Close Quarters

by Michael Gilbert

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Hazlerigg, ‘for most of the main construction stands. We have only to put the time of the murder back a little farther. Appledown was – shall I say induced? – to go round to the engine shed immediately after the end of evening service. The murderer, as I see it, was waiting there for him. He hit him on the head, hid the stick, dragged the body a little farther out of sight – slightly grazing the face as he did so – picked up the hat, which had rolled off, and walked calmly up the path to Appledown’s front door, letting himself in with Appledown’s key. He then—however, I mustn’t waste the time of two very busy gentlemen in conjecture.’

  Neither of the two busy gentlemen referred to looked at all adverse to a little more of this inspired conjecture, but Hazlerigg gave them no time to voice a protest.

  ‘I and Dr. Smallhorn have worked out, with Mrs. Meadows, the school matron, a little plot which I hope may help us. Now what I want you to do is this. Will you and Mr. Scrimgeour go over to the school together, timing yourself to arrive there at a minute before four o’clock? We must remember to synchronise our watches before I go. The maid will let you in, