Dead Mrs Stratton (Jumping Jenny) rs-9

by Anthony Berkeley

  "Absolutely. No, not cast iron. Not so brittle. Wrought iron. I've just," said Roger with a smile, "been forging it."

  "Ah! Well, listen, Roger," Ronald said slowly, "I want to speak carefully to you, too. I haven't said a word to David, and he hasn't said a word to me. I quite agree with you that it's much better not to know anything. I can see that's your line, and it's the right one. But I do just want to say this, Roger. That woman utterly deserved - well, anything she got."

  "I know she did," Roger said, not without emotion. "And that's just why I'm not knowing anything at all. But I'll say this, Ronald: Everything will be all right."

  "Sure?"

  "Sure. You see, after all, there's no evidence at all. Not to say, evidence."

  Fleeing any more emotion, Roger hurried off in search of Colin. The police might be back at any moment, and Roger wanted everything nice and simple for them when they came.

  Colin was smoking his pipe with Williamson on the lawn in front of the house. Roger called him aside and began once more. "Colin, after I'd gone up on the roof last night and left you with David, you didn't go back to the ballroom alone. David went with you."

  "But I've told you already I ..."

  "Colin, I haven't got much time. Listen. David went with you. Mrs. Lefroy remembers seeing you both come in together. And," said Roger with emphasis, "David himself remembers that he went in with you. David himself remembers it, Colin."

  "Oh!" said Colin slowly.

  "Yes, you were wrong, I'm afraid. But the lad's perfectly safe, so long as you remember just that thing."

  "Of course I remember we went in together, said Colin firmly. "Haven't I told you so all along?"

  "Then thank goodness that's settled." Roger mopped his brow and took a breath of relief.

  "But, Roger, man, what are the police up to? Do you mean to tell me they smell a rat? What were they doing, taking photographs on the roof?"

  "I don't know," Roger admitted. "But that appears to be my next job, to find out. Little did I think that the Great Detective would ever come down to detecting what the official detectives may have detected already. Well, well."

  "Does it look serious, do you think?"

  "No, I don't think so really," Roger said, as they walked back towards the house. "It's alarming, of course, but I don't see how it can possibly be serious. They can't have anything more than the vaguest suspicions; and suspicion never even arrested anyone without some kind of evidence, too, let alone hanged him. Anyhow, if the coast's clear we'll see if we can make out what they've been up to."

  The coast was clear and the roof unguarded. Even the large constable had been withdrawn. "Ah!" said Roger and looked round. At a first glance everything seemed exactly the same. "Well, I don't know what the deuce they were at, unless they really were still worried about that chair," said Roger and walked towards the gallows.

  "Hullo!" he exclaimed in surprise. "It's gone!" He looked round again. Undoubtedly the chair was gone. Three chairs still stood on the roof, but exactly as they had stood before. The fourth, under the gallows, had disappeared.

  "Let's see if it's in the sun parlour," said Roger. It was not in the sun parlour. "Well, what on earth would they want to take it away for?" asked Colin, no less puzzled.

  "Heaven only knows." Roger was beginning to feel worried, in the way that the inexplicable does worry. "I can't make it out at all. The only importance in the chair to them was its position with regard to the gallows. As an object apart from its position, I can't see how it could possibly interest them." Already such a simple act as the carrying away of the chair was beginning to look sinister. Roger felt perfectly equal to combating the known moves of an opponent, but this was an unknown one, and how can one combat that?

  "Ach," Colin tried to be reassuring, "they're just daft. Trying to be too clever, that's all."

  "No," Roger worried. "No, I don't think that can be it. They must have had some reason." He stared at the roof where the chair had lain. Suddenly he uttered an exclamation and dropped on his hands and knees, to peer intently at that same bit of roof.

  "Have you found something?" Colin asked eagerly.

  Roger blew gently at the ground, and then again. Then he got up and faced Colin. "I know why they took that chair away," he said slowly. "Colin, I'm afraid we're rather up against it."

  "What do you mean, man?"

  "I was wrong when I said they were working just on suspicion, with no evidence to back it. They have got evidence. Can you see faint traces of grey powder there? That's insufflator powder. They've been trying to take fingerprints off that chair, and they've found that there aren't any at all - not even Ena's."

  CHAPTER XII

  UNSCRUPULOUS BEHAVIOUR OF A GREAT DETECTIVE

  "WE MUST keep calm," said Roger, not at all calmly. "We mustn't lose our heads. We're in a nasty jam, but we must keep calm, Colin."

  "It's the devil," muttered Colin, in a distressed voice.

  "We must try to work out their moves," Roger continued, a little less wildly, "so that we can forestall them. You're the only person I can talk to freely, so you've got to help me."

  "I'm with you all the way, Roger."

  "You'd better be," said Roger grimly. "Because we're both of us for it if the truth comes out. In a moment of lunacy I put myself in the position of accessory after the fact, to shield someone else (I suppose one can be an accessory after the fact to a crime, by the way, without having the least knowledge of the criminal's identity? It's an interesting point); and you did the same by shielding me. I hope you realize that?"

  "I'm afraid you're right. I'm an accessory to an accessory at any rate, if there is such a position. But let's look on the bright side, Roger. Things might have been worse if I hadn't wiped those prints of yours off the chair. Worse for you, I mean."

  "And possibly worse still for someone else besides me," Roger retorted.

  The two were sitting in the sun parlour, whither they had retired in some alarm, after Roger's discovery on the roof, to talk the thing over. Roger had spent another five minutes crawling about on his hands and knees round the gallows, to see whether anything else was to be read from the surface of the roof, but beyond one or two burnt matchstalks had found nothing. He had explained to Colin that the police would have done exactly the same thing, and equally, it was to be presumed, found no scratches or other marks on the surface of the asphalt to indicate that anything in the nature of a struggle had taken place there; though whether they might have found anything else, of a removable nature, could not be said.

  Roger relit his pipe and continued, considerably calmer. Unlike many people, Roger found argument soothing.

  "Yes, that's quite true, Colin," he said. "If you hadn't wiped off my prints, what would they have found? That officious inspector was going to test the chair for prints in any case. He'd have found mine and presumably those of the person who carried all the chairs onto the roof, and probably several others as well. But he wouldn't have found Ena Stratton's, which he was looking for; and that might have made things more awkward even than they are now. I wonder, by the way," Roger added vaguely, "how the particular chair of the four which I chose happened to get where it was, right in the middle of the fairway. It was the one, of course, which you knocked over."

  "I didn't knock it over," Colin contradicted. "It nearly knocked me over. It was lying on its side. That's why I didn't see it."

  "Lying on its side, just about halfway between the gallows and the door into the house," Roger meditated. "It might have been there, of course, when I was standing just outside the door earlier, but if so I don't remember noticing it. And it certainly wasn't there at the beginning of the evening, when Ronald took me up to show me his gallows, because we walked abreast straight across from the door. Somebody must have put it there later. I wonder if that has any significance?"

  "Well, there was a chair missing from the picture," Colin pointed out.

  "Exactly. Could the murderer have been going towards the
gallows with it, intending to complete the picture, and then been alarmed or distracted, and dropped it there to make his escape?"

  "That sounds feasible enough, Roger."

  "Yes, but it's so easy to think of a feasible explanation of a fact, without knowing in the least whether it's the right one, and probably without realizing how many other feasible explanations of the same fact there may be. That was the trouble with the old - fashioned detective story," said Roger, somewhat didactically. "One deduction only was drawn from each fact, and it was invariably the right deduction. The Great Detectives of the past certainly had luck. In real life one can draw a hundred plausible deductions from one fact, and they're all equally wrong. However, we've no time to bother with that now."

  "You were talking about the chair," Colin reminded him.

  "Yes, it's odd that it should have been there, but I can't see that it has any real bearing on the actual crime. Though if my explanation is right, the police would have found the murderer's prints on it, though not Ena Stratton's. I'm sorry, by the way, to keep on using that term for the poor fellow who retorted on her at last in the only possible way, but there doesn't seem to be another. Executioner is too formal."

