Fen grunted. “Someone must have opened the front door for Church when he went out to paint his fence,” he explained: “and since he didn’t mention that important fact, the someone was fairly obviously Merrick. The two women heard the door being opened, remember—so it wasn’t open already. Church couldn’t have opened it himself for the reason, you understand, that he was carrying that pot of paint. And he didn’t put the pot of paint down in order to open the door, because the old newspaper—the obvious and only place for a houseproud man to deposit the messy paint-tin—wasn’t marked at all.”
“But look here, he only needed one hand to carry the paint. So why couldn’t he have opened the door with the other?”
Fen chuckled and drank deep. “When there were two knobs to turn—and neither could be fixed? Well, I suppose he just might have used his teeth or his toes, but really, Bledloe …”
The Quick Brown Fox
The port had been round several times, and Wakefield’s temperamental dogmatism was by now somewhat inflamed by it.
“Just the same,” he said, irrupting on a discussion whose origin and purpose no one could clearly remember, “detective stories are anti-social, and no amount of sophistries can disguise the fact. It’s quite impossible to suppose that criminals don’t collect useful information from them, fantastic and farfetched though they usually are. No one, I think”—here he glared belligerently at his fellow-guests—“will attempt to contest that. And furthermore——”
“I contest it,” said Gervase Fen; and Wakefield groaned dismally. “For all the use criminals make of them, the members of the Detection Club might as well be a chorus of voices crying in the wilderness. Look at the papers and observe what, in spite of detective fiction, criminals actually do. They buy arsenic at the chemist’s, signing their own names in the Poisons Book, and then put stupendous quantities of it in their victims’ tea. They leave their fingerprints on every possible object in the corpse’s vicinity. They invariably forget that burnt paper, if it isn’t reduced to dust, can be reconstituted and read. They spend, with reckless abandon, stolen bank-notes whose serial numbers they must know are in the possession of the police.…
“No, on the whole I don’t think criminals get much help from detective stories. And if by any chance they are addicts, that fact by itself is almost certain to scupper them, since their training in imaginary crime—which as a rule is extremely complicated—tends to make them over-elaborate in the contriving of their own actual misdeeds; and that, of course, means that they’re easy game.… For instance, there was the Munsey case.”
“It has always been my opinion,” said Wakefield to the ceiling, “that after-dinner conversation should be general rather than anecdotal. Moreover——”
“I’d known all the family slightly,” Fen went on, unperturbed, “over quite a long period of years; but I suppose that it was George Munsey, the head of the house, whom I knew best. Chance threw us together in Milan in 1928, when I was lecturing at the University there and he was engaged in some prolonged financial transaction to do with motor-cars. And although his household, which I met later, proved to be a pleasant one, I never got to know any of its members well enough to be able to regard them as individuals—as other, I mean, than the natural appendages of George. George himself was a little, round, chuckling man who’d made money on the Stock Exchange; but I’ve always felt that he must have made it more or less accidentally, because he had none of that appalling narrowness which you normally get in people who are engaged in breeding money from money. On the contrary, in fact: George was a man with hobbies—collecting ghost stories; running a toy theatre which he made and wrote the plays for, himself; bird-watching; illuminated manuscripts; and heaven knows what not else—and that fact made him livelier and more intelligent and more human even than the average non-business-man—a novelist, for instance—whose interests are necessarily fairly wide. He was thirty-seven when I first encountered him; so that in 1947, when the events I’m speaking of occurred, he was getting on for sixty—though his cherubic looks belied that, and his baldness was the only sign of ageing in him that I could see.
“I’d travelled up from Oxford to London to deal with some odd scraps of business and to get myself a new portable typewriter (eventually it was a second-hand one I bought, in Holborn). On the following morning I had to attend a Ministry of Education conference, and I was proposing to stay overight at the Athenaeum. At lunch-time, however, I happened on George Munsey in the Authors’ Club bar, and when he heard how I was placed he suggested I should stay with him instead; it was several years since we’d met, and he said the family would never forgive him if he allowed me to go back to Oxford without paying them a visit. I warned him I’d have to do some work while I was in the house—there was a long memorandum to be typed out for presentation at the M. of E. conference—but he was quite agreeable to that; and so at about half past two in the afternoon I duly appeared on his doorstep, typewriter and all.
