Murder a la Mode

by Patricia Moyes

  “Mrs. Dodgson arrived first, probably by taxi, and spoke to you,” said Henry. “I imagine that she asked you to keep your diagnosis secret from her husband, but to tell her. You replied that you wouldn’t be able to give a definite answer immediately—tests would have to be made, and so on.”

  Sir James smiled. “This is wizardry,” he said. “You seem to know more about it than I do. Go on.”

  “Mr. Dodgson turned up by car a little later, you examined him, and they drove off together. Correct?”

  “Correct!”

  “When did you next see him?”

  “He came in for an X-ray a couple of weeks later. I was fairly sure of my diagnosis by then, but I wanted the X-rays to clinch matters. Mrs. Dodgson was not with him on that occasion. He was anxious about his condition, so I kept my promise, and merely told him that he had a stomach ulcer. He went off quite happy.”

  “Then,” said Henry, “on Tuesday of this week the X-ray results came through, confirming your worst fears.”

  “On Monday evening, as a matter of fact,” said Sir James.

  “Sorry. On Monday evening. You telephoned Mrs. Dodgson, and asked her to come and see you.”

  “In principle, yes. In fact, it was she who telephoned me.”

  “Really? But why?”

  Sir James smiled, a little sadly. “In cases like this,” he said, “there is always the fear that the wrong person may answer the telephone if I call. Mrs. Dodgson was particularly anxious about this. You see, she did not wish me to telephone her at her office. In fact, she was at some pains to discourage me from finding out where she worked, and yet, in the evenings, her husband would be as likely as she to answer the telephone. So I told her to ring me at Hindhurst on Monday evening, by which time I was fairly certain of having a positive answer for her.”

  “I see,” said Henry. “So when she telephoned, you told her that you would like to see her as soon as possible. Naturally, you wouldn’t want to break the bad news over the telephone. You explained that you would be in Hindhurst until Tuesday evening, and were leaving for Vienna on Wednesday morning.”

  “That is correct. The dinner I told you about was organized by the Hindhurst Cottage Hospital, where I work for a day each week.”

  “She replied,” pursued Henry, “that she could come to Hindhurst and see you on Tuesday afternoon. This she did, and you told her the worst.”

  “Yes. That is all perfectly accurate. That is all I know. What happened then?”

  “She returned to London,” said Henry, “and started on an all-night working session for the magazine. All the other people concerned went home at about half past one, leaving her to work on alone. She was found dead the following morning, having drunk cyanide in her tea.”

  For a moment, Sir James was silent. Then he said, “And you are treating this as a case of murder?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Sir James nodded. “I am glad to hear it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because, in the circumstances, you might be tempted to think of it as suicide, and I am convinced that you would be making a grave mistake.” Sir James paused, considering his words carefully. “I am not a psychiatrist, Inspector, but it is my unhappy duty to have to break bad news—the worst possible news—to many people. I have come to gauge their reactions fairly accurately. Mrs. Dodgson behaved splendidly. She broke down when she first heard the truth, which is always a good thing. The sooner the inevitable emotional storm comes, the sooner the air is cleared. Then she pulled herself together and asked me a lot of highly intelligent questions. She wanted to know all about her husband’s condition, and how she could best care for him and make his last months happy and comfortable. In short, her approach was constructive. I cannot believe that she went away and killed herself.”

  “She didn’t,” said Henry, positively.

  “But…” Sir James hesitated. “There is this inconsistency in her name. Am I to take it that she was not, in fact, Mrs. Dodgson?”

  “You are.”

  “Then—forgive me for asking this, but I am concerned with my patient—who will look after him?”

  “Your patient has a wife,” said Henry. “Whether she will be as sympathetic and sensible as Miss Pankhurst, I can’t say. In the course of time I’ll send her to see you.”

  “This puts me in a very delicate position,” said Sir James, unhappily. “Does Mrs. Dodgson…the real one…know about…?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” said Henry. “Not for the moment. But I can tell you that she will come and see you, and that her name is not Dodgson either.”

  It was six o’clock when Henry left Wimpole Street. He went to the nearest phone box and put through a call to Olwen Piper at the flat in Kensington—the flat which had been Helen’s. Olwen answered at once, and did not seem pleased.

  “I have to be at the theatre by half past eight,” she said. “It’s not very convenient. I thought you’d have rung earlier.”

  “I can be with you by half past six,” said Henry. “If you could spare me even half an hour…”

  “Oh, very well.”

  Henry was looking forward with interest to seeing Helen’s home. He knew already that she had not been rich. A couple of hundred pounds in the bank and the proceeds of a small insurance policy were all that her sister in Australia would inherit, apart from furniture and personal possessions. Henry guessed that, like many unmarried women, Helen had spent the bulk of her salary on clothes and on her apartment, and a quick look round was enough to convince him that he had been right.

  The flat was on the seventh floor of a modern block, and was furnished with good, simple, contemporary pieces, bearing witness to excellent if somewhat austere taste on the part of the late occupant. There was a marked lack of the frills and knickknacks which often abound in a purely feminine household. A few pieces of clean-cut Scandinavian glass and pottery, and several reproductions of abstracts by Kandinsky and Klee, were Helen’s only concessions to decoration; everything else was strictly functional.

  Olwen greeted Henry brusquely. “I suppose you want to look around,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it. I have to change. Call me if you want me. I’ll be in my room.”

  With that, she disappeared through an open doorway on Henry’s left, beyond which he caught a glimpse of a small bedroom in a state of great disorder. Clothes and books and papers and gramophone records lay around in confusion. The contrast between Olwen’s room and the rest of the apartment underlined the fact that this had been an oddly assorted ménage. Olwen shut the door behind her, and Henry began his tour of inspection.

  Apart from Olwen’s room, the flat consisted of a diminutive hall, a large living room with a balcony, Helen’s bedroom, and a kitchen and bathroom. The living room did not occupy Henry for long; it was as neat and impersonal as a shop window, and he felt convinced that Helen would not have kept anything private there. He left it, and went into her bedroom.

  Here, again, he noticed a certain lack of femininity. The studio bed had a navy-blue tailored cover, the dressing table was of plain, light oak, and bore the bare minimum of scents and cosmetics, although Henry noticed that they were of the most expensive and exclusive makes. The drawers in the austere, modern tallboy revealed neatly arranged piles of clean clothes and handkerchiefs, and the wardrobe was equally immaculate. Only a number of soiled handkerchiefs in the dirty linen bag testified to the fact that Helen had been an ordinary, vulnerable mortal with a bad cold in the head. Henry felt depressed. There was, however, one more piece of furniture: it was a small, roll-top desk, and it was not locked. Henry opened it.

  The first thing that caught his eye was an unfinished letter, which lay on a pad of white blotting paper in the center of the desk. It was written in ink, in a precise, Italianate hand, and it bore no superscription other than the word “Tuesday.” Henry picked it up and read it.

  “I think I’ve got hold of the right stuff at last. It’s not quite the same as one finds in
Paris, but I’ve asked Teresa to bring me back a sample, so that we can compare them. I’ve practically made up my mind about the blue jersey dress—you know, the one Beth wanted to photograph. I’ll let you know definitely in a few days’ time, I hope.”

  Here the note stopped. Since it did not break off in midsentence, Henry guessed that Helen had not been interrupted while writing it, but had merely put it away to finish later—realizing, perhaps, that she would have to hurry to keep her appointment with the doctor. A large pin in the left-hand top corner of the paper secured something to the back of it, and Henry turned it over, expecting to see a scrap of dress material, for clearly the letter had been intended for Helen’s dressmaker. He was mildly surprised, however, to find nothing except a blank sheet of writing paper pinned to the first one. He was on the point of replacing the note in the blotter when it occurred to him that he had no sample of Helen’s handwriting—in the office she had worked exclusively on the typewriter. So he folded the paper and put it into his pocket.

