Death Invites You

by Paul Halter

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ sighed Hurst, ‘even though we’ve been through every room with a fine-tooth comb. I suspect the murderer has disposed of it. One last question, Mr. Sharpe: was Harold Vickers still widely read? More precisely, hadn’t sales of his books been dwindling lately?’

  The conjurer nodded.

  ‘His novels were still being snapped up by the enthusiasts, but the public at large was starting to tire. Which couldn’t help but worry him. Recently, he’d been more tormented than ever and seemed to be mulling a mysterious project over in his mind, as if he wanted to do something dramatic by way of a comeback.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr. Sharpe,’ said Hurst with a triumphant expression on his face. ‘Thank you again. This interview has been most illuminating. I have reason to believe we’re near the end of our investigation.’

  So saying, the two detectives took their leave. On the stairs, Dr. Twist asked his friend:

  ‘You seem very sure of yourself, Hurst. Have you got to the bottom of this intriguing business?’

  ‘Broadly speaking, yes. Needless to say, there are a few details here and there which need clearing up, but once we lay our hands on our would-be chef, we’ll cook him ourselves and serve him up, ha ha ha!’

  ‘You’re whetting my appetite, old friend. Could you give me a glimpse of the menu?’

  ‘Just be patient a little while longer.’ Hurst stopped in front of the study and spoke to the men who had been assigned to examine the door, the window and the chimney. ‘Anything to report, fellows?’

  The youngest one came over, magnifying glass in hand.

  ‘No traces in the chimney, which is too narrow anyway. Nothing on the window handle, either. The edges of the lock show no signs of damage on either side.’

  ‘So, you’ve drawn a blank on everything?’

  The young policeman looked crestfallen:

  ‘I’m afraid so. There’s just a slight smell of varnish which—.’

  ‘A smell of varnish?’ thundered Hurst, a dark frown on his face. ‘What do you expect me to do with that, Mr. Smart Detective? A smell of varnish and what else?’ He turned to Twist with a shrug of his shoulders and said:

  ‘We need to sink our teeth into something. That’ll give us some new ideas.’

  ‘It’s only half past eleven,’ replied Twist, looking at his watch. ‘Might I suggest we pay a little visit to the neighbour whom Harold Vickers saw quite a lot of recently, Colin Hubbard?’

  A rose-lined path led to Dr. Colin Hubbard’s bungalow. It was a charming spot. The whitewashed walls and red roof made a pleasant contrast with the soft green of the lawn, and the first asters offered a riot of harmonious colour.

  After ringing the doorbell, the two detectives were greeted by a thin old man with a vague look in his eyes and a forehead covered with anxious wrinkles. Once they had identified themselves he invited them in.

  ‘What a horrible thing to have happened,’ he said in a reedy, quavering voice.

  While he was serving them whisky, Dr. Twist noted how much their host’s hands were trembling. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of alert. The criminologist looked around the room. Everything was precisely in its place; nothing was even the slightest bit out of order. The smoker’s kit was carefully arranged on a small table within easy reach of Twist, who had sunk down in the comfortable armchair. Numerous books, mostly medical textbooks, were arranged meticulously in a magnificent mahogany bookcase. Dr. Hubbard was evidently a fiend for order and simultaneously a man of taste. An embroidered tapestry of The Lady and the Unicorn hung above a Restoration commode, on which stood a casket of precious wood and some roses in a crystal vase. Nearby, in a silver frame, was a photograph of a smiling young woman with a dreamy look in her eyes..

  The inspector broke the silence, which had become deafening.

  ‘The death of your neighbour seems to have affected you rather badly. I assume you know the circumstances of his murder?’

  Twist noticed the man’s hand clench his glass so tightly the knuckles turned white.

  ‘Yes, it’s awful,’ replied Hubbard, almost having to force the words out. ‘I saw Mr. Sharpe early this morning.’

  ‘The face and hands burnt and the table set...a macabre kind of dinner,’ said Hurst, lighting a cigar.

