by Sapper
He strolled off, and I watched the glow of his cigarette fading away in the darkness. Then once again I riveted my eyes on the study window: on that grim, fierce, age-old struggle of two males for a female: the struggle that brings murder into the air.
And when ten minutes later I went back into the drawing-room the atmosphere was not much better. Mary glanced up quickly as I came through the window, and her face fell when she saw who it was. Merrick made a grimace at me, and Phyllis Dankerton went on playing patience religiously. Even little Marjorie Stanway seemed to feel there was something the matter, and was fidgeting about the room.
Then, suddenly, it happened. The door was flung open and Somerville’s secretary dashed into the room. Her face was ashen white, and she was gasping for breath.
“Mrs Somerville,” she almost screamed, “he’s dead. There’s a knife in his back. He’s been stabbed.”
For a moment no one spoke. Then Dankerton said a little dazedly: “Who is dead?”
“Mr Somerville,” sobbed the woman. “At his desk.”
And again, for what seemed an eternity, there was silence. Mary, her face as white as a sheet, was staring at the secretary, as if she couldn’t grasp what had happened: young Merrick was saying “Good God!” under his breath over and over again and watching me. And at last I heard a voice say: “We must get the police.” It was my own.
“Don’t you think that we ought to go and make certain?” muttered Dankerton. “He may not be dead. Not the women, of course.”
And then, at last, Mary spoke.
“Where is Miles?”
It was hardly more than a whisper, but it sounded as if it had been shouted through a megaphone in the deathly silence. And at that moment he appeared in the window. For a second or two he stood there looking from one to the other of us: then he spoke.
“What on earth is the matter?”
It was Dankerton who answered him.
“Somerville has been stabbed in the back,” he said gravely. “His secretary says he is dead. We were just going along to see.”
“Stabbed in the back!” cried Standish in amazement. “But who by?”
“We don’t know,” I said, and once again Merrick’s eye met mine. “Let’s go and see if there is anything to be done.”
But there wasn’t: that was obvious at the first glance. He lay there huddled over his desk, his eyes glazed and staring. And thrust into his back up to the hilt was a knife I had often seen lying on the mantelpiece. For a long while no one spoke: then Dankerton pulled himself together.
“Look here, you fellows, this is a pretty ghastly business. We must get the police at once. I’ll tell the butler to ring up.”
“Yes,” agreed Standish quietly. “We must get the police.”
His eyes were riveted on the knife: then with an effort he turned and looked at us each in turn.
“He and I had a frightful row tonight.” He spoke with intense deliberation, and once again Merrick looked at me. “A frightful row.”
“My dear fellow,” muttered Dankerton awkwardly. “Look here, I’ll see about the police.”
He bustled out of the room, and suddenly Merrick took the bull by the horns.
“This is a pretty grim affair, Standish. You see Canford and I were outside there, and we saw you having words with – with him.”
“Then you must have seen who did this,” said Standish eagerly.
“Unfortunately I didn’t,” said Merrick. “It seemed to me to be a private affair, and I went back to the drawing-room.”
“And I followed shortly after,” I remarked.
Once more silence fell, while Standish stared at the dead man.
“I had a frightful row,” he repeated mechanically, “and then I went out into the garden through the window. Damn it,” he exploded suddenly, “you don’t think I did it, do you?”
“Of course not, my dear chap,” I cried. “Of course not.”
He walked a little stiffly out of the room, and I turned to Merrick.
“What’s your opinion?” I said at length.
“What’s yours?” he answered. “Damn it, Canford, if he didn’t do it somebody else did. And if it was anybody in the garden we’d have seen him.”
“We might not,” I said. “If he was hiding.”
“In the back too,” he muttered. “A dirty business. God! I wish the police would come.”
