Silent Nights

by Martin Edwards

  ***

  Once upon a time a number of men in a club discussed how Mr Reginald Fortune came to be the expert adviser of the Home Office upon crime. The doctors admitted that though he is a competent surgeon, pathologist and what not, he never showed international form. There was a Fellow of the Royal Society who urged that Fortune knew more about natural science than most schoolboys, politicians and civil servants. An artist said he had been told Fortune understood business, and his banker believed Fortune was a judge of old furniture. But they all agreed that he is a jolly good fellow. Which means, being interpreted, he can be all things to all men.

  Mr Fortune himself is convinced that he was meant by Providence to be a general practitioner: to attend to my lumbago and your daughter’s measles. He has been heard to complain of the chance that has made him, knowing something of everything, nothing completely, into a specialist. His only qualification, he will tell you, is that he doesn’t get muddled.

  There you have it, then. He is singularly sensitive to people. “Very odd how he knows men,” said Superintendent Bell reverently. “As if he had an extra sense to tell him of people’s souls, like smells or colours.” And he has a clear head. He is never confused about what is important and what isn’t, and he has never been known to hesitate in doing what is necessary.

  Consider his dealing with the affair of the unknown murderer.

  There was not much interesting crime that Christmas. The singular case of Sir Humphrey Bigod, who was found dead in a chalkpit on the eve of his marriage, therefore obtained a lot of space in the papers, which kept it up, even after the coroner’s jury had declared for death by misadventure, with irrelevant inventions and bloodthirsty hints of murder and tales of clues. This did not disturb the peace of the scientific adviser to the Criminal Investigation Department, who knew that the lad was killed by a fall and that there was no means of knowing any more. Mr Fortune was much occupied in being happy, for after long endeavour he had engaged Joan Amber to marry him. The lady has said the endeavour was hers, but I am not now telling that story. Just after Christmas she took him to the children’s party at the Home of Help.

  It is an old-fashioned orphanage, a huge barrack of a building, but homely and kind. Time out of mind people of all sorts, with old titles and new, with money and with brains, have been the friends of its children. When Miss Amber brought Reggie Fortune under the flags and the strings of paper roses into its hall, which was as noisy as the parrot house, he gasped slightly. “Be brave, child,” she said. “This is quiet to what it will be after tea. And cool. You will be much hotter. You don’t know how hot you’ll be.”

  “Woman, you have deceived me,” said Mr Fortune bitterly. “I thought philanthropists were respectable.”

  “Yes, dear. Don’t be frightened. You’re only a philanthropist for the afternoon.”

  “I ask you. Is that Crab Warnham?”

  “Of course it’s Captain Warnham.” Miss Amber smiled beautifully at a gaunt man with a face like an old jockey. He flushed as he leered back. “Do you know his wife? She’s rather precious.”

  “Poor woman. He doesn’t look comfortable here, does he? The last time I saw Crab Warnham was in a place that’s several kinds of hell in Berlin. He was quite at home there.”

  “Forget it,” said Miss Amber gently. “You will when you meet his wife. And their boy’s a darling.”

  “His boy?” Reggie was startled.

  “Oh, no. She was a widow. He worships her and the child.”

  Reggie said nothing. It appeared to him that Captain Warnham, for a man who worshipped his wife, had a hungry eye on women. And the next moment Captain Warnham was called to attention. A small woman, still pretty though earnest, talked to him like a mother or a commanding officer. He was embarrassed, and when she had done with him he fled.

  The small woman, who was austerely but daintily clad in black with some white at the neck, continued to flit among the company, finding everyone a job of work. “She says to one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he cometh. And who is she, Joan?”

  “Lady Chantry,” said Miss Amber. “She’s Providence here, you know.”

  And Lady Chantry was upon them. Reggie found himself looking down into a pair of uncommonly bright eyes and wondering what it felt like to be as strenuous as the little woman who was congratulating him on Joan, thanking him for being there and arranging his afternoon for him all in one breath. He had never heard anyone talk so fast. In a condition of stupor he saw Joan reft from him to tell the story of Cinderella to magic lantern pictures in one dormitory, while he was led to another to help in a scratch concert. And as the door closed on him he heard the swift clear voice of Lady Chantry exhorting staff and visitors to play round games.

  He suffered. People who had no voices sang showy songs, people who had too much voice sang ragtime to those solemn, respectful children. In pity for the children and himself he set up as a conjurer, and the dormitory was growing merry when a shriek cut into his patter. “That’s only my bones creaking,” he went on quickly, for the children were frightened; “they always do that when I put the knife in at the ear and take it out of my hind leg. So. But it doesn’t hurt. As the motor-car said when it ran over the policeman’s feet. All done by kindness. Come here, Jenny Wren. You mustn’t use your nose as a money-box.” A small person submitted to have pennies taken out of her face.

  The door opened and a pallid nurse said faintly: “The doctor. Are you the doctor?”

  “Of course,” said Reggie. “One moment, people. Mr Punch has fallen over the baby. It always hurts him. In the hump. Are we down-hearted? No. Pack up your troubles in the old kit bag—” He went out to a joyful roar of that lyric. “What’s the trouble?” The nurse was shaking.

  “In there, sir—she’s up there.”

  Reggie went up the stairs in quick time. The door of a little sitting-room stood open. Inside it people were staring at a woman who sat at her desk. Her dress was dark and wet. Her head lolled forward. A deep gash ran across her throat.

  “Yes. There’s too many of us here,” he said, and waved the spectators away. One lingered, an old woman, large and imposing, and announced that she was the matron. Reggie shut the door and came back to the body in the chair. He held the limp hands a moment, he lifted the head and looked close into the flaccid face. “When was she found? When I heard that scream? Yes.” He examined the floor. “Quite so.” He turned to the matron. “Well, well. Who is she?”

  “It’s our resident medical officer, Dr Emily Hall. But Dr Fortune, can’t you do anything?”

  “She’s gone,” said Reggie.

  “But this is terrible, doctor. What does it mean?”

  “Well, I don’t know what it means. Her throat was cut by a highly efficient knife, probably from behind. She lingered a little while quite helpless, and died. Not so very long ago. Who screamed?”

  “The nurse who found her. One of our own girls, Dr Fortune, Edith Baker. She was always a favourite of poor Dr Hall’s. She has been kept on here at Dr Hall’s wish to train as a nurse. She was devoted to Dr Hall. One of these girlish passions.”

  “And she came into the room and found—this—and screamed?”

  “So she tells me,” said the matron.

  “Well, well,” Reggie sighed. “Poor kiddies! And now you must send for the police.”

  “I have given instructions, Dr Fortune,” said the matron with dignity.

  “And I think you ought to keep Edith Baker from talking about it.” Reggie opened the door.

  “Edith will not talk,” said the matron coldly. “She is a very reserved creature.”

  “Poor thing. But I’m afraid some of our visitors will. And they had better not, you know.” At last he got rid of the lady and turned the key in the lock and stood looking at it. “Yes, quite natural, but very convenient,” said he, and turned away from it and contemplated a bi
g easy chair. The loose cushion on the seat showed that somebody had been sitting in it, a fact not in itself remarkable. But there was a tiny smear of blood on the arm still wet. He picked up the cushion. On the under side was a larger smear of blood. Mr Fortune’s brow contracted. “The unknown murderer cuts her throat—comes over here—makes a mess on the chair—turns the cushion over—and sits down—to watch the woman die. This is rather diabolical.” He began to wander round the room. It offered him no other signs but some drops of blood on the hearthrug and the hearth. He knelt down and peered into the fire, and with the tongs drew from it a thin piece of metal. It was a surgical knife. He looked at the dead woman. “From your hospital equipment, Dr Hall. And Edith Baker is a nurse. And Edith Baker had ‘a girlish passion’ for you. I wonder.”

  Some one was trying the door. He unlocked it, to find an inspector of police. “I am Reginald Fortune,” he explained. “Here’s your case.”

  “I’ve heard of you, sir,” said the inspector reverently. “Bad business, isn’t it? I’m sure it’s very lucky you were here.”

  “I wonder,” Reggie murmured.

  “Could it be suicide, sir?”

  Reggie shook his head. “I wish it could. Not a nice murder. Not at all a nice murder. By the way, there’s the knife. I picked it out of the fire.”

  “Doctor’s tool, isn’t it, sir? Have you got any theory about it?” Reggie shook his head. “There’s the girl who gave the alarm: she’s a nurse in the hospital, I’m told.”

  “I don’t know the girl,” said Reggie. “You’d better see what you make of the room. I shall be downstairs.”

  In the big hall the decorations and the Christmas tree with its ungiven presents glowed to emptiness and silence. Joan Amber came forward to meet him. He did not speak to her. He continued to stare at the ungiven presents on the Christmas tree. “What do you want to do?” she said at last.

  “This is the end of a perfect day,” said Mr Fortune. “Poor kiddies.”

  “The matron packed them all off to their dormitories.”

  Mr Fortune laughed. “Just as well to rub it in, isn’t it?”

  Miss Amber did not answer him for a moment. “Do you know, you look rather terrible?” she said, and indeed his normally plump, fresh-coloured, cheery face had a certain ferocity.

  “I feel like a fool, Joan. Where is everybody?”

  “She sent everybody away too.”

  “She would. Great organizer. No brain. My only aunt! A woman’s murdered and every stranger who was in the place is hustled off before the police get to work. This isn’t a crime, it’s a nightmare.”

  “Well, of course they were anxious to go.”

  “They would be.”

  “Reggie, who are you thinking of?”

  “I can’t think. There are no facts. Where’s this matron now?”

  The inspector came upon them as they were going to her room. “I’ve finished upstairs, sir. Not much for me, is there? Plenty downstairs, though. I reckon I’ll hear some queer stories before I’ve done. These homes are always full of gossip. People living too close together, wonderful what bad blood it makes. I—” He broke off and stared at Reggie. From the matron’s room came the sound of sobbing. He opened the door without a knock.

  The matron sat at her writing-table, coldly judicial. A girl in nurse’s uniform was crying on the bosom of Lady Chantry, who caressed her and murmured in her ear.

  “Sorry to interrupt, ma’am,” the inspector said, staring hard.

  “You don’t interrupt. This girl is Edith Baker, who seems to have been the last person who saw Dr Hall alive and was certainly the first person who saw her dead.”

  “And who was very, very fond of her,” Lady Chantry said gently. “Weren’t you, dear?”

  “I’ll have to take her statement,” said the inspector. But the girl was torn with sobbing.

  “Come, dear, come.” Lady Chantry strove with her. “The Inspector only wants you to say how you left her and how you found her.”

  “Edith, you must control yourself.” The matron lifted her voice.

  “I hate you,” the girl cried, and tore herself away and rushed out of the room.

  “She’ll have to speak, you know, ma’am,” the inspector said.

  “I am very sorry to say she has always had a passionate temperament,” said the matron.

  “Poor child!” Lady Chantry rose. “She was so fond of the doctor, you see. I’ll go to her, matron, and see what I can do.”

  “Does anyone here know what the girl was up to this afternoon, ma’am?” said the inspector.

  “I will try to find out for you,” said the matron, and rang her bell.

  “Well, well,” said Reggie Fortune. “Every little helps. You might find out what all the other people were doing this afternoon.”

  The matron stared at him. “Surely you’re not thinking of the visitors, Mr Fortune?”

  “I’m thinking of your children,” said Reggie, and she was the more amazed. “Not a nice murder, you know, not at all a nice murder.”

  And then he took Miss Amber home. She found him taciturn, which is his habit when he is angry. But she had never seen him angry before. She is a wise woman. When he was leaving her: “Do you know what it is about you, sir?” she said. “You’re always just right.”

  When the Hon. Sidney Lomas came to his room in Scotland Yard the next morning, Reggie Fortune was waiting for him. “My dear fellow!” he protested. “What is this? You’re not really up, are you? It’s not eleven. You’re an hallucination.”

  “Zeal, all zeal, Lomas. The orphanage murder is my trouble.”

  “Have you come to give yourself up? I suspected you from the first, Fortune. Where is it?” He took a copy of the “Daily Wire” from the rack. “Yes. ‘Dr Reginald Fortune, the eminent surgeon, was attending the function and was able to give the police a first-hand account of the crime. Dr Fortune states that the weapon used was a surgical knife.’ My dear fellow, the case looks black indeed.”

  Reggie was not amused. “Yes. I also was present. And several others,” he said. “Do you know anything about any of us?”

  Lomas put up his eyeglass. “There’s a certain bitterness about you, Fortune. This is unusual. What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t like this murder,” said Reggie. “It spoilt the children’s party.”

  “That would be a by-product,” Lomas agreed. “You’re getting very domestic in your emotions. Oh, I like it, my dear fellow. But it makes you a little irrelevant.”

  “Domestic be damned. I’m highly relevant. It spoilt the children’s party. Why did it happen at the children’s party? Lots of other nice days to kill the resident medical officer.”

  “You’re suggesting it was one of the visitors?”

  “No, no. It isn’t the only day visitors visit. I’m suggesting life is real, life is earnest—and rather diabolical sometimes.”

  “I’ll call for the reports,” Lomas said, and did so. “Good Gad! Reams! Barton’s put in some heavy work.”

  “I thought he would,” said Reggie, and went to read over Lomas’ shoulder.

  At the end Lomas lay back and looked up at him. “Well? Barton’s put his money on this young nurse, Edith Baker.”

  “Yes. That’s the matron’s tip. I saw the matron. One of the world’s organizers, Lomas. A place for everything and everything in its place. And if you don’t fit, God help you. Edith Baker didn’t fit. Edith Baker has emotions. Therefore she does murders. Q.E.D.”

  “Well, the matron ought to know the girl.”

  “She ought,” Reggie agreed. “And our case is, gentlemen, that the matron who ought to know girls says Edith Baker isn’t a nice young person. Lomas dear, why do policemen always believe what they’re told? What the matron don’t like isn’t evidence.”

  “There is some evidence. The g
irl had one of these hysterical affections for the dead woman, passionately devoted and passionately jealous and so forth. The girl had access to the hospital instruments. All her time in the afternoon can’t be accounted for, and she was the first to know of the murder.”

  “It’s not good enough, Lomas. Why did she give the alarm?”

  Lomas shrugged. “A murderer does now and then. Cunning or fright.”

  “And why did she wait for the children’s party to do the murder?”

  “Something may have happened there to rouse her jealousy.”

  “Something with one of the visitors?” Reggie suggested. “I wonder.” And then he laughed. “A party of the visitors went round the hospital, Lomas. They had access to the surgical instruments.”

  “And were suddenly seized with a desire for homicide? They also went to the gymnasium and the kitchen. Did any of them start boiling potatoes? My dear Fortune, you are not as plausible as usual.”

  “It isn’t plausible,” Reggie said. “I know that. It’s too dam’ wicked.”

  “Abnormal,” Lomas nodded. “Of course the essence of the thing is that it’s abnormal. Every once in a while we have these murders in an orphanage or school or some place where women and children are herded together. Nine times out of ten they are cases of hysteria. Your young friend Miss Baker seems to be a highly hysterical subject.”

  “You know more than I do.”

  “Why, that’s in the evidence. And you saw her yourself half crazy with emotion after the murder.”

  “Good Lord!” said Reggie. “Lomas, old thing, you do run on. Pantin’ time toils after you in vain. That girl wasn’t crazy. She was the most natural of us all. You send a girl in her teens into the room where the woman she is keen on is sitting with her throat cut. She won’t talk to you like a little lady. The evidence! Why do you believe what people tell you about people? They’re always lying—by accident if not on purpose. This matron don’t like the girl because she worshipped the lady doctor. Therefore the girl is called abnormal and jealous. Did you never hear of a girl in her teens worshipping a teacher? It’s common form. Did you never hear of another teacher being vicious about it? That’s just as common.”