Death Invites You

by Paul Halter

  For a moment, Hurst thought he was about to lose his mind. He almost screamed with rage.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Twist. ‘This certainly looks like the man who had his arm around Harold in the photograph. So, it’s Stephen, the brother. And the dead man from Saturday night is indeed the famous author.’

  The criminologist took Hurst’s hand in order to haul him up off the ground, then shone the lamp in his face:

  ‘And now, Hurst, listen to me carefully. No more talk of supremely subtle machinations or quadruple crosses. Don’t push the reasoning to the absurd.’

  Even if he’d wanted to reply, the inspector would not have been capable: his throat appeared to be paralysed. In a few words, Dr. Twist explained to Sharpe the facts which had led them to the wrong conclusion about the body in the morgue, and observed:

  ‘Everything leads us to believe that Harold Vickers, having accidentally broken two teeth, went to a dentist other than the one he knew well and who had treated the whole family. Why? It’s quite obvious, particularly when you understand his personality. The man who possessed perfect health and perfect teeth could not stand the idea of anything less than perfection, which he considered to be a failure on his part—something he could not tolerate. So he simply went to another dentist. Since he was often in the habit of going away for days at a time, fitting him for false teeth could have been done with the utmost discretion. It all has to be verified, of course, but it shouldn’t take long to find the other dentist.’ He lifted up the dead man’s trouser bottoms and examined each leg. ‘No scar. The other body is therefore Harold Vickers. Sorry, Hurst, your explanation of the famous scar was certainly brilliant, but unfortunately not true.’

  Hurst didn’t say a word. He tapped his soiled overcoat with the back of his hand. The lamps weren’t shining on him, so the expression on his face was hard to read. After completing his superficial cleaning operation, he declared:

  ‘Fine. At least we know where we are now. One: the murderer killed Stephen Vickers, more or less as soon as he arrived. He made the body disappear temporarily. Two: he killed the author with the firm intention of making us believe that the body was Stephen’s, and the murder was the machination of the author. Do you agree, Twist?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘We’re faced with a strategy of deflecting suspicion. Up to that point, things are relatively clear. On the other hand, what happened afterwards was baffling. He commits a new murder, he shows himself, and he leaves a trail of bloody clues in order to lead us to the body of Stephen Vickers. Which inevitably tells us the identity of the first victim. In other words, he destroys his own plan!

  ‘Gentlemen, I have the distinct impression that the murderer is in the process of losing his marbles.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ replied Twist. ‘Let’s consider what happened tonight. The first thing he probably did was to plant the body we see in front of us. Where had he hidden it? A mystery. Then he commits his third murder. He soaks part of the sheet in his victim’s blood, tears it off and puts it on the path leading to the cemetery. He comes back into the house, frightens Miss Valerie, then gets rid of the wig and the sheet before disappearing. All that masquerade is designed to lead us to the body of Stephen Vickers. Yet he could quite easily have left it at the front door. Simpler and less risky. I’m beginning to wonder myself if he isn’t starting to go mad. Disguising himself as a ghost, indeed!’

  After a moment of perplexity, Roger told them about the quarrel several hours earlier, which had pitted his two nieces and his sister against each other.

  ‘What?’ exclaimed Hurst. ‘Did poor Henrietta predict the return of her grandfather?’

  ‘Yes. And she wasn’t the only one. My sister made a similar suggestion before she went to bed.’

  ‘Can you tell us precisely what happened?’ asked Twist pensively. The magician gave them a detailed account.

  A highly charged silence engulfed the three of them. A defeated Roger Sharpe and an Archibald Hurst under pressure from the intense activity of his grey cells. Only Dr. Twist stayed impassive; his voice rose:

  ‘And Grandfather came back... and he killed Henrietta.’

  19

  The Half-Filled Bowl Under the Window

  On the following Monday, at Scotland Yard, Dr. Twist knocked on the door of Inspector Briggs’ office.

  ‘What a business!’ said the policeman, shaking Twist’s hand. ‘Have you seen the papers? His books are going to fly off the shelves now. What a business! We haven’t seen anything like it since the Lonely Hearts Killer case. Not to mention this morning’s murder.’

  ‘Alas!’ sighed Twist. ‘By the way, Briggs, did you manage to verify...?’

  A mischievous look appeared in the old inspector’s eyes:

  ‘You were right, Dr. Twist. Once again. It was our man all right. But how did you guess?’

  ‘Thanks to Sherlock Holmes.’

  So saying, Dr. Twist left the room, leaving Briggs with his mouth open.

  A few moments later, he was in Hurst’s office. Straight away the inspector announced:

  ‘Congratulations, Twist, you were right about the false teeth. We were lucky to find the other dentist so soon. He remembered his patient clearly. He’d been flattered the famous author had come to him, but intrigued by his attitude. Vickers had demanded absolute secrecy and had offered his complete works.

  ‘Stephen was killed by a stab in the back about five days ago, so pretty much on the day he arrived in England, last Wednesday. We’ve just received confirmation from the shipping line.’

  Hurst frowned darkly as he crushed his cigar in the ashtray.

  ‘Have you any assumptions?’ asked Twist.

  ‘Not assumptions, proof. My men went over the place with a fine-tooth comb this morning. And they found this.’ He opened a large envelope and dumped the contents on his desk: a pair of long-nose pliers, a length of thick wire, a metal strip with a curved end, another larger pair of pliers, a screwdriver and a skeleton key. ‘The perfect little locksmith’s kit. No fingerprints, naturally.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In Diane Vickers’ bed, between the mattress and the base. We haven’t talked to her yet. Her doctor has formally forbidden it for the time being. She broke down when she learnt of the death of her daughter. And that’s not all: in the grey wig the killer used to play at ghosts we found two blonde hairs. Ash blonde. Just like Mrs. Vickers.’

  Simon came into the office, his face drawn. He greeted Dr. Twist.

  ‘So?’ asked Hurst.

  The sergeant lowered his head:

  ‘An examination of the lock confirmed what I thought. She really fooled us.’

  Hurst was about to speak but his friend beat him to it.

  ‘Have you determined the significance of the bowl of water and the gloves?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ growled Hurst, ‘but—.’

  ‘And the connection to the Fielder case?’ continued Twist, his eyes gleaming behind the pince-nez.

  ‘No, but—.’

  ‘And the connection to the grandfather’s heart attack?’

  Simon looked at the detective admiringly:

  ‘Can you explain them, doctor?’

  ‘More or less. But I know someone who could tell you precisely.’

  ‘Who?’ asked the inspector.

  ‘The neighbour, Dr. Colin Hubbard.’

  A few minutes later the three men were on their way to St. Richard’s Wood. The traffic was heavy and the pavements were crowded. Hurst, at the wheel, glowered at every obstacle that caused him to jam on the brakes, but said nothing.

  ‘Stop here,’ ordered Twist. ‘I’ll only be a minute.’

  The inspector complied and Twist shot out of the car to go into a bookshop. Hurst and Simon looked at each other in surprise. After a wait which appeared interminable to the policemen, Twist re-emerged smiling, carrying a gift parcel under one arm.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the inspector after the detective had reclaimed his seat.


  ‘A small present for Dr. Hubbard. We’re not going to turn up empty-handed, particularly at aperitif time. Don’t sit there, Hurst, get moving.’

  They arrived at the Hubbard residence at half past eleven. It was a sunny day, just like the one before, only slightly more chilly.

  Colin Hubbard opened the door, an anxious look on his face. He muttered a few words of welcome, but he was hard to understand because he spoke in disjointed phrases.

  ‘I’ve taken the liberty of bringing you this little present,’ said Dr. Twist in a soothing voice. ‘I noticed you like beautiful books and I think you’ll appreciate this one.’

  Caught off guard, Hubbard took the package and mumbled his thanks.

  He invited them into the living-room and offered them a drink.

