. Did ye ever read the Father Brown stories o’ the late Mr. G. K. Chesterton?” The Chief Inspector and I nodded. “Well, then, ye’ll remember the case o’ the Invisible Man, a much better invisible man than that o’ Wells. The Invisible Man, as ye’ll remember, was the postman. He could come in an’ do his murder an’ get away wi’ it, just because everyone was expectin’ him to come in at that time, an’ didn’t count him.” He settled himself down in his seat. I could see he was preparing to lecture us. “Now, I meself don’t think that Chesterton was right in thinkin’ that no one ’ud notice the postman, for meself I’m a great waiter for me postbag, an’ I’m quite sure that I’m not a unique kinda person there. In real life there’d ha’ bin a girl waitin’ for her love letter or me waitin’ for proofs, or somethin’ like that, an’ we’d ha’ noticed the postman. I got kinda thinkin’ about this story last night an’ saw that, maybe, it had somethin’ to do wi’ the present case. There’s always somethin’ hidden in the back o’ the mind which ’ull help a man out on these occasions—it may only be a way to tie a knot which he had learned as a boy an’ hadn’t thought o’ these fifty years, but it might come in useful sometime. That, I think, might be called me apologia for the readin’ o’ thrillers. The fellers who write them are full o’ wonderful wheezes an’ tricks an’ lots o’ strange information. It’s better than collectin’ stamps, as a method o’ education. So I kinda dip me nose into everythin’ an’ hope it will be o’ use someday.”

  “I say, Prof old cock,” it was Mr. Carr, “what about a little less cackle and a few more horses?”

  Now if I had spoken to the old man like that I have no doubt that he would have been mad, but he just beamed at Mr. Carr.

  “All right, son,” he said, “but ye must let me ha’ me little bit o’ crowin’. After all, it’s me own dunghill ain’t it.” Mr. Carr nodded gravely. “Well, here I was wi’ two really first-rate subsidiary problems to bite on, so I set me old brain to work—it can still do a bit o’ tickin’ when it has to, an’ I saw the answer. Now can any o’ ye see it? Ye don’t mean ye’re all as dumb as ye’re stuffed-lookin’, eh?”

  A gentle chuckle broke from the supine Chief Inspector. “Don’t be an old hypocrite, John,” he said, “you know that you’d be as mad as hell if any of us was to admit that he saw the answer now. You’re waiting to bring your rabbit out of your hat—oh, no, it’s no use denying that you’re playing magician—and I’m sure we’d all loathe to spoil your act. It would be like a child who announced in loud tones, just before the conjuror did his trick, that he’d seen the man putting piegons in his coat-tails. No, no, John, I won’t spoil sport. And I think I’ll go further and say that I don’t quite get what you are driving at, though I may have got a very faint glimmer of it.”

  He cracked a new cigar contentedly beside his ear and lit it with great care. Mr. Carr fished for a packet of Woodbines and lit one. Even though he had come into wealth he saw no reason why he should give up the cigarettes he liked. The Professor took another look round at us to see that we were hanging on his words in the approved style. We must have looked as though we were, for a look of extreme benevolence stole across his face.

  “Harumph,” he cleared his throat, “now where, was I? Oh, yes, I was tellin’ ye about the virtues o’ the detective story an’ I was tryin’ to apply Father Brown to Annie Aspinall—that sounds kinda funny, don’t it? Well, it is quite obvious to any one wi’ a farthin’ worth o’ wit that the reason that she heard nothin’ out of the ordinary was that there was nothin’ out o’ the ordinary for her to hear. She’d bin wi’ Lottie Rattigan for the whale o’ a number o’ years an’ had grown used to the common noises o’ the night, an’ in that hotel there must ha’ bin quite a number o’ noises durin’ the night, wi’ Lottie ringin’ for a drink an’ chattin’ wi’ a friend. But it occurred to me that, if a friend had looked in to see Lottie Rattigan, Miss Aspinall, who seems to me to ha’ bin a most admirable watchdog, would ha’ looked out to see who it was. Now, the reason that she didn’t look out was that no one was chattin’ wi’ her, no stranger had come in from outside. She wasn’t bickerin’ wi’ her nephew, Roland Grimble, or exchangin’ dirty stories wi’ her other nephew, Ben Carr. Miss Aspinall heard nothin’ out o’ the ordinary because there was nothin’ out o’ the ordinary to hear.” I don’t know at what point in this last harangue it was that the whole thing came to me, or at what point the others got it. As I glanced round I saw that the Chief Inspector had pulled himself up a little and was examining the Professor closely through half-closed eyes.

  Mr. Carr sat as still as a bronze statue, the only movement being the wagging of the Woodbine between his lips.