And in about half an hour they did. An Inspector and a sergeant arrived and with them the doctor. The cause of death was clear: the knife had penetrated the heart. Somerville had died instantaneously. Then came the turn of the police, and it soon became evident in what direction their suspicions lay. Standish made no attempt to hide the fact of his quarrel with the dead man: incidentally it would have been futile in view of the fact that Merrick and I had seen it. But he flatly refused to say what it was about, and he denied absolutely that he was the man who had done it.
“Nobody said you were, sir,” said the Inspector sternly. “You go too fast!”
“Rot,” said Standish curtly. “I’m not a damned fool. If I have a violent row with a man, and a few minutes later he is found dead, there’s no good telling me that suspicion doesn’t fall on me. Of course it does.”
And the next day suspicion became certainty. A fingerprint expert arrived from Scotland Yard, and the marks of Standish’s fingers were found on the hilt of the knife. It was proof irrefutable, and the only explanation he could give was that in the heat of the argument he had snatched up the knife from the mantelpiece. But he still denied that it was he who had struck the blow.
“Then how comes it that yours are the only prints on the knife?” said the Inspector quietly.
I think the only person who believed in his innocence through the days that followed was Mary. To us it was painfully, terribly clear. As I said to Merrick the night before the trial it was the most obvious case, short of having an eyewitness, that could be put before a jury. And he agreed. He and I, of course, were two of the principal witnesses for the prosecution, but our evidence was really unnecessary. Standish had never denied the fact that he and the murdered man had had a bitter quarrel. And that and the fingerprints on the knife formed the evidence against him.
He still refused to say what the quarrel was about, though we all of us knew it concerned Mary. And from the point of view of his innocence or guilt it didn’t really matter. He and the murdered man had quarrelled over something, and in a fit of ungovernable rage Standish had picked up the knife and stabbed him. That was all there was to it.
And that was all there was to it when Counsel for the Crown had finished his final speech. The members of the jury had obviously made up their minds already: it was difficult to see how they could have done otherwise. And Sir John Gordon – Standish’s Counsel – was just rising to commence his hopeless task, when there occurred an amazing interruption. A strange, distraught-looking woman carrying a big brown box forced her way into court and shouted out: “Wait. Wait. Don’t go on.” Her face seemed vaguely familiar to me, and suddenly I placed her. She was John Somerville’s secretary.
Everybody was so astounded that she had reached Sir John before anyone could stop her. And by the time ushers and attendants had rushed up to her, she had said enough to Sir John to cause him to wave them away.
“My Lord,” he said, “this woman has just made a most important statement to me. In spite of the irregularity of the proceedings I propose to put her in the witness box.”
And so Emily Turner was duly sworn, and made her statement. And when she had finished you could have heard a pin drop in the court.
“I understand,” said the Judge, “that the position is as follows. The box in front of Sir John is the instrument which the murdered man used for dictating his letters into. This morning, not having thought of it since the night of the tragedy, you opened the box. And you found that a record had been made. You thereupon played that record, if that is the correct phrase, and you discovered that the conversation
between prisoner at the bar and the murdered man was what was recorded. Is that correct?”
“Yes, my Lord.”
And then came a harsh voice from the dock, “Smash the thing, I tell you. Smash it.”
“Silence,” said the Judge sternly, and Miles Standish faced him steadily.
“My Lord,” he remarked, “I give you my solemn word of honour that my conversation with Somerville that night had nothing to do with it. Moreover it affects a third person. Therefore need that record be given?”
“It must certainly be given,” said the Judge. “If what this witness says is correct, a vital piece of evidence has just come to light. Turn on the machine.”
I can still see that scene. Miles Standish, impassive and erect: the jury tense and expectant: the public craning forward in their seats. And the centre of everything – that plain little woman bending over the box.
There came a faint scraping like a gramophone: then it started.
“Sir. With reference to your last quotation, I beg to state–”
John Somerville’s voice: God! it was uncanny. Things began to blur a bit before my eyes. John Somerville dictating a letter.
“May I have a few words with you, Somerville?”