  ‘What a tragedy,’ he said in a quavering voice as he opened the package carefully. ‘Poor Miss Vickers. What an atrocious end. What kind of monster could have done that? Who could have held a grudge against that poor child who wasn’t completely sane? It must have been a madman, there’s no other explan---.’ He stopped, having extricated the book from its wrapping. ‘“The Mystery of the Yellow Room,”’ he read out loudly. ‘By Gaston Leroux.’

  ‘Gaston Leroux,’ repeated Dr. Twist, fixing Hubbard with a gimlet eye from behind his pince-nez. ‘aston Leroux, not Conan Doyle. And it was Joseph Rouletabille who unravelled the extraordinary puzzle—one of the best ever written—not Sherlock Holmes. Any lover of detective fiction could tell you that. Isn’t that true, Hurst?’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ growled the inspector. ‘But what difference does it make? Conan Doyle or Leroux. It’s not the author who counts, but the puzzle.’

  Twist turned to look at Hubbard again, who was sitting with his head in his hands.

  ‘You set a trap for me,’ he wailed.

  ‘Trap is a big word. Let’s say I wanted to verify something. You see, Dr. Hubbard, a true lover of detective fiction would have his favourite books proudly displayed in his library.’ He pointed to the carefully arranged books on the shelves. ‘Now, here there aren’t any! From which I conclude they’re not your passion. Admittedly you know something about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Homes, but practically everyone knows that. So it’s obvious that your conversations with Harold Vickers weren’t about detective fiction. What were they about, doctor? Dr. James Merrilow, the son-in-law of the late Charles Fielder?’

  Simon and Hurst sat up in their armchairs. Dr. Hubbard slumped back in his.

  ‘So, you know everything.’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘It’s a nightmare, a veritable nightmare. The case will follow me to the end of my days. I know you’re not going to believe me, but I didn’t kill my father-in-law, much less my neighbour. In spite of how it looks.’

  ‘I never said you did,’ replied Dr. Twist calmly, filling his pipe. ‘This is how I see things. Stop me if I’m wrong.

  ‘A few weeks ago, Harold Vickers paid you a visit, not with anything specific in mind, probably just to talk to someone. It was a miserable night, you had a drink, then another one and tongues started to loosen. Then Harold Vickers talked about Henrietta’s birthday dinner where he’d quarrelled so violently with his father that he’d had a heart attack and crashed forward on the dinner table. I imagine you had a shock when you heard about it, as it awoke memories of the death of your father-in-law. You lent a sympathetic ear to the confidences of your neighbour, who probably felt guilty about his father’s death, then you confided in turn about the terrible event which had ruined your life and was so strikingly similar to the birthday incident.’

  Dr. Hubbard emptied his glass with a trembling hand.

  ‘Charles Fielder,’ he began in a voice full of rancour and bitterness. ‘I worked with him at Exeter hospital when I was a young surgeon. We very quickly got into heated discussions over professional matters. He was of the old school and showed an obvious disdain for my methods. I made the acquaintance of his daughter Rosemary, and you can imagine his face when, a few months later, we announced our intention to marry. He was present at the wedding but never opened his mouth. His animosity towards me diminished over time and he was overjoyed when he learnt he was going to be a grandfather. And then....’

  The old man’s eyes filled with tears as he got up and fetched the photograph of his wife.

  ‘She was beautiful, gentle and loved roses. We were very happy together. That tapestry over there was her last work. It’s incomplete and will forever stay that way.’

  Hubbard put back the photo, served himself a large glass of whisky which he drained in one gulp, and sank back down in his armchair.

  ‘The baby was a month premature, in the middle of a glacial winter. I delivered it myself. It presented itself badly and I couldn’t save either of them. As God is my witness, no one could have done better at the time.

  ‘Even as I was mad with grief, my father-in-law accused me of killing his grandson and daughter through incompetence. He treated me as a murderer.

  ‘We didn’t speak to each other for years. Imagine my astonishment when, one day in the autumn of 1907, I received a letter from him in which he explained to me that he was approaching the end of his life—which I knew to be true—and was feeling remorse for his attitude towards me over the years: the result of the grief he felt. He wanted to die with a clear conscience and would be happy if I’d accept a dinner invitation to seal our reconciliation. He told me that, to prove his good faith, he’d made me his sole heir.

