The Long Arm of the Law

by Martin Edwards

  “If only we could get round the difficulty of there being no sign of violence, I think we’re well on our way to a charge.”

  “Well, sir,” said Bragg, “I think I’ve got an idea about that. Mrs Bransome has bought four pounds of fine cotton-wool during the last fortnight, and she has bought it in pound packets at four different shops. I think she may have been buying calico, too, but I haven’t been able to trace that so far.

  “There’s no sign of any cotton-wool in the house now, except one partly used package in a medicine cupboard. You remember that scrap of calico I found in the furnace, sir.”

  Inspector Hurst nodded. He was listening with interest now.

  “That may have been used for making bonds that wouldn’t mark the flesh—calico stuffed with fine cotton-wool.”

  Hurst whistled.

  “I believe you’ve hit it,” he said; “lucky you spotted that scrap in the furnace.”

  “Lucky” was hardly fair, but Bragg realised that he had very nearly thrown the scrap back again.

  “How’s this for a reconstruction, Bragg?” asked the inspector. “The brothers get into the house as I suggested, hide in the wife’s bedroom till the Bransomes return. Then, when Bransome is settled down in his chair ready to start supper…which way was he sitting?”

  “Back to the door, sir; at least the place with the beer beside it was like that.”

  “Good. The sister must have given a signal, but even so I wonder he didn’t hear them.”

  A thought flashed into Bragg’s mind.

  “The wireless, sir; it’s a powerful set…and that would act as a signal, too.”

  “Good idea. They creep in, one of them claps a cushion over Bransome’s face, one—Fred, the wrestler, no doubt—seizes his arms, the third one ties them behind his back. Then his legs, then a proper gag in or over his mouth; probably blindfold him, too. Then…what?”

  “Eat the supper, sir. That’s got to be eaten if Mrs Bransome’s story is to stand muster.”

  “Gosh; the cold-blooded devils! But you’re right. Then carry him into the kitchen and shove his head into the oven.

  “But—what about the bonds?…ah, I see; they gave him enough gas to make him unconscious—probably stuffed cushions round the opening to prevent it coming into the room, and kept the window open for their own sakes.

  “Then when he was unconscious they could undo the bonds and the gag—no doubt they untied the feet and legs first, to see if there was any kick in him—then shut the window and leave him to it.

  “Mrs Bransome keeps the wireless on for a bit, then turns out the light and goes to bed, leaving the brothers…no, they must have gone out by the living-room window—it opens on to that narrow passage through to the back garden—and shut it after them.”

  “But it wasn’t latched, sir.”

  “Oh, well, perhaps she went to bed first and they shut it from the outside. Or she may have left it unlatched on purpose, because if murder was suspected and the whole house was found closed, then the murderer must be inside.

  “Perhaps it was left as a loophole for the suggestion of an outside murder, if the worst came to the worst. Does that cover it, Bragg?”

  “That’s probably the story, sir, but they’ve covered it cleverly. The fingerprints, for instance.”

  “Ah, yes, Bransome’s prints on the tap, the oven door handle, the glass of beer, the fork—all correct way up, too. That’s the worst of these detective stories; every criminal knows that trick.

  “They must have wiped their own off and then put his on after he was unconscious—the cold-blooded devils! I want to see them swing, Bragg. We know what they did, but can we prove it?”

  “I think that empty stomach will prove it, sir. Mrs Bransome lied about his having supper; how can she get away from that?”

  “She may say she ate the cutlets herself—Bransome off his feed and she hungry.”

  “Two on one plate and one other, sir? If she’d cleared supper properly she might have got away with it.”

  “Yes, you wouldn’t have noticed the cutlet bones. Come on; we’ll go and ask her a question or two…”

  ***

  Mrs Bransome was at home and with her was her brother Fred. Hurst was rather glad to see him; confederates were inclined to give themselves away by trying to warn each other. Bragg would know enough to watch Fred.

  “I’ve just come round to clear up one or two points before tomorrow’s inquest, madam,” said the inspector. “Your husband’s health; how’s that been lately?”

  “Oh, his health was all right,” said Mrs Bransome, who seemed quite at her ease now. “Never any trouble about that.”

  “Appetite good?”

  “Oh, fairly. Of course, being depressed didn’t help that much.”

  “No, I suppose not. Now, the night this happened; what would he have had for supper?”

  The faintest flicker of disquiet showed in Mrs Bransome’s blue eyes, but her hesitation was only momentary. No doubt she felt that truth was the best policy—where truth could be conveniently told.

  “He had a cutlet, if I remember rightly; yes, I remember, because I had to cook them.”

  “One cutlet?”

  “No, two. I had one.”

  Bragg, watching brother Fred, saw his eyes shift quickly from one to the other of the speakers. He was clearly nervous—and no wonder.

  “Anything else?”

  “Some stewed pears—and a bottle of beer. But what can all this matter?”

  Inspector Hurst looked steadily at the woman before answering.

  “It matters, Mrs Bransome, because the medical report tells us that your husband’s stomach was empty when he died. He ate no cutlets that night.”

  Mrs Bransome’s face slowly froze into a stare of horrified consternation. Her slower-witted brother had hardly grasped the point when Hurst turned on him and asked sharply:

  “Was it you who ate those cutlets, Yates—or your brother George?”

  “I—I—” Fred Yates saw the point, all right now. His face was red and his great hands opened and shut convulsively.

  “What do you mean? I wasn’t here—I—”

  “Then who held Bransome while he was tied up with those padded bonds?”

  In a flash the inspector turned to Mrs Bransome again.

  “And where’s all that cotton-wool you’ve been buying, madam?”

  There was a crash as Fred Yates’ chair fell over. With a bound he was at the door—but Bragg was on his back. Hurst darted to the window and, throwing it up, blew short blasts on his whistle. Within thirty seconds Fred Yates was handcuffed.

  Mrs Bransome had fainted.

  ***

  It was Fred Yates who lost his nerve and confessed. His sister, though she had fainted, had sufficient self-control to hold her tongue. Had Fred done the same it might have been difficult for Inspector Hurst to prove his case.

  The reconstruction which Hurst and Bragg had worked out between them proved to be substantially correct. The three Yateses had seen their fortune—as it appeared to them—slipping away as Bransome squandered it on the girl Lucy Petworth.

  George had had the idea of taking advantage of Bransome’s carelessness to forge his cheques, hoping thereby to save something from the wreck but Bransome, careless as he was, had spotted that his money was going too quickly and had begun to question George—though he had not got as far as taking the matter up with his bank. Mrs Bransome and her brothers felt that the only thing to do was to put him out of the way; then all the money would come to “Winnie.”

  It was she who planned the “suicide,” made the padded strips of linen, rehearsed her brothers in their parts. Whenever they got the chance to be alone in the house together—as they did when Ralph Bransome was taking out his Lucy—Winnie would sit in her husband’s place at the suppe
r table and the two others would come creeping in behind her.

  Finding that she could hear them every time, she thought of the wireless and that did the trick. The actual date and time of the murder were fixed by reference to the Radio Times: a military band, which Ralph liked to hear at full blast, was exactly what was wanted for the job.

  George carried a cushion and crammed it over Winnie’s face until he had become sufficiently adept to stop her making a sound. A moment later Fred would pinion her arms, and hook one of his long legs over hers to stop her kicking the table over.

  “On the night,” with Ralph in his allotted place as victim, his wife had whisked out of their hiding-place the long ropes of calico padded with fine cotton-wool, and within a minute Ralph Bransome had been bound and helpless.

  The rest had followed exactly as the two detectives had imagined, the brothers watching their opportunity to slip out of the gate at the bottom of the garden into a quiet lane which led on to Blackheath.

  When all three had been charged and were awaiting trial, Inspector Hurst said to Bragg:

  “That’ll do for a start, my lad. I don’t see why we shouldn’t work well as a team. I may be no Sherlock Holmes, but you are certainly no dunderheaded Watson. What was that motto of yours?”

  After the Event

  Christianna Brand

  Mary Christianna Brand Lewis (1907–1988), a dance hostess prior to her marriage to an up-and-coming doctor, took a job as a shop worker in the early months of the Second World War, selling cookers and kitchen equipment. A female colleague bullied her, and by way of retaliation, she wrote a detective novel in which a fictional incarnation of her enemy was murdered. Death in High Heels (1941), published under the name Christianna Brand, introduced Inspector Charlesworth of Scotland Yard, and was followed by Heads You Lose (1942), set in Kent, which featured a local policeman, Inspector Cockrill.

  Writing in the Golden Age tradition, Brand focused on plot and characterisation rather than police procedure, and became one of Britain’s leading mystery writers. Cockrill’s second case, Green for Danger (1944), combines a superbly constructed plot with a well-evoked war-time setting; the book was filmed, with Alastair Sim playing Cockrill. In an article published in 1978, she explained that the likeable detective was inspired by her beloved father-in-law. Cockrill appeared in six published novels (plus one that has not been published), a play, and a handful of stories. This one first appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in 1958.The researcher Tony Medawar revealed in The Spotted Cat (2002), a collection of Cockrill mysteries, that she was working on another Cockrill story at the time of her death.

  ***

  “Yes, I think I may claim,” said the grand old man (of Detection) complacently, “that in all my career I never failed to solve a murder case. In the end,” he added, hurriedly, having caught Inspector Cockrill’s beady eye.

  Inspector Cockrill had for the past hour found himself in the position of the small boy at a party who knows how the conjurer does his tricks. He suggested: “The Othello case?” and sat back and twiddled his thumbs.

  “As in the Othello case,” said the Great Detective, as though he had not been interrupted at all. “Which, as I say, I solved. In the end,” he added again, looking defiantly at Inspector Cockrill.

  “But too late?” suggested Cockie, regretfully.

  The great one bowed. “In as far as certain evidence had, shall we say?—faded—yes; too late. For the rest, I unmasked the murderer; I built up a water-tight case against him; and I duly saw him triumphantly brought to trial. In other words, I think I may fairly say—that I solved the case.”

  “Only, the jury failed to convict,” said Inspector Cockrill.

  He waved it aside with magnificence. A detail. “As it happened, yes; they failed to convict.”

  “And quite right too,” said Cockie; he was having a splendid time.

  ***

  “People round me were remarking, that second time I saw him play Othello,” said the Great Detective, “that James Dragon had aged twenty years in as many days. And so he may well have done; for in the past three weeks he had played, night after night, to packed audiences—night after night strangling his new Desdemona, in the knowledge that his own wife had been so strangled but a few days before; and that every man Jack in the audience believed it was he who had strangled her—believed he was a murderer.”

  “Which, however, he was not,” said Inspector Cockrill, and his bright elderly eyes shone with malicious glee.

  “Which he was—and was not,” said the old man heavily. He was something of an actor himself but he had not hitherto encountered the modern craze for audience-participation and he was not enjoying it at all. “If I might now be permitted to continue without interruption…?

  ***

  “Some of you may have seen James Dragon on the stage,” said the old man, “though the company all migrated to Hollywood in the end. But none of you will have seen him as Othello—after that season, Dragon Productions dropped it from their repertoire. They were a great theatrical family—still are, come to that, though James and Leila, his sister, are the only ones left nowadays; and as for poor James—getting very passé, very passé indeed,” said the Great Detective pityingly, shaking his senile head.

