The Crimson Rambler

by John Russell Fearn

  “Thank you.” Gossage’s voice was unaccustomedly reserved. “For your promise of co-operation. I mean.”

  “I don’t know who killed him,” she went on fiercely. “But I feel sure it was somebody in this house. We all hated him. He was overbearing, cruel, derisive. I am sure you will find the killer. Don’t spare him—or her.”

  When Gossage stepped out to the corridor, Preston was not there. He had gone downstairs, Blair said.

  The door of the boxroom opened stiffly, and Blair felt inside for the light switch and snapped it on. Nothing happened.

  “No bulb.” he muttered. “I have a flashlight in my room, sir. Be back in a minute.”

  Gossage nodded and stood just inside the doorway, waiting, the smell of dust strong in his nostrils.

  Blair came hurrying back, and flashed the light beam into the boxroom. It settled on tin deed boxes, old trunks, part of an old bedstead, a section of what had once been a wardrobe, and a small table minus one of its legs.

  “Junk!” Blair growled.

  Gossage took a few steps into the room and paused, frowning.

  “That’s odd,” he said. “Years of dust on the trunks and other stuff, and yet none on the floor, at least not where it’s uncovered.”

  Blair considered the fact.

  “Probably Craddock’s men brushed the floor, sir—”

  “What for? They could see if anything were on the floor, dust or no dust. And evidently they didn’t look in these trunks and deed boxes for the reason that the undisturbed dust on them shows they haven’t been tampered with.”

  “I have heard of criminals adding dust after a crime sir,” Sergeant Blair murmured.

  “And I’ve heard of the moon being made of green cheese—but I don’t have to credit it. The point here, Harry, is that somebody else has been in this room either before or after the police and moved the dust—to prevent any footprints being traced.”

  “Then it must have been before, sir,” Blair said, “otherwise Craddock and his boys would have seen the prints.”

  “Right.”

  Gossage went forward again, casting the flashlight beam along the bases of’ the trunks and boxes. Then he pointed.

  “I was right. Look! The dust is piled up in ridges round these edges. Somebody’s brushed it aside.”

  They looked at the small plain glass window. It was of the sash variety and locked. Blair turned.

  “We came to look at the electrolier support, didn’t we, sir?”

  Gossage nodded and. they moved to the wall on their right, the one dividing them from Gregory Bride’s bedroom. Immediately the beam fell on the spot they wanted. Three of the floorboards had been sawn through, making a movable square of about 18 inches. Without the least effort Blair pried them up with his penknife blade.

  In the cavity that had been there was a loose piece of steel chain, about eight inches long, made up of six strong links. Through the seventh link from the loose end a narrow iron bar was fixed horizontally over a wide, cast-iron cylinder which itself was secured to the top side of the panelled ceiling by a series of screws, corroded with age.

  Twining loosely from the open end of the electrolier’s central tube, and then snaking between the links of the chain, was a double wire finishing in twin plugs, which were pegged into two sockets fixed in the floor beam. To these sockets ran the house wiring.

  “Everything in order, sir,” Blair said. “The electrolier is held by the chain, which is fastened to this hook on the inside of the rosette which is flush with the panelled ceiling below. The bar through the links holds it taut—hence no screws are needed in the ceiling—and the bar is supported by this metal cylinder that is screwed to the topside of the panel. Then the wires plug in the sockets. The electrolier can be lowered simply by unplugging the sockets and putting a rope through the chain. The cylinder is wide enough to take the two plugs as you lower.”

  Gossage said nothing. He was on his knees, the flashlight beam blazing into the cavity.

  “This hook is bent back,” he said presently. “This one, I mean, to which the chain is fastened. And sharply back, too. For some reason the top has been bent away from the normal central position. And—what’s the idea of this smaller tube, I wonder?”

  For the moment Blair did not quite see what his superior meant, but when he did he peered into the cavity more earnestly. He observed the bent hook just like a backwardly tilted “?”, then he saw something else.

  At first sight it looked as if the two electric wires came out of the top of a single tube—the main electrolier tube—but now it was evident they came up the sides of a second tube, of smaller diameter, in the middle of the big tube.

  The smaller one was, in turn, clipped on to the edge of the large one by spring clamps, similar to those on a fountain-pen cap.

  “I’ll wager my shirt and next year’s rose bushes that this second tube doesn’t need to be here!” Gossage said.

  He reached into the cavity and tried to seize the inner tube, but the space was too narrow for his fingers and thumb to get a grip.

  “Get the pliers out of my bag,” he ordered.

  Blair brought the pliers from Gossage’s ‘murder bag’, and the chief inspector took them from him.

  “We can’t pull this inner tube up,” he said, after some minutes of effort, “and it’s probably because that rosette the bottom is holding it. In that case, I’ll take a risk—” And the steel jaws of the pliers began to work the spring clips back and forth. After a moment or two one of them snapped, then the other followed it.

  Tense-faced both men watched the inner tube slide downward and from below there came a muffled bump.

  “It’s gone,” Blair whispered. “Dropped right out of the bottom of the main tube and hit the study carpet below. In fact, I can see it.” he added, peering through the electrolier tube. “Yes, the desk light is still on, giving a glow along the floor. I can see a bit of the stepladder, too. Take a look.”

  Gossage did so and saw a tiny circle of study carpet with the edge of the steps and part of the fallen tube just within the area.

  “Definitely we are getting warmer,” he said grimly. “But there’s huge chunks of the problem left unsolved. We—”

  “What,” Blair interrupted him, musing, “do you make of that, sir?”

  He was pointing to the boards at the edge of the cavity. For three-quarters of the way along its length, at right angles to it, somebody had drawn five thick straight pencil lines. One of them, the centermost, had a line at right angles to it on its tip, making it a horizontal T.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SOURCE OF MURDER

  Gossage studied the lines with his brows down. Then at last he shook his head slowly.

  “I don’t know,” he said frankly. “This has got to be thought out. Put the boards back and we’ll go down to the study and have a look at that tube.”

  They hurried downstairs together and re-entered the study, Blair locking the door behind them. He turned to the centre of the room again to find Gossage had picked up the tube and taken it over to the desk where he was examining it under the light.

  “By all that’s neat and ingenious,” he muttered at length. “Take a look at this, Harry.”

  Sergeant Blair watched, then his eyebrows went up as, cupping the copper rosette in. his palm, Gossage squeezed it. It folded up flat like the ribs on a closing umbrella, the ‘leaves’ of the rosette lying parallel with the tube itself.

  “It’s simple enough, sir.” Blair ventured a modest smile. “I’m a bit of an amateur magician; do a turn for the kids at Christmas and so on. This rosette is a variation of two magical tricks, the one known as the ‘magic cabbage’ and the other as, I think, the ‘umbrella problem’.”

  Gossage grinned and laid the tube on the blotter. He sat down in the swivel chair and began to refill his pipe. “Go on, Harry,” he urged.

  “It’s like this. The ‘magic cabbage’ is an affair of silks and wires made to resemble a cabbage, smal
l enough to fit in the palm of the hand. It lies flat when folded up. Release it, and you have what looks like an impossibly large cabbage from an impossibly small space.

  “The umbrella trick is different, and there’s no point in my going through the whole routine, even granting I could remember it. In principle, you have eight ribs all flat to the umbrella shaft, as in an ordinary umbrella. You shoot it through a tube that has apparently been empty, and once the flat umbrella gets beyond the tube, the springs work and the ribs open out. The trick relies for effect on the principle that you can’t pull an open umbrella through a narrow tube.”

  Gossage sat smoking, his eyes on the rosette.

  “In that case, then, somebody made an artificial rosette of copper with each leaf springed and fastened it on a tube narrower than the tube of the electrolier itself. Then he, or she, pushed the tube in the bigger tube from the top, the rosette lying flat as it went down the tube. When it reached the bottom it sprang open, and the tube could not be drawn back again. The clips stopped it from falling out.”

  “That seems about it, sir. The whole thing could be worked from above. As we saw for ourselves, the electrolier tube is amply wide enough to admit of this smaller tube without the twin cords getting in the way. And they branch off into those two right-angled arms before reaching bottom, so that a clear passage is left for the smaller ‘rosette tube’.”

  Gossage examined the rosette again, wagging his head over its neatness. It was quite obvious now that the copper was different from the rest of the electrolier.

  “This,” he said, “enables us to get the picture a little more in focus. We know that there is a screw-thread which doesn’t seem to serve any useful purpose, on the base of the electrolier there.” He turned to look at it. “That, doubtless, is where the real rosette was originally screwed. Clearly, then, the murderer, after having made all arrangements, unscrewed the real rosette and left a clear hole in the bottom of the electrolier tube.

  “Would Darnworth notice it? Not a chance in ten million. Do you look at the electric light fittings in your home when, as far as you know, they haven’t changed ever since you came into the place? Of course you don’t. The murderer was right in his assumption that there was nothing to fear from that quarter. Then afterwards, when the murder had been committed, knowing the police would investigate, he—or it may be she—covered up tracks by pushing this false rosette down the tube from above. The rosette sprang into place, the tube was clipped, and a casual look at the electrolier by the police would reveal nothing unusual. An open-end tube would have drawn suspicion, which the false rosette counterbalanced. Obviously the killer knew it would not be possible to put the real rosette back.”

  There was a long silence in the study. Gossage blew a cloud of smoke at the desk lamp, and Sergeant Blair looked up at the electrolier speculatively. Finally he gave his thoughts words.

  “We can’t help ourselves being drawn to the conclusion that the electrolier is the source of the tragedy, sir—but how could it be? We can look down the tube, but it only shows the carpet immediately underneath it. Darnworth was where you’re seated, about ten feet away. Assuming the electrolier could be tilted to be in line with him, two big factors come up for consideration: the electrolier couldn’t be moved because its rosette is flush with the ceiling, and even if it could, it couldn’t be swung out of the perpendicular from above.”

  Sergeant Blair stopped wading through the morass and shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’m stuck for the moment, I’m afraid. Maybe something will occur to me later on.”

  Gossage didn’t answer: He was thinking so deeply that his pipe had gone out. His eyes were fixed on the tube and rosette, and there was about him the still detachment of concentration. At length he relaxed and took his pipe from his teeth, grinning faintly.

  “I’m going to let it simmer,” he decided. “There is an answer. Tomorrow I’ll go for a long ramble and probably get that answer. Nothing like walking to get your brain working.”

  Chief Inspector Gossage had the enviable gift of being able to draw down the blinds round his mind as a shopkeeper does over his wares. He was asleep within ten minutes of getting to bed, not one vestige of the problem remaining to form the nucleus of a distorted dream.

  The next day was Sunday, and when he arrived at breakfast he found all save Mrs. Darnworth had assembled. The two younger women looked vaguely curious; the two men entirely indifferent. Sergeant Blair seemed worried.

  Several times Elaine tried machine-gun tactics to pierce Gossage’s armour, and failed. Sheila tried too, by less forceful methods and also came to grief. Gossage had reached the stage where he absorbed everything and gave nothing away. Then the moment breakfast was over he made tracks for Mrs. Darnworth’s bedroom, Blair hurrying behind him.

  “Right you are, sir.”

  Louise admitted Gossage into Mrs. Darnworth’s bedroom. He found her with pillows at her back with breakfast on a tray across her knees. In a corner nearby was the oiled wheelchair.

  “Good morning, inspector” she greeted him. “I trust you arc finding everything quite comfortable?”

  “Generally speaking, yes.” His red face beamed down on her. “In other directions, though. I’m a little puzzled—and that’s why I’m here. Can you tell me how long it is since anybody entered the boxroom?”

  “The police entered on the night my husband—”

  “Yes, yes, I know—but I mean before that.”

  Jessica Darnworth reflected. “Oh, it must be two years ago when an electrician came to fix the lighting system.”

  “I see. And you have had the key in your possession all that time?”

  “Yes. Do you consider that fact—significant!”

  “Not particularly; I am simply posing a question. How is the room ever cleaned out?”

  “It is never cleaned out—now,” Mrs. Darnworth said. “Before I had my accident I used to do it myself. I would never allow the staff to do it, but now that is manifestly impossible. So it just isn’t done.”

  “Do you always keep the boxroom key in your handbag?”

  “Or do you mean do I leave it in my handbag so anybody could take a duplicate impression?” Her eyebrows rose in question.

  “Yes,” Gossage said. “That’s just what I mean.”

  “I’m afraid that would hardly be possible,” she said, reflecting. “I sleep heavily—drugs, you see—but my door is locked on the outside. Louise has the key. Once I have retired, my daughters never bother me.”

  Gossage turned slightly and looked at Louise. She was doing something at the wardrobe, and though her pale ears were hidden under her mousy hair, Gossage guessed that they were probably sticking out a mile.

  “Let me try something else, Mrs.Darnworth,” he said finally. “On the night your husband was murdered—between seven and eight—you were in here, I believe? Dressing for dinner?”

  “That is so. I had spent all afternoon in bed. Louise was helping me dress.”

  “And Preston, I understand, was in the corridor outside waiting to be called to help you downstairs?”

  “To carry me downstairs, Inspector. You needn’t spare my feelings.”

  He shrugged. “During that period can you remember if you heard anything outside? I imagine there would be very little noise in here, which should have made outside sounds quite noticeable.”

  “Sounds outside?” Her eyes sharpened at him. “What kind of sounds?”

  “Oh, say, the bang of a ladder against the side of the house?”

  “No, I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Did you, Louise?” Gossage looked across at her.

  “I didn’t hear anything, sir.” Her head shook emphatically.

  “All right,” the chief Inspector said.

  “I won’t bother you any further now, Mrs. Darnworth—or you, Louise—but I’ll keep the boxroom key a little longer, if I may?”

  “As long as it does not leave your possession you may keep it as long as you
wish, inspector”

  With a nod Gossage left the room. He shut the door slowly and stood rubbing his head for a moment, then Blair came over to him from further down the corridor.

  “Anything new, sir?”

  “No. Harry, nothing new. But I think there’s something queer in that boxroom which we haven’t yet unearthed. Until the time of her accident Mrs. Darnworth always cleaned it out herself. Then after her mishap she locked it up and won’t let anybody else go in. The only person who bas been in—bar Craddock and his men—was an electrician two years ago. And that, according to her, is the only time. He we can discount, of course. I’ll wager she watched over him from her wheelchair or had Preston do it.”

  “But there’s nothing but junk in there,” Blair protested. “At least as far as we could tell last night. Might look different now it’s daylight. We could have a look,” he suggested, with a slight movement towards it.

  Gossage shook his head.

  “Not for me, Harry. I might run into more problems and I just don’t want ’em until I’ve got the existing ones straightened out. No, I’m going for a long ramble and chew this thing over, and I’ll also have a word with Craddock. Maybe I’ll come back with something worth having. And you’d better take charge of this.” He handed over the boxroom key. “See you later.”

  “Yes, sir,” Blair said. Then he brightened as he watched Gossage go down the stairs. After all, the chief had not told him to stop investigating on his own account.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SURPRISING DEVELOPMENT

  The fine November day was closing down in ochre and vermilion sunset as, toward half-past five, ‘Crimson Rambler’ Gossage entered the last stage of his journey home. He was singing ‘Danny Boy’ to himself in a pleasing bass and was at peace with all the world.

  His long walk, and a chat with Craddock over lunch in Godalrning, had cleared up a lot of outstanding problems in his mind. He knew now what he hadn’t known before—how Warner Darnworth had been shot and even more important, the reason for the pencil marks on the boxroom floor. Of course the pencil marks had to be there, especially the one like a horizontal “T,” otherwise the thing didn’t make sense.