“The Munseys’ house was in St. John’s Wood: a tall, narrow, greystone place with a long, narrow, rather sooty strip of garden behind it. They don’t live there now; with a single exception, I’ve no idea of the whereabouts of any of them these days, and there are good reasons why I shouldn’t enquire. But in 1947 they were old-established residents who’d survived two wars and were well-known and popular in the neighbourhood. And I rang their bell with the vaguely guilty, vaguely nostalgic feeling one has about people from whom, for no adequate reasons, one has allowed oneself to drift apart.
“I rang their bell; and the door was opened to me by Judith, the younger daughter.
“George Munsey’s two daughters were both good-looking; but if I’d had to choose between them, I think I should have chosen Judith rather than Eleanor. Eleanor had the more dizzying figure of the two, but that, of course, is only a relative judgment: Judith’s figure, though without the heroic mouthdrying splendour of her sister’s, was still capable of making the average girl look as if she’d been hammered out of a milkchurn, and in addition to that her features were more beautiful than Eleanor’s. I’m sorry to be talking about nothing but externals; the trouble is that I didn’t then, and don’t know, really know much about the two girls’ characters—other, I mean, than such obvious facts as that Judith was noisy while Eleanor was quiet, and that Judith was energetic while Eleanor was lazy. There were three years between them—Judith, at twenty-two, being the younger; Judith was fair while Eleanor was dark; and Eleanor dressed better than Judith. None of which is very vivid, I’m afraid—but then, healthy, attractive young women aren’t very vivid, except in the flesh.
“‘Aha!’ said Judith from the doorway. ‘The Great Manhunter in person, how nice to see you again, I didn’t have so much embonpoint when you were here last do you think it’s improved me, oh look let me take your things, I’m sorry everyone’s making that God-awful row but they’re playing Racing Demon, how long are you going to stay, come on in.’
“So I went on in.
“I ought to explain, at this point, that the Munseys were a well-to-do family, since Mrs. Munsey and Judith and Eleanor had all inherited substantially from Mrs. Munsey’s father, who had owned flour-mills. They kept no servants, however, preferring, on the whole, to lead a mildly Bohemian existence, looking after themselves. For some reason, they had never quite grasped the practical advantages, in a household, of the principle known to economists as Division of Labour, and when anything had to be done they tended all of them to try and do it simultaneously, frequently with disastrous results. But the atmosphere of their house was very friendly, and the shouts of irate laughter from the drawing-room were so characteristic of it that for a moment time was telescoped, and it seemed a matter of hours rather than of years since I’d been there last.
“‘Me,’ said Judith, ‘I’m Doing Something In The Kitchen and you’d better not ask what it is because you’ll probably have to eat it later on, and now just dump your bags, and that other thing oh it’s a typewriter
isn’t it, here and come and meet everyone, we’re stuck with Aunt Ellen these days did you know, I really can’t bear the woman’—this with a sudden access of genuine feeling which rather startled me—‘but the others don’t seem to mind her so it’s hopeless to try and turn her out, if she’d only accept money instead of battening on us here I shouldn’t mind so much, but look at her now, she’s upstairs slaving away at a lot of rubbishy embroidery which she can’t do for nuts in the hope that someone’ll pay her a few shillings for it, and God knows I’d be willing to finance her myself if only she’d go away, you remember her don’t you?’
“I did remember her. George Munsey’s sister Ellen was one of those desperately willing, desperately inefficient middleaged women whom one associates with the Women’s Voluntary Services and an atmosphere of utter confusion: short-sighted eyes, wispy greying hair, and a walk like a cripple in a hurry. Her poverty, which was genuine enough, could, as Judith remarked, have been remedied easily out of the family resources if only she had not been obstinate about receiving direct help; as it was, she lodged with them free of charge, a situation which all of them except Judith endured very patiently; and Judith’s dislike of her hadn’t, I think, any rational basis, but was more in the nature of a violent temperamental aversion such as does sometimes crop up between dissimilar personalities. Aunt Ellen didn’t reciprocate it, by the way: if anything, she was rather fonder of Judith than of the others.
“I didn’t, of course, take all of this in straight away; most of it emerged during conversation over the cards—and it was to the cards that Judith conducted me as soon as I’d deposited my things. There were four of them playing: George Munsey, his wife Dorothy, his eldest daughter Eleanor, and a young man who was a stranger to me, but who I gathered was occupying the second spare-bedroom. He had the sort of looks which people describe as ‘over-handsome’; his thick, curly, jet-black hair was heavily oiled; he cheweu gum; and he was manifestly vain—though the vanity was too naïve to give serious offence, and it was relieved on occasion by a queer, earnest, dog-like, rather touching humility. Physically he was splendid. ‘This is Philip,’ said Judith, introducing him. ‘In full, Philip Odell. His speciality’—here a glint of malice appeared in Judith’s eye—‘his speciality is changing horses, or perhaps I should say mares, in mid-stream.’
“‘Judith,’ said Mrs. Munsey reproachfully. ‘The image is hardly—hardly——’ But reproof tailed away into benevolence. Dorothy Munsey, vague, stately and benign, who had acquired something of a reputation as a poetess in the earlier twenties and lost it again, conclusively, in the later, was temperamentally incapable of rebuking anyone, and it was a wonder her daughters had grown up as unspoiled as they were. ‘What Judith means, Professor Fen——’
“‘Is that I,’ said Odell, ‘have not been behaving like the perfect gentleman.’ His hearty tones didn’t quite conceal his uneasiness, I thought. ‘The fact is, sir,’ he went on, that for a time I was engaged to Judith. But of course, she couldn’t stand me’—he showed very white teeth in a not altogether convincing laugh—‘not for long, anyway. So that when Eleanor decided she could stand me, I got engaged to Eleanor. And there, as they say, the matter rests.’
“‘He felt,’ Eleanor put in, ’that it ought to be kept in the family. And since apart from Aunt Ellen I was the only other unattached female to be had——’
“‘Now, darling, you know very well I adore——’ Odell checked himself abruptly. ‘Hell,’ he said. ‘Why wasn’t I brought up properly?’ He grimaced. ‘It’s the gigolo in me,’ he added ruefully, ‘that makes me want to gush in public. I’m sorry.’
“And somehow I liked him for that.
“I learned later that he was the owner of a chain of milk bars in the West End; and although clearly he was passionately interested in them, he took the Munseys’ gentle mockery on the subject in really very good part. I also gathered, indirectly, that in spite of what he’d said it was he rather than Judith who had been primarily responsible for the breakingoff of the first engagement. However, neither he nor Judith nor Eleanor seemed much discomfited by the exchange, and until the next day I wasn’t in the least aware of anything’s being amiss in the house at all.
“In the meantime, we played cards.
“I myself ought to have been working; but I nave a fononess for Racing Demon, so when Judith had gone back to the kitchen I joined the game, and the five of us played uninterruptedly for the next two hours—George Munsey with gusts of helpless laughter at his own inefficacy, Eleanor lazily, Odell with great seriousness, and Mrs. Munsey with her usual stately vagueness; so that it was always surprising when, as generally happened, Mrs. Munsey came out on top. At half past four, on the Munseys’ departing in a body to make tea, I retrieved my new typewriter and settled down in the library to work. And there I stayed—recruited by food and drink which the family brought in to me at irregular intervals—until nearly midnight. I hadn’t any occasion to leave the library, so I’ve no idea what the others did with themselves; and I don’t remember that anything more eventful happened to me, during the remainder of the day, than having to put a new ribbon into my machine. By the time I’d finished my job they’d all gone to bed, and I wasn’t at all sorry to follow them.
“But next morning, Odell being not yet up and the others unitedly engaged in cooking breakfast, Judith took me aside and confided to me certain matters which I must confess disturbed me a good deal.”