  "David," said Colin carefully, "actually admitted it to you?"

  "Oh, no. He didn't try, and I wouldn't have let him if he had. It just went tacitly, by default. But Ronald did."

  "Ronald told you he and David had done it?"

  "No, no. Ronald apparently had no hand in it. He doesn't appear to be in the least worried about his alibi. But he knows David did it. He told me with some care that David hasn't said a word to him, or he to David; but he knows all right, and I should imagine that David knows he knows. But Ronald and I took some time in explaining elaborately to each other that neither of us does know anything, and doesn't intend to; so that's all quite satisfactory."

  "And the police don't know?"

  "No, that's our great consolation. And that's what we've got to build on. Let's try to reconstruct their ideas. They can't possibly know even that murder has been committed at all, let alone who did it. They may remotely suspect, but all they actually know is that there has been some hanky - panky going on. Some interested party wiped that chair clear of fingerprints; and not just the back, but the sides and seat and everything. You did wipe the seat, didn't you?"

  "I polished the blessed seat!" groaned Colin.

  "Don't be unhappy. It's a very good thing you did. Don't you see that with a wooden seat like that, not only fingerprints but traces of footprints would be looked for? The suicide theory involves Mrs. Stratton having stood on a chair. Well, with modern methods of detection it would be perfectly simple to establish whether anyone had or had not stepped recently onto the seat of that chair from this roof. The surface of the asphalt is covered with flint; quite a large amount of it would be carried up onto the seat of the chair and pressed firmly into the varnish, and even into the wood, by the weight of the person. The knocking over the chair would displace some, but not all; and the traces of what had been displaced would be quite visible. A microscopic examination of the seat would tell all this as clearly as I've told it to you.

  "And I'm not at all sure," added Roger uneasily, "that a microscopic examination even after the polishing you gave it won't show that Mrs. Stratton didn't stand on it at all. It's marvellous how accurate these expert witnesses are. Still, as you can understand, much better that you did polish than that you shouldn't have done."

  "Well, come, that's something," said Colin, but he sounded more than a little uneasy, too.

  "So what do we come to then? The police know that someone has been tinkering with that chair, with or without a criminal motive. And they may be pretty certain that Mrs. Stratton never stood on it at all. If they are, then undoubtedly there is going to be the devil to pay; because that proves murder. But even then, looking on the hopeful side, to prove murder isn't to prove a murderer; and though there certainly would be a nasty pother, and a great deal of unpleasantness all round, I'm not at all sure that David's neck would ever be seriously in danger. Even if the police were quite, quite sure he'd done it, there's so little real evidence in the case at all that they would have an exceedingly difficult job to prove it.

  "However, that's the worst that can happen, and it may not; so let's leave that possibility out of the reckoning just now and concentrate on what is quite certain. Well, all that's really certain so far I think, is that the police feel that there is cause for further investigation. They've made photographic records of the appearance of the roof, and they're retaining all of us here in case they want to question us further. That's all quite normal, and not so very formidable after all."

  "I'm glad to hear it," said Colin.

  "But what I don't quite like is the removal of the body to the mortuary. It was inevitable, if the police weren't satisfied; but it means a postmortem - and goodness knows what that may reveal."

  "But hang it all, man, the cause of death must be obvious enough?"

  "Oh, the cause of death, yes. But that's not all they'll look for. There's the question of bruises, you see. I didn't ask Chalmers last night whether he'd looked for any bruises on the body, but I don't imagine he did. Or Mitchell. In a perfectly straightforward case they probably wouldn't. But now of course the man who does the p.m. will - and that may prove a little awkward."

  "But why might there be bruises on the body?"

  "Well, consider how it must have been done. I don't suppose Mrs. Stratton was persuaded quite peaceably to put her neck in the noose, while David gave her a friendly hoist, do you? How it was actually effected I can't say, and no doubt a certain amount of guile was employed as far as possible: but there must have been some kind of a last - second struggle. Not a long one, because, so far as we know, she never screamed; and I think she would have been heard if she did. I wonder," said Roger thoughtfully, "how the devil the man did succeed in getting it done so quietly. And so quickly. He can't have been more than three or four minutes over it, at the most, so far as I can work out the times. Though it is a little doubtful just when he got back into the ballroom."

  "You always say," Colin remarked tentatively, "that the psychology of the murderer is a great help in reconstructing a crime. Couldn't that apply, too, to the psychology of the victim?"

  "That's a very shrewd observation, Colin," said Roger with enthusiasm. "And it interests me particularly, because it reminds me of a remark I made last night about Ena Stratton, which sounded very profound, but which I thought, as soon as I'd made it, might not bear very much examination. Perhaps it was deeper than I suspected. In fact, Colin, I believe I made it to you. Do you remember my saying that something or other, I forget now what, was significant not only of everything that had happened to Mrs. Stratton so far, but of anything that might happen to her in the future?"

  "Yes, I do remember. I wondered at the time what the deuce you meant."

  "To tell you the truth, so did I. But I must have meant something, surely. You can't call to mind what the occasion was, I suppose?"

  "Yes, I do. It was her exhibitionism."

  "Ah, was it? I said her exhibitionism was significant of anything that might happen to her in the future; and what did happen was that she got murdered. Well, could her exhibitionism have been responsible for that? I don't quite see how."

  "It was the time she climbed on that beam. Can you get anything out of that? Suppose she climbed up on the gallows, and wee David swarmed up after her?"

  Roger laughed. "That's taking me a trifle too literally. But it's a possible idea, for all that. That's the trouble. Any extravagant idea in that line is possible with Mrs. Stratton. But I'm afraid that if your theory were right, and David had slipped the noose over her head on top of the gallows instead of underneath them, her neck would have been broken. And there's no question of that. She died from strangulation all right. The rope was much thicker and suffer than the ordinary hangman's rope, and the excoriations on her palms show that she tried to c
lutch at it, so she probably died more slowly; but her own movements would tighten the noose round her neck in a fairly short time. Still, you may not be so wide of the mark, Colin. It's certain, if we accept that there was no more than a very short struggle, as I think we can, that some kind of ruse was employed; and I've no doubt that Mrs. Stratton herself, and possibly her exhibitionism, dictated the ruse's nature. Still, that's beside the point. The trouble is that there must have been some violence used, if only at the last second; and violence always leaves traces.

  "And if there are such traces, the suspicion of the police will be confirmed, the inquest will be adjourned tomorrow after just a formal opening for further evidence, and there'll be the devil and all to pay."

  "Hell's bells," observed Colin gloomily. "So what," said Roger, "are we going to do about it?"

  What Roger did about it first of all was to go downstairs and ask Ronald to find out for him when the post - mortem was to be performed and what doctor was going to perform it. Ronald rang through to Chalmers and learned that it was to be carried out that afternoon, by a doctor from Westerford named Bryce, and that both Chalmers and Mitchell were to be present.

  "Half a minute," said Roger, and took over the receiver. "Is that you, Chalmers? Sheringham speaking."

  "Oh, yes?" came Dr. Chalmers's pleasant tones.

  "This man, Bryce. He's a good man?"

  "Quite. An elderly man, with a good deal of experience."

  "A little odd, isn't it?" Roger said cautiously. "A little odd, I mean, the police wanting a p.m. in such a very straightforward case?"

  "Oh, I don't think so, really. They usually do, here."

  "Coroner fussy?"

  "Oh, no. But the police haven't much to do, you know, and that makes them keener when they do get anything."

  "I see. You think that's all there is to it?"

  "Oh, I'm quite sure there's nothing more," said Dr. Chalmers, most reassuringly.

  Roger handed over the receiver to Ronald. "Ask him to ring you up as soon as the post - mortem's over and tell you its findings," he said, "even if it is a bit unofficial. I expect he will." Ronald put forward the request. Then he nodded to Roger, to intimate that Dr. Chalmers had agreed to do so.