  Otherwise, the desk was as dishearteningly well-ordered as the rest of Helen’s life. There were neat files of receipts, bank statements, and household accounts. There was a file marked “Letters to be answered,” in which Henry found a note, apparently from an old school friend, urging Helen to spend a week end with the writer and her husband in Shropshire; a letter from a London store, informing Madam that the lamp shade she wanted was not available in yellow, and asking if blue would be suitable; and a card from the Electricity Board stating that, if convenient, their representative would call next Monday at 2 P.M. to inspect the faulty cooker.

  Contemplating the contents of the desk, Henry felt chilled by the impersonality of it all. There were no invitation cards, no inane picture post cards from holidaying friends, no scribbled notes making or breaking dates. Above all, there were no love letters. Was it, he wondered, because she never received such communications? Or was it because she destroyed them?

  Resolving to have a word with Olwen on the subject, he took a last look round the room, but it revealed no secrets. A small bookcase held some detective stories, two currently fashionable biographies, a celebrated but unscholarly account of archeological discoveries in Egypt, a complete set of A.A. Milne, and a couple of best-selling novels—one of them written by a university professor and the other by a self-confessed pickpocket. The lower shelf was stacked with back numbers of Style. “A middle-brow,” Henry summed up to himself, “just very slightly raised.”

  In fact, of everything in the room, the most individual items were Helen’s clothes. Henry was no fashion expert, but even he could see that the contents of the wardrobe revealed a strong and adventurous sense of colour, allied to a preference for simple, classic lines. There were no hats swathed in veiling or roses, no dresses in soft, pastel colours, and above all, no extremes of fashion. Henry found himself agreeing with Margery French’s assessment. Helen had been a well-dressed woman—her Style training ensured that—but she played too safe to be the editor of a great fashion magazine. In spite of himself, the much-used word “flair” came to Henry’s mind. He felt that he was beginning to understand what it meant.

  Leaving the bedroom, Henry went into the white-tiled kitchen, and took a look at the garbage-disposal arrangements. To his depression, he saw that the apartment was fitted with a modern incinerator unit. Any correspondence which Helen had thrown away would be pulverized beyond hope by now. He went back into the hall and knocked on Olwen’s door.

  “Yes? What do you want?”

  “I’ve seen all I need to see, Miss Piper,” said Henry, “but I’d like a word with you when you’re ready.”

  “Very well. I shan’t be long.”

  A couple of minutes later, Olwen joined him in the living room. She had changed into a rose-pink silk dress, embellished with the softly draped ruffles which were all the rage, and she looked terrible. Any of Style’s fashion staff could have told her that one should not wear ruffles if one wasn’t the type, fashion or no fashion, and that if one did wear them, it was disastrous to combine them with ropes of artificial pearls, a pair of bright pink satin shoes and a solid-looking white handbag. In fact, the fashion staff of Style were sick and tired of telling Olwen these things, since her reply was always either a defiant, “But I like pearls with it,” or a vaguely murmured, “Oh, really…yes, of course…” which indicated that her mind was miles away. As for Henry, he did not have the expertise to analyse Olwen’s sartorial faults, but he knew a mess when he saw one. All the same, he made an effort, smiled, and said, “Ah, there you are. How charming you look.”

  “It is a pretty dress, isn’t it?” said Olwen complacently. “Beth photographed it for Young Style a couple of months ago, on Veronica Spence. The picture was so lovely I felt I must buy the dress.” Privately, Henry lowered his opinion of Beth Connolly by several notches. He could not be expected to understand that, although the dress was identical, the resultant effect was a thousand miles away from the young, fresh drift of rose-petal pink which had floated across the pages of Style. It is a bitter burden that fashion editors have to bear, that their advice is generally only half digested by their readers.

  “Well?” said Olwen, “What can I do for you?”

  “First of all,” said Henry, pulling out of his pocket the note he had found in Helen’s desk, “can you identify that handwriting?”