  Dr. Hubbard drained his glass and served himself another. Then he took a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow.

  ‘Have you known your neighbour for a long time?’

  ‘No, just a few years. When I retired from practice and bought this property.’

  ‘Do you hail from London?’ enquired Twist absently.

  ‘No, but I worked there for quite a while. I had a surgery in Harley Street.’

  So saying, he lowered his head and fell silent, before raising his eyes to look at the young woman in the photograph.

  Twist broke the awkward silence by asking gently:

  ‘Your daughter?’

  ‘My late wife,’ replied Dr. Hubbard sadly.

  Out of compassion, Twist asked no more questions.

  ‘We’re here,’ declared Hurst after clearing his throat, ‘to find out what light you can shine on the personality of the deceased. He visited you quite frequently before his death.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Do you have a common interest? Why the sudden friendship?’

  Once again, Dr. Hubbard wiped his perspiring brow with his handkerchief.

  ‘We talked about literature.’

  ‘Detective fiction?’ asked Twist with his usual amiable smile.

  ‘Yes! That’s it! Detective fiction!’ exclaimed the doctor, obviously relieved. ‘That was our common passion.’

  Twist removed his glasses and asked, with a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes:

  ‘So he must have spoken to you about The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Arthur Conan Doyle? Apparently it was his favourite novel.’

  Colin Hubbard gave a knowing look and smiled for the first time.

  ‘Of course, The Mystery of the Yellow Room with the celebrated Sherlock Holmes. How many times must he have talked to me about that fantastic story.’ He took a quick gulp of whisky and contemplated a corner of the ceiling. ‘I can still hear him describing the famous detective down to the slightest detail, with his deerstalker hat and his pipe, pacing up and down in the yellow room.’

  ‘And the no less famous Dr. Watson,’ interjected Hurst, proud of his literary knowledge. ‘The dullard with a gift for following the wrong trail. That kind of imbecile is only found in fiction.’

  ‘Ah! Dr. Watson,’ replied Colin Hubbard with a smile. ‘A decent enough chap, all things considered.’

  Dr. Twist had stopped taking part in the conversation, content to listen to the two others with a faint smile on his lips. It was noon when he and Hurst took their leave of the host.

  11

  Inspector Hurst Explains

  Seated on a bench in St. James’s Park, Simon Cunningham stared at the surrounding landscape. The soft green of the willows was reflected in the dark waters of the lake. A swan swam past, leaving a silver wake. All was warm and peaceful, undisturbed by any gusts of wind. He glanced at Dr. Twist, wolfing down his fourth sandwich and wondered how a man with such an appetite could remain so thin.

  ‘You were saying, sergeant?’ asked the detective, discreetly wiping his moustache.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You were talking about death.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ sighed Simon. ‘I think Roger Sharpe’s right—Valerie also, come to that—Henrietta’s exaggerating when she talks about her father. I was on relatively good terms. In fact, we talked frequently about Scotland Yard and its investigation methods. He asked me quite a few questions on the subject.’

  ‘Which served as documentation for his novels.’

  ‘Quite. But the fact remains, he was quite kind. Mysterious and not very communicative occasionally, I’ll grant you that, but nothing like the portrait Henrietta traced for you.’


  There was a silence, during which a duck and her ducklings waddled past. Simon watched them and asked:

  ‘Nothing new concerning the door and the windows?’

  Dr. Twist gobbled down the rest of his sandwich before replying:

  ‘Nothing, except a smell of varnish, to which Hurst attaches little importance.’

  ‘A smell of varnish?’

  ‘One of the officers detected a slight smell of varnish. That’s all I know at present.’

  Simon looked startled:

  ‘But that could be very important.’

  ‘Do you have any ideas, young man?’ asked Twist, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘No, but... after all, we can’t afford to overlook anything at this stage. We have to get to the bottom of this.’

  ‘There seem to be quite a few smells in this case. But don’t worry: just because your boss doesn’t think it’s important doesn’t mean that I’m not interested.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s after two o’clock. Hurst should be here at any moment... There he is. The bearer of good news, by the look of it.’

  Inspector Hurst, a barely concealed smile of jubilation on his face, sat down heavily on the bench, which groaned in protest. He took his time lighting a cigar, then released his bombshell.

  ‘Gentlemen, there’s been a case of mistaken identity. The body isn’t Harold Vickers, it’s his brother Stephen!’

  Simon, stunned, fiddled with his glasses, but Dr. Twist continued to smile.

  The inspector savoured the silence which followed his announcement, then began:

  ‘When I find myself with a corpse with a disfigured face and burnt hands precluding clear fingerprints, I immediately think to myself: this body may not be who we think.’ Favouring his subordinate with an indulgent smile, he continued: ‘Yes, Cunningham, you’ll see—when you have my experience, such thoughts are second nature.

  ‘Well, then. I’ve had this idea in my head ever since I saw the photo of the two brothers. Apart from the different expressions on their faces, they’re as alike as two peas. So I followed a hunch and took advantage of the time difference to call my Australian colleagues at three o’clock this morning. They said they’d get back to me as quickly as possible and I’ve just read the message they sent to the Yard around noon. Stephen Vickers left Australia just over a month ago to visit his brother. The workers on the family farm confirmed it.

  ‘To visit his brother,’ repeated Hurst. ‘He left over a month ago and hasn’t been seen since. So, on the one hand we have a disfigured corpse and on the other we have a brother who’s mysteriously vanished from circulation.’

  Twist nodded approvingly:

  ‘Good work. But what, in your opinion, would be the motive for such a masquerade? And who’s pulling the strings?’

  Hurst looked disappointed:

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Twist, don’t tell me you don’t understand. This whole case has been a sham from start to finish, a pre-meditated murder dreamt up a long time ago. Who, I ask you, would have a mind twisted enough to concoct such an astonishing and baffling situation? Who but the master of the puzzle, the great specialist of impossible crimes and locked room puzzles himself?’

  ‘Harold Vickers,’ murmured Simon, catching his breath.

  ‘Without going back over the author’s personality in detail,’ continued Hurst after a pause, ‘you have to admit that only someone as eccentric as he could have dreamt up such a plot. Now let’s look at the motive. In fact, I wasn’t too wide of the mark when I said that Harold Vickers would rather commit suicide rather than fade into obscurity.

  ‘Everyone says he lived only for his work. Except for those rare moments when he came out of his shell and acted like a normal human being, he was always thinking up the most sinister plots, the most surprising situations and the weirdest stories. Detective stories were his life. We now know that his work was starting to interest fewer and fewer readers. For Harold Vickers, the money didn’t matter: his fortune wasn’t at risk—although we still need to verify that. How would he react to the decline, he who had been the master for so many years? There’s only one way, to surpass himself and produce a master stroke. He could already see the headlines in the newspapers: The Master of the Locked Room Murdered in a Locked Room. But that wasn’t enough, he had to spice it up by making it macabre and spectacular, with the body slumped over a table prepared for a feast which nobody could have prepared or brought in... Just as in his latest novel.

  ‘Let’s look at the sequence of events as they happened. First of all, I wouldn’t be surprised to find he was behind Charles Fielder’s death: he was murdered in 1907 in identical circumstances. There’s no possibility of a coincidence, given the number of points the two cases have in common, and with a bit of luck we’ll find his name amongst the list of Fielder’s acquaintances. So, after giving the matter serious consideration, he decides to base this new crime on the old one with a few improvements to add that supernatural touch for which he’s famous: the murderer can only be a ghost.

  ‘Having worked out his plan, he goes to visit his brother—for the first time in thirty years, by the way—so as to be sure their resemblance is still the same after such a long time. Let me draw your attention here to his strange silence as to the motive for the trip. He finds Stephen and becomes confident the switch will be possible. I assume he also prepares the ground by insisting his brother pay him a return visit to England the following autumn.

