The Department of Dead Ends

by Roy Vickers

  ‘Maybe I’ve slipped up on a few details,’ said Rason. ‘But do you deny that you created an act in which a girl is rolled up –’

  ‘I deny it absolutely,’ thundered Spengrave. ‘It would be an utterly futile act.’

  ‘At the repository, I found nothing in your desk – it was practically empty,’ said Rason. ‘But under the cushion of the armchair that used to be in your study I found a manuscript in your handwriting. Here’s a typed copy. I don’t altogether understand stage directions. But there’s one bit where it says: “Clown kicks coil of carpet (laugh). Clown struggles with carpet. Fails. Walks away (laugh). Returns. Unrolls carpet. Girl sits up –”’

  ‘All right!’ Spengrave stood up. The figure of the clown facing destruction was not even tragic, only bizarre. ‘It will take me twenty minutes to change. Do you mind waiting in the foyer?’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Spengrave.’ Again Rason’s eye travelled along the frieze – to the altar of Ishtar, where the Clown is slain. ‘We shall have to stay with you.’

  But, as is well known, Spengrave succeeded in shooting himself while he was changing, with the gun which he kept in a drawer for precisely that contingency.

  The Man who Murdered

  in Public

  Chapter One

  How little do you know about a man if you only know that he has committed four murders! That is all the public of his day knew of George Macartney. The papers handed out the usual thoughtless nonsense about a ‘human monster’, and reminded the public that he was the son of Henry Macartney, the fraudulent financier – and that he therefore had a tainted heredity.

  Now it is impossible to inherit a tendency to falsify balance sheets (not that George ever did anything of the kind). And as to the human monster stuff, with its suggestion of morbid bloodlust, it may be remarked that George netted by his murders a little over twenty-two thousand pounds. Further, it is the essence of anything to do with morbidity that the act should be secret. George Macartney is perhaps unique amongst murderers in that each of his four murders was eye-witnessed by anything from a dozen to several hundred persons, including a policeman or two.

  All the same, the fact that Henry Macartney, his father, actually received fourteen years’ penal servitude, is the key to the queer psychology of George himself. It was, however, not a matter of heredity but of objective circumstance – being the direct cause of young George receiving his first thrashing.

  George was a late-grower both physically and mentally. Eventually he grew into a hefty man with plenty of pluck and intelligence. But at fifteen he was about the physical size of a boy of eleven, with much the same mental range. And a pretty dreadful little boy, too!

  His mother was a very good sort but she had died when he was three. His father in his private life was amiable and undisciplined. There had been two or three schools which he had allowed the boy to leave, and two or three governesses who had been allowed to give up in despair. Unsuspected by his father, George had become a horrid little snob and a bully.

  The story of the murders really starts with this boy sitting down to lunch at home in the big dining-room of their Surrey house on the last day of his father’s trial. Akehurst, the butler, and the parlourmaid, are both in the environs of the Old Bailey waiting for the verdict which is expected at any time. Elsie Natley, the first housemaid, is waiting on George and thoroughly detesting him. In fact, her fingers are itching to get at him – and she is a very muscular girl of twenty.

  ‘You’ve got to stand behind my chair when you wait on me. If you don’t I shan’t tell father – I shall jolly well tell Akehurst and he’ll make you cry. I’ve seen him do it.’

  ‘All right, Master George! I’ll stand behind your chair when I come back.’

  She ran out of the house because she had seen a telegraph-boy coming up the drive.

  ‘Guilty. Fourteen years. Akehurst.’

  The other servants had not seen the telegraph-boy coming, so they could wait. She put the telegram down on the hall table, and from a little cupboard in an elaborate fitment surmounted by a stag’s head, she took a galosh.

  ‘Now, Master George!’ she said. She whipped his coat over his head and dragged him on to the table, smashing the crockery. It is doubtful whether she was consciously avenging the three governesses and all that the butler and a succession of parlourmaids had endured, but there is no doubt that she laid it well in with the sole of the galosh.

  We may assume that the pain to his person was no more than salutary. Nevertheless, damage was done of a more subtle nature. He knew that she was only twenty. And she was a girl. And he was fifteen and a boy. And for all his budding manhood he had been unable to offer effective resistance.

  The girl cannot be blamed. She was behaving naturally, as others ought to have behaved before – with no cruelty and with no more violence than she would have used towards a young brother if she had had one. It was beyond her imagination that she could have inflicted a deep hurt that would take years to heal.

  Chapter Two

  After the home was broken up George did not see Elsie again until he was twenty-one and she was twenty-six, when he met her by chance at Ilfracombe.

  In the meantime a sister of his mother’s had taken him over and sent him to an expensive private school run on public-school lines. He was there until he was nearly nineteen. They gave him a rudimentary education, taught him manners of a kind, but finally expelled him in spite of the fact that he had been instrumental in winning a swimming-cup for the school.

  She sent him up to Cambridge but he did not last there a full term. His aunt did not turn him out – he just drifted off and eventually joined a theatrical touring company, where he was quite a useful man provided he were cast to type.