A gasp ran through the court – instantly quelled. Miles Standish had spoken. The living and the dead – reproduced before us.
“Certainly, Standish.”
“There is not much good beating about the bush, Somerville. Your wife and I are in love with one another.”
“How excessively interesting.”
How well I knew that cold sneering tone of Somerville’s. I could see now the slight rise of his upper lip. I could see the man himself again, as I hadn’t seen him since that night: as I’d never expected to see him. He was dead, damn it, dead: and that cursed instrument had brought him to life again. What was he saying now?
“I certainly can’t prevent my wife going away with you, Standish. But it’s going to be a little awkward for you both. Divorce proceedings bore me, and I hate being bored.”
“You mean you won’t divorce her, Somerville?”
“You damned swine. You utterly damned swine.”
There came a pause, then Somerville’s voice with fear in it.
“Put down that knife, you fool. Put down that knife.”
I hadn’t told them that: I’d kept that dark. I’d seen Standish pick up the knife – seen it myself. Just as he said.
“And now clear out, blast you.”
Somerville’s voice again – icy, contemptuous. How I’d hated his voice, the thin-lipped swine…
And it was then I remembered.
“Stop it,” I screamed. “Stop it.”
People stared at me in amazement, and suddenly I felt icy calm. The machine scraped on, then, “Hullo! Canford. What do you want? I’m busy.”
Somerville’s voice: he’d said it to me as I entered the room.
“What the devil – Oh! my God!”
Followed a little sobbing grunt: then silence. The record was over.
Yes: I did it. I’d always loathed him, and I loathed Standish worse. Because Mary loved Standish, and I loved Mary. And when Standish rushed out past me into the night I saw my chance to get them both. I wrapped a handkerchief round the hilt of the knife to prevent fingerprints: I’d thought of everything.
Everything except that cursed machine.
THE TWO-WAY SWITCH
As a winter sports resort Dalzenburg is known only to the select. Not the rich, clothes-changing select of St Moritz: not the stiff-backed, skating select who pirouette round the homely orange of Morgins: not even the ski-mad select of Mürren – but just the Dalzenburg select. Year after year the same people go back to the same rooms in the same hotels, so that Christmas is like a reunion of a cheery house-party, the members of which all know one another intimately.
Ski-ing, somewhat naturally, is the main topic of conversation, though bobs may be mentioned, and skating alluded to. Curling – well curling is more or less taboo. A few wild-eyed Scotchmen are wont to mutter dark things nightly in a corner of the bar, concerning handles and crampits, but as Jim Weatherby said, when people spent the day throwing a brick along the ice and pursuing it with oaths and curses they must be humoured at night.
There are advantages, many advantages, in a clientele which continues unchanged, but there are disadvantages also: particularly for a stranger arriving for the first time. With the best will in the world cliques are apt to form, and the new arrival finds himself out of it, at any rate to start with. And this is especially the case if the hotel is not a large one. I will say, however, that at the Hotel Victoria there is less of it than in many places. All the old habitués ask is that the newcomer should prove him or herself a good fellow, and then after a short period of probation the body corporate opens and the stranger is absorbed. Then all is well unless perchance the morsel proves indigestible…
It was on the Tuesday before Christmas that I arrived there accompanied by Geoffrey Sinclair. He it is true was a stranger, but since he was vouched for by me as a fully qualified member of the assembly to be the goods, he was accepted on the spot. And we found ourselves up to the neck in an indignation meeting.
“Peter,” said Jim Weatherby, “a thing of vile aspect has arrived!”
“A black slimy slug,” remarked Johnny Laidlaw.
“An inhabitant of the Solomon Islands,” added Daisy Farebrace.
“Who eats his young,” said Tom Kirton with commendable originality. “Hist! it comes.”
I glanced up as the subject of these eulogies came through the bar. He was certainly not a prepossessing specimen, but I’d seen many worse. That he was a Dago was obvious: that his smile when he saw us was of the type oleaginous was also obvious. But he made no attempt to butt in and join our party, and frankly I thought their remarks exaggerated and said so.
“You wait,” said Daisy darkly. “He’s the sort of man who would murder his mother.”
“In that case,” laughed Geoffrey Sinclair, “send for me. I promise to bring the crime home to him.”
“My poor friend,” I explained to the crowd, “labours under the delusion that he is a detective. He goes about with magnifying glasses, and sleuths.”
“But how perfectly thrilling,” cried a girl. “Do sleuth him, Mr Sinclair. You can start with his name – Pedro Gonsalvez de Silvo.”
And as the days went by it was certainly a little difficult to see what had brought Pedro Gonsalvez to such a spot as Dalzenburg. His sole method of amusing himself as far as could be seen was to sit on a luge and go down twice a day to the pâtisserie in the village, where he consumed inordinate quantities of sickly cakes. He loathed the cold, and he frankly admitted the fact.
“Then why not drift gently to the warmth, Mr de Silvo,” said Jim Weatherby hopefully.
But Pedro Gonsalvez only smiled his smile and stayed. And the reason of his staying soon became obvious – Beryl Carpenter.
Beryl Carpenter was the uncrowned queen of the hotel. As a ski runner she was miles in advance of any other girl: in fact, in open races there were only two men who could be relied on to beat her. One was young Laidlaw: the other was Hilton Blake – of whom, more anon.
She was adorably pretty, danced like an angel, and was quite unspoiled. Moreover – and I think it was in this that lay much of her charm – she had a delightfully intent way of listening to whoever was talking to her. It wasn’t a pose: she really did listen, and listen intelligently. And even if she was bored she never showed it.
One other characteristic she had – she never said unkind things about people. In every hotel, comment of a terse nature, to put it mildly, is apt to fly round concerning one’s fellow guests, but Beryl Carpenter always went out of her way to find a good point in the accused. Or if she couldn’t do that she said nothing at all.
Admittedly in the case of Pedro Gonsalvez it was difficult. And had it not been that everybody united in damning him, I think even she would
have drawn the line at dancing with him. But it was the old story of the underdog, and Beryl Carpenter fell for that every time.
“Poor little blighter,” she said when arraigned before a rag court-martial, “he can’t help being what he is. And you people are giving him such a putrid time.”
It was on New Year’s Eve that Milton Blake arrived. Personally I had never cared about the fellow very much, though he was quite popular with both men and women. He was a man of about forty, with a clean-shaven, rather aquiline face. He had a fund of amusing stories which he told extremely well, and to all outward appearances he was a very nice chap. And yet…
I asked Geoffrey Sinclair – than whom no better judge of human nature exists – what he thought of him.
“The same as you, Peter,” he remarked. “An amusing club acquaintance, but I don’t know that I would trust the gentleman very far. By the way, is there anything between him and that nice Carpenter girl?”
“Nothing at all as far as I know,” I said. “I believe she is more or less engaged to some boy at home, who hasn’t got a bean. What makes you ask?”
“Idle curiosity,” he answered. “I saw ’em together in the bar before dinner, and it struck me he seemed a bit intense. Has he got any money?”
“He always behaves as if he had,” I said. “He’s something in the City.”
But Geoffrey’s question stuck in my mind, and during the next two or three days I found myself watching them when they were together. And once or twice it struck me that the word intense was very apt. He was a man who never showed his feelings on his face – one had only to play bridge with him to realise that – but it was obvious that the topic of discussion was not of the usual hotel chatter order. And yet it didn’t seem to me that he was making love to her.
It was Tom Kirton who supplied a possible solution.
“Pity Tony Carruthers doesn’t come out,” he remarked. “I suppose he can’t manage it while his boss is away.”
“What’s that?” I said. “Tony Carruthers. You mean the fellow Beryl ran round with a year or two ago?”