  Chapter 20

  Reason and Explanation

  “YES, YE LOT o’ blunderin’ muddle-headed, fish-faced, nincompoops,” the old man certainly was having a field, day, “o’ course ye all see the answer now that I’ve pointed it out to ye. Ye all know that hotel, an’ ye all know that there was only one man who could ha’ spoken to Lottie Rattigan in the early hours o’ the mornin’ wi’out wakening Miss Aspinall. She was so familiar wi’ his voice that she’d never ha’ bothered about it. It wouldn’t ha’ made her stir in her sleep. The one person who could ha’ killed Mrs. Rattigan, an’ who, in fact, did so, was Arthur Niven.”

  He beamed round at us with the utmost satisfaction showing in his face. The Chief, Inspector slowly hoisted himself out of his chair. I realised that he was going to reach for the telephone. Professor Stubbs reached out a hand like a vegetable beefsteak and stopped him.

  “No, Reggie, no,” he said seriously, “there’s no point in yer tryin’ to arrest him now. He’s beyond yer reach. Arthur Niven died earlier this evenin’. That’s the message I was waitin’ for, an’ I asked Ben Carr to come along an’ tell me as soon as the old man was dead. I had a talk wi’ his doctor this afternoon, after I’d seen the old man, an’ he said he didn’t think he’d last the afternoon, an’ so I thought I’d let things ride.”

  “Oh,” the Chief Inspector seemed to be mildly nettled, “you know, John, I did warn you about taking the law into your own hands, and strictly speaking you should have communicated with me as soon as you realised that he was the murderer.”

  “Oh, I dunno about that,” the old man’s voice held a gentle rebuke. “Ye see, Reggie, by the time I knew for certain that old Arthur had killed Mrs. Rattigan it was too late to set the forces o’ the law after him, an’ after I’d heard his story I don’t know that I thought o’ it again.”

  He paused and took a long draught of beer. He then relit his pipe.

  “To get a rough idea o’ the story that I learned in bits an’ pieces from Arthur Niven,” he said, “ye’ve kinda got to reorientate yerselves. Ye got to look at Lottie Rattigan through the eyes o’ one o’ her servants. To you an’ to me she’d just appear as a bawdy an’ amusin’ old bird, but to someone like Arthur Niven she must, at times, have appeared to be a tyrant o’ the first water, wi’ a tongue that could lash like the wrath o’ God. An’ yet the man adored her. He always had adored her, even in the years when she was a rich man’s doxy an’ he’d bin her butler. We none o’ us realised that his association wi’ Lottie Rattigan went back so far, because we none o’ us thought o’ Arthur Niven as a man. To us he was just the fumblin’, stumblin’ old man who brought the drinks. Well, ye see, takin’ all this into consideration, ye get a man in a very curious state, wi’ his feelin’s towards his mistress runnin’ quickly from blind an’ implicit adoration to equally blind an’ helpless rage. She bullied the old man like hell, as Carr here will tell ye.”

  “Cor, yes,” said Mr. Carr, “I used to think that if I was old Arthur that I’d have slugged the old girl over her head with a bottle of Bols o
ne of these fine days.”

  “So ye see,” the old man returned to his story, “it was not really surprisin’ that there should come a day when the cord that kinda kept his temper in check would snap, an’ when it did happen it was by way o’ bein’ an accident.”

  “An accident?” said the Chief Inspector incredulously, “I must say that the corpse didn’t much look as if there had been an accident. If ever I saw anything that was done intentionally that was it.”

  The old man was not the least bit ruffled. He beamed at the Bishop, who was now sitting as if enthroned to take a service.

  “Got ye there, Reggie,” he remarked pleasantly, “but all the same, as I say, it was by way o’ bein’ an accident. Ye didn’t see the old boy till after the death o’ Lottie Rattigan, but ye must ha’ noticed then the way he shuffled along. Well, there he was, bein’ called out in the early mornin’ to take Lottie a drink an’ he shuffles along the corridor to find out what she wants. Well, his poor old shufflin’ feet get tangled in the flex o’ the standard lamp on the table an’ he pulls it out o’ the wall. ‘Ye clumsy old So-an’-So,’ says Lottie, not raisin’ her voice, and she catches hold o’ the flex an’ whips it towards him. An’ then, the accident happens. The flamin’ flex gets up round her neck an’ at the same instant old Arthur gets one o’ his blindin’ fits o’ hatred an’, instead o’ unwindin’ the flex, he just pulls it tight. As I think it was ye who said, Reggie, she died kinda easy, an’ the reason that the bell didn’t go was obvious. Even if she had reached it she’d not ha’ bin able to do any good by pressin’ it, for it rang in Arthur’s room an’ he was the man, who was killin’ her. So there ye are. Ye see, Reggie, that it was a kinda accident. But for the cord goin’ up round her neck like that an’ old Arthur steppin’ forward to remove it at the moment that his rage flowered, she’d ha’ escaped.”

  The Chief Inspector nodded his head wisely. “Yes, John,” he said, and his voice was not happy, “I see what you mean. You might almost say that it was the kind of thing which any of us might have done under the circumstances.”