Fen leaned back, staring rather blankly at the roses in the centre of the dinner-table. “We went down the garden,” he said, “so as to keep out of people’s way. There was a ramshackle tool-shed, I remember, and a few spiky cabbages, and dust on all the grass; and we could hear the clatter of plates from the kitchen. Judith, in slacks and a sweater, was unusually subdued: her conversation had some full stops in it for once, And the reason soon appeared.
“ ‘I—I don’t know whether I ought to be telling you this,’ she said. ‘But it’s so like a Providence, you actually being here.… Look, you’re not officially connected with the police, are you?’
“‘No.’
“‘I mean, anything I told you, you wouldn’t have to pass it on to them?’
“‘No, of course not,’ I said uneasily. ‘But——’
“‘It’s about Philip, you see. Philip Odell. I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s his real—— Well, but never mind that. The point is, you see, that last night something happened.’
“ ‘What sort of thing?’
“ ‘It—I say, you will keep this to yourself, won’t you? It’s something rather horrible, you see, and I—— Oh damn, I’m havering—— Well, anyway, here goes.’
“And then it all came pouring out. Summarised—for conciseness’ and Wakefield’s sake—what it amounted to was this:
“Judith had heard me come up to bed at midnight, and having finished her book, and being still sleepless, had set off, as soon as the closing of the bedroom door signalled me out of the way (since in spite of her talk she was quite a modest child, and apparently had very little on), to fetch a magazine from the hall. Arriving at the head of the stairs, however, she had looked down and seen Odell slip quietly out of the drawing-room—where they’d left him chewing gum and playing dice with himself—and into the library; from which shortly fterwards she heard the rattle of my typewriter, which I’d left down there. In the normal way she wouldn’t have thought much about this, but Odell’s manner had struck her as distinctly furtive, and she was curious to know what he was up to. She hid in the hall cloaks closet, therefore, until after about ten minutes Odell emerged, still stealthily, and crept up to his room. Then she went into the library to see if she could find any indication of what he’d been doing there. Well, she did in fact find something, and in due course showed it to me, and——”
Fen broke off rather abruptly; and when after a moment he resumed, it was to say:
“You know that when you’re using thin typing-paper you generally put a backing-sheet be
hind the sheet you’re actually typing on?”
Haldane nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“That’s what Odell had done. And he’d left the backingsheet in the waste-paper basket. And you could read what he’d typed by the indentations on it. And what he’d typed was not in the least pleasant”
Fen paused to refill his glass. “As I recall it,” he continued after drinking, “the message ran like this: ’You remember what happened at Manchester on December 4th, 1945? So do I. But a thousand pounds might persuade me, I think, to forget about it. I’ll write again and tell you where to leave the money. It will be the worse for you if you try to find out who I am.’”
Haldane nodded again. “Blackmail,” he murmured thoughtfully.
“Quite so. Odell was the sort of person who might well be unscrupulous enough to try that particular game; and the Munseys—Aunt Ellen apart—were a good rich mine for that kind of mining: I don’t mean in the sense of their having dubious pasts, of course, but rather in the sense that each one of them was well off independently of the others. It all seemed plain enough—and yet somehow it was a bit too plain; and I got the impression that even Judith, distressed as she was, had inexplicit doubts about it. Besides, there was an odd thing about the message on that tell-tale backing-sheet, and that was its heading.”
“Its heading?”
“Yes. At the top of it there were four additional words typed: ‘The—quick—brown—fox.’”
There was an instant’s bemused silence. Someone said: “What on earth…?”
“Yes. A little mystifying, I agree. But anyway, there it was—and there too, more importantly, was the impress of the blackmail note. And if in fact, despite Judith’s and my misty doubts, Odell was blackmailing someone in the house, then the situation required very delicate handling indeed. Judith wanted my advice, naturally enough” (“Tcha,” said Wakefield) “as to what she ought to do. But I never had a chance to give it her, because it was at that point in our conversation that we heard Eleanor’s scream. Eleanor had gone to call her fiancé down to his breakfast, and had found him murdered in his bed.
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