  ‘Ten months or so later, he begins the second phase of the plan: he starts to talk about his next novel, with the body slumped over the table and all the rest of it. Everything works out to perfection: his family and friends are very intrigued and can’t wait to read it. Now he can formally invite his brother, whom he will welcome at the beginning of this week, straight off the boat, and keep away from the house on some pretext—you can trust him to accomplish this. On Friday afternoon he gets everyone to leave, dispatches his brother to kingdom come and sets the scene. Let’s not forget the two invitations he sent out: the first to you, Cunningham, representing the police and whom he could absolutely count on; and the second to a journalist. Not just any journalist, one whose work he admired and who would certainly ensure sensational reporting. How did he pull off the hocus-pocus of Saturday night? Only he knows. All we know is that it will be diabolically clever.

  ‘The only certainty is that this case will catapult him into the headlines, his book will fly off the shelves and he will once again be the centre of attention. Posthumously at first, but not for long: he will reappear when least expected. And, once again, the setup will be spectacular. Don’t ask me what trick he’ll use to wriggle out of blame for his brother’s death. He’ll obviously have a cast-iron alibi and provide a rational explanation for the extraordinary crime. He’ll have thought of everything. We’re dealing with a formidable adversary, a master at the game. I don’t have to tell you that, even when we’ve worked out his plan, we’re going to have a devil of a job to convict him.’

  ‘My God,’ moaned Simon, his hands clapped to his head, ‘if all that’s true, how will Valerie face the world? The shame of it: her father a murderer.’

  Hurst gave a slight grimace of regret, then shook his shoulders:

  ‘In any case, the murderer was someone in that household. If not him, then someone else.’

  Dr. Twist looked thoughtfully at the grassy slope going down to the lake. The duck and its little ones had emerged from the reeds quacking noisily before diving for food in the water.

  He stood up suddenly, announced he would return very shortly and marched purposefully to a small cafeteria at the top of the slope. Five minutes later he was back with a sandwich in each hand, devouring the first in front of his startled colleagues and going down to the lake again to distribute the second to the duck and her family. He returned to the bench and observed:

  ‘I’ve always liked ducks.’ He lit his pipe. ‘I’m beginning to wonder, Hurst, if you haven’t exaggerated the decline of Harold Vickers. It’s
true you can’t find his books on the newsstands any more, but he still has quite a reputation, even overseas.’

  The inspector, chewing on his cigar, protested:

  ‘Please, Twist, this is hardly the moment to be splitting hairs. It’s just a nuance and it doesn’t alter the basic facts.’

  ‘Granted. But I have to make a confession: I knew you were going to arrive at that conclusion.’

  Hurst looked upset:

  ‘So you don’t think it’s the right one?’

  ‘Yes, I do. At least for the moment. Obviously the corpse wasn’t disfigured for no reason.’

  ‘So, what’s bothering you?’

  Eyes half-closed, the criminologist took his time to respond:

  ‘What do you plan to do right now, Hurst?’

  ‘I’ve arranged for Mrs. Vickers and her daughters to identify the body.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s a quarter to three now and the appointment’s for three o’clock. We’d best be on our way.’

  ‘My God,’ wailed Simon. ‘They’re going to have such a shock.’

  Even though he’d thought about consoling his fiancée first, Simon decided to wait for his superior officer and Dr. Twist at the corner of the street.

  A glacial silence reigned in the morgue, where the temperature was already pretty cool. The walls looked cold as well, with their rows of refrigerated compartments, opening to reveal their pale occupants. In the middle of the room, on a wheeled table, lay a body covered in a white sheet.

  ‘Why do we have to go through all this?’ protested Valerie tearfully.

  Mrs. Diane Vickers was crying as well, her face buried in a handkerchief. Henrietta, her eyes gleaming, was eagerly watching the draped form.

  ‘Why do we have to do this?’ Valerie repeated.

  Dr. Leedom, dressed all in white, shrugged his shoulders and looked at Twist and Inspector Hurst before answering:

  ‘It’s the law, miss. And it’s best to do it before the autopsy.’

  Hurst took a step forward, head bowed and put his hands behind his back: