Homicide House

by Zenith Brown

He looked around the circle. “I’ll tell you this too. I don’t believe Scott Winship ever stole the picture. I think Aunt Louise sold it herself and kept the money and kept the picture. I don’t know Scott Winship. He may be the half-saint half-devil he’s made out to be, but I’ll bet he’s got some jolly good reason for hiding out. I’ll bet he’s been living right here in London all the time. I’ll bet he’s never left it at all. More than that, I’d bet that every one of you except Mary—old Copey and Elliot Winship and all of you—knows damned well where he is. And I’d not blame him for fighting clear of this hole where every penny farthing you get you’ve got to get down on your knees and beg for like a poodle for a biscuit. I’m fed up, I tell you. I’m clearing out.”

  He did not slam the door as he went, but the effect was not different.

  “Insolent puppy—” Sidney Copeland had again half-risen from his chair. He sat down abruptly again as Caroline Winship shook her head.

  Dan was watching Mary and her mother. Louise Winship had closed her eyes. She sat with her head bowed a little, pale but not seemingly either shocked or surprised by the tirade that swept over her. Mary Winship had stiffened, shocked and angry.

  Dan got to his feet.

  “Thank you, Mr. McGrath.” Caroline Winship’s voice had an extraordinary quality of sombre deliberateness as she drew her breath in deeply. “I think you’d best go now. We don’t know what your business here is. I can only hope it no longer concerns any of us.”

  “It concerns one of you,” Dan said. His eyes were fixed on Mary. He took three steps across the space in front of the fireplace and stopped in front of her. He put his hand out, tilted her chin up, bent his head and kissed her abruptly on the mouth. “That’s my business here. It’s the only one I have, Mary. The only one I have ever had. Good night.”

  He was halfway up the third flight of stairs to his own room when he realized what he had done.

  “Good God,” he thought. “They’ll think I’m a—”

  He could not offhand think just what. Insolent puppy would be a milder term for him than it had been for Dalrymple-Hughes. Nobody knew better than McGrath that getting sore had never helped him. But sore he had been. He could not get her white shocked face out of his mind. Or the feel of her cold hostile lips on his own. “You’ve torn it, McGrath,” he told himself. “Wrecked the works. You’re in England, you creep. You’re not in Hollywood. Apologize and get the hell out—that’s all that’s left for you, McGrath.”

  And moreover, he thought suddenly, he still had the book in his pocket. Although how, or at just what point, he could have brought it out and handed it over, he could not imagine—not, certainly, without making himself more unpopular than he already was—even, he reflected further, if he had thought of it, which he had not.

  He went on up, trusting the book was something that it might be a very good idea to skip altogether.

  12

  SIR CHARLES DEBENHAM, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, regarded Chief Inspector J. Humphrey Bull with a mild twinkle in his eyes. Not that there was anything amusing about the murder of Arthur Pegott, valet at Number 4 Godolphin Square. Or indeed anything basically amusing about Bull himself. It was the slow, ponderous incredulity with which, after eighteen years of dealing with people who murdered other people in the Metropolitan Area of London, as well as occasionally farther afield, Bull still approached each new example of man’s inhumanity to man. He reminded Debenham of Wells’s description of that American writer chap’s prose style—a hippopotamus trying to pick up a pea out of the corner of his cage. Although he knew no hippopotamus ever got the pea with one falcon swoop as quickly, if still inexplicably, as did the large stolid man standing there looking down onto the Embankment, once he had made up his mind. It was the laborious, minute grubbing for facts, the painstaking reluctance to accept them as such, the patience of a water buffalo, and an occasional intuitive brilliance that Sir Charles Debenham still found it difficult to remember at the beginning of a case.

  “I don’t like the looks of this thing, sir,” Bull said. His face was even more concerned than usual. “Pinkerton’s not telling me the truth. But that’s on account of this American out there. Pinkerton’s what he calls a—a pushover for the Americans.”

  “Ah, yes. That’s that Bird Watcher’s game the Americans play. The rosy-breasted push—”

  “I doubt if it’s the same, sir.” Bull looked even more troubled. “I believe he means he’s extremely fond of them. But the American—his name’s McGrath—isn’t telling the truth either. He found the body. He says he came into Pegott’s room to see about getting his trousers pressed—coming in directly from the street without first going to his own room two doors off. He’d got his hat with him and forgot it when he started to leave. That’s ridiculous. Then there was a book in his pocket. I’d say it had come out of the valet’s case on the bed. There was a hollow space still under his pyjamas the same size. It’s clear he came into Pegott’s room to see him about something important, saw his luggage packed up, and was concerned enough about something to look in the wardrobe.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “I’ve not asked him yet. I thought we’d wait to see what he did next. He went down to the Winships’ flat.”

  Debenham’s eyes lighted slowly. “The Winships?”

  Bull nodded. He opened his despatch case on the corner of the Assistant Commissioner’s desk and took out a yellowed sheaf of papers.

  “You remember the name, sir. And we’ve heard of Arthur Pegott before too.” He unfolded the sheaf. “Pegott was in trouble when he was seventeen. Pilfering, money and cigarettes. He was remanded to his father’s custody—respectable stonemason, lived in Battersea. He seems to have gone straight enough for a time. McFarlane thinks he was mixed up in the sale of clothing coupons here last year—not enough evidence for an arrest. Some little trouble in the Army and discharged after ten months. He’s been at Godolphin Square three and a half months. Miss Grimstead the manageress says she was worried about taking him on. He’d always been at fancier establishments—bigger pay and tips. She taxed him with it, and says he was uppity about it—said if he wished to come there she’d jolly well ought to be glad to get him. He was excellent at his job when he chose to be.”

  “And the Winships ? The name—”

  “You remember Inspector Pulham, sir? Reggie Pulham?”

  The Assistant Commissioner nodded, smiling. “Reggie Pulham and his idée fixe. Very well. Some picture. He nearly drove us out of our minds.”

  “It’s the same Winships, sir. You remember he used to go and see every amnesia case reported?”

  Debenham nodded. “I remember the idée fixe without remembering what it was about.”

  “It was about a Scott Winship,” Inspector Bull said. “He was crocked up in the last war—shrapnel head wounds. He was in hospital in Sussex. Used to disappear and turn up at the place he’d lived at as a child. The fourth time they decided to let him stay there. He got well finally and married his cousin. That’s the Mrs. Scott Winship at Number Four Godolphin Square, sir, where the valet Pegott was killed. They’d been living at Number Twenty-two on the opposite side until they were bombed out in ’44.”

  Bull took up one of the yellowed papers.

  “Let me give you some of the facts, sir. I wasn’t on this case but they were talking about it down in the canteen this morning. Carson knew it best. This is a statement by Andrew J. Myers, American art dealer, reporting a picture presumably painted by Vermeer of Delft, purchased by him second October 1925. On fourteenth October he went to Number Twenty-two Godolphin Square to collect the picture and was refused it. He called in the police, ringing from the house. When P. C. Baker got there he’d sent for the receipt and cancelled cheque. Miss Caroline Winship, who owned the house, was there—Mrs. Scott Winship was ill, with a doctor in attendance—and Miss Caroline Winship, Myers, and P. C. Baker went to the second floor, unlocked a bedroom that had been occupied by Miss Wins
hip’s father, an invalid who’d died in August, and found the picture missing from the wall where it had hung and where Myers had seen it and bought it on second October.

  “Miss Caroline Winship said the picture belonged to her sister Mrs. Scott Winship, and that her brother-in-law Scott Winship, from whom Myers had bought the picture, was abroad. Myers and P. C. Baker left the house. That afternoon Sergeant Pulham, he was then, went back with Myers. Miss Winship’s solicitor was there. It was agreed Myers would be forced to take action against Scott Winship for recovery of his property. The next afternoon, fifteenth October, Myers came to Pulham and said they’d settled. He’d got his money back and was withdrawing charges. That’s what we have officially here.”

  Debenham picked the file up as Bull laid it in front of him and glanced through it.

  “Which is when Reggie Pulham started hunting through secondhand shops and barrows?”

  “Yes, sir. But it was really Winship he was hunting, not the picture. He found out that Winship had been living down in Kent at the lodge of Mrs. Winship’s sister’s place near Sevenoaks. Scott Winship had left to come up to town on business early the morning of the second October, when Miss Caroline Winship was to be in Richmond for the week. He took Myers the American dealer to the empty house at eleven-thirty and sold the picture : five thousand pounds paid then and another five thousand pounds to be paid on delivery. The two of them went to the bank and Winship cashed the five thousand pound cheque in Myers’s presence. When Pulham got to this point, he decided Winship’s mind had blanked out again or he was the victim of foul play. He learned then Winship had told his wife he was going to Paris for a week. She’d not expected him home that night —of the second October. He’s not been seen by any of them since. She didn’t worry about him till the second week. She came up to town on the twelfth, afraid to tell her sister, who’d assumed Winship was down in Kent supervising her farm. And the next day, which was the day before Myers turned up to collect his picture and pay the balance of the price, she got a letter from him from Monte Carlo—or she and her sister too said it was from Monte Carlo. Pulham didn’t see it. Miss Caroline Winship was furious with him, her sister being as ill as she was in addition to everything, and flung it in the fire. The letter said he’d done his wife a great injustice and would come back when he could to make it up to her. She was in a state of collapse already. That was when her sister called in the doctor. At this point, neither the wife nor the sister knew the picture had been sold—and had disappeared before delivery. It’s a big house, the picture was hanging in the bedroom they’d closed after the father’s death and wasn’t likely to be immediately missed. And then, on fourteenth October, sir, when the dealer came round to collect, it turns out the man, the five thousand pounds and the picture have all vanished.”

  “It was Caroline Winship who paid the American back?”

  “It must have been, sir. She’s the only one of them that’s got any money. Carson says she talked to Pulham just once. He went to see her with his amnesia theory. She’s supposed to have said she expected the shock of having five thousand pounds might have brought the amnesia back, but the picture didn’t belong to him in any case, she never wanted to hear his name again, and if he turned up at Twenty-two Godolphin Square, which was Pulham’s idea, she’d call the police and have him thrown in gaol. She’s a bitter woman.”

  “Well, five thousand pounds is something to be bitter about, Bull. Never having had that much, I can still imagine how I’d feel having to pay it out for somebody.”

  “Right, sir.” Inspector Bull agreed soberly. “And if you’d got to take care of the sick wife and the child—it was born the following March—I dare say it’s not surprising.”

  He got to his feet. “That gets us a far cry from Arthur Pegott, sir. But I’ve always believed in coincidences. Pegott could have got a much better post in a dozen places in the West End. It looks to me—”

  He chewed at his tawny mustache.

  “You think Winship’s come back to Godolphin Square?” The Assistant Commissioner smiled faintly. “Just don’t take over Pulham’s monomania. Or have you done already?”

  Inspector Bull shook his head. “I don’t believe so, sir. But I would like to find a picture of him—without asking his wife or sister-in-law for one. It could be, of course.”

  A smile flickered through his mild blue eyes.

  “I know he’s not Pinkerton. Or the American. Though an interesting thing happened last night. The American got his supper out and came back to his room at twenty minutes to ten. Smithson was in the serving pantry behind the lift. At eighteen minutes past twelve, McGrath came out of his room and went downstairs. Constable Mathers reported that a man came out of the flats at twenty-three minutes past twelve and walked round the Square, smoking his pipe, until thirteen minutes to one. First Mathers thought he was just taking a stroll, but it started to rain about half-past twelve, so Mathers kept an eye on him till he went back into the building. Smithson says he was back in his room at ten minutes to one. It looks as if he expected to meet someone who didn’t show up. Nobody else left the house except the servants and Mr. Sidney Copeland. He’s a surgeon in Wimpole Street, an old friend of the family.

  “Then there’s a nephew of the Winship ladies, Eric Dalrymple-Hughes, actually the son of a first cousin of Caroline Winship who died out in India. His father married again and was evidently glad enough to turn the boy over to his wealthy relative to bring up and educate. Dalrymple-Hughes came downstairs with his suitcases at a quarter past ten. I was in the office talking to the manageress and I suggested he wait until today. He said if the police wanted him to stay there they’d got to be prepared to pay the rent for his flat. When I went up to talk to him ten minutes later, he’d cooled off considerably. He said he’d lunched with Pegott yesterday. The man had had something to tell him. They’d seen his cousin Miss Mary Winship and Pinkerton lunching there, so they’d put it off. Pegott was supposed to see him yesterday evening, then, but he states he’s got an alibi for the time of Pegott’s murder.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I asked him, sir. He said he didn’t know, of course, but he’d left Pegott after lunch and hadn’t got back to the flat until six o’clock when the place was overrun with policemen. I thought it was best to let him think about it a bit. I’ll see him today. He’s got the wind up about something. He’s a proper spiv, I’m afraid, sir. I’d not say he’s the sort of person to lunch with one of the lower orders, if I may say so, any more than McGrath’s the sort to worry about his trousers not being pressed. Now if it was the other way round, sir . . .”

  13

  WHICH was in a sense unjust to Dan McGrath. If he was not worried, he was at least slightly concerned about the rumpled state of his lower as well as upper garments. Twenty minutes strolling in the midnight rain dripping from the trees in Godolphin Square had not done much for either one, and his packing technique had done nothing to improve the decent blues he was wearing now. Laundry and pressing seemed to be a problem Miss Myrtle Grimstead left solely to the personal discretion of her tenants. On the other hand, Elliot Winship was hardly likely to be critical, Dan thought, remembering the rather weary-looking oatmeal tweeds he had had on himself there in the hall the day before. And if he had to go to lunch in a blanket he would not have hesitated long. Elliot Winship he had got to see. It was very clear that the leisurely and unobtrusive methods of New Scotland Yard were not as undeceptive as one might think. If it had not been for the rain, and the frail glow of the street light glancing off the policeman’s cape out in the Square the night before, he might easily not have spotted the fact that he was there, nor would he have known that Detective-Sergeant Smithson was in the serving pantry behind the lift shaft, if Mason had not brought him a nice hot cup of tea along about one-fifteen. The ivory tower he was to all outward appearances abiding in, so far as the police were concerned, was a snare and a delusion. Even his old friend Mr. Pinkerton had deserted him. Coming out of
the washroom the little man had seen him and run for his room, any resemblance to a frightened rabbit being too marked to miss. Pariah McGrath. Even Betty had looked at him reproachfully when he suggested maybe she could get his trousers pressed. Still, it was a good try.

  As he rang the bell at 53 St. Giles’s Terrace, the green door of Elliot Winship’s neat compact little Georgian residence overlooking Kensington Gardens was opened by a solid and respectable person whom he took to be Mr. Winship’s daily woman. The door opened exactly the number of inches she required to look out of.

  “I’m Mr. McGrath. Mr. Winship expects me for lunch, I believe.”

  Her face fell into far more reproachful lines than Betty’s as she reluctantly opened the door full and stood aside.

  “Put your hat there, sir. And wait in here.” She nodded to the room at the right of the narrow hall. “I’ll tell him you’re here. Mr. McGrath, is it, sir?”

  The reproachful look was transforming itself into something more tight-lipped as she turned and plodded up the stairs.

  “He forgot to tell her,” Dan thought. He stepped into the small drawing room.

  “It’s an American gentleman, sir. He says you asked him to lunch. And you promised, sir. If you’d have told me, I could have brought in a bit of fish or—”

  The door upstairs closed before Dan heard the rest of it or Mr. Elliot Winship’s unhappy reply. He felt a sharp twinge in his own conscience. He’d forgot he was in a rationed world, that here people did not have food to throw around. He glanced at his hat on the hall table. It was too late. The door upstairs had opened again, and someone with feet less heavily plodding than the woman’s was coming down. Dan turned from the fireplace to meet him, and stood for an instant, not openmouthed but very near it, as Elliot Winship came briskly into the room.

  He was barely recognizable as the same man. He was as neat and glistening as the brass firedogs on his own hearth. His hair was meticulously brushed, his chalk-stripe grey flannel suit had not a wrinkle in it, his black shoes gleamed, his blue striped shirt, starched collar and maroon tie were immaculate. Only his eyes were recognizably the same, and his voice as he spoke.