So far in her efforts to discover “Mr. Bennington’s” real occupation and address she had drawn a blank. First she had tried the garage where the wrecked car had been taken, but the proprietor had told her that “Bennington” had traded in the car as scrap, it being damaged beyond repair, and taken a nominal price for it. Her inquiries after that, which had taken her to Guildford, had been confined to calling upon all possible garages and asking for particulars about a silver-haired man who had hired a private car. She had at last tracked down the garage, and only learned that his name was “Bennington” and his address the Middle Temple London. Since she knew that much already, it had not advanced her any.
But at least the Middle Temple seemed a likely starting point to reopen her investigation—hence her present journey to London, her reservation made in advance with the hotel at which she usually stopped when in the city.
Once she arrived in town, she had her taxi driver detour to the Middle Temple on the way to the hotel, despite his protests that it was useless going in that direction at that hour of night. Outside Vance Chambers in the famous old legal quarter of the metropolis the taxi pulled up and Elsa stepped out.
In the glimmer of the street lamps she peered at the brass plates outside Vance Chambers, but nowhere was there a sign of Adam Bennington, Barrister-at-Law. There was Todmore, Cranstall, and Bury—but no Bennington.
“Told you it was no use, miss,” the taxi driver said, watching her. “These law offices shut around five o’clock of an evening—”
“I know that,” Elsa told him curtly. “I’m simply checking up on a name—or trying to. Bennington, a barrister. His address should be here, but apparently it isn’t.”
“Sorry, lady.... Strite to your hotel now?”
“Yes, I suppose so,” Elsa sighed; then she hesitated before climbing back into the taxi. “Look, do you often drive through this quarter?”
“More times ’n I can count. Bin doin’ it for forty year nearly—takin’ these legal blokes to an’ from the station chiefly. Why?”
“You’ve never heard of one of then called Bennington, I suppose?”
“Sorry, miss. Don’t know their names anyway—or only a few of ’em. Bennington? What’s he look like? Sort o’ bloke you might know if you saw ’im again?”
“I imagine so. About six feet, very stout, and silver-haired. Be about fifty-five or sixty years of age.”
“Oh, ’im!” the taxi driver exclaimed. “Why, of course I know ’im! Drive ’im many a time from the station to ’ere, and from ’ere to his place in ’Arley Street. You’re miles off your track, miss. He isn’t a lawyer, an’ ’is name isn’t Bennington neither.”
“Harley Street?” Elsa repeated sharply. “That’s the doctor’s section, isn’t it?”
“Course it is, miss—an’ that’s what ’e is. Castle’s ’is name. Dr. Adam Castle. ’E’s one them blokes who fiddle with your nerves an’ brain. A—er—psycho.... Whatever you call it.”
“Psychologist?” Elsa suggested, in a low voice.
“Aye, that’s it. I’ll swear that’s the bloke you want, lady. Big, genial feller with—”
“Drive me to my hotel!” Elsa interrupted, and stepping inside the taxi she slammed the door and relaxed in the upholstery. She clenched her fists and, muttered to herself.
“So that’s it! Not a detective but a psychiatrist! He was planted there to study me. Not to look for clues. To probe into my mind, to find. out why things are as they are.... I never even thought of such a thing! But there’s an answer to it. Once I’m sure it is the same man, he has a daughter, a girl who’s never known a moment’s unhappiness, to judge from the look of her— Analyze me, will he?”
* * * * * * *
At ten o’clock the following morning, Castle and Chief Inspector Calthorp arrived at Hexley’s closed studio in Chelsea. Calthorp obtained the key from the janitor and opened the place up. Pensively Castle waddled in, hands in trousers pockets and small black hat on the back of his silvery head.
“Obviously a Bohemian!” he commented. “Of all the confoundedly untidy places!”
Calthorp grinned an acknowledgment and led the way into the adjoining dressing room, remarking:
“If there’s anything at all we’re likely to find, doc, it’ll be in here. I’ve searched already, but see what you can do.”
