Homicide House

by Zenith Brown

  “Oh, I say. Frightfully glad to see you, Mr.—I’m so stupid about names—”

  “McGrath,” Dan said.

  He felt a slight twinge of half-amused annoyance. It was utterly apparent that Elliot Winship had not only forgotten his name, but had no memory of ever having seen him before in all his life. The mild but desperate scratching around in his mind could not have been clearer.

  “I say, do sit down, won’t you ? What about a bit of sherry ? Or gin and orange. You Americans aren’t sherry drinkers, are you, really? Do sit down, I’ll get it. Mrs. O’Neill is temperance and won’t touch the stuff. I say, I’m sorry I’ve no cigarettes.” He opened a box on the table. “I’m afraid I’m out. I seldom smoke myself. It’s so much trouble to find the things.”

  He started out the door and stopped. “I say, why don’t you come along up to my diggings ? It’s so blasted precise down here. Do come along.”

  Dan followed him up the stairs. Through the closed doors of the domestic reaches of the house he could hear a vehement rattle of pots and pans. They went along to the front of the house. Elliot Winship’s diggings were not precise, but the diagrams and drawings the room was full of were orderly and well-dusted.

  “I do hope you’re not in any frightful rush. Lunch is always late on—”

  Mr. Winship stopped, pondering. “On Wednesday. I say, it is Wednesday, isn’t it? As a matter of fact, lunch is late every day in the week.”

  He smiled at Dan. “The whole business of food is so stupid in England. It’s all anyone talks about. It’s a great bore.”

  He was at the cellarette at the end of the room against a temporary partition of composition board where a wall had been blown out, rattling along, still trying hard, Dan saw, to remember him.

  He turned suddenly with a happy smile. “Oh, now I place you,” he said. He laughed heartily at his own stupidity. “I’d got the name McDermott in my head. And I thought it was next week. You’re from Frazier-Heath, of course, about the plans for—”

  “No,” Dan said. He took the glass of lukewarm gin and orange squash his host held out to him. “I’m afraid you don’t remember me, Mr. Winship. I’m from Number Four Godolphin Square. I talked to you yesterday afternoon. You were hunting Arthur Pegott. The valet de chambre . . .”

  He stopped slowly. The expression on Elliot Winship’s face as he put his glass of gin and orange down on the corner of the desk could not have been more ludicrously blank.

  “Arthur Pegott?” It sounded like “Pigett” as he pronounced it. He looked anxiously at Dan. “Whatever was I looking for anyone named Pegott for? I—I’ve no idea whatsoever. But I’m sure you’re right,” he added hastily. “I have the most appalling memory.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well, as he was dead at the time.”

  Elliot Winship had picked up his glass. He put it down abruptly again and looked still more blankly at Dan. “Dead?”

  “Murdered.”

  Mr. Winship stared.

  “Look, my dear fellow,” he said. “What are you talking about? I am so sorry, but—you are in the right house, aren’t you? This is Fifty-three Saint Giles’s Terrace. My name’s Elliot Winship. I’m an architect. You’re sure you’ve not made some— some sort of error, of some sort? I mean, well, really, you know!”

  The expression on his face was so compounded of anxiety, solicitude and profound disturbance that the fantastically bizarre doubt that had been creeping negatively round in the background of Dan McGrath’s own mind sharpened into positive action.

  He hesitated for an instant. “I think you invited me here for lunch today, Mr. Winship, didn’t you?”

  “Well, my dear fellow—I’m delighted to have you. And, of course, I may have done. But, frankly, I have no memory of it. Frankly, the only place I could possibly have met you yesterday —unless I stopped you in the street—was at my club. But do wait a moment.”

  He went to the door in the composition wall and opened it. “Oh, I say, Mrs. O’Neill. Did I say where I was going yesterday after lunch?”

  Through the doorway Dan could see the solid figure, her face flushed, coming out of the kitchen door.

  “You did not, sir. Because you never went out. You worked all afternoon on them drawings I took to the post office for you at six o’clock, sir. The ones for the Dorrington Town Council. You’ll remember, sir, if you’ll stop to think of all the fuss and bother they’ve been to you, sir.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. O’Neill.”

  Winship closed the door and came back. “Remarkable woman. Memory of an elephant. Have some sherry, won’t you ? Now let me see. What were we saying? I remember. Well, I’m delighted you’ve come anyway. An American friend sends me food parcels, and Mrs. O’Neill hides them until someone unexpected drops in. Mrs. O’Neill has an acute mania for emergencies, I’m afraid.”

  He looked vaguely out of the window, off over Kensington Gardens.

  “Pegott,” he said. “Pegott. I’ll ask Mrs. O’Neill if she—”

  “It’s not important, sir,” Dan said. “He was the valet— permanent valet, I believe they called him—at Number Four Godolphin Square. You are the brother of Scott Winship, aren’t—”

  “Oh dear God,” said Elliot Winship. He put his glass abruptly down. “You know, I do get so irritated at all this nonsense about my brother. I thought Number Four Godolphin Square sounded curiously familiar. That’s where his unfortunate widow lives. Assuming she is his widow, not his wife. Of course, the thing’s so utterly fantastic. My niece was here yesterday—the day before. I don’t know, I’ll ask Mrs O’Neill. Some time recently. She thinks he’s back again. I must say it sounds perfectly ridiculous to me. Good Lord, Scott’s not a ghoul— why should they think he’s about haunting them every seven years? It’s nonsense. If he were back, he’d come see me. We were great friends. He was four years older than I. A charming fellow. I mean, really charming.”

  Mr. Winship shook his head slowly. “You know, I’ve never been able, my dear fellow, to believe Scott was really such a swine. I was up at Oxford when it happened. I suppose Louise has always kept thinking he’d come back. He’d always got some kind of curious wanderlust. Marriage was not his dish, really, and managing Caroline’s farm in Kent must have been an appalling chore, with an ill wife. I thought then that just the prospect of having a baby to look after too was too much for him— in his condition—so he skipped out. I could understand that. Reprehensible, of course. But I can’t understand his selling a valuable painting that belonged to his wife—it was a lost Vermeer, or so the American dealer believed—selling it and pocketing the money. That is hard for me to believe.”

  He gave Dan a quizzical deprecatory smile.

  “Of course, I don’t want to believe it. I’ll admit that. None of us likes to think he comes of tainted stock. But, if Scott took that money, I know he was mentally ill. He couldn’t have done it, otherwise. And he had got a lot of nasty stuff sticking in his brain from the war. Shrapnel, and that sort of muck. I was awfully fond of him, you know. But I say, you’re not interested in my family history, are you? I—I really mustn’t keep you. Perhaps you will lunch with me, one day soon.”

  He looked around as Mrs. O’Neill appeared at the door.

  “There’s a man downstairs, sir,” she said severely. “From the police. I do pray you’ve not gone and got yourself in trouble with them, sir.”

  “I sold my motor car, Mrs. O’Neill,” Mr. Winship said with some dignity. “Show the gentleman up, will you please? Dear me,” he added anxiously as she went down the stairs again. “I did sell it, didn’t I? Some time ago. They were always picking it up and hauling it off some place. Blasted nuisance, you know. Mrs. O’Neill will be very annoyed.”

  The heavy tread of solid boots on the staircase seemed suddenly to depress him. He was trying anxiously to recall what it was he could have done, as he rose and went toward the door. Dan saw the startled surprise on his face as it was not a blue uniform there but a tawny cinnamon-brown creati
on, and knew it was only a pallid reflection of the surprise that must have been on his own face as Chief Inspector Bull nodded soberly at him. He put down his glass and got to his feet.

  “That’s all right, sir,” Bull said. “Sit down.” He introduced himself to Elliot Winship. “I’m here about a man named Arthur Pegott.”

  Winship’s face was blank for an instant, and brightened. “Ah yes, of course. I was going to ask Mrs. O’Neill about him.” He went to the door, called her and waited, smiling at them. When she appeared he said, “Mrs. O’Neill—do we know anyone named Pegott? Arthur Pegott?”

  “We don’t know him, sir.” Mrs. O’Neill spoke with strong disapprobation. “We knew his father. A respectable, God-fearing man. He did work for you before the war. We never knew his son. He came here to see you—a month ago, I think it was, sir. I never liked the look of him, sir—a proper bad one he is and always has been, to my mind. I’d have none of him. Never comes near his own mother. He pretended he wanted to sell some of his father’s moulds. What’s his father to him? More likely bringing tales about the other Winships, sir. I told him we wanted none of him in this house.”

  “Oh dear me,” Elliot Winship said nervously. Dan McGrath saw that Inspector Bull was listening with quiet attentiveness.

  “I told him so far as we were concerned Mr. Scott Winship was in his grave, and decent people should let him rest in peace. And I never heard hide nor hair of him again, sir, till I saw in the paper this morning he’d been found dead in his own cupboard. Good riddance, if you ask me, sir, and your lunch is getting cold on the table.”

  “Dear me,” Winship said again as she went out. He looked at Bull. “I’m afraid we don’t know Arthur Pegott, Inspector.”

  “It was really about your brother I came anyway,” Bull said. He seemed to Dan to be as imperturbable as a friendly yak. “Have you got a picture of him? A photograph or a snapshot?”

  Elliot Winship shook his head. “I’ve got a sketch of him that I did when he was ill. Mrs. O’Neill saved it when we got an incendiary.” He motioned toward the temporary wallboard. “All my pictures and papers were destroyed. It’s in the dining room.”

  He went out and returned in a moment with a small framed pencil sketch of a thin-faced man, his head bandaged, a crutch under one arm.

  “It’s not very like. But he wasn’t himself of course. I wanted to photograph him—this was for a competition for a war memorial—but he couldn’t bear the click of a camera then.”

  He propped it up on the mantel and looked at it. “It’s not Scott, really,” he said, shaking his head.

  “May I take it, sir?”

  Elliot Winship hesitated a moment, looking oddly at Bull.

  “Do you think he’s come back?” he asked quietly. He was silent for a moment. “It’s been twenty-four years. He’d be fifty or so, now. I’d like to see him. Could a man forget, and remember, after that long? We were very happy as children, in Godolphin Square—especially when Caroline and Louise were away at school. Grandfather loved his pictures. He made us love them too—little barbarians, we both were. High tea with him was a sort of beautiful mystery. I suppose now some of the pictures were pretty bad—Edwardian taste, you know. That’s why I didn’t feel too strongly about it when the house was destroyed. I like to think they were all Titians and Correggios, and I’d have hated to see that young boor Dalrymple-Hughes get them, and bring in some supercilious bounder from the Tate and have him say a hundred quid for the lot. I dare say the frames are honest pear wood, or perhaps the Americans will buy them. One’s dreams are frightfully valuable, these days.”

  He stopped, suddenly remembering, apparently, that an American and a policeman were there in the room with him.

  “Oh, I say,” he exclaimed. “I do babble on. I’m so sorry.”

  He took the sketch from the mantel, looked at it a moment and handed it to Bull. “You may take it, but do tell Mrs. O’Neill so she won’t miss it. And if you find him, I’d like to see him. I have room here, and I’m sure Mrs. O’Neill could do for both of us.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Bull took the framed drawing. “You’ve not seen him, I take it, sir?”

  Elliot Winship shook his head. “Not since I made that sketch. I’ve not seen his wife but a few times. I was persona non grata in the house. Caroline felt he was an ingrate of the lowest order, as I think she easily might, and it extended to me. His daughter Mary started coming to see me during the war. We’ve become very fond of each other.”

  Elliot Winship brightened. “In fact, I gave her the only picture I had of her father—in uniform in the last war. I’m sure she’ll have it. Have you asked her ?”

  “I’d rather say nothing about it to the Winship ladies, just now, sir.” Inspector Bull turned to Dan. “I was on my way out to see you. But if you’ve not had your lunch—”

  “I think Mr. Winship would excuse me, Inspector.”

  Mrs. O’Neill was the only doubt he had, and he tried to avoid her offended gaze as she let them out the front door. He followed Bull down the steps.

  At the bottom Bull turned and looked at him.

  “You’ve got something on your mind, Mr. McGrath?”

  Dan nodded. “If you’re asking me, I’d say you could take that sketch back and leave it with Mrs. O’Neill.”

  “Why do you say that, sir?”

  “Because,” Dan said slowly, “Mr. Scott Winship is—back. I’ve seen him. Seen him and talked to him—outside Pegott’s door at quarter past four yesterday afternoon.”

  He felt something chillier in the atmosphere as he thought about it, though it was not a particularly cold day.

  “He’s the spitting image of his brother Elliot, Inspector—a little older, lighter sandier hair, a lot seedier. A lot happier, too, some way. More of a sense of humor than his brother. He told me he was Elliot Winship and invited me to lunch here today.”

  He hesitated for a moment as the two stood there on the sidewalk by the police car, Chief Inspector Bull looking at him silently.

  “Mr. Scott Winship knows everything that’s going on, Inspector. And if he could come out of that room after he killed Pegott—or even if he didn’t kill him, if he just saw him—and be as casual and charming and amused as that guy was, then that shrapnel must have wrecked any moral sense the guy ever had. Scott Winship has a sense of humor, all right, Inspector, but it’s a damned queer one—and I think he’s playing some kind of a joke on everybody.”

  14

  AT TWENTY minutes to three o’clock the postman going indifferently about his business in Godolphin Square came to more active life and set off toward the top of the road a short distance ahead of the small man in the shoddy grey suit and faded brown bowler who had come out of Number 4. Mr. Pinkerton, his furled umbrella clutched in one hand, nervously adjusted his steel-rimmed spectacles with the other as he glanced behind him to see if anyone was following him out of the house.

  It was seldom Mr. Pinkerton told a deliberate falsehood, and almost never to his friend and former lodger Chief Inspector Bull. But desperate times demand desperate remedies. Having denied any and all complicity with Daniel McGrath, the Winships en masse and Arthur Pegott in particular, in any degree whatsoever, and having kept his mouth miraculously shut in spite of the siren song that Scotland Yard per se whispered in his inner ear, he had now come to a number of distressingly regrettable and even grim conclusions.

  He had come to them quite on his own, behind the locked door of his bed-sitting room on the third floor. The first was that Mary Winship’s father was not dead, as Miss Caroline Winship averred, but very much alive, and definitely somewhere in or about Number 4 Godolphin Square. He had even been emboldened to subject Miss Myrtle Grimstead to extraordinary scrutiny on the strength of it. The second was that Mr. Scott Winship could now only be thought of as having turned, in some way, into a cold-blooded, cruel and ruthless person. The third was that unless he was laid by the heels, they could all of them be victims. There was no doubt in Mr. Pi
nkerton’s mind, among other things, that Mary Winship was right in believing her mother was being slowly poisoned to death, though he had not figured out how it was being managed. But in general, piecing together the bits and fragments of information he had got from Mary, and from searching his own mind for discarded memories of his own observations since he had lived in the house with the Winships, he had gathered himself what he regarded as a formidable body of evidence supporting those conclusions.

  Why, Mr. Pinkerton thought, had he himself been murderously attacked, immediately after he had, in a way, pretended knowledge of Scott Winship’s continued existence? Why had Pegott, who had been listening at the keyhole, and who had or claimed to have definite knowledge of Winship and his original crime, been brutally murdered just as he was apparently on the point of divulging it? And why did Scott Winship send the flowers twice yearly, effectively keeping his wife from be lieving herself a widow so she could marry Sidney Copeland, when he quite determinedly had no desire to return to her himself ?

  He had been spurred on to his third conclusion by the incident of the chambermaid Betty when she came to make up his bed that morning. The girl was badly frightened.

  “I don’t know what to do, I’m that worried, sir,” she had whispered, looking anxiously at the closed door. “It’s my key. The one that opens all the flats. I couldn’t have lost it off by itself, sir, but it’s gone.” She held up the wide metal ring she carried hanging by a ribbon tied to her apron belt. “It was missing last night. Sarah didn’t let on to Grimstead when she was giving her what for for not turning down old Miss Winship’s bed. She would be the one to make the complaint, sir, but Sarah told me because we’re not supposed to let it go off the ring. I’d not let it go. And it was on yesterday morning. Somebody must have pinched it when I was making up the rooms.”