The Riddle of the River

by Catherine Shaw

  ‘Just who are you and what do you want?’ he whispered.

  Arthur came up beside me and took my hand in his.

  ‘This is my wife,’ he replied, addressing Julian, but speaking clearly enough to be heard perfectly by the assembled group of neighbours. ‘And I believe that she is preparing to level a grave accusation against you. You would do well to listen.’

  Julian’s glance shifted rapidly to Arthur and then back to me. As he realised that the situation was more complex than it had seemed, his sense of his own danger increased, and from being defensive he became aggressive.

  ‘You poor sod,’ he said, ‘if you knew what your wife does when you’re not there to see.’

  ‘I do know,’ replied Arthur coldly. ‘She makes a practice of detecting criminal activities.’

  His words confirmed what the murderer had already begun to understand. A hunted look flashed across his face; for a moment I feared he might run away, and wondered if the neighbours would give chase if he did. I wanted to keep him there, just a few minutes, just a minute longer.

  ‘My husband is quite right,’ I said steadily, capturing his eyes with mine to hold him.

  ‘You just be careful what you say,’ he said, his lips curling back. ‘People like you are easy victims. Easy. You know that, don’t you?’

  The threat was spoken low, but it was overhead – by Jenny, who had come to her senses and now flung herself suddenly out into the street. Her dark hair seemed lit around the edges by the flicker of the candles held by the people standing behind her. Ignoring them, she approached him and pointed a finger directly at his chest.

  ‘You rotten criminal,’ she said, causing him to jump and turn around suddenly, ‘you pimp, you murderer, I’ll get you yet!’

  The gathered neighbours drew in their breath in a collective gasp of shock.

  ‘This woman is a slut; she’s raving,’ cried Julian Archer.

  ‘Yes, I’m a slut,’ she shouted. ‘I’m a slut, and who made me one? Who makes sluts of girls like me? Men like you, who take our money and keep us down in the filth while they get rich! Yes, that’s what he does,’ she went on, her voice rising, and she turned towards the onlookers and advanced towards them, thrusting out her chest so as to provide them with the full benefit of her shocking manners and appearance. And indeed, her height, her pose, her loud voice and her dark, tangled hair, her wild face, her torn clothing and the bruise on her throat caused the white-clad group to shrink back from her with hushed horror.

  ‘Go away,’ said a bearded man harshly. ‘We don’t want women like you here, with your shrieks and your hysteria and your lies and your immoral habits. We don’t know what you’re doing here and we don’t want to. Go back to wherever you came from!’ He gave her a sharp push. She shrieked.

  At that moment came a sound I had been hoping and waiting for, a sound which was music to my ears.

  ‘Now, now, what’s all this?’ said a strong, authoritative voice, and a police officer came loping up the street. ‘I heard screaming down this way just a couple of minutes ago. Was that from here? Who screamed? Just what is going on here?’

  I was about to answer, when Julian stepped in front of me, took the candlestick from his neighbour, and faced the constable openly and directly. By the light reflected on his face, I perceived with astonishment that he had erased all traces of disturbance from his features. Truly, this man possessed aplomb beyond measure. Putting on an air of dignity which has been offended by the sight of vulgarity, but which remains above the fray, he spoke.

  ‘I have been attacked, Officer,’ he said. ‘These two women have insulted me publicly, and one of them tried to stab me with a knife, causing me to have to defend myself and take it from her. Here it is, Officer. I am of course extremely sorry to have had to lay hands upon a female, but I trust I did her little harm. These women should not be here, disturbing our quiet streets.’

  ‘Arrest them, Officer!’ said the angry bearded man, playing nicely into Mr Archer’s hands.

  ‘Is this true, ladies?’ said the policeman, glaring at us severely.

  ‘Yes,’ cried Jenny, her eyes flashing. ‘He’s a murderer and a filthy pimp, and I pulled the knife on him and I’ll do it again! It’s him you should be arresting!’

