The Case With Nine Solutions (A Clinton Driffield Mystery)

by J. J. Connington

  “Well, I think that’s all we have to do here, Inspector,” Sir Clinton said as he turned back from the open door. “We mustn’t take up any more of Dr. Markfield’s time. I don’t want to hurry you too much,” he added to Markfield, “but you’ll let us have your official report as soon as you can, won’t you?”

  Markfield promised with a nod, and the two officials left the building. When they reached headquarters again, Sir Clinton led the way to his own office.

  “Sit down for a moment or two, Inspector,” he invited. “You may as well glance over the London man’s report when you’re about it. Here it is—not for actual use, of course, until we get the official version from him.”

  He passed over a paper which Flamborough unfolded.

  “By the way, sir,” the Inspector inquired before beginning to read, “is there any reason for keeping back this information? These infernal reporters are all over me for details; and if this poison affair could be published without doing any harm, I might as well dole it out to them to keep them quiet. They haven’t had much from me in the last twenty-four hours, and it’s better to give them what we can.”

  Sir Clinton seemed to attach some importance to this matter, for he considered it for a few seconds before replying.

  “Let them have the name of the stuff,” he directed at last. “I don’t think I’d supply them with any details, though. I’m quite satisfied about the name of the drug, but the dose is still more or less a matter of opinion, and we’d better not say anything about that.”

  Flamborough glanced up from the report in his hand.

  “Markfield and the London man both seem to put the dose round about the same figure—eight milligrammes,” he said.

  “Both of them must be super-sharp workers,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “I don’t profess to be a chemist, Inspector, but I know enough about things to realise that they’ve done a bit of a feat there. However, let’s get on to something more immediately interesting. What did you make of the Hailsham girl?”

  “What did I make of her?” Flamborough repeated, in order to gain a little time. “I thought she was more or less what I’d expected her to be, sir. A hard vixen with a good opinion of herself—and simply mad with rage at being jilted: that’s what I made of her. Revengeful, too. And a bit vulgar, sir. No decent girl would talk like that about a dead man to a set of strangers.”

  “She hadn’t much to tell us that was useful,” Sir Clinton said, keeping to the main point. “And I quite agree with you as to the general tone.”

  Flamborough turned to a matter which had puzzled him during their visit to the Institute:

  “What did you want young Hassendean’s notebook for, sir? I didn’t quite make that out.”

  “Why, you saw what I got out of it: arithmetical errors which proved conclusively that he was a careless worker who didn’t take any trouble at all to verify his results.”

  “I had a kind of notion that you got more out of it than that, sir, or you wouldn’t have asked to see Markfield’s notebook as well. It doesn’t take someone else’s notebook to spot slips in a man’s arithmetic, surely.”

  Sir Clinton gazed blandly at his subordinate:

  “Now that you’ve got that length, it would be a pity to spoil your pleasure in the rest of the inference. Just think it out and tell me the result, to see if we both reach the same conclusion independently. You’ll find a weights-and-measures conversion table useful.”

  “Conversion table, sir?” asked the Inspector, evidently quite at sea.

  “Yes. ‘One metre equals 39·37 inches,’ and all that sort of thing. The sort of stuff one used at school, you know.”

  “Too deep for me, sir,” the Inspector acknowledged ruefully. “You’ll need to tell me the answer. And that reminds me, what made you ask whether the dose could have been fifteen times the maximum?”

  The Chief Constable was just about to take pity on his subordinate when the desk-telephone rang sharply. Sir Clinton picked up the receiver.

  “. . . Yes. Inspector Flamborough is here.”

  He handed the receiver across to the Inspector, who conducted a disjointed conversation with the person at the other end of the wire. At length Flamborough put down the instrument and turned to Sir Clinton with an expression of satisfaction on his face.

  “We’re on to something, sir. That was Fossaway ringing up from Fountain Street. It seems a man called there a few minutes ago and began fishing round to know if there was any likelihood of a reward being offered in connection with the bungalow case. He seemed as if he might know something, and they handed him over to Detective-Sergeant Fossaway to see what he could make of him. Fossaway’s fairly satisfied that there’s something behind it, though he could extract nothing whatever from the fellow in the way of definite statements.”