Castle lumbered after him and, breathing hard, stooped low down to shelves and reached high up to cupboards, ransacking both. The additional litter amidst that already accumulated did not seem to matter. Certainly Castle was thorough, more so than Calthorp had been. He examined crockery, a face flannel, and particularly an old razor blade that he finally tossed away.
“Nothing on that,” he sighed. “Dammit, the man couldn’t even cut his whiskers like a gentleman and leave us a blood trace.”
“Just the same, that may be an angle,” Calthorp said thoughtfully. “And one I hadn’t thought of. What about the old razor blades at his flat? There might be some. They are always pretty difficult things to get rid of.”
Castle nodded. “Yes, it’s worth a try. You hop over there, Calthorp, and see what you can find. You’ve already been through this place, anyway. I’ll see if I can find anything here.”
The chief inspector hurried away and Castle continued his prowl alone, gazing thoughtfully about him at intervals. He gave two smocks particular attention, examining the paint splashes on them, and finally he shook his head. Apparently, from the absence of blood traces, Hexley had not been wearing a smock when he had met with the accident with the dagger.
Beaten so far, Castle wandered into the studio and began an almost interminable exploration of everything within sight. Dusters in particular he studied minutely, and the handles of the paint brushes. The half-completed paintings also claimed his attention, but he arrived no nearer a solution to his problem. Finally he sat down, took off his hat and felt for his pipe. When Calthorp arrived back some thirty minutes later, he found the psychiatrist smoking solemnly and gazing in front of him.
“Well, any luck?” the chief inspector asked.
“The same question applies to you.” Castle slanted a blue eye. “What did you find at Hexley’s flat?”
“Nothing.... Or rather, almost nothing. We might do better if we pull down the building in which Hexley’s flat is situated.”
“What!”
“Sounds queer, I know,” Calthorp admitted moodily, “but it’s a fact.” He sat down and lighted a cigarette, fanning himself with his hat as the sun blazed through the opaque glass roof. He continued: “In the bathroom of his flat I couldn’t find any old razor blades at first, then after looking around I caught sight of one in a small crack in the plaster-cast wall. I tried to grab it, but I was too hasty and knocked it out of reach. I borrowed thin-jawed pliers and a torch from the proprietor, but the blade had gone. It must have dropped down between the space of the party walls separating Hexley’s flat from the one next to it. And since the walls go down seven floors I assume that the blade is behind the basement party wall—and maybe there are dozens of others like it.”
“In other words,” Castle grinned, “Hexley solved man’s greatest problem—what to do with old razor blades. So he put them through a crack in the wall, did he? Mmm. All right, in spite of inconvenience and compensation to pay, the party wall in the basement must be broken through and the base of the gap between the walls examined for old blades. On one of them there might be traces of brood from a facial cut. It’s our last chance, Calthorp.”
“Yes, I think you’re right,” the chief inspector admitted. “And I hope the A.C. is reasonable when I tell him what we have to do.”
The psychiatrist did not comment further. He was smoking absently and staring hard at the wooden floor of the studio. Then suddenly he took his pipe from his mouth and got to his feet. Without speaking he began a tour of the studio, examining in his travels each and every one of the paintings he could find, both on the floor and on the easels.
<
br /> “That’s interesting,” he said at length, pondering.
What is? What’s wrong?”
“In none of these paintings is there anything of a chocolate-brown shade—not even in this one of Elsa Farraday, half-completed. Reds, browns, and russets, but no chocolate-brown.... Let me see now.”
Castle picked up the palette and inspected it, then he studied each tube of paint. Turning, he said:
“Still no chocolate brown, or combination of shades to make that colour.”
“What about it?” Calthorp asked in wonder.
“Look!” And Dr. Castle pointed.
Calthorp gazed at the wooden floor near the easel containing Elsa Farraday’s portrait. The floor was liberally spattered with paint spots, a condition which Elsa herself had noticed when she had first entered the studio—but under the easel there were at least six comparatively new chocolate brown stains, varying in size.
“Good heavens, do you think—?” Calthorp leapt up suddenly.
“There’s no paint to account for those stains: it could be blood from Hexley’s injured hand,” Castle said. “The best thing you can do is get a man over here quickly to make a test with bendizine and hydrogen peroxide.”
Calthorp did not hesitate for a moment. He hurried from the studio and downstairs to the nearest telephone. Then he came back and with Castle contemplated the marks pensively.
“Just about how bloodstains would look after all this time,” he commented. “Maybe I shan’t have to pull down that party wall after all. I surely hope not.”
“On the other hand you may,” Castle told him. “If this stuff on the floor is blood it does not say that it is Hexley’s. It might belong to anybody who has been in the studio, or even to an animal. Bendizine is no respecter of species, unfortunately. However, let us not consider such a coincidence at the moment. The point is this: If we can find anything on the razor blades that we know Hexley had used to shave himself, and it should match this stuff—if blood it is—then we have proof.”
“Right enough,” Calthorp agreed, a gleam in his eye.
With some difficulty he kept his patience until at last the man from the forensic department with his little “bag of tricks” arrived. He nodded as the chief inspector indicated the spots and immediately went down on his knees to commence work. Carefully he scraped up the deposit from one of the spots and placed it on a strip of filter-paper glued to a glass slide. Then he added the drop of combined bendizine and hydrogen peroxide.
Instantly the chocolate-brown spot turned a bluish green and spread quickly over the filter paper.
“Blood!” Calthorp exclaimed in delight. “You guessed right, doc! Okay,” he added to the forensic expert, “take up the rest of this stain deposit and have it analyzed for blood-grouping right away. Send the report to my office.”
“Right, sir.”
Calthorp waited until the job was completed and the man had gone, then he turned again to the psychiatrist.
“That settles that. I suppose we’d better see now what we can do about that party wall business.”
“No doubt of it—and there’s certainly no need to ask the A.C. whether you should or not. Damnit, man, it only needs the removal of a brick from the basement wall, roughly on a line with the bathroom seven floors higher up. The rest is simply a matter of a small magnet on the end of a stick. Come—I’ll show you.”
Content to leave developments to the unorthodox Castle, Calthorp locked up the studio and then followed the psychiatrist downstairs and out to the waiting police car. On the way to Hexley’s flat Castle made two unavailing attempts to buy a magnet; but the third time at a radio and electrical shop he was successful and emerged beaming, with a horseshoe magnet clasped in his podgy hand.
“The yard owes me for this, apart from my usual fee,” he said dryly, handing over the paid bill. “I don’t suppose we need to buy a hammer and chisel. The proprietor should have those.”
The proprietor had, but for all that he did not appear particularly attracted to the idea of having the basement wall hammered through.
“In other words, my dear sir, you would prefer that we get the necessary authority to make you give permission?” Castle inquired, his enormous frame towering over the small vinegar-faced man.
“I doubt if you could ever get permission to do a thing like this,” the man snapped. “The law has certain advantages, I know, but when it comes to smashing up the property of a law-abiding tax payer I—”
“Upon your co-operation, either forced or voluntary, there may depend a life,” Castle told him solemnly. “To get the authority will mean delay. In that time an innocent person might be grievously wronged. You knew Mr. Hexley and he was a good tenant. Do you think it is altogether public-spirited of you to take this attitude when taking a brick out of the wall might produce his murderer?”
“Murderer? Behind there?”
“I stand corrected,” Castle murmured. “I should have said the necessary clue to perhaps indict his murderer. The clue being old razor blades.”
The proprietor sighed. “Oh, all right. The inspector mentioned about the razor blade business. I can see I’ll get no peace if I don’t agree. Come on down to the basement and I’ll give you an idea where the straight line from Hexley’s bathroom should finish.”
After taking a hammer and chisel from the tool chest he led the way out of his office, along a corridor, and down a flight of stone steps which opened on to a wide underground area with plain brick walls. Electric bulbs gleamed at intervals from a steel conduit.