  Elsie had kept herself very well and had scarcely changed at all. To George she no longer looked so dreadfully muscular – she looked rather pink-and-white and nice. He took off his hat to her and smiled, but he had to speak before she answered:

  ‘Well, Master George! Oh, do excuse me calling you that when I ought to say “Mr Macartney”. Who would have thought of meeting you like this!’

  The conversation followed standard lines. Elsie was having a holiday in a boarding-house selected by her late mistress who had departed for America, after which she intended to look round for another job. George gave an account of himself, truthful except for a little romantic colour. He presented her with a stall for that night’s performance, and the next afternoon hired a boat and took her for a row.

  (‘I wasn’t thinking about what she did to me all that time ago. Or if I was, I only thought I would wait for a chance to kiss her and sort of get even that way, like any young fellow might, as she was a good-looking girl and full of fun.’)

  A muscular girl, too, and full of physical energy. George, in spite of some philandering experience, was perhaps a bit slow in making the running. For when they were about a mile off shore she became bored and suggested that she should take a turn at rowing.

  Anything to please her, thought George, just like any other young man.

  ‘Here, I may knock this. Put it in your pocket for me, George, and don’t forget to let me have it afterwards whatever you do!’

  She detached a bracelet, liberally set with big red stones. George affected to think it valuable. He put it in his pocket-case for her and she began to row. She had never rowed a sea-boat before and the inevitable happened. She lost an oar and made a grab for it. He made a grab, too, and the boat capsized.

  George, as we have noted, was a crack swimmer, so here was a chance to play the hero in real life to a maiden in distress. But Elsie had not had time to consider George in the role of hero.

  ‘Leggo, you brute, you’ll drown me!’ she cried, and landed him a useful blow on the nose.

  (‘I swear I had no thought except to rescue her, like anyone else would. But when she hit me, somehow it all came back. I let her swim a couple of strokes to the boat, which was between us and the shore, and then before I kn
ew what I was doing I collared her by the head from behind and put her under.‘)

  Fifty or sixty holiday-makers had seen the accident from the Capstan Hill. But there were no motor-boats in those days and it was some little time before a boat rowed by two seamen reached them. George was clinging to the upturned boat with one hand and with the other supporting Elsie.

  But Elsie was in a vertical position, and her lungs had been full of water for something like a quarter of an hour.

  At the inquest George admitted that she had been a house-maid in his father’s house and that they had met by chance. He described the incident truthfully and then:

  ‘I came up under the upturned boat and when I got out it was on the other side. I looked round for Elsie and couldn’t see her, for she was on the sea side. Then I wriggled round the boat and after a bit I saw her hand come up. And then I caught hold of one of the oars which was floating and splashed up to where I’d seen her and after a bit I got her. I can’t remember much about how I got her back to the boat because I’d swallowed a lot of water myself.’

  He took the risk of implying that he could hardly swim at all and no one in the theatrical company could deny it. The Coroner gave him a lecture on the folly of standing up in a small boat, opined that he had had a terrible lesson which would stay with him for the rest of his life and then, like everybody else, forgot about him. There are a certain number of boating and bathing fatalities every year, and this was one of them.

  The company had moved on to Plymouth before George discovered that he was still in possession of the bracelet which Elsie had asked him to hold. He had not the slightest intention of stealing it but he did not want to stir things up. So he kept the bracelet and a little later gave it to Polly, a small-part girl in the company. When they quarrelled she gave it back to him, when something she said revealed to him that it was worth about eighty pounds. He was delighted, for he intended to pawn it at once.

  Then he reflected that if it was worth all that money Elsie had almost certainly stolen it – which might lead to complications. It would be safer to get rid of it or keep it out of sight for a few years. More or less out of inadvertence, he kept it.

  Chapter Three

  The theatre held no future for him. At the end of the tour he went back to sponge on his aunt for the few remaining months of her life. She was an annuitant with a negligible capital, but she left him some two thousand pounds with which he established himself as a motor-car agent.

  Selling motor-cars in 1903 was a slow and heart-breaking process. It is incredible nowadays, but on the rare occasions when you booked a customer, some eight months would pass before you could redeem the car from the coach-builder’s and collect your cheque.

  The two thousand did not last very long. Soon a more balanced concern took over the agency and employed George as part clerk, part salesman. His new employer had been one of his father’s victims but very generously felt only sympathy for George. He suggested that the name was an unfair handicap and himself paid the expenses of George changing his name by Deed Poll. Between them they constructed the name of ‘Carshaw’ as a good omen for business.

  George was living fairly contentedly in lodgings in Richmond. We have no clue to his inmost thoughts at this time, but we may deduce that at the back of his thoughts was the consciousness that he had committed murder and got away with it. What fools, we imagine him reasoning, are murderers to be caught! To mess about with poison and guns and knives, which always leave clues! Whereas, if you have an accident which lots of people can witness it does not matter if you contradict yourself a bit. You are expected to be flurried. And unless they can prove that you deliberately upset the boat there is no possibility of their proving anything at all.

  His evenings tended to be lonely, for he was not a very sociable young man and had no friends of his own sex. Indeed his earnings did not give him scope for much in the way of social activities, and he was already inclined to believe that the motorcar trade held no prospects.

