by Bruce, Leo
“At last,” said Carolus and hurried from the room.
In the hall he had time to say—“Your husband’s quite all right. But go to him.” Then he rushed out to the car, started it, and moved away. He was soon on the London road.
And now it was, what he had so often claimed for issues in his cases, a matter of life and death. That name, combined with what Chumside had told him on the phone three hours ago, meant certainty, and a very ugly certainty at that.
Carolus was unconscious of fatigue. On the contrary he felt something like exhilaration as he sped across Sussex to the Kentish border. He felt justified in ignoring speed limits and barely slowed down for the silent and empty villages. He knew exactly his objective and counted on the powerful engine of his car to enable him to reach it in time.
When he came into the streets of Albert Park it was nearly half past three and the only living being he saw was a policeman on his beat. He drove to the car park from which he had taken his car and left it there. Then he set out for Slatter’s lodge at the park gates.
There was no wind or rain tonight, but the air was cold and damp, a dark and somehow miserable night. As he approached the lodge he saw no lights and thought the little stucco house on one floor looked grim and dreary among its close-growing shrubs. He stood outside for a moment listening and looking about him. Of the park behind its iron gates he could see almost nothing but the lodge was built so that its entrance was open to the road.
A porch was over the door and shrubs came close to this on either side. There was no electric bell and no knocker on the door but an iron bell-pull. Carolus heard a cracked sound as his tug at this set a bell ringing within the lodge. This died away bringing no response or movement from within.
Carolus tried again, with the same result. It was a sad sound which seemed to come out of a hollow emptiness as though the lodge had been unoccupied for years. It was hard to believe that within someone was alive, listening perhaps or in deep sleep.
He tried the door handle and found the door opened easily. He pushed it forward a foot and called “Slatter!”
Still no answer.
“Slatter! Are you there?”
Carolus shoved the door wide and stepped into a sitting-room. He groped to a light switch and found it.
The sitting-room was not large and there was too much furniture. A table with a table-cloth nearly filled its space. Carolus caught only a brief impression of this room before crossing to another door, but it was not an impression of a room left by someone retiring to bed. Nothing seemed out of place. The ashtray on the table was empty and clean and the air of the room seemed that of an unoccupied house.
But the house was not, in a sense, unoccupied. Carolus crossed to the door on the far side and flung it open. The light behind him showed someone lying fully dressed on the bed. Again he felt for a switch and illumined the room. The man on the bed was Slatter, lying in a position of complete repose, his eyes shut and his hands lying one on each side of him. He was quite dead.
Having made sure of this Carolus stood contemplating the dead body for nearly a minute. Then his eyes went round the room. There was a bedside lamp and this he had switched on from the door. He crossed to it and saw a switch almost within reach of the dead man’s hand. He tried it—a two-way switch. Thoughtfully he returned to the sitting-room and again moved the switches. Here too was a two-way switch, from one doorway to the other. Simple and logical. But both had last been operated by the switch nearest the exit.
He returned to the corpse. Lying beside Slatter on the counterpane was a strong villainous-looking butcher’s knife. Over the head of his bed was hung a raincoat, a grey muffler and a cloth cap. On the table by his bedside was a pair of heavy spectacles.
But beside him, too, were several tubes and bottles and one of them, which Carolus recognized, was a soporific, a pheno-barbitone preparation of moderate strength. The bottle was empty and the cap was lying beside it.
“He would have had to take a lot of those to kill himself,” thought Carolus and wondered why he had not got hold of one of the pheno-barbitone preparations which contained morphine. Slatter suffered from insomnia and could have obtained the necessary doctor’s certificate.
The inference, then, which the first discoverer of this scene was intended to draw was that Slatter was the Stabber and had killed himself by an over-dose of drugs after leaving his weapon and disguise beside him as a confession of his guilt. It was possible, on the known facts, but Carolus did not like it for a number of reasons. It was too neat, too obvious. Then if Slatter wished to confess why didn’t he do so unequivocably with pen and paper? And finally, why had he walked over to the front door in the sitting-room to turn that light out, and to the door into the sitting-room from the bedroom to turn out this one?
Carolus returned to the sitting-room and looked about him. His first impression of a room too tidy to have been left by a man going to bed remained. The chairs round the table were set straight, the single grimy cushion in the arm-chair by the range had been patted into place, there wasn’t a crumb or a sign of tobacco ash anywhere.
There was another door in the room which led to a small kitchen. Not a dish in the sink, not a used plate on the table. Carolus opened a cupboard and was met by a smell of stale food. ‘I always eat a bit of bread and cheese before turning in’, he remembered Slatter saying. Yes, here was the cheese, a half ball of yellow Dutch.
Carolus brought it to the light and examined it carefully. It was a little dry and its surface had turned to a deep yellow colour, but from one end of it a piece had been newly cut, showing a pale fresh surface.
He went on to the bread bin. Yes, the loaf too had had a slice cut from it, the surface had not had time to dry.
What then had been Slatter’s movements? The two sets of evidence were totally inconsistent. If he had, as it appeared, committed suicide was it credible that he had come home from the Mitre, set out his supper, eaten it, washed up, set everything back in its place, gone to his room after carefully juggling the light switches, and swallowed his whole supply of sleeping tablets, after laying out the articles which constituted his confession? If so, this was the strangest suicide on record.
But suppose he had had no such intention. Suppose he had come home, eaten his supper and then admitted someone. Someone in whose interest it was that he should die. Someone who hearing of his insomnia brought some tablets that would surely give him a good night’s rest. Then everything fell into place.
Or again, suppose he had met someone that evening who knew it was his habit not to lock his front door. Someone who suggested he should try these tablets to be swallowed an hour before retiring. Someone who could come to the house when they had taken their deadly effect? Once more everything fell into place.
Carolus replaced the cheese and bread and carefully closed the cupboard door. He had entered wearing his motoring gloves and either by intent or guided by instinct he had kept them on. He now switched out the lights leaving the two-way switches as he had found them. Then he stepped out of the lodge quietly shutting the door after him, and walked away.
Seventeen
IT was the plain duty of Carolus to go to the nearest police station and report what he had found, or at least to telephone. But here he was up against an awkward predicament. If he reported the matter his name would go into police records as the finder of the body and the press would very soon publish a report of this. He could smile at the headmaster as a good pompous creature, but he took his job seriously and he had promised that his name should not emerge. If he waited till the morning and saw Dyke himself, Dyke would see that it was to his own interest, and to that of the police force, that an efficient policeman should be the first to discover the tragedy and would be willing to leave Carolus out of it.
Nothing much could be lost by keeping his information till the morning, when he could see Dyke personally. So not without misgivings and in full knowledge that he was breaking the law he came quietly and watchfull
y away from the lodge.
He drove to number 32, this time leaving his car outside, and within twenty minutes of leaving the lodge he was asleep.
When he had made himself a cup of tea next morning he set out at once for Albert Park Police Station which Dyke had made his headquarters. He still felt no great compunction at not having done this five or six hours earlier but realised that his omission might not endear him to Dyke. Nor would his discovery of the body, for that matter.
He found a spruce sergeant at the desk and asked to see Detective Superintendent Dyke. The sergeant looked at him coolly and asked his name, which Carolus gave. A slip of paper was dispatched by a constable to unknown regions.
“Chilly again this morning,” said Carolus to the sergeant who continued to occupy himself with the book in front of him.
A buzzer sounded and the sergeant said, “Yes, sir,” several times then turned to Carolus.
“The Superintendent can’t see you,” he said. “He’s too busy. He advises you to get out of Albert Park as soon as possible.”
Carolus turned to go.
“That’s all right,” he said smiling. “You might tell him I came to report a murder, would you?”
“What d’you mean? Are you trying to be funny?” asked the sergeant savagely. “Here! Come back. What do you mean, murder?”
Carolus resisted the temptation to be sarcastic and said, “Just murder, that’s all. I happen to have come on the corpse.”
The sergeant lost his head a little.
“If you’re trying anything on it’ll be the worse for you,” he told Carolus.
Carolus remained silent.
“I’m not having any larks round here. You said murder.”
Disconcertingly, Carolus made no reply.
“If there’d been any murderwe’d have heard aboutit,” said the sergeant. “Coming here talking about murder!”
“Well, good morning,” said Carolus from the door.
“Wait a minute. If you’ve got something to report you’d better report it.”
“Exactly. That’s what I came to do. To Superintendent Dyke.”
There was a long pause, then a second slip of paper was dispatched.
Was there something ferocious in the buzz this time?
“He wants to see you, though, sir,” said the sergeant unhappily into the telephone. “Yes, that’s what he says. I’ve told him that. Very well, sir.”
“He’ll see you,” said the sergeant shortly. “Take him up will you, Whesker?”
Carolus found Dyke alone behind a desk. They exchanged no greeting.
“What’s all this nonsense?” asked Dyke before Carolus could speak.
“Murder,” said Carolus.
Dyke watched him craftily.
“Go on, Mr. Deene. Go on. Have your little game. I’ve warned you once.”
“You have indeed. Perhaps I should have let you find the corpse yourself. I expect you would have, some time today.”
Dyke made efforts to control himself.
“Whose corpse?” he asked dangerously.
“Slatter’s. The park-keeper. He has been poisoned,” Carolus replied.
For a moment Dyke hesitated and then the efficient detective that he was got the better of his annoyance.
“Give me full details, please.”
“Certainly. That’s what I came to do. Slatter is lying, fully dressed, on his bed at the lodge of Albert Park. He died some time during the night, probably from an overdose of sleeping pills. A butcher’s knife, presumably the one with which the three earlier murders were committed, is beside him. A raincoat and cap are over the head of his bed. There is also a grey muffler.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I happened to call on him, and found what I have described.”
“Call on him? What time?”
“Must have been around four o’clock this morning.”
Dyke seemed about to break out again but controlled himself.
“What makes you think he was murdered?”
“Ah, there we enter private territory, Superintendent. What makes me think is my own affair. What you will think when you see it all is yours. Let’s leave it at that.”
“I want to know what took you to Slatter’s lodge at four o’clock this morning.”
“Shall we say a hunch?”
“You mean you thought you would find what you did?”
“I feared I might. Unfortunately I couldn’t get there quicker. I came up from Hastings in less than ninety minutes.”
“What’s Hastings got to do with it?” asked Dyke despairingly.
“Oh nothing, really. I had to get some information there.”
“Mr. Deene,” said Dyke at last. “I don’t deny I think you’re a nuisance. If I had the power to prevent your sort from nosing round I’d do it. It’s dangerous in a case like this. And if what you tell me now is true it lays you open to some very serious charges. Very serious. You might even be considered an accessory after the fact.”
“Why not the murderer? After all I’m the only person you know of who went to Slatter’s lodge last night.”
“I’ve no reason to think yet there has been a murder. All you have told me so far points to suicide.”
“You’ll soon see for yourself,” said Carolus, rising to go.
“You’ll be wanted at the Inquest,” said Dyke sharply.
“Yes. That’s awkward isn’t it. I don’t want my name in this. Wouldn’t it be better for one of your men to ‘discover’ the corpse? Who is to know that you had prior information? Slatter will be missed at his work by now. What more natural than that a policeman should go to his lodge and find him, then report to you? That, surely, would suit both of us.”
Dyke was struggling.
“You’d better be at the Inquest, anyway,” he said at last.
Carolus would like to have been present when Sergeant Murdoch, a sturdy member of the uniformed branch, was given instructions to proceed to Albert Park and after obtaining information that Slatter had not appeared that morning go to the lodge to investigate, thereupon telephoning to the Station to state what he had found. Within an hour or less, Carolus calculated, Dyke would be able to make his investigation, the police being solely responsible for the discovery.
All might have been well at the Inquest if Sergeant Murdoch, a dyed-in-the-wool old timer who used every police cliché in the book, had not started to give his evidence with words which had served him well in many a dubious prosecution.
“Acting on instructions,” he began. “I proceeded to …”
But the Coroner, a lively hawk of a man, was too quick for him.
“Instructions?” he snapped. “What instructions?”
Sergeant Murdoch gaped.
“Instructions to proceed to Albert Park,” he replied resentfully without realizing where he was being led.
“Whose instructions?” asked the Coroner.
At least Murdoch knew better than to involve the CID man. All his training had taught him to keep his superior officers out of the witness-box.
“The Desk Sergeant said …”
“Am I to understand that some information had already been received at the Station?”
Sergeant Murdoch was baffled. Never before had one of his stock phrases been so mauled and shaken in a court.
“Acting on instructions …” he tried again.
“I shall require further information on this point,” said the Coroner firmly.
So it was that Carolus found himself giving evidence.
The Coroner showed him no mercy.
“You are, I understand, a schoolmaster?”
“I am.”
“Are you in employment?”
“Yes.”
“At what school?”
“The Queen’s School, Newminster,” admitted Carolus, trying to picture Mr. Gorringer’s face when he read his evening paper.
“Are you a resident of Albert Park?”
“I hav
e been staying here during the school holidays.”
“Why?”
It was an understandable question in the circumstances. What sane man, it implied, would choose Albert Park for his vacation. But it left Carolus no escape.
“I was interested in the three murders which had taken place here.”
“Oh, you were? Interested. You consider yourself, perhaps, a criminologist?”
“I am an abnormally inquisitive person,” retorted Carolus calmly.
“Inquisitive about murder?”
“Often, yes.”
“Was it inquisitiveness which led you to visit the lodge of Albert Park in the small hours of the morning?”
“Oh yes.”
“And what did you expect to find?”
“Rather what I found. At least I feared that.”
“Are you calmly telling me that you expected the dead man to take his own life?”
“No. I expected nothing of the sort.”
“You are very evasive, Mr. Deene. Please tell me why you went to this lodge as you did?”
“I thought Slatter might be in danger.”
“Indeed. If that was so, why didn’t you report the matter to the police?”
“It would have been useless. Dyke had made it clear that he wanted no information from me. I had no definite or concrete facts to give him and I have none now. It was guesswork, or instinct, if you like.”
“Guesswork told you that Slatter would take his own life?”
“Guesswork told me that Slatter would be murdered.”
The Coroner allowed himself a cold stare at Carolus, but did not pursue this point.
“At what time did you find the body?”