“No. Bring me a packet with the coffee.”
The identical conversation had been conducted the previous evening, and with voices slightly raised so that should Mr. Hyde be outside the lounge windows he would know Mrs. Sayers’ immediate plans. Tonight, in the unoccupied room along the passage, he was doubtless holding the door ajar. Briggs was perfect: Mrs. Sayers was superb.
Briggs proceeded with his chores, closing the storm shutters and locking the veranda door. As on the previous evening, he did not shut the door to the house, and he did not make an inspection of the rooms, and when he was passing the room where lurked the “mako shark” Bony slipped into the bedroom occupied by Mrs. Sayers.
Mrs. Sayers came in and switched on the light. Bony commanded silence with two fingers pressed to lips. He wrote a note, using the tall-boy for a desk, and, when Briggs knocked, he gave her the note, which she saw was directed to Briggs.
Briggs was told to enter and appeared with a tray covered with a cloth. He openly winked at Bony, dexterously removed the cloth and spread it on the bedside table. Then, having set out the supper, he stood with the tray under an arm and asked if there was anything further required. Presenting him with the note, in which Bony had announced the arrival of the murderer, Mrs. Sayers said:
“That will be all, Briggs. Don’t forget to put out the kitchen light. You’ve often forgotten it, remember, and I won’t have wastage.”
The wrinkled face slightly expanded in a grin.
“What a nark you are, Mavis,” he grumbled. “Here’s me having to think of everything, and you go crook. All right! Now take them tablets and sleep deep. Good-night!”
The door closed behind him. Mrs. Sayers poured coffee for two, and she and Bony sat on the edge of the bed and munched sandwiches. In a low whisper, Bony told of what he had seen.
“He won’t come for an hour or two. He’ll wait to be sure Briggs is asleep. Bear in mind all the points I’ve given you, and keep a hard rein on your nerves. And remember, I want to take a picture of him, so try to avoid coming between him and the camera.”
Mrs. Sayers nodded. Her eyes were bright with excitement and she gained Bony’s complete admiration when he failed to see a sign of fear. In his chair in the far corner, he smoked a last cigarette and watched her gathering the supper things with hands perfectly steady. She placed them on the dressing-table, and Bony removed one cup and saucer, which he put into a drawer.
Again in his chair, he laughed silently when Mrs. Sayers slipped on her satin nightgown and, with a flourish, completed her ensemble with the iron collar. She smiled at him, and he knew she wanted to giggle. Then the mood passed and she stretched and raised her arms and tensed her muscles. Her face was very square and her eyes were small and wicked. Above the foot-rail of the bed, she waved to him before pulling on the light cord.
In the dark, Bony settled himself for what he expected to be a prolonged vigil. He could hear Mrs. Sayers moving on the bed. Briggs was still in the kitchen and he was whistling as though to send them a message of good cheer. A minute passed, and then the sound of the kitchen door being shut and locked. Silence descended like a desperate hand on an alarm clock.
The stage was set and the actors waiting for the curtain to go up. The play would begin with the entry of the man Bony had already identified with his “bits and pieces”. The remaining actors had been drilled in their parts and were now waiting to receive their call. It was a situation and a moment to thrill the heart of one who loved the dramatic denouement.
When Bony pressed the button at the edge of his chair and tugged the cord operating the camera shutter and the automatic flashlight, Briggs would rush for the kitchen door and, if unable to unlock it, smash it with a sledge-hammer. He would then race along the passage and, should there be no light in Mrs. Sayers’ room, he was to make for the master switch before joining forces with Bony. Meanwhile, Mr. Dickenson was to emerge from the hut with a bucket of sand into which was partially embedded three wide-mouthed bottles. Into the bottles he was to place rockets, the wicks of which were moistened with kerosene. Having fired the rockets he was to make for the front veranda door and switch on all the lights.
The rockets would be seen by the two constables guarding the homes of Mrs. Abercrombie and Mrs. Clayton. They would at once race for Mrs. Sayers’ house. Inspector Walters and Sergeant Sawtell would be waiting in the jeep, and they should arrive within three minutes of the signal being sent up.
Guile and patience were the attributes essential to landing this monster, with emphasis on guile. Police posted round the house would, under these circumstances, be foolish. To get within range of a tiger you don’t blow whistles, and to hook a mako shark you don’t use a bent pin. And when you have the co-operation of a woman like Mrs. Sayers, you try to so arrange matters that you will have the most complete and the most conclusive evidence to accompany your assertion that an attempt to murder did take place. The Crown Prosecutor’s ruling is ever—“He who asserts must prove.” Bony waited with cold patience to provide a classic example of assertion with proof.
With the eyes of his mind, Bony could see the man skulking in that other dark room. He was crouched on the floor, recalling those ecstatic moments when he had killed three times and waiting for the moment to come when he would again kill. He had been a young man blessed with a retentive memory and the laudable desire for knowledge, and the road of his progress had been marked with his triumphs. He had been spurred by ambition to reach the goal of social distinction and power, and nothing had been permitted to come between him and those prizes. Normal human desires had been placed on the altar of asceticism and with unbreakable will maintained upon that altar.
He had fought a good fight ... so he had thought ... rushing to the shower and his books when the battle went against him. He had exchanged the pleasures of early manhood for knowledge. Knowledge would bring power. With power he would have social position and once that was gained all that which he had suppressed within himself could be given freedom of expression.
But, having entered the kingdom of ambition, he discovered that his knowledge did not include even the elementary knowledge of women. The years of self-denial had loaded him with honours, they had raised him high to a position of power ... and they had stripped him of his youth. Wine he had expected, and vinegar he had received in the critical flash of a discerning eye, the titter of scorn within a whisper, the lift of a luscious mouth. Lovely women wanted nothing of his knowledge. They are themselves a Science, and only the ardent student acquires the counter-science. He had found himself too old to begin the study.
The pride of the successful man was overwhelmed. What he had with conscious will kept submerged rose from the subconscious to attack with long-pent fury. He had become the centre of contending forces, finally to emerge fearing that for which he yearned and fearing he would lose all the fruits of his emulation.
This dual fear had become directed to certain women whose activities threatened his power and whose sex tormented him.
He had watched and waited for the opportunity to steal a woman’s nightgown to ease a craving and still a fear, only to discover that possession of it gave strength to the fear.
The fear must be destroyed. The torment silenced.
He had planned to enter the woman’s bedroom, but before he could do so, she had come walking in her sleep to meet him.
“Mrs. Cotton, I want you!” he had breathed, and the perfumed femininity had flowed into his hands and up his arms and to his brain like a river of sweet coolness to create a feeling of triumphant chastity.
Only the lesser evil remained to be destroyed, that it mock him not, and, uplifted by the triumph, he had entered the woman’s room and had cut and ripped and torn her underwear to shreds.
The triumph over the demon had been momentary. It had returned to drive him on to whisper:
“Mrs. Eltham, I want you!”
Something ... perhaps a knock on the door ... had blacked out a thing still to do. Again
to the house to destroy the garments so intimately associated with the woman.
There was no release.
“Mrs. Overton, I want you!”
It was driving him now, driving him onward to the moment when he would whisper:
“Mrs. Sayers, I want you!”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Angler Wins
TO sit comfortably for thirty minutes and meditate on pleasing subjects is, in these hectic years, an experience. To sit on a hard chair for three hours, with hearing strained to locate the approach of a multiple murderer is perhaps one degree easier to bear than lying on a bed and imaginatively dying a hundred deaths by strangulation. Had Mrs. Sayers screamed: “I can’t bear it!” Bony would have been neither surprised nor angered.
The cessation of a sound so prolonged as to become unnoticed was at first not registered by Bony, and it was several seconds before he realised that the wind in the taut telephone wires had stopped. There could be only the one explanation—the murderer had cut the wires.
Holding the edge of the window curtain one inch from the frame, Bony kept watch on the veranda. He hoped that Mrs. Sayers had noted the cessation of wind playing on telephone wires, for then she would at least know that her ordeal was drawing to a climax.
A measureless period of emptiness was endured when imperceptibly the darkness of the veranda waned before the waxing of light. The light grew but not sufficiently to illumine the furniture, and suddenly Bony saw its source, the round opaque disc of a flashlight masked by a cotton handkerchief.
The murderer was now facing the master light switch. He appeared to be standing there a long time, but actually was with infinite care raising the switch bar to prevent any metallic sound. A master in the art of noiseless movement, Bony felt admiration for the practitioner who equalled himself. The disc of light disappeared, and again imperceptibly the light waned. He was coming back into the passage.
Bony sat with one hand on the rod and the other about the brake controlling the reel-drum ... one hand holding the camera release shutter and a finger of the other touching the smooth surface of the press-button. When fishing, he sat with the base of the rod swivelled to the seat between his knees: now his knees gripped a sizeable flashlight.
The murderer must now be outside the bedroom door. Bony could not hear him. Not a sound of him. Why the delay? There was no further precaution he need take. The telephone wires had been cut. The overhead wire to Briggs’ alarm bell would have been cut, and the light power had been switched off. The victim was beyond communication with the outside world, as Mrs. Eltham had been and Mrs. Overton.
The door was being opened so silently and so slowly that there was no detectable difference in air pressure. Then as silently and slowly the door was closed.
Mrs. Sayers moved. She sighed. She breathed with soft rhythm.
Bony was wondering what was keeping the shark from taking the bait-fish when he saw the brute’s head rising above the surface. He was hearing the tapping of teeth, the sound he had heard once before.
The small disc of light appeared. It was directed to the floor. The diffused illuminant revealed the man standing with his back to the closed door. It revealed the foot-board of the bed and the small table at the head of the bed whereon stood the useless telephone. The man who appeared to have the body of a giant advanced to the bed. Silence! And then the whispered command:
“Mrs. Sayers, I want you! Mrs. Sayers, I want you!”
Then Bony saw Mrs. Sayers sitting on the edge of the bed, and slowly she stood up.
“Oh, Mr. Rose, this is so sudden,” she murmured.
The shark’s jaw opened wide. The torch he carried he dropped as his hands darted towards his victim’s throat.
Bony pressed his finger on the bell button and kept it there. He pulled on the camera shutter release. There was a flash of white light which lingered behind the eyes. A cry of astonishment. A woman’s laughter which Bony remembered for many a year. A shout of fury.
Bony’s torch beam revealed Mr. Rose. He was facing towards Bony, his back arched, his knees sagging, his mouth gaping, and his eyes white with agony. Mrs. Sayers was behind him. She was doing something to his left arm and something to his neck, as she shrieked:
“You dirty beast! You scum! I’ll snap your neck like a carrot, you dirty, filthy, murderous swine.”
A terrific blow was given to the back door. Bony laid his flashlight on the tall-boy, directing its beam on the struggling Mr. Rose. He rushed forward, shouting:
“Don’t injure him, Mrs. Sayers! Don’t injure him!”
He swung a sock nicely filled with sand down hard on the head of Mr. Rose, and the abrupt weight sent Mrs. Sayers to the floor. There was a pounding of feet in the passage. The door was flung inward, and Briggs dived for the unconscious Mr. Rose, whom he thought was lying on Mrs. Sayers and strangling her.
“Let him be!” Bony shouted. “Let him be!”
“Let up, Briggs, you ruddy fool,” screamed Mrs. Sayers. “Can’t you see the scum’s out to it. Pull him off me, d’you hear?”
Bony rushed out to the master switch. On re-entering the passage, he collided with Mr. Dickenson, made no apology and darted into the bedroom, where he tugged the light cord.
Mr. Rose was now lying on his back on the floor. Briggs was bending forward, his hands working and extended towards the inert body. Mrs. Sayers was getting to her feet, and in a fit of wild hysteria. Bony dragged Briggs back and ordered him to attend to Mrs. Sayers. Briggs attended to her ... slapping her face and shouting:
“Cut it out, Mavis. What’s biting you?”
There came the roar of the police jeep. Mr. Dickenson, who had switched on the veranda lights, was in time to unlock the front door. And then Mrs. Sayers’ bedroom was full of men.
Inspector Walters claimed that he was damned!
“What’s the matter with him? Someone kill him?”
“I was persuaded to sandbag him,” admitted Bony. “I had to be cruel to be kind.”
***
“Why, it’s a beaut!” shouted Sawtell. He rocked the developing dish, and Bony wanted to stop him that he could appraise the value of the negative.
“It’s got everything,” chortled the sergeant as he transferred the plate from the developer to the fixing bath. “We’ll have a proper look in a minute or two. How in hell did you pick on him?”
Bony did not answer the question. He was too absorbed by the promise of the picture he had taken to bother with explanations at this moment, and he waited with a mental breathlessness as he had so often done when the club secretary was weighing his marlin at the end of the jetty. Then Sawtell lifted the plate and held it before a white light.
Mr. Rose was turned three-quarter full to the camera. He had both hands about Mrs. Sayers’ throat. The face was like that of a gargoyle but unmistakably his.
“Pretty, isn’t he?” said Sawtell. “We could sell this picture to the newspapers for a million.”
“I’d like a copy of it,” murmured Bony. “It’s unique. That woman! She behaved magnificently although a little too roughly. I feared for Mr. Rose.”
“Did you expect him to play up on amnesia?”
“Of course. His kind always do. Probably practised the surprised look before his mirror, just in case he was nabbed. This picture will rule out that defence when the case goes on trial. The politicians, though, will step in if we don’t find those four nightgowns.”
***
The police jeep and Inspector Walters’ private car were loaded with men when they stopped before the main entrance of Cave Hill College. With them was Mrs. Sayers.
Mr. Percival met the party, astonishment plain on his florid face.
“I have here a warrant signed by Mr. Willis, Justice of the Peace, to conduct a search of the apartments occupied by Mr. Rose,” Walters said in his official manner. “Mr. Rose was arrested early this morning and charged with wilful murder.”
“Was charged ... Mr. Rose was...” stutter
ed Mr. Percival.
“With murder, Mr. Percival,” interrupted Mrs. Sayers. “You must manage the school until the Board meets. Meanwhile, take us to Mr. Rose’s rooms.”
Bony, Walters and Sawtell, Mrs. Sayers and Briggs and Mr. Dickenson, the two constables and Mr. Willis passed up the wide stairs to the first floor. They entered the study, a handsome room overlooking the town. Books were ranged on shelves half-way up three of the walls. Behind the door stood two safes.
“Mr. Percival, these are Mr. Rose’s keys,” Bony said. “Kindly open these safes.”
Without comment, Mr. Percival accepted the keys. The larger safe contained account books and cheque books, an amount of cash and several unpresented cheques. All were the property of the college. The smaller safe was opened, and Sawtell extracted its contents, comprising documents and bank pass-books. The silence in the headmaster’s study was significant. Walters and the sergeant were grim.
“Where is the headmaster’s bedroom?” quietly asked Bony.
“Beyond those curtains,” replied Mr. Percival.
The party entered a room as large as the study and also overlooking the town. It was Sawtell who discovered the safe in the corner behind the wardrobe. Mr. Percival was asked to open it. He was dazed by this extraordinary intrusion and the implications behind the search warrant. He tried four of the keys on the ring before succeeding in unlocking the safe, everyone present crowding behind him.
It was Sawtell who removed its contents comprising a pair of binoculars; a pair of old shoes, with a drawing-pin still attached to the left sole, which had not been worn after Abie’s attempted blackmail; and four silk nightgowns.
“That’s the nightie he stole from my line,” stated Mrs. Sayers a little shrilly. “And that one belonged to Mrs. Overton. I remember the time she bought it.”
Bony spoke.
“Mr. Willis, kindly prepare the declarations to be signed by every person in the room, setting out the contents of this safe as produced by Sergeant Sawtell in the presence of us all, and adding what Mrs. Sayers has said concerning two of the nightgowns. She will assist you to describe the nightgowns.”
The Widows of Broome Page 20