by Roy Vickers
For instance, there was the occasion some five months after the murder when he turned up at seven o’clock as usual to find Connie all in a flutter because she had mistaken the time and had not prepared his supper.
From the new Andrew she had almost expected another beating for her remissness and no doubt felt some difficulty in believing her ears when he said:
‘Never mind all that, Con! I’ve given you the chance and you’ve been trying to take it. Go and put your best clothes on – and all your jewellery – we’re going out. Hurry up. And don’t forget the jewellery!’
He took her out to dinner. To a private room at the Café de l’Europe, decked with flowers.
‘Remember when we were here before, Con? … Made a bit of a mistake that night – me the same as you. That’s all over. You and I are getting along fine. Brought you something – catch hold!’
A jeweller’s box. And inside was a new gold wrist-watch. But this gold wrist-watch was set with diamond points.
‘That’s better than the one he gave you. Look at the diamonds. Put it on and chuck his in the river.’
Connie gushed with gratitude and renewed penitence.
‘I wouldn’t ever have worn his jewellery again, only you told me to, Andy. I never really cared for it. And I promise you, you won’t see any of it again ever.’
‘Rats!’ said Andrew. ‘You go on wearing that stuff every time I take you out until I can give you better.’
At intervals of a few weeks, he brought her back to the same restaurant and substituted first a better diamond ring, then a better pendant, a better bracelet, and finally, just after Christmas, a better brooch. But Connie demurred against throwing Harries’ jewellery into the river.
‘The wonderful luck you’ve been having in business might turn, Andy, and then we’d be glad of the stuff to pawn it. Let’s keep it out of sight somewhere, just in case.’
‘All right!’ he agreed. ‘It isn’t luck – it’s brains. But you can store the stuff if you like. And if ever I can’t keep you a bit better than he could, you pawn it and welcome.’
On the same principle he gradually replaced every item of furniture that Harries had bought, down to the last saucepan and corkscrew. When everything in the house was his own, bought by himself, he let Connie engage a cook-general to help her. Then a cook and housemaid – which brought him level with Harries. Then a cook, a housemaid, a parlourmaid and a whole-time gardener – and Harries was definitely beaten.
This ended the reconstruction phase, after which he seems to have settled down. Within three years of the murder he was paying income-tax on three thousand – and even so his returns were not as frank as they ought to have been. Andrew was saving money, though he gave his wife pretty nearly everything she wanted. He never beat her again – was, in fact, very kind to her.
Connie, for her part, turned into a somewhat timid but very respectable wife. She was a bad manager, having perpetual trouble with her servants. But there is no doubt that she did her best with the instinctive loyalty of her class to the paymaster.
The last of a long line of servants whom she had dismissed had known all about the cash-box under a loose board in the built-in wardrobe with its little cache of jewellery – Harries’ jewellery. After she had left, she imparted the information to a boy-friend, who called when Connie was shopping. It was not until six weeks later – August 1906 – that Connie discovered her loss. She went straight to Scotland Yard about it. By October, Scotland Yard had fished the jewellery out of four London pawnshops.
Chapter Seven
Detective Horlicks had recovered the jewellery. On a Friday evening, he showed the items to Detective-Inspector Rason, of Dead Ends.
Rason borrowed the jewellery and looked long at the gold wrist-watch. From a cabinet he produced the gold wrist-watch that had been found on Harries’ wrist after death. He noted that, in outward appearance, they were exactly the same.
‘You might bring the Amershams in here first, Horlicks. I’ll send the jewellery back to you when I’ve done with them.’
Connie was again all of a flutter, a very frequent state with her. She had visualized a respectful detective handing her back her jewellery in her own house, urging her to prosecute the horrible girl who had so basely betrayed her kind mistress. Instead, had come an anything but obsequious invitation to Scotland Yard, and she had refused to face the ordeal without Andrew.
Each item of jewellery was in a little cardboard box bearing the name of the pawnbroker from whom it had been recovered. Connie identified the ring, the bracelet, the pendant, and the brooch, and finally the gold wrist-watch.
‘That watch looks to me extraordinarily like the one found on your late lodger, William Harries, after death. Are there any special marks by which you could positively identify that watch as your property, Mrs Amersham?’
‘Yes, Mr Rason. If you open the back, you’ll find some reading inside. It says: “W.H. to C.A.” I’m C. A.’
‘And William Harries was “W.H.”?’
‘Yes. They were presents to each other, weren’t they, Andrew? I mean, I gave him one exactly like that, with the initials the other way round.’
‘Just open the watch, will you, Mrs Amersham, and see if the initials are there. Then p’raps I needn’t trouble you any further.’
It was not until that moment that Connie remembered some ‘jumbling up’ of the two watches. But she was as muddled about this as about everything else.
With a certain difficulty – for she had never done it before – Connie prised open the back of the watch. A moment later, her unease was justified. Completely ignorant of police methods, she snapped the back of the watch into position.
‘Yes, it’s my watch all right. I’m sure I’m much obliged.’
Rason held out his hand for the watch. He opened the back.
‘“C. A. to W.H.”’ he read aloud. ‘This is the watch you gave Harries. Not the watch he gave you!’
‘Oo! Well! Yes, I suppose it must be, now you mention it, Mr Rason. Fancy me not noticing the letters being that way round!’
‘So you have been in possession of Harries’ watch for the last three years. That means that the one found on his wrist was really yours. How do you account, Mrs Amersham, for your watch being on Harries’ wrist?’
‘Why, they’re as like as two peas, Mr Rason! They might have got jumbled up some time, and poor Will might have put mine on by mistake.’
‘Thank you!’ said Rason and turned to Sergeant Horlicks. ‘Perhaps Mrs Amersham would like to wait in your room, Sergeant.’
With growing discomfiture, Connie found herself accompanying Horlicks through a maze of corridors, to a room deemed to be the sergeant’s. As yet, there was nothing in her mind beyond a vague fear that she might be accused of stealing Harries’ watch.
‘I don’t know why there was all that fuss!’ she said. ‘I remember now I happened to go to Mr Harries’ room that night – to talk about something. I – I sat on his bed – and I expect my watch came unfastened and I expect he put it on absent-mindedly. His own was being mended. It was delivered at the house a day or so after his death – the day of the inquest, it was. So I thought it wasn’t worth bothering anybody, and as my own watch had been taken away with the rest of his things, it seemed simplest for me to keep his.’ She added: ‘Nach’rally, I didn’t want to say all that in front of my husband.’
‘Detective-Inspector Rason had better be told,’ said Horlicks, grasping its significance. ‘You stay here. I’ll tell him.’
In the meantime, Rason had already pointed out that Mrs Amersham’s explanation was inadequate.
‘Follow this, Mr Amersham. William Harries – died – in the small hours of May 18th, 1903.’ He fluttered a dossier. ‘We have here a statement, taken at the time, from a Mr Murfoot, jeweller Hampstead, saying that, on May 17th, William Harries brought a gold wrist-watch for repair of the glass. So he could not have mistaken your wife’s watch for his own, because he knew that his ow
n was at the jeweller’s.’
‘Have it your own way, Mr Rason.’
‘Two days later the watch was delivered at your house. I suggest Mrs Amersham claimed it as hers to prevent our asking awkward questions – dangerous questions, Mr Amersham.’
‘Cor! She wouldn’t have it in her to think o’ that!’
‘You had better say nothing, or it may be used in evidence,’ warned Rason. ‘That watch found on Harries’ wrist had no finger-prints on it. If Harries had put it on himself, he would have been bound to leave finger traces if not finger-prints. One of you put that watch on his wrist after he was dead. The one who did this part of the job wetted a piece of thin cloth with the tongue and rubbed the whole watch and bracelet attachment. Microscopic examination at the time revealed saliva.’
Backchat, Andrew perceived, would not extricate him. Rason was getting into his stride.
‘You two crept into his room that night. You noosed him as he lay asleep. Then both of you pulled on the rope and swung him up. In his struggle to tear the rope from his neck he broke a thumb nail. To hide traces of the struggle one of you put the wrist-watch on him.’
‘You can leave her out, Mr Rason.’ Andrew had made his decision. ‘I did it all by myself. She didn’t know anything about it.’
The bare statement was of little use to Rason, even when witnessed by Horlicks, who had just come in. He wanted circumstantial detail.
‘That’s plucky of you, Amersham! But if you’re offering that as a confession, I can’t accept it. You must have been in it together. You couldn’t have pulled him up by yourself – he was too heavy.’
‘I didn’t pull him up, Mr Rason. I lifted him up – after I’d strangled him on the bed … All right, I’ll say it slowly so’s you can write it down. But let her go first.’
Sergeant Horlicks decided that it would merely be inhuman to report Mrs Amersham’s statement.
The Clue of the
Red Carnations
Chapter One
Perhaps the most dangerous and troublesome method of disposing of a murdered body is to pack it in one or more travelling trunks for deposit at a railway station: this method is commonly used in poverty areas where the corpse cannot be conveyed unobserved to an automobile.
Hugh Wakering, however, himself a well-to-do lawyer, broke most of the rules of the Trunk Murder. For one thing, the trunk was a packing-case designed to carry machinery: for another, the corpse, adequately concealed in a large Wellman car, was driven for about eighty miles under cover of darkness over long stretches of open country; for a third, the murderer, having successfully deposited the corpse, found himself compelled to carry away from the railway station a fantastic ‘clue’, six feet long and weighing exactly one hundred and forty-five pounds – namely the driving shaft of the Arbee Steam Roller.
The shaft was consigned to Messrs Tibbits of Dinton, a market town some eighty miles west of London, on a loop line from the tiny junction of Sudchester. On February 1st, 1936, the railway locomotive drivers and firemen struck work. On the morning of February 2nd, Messrs Tibbits sent a lorry the dozen odd miles to Sudchester to pick up the driving shaft, which would otherwise stay there until the end of the strike.
The packing-case arrived in their yard at nine o’ clock and was at once opened. As is known, it was found to contain, not the shaft of the Arbee Steam Roller, but the naked body of a man in early middle age, subsequently identified as that of Cuthbert Bridstowe, a prosperous coffee broker.
Medical evidence established that death, inflicted by a bullet fired at close range from behind and shattering the spinal column, had occurred within twenty-four hours.
Obviously, it was not a local murder, so Scotland Yard was at once informed. By midday, Superintendent Karslake’s men on the spot were reporting that the packing-case had arrived at the loop line junction of Sudchester at eight on the evening of January 31st. The medical evidence therefore established Sudchester as the site of the substitution.
In the packing-case, wooden rests supporting the shaft, which could have been slipped from their slots, had been clumsily smashed, suggesting a man with no mechanical training and no general handiness.
There had been no official at Sudchester station between eight at night and five the following morning. As the station stood by itself in almost open country, it would have been easy to break into the goods shed, though the latter bore no signs of a forced entry.
The driving shaft of the Arbee Steam Roller was not at Sudchester.
Further investigation drew from the porter who had opened the goods shed in the morning that the only unusual thing he had noticed was a bunch of red carnations in the yard, close to the doors of the goods shed. As the flowers had faded, he had thrown them on the refuse dump, where they were found by Karslake’s man. The carnations were wrapped in a folded poster, the size of a newspaper page, carrying propaganda for an Animal Society.
‘We want that driving shaft,’ said Karslake. ‘Send it out on the teleprinter. Pass me the makers’ description and put me through to the BBC.’
The teleprinter yielded quick results. From Whitchurch, forty miles Londonwards of Sudchester, came a report that a constable on cycle patrol had seen a Wellman car stop on the bridge at one-forty a.m. A man got out, stretched himself and leant over the parapet. Suspecting that he might be about to throw himself into the Thames, the constable approached and asked him to explain himself.
As was later obvious, the man was Wakering, the murderer. But he gave the constable the name of the victim, Cuthbert Bridstowe, producing Bridstowe’s driving licence, log, and insurance certificate, containing Bridstowe’s address, duly reported. The constable’s report added that the bucket seat had been removed to make room for a piece of machinery answering to the description of the driving shaft, though the driver had said it was part of an hydraulic lift. As there was no reason to suppose such a piece of machinery to have been stolen, the constable had made no further inquiries. On the back of the car was pasted a poster, about the size of a newspaper sheet, propagandizing for an Animal Society.
Independently, came a report from Sudchester that bloodstained clothing and a revolver – subsequently identified as the property of the deceased – had been found in a gravel pit some three miles west of Sudchester. Karslake’s men had been led there by a yokel who had been given a lift by this unusual murderer and had actually sat on the Arbee driving shaft.
With the six o’clock news, the BBC broadcast the Whitchurch constable’s description of the man, the number of the car, the details and number of the driving shaft.
Then information poured in piecemeal. When tabulated, it revealed that, after leaving Sudchester Junction, the driver had knocked up the garage in Sudchester village, shortly after eleven, had taken six gallons of petrol and had then driven on to the gravel pit, where he had dumped the clothing and the revolver, and would, no doubt, have added the driving shaft if he had not been interrupted by the yokel.
The car had then turned back and travelled straight-road through Whitchurch to London. At two-fifteen, at an all-night garage near Kew Bridge – on the western fringe of the built-up area which is London – the pumpman had supplied five gallons. He noticed the bucket seat had been moved to make room for a piece of machinery and that there was a poster on the back of the car.
Finally, the Shell Mex garage in the Strand, Central London, reported that the Wellman of that number had been garaged shortly after three a.m. But the bucket seat was in its proper position, and there was no driving shaft in the car.
‘Then he brought that spare part into London!’ pronounced Karslake. ‘And he couldn’t have allowed himself as much as ten minutes off the route for dumping it. Where could you dump a thing like that in London? Hm! Only in the parks. Ring’em all up and ask for an immediate search. Tell ’em if it’s there, it’s bound to be near the roadways.’ Karslake added: ‘If our man has still got that spare part, he’ll have to keep it until we call for it.’
�
��Is anything to be done about those carnations, sir?’ asked his junior.
‘Might as well check up, as a matter of form,’ answered Karslake. ‘The poster – same as the one pasted on the car – is issued by that Hemmelman woman. Ask her if she can oblige with a list of those who have received copies. It might yield something – about the deceased, of course. A murderer doesn’t carry flowers around.’
Chapter Two
Karslake cannot be blamed for failing to guess that the clue-value of the carnations lay, not in their wrapper but in the flowers themselves – in the fact that they were in the car at the time of the murder. As an abstract clue, the carnations were, so to speak, crushed under the weight of the Arbee driving shaft. For Hugh Wakering – the murderer, as we must call him – had been ‘carrying them around’, and actually had them in his hand when he shot Cuthbert Bridstowe. Indeed, the scent of them had been a vital factor in the act of pressing the trigger.
True that the wrapper quickly brought Scotland Yard face to face with the murderer and put him in some danger. If he had been questioned about the carnations instead of about the wrapper, Wakering would have lost his nerve. This he admitted when he was dying – in his own bed, in his own house, ten years after the murder.
The second broadcast described Wakering as being about five feet nine, in the middle thirties, dark hair, dark eyes a little prominent, regular features and well-cut clothes, refined speech, probably a member of the professional classes.
He was, in fact, a solicitor. He had a small but comfortable practice, with offices off Mincing Lane, where the tea and coffee brokers predominate. The police description was valueless, for it could have been applied to thousands. It failed to explain that he had a particular kind of handsomeness, comparable with that of a film star, so that strangers who had once noticed him tended to recognize him. Yet, oddly, his appearance seems to have been wholly lacking in appeal to women. At thirty-six he was still living with his mother.