Homicide House

by Zenith Brown

  He turned as Sidney Copeland came back from the room to which they had carried her.

  “Your task is here, Mr. Copeland,” he said evenly. “Not there. There’s no pity needed for a murderess. This woman killed a man she was in love with because he married another woman, and then carried on a sadistic torture under the guise of kindness to that woman and her child—pretending she’d paid the dealer back out of her own pocket when there’s no doubt she merely returned him the money she’d taken from Scott Winship when she killed him the night of October second —pretending that a letter had come from him in Monte Carlo when her sister was too ill to detect the forgery, and destroying it in a pretence of anger before anyone else could see it.

  “There’s no doubt Miss Winship has for years been administering poison to her half-sister Mrs. Winship—to bring on the supposed attack of asthma whenever the flowers that she herself had sent arrived, and every time her sister made up her mind that her husband would never return, and decided to have him declared dead so she could marry the man who’d stood faithfully by her year after year. It was nothing poisonous to anyone else in the house. It was something she could herself easily administer, when she pleased, to keep up the fiction in the minds of reputable medical men that it was a psychic disturbance, connected with the presumed presence of her husband. Miss Caroline Winship was playing on her faith and affection, trying to destroy her before her death even, in the minds of her daughter and the man who wanted to marry her. People get tired of neurotic women, always sick and worn out.”

  Louise Winship, stunned and scarcely breathing, kept her eyes blindly on him, as in a daze.

  “We can find out what it was. The valet Pegott had a tin of mushrooms in his despatch case. I’ve wondered if he suspected this part of Miss Winship’s design too.”

  Louise Winship shook her head. “I never eat mushrooms. They made me sick as a child. I’ve never touched them since.”

  “Then mushrooms they were,” Bull said dryly. “The liquor from the tin in your broth would be all you’d need, Mrs. Winship. If your attacks hadn’t always been connected with the fiction of your husband, your doctors would have had you in hospital finding out what it was—if your sister had allowed you to go. An allergy to mushrooms, or to anything of the sort, ma’am, would have made you deathly ill, in the way you were. And that’s no doubt why during the war you weren’t ill. Your sister was too busy worrying whether a bomb or the blast would wreck her house and expose her guilt, and tinned mushrooms were not easy to get. I imagine you’ll be a well woman, now, ma’am. And you can thank Miss Grimstead’s prying ways that you’re still alive. Her and Dalrymple-Hughes. It was him hammering his bolts in the woodwork she heard and came up to investigate.”

  He turned to Copeland with an inquiring glance. The surgeon shook his head.

  “There’s no chance, Inspector. But if she could pull out, she’d be paralyzed for life.”

  Mary Winship held tight to Dan’s hand. “I don’t want her to live and suffer,” she said quietly. Her face was still white, her eyes wide with shock. “I—I can’t believe it. She was always kind to me.”

  Inspector Bull passed over without remark an error of omission in prognosis that Scotland Yard could hardly be expected to make but that there was no need to mention.

  “I think you were the one person alive that she cared about, Miss Winship,” he said gently. “She tried to send you away when she felt things were closing in, to keep you out of it. I expect she could have thought of you as her child.”

  Louise Winship sat up, breathing deeply, as if testing whether she could really breathe again, freely and without fear.

  “It’s very strange,” she said unsteadily. “Once, a long time ago, I—I knew he was dead. I knew it very clearly. But then I’d forget. I told Caroline. She said it was because I wished him dead, so I could marry. I remember now the night we were bombed. She kept crying, ‘They’ll never find him.’ Over and over again. And when the demolition people came, she sat at this window and didn’t move, or eat, for days. One day she looked over there and said, ‘God has saved my house for me. I’ll build it up again.’ She tried to get a license to rebuild.”

  She breathed a deep free breath again.

  “We didn’t mean to be wicked, to hurt her so. She had taken care of him. And he—when he was very ill, he had thought he was in love with her—before we met. It was cruel, but we couldn’t help it. We were terribly in love.”

  She held out her hand, and Bull took the newspaper clipping out of his pocket and gave it to her.

  “The King and Queen have returned from Sandringham.”

  “King George and Queen Mary,” Louise Winship whispered. Bull watched her reading the old announcement.

  “A marriage has been arranged and will soon take place between Scott William Winship, late of H. M. Guards, and Miss Caroline Winship, daughter of the late Colonel Elliot Philip Winship, D. S. O., of 22 Godolphin Square.”

  She closed her eyes for an instant. “It was the—the very day we were married. We didn’t know, of course, that she’d got the announcement off to the press, and we were going to tell her the next day. We were terrified. But she found out. She pretended not to mind. She insisted we be properly married, at home, not to embarrass her. Then she took care of us. We had nothing but the picture. We couldn’t bear it, eating her bread and living in her house. That’s when we decided to sell the picture. We weren’t sure it was genuine. Scott was almost frantic with delight when he got me on the phone and told me we’d got ten thousand pounds. But we were afraid to tell her. He was going to Paris and get us a flat. I thought the excitement had brought back his illness, when I didn’t hear from him. I was afraid to tell Caroline. She was so kind to me, and so bitter because he’d left me.”

  Sidney Copeland went over to her. “Don’t, my dear. It’s through with, now. I was a fool, not to see.”

  For one moment it seemed to Dan McGrath that Mr. Sidney Copeland was very nearly human—until the surgeon hap pened to notice then, off in a corner, an almost forgotten man. Mr. Elliot Winship. He stiffened slightly.

  “I don’t see what brought you into all this.”

  Elliot Winship took his pipe out of his pocket and looked at it. He looked up at everyone then with a quiet deprecatory smile.

  “Trying to help out, that’s all,” he said apologetically. “Made a frightful mess of it, I expect.” He looked at Dan, shaking his head in genuine ruefulness. “Must really apologize, old boy. Swine, absolute swine. No lunch. Foul cocktail. Tepid stuff —horrible. Felt like an ass, a complete ass, trying to have you on. But, you see, I’d not done young Pegott in. I’d been in his room, too, but I’d just sat there waiting for the bounder to come in. Never thought of looking in the wardrobe. Never crossed my mind. Then Mrs. O’Neill said he’d been to see me about the ruddy moulds. And I’d known his father. Good man, Old Pegott. Jolly fine stonemason, always talking in riddles about missing valuables walled up somewhere. I expect he’d twigged. In part. Knew there might be something back of that metal screen. Heard about the blasted picture later. I always thought he was a bit addled, you know. Until Mary got the wind up about this other McGrath fellow that wrote the book, and all that.”

  Elliot Winship looked around at them a little more cheerfully.

  “Well, put two and two together, then, and all that sort of thing. There was some plaster on his rug—sort of thing I’d notice, d’you see—and there was Caroline’s wretched house staring me in the face. That’s when I twigged. In part too, may I say. Thought I’d have a look at the place last night.”

  He smiled less happily then at his niece. “So sorry, old girl. But you really had me bothered. Didn’t mean to frighten you. I’d just got out of the clutches of the gendarmes—and my friend here . . .”

  He glanced at Mr. Pinkerton, who, still white-faced himself and shattered, stood back against the wall, looking little like anyone’s friend.

  “. . . and all I could think of was to mak
e a run for it. Didn’t know you’d tumbled down the stairs till I rang up good old Grimstead this morning. Thought I’d best see the Chief Inspector at once.”

  He took the square of oatmeal tweed out of his raincoat pocket and looked at it ruefully. “Only got two suits left, you know. Expect Mrs. O’Neill can see an Invisible Mender to patch me together again. If anyone can see an Invisible Mender— wonderful woman. But I am sorry, Mary, you know. I hope McGrath doesn’t hold it against either of us. And you do look frightfully disreputable, my dear.”

  He smiled at her, and she looked at Dan.

  “I’ll string along still,” said McGrath the magnanimous. “I guess she’ll patch up as well as your coat.”

  Sidney Copeland cleared his throat.

  “If I understand your idiom, Mr. McGrath,” he said, “perhaps I’d better remind you that in England we like to know something about the young men our daughters marry—about them and their families, and their families’ antecedents, if they’ve got—”

  “Good old Copey.” Elliot Winship interrupted him amiably. “Spoken like a true Heart of Druid Oak, old man. And as an expectant stepfather, he’s right, you know, McGrath. Absolutely right. We’ve heard about these wolves with an easy grin. Got to keep up our austerity standards, old chap. Now, how many murderers can you offer? Can’t let down the bars, you know. You’ve got to measure up—”

  “Elliot!”

  Mrs. Winship’s strength was coming back.

  “Sorry, old girl. But it does rather occur to me that McGrath has a damned lot more reason to ask for our credentials than we’ve got to ask for his. If I were Mary I’d not stand back. I’d take him, no questions asked. Look at his face. God never made a counterfeit, you know. And Copey surely knows enough to know that McGrath had nothing whatsoever to do with his nationality at birth.”

  He smiled at Dan, and Dan grinned back. “Thanks, pal.” He turned to Sidney Copeland. “But you’re right, sir. The McGraths don’t mind being investigated. There’s our Embassy. Or try your own consul in Baltimore. But after all, it’s up to Mary, isn’t it ? Or is it ? I forget I’m not at home.”

  “Yes, it is, Mr. McGrath.” Louise Winship smiled at him. “It’s up to Mary.”

  “She’ll have to live in Baltimore, Marlyand. She’ll have to learn how to cook if she doesn’t know how. A pioneer woman, drawing the water and hewing the wood. When she can hobble around, that is. We don’t work our women when they’re lame. She won’t have much money till I make it, but she’ll—”

  “Oh, don’t, Dan, don’t!” Mary pulled herself up with her one good hand onto her one good foot. “Please don’t! I don’t care if we starve. All I want is—”

  “Good girl,” Dan said. “Here, use this.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped her face tenderly with it. “You’re sweet, Mary. Maybe life won’t be so tough, where you and I are going.”

  “I say,” Elliot Winship murmured. “I’d rather like to go there myself. I could do with a joint of beef. I’m so fed up with offal.”

  24

  INSPECTOR BULL had gone. Dan could see him through the window, his burly figure moving through the ragged overgrown rhododendrons across to the house where the staircase curved gracefully up to the sky.

  “Well, I think Mr. Pinkerton and I’ll go along,” he said.

  He lifted Mary Winship’s chin and kissed her gently.

  “Get well quick, will you, honey? I’m tired of always having an audience around. It ruins my technique.”

  Mary smiled up at him. “I think it’s quite—okay.”

  “Speak your own language, lady. You speak yours and I’ll speak mine. Good-bye now. I’ll be back.”

  A sort of dumb compassion wrinkled his lean earnest face as he looked down at her. “Don’t think about it, Mary, sweet,” he whispered. “Don’t let it get you down, baby. It’s—”

  She buried her dark head quickly in his shoulder for a moment. “Oh, no! It’s—it’s horrible—but at least we know. There’s nothing we can do. We don’t have to worry and wonder, and be always waiting, any more. And Mother—Mother’ll be well again.”

  “That’s my girl.” He held her tightly for an instant, and then for the fourth time his audience made no difference to McGrath of Baltimore.

  Out in the hall Mr. Pinkerton stopped and took off his steel-rimmed, lozenge-shaped spectacles, and polished them with his torn handkerchief. They were unaccountably blurred. He blinked his eyes, put the spectacles back on, and looked timidly up at Dan McGrath.

  “I’m very pleased, Dan,” he said. “I’m really very pleased, about you and Mary. I’d really like to congratulate you . . .”

  They shook hands solemnly.

  “And I’ve just thought of something,” Mr. Pinkerton said. “Do you recall ?—she always told everybody Scott Winship was dead. Miss Caroline, I mean. She said it over and over again. Oh, dear, what great fools she must have thought us, not to believe her when she was telling the truth.”

  “Right,” Dan said. “I thought of that, back in there. Let’s forget it now, shall we?”

  Mr. Pinkerton nodded vigorously. He was glad to forget it.

  “Well,” he said. His heart sank a little. “Well, I expect I should go back to my room.”

  It was so seldom that he felt the tremulous brush of the butterfly wings of romance rising above the terror and brutality of crime to erase the memory of it, and to flutter through his small grey heart leaving there a precious deposit of its radiant and iridescent dust, that he was loathe to let it go. He looked up at his new friend.

  “Nuts,” said McGrath. “You and I are going out and get some lunch and go to a movie. I guess the Winships’ll be glad to get rid of both of us a while. And I know just the picture you’d like to see.”

  It was in Oxford Street near Marble Arch. They crossed Park Lane after lunch at the Dorchester, where Mr. Pinkerton would no more have dared to go alone than he would have dared to call at Buckingham Palace at the sherry hour, and went into Hyde Park on their way to the Edgware Road. Small knots of listeners were clustered round the stands of the few hardy speakers already out. An occasional policeman strolled by, to protect the right of each and every one of them to say what he would, unmolested. Suddenly from the makeshift rostrum nearest the Marble Arch came a hoarse vibrant voice.

  “The wicked shall be repaid—and the good!”

  Mr. Pinkerton stopped dead, blinking, clutching at Dan’s coat sleeve. They could not see the speaker, but they did not need to.

  “Oh, dear!” Mr. Pinkerton said. “That means . . . Dear, dear. Miss Grimstead must have given him the sack.”

  “No,” said Dan. “He quit. Sarah told me this morning. He presented Miss Grimstead with his compliments, and left. Not —in those words, however. Something Biblical, Sarah said, that she couldn’t think of repeating.”

  “Goodness,” said Mr. Pinkerton.

  Nevertheless, he was somewhat relieved. He scurried past the knot of listeners round the former chef, keeping well on the off-shore side of Dan McGrath, trusting the chef would not see him or he the chef. While he had no reasonable doubt that the man was properly clothed, or the policeman would hardly allow him there in Hyde Park, in Mr. Pinkerton’s mind he would be forever clad in a simple nightshirt, and Mr. Pinkerton had no desire to see it again, or those bare feet and horny toes.

  He would, in fact, much rather see Miss Rita Hayworth. He knew, as he trotted along beside his friend McGrath, that that was what they were going to see at this cinema, because he had already been there twice. The queue of women formed outside the theatre dampened him for just a moment, as he was sure Dan was not the sort who’d queue up and stand in line, even for Miss Hayworth. Then his heart rose. The queue was not outside the theatre but outside the butcher’s next door, where a large sign in the window said “Offal Today.”

  Dan McGrath stared. “You don’t really eat the stuff? Or is that a critical comment on the dramatic offering presented next door?”

  Mr. P
inkerton blinked at him. He was a little bewildered.

  “Awful, I mean?”

  “Why, of course we eat it,” Mr. Pinkerton said warmly. “A grilled kidney is very nice. And calves’ liver. A young beef heart is nice too, when you can get it.”

  “Ah,” Dan said. He grinned. “That’s what you call them. I hope Mary’s careful what she says to my father. He calls them something else, though not in public, or when my mother’s around.”

  Mr. Pinkerton blinked again. Every time he thought he understood the Americans, something happened that convinced him he really had not yet reached that point.

  Inspector Bull stood on the hanging balcony of the bombed house with Inspector Carson, in front of the gaping hole in the chimney face. All that was mortal of Scott Winship had gone. The dried and blackened canvas dust, that with a woman’s passionate and embittered heart had been his death knell, sounded in the deserted house after the first way, waiting for a second then to rend the walls and send it echoing through the dying leaves to be heard again, was gone too. No one would ever know whether it was genuine or false, lost forgery or lost masterpiece crumbled irretrievably to flakes and shreds, some blown into nothing by the wind.

  “He was wedged just in there, sir, with the picture propped up in front of him. Poor devil. His skull was smashed. And this sheet was fixed in to cover him from sight.”

  He took up the square of galvanized tin leaning against the bricks. “It’s part of a furnace sheathing. She must have planned the whole thing out some time before and had this cut and brought to the house. She must have been strong as an ox to get him in here.”

  Bull nodded soberly. “Her father was paralyzed. She was used to lifting him about, I expect. She was a powerful woman. But this isn’t heavy.”

  He took the sheet of metal from Carson’s hands.