  “Has Fossaway got him there still?”

  “No, sir. He’d no power to detain him, of course; and the fellow turned stubborn in the end and went off without saying anything definite.”

  “I hope they haven’t lost him.”

  “Oh, no, sir. They know him quite well.”

  “What sort of person is he, then?”

  “A nasty type, sir. He keeps one of these little low-down shops where you can buy a lot of queer things. Once we nearly had him over the sale of some postcards, but he was too clever for us at the last moment. Then he was up in an assault case: he’d been wandering round the Park after dark, disturbing couples with a flash-lamp. A thoroughly low-down little creature. His name’s Whalley.”

  Sir Clinton’s face showed very plainly his view of the activities of Mr. Whalley.

  “Well, so long as they can lay their hands on him any time we need him, it’s all right. I think we’ll persuade him to talk. By the way, was this lamp-flashing stunt of his done for aesthetic enjoyment, or was he doing a bit of blackmailing on the quiet?”

  “Well, nobody actually lodged a complaint against him; but there’s no saying whether people paid him or not. His record doesn’t make it improbable that he might do something in that line, if he could manage to pull it off.”

  “Then I’ll leave Mr. Whalley to your care, Inspector. He sounds interesting, if you can induce him to squeak.”

  Chapter Eleven

  THE CODE ADVERTISEMENT

  On the following morning, Inspector Flamborough was summoned to the Chief Constable’s room and, on his arrival, was somewhat surprised to find his superior poring over a copy of the Westerhaven Courier. It was not Sir Clinton’s habit to read newspapers during office hours; and the Inspector’s eyebrows lifted slightly at the unwonted spectacle.

  “Here’s a little puzzle for you, Inspector,” Sir Clinton greeted him as he came in. “Just have a look at it.”

  He folded the newspaper to a convenient size and handed it over, pointing as he did so to an advertisement to which attention had been drawn by a couple of crosses in pen and ink. Flamborough took the paper and scanned the advertisement:

  DRIFFIELD. AAACC. CCCDE. EEEEF.

  HHHHH. IIIIJ. NNNNO. OOOOO.

  RRSSS. SSTTT. TTTTT. TTUUW. Y.

  “It doesn’t seem exactly lucid, sir,” he confessed, as he read it a second time. “A lot of letters in alphabetical order and divided into groups of five—bar the single letter at the end. I suppose it was your name at the front that attracted your eye?”

  “No,” Sir Clinton answered. “This copy of the paper came to me through the post, marked as you see it. It came in by the second delivery. Here’s the wrapper. It’ll probably suggest something to you.”

  Flamborough looked at it carefully.

  “Ordinary official stamped wrapper. There’s no clue there, since you can buy ’em by the hundred anywhere.”

  Then a glance at the address enlightened him.

  “Same old game, sir? Letters clipped from telegraph forms and gummed on to the wrapper. It looks like Mr. Justice again.”

  “The chances are in favour of it,” Sir Clinton agreed, with a faint tinge of
mockery in his voice at the Inspector’s eager recognition of the obvious. “Well, what about it?”

  Flamborough scanned the advertisement once more, but no sign of comprehension lightened his face.

  “Let’s clear up one point before we tackle the lettering,” Sir Clinton suggested. “That’s to-day’s issue of the Courier; so this advertisement was received at the newspaper office yesterday. Since the thing reached me by the second post, this copy of the paper may have been bought in the normal way—first thing in the morning—and posted at once.”

  “That’s sound, sir. It’s among the ordinary advertisements—not in the ‘Too Late For Classification’ section.”

  “It may be a hoax, of course,” Sir Clinton mused, “but the telegram-form business would hardly occur to a practical joker. I think one can take it as a genuine contribution until it’s proved to be a fake. Now what do you make of it?”

  The Inspector shook his head.

  “Cyphers are not my long suit, sir. Frankly, it seems to me just a jumble, and I don’t think I’d make it anything else if I tried.”

  Sir Clinton reflected for a minute or two in silence, his eyes fixed on the advertisement.

  “I’ve a notion that this is only Chapter I, Inspector. There’s more to come, in all probability. If it’s Mr. Justice, he’s not the man to waste time. By the way, did you give the reporters the information you were talking about yesterday?”

  “Yes, sir. It was printed in last night’s Evening Herald, and I think both the Courier and the Gazette have got it this morning.”

  Sir Clinton was still scrutinising the advertisement.

  “I’m like you, Inspector—no great shakes on cyphers. But this affair looks to me more like the letters of a plain message arranged in ordinary alphabetical order. I think that most likely we shall get the key from the writer in some form or other before long. In the meantime, though, we might have a dash at interpreting the affair, if we can.”

  Flamborough’s face showed that he thought very poorly of the chances of success.

  “Ever read Jules Verne or Poe?” Sir Clinton demanded. “No? Well, Poe has an essay on cryptography in its earlier stages—nothing like the stuff you’ll find in Gross or Reiss, of course, and mere child’s play compared with the special manuals on the subject. But he pointed out that in cypher-solving you have to pick the lock instead of using the normal key. And Jules Verne puts his finger on the signature of a cypher-communication as a weak point, if you’ve any idea who the sender is. That’s assuming, of course, that there is a signature at all to the thing.”

  The Inspector nodded his comprehension of this.

  “You mean, sir, that ‘Justice’ would be the signature here, like in the wire we got?”

  “We can but try,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Not that I’m over-hopeful. Still, it’s worth a shot. Suppose we hook out the letters of ‘Justice’ and see what that leaves us. And we may as well disregard the groups of five for the moment and simply collect the remaining letters under A, B, C, etc.”

  He tore a sheet of paper into small squares and inscribed one letter of the message on each square.

  “Now we take out ‘Justice,’” he said, suiting the action to the word, “and simply leave the rest in alphabetical groups.”

  The Inspector, following the operation, found himself faced with the arrangement:

  AAA CCCC D EEEE F HHHHH III NNNN

  OOOOOO RR SSSS TTTTTTTTT U W Y

  JUSTICE.

  “It doesn’t seem much clearer, sir,” Flamborough pointed out with a certain tinge of enjoyment in his tone. It was not often that he had a chance of crowing over his superior.

  “Wait a moment, Inspector. Just let’s reflect for a bit. At any rate, the letters of ‘Justice’ are there; and that’s always better than a complete blank end. Now consider what Mr. Justice might be burning to tell us about in his unobtrusive way. He had time to see the news printed in last night’s Herald before he composed this little affair. Let’s suppose that he got some fresh ideas from that—since this communication falls pat after the publication and he hasn’t bothered us for days before that. The crucial thing was the identification of the hyoscine. We’ll see if we can get the word out here.”

  He sifted out the letters rapidly; and the jumble then took the form:

  HYOSCINE AAA CCC D EEE F HHHH II

  NNN OOOOO RR SSS TTTTTTTTT U W

  JUSTICE.

  “It fits, so far,” Sir Clinton said, surveying his handiwork doubtfully, “but we might have got a couple of words like that out of a random jumble of fifty-six letters. It’s encouraging, but far from convincing, I admit.”

  He glanced over the arrangement with knitted brows.

  “There seem to be a devil of a lot of T’s in the thing, if we’re on the right track. Now what do you associate with hyoscine in your mind, Inspector? Quick, now! Don’t stop to think.”

  “The Croft-Thornton Institute,” said the inspector, promptly.

  “Bull’s eye, I believe,” the Chief Constable ejaculated. “You could hardly jam more T’s together in English than there are in these three words. Let’s sift ’em out.”

  The Inspector bent eagerly forward to see if the necessary letters could be found. Sir Clinton separated the ones which he required for the three words, and the arrangement stood thus:

  HYOSCINE THE CROFT-THORNTON

  INSTITUTE AAA CC D E HH OO SS TT

  W JUSTICE.

  “I think this is getting outside the bounds of mere chance,” Sir Clinton adjudged, with more optimism in his tone. “Now we might go a step further without straining things, even if it’s only a short pace. Let’s make a guess. Suppose that it’s meant to read: “Hyoscine at the Croft-Thornton Institute.” That leaves us with the jumble here:

  AA CC D E HH OO SS T W

  “What do you make of that, Inspector?”

  “The start of it looks like ACCEDE—no, there’s only one E,” Flamborough began, only to correct himself.

  “It’s not ACCEDE, obviously, Let’s try ACCESS and see if that’s any use.”

  The Chief Constable shifted the letters while the Inspector, now thoroughly interested, watched for the result.

  “If it’s ACCESS then it ought to be ACCESS TO,” Sir Clinton suggested. “And that leaves A, D, HH, O, W.”

  One glance at the six letters satisfied him.

  “It’s panned out correctly, Inspector. There isn’t a letter over. See!”

  He rearranged the lettering, and the inspector read the complete message:

  WHO HAD ACCESS TO HYOSCINE AT THE CROFT-THORNTON INSTITUTE. JUSTICE.

  “The chances of an anagram working out so sensibly as that are pretty small,” Sir Clinton said, with satisfaction. “It’s a few million to one that we’ve got the correct version. H’m! I don’t know that Mr. Justice has really given us much help this time, for the Croft-Thornton was an obvious source of the drug. Still, he’s doing his best, evidently; and he doesn’t mean to let us overlook even the obvious, this time. I’m prepared to bet that we get the key to this thing by the next post. Mr. Justice wouldn’t leave the matter to the mere chance of our working the thing out. Still it’s some satisfaction to feel that we’ve done without his assistance.

  Flamborough occupied himself with copying the cypher and its solution into his notebook. When he had finished, Sir Clinton lit a cigarette and handed his case to the Inspector.

  “Let’s put officialism aside for a few minutes,” the Chief Constable proposed. “No notes, or anything of that sort. Now I don’t mind confessing, Inspector, that we aren’t getting on with this business at all well. Short of divination, there seems no way of discovering the truth, so far as present information goes. And we simply can’t afford to let this affair go unsolved. Your Whalley person seems to be our best hope.”

  The Inspector evidently found a fresh train of thought started in his mind by Sir Clinton’s lament.

  “I’ve been thinking over that set of alternati
ves you put down on paper the other day, sir,” he explained. “I think they ought to be reduced from nine to six. It’s practically out of the question that young Hassendean was shot twice over by pure accident; so it seems reasonable enough to eliminate all that class from your table.”

  He put his hand in his pocket and produced a sheet of paper which had evidently been folded and unfolded fairly often since it had been first written upon.

  “If you reject accident as a possibility in Hassendean’s case,” he continued, “then you bring the thing within these limits here.”

  He put his paper down on the table and Sir Clinton read the following:

  HASSENDEAN

  MRS. SILVERDALE

  A—Suicide.................

  Suicide

  B—Murder.................

  Murder

  C—Suicide.................

  Accident

  D—Murder.................

  Accident

  E—Suicide.................

  Murder

  F—Murder.................

  Suicide

  “Now I think it’s possible to eliminate even further than that, sir, for this reason. There’s a third death—the maid’s at Heatherfield—which on the face of it is connected in some way with these others. I don’t see how you can cut the Heatherfield business away from the other two.”

  “I’m with you there, Inspector,” Sir Clinton assured him.

  Flamborough, obviously relieved to find that he was not going to be attacked in the flank, pursued his exposition with more confidence.

  “Who killed the maid? That’s an important point. It wasn’t young Hassendean, because the maid was seen alive by Dr. Ringwood immediately after young Hassendean had died on his hands. It certainly wasn’t Mrs. Silverdale, because everything points to her having died even before young Hassendean left the bungalow to go home and die at Ivy Lodge. Therefore, there was somebody afoot in the business that night who wouldn’t stick at murder to gain his ends, whatever they were.”