by Paul Halter
‘Now let’s talk about Saturday evening. I don’t know exactly what time X went into the study, but I don’t think it took him more than forty-five minutes to complete the staging. Let’s say around eight o’clock. He obviously has a copy of the front door key. He enters discreetly with some dishes already cooked. Then he locks himself in the study. He lights a fire in the hearth and finishes the cooking, which involves reheating the vegetables and the chicken and taking care of three or four small details. Then he carefully burns the dead man’s face and hands in boiling oil. Let me remind you that the author was supposed to be shut up in his study, so any noise wouldn’t be suspect. It must have been at about twenty to nine that he sets fire to the meths in the dishes containing the chicken. This will have the effect of emphasising the spectacular nature of the crime but isn’t the only reason, as we shall see later. He leaves the room, taking the saucepans with him. Let’s skip the part about how he locked the study from the outside until later.
‘Now we’re at the night between Sunday and Monday. The prime motive now is to pin the murders on Mrs. Vickers. He knows she went to bed with a lot of sleeping pills and therefore won’t have an alibi. He also knows she’s not her normal self, so he will give his next crime a touch of madness. He’s aware she’s more or less threatened her daughters with the return of their grandfather, so he’s going to disguise himself. After depositing Stephen’s body on Grandpa’s tomb, he kills Miss Henrietta. It’s around three o’clock in the morning. He goes quietly into Diane’s room, cuts off a few locks of her hair and hides the locksmith’s kit under her mattress. He goes outside to place a piece of his bloody sheet on the path leading to the cemetery and goes upstairs to frighten Miss Valerie out of her wits before throwing the wig and the sheet down to the foot of the stairs and leaving.
‘What do you think of all that, Mr. Sharpe?’
‘Very convincing, I must say,’ said the conjurer, still very relaxed, ‘I’ve really nothing to add.’
‘Nothing to add?’ repeated Twist, pointing an accusing finger at him. ‘Yes! The first thing to add is that this is not the work of an amateur. This case is not the murderer’s first attempt: he’s in the habit of killing. This whole business is the product of a diabolically clever mind. Another thing: Henrietta’s throat was slit in a particular way—without going in to the details—reminiscent of another case.’ Twist’s expression changed as he addressed the inspector. ‘Do you remember, Archibald, when I spoke to you of Jack the Ripper late last Saturday afternoon?’
‘Ah! Yes!’ said the inspector evasively.
‘I told you there was a connection with the Lonely Hearts Killer case.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t see it.’
‘In both cases, the murderer committed suicide at a singularly opportune moment. Just to be clear, I have serious doubts about these so-called suicides... Jack the Ripper is dead now, in all probability. But the Lonely Hearts Killer....’
Twist looked menacingly at Sharpe as he pronounced these words and the latter, for the first time, looked visibly shaken.
The two officers guarding the door took a step forward. At the same time there were three knocks on the door and Wilson came in.
‘What do you want, Wilson?’ barked Hurst. ‘Can’t you see we’re busy?’
‘Excuse me, chief, but it’s about the wig.’ The young officer was holding it in his hand and showed it to the gathering.
‘What about it?’ asked the inspector in an even harsher tone of voice.
Wilson blushed:
‘It has a strange smell.’
Hurst stood up menacingly:
‘Another smell? Are you pulling my leg? Haven’t there been enough smells in this case?’
One of the other police officers took the wig and sniffed it.
‘Yes,’ he announced, ‘it appears to be....’
The second officer offered his agreement.
‘If there’s one thing in this whole business which has baffled me,’ declared Twist, ‘it’s where the murderer hid Stephen’s body. Because after a while it must have stunk to high heaven. So, where? Smells the killer had to get rid of, or mask with other smells. Here, give me the wig. Thanks.’ He inhaled the interior of the wig cautiously and opened his eyes wide. ‘My goodness, Hurst, it smells of... Here, try.’
Hurst followed suit and nodded. A broad smile broke out on his face as he turned to his right:
‘Here, Cunningham, it’s your turn. Tell me you can’t smell anything. Yes, try. Don’t be shy. Here... So, Cunningham, what do you think?’
A frightening smile appeared on the face of the young sergeant, who babbled a few words.
‘We can’t hear you, my young friend,’ said Twist gently. ‘Speak louder, I beg of you.’
The expression on Cunningham’s face was horrible. His facial muscles, as if paralysed, pulled his lips back in a hideous rictus.
‘P-pain,’ he managed to utter. ‘P-pain....’
‘Louder,’ roared Twist.
‘P-paint...’ said the sergeant in a strangled voice and reached for his trousers pocket.
But Twist got there first, producing an automatic revolver which he pointed at Cunningham.
‘Gentlemen, you see before you the notorious Lonely Hearts Killer, who massacred almost the entire Vickers family to collect the inheritance by marrying Miss Valerie!’
Epilogue
Twist had hardly uttered the phrase when the magician literally threw himself at the murderer. A sinister cracking noise was heard, followed by blows. A chair was raised several times and brought down forcefully on the heap on the floor.
The two uniformed police stepped forward to intervene, but a sign from Hurst stayed them. He looked at his watch for several seconds, then announced calmly:
‘I think that’ll be enough, Mr. Sharpe.’
The two officers took the magician by the arms and dragged him away from the inert mass on the floor. Sharpe, his hair in disarray and blood in his eyes, clenched his fists breathlessly:
‘No punishment would be too great for that monster. Ouch! My fist! I can assure you, gentlemen, that the hardest part was sitting still in my chair, waiting... knowing that, only a few feet away....’
‘You were perfect, Mr. Sharpe,’ replied Twist. ‘Your calm demeanour seriously upset him. I was watching out of the corner of my eye. By the way, Wilson, I wonder whether you weren’t just a little too enthusiastic with the paint you put inside the wig. It’s not even dry.’
‘Now get rid of that rubbish!’ ordered Hurst, pointing to the inert Cunningham, whose face was covered in blood. ‘I must say, Sharpe, you’ve given him a good going-over. I doubt he’ll be quite so seductive after this.’
The conjurer gave the flicker of a smile, then turned to Twist.
‘How did you come to suspect him?’
‘Thanks to some ducks,’ replied the other with a tender look in his eye. Do you remember, Hurst, this afternoon when we were sitting on the park bench discussing the case? I was asking where Stephen’s body could have been hidden, when a little duck pecking at my leg made me jump. A slice of tomato fell out of my sandwich and some juice trickled over the bench. That made me think of the paint Cunningham had been applying to the door yesterday evening, which also trickled. There was paint everywhere in the room as well as a bowlful of paint thinner. I’ve never seen such a clumsy painter in my life, not to mention the smell of paint getting up my nose. There was paint everywhere, even in his hair.’ He looked in amusement at the wig. ‘Then I started to think: why such an orgy of paint and such clumsiness in the flat of someone so neat and so organised? I thought about the huge chest and the look on Cunningham’s face when you were about to sit on it, Hurst. There could be no doubt: Stephen Vickers must have been inside. The truth hit me all at once: Cunningham was engaged to Miss Vickers, who would soon be in possession of a considerable fortune. Even more so when her mother’s part reverted to her once her guilt had been established beyond reasonable doubt. Once he marr
ied Valerie the game would be over. We should kick ourselves, Hurst, for not thinking about that much earlier.’
‘When I think about him,’ muttered the inspector, ‘so shy and awkward....’
Fred Springer interrupted the reminiscing:
‘In fact, you also accused him of being the Lonely Hearts Killer, but the suspect committed suicide before he could be arrested, didn’t he? And it was Cunningham himself who ran the investigation.’
‘Another diabolical ruse,’ replied Twist with grudging admiration. ‘Almost two years ago, the Lonely Hearts Killer affair was at its peak. It was certainly at that time that Cunningham made the acquaintance of Miss Valerie. Without a precise plan in mind, he dreamt about the Vickers fortune and decided to end the killing of lonely hearts, which wasn’t very lucrative. Moreover, Scotland Yard was closing in on the criminal and things were becoming dangerous, even though each time he had ventured out he’d taken great pains to disguise himself differently.
‘I can’t emphasize enough the charm he exudes, which captivates the weaker sex, be they young or old. Not the kind of virile self-assurance which attracts some women, but a sort of innocent sincerity which makes for the ideal husband: serious, cultivated and pleasant. Add to that a certain awkwardness and you have someone almost irresistible to the fair sex. I imagine he worked on it and adapted it for each of his unfortunate victims. Even Miss Henrietta fell under his spell. Did you notice how she looked at him, Hurst? No, of course not. He fooled everybody right up to the end.’
‘The bastard!’ exclaimed Springer, Sharpe and Hurst in unison.
‘Once he’d decided to finish with the personage of the Lonely Hearts Killer he was determined to get it done quickly, so as to avoid lengthy investigations which could prove dangerous. So the Lonely Hearts Killer would have to commit suicide. He chose his victim, a miserable wretch with no family or friends, and started an identikit operation. He interrogated witnesses in the company of a police artist and, by dint of artful questioning, steered them to create a description which matched his intended victim. Once the final portrait was circulated by the press, he made sure the Lonely Hearts Killer “committed suicide.” And received widespread applause for the masterly way he had brought the sinister case to a satisfactory conclusion.’
‘The bastard!’ growled Hurst, brandishing his fist.
Twist paused before continuing:
‘I think what finally prompted him to act was when he learnt, on Harold’s return from Australia, that Stephen Vickers had also made a considerable fortune. He had been mulling over his plans for a while, and it was when his future father-in-law told him about the plot of his next novel that everything clicked into place.
‘How did he get out of the locked room? The solution is stunningly simple. Let’s not forget also that his other objective was to find a way to pin the murder on Mrs. Vickers, whose father was a talented locksmith. It was probably on Friday afternoon, after killing Harold Vickers, that he removed the lock in order to make a few scratches and place a plain piece of metal inside, put it back in place and gave it a fine coat of varnish. That manoeuvre, performed solely to frame Mrs. Vickers, was quite ingenious.
‘The explanation he gave us—that the piece of metal was intended to neutralise the bits and notches of the lock so that the key could turn freely—was not impossible, particularly since he was the one to verify whether the door was locked or not. So no one was in a position to refute his claim.’
‘Now that I think about it,’ exclaimed Wilson, punching his hand with his fist, ‘he was the one who put me on that track.’
‘He led us by the nose right from the start,’ said Twist, shrugging his weary shoulders. ‘Let me go on. He shoots the bolt, slips a piece of cardboard between the door frame and the lock to disengage the latter, climbs out by the window and comes back into the house to break the door down; thus, it’s only the bolt and its fixings that are damaged. Before leaving the house he locks the study door using the key. Why does he send dinner invitations to Springer and himself? He’s following Harold’s novel to the letter, of course, but that’s not all: he must absolutely be on the premises when the door is broken down and so must Mrs. Vickers. And there needs to be an independent witness present: that’s you, Springer. He knows that, at the appointed hour, Mr. Sharpe will be absent, Henrietta will be in her room and so will the servants. As far as his fiancée is concerned, there’s no difficulty getting rid of her, since she’s itching to see a particular play before it closes. That means it will be Mrs. Vickers who’ll open the door.
‘So, at around eight o’clock on Saturday night, he unlocks the study door and goes in with his cooking gear. He does what we already know—Ah! I was forgetting: the trick of the meths in the dishes, which was supposed to make us think that the murderer had only just left when the door was broken down, served several purposes: the dinner roasting as in the Harold Vickers novel; an excellent alibi for him because he “arrived” at five minutes to nine, well before the door was broken down! And even if anyone discovered the trick, as he hoped, suspicion would most probably fall on Mrs. Vickers, who was far better placed than anyone else to do it.’
‘And the noise she heard as she was going to open the door for Cunningham?’ asked Hurst.