  Olwen glanced at it. “Yes, of course. It’s Helen’s.”

  “Good. I just wanted to be sure. Now, can you tell me if Helen generally received many letters?”

  “I really can’t tell you, Inspector.”

  “But surely you must…”

  “Helen always got up first in the morning, and made coffee. I’m at the theatre most evenings, so I can afford to get into the office a little later, unless I’m specially busy. Helen was…well…secretive about some things. It became a routine that she always collected the post, and she took her letters into the kitchen and read them while the coffee was brewing. Anything that didn’t need an answer, she put into the incinerator straight away—you know how tidy she was.”

  “What do you mean by ‘secretive’?” Henry asked.

  “Well…” Olwen hesitated. “One morning I was expecting rather a special letter, and I got up early and cleared the letter box and took her mail into her room to give her, and she was absolutely furious. As though I’d been opening her private letters, or something. Anyhow, there was nothing for her that morning except a couple of circulars, but she made me promise I’d leave the post for her to collect in the future. It was strange, wasn’t it? Not a bit like her.”

  “Very strange,” Henry agreed. He felt considerably annoyed with Helen Pankhurst. Whatever intriguing correspondence she might have received, she had successfully obliterated all trace of it. Henry thought wistfully of those detective stories where a scrap of unburnt paper with a few significant words on it always seems to emerge from a pile of ashes in the grate. He’d like to know, he reflected grimly, what even Sherlock Holmes would have done if confronted with an electric incinerator. He became aware that Olwen was speaking again.

  “…as soon as possible. You do understand, don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

  “Helen’s clothes and things. I’d like to get them packed up and into storage as soon as I can.”

  “I can’t see any objection,” said Henry. He looked round the room. “I suppose all this furniture is hers. What will you do about that?”

  “I’ll write to her sister,” said Olwen, “to see what she wants me to do with it. Of course, I’ll have to refurnish completely, but for the time being I imagine I can go on using Helen’s things.” She glanced at her workmanlike wrist watch, which, on its stout black leather strap, did less than nothing for the rose-pink dress. “I’m afraid I have to go now.”

  “Me, too,” said Henry. “Thank you for your help.”

  At the door, Olwen paused. “So I can pack her things up over the week end?” she
said.

  “If you wish.”

  “Thank you. You can’t imagine how…how glad I shall be.” For a moment, Olwen’s voice broke. “It’s her clothes. They’re like ghosts…doppelgängers. I can’t bear having them in the house.”

  “I can understand that,” said Henry. “Right. Pack them up and get rid of them.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE WEEK END was characterized by the coldest weather of a cold winter, and by a deep depression on Henry’s part. He was pretty sure by now that he knew the identity of the murderer, but he had arrived at the answer by a combination of small clues and the instinct which he called his “nose.” This did not give him anything like the solid proof that he needed, and besides, there were gaps that he could not fill in. Added to this, the situation of Michael and Teresa Healy weighed heavily on his shoulders. He could not make up his mind where his responsibility lay, and whether it was part of his duty to tell Teresa the truth. He even had misgivings about his own reconstruction of the case, and he frequently thought about what Donald MacKay had said, and wondered if he had been bamboozled by a group of experts into forming opinions which were in no sense his own.

  On Saturday, to add to the general gloom, Henry went to Helen’s funeral, which—with typical generosity and thoughtfulness—Godfrey Goring had organized. Apart from a genuine desire to pay his respects to the dead woman, Henry was anxious to see whether, in fact, the staff of Style had been correct in saying that Helen had had few friends outside her work.

  It certainly looked like it. Margery French and Patrick were there, sitting together; so were Michael and Teresa. Godfrey Goring sat alone, looking suitably solemn. Beth Connolly was accompanied by a short, fair girl whom she introduced to Henry as Helen’s secretary. The only other mourner was a solidly built motherly lady whom Henry had never seen before, and who turned out to be Mrs. Sedge, the charlady who had “done” for Helen for the past ten years. Henry made a careful mental note not only of who was there, but of who was not.