  Spring came with its insistent urge to be up and doing. If he could have Aunt Maud’s two thousand over again he would know better what to do. On Sunday afternoons he began to loaf around the more prosperous residential streets of Richmond. The connexion between this activity and the thought of two thousand pounds will not be immediately obvious to you. But it is almost certain that it was not immediately obvious to George.

  Violet Laystall was a house-parlourmaid, whom he picked up one Sunday afternoon. She was reasonably good-looking and of quiet manners; and George, though he thought of himself as a gentleman, had been cured of snobbery and class-consciousness. On May 5th, 1904, he married her, a notable gift from the bridegroom to the bride being the ruby bracelet which had once belonged to Elsie.

  He took her to live in his rooms, for his holiday was not yet due. On May 9th, he insured her life for £2,000. He proposed his own life for a similar amount, but the proposal was rejected by the Insurance Company on account of certain medical information he felt obliged to give the doctor about himself. And, of course, they made wills in each other’s favour.

  Their deferred honeymoon took place in the middle fortnight of August. He took her to Bognor. On the first three days the sea was choppy. On the afternoon of the fourth day he hired a small rowing-boat. When they were about a mile from the shore he suggested that she might like to try her hand at rowing.

  She was a docile little woman and obediently took her place on the thwart. She pulled a few strokes while he manipulated the boat broadside to the shore. There were several pleasure boats dotted about, but none of them too close for his purpose and the nearest was that of the attendant on the fringe of the bathers.

  He waited for her to lose an oar but, as time was valuable, he leant forward and bumped the sea-side oar out of the rowlock. Then he stood up and capsized the boat.

  The little play had already been rehearsed, and he had only to repeat his lines. Even the Coroner made very much the same little speech about its being a lesson to him for the rest of his life. When he was leaving the Court, in a suitable state of collapse, an official handed him the ruby bracelet that had been taken from the dead woman’s wrist.

  Chapter Four

  Even with two thousand pounds in the bank, George Carshaw, as he now was, did not lose his head. Go slow and look round, was his motto. The motor trade, it seemed, was improving of its own accord; so without any extra effort George was soon more than equalling his salary in commission. He decided to stay on, a course which presented no embarrassment. His employer did not even know that he had married; and, as George was an unsociable man, he had not confided in any of his colleagues where he had intended to go for his holiday.

  There being no immediate opening for capital, George thought a fellow might as well do himself comfortably for a bit. He began to spend his evenings in the West End. Shortly before Christmas he ran across the girl with whom he had had a flirtation in the touring company. She had a one-line part in pantomime, and was now glad to be taken out to supper. Before the pantomime was actually put on she resigned and joined forces with him, without benefit of clergy, in a flat in Baker Street.

  She could not be described as mercenary, but she helped to make a very large dent in the two thousand. He grudged her nothing, for she fascinated him. She was known as ‘Little Polly Flinders’, lived as Miss Flinders and would never tell him her real name. She certainly did not grab, and it was certainly he who tumbled on the original idea of replenishing their dwindling capital on the racecourse. By June she discovered that she was not good for him and left him for his own sake. She may even have meant it, for they remained friends and from time to time renewed their association.

  In September he married Madge Turnham, another muscular girl, a quick-witted, suspicious Cockney. But there was nothing very much to be suspicious about. He gave her the ruby bracelet and she promptly sneaked off and had it valued. When she learnt its worth she opened her eyes. When she had assured herself that he really was employ
ed by a respectable motor agency she thanked her stars for a mug and eagerly married him.

  At this stage George was undoubtedly planning everything very carefully. He insured her life for £100 only. Again he proposed a similar policy for his own life, and again got it turned down on the ‘confession’ he made to the doctor.

  Life Insurance at best is a troublesome matter; but Accident Insurance is very simple. He took out an Accident policy on both their lives for ten thousand pounds each. The policy covered death by any kind of accident – including, of course, the accident of drowning.

  Chapter Five

  Of his three wives Madge, who was the second, was the only really bad one. She was slovenly and quarrelsome. Her ill-nature, indeed, came near to imperilling George’s plan. For she soon became known as a termagant – the kind of woman that nearly every kind of man would very soon come to hate. They lived in the upper part of a jerry-built house in Harringay and all the neighbours knew that occasionally they came to blows, after which she would be docile and well-behaved for nearly a week.

  It is probable that her detestable temperament made George speed up the programme. They had a scrap on the Thursday before Whitsun 1906. George lost his temper this time and very nearly had to call a doctor for her afterwards. After the thumping she was extra docile, and perhaps George saw his last chance of staging a reconciliation. He took her to Paignton, a growing seaside resort on the south coast of Devon.

  She said that the sea made her sick and she wouldn’t go on it. But George, of course, was much more intelligent than his wife. He put up a convincing little pantomime with a five-pound note concealed at the back of his pocket-book against a rainy day – teased her and said that she should have the fiver if she could stay in a small rowing-boat with him for an hour without being seasick. And the greedy fool succumbed.