‘A stroke of luck, a huge stroke of luck, from which he extracted the maximum advantage. As is often in this kind of case, we let ourselves be influenced by the context, which prevented sober reflection. Let’s ask the question in a different way: when one hears a cracking noise in an empty room where there’s a fire in the hearth, what could the noise be?
Hurst and Springer looked at each other.
‘Yes, my friends: a log crackling, quite simply. Let’s go on. It’s about twenty to nine when he leaves the study. The bolt is already broken.’
‘But then....’
‘He locks the door with the key. He runs to his car, hidden some way away, and drives back to park in front of the house. It’s five to nine when he rings the doorbell. Let’s skip to the moment when they realise the study door won’t open. He’s the one, needless to say, who claims to verify that it’s not locked. Mrs. Vickers tells him that to her knowledge there isn’t another key. He knows that. He also knows that the keys on that floor are interchangeable. He’s taken one for himself, for that matter—or made a copy, as he did for the front door. He asks Kesley to try and find one. When Kesley returns, he’s the one who verifies the door isn’t locked. No prize for guessing what Cunningham does when he works the key in the lock with his back to the others... he turns the key to open it! Then he turns round and declares wearily that the door isn’t locked. Which is true, now! This is the critical moment for him, because if someone turns the handle the door will open. But he’s there to direct the operation, and so they break down the door without further ado. In fact, the only resistance the door will offer is from the dead-bolt of the handle. Needless to say, he doesn’t apply his full weight when he and you, Springer, throw yourselves at the door.’
Springer muttered something through clenched teeth and Hurst made a fist.
‘As simple as pie,’ observed Roger Sharpe, appreciating the trick as a connoisseur. ‘Which proves again what I always say: the simplest tricks are the best.’
‘But it wasn’t over yet,’ continued Twist. ‘Mrs. Vickers has to get close to the lock, so that he can claim later that it was she who locked the door. I’m sure he had a trick up his sleeve to get her to do it, but it wasn’t necessary because Mrs. Vickers clutched at the door and the handle anyway.
‘It may all seem very hazardous, but, apart from the moment the door was no longer locked by the key, there was in fact very little risk. When you look back at what happened afterwards, you realise that it was he who was directing the investigation; it was he who led the discussion about the brother; it was he who showed us the photograph, underlining the resemblance of the two brothers while right next to us we had a disfigured corpse; it was he who took charge of the examination of the l
ock... Yes, gentlemen, we were manipulated from the beginning to the end.’
Frowning, Hurst asked:
‘And why did he tell us about the old man he’d seen going into the cemetery?’
‘Ah!’ replied Twist, raising a hand with an amused smile. ‘Do you remember, Hurst, when we asked him if he’d seen anyone on his way in, he hesitated, not quite sure how he should answer? At which point Henrietta interrupted with her story of the grandfather’s attack. After she’d left we asked him again. But he let himself get carried away by his morbid imagination, the bewildering state of the investigation and, most of all, by Henrietta’s disturbing story. The opportunity is too good to miss: he talks about an old man going into the cemetery where Theodore Vickers is buried. Of course he doesn’t swear to anything, he believes he may have seen something. Very subtle. Such a way of presenting things is more plausible than a categorical affirmation, and doesn’t commit him to anything. But then he realises he’s made an error: the figure which might be the murderer will weaken the case against Mrs. Vickers, who couldn’t possibly have been that vague figure. He recovers quickly and affirms this time that it was a vision, and that he’d been upset by his fiancée hanging up on him when he’d called to cancel their evening at the theatre, etc. etc. It was one of the few errors he made, incidentally.
‘Now we come to the moment when the body of Harold Vickers is formally identified, thanks to the small scar. Did Cunningham know about it? He may well have done. In any case, he was planning the re-appearance of Stephen’s body sooner or later, which he’d been keeping in a large chest in his flat. In fact, it’s quite possible that, at one point, nobody knew whose was the disfigured body. Now, if he were going to implicate Mrs. Vickers, it was absolutely vital that the body be identified as her husband’s. And, of course, the discovery of Stephen’s corpse—which was identifiable as such—would clarify the matter and, furthermore, speed up the inheritance from Australia.