  “But at the time of the murder, he was in his prime; not yet thirty and at the top of his form. And he was splendid. I see him now as I saw him that night, the very night she died—towering over her as she lay on the great stage bed, tricked out in his tremendous costume of black and gold, with the padded chest and shoulders concealing his slenderness and the great padded, jewel-studded sleeves like cantaloupe melons, raised above his head; bringing them down, slowly, slowly, until suddenly he swooped like a hawk and closed his dark-stained hands on her white throat. And I hear again Emilia’s heart-break cry in the lovely Dragon family voice: ‘Oh, thou hast killed the sweetest innocent, That e’er did lift up eye…’”

  But she had not been an innocent—James Dragon’s Desdemona, Glenda Croy, who was in fact his wife. She had been a thoroughly nasty piece of work. An aspiring young actress, she had blackmailed him into marriage for the sake of her career; and that had been all of a piece with her conduct throughout. A great theatrical family was extremely sensitive to blackmail even in those more easy-going days of the late 1920s; and in the first rush of the Dragons’ spectacular rise to fame, there had been one or two unfortunate episodes, one of them even culminating in a—very short—prison sentence: which, however, had effectively been hushed up. By the time of the murder, the Dragons were a byword for a sort of magnificent untouchability. Glenda Croy, without ever unearthing more than a grubby little scandal here and there, could yet be the means of dragging them all back into the mud again.

  James Dragon had been, in the classic manner, born—at the turn of the century—backstage of a provincial theatre; had lustily wailed from his property basket while Romeo whispered through the mazes of Juliet’s ball-dance, “Just before curtain-up. Both doing splendidly. It’s a boy!”; had been carried on at the age of three weeks, and at the age of ten formed with his sister such a precious pair of prodigies that the parents gave up their own promising careers to devote themselves to the management of their children’s affairs. By the time he married, Dragon Productions had three touring companies always on the road and a regular London Shakespeare season, with James Dragon and Leila, his sister, playing the leads. Till he married a wife.

  From the day of his marriage, Glenda took over the leads. They fought against it, all of them, the family, the whole company, James himself: but Glenda used her blackmail with subtlety, little hints here, little threats there, and they were none of them proof against it—James Dragon was their “draw”, with him they all stood or fell. So Leila stepped back and accepted second leads and for the good of them all, Arthur Dragon, the father, who produced for the company as well as being its manager, d
id his honest best with the new recruit; and so got her through her Juliet (to a frankly mature Romeo), her Lady Macbeth, her Desdemona; and at the time of her death was breaking his heart rehearsing her Rosalind, preparatory to the company’s first American tour.

  Rosalind was Leila Dragon’s pet part. “But, Dad, she’s hopeless, we can’t have her prancing her way across America grinning like a coy hyena; do speak to James again…”

  “James can’t do anything, my dear.”

  “Surely by this time…It’s three years now, we were all so certain it wouldn’t last a year.”

  “She knows where her bread is buttered,” said the lady’s father-in-law, sourly.

  “But now, having played with us—she could strike out on her own?”

  “Why should she want to? With us, she’s safe—and she automatically plays our leads.”

  “If only she’d fall for some man…”

  “She won’t do that; she’s far too canny,” said Arthur Dragon. “That would be playing into our hands. And she’s interested in nothing but getting on; she doesn’t bother with men.” And, oddly enough, after a pass or two, men did not bother with her.

  A row blew up over the Rosalind part, which rose to its climax before the curtain went up on “Venice. A street”, on the night that Glenda Croy died. It rumbled through odd moments off-stage and through the intervals, spilled over into hissed asides between Will Shakespeare’s lines, culminated in a threat spat out with the venom of a viper as she lay on the bed, with the great arms raised above her, ready to pounce and close hands about her throat. Something about “gaol”. Something about “prisoners”. Something about the American tour.

  ***

  It was an angry and a badly frightened man who faced her, twenty minutes later, in her dressing-room. “What did you mean, Glenda, by what you said on-stage?—during the death scene. Gaol-birds, prisoners—what did you mean, what was it you said?”

  She had thrown on a dressing-gown at his knock and now sat calmly on the divan, peeling off her stage stockings. “I meant that I am playing Rosalind in America. Or the company is not going to America.”