  ‘Now, now,’ said the constable, ‘I think you’re going to have to come along with me, miss, and stop bothering this gentleman. And you gentlemen and ladies should all get back to your beds. There’s nothing to see here,’ he added with a nod towards the assembled group of onlookers and a complete and obvious disregard for the truth. ‘Come on, then,’ he went on, addressing both Jenny and myself. ‘You ladies should not be here. Leave this gentleman alone and come along to the Station where we will try to untangle whether you have been guilty of nocturnal breach of the peace or more serious illegality.’

  I saw, or thought I saw, a tiny little look of triumph flash through Julian’s eyes. If we went with the officer now, he would be out of the country in a matter of hours.

  ‘No!’ I cried.

  ‘What do you mean, no? You can’t talk to me like that,’ said the policeman. ‘Otherwise it’ll be the handcuffs on you. Now you be careful how you behave.’

  ‘I’ll just be going back home, now, Officer,’ said Julian with a courteous nod. ‘I live right here. I will be available in the morning, of course, should you need me for anything.’

  ‘Don’t let him go!’ I said, grasping the officer by the arm. ‘He’s a murderer!’

  ‘Ah,’ said Julian, in a tone of weary, half-intolerant impatience, ‘there they go again.’

  ‘Now, miss,’ the officer scolded me, ‘be careful what you say. You can’t go throwing around accusations like that.’

  ‘I am not throwing around accusations,’ I replied, and taking a leaf out of Mr Archer’s book, I drew myself up to my full height, pushed back the worst of the catastrophically half-unpinned hair which was falling into my face, and assumed my most distinguished accent.

  ‘I accuse him formally of murder,’ I pronounced firmly. ‘Inspector Doherty is in charge of the case and fully cognisant of all details. He should be called as soon as possible. This man strangled Ivy Elliott, the young woman whose body was found in the Cam on the morning of the 22nd of June. Don’t allow him to return inside his house – he will destroy important evidence!’

  The police officer’s face changed; he stared at me. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Let me answer that,’ replied Arthur, whose quiet distinction covered me like a protective blanket. ‘My name is Weatherburn, I am a don of the University, and this is my wife, Mrs Weatherburn. She is a private detective who has been investigating the murder of the girl named Ivy Elliott. Inspector Doherty is fully aware of her activities in the matter. Please allow me to repeat her suggestion that he be summoned at once.’

  Calm masculine tones succeeded where feminine efforts failed. The constable turned to the delivery man, who had finished his work of loading crates and was standing motionless, watching the scene. ‘Go straight to the police station on St. Andrew’s Street, my man, and tell them to fetch Inspector Doherty here as fast as possible,’ he snapped sharply. ‘Now, and don’t lose any time about it! Do you hear?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ said the delivery man, climbing into his cart and clopping off with no sign of emotion.

  During the time it took us to convince the officer, Julian had once again slipped towards his own door; as the cart rolled down the street, I saw that he was about to enter, and feared that he would lock it behind him and make his escape while we waited for Inspector Doherty. I saw with dismay that the house door already stood open, and I jumped forward, determined to try to prevent him from closing it behind him. But he did not enter; indeed, it was not he who had opened the door, but Philip; Philip, who stood motionless, framed in the darkened doorway, listening. How long had he been there? After a moment’s hesitation, Julian made as if to push past him.

  ‘Wait,’ said Philip, barring his way. �
�I heard everything she said.’

  ‘It’s rubbish, Phil,’ said Julian quickly, warmly. ‘That woman’s mad. You know as well as I do that I was with you the entire evening that Ivy was killed.’ He tried again to squeeze past, but Philip dropped his crutches and opened his arms to grasp the doorframe with both hands.

  ‘I know that you were,’ replied Philip, but his look was as cold as stone. ‘That is exactly why she should be allowed to speak. Stand aside.’

  Standing on the doorstep raised above the level of the street, he was as tall as his brother; their eyes were at a level, and locked into each other in what seemed a duel of silent wills. His crooked, deformed body obviously had difficulty remaining upright without the crutches, yet so steady was his look and so strong was the impression of power that emanated from his stance and his gesture; so strong, perhaps, also, the ingrained habit of respect – and perhaps even pity – for his handicap, that Julian did not dare to use violence to pass him. And I, watching, was awestruck by Philip’s act, for he knew exactly what he was doing. If Julian could once enter the house, his destruction of the evidence, and even his escape out of some back window, were practically certain. There was nothing passive in Philip’s unmoving stance. Without words, it said clearly that if his brother had murdered his beloved, he would deliver him up to justice with his own hand. It wrenched me that he should be forced to do this, this, to the brother with whom he had grown up. Yet it could not be avoided; it was the only way. I began to worry that as the seconds passed he would begin to doubt, and yield. I turned to him and spoke.

  ‘He strangled her here, in the bookshop,’ I said. ‘He placed the body into a crate of books, and your – er – his father came dressed as a delivery man in the early morning and carried the body away. It took him no more than a few minutes to hurry down to the bookshop to kill her, since he already knew exactly when she would be there – because your father sent her from Chippendale House directly to Heffers with some story or other about putting money back into the cash register there, and sent a message to Julian by wireless transmitter, informing him of the exact time at which she had left the house. So he didn’t need to watch for her coming. He knew to within a couple of minutes when she was going to arrive.’ I felt a peculiar sensation as I spoke these words; it was strange to be so completely sure of myself, while having no real notion of what a wireless transmitter might actually be! Neither, apparently, did anyone around me.

  ‘What did you say? What is that?’ asked Philip.

  ‘It – it is a machine with a wire,’ I said. ‘I don’t know exactly how it works, but I know that it can send messages silently, directly and instantaneously through the air from one house to another over quite a long distance. It is a recent invention, but your father knows all about it. He invests in the company which created it. I have not been into Mr Archer’s rooms here, but I will guarantee that there is a machine there, with a wire running upwards, probably out of the window. I have already noted the existence of such a wire in a tree in the garden of Chippendale House.’

  ‘Is it true?’ Philip asked Julian. ‘Do you have such a machine upstairs?’

  ‘I have a machine with a wire,’ he said, ‘but this young lady doesn’t understand what it is used for.’

  ‘Show it to me,’ said Philip.

  By this time, the police officer had advanced towards the brothers; he was now standing directly behind Julian. And the other spectators had followed him, so that we were all grouped around the doorway where Philip still stood. As though in a strange procession, we entered and mounted the stairs, preceded by Philip, who climbed with excruciating slowness, one painful step at a time, then Julian, then by the police officer (who was now holding the knife he had removed opportunely from Julian’s hand), myself, Arthur, Jenny, and the other neighbours. We stopped after the first flight, and entered into a room which was obviously Julian Archer’s sitting room. It contained nothing out of the ordinary. We crossed it and entered his bedroom, which looked out over a miserable little lane to the back. There, on a large table in front of the window, sat two peculiar machines, one at each end of the table, separated from each other by nearly two yards. They were quite large, and one of them was equipped with two white buttons, connected by wires to a kind of jar. The machine was completed by a large brass rod bent nearly into a circle, at the ends of which were fixed two brass balls facing each other, separated by no more than a tiny space. The other machine was fitted with a glass tube containing what seemed to be a little pile of metal filings. Something looking like a small spoon lay over this tube, and a wire went up from this machine, through the crack at the bottom of the window, and outside. This machine was also connected by one short wire to an ordinary electric battery, and by another to a tiny printing machine with an inker and a long, thin roll of paper. The glass tube formed a kind of hole in the electrical connection between the battery and the printer.

  ‘This is it,’ I asserted.

  ‘What does this apparatus do?’ asked the policeman, addressing Julian.

  ‘It’s scientific,’ he replied coldly. ‘It’s difficult to explain to a layman.’

  On an impulse, I reached out and pressed one of the round white buttons with my forefinger.

  There was a crack of electricity, and a spark jumped between the two brass balls. Instantaneously, the metal filings in the glass tube on the other machine seemed to come alive, leap up from the bottom of the tube and cohere into a single mass, exactly as though they had been suddenly attracted by a magnet. This newly formed metallic link completed the path of the electric current, connecting the battery to the tiny printer, which immediately purred into action and inked a small dot on the roll of paper, which then advanced by a quarter of an inch. The spoon then suddenly leapt up and lightly tapped the glass tube. The metal filings fell away into a little pile of powder again; the current was broken, and the printer fell silent.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ said the police officer.

  ‘It’s for Morse code,’ I cried, remembering what I had heard in Kingstown. And reaching out again, I pressed down the other button. The spark flew as before, the metal filings cohered, the printer printed, the tapper tapped, the connection was again broken. But this time the printer had printed not a dot, but a short segment.

  ‘You see?’ I said. ‘These two machines are separated by the whole length of the table. No wire connects them to each other, yet by pressing a button on one of them, I can transmit a message which is printed in Morse code on the other.’

  ‘And you claim that this machine can send a message to another one situated a mile away?’ asked the police officer doubtfully.

  ‘Over ten or twenty miles. I have seen it with my own eyes,’ I replied.

  ‘This is a miracle,’ said the police officer.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It is a stroke of genius.’

  ‘He’s a devil!’ shrieked Jenny suddenly. ‘I’ll kill him with my own hands! Let me! I want to kill him! I want to kill him!’

  She tried to throw herself on Julian, but many pairs of hands held her back. The attitude of the people, however, had changed completely. She was held away protectively, while Julian now stood abandoned in the centre of the room like a loathsome serpent.

  ‘I think you had better come along with me, sir,’ said the policeman to Julian, taking out his pair of handcuffs.

  I saw his eyes dart – backwards, forwards, to the sides. There was no chance of flight, no chance of escape. Already people were stepping forward to come to the assistance of the officer in his duty.

  ‘You’ll pay for this,’ he snarled suddenly, turning to me.

  ‘No. You will pay,’ said Philip to him, and his low voice contained a vibration of bitterness beyond description. ‘You and father. You will pay between you for a life destroyed.’

  ‘You fool,’ said his brother, ‘this is all your fault. If you hadn’t taken the grotesque idea into your head of forcing a beautiful girl to marry a snivelling runt like yo
u just because she was in trouble, none of this would have happened.’

  ‘That’s a lie,’ cried Jenny suddenly, ‘he didn’t force her – you did! You forced her beyond bearing, and then you killed her, not even for money, just for nothing – nothing at all! What did you care? She wasn’t even a person to you. She wasn’t a person to anyone, I think. Men thought she was too beautiful – she was Ophelia – she was a whore – she was an idol – she was less than dirt, and all the time she was just a girl, an ordinary girl, who had the right to life like everybody else – and you took that from her. And now you’re on your way to Hell where you belong. Go burn in Hell! Burn! Burn! Burn in Hell!’

  ‘Hell?’ said a voice on the stairs, and Inspector Doherty arrived, looking just as disorderly and half-dressed as the rest of us, clearly fresh from his bed. ‘What’s going on here? Do I understand that some new evidence has appeared in the case?’

  ‘It’s incredible,’ said the police officer to Inspector Doherty. ‘This young woman has shown us how that machine over there can send an instant message through the air without a wire.’ He hesitated a moment, then reached out and pressed one of the buttons himself. The printer immediately obliged. Both policemen stared. Inspector Doherty ran his fingers over and under the tables, searching for a wire.

  ‘It’s Morse code,’ breathed the constable admiringly. ‘This machine sends and that one receives. And she says it’ll work even if they’re miles apart.’

  Inspector Doherty was not slow to understand. The officer’s description too clearly corresponded to the missing link in the case against Julian Archer that we had discussed at such length. He glanced at me, raising his eyebrows. I gave a quick nod towards Julian. His eyes followed my look.