Castle and Calthorp stood watching as the proprietor stood in various positions, his head on one side as her assessed the right-hand wall. Finally he nodded and tapped a certain spot.
“Be about here,” he said.
“Thanks.” Castle moved over and took the hammer and chisel from him. “Now let’s see what we can do. Here, Calthorp—you are slimmer than I. Get busy.”
Calthorp went down on his knees and began operations, the proprietor watching and wincing at intervals. Nor did the bland expression on Castle’s round face make him seem any the happier.
In ten minutes Calthorp had smashed through the mortar and eased the brick out gently. At Castle’s request the proprietor searched round for and presently found a long stick. With the magnet secured to the end of it Calthorp eased it into the hole in the wall and fished about carefully. When he finally withdrew the magnet all manner of metallic objects were clinging to it. There were razor blades by the dozen, old and rusted; ancient tin tacks, pins, metallic bits from piping shavings....
Carefully Castle picked off the razor blades, nearly three dozen of them, and tipped them into an envelope. The remaining rubbish he threw back into the cavity and Calthorp replaced the brick.
“Well, not as bad as I’d expected,” the proprietor admitted, a trifle mollified. “Get what you wanted, gents?”
“Definitely,” Castle responded. “Now, if you can find us some mortar we can put—”
“Never mind that. I’ll patch the brick up for myself.”
“Splendid! Then we’d better be on our way, Calthorp.”
The chief inspector nodded and in fifteen minutes he and the psychiatrist were back at Scotland Yard, in the forensic department. In silence they watched the experts get to work on the blades, whilst another group were conducting a precipitin test on the deposit that had been removed from the studio floor.
Amongst the razor blades only two in the three dozen had worthwhile stains upon them, turning blue under the bendizine and hydrogen peroxide test. Castle glanced at Calthorp and noted the look of profound satisfaction.
“Hurry it up,” the chief inspector said. “We’ll wait.” To hurry a precipitin test, however, was something chemically impossible, and accordingly it was towards noon when a fuming Calthorp and imperturbable Castle received—in the chief inspector’s office—the information for which they were waiting.
“Both groups are O, sir,” the expert said, putt
ing the classification card on the table.
“They are, eh?” Calthorp gave a grim smile. “All right—many thanks.”
He picked up the cards as the expert went out and Castle gave his slow, fleshy chuckle.
“Well, Calthorp, there it is. Hexley’s group is O—quite a common group—and that on the handbag, belt, and handkerchief was A-B, the rare group. In other words, Miss Farraday fixed things up for herself. The best thing we can do now is to confront her with this information and see how she reacts. I have the feeling that she’ll break down.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
About the time the chief inspector and Castle were awaiting results Elsa Farraday was studying the telephone directory in her hotel. Finally she ran her finger along an entry—
Castle, Adam. Neurologist and Psychiatrist.M
Mordaunt Chambers, Harley Street. Central 1695
(Residence: The Elms, Heston Grove, Hampstead.
HAMpstead 78)
“Hampstead,” she mused, making a note; then she put the directory aside and walked over to one of the telephone booths, closing the door tightly. She dialled Central 1695 and waited. After a moment or two a woman’s pleasant voice spoke.
“Dr. Castle’s chambers. Who is speaking, please?”
Elsa took full stock of the inflexions in the woman’s voice and responded in a voice utterly unlike her own—hesitating and nervous.
“Oh—er—I’m Miss—Miss Prentiss. Could. I see—see the doctor this morning, do you think? It’s most ur—urgent.”
“I’m so sorry, Miss Prentiss. Dr. Castle is out on business for the day. He has cancelled all appointments. Tomorrow perhaps?”
“Tomorrow? Oh.... Er—who is that speak—speaking?”
“I am the doctor’s secretary. Shall I make an appointment for you for tomorrow?”
“Ye-yes, maybe that would be as well, Miss—er—”
“Taytham.”
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