  ‘It was raining cats and dogs that night when I arrived at the Royal Restaurant, which saved me from the rope because no one recognised me with my raincoat collar turned up and my hat pulled down to my eyes. When I reached the private room at the back which my father-in-law had reserved, the dinner had already been served and he helped me off with my clothes. For some reason he placed my gloves next to his plate. Then he served me an aperitif and we drank to our reconciliation. We sat down at the table and that was when he said, with a strange smile: “Goodbye, James Merrilow.” As I sat there stupefied I saw him take one of my gloves—the other had fallen to the floor—and plunge his hand into his pocket to bring out a pistol. Thinking he was going to use it on me, I jumped aside. But he pressed it to his own head, with my glove between his hand and the weapon. There was a terrible explosion and he fell across the table. The pistol fell next to his head but the glove fell to the floor next to the other one.

  ‘I understood immediately. By making me his sole heir and faking a suicide to look like murder, Charles Fielder had concocted a plot to hang me!

  ‘I rushed to the door and double-locked the room, taking care not to leave any fingerprints. I took my things and went to the window. Just as I was about to leave I thought about the aperitif glass: my prints were on it... At this point I should mention that the aperitif glass had a rather unusual shape and it was for that reason that the newspapers spoke of a bowl. I went back for the glass, and also picked up a napkin which I dampened. I was scared stiff, but my movements were precise. The knocks on the door got louder. I was by the window, wiping the glass with the napkin, when the door started to give way. I left by the window.

  ‘I’d only cleaned the outside of the glass and there was some water at the bottom. But it couldn’t possibly have been half full as the papers reported. Still, the glass standing on the napkin did intrigue the police.

  ‘After that I had a lot of luck: nobody in the restaurant had recognised me and a highly-placed friend—to whom I’d explained everything—gave me a solid alibi, saying he’d spent the evening with me. What’s more, I’d made the huge mistake of leaving my gloves behind. Once again, luck was on my side and there was nothing to connect me to them. Nevertheless, in everyone’s mind I was my father-in-law’s killer and people avoided me like the plague and pointed me out in the street. My life was hell. Even though I moved to Oxford my reputation followed me. So I changed my name, James Merrilow became Colin Hubbard and I set up practice in London.
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  ‘I think it must be hard to imagine, if one hasn’t lived through it, the situation I was in those days: being suspected of a crime one hasn’t committed. At one point I thought of going to the police and the newspapers to explain everything. But would they have believed me? I didn’t think so, so I kept quiet.’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ said Hurst grudgingly. ‘You would have destroyed your own alibi and the charges pressed against you would have been overwhelming. But, Hell’s bells, why didn’t they realise the significance of that glass of water? It seems so obvious now.’

  ‘I imagine your story interested your neighbour greatly,’ observed Twist.

  ‘Yes, I’d barely finished when he declared it would make a great basis for a novel. I didn’t agree at first, but he persuaded me. He would only use the spectacular aspects of the case and the room would be locked on the inside. He came back to see me frequently, asking me to go over certain aspects again and again. He said it inspired him. I think you can see now why the method of his murder terrified me. That damned story of the macabre dinner stuck to me like a curse. If the police had discovered my past I would automatically have become suspect number one.’

  ‘Incredible,’ said Hurst, shaking his head. ‘How clear that aspect of the case becomes now.’

  There was a silence, broken by Twist asking:

  ‘By the way, Dr. Hubbard, would you by any chance have a book for me? A sort of red manuscript, very thin.’

  The old man nodded and left the room, to return shortly with a red notebook.

  ‘Harold Vickers left it here and forgot about it,’ said Dr. Hubbard.

  The three detectives examined the contents at length.

  ‘There’s nothing here we don’t know already, growled Hurst after a while. ‘It says nothing about the murderer’s miraculous exit.’

  ‘We may never know it,’ replied Twist. ‘At least the one he conceived for the novel. What’s this? It looks like the notes for another book: poisoned barbed wire and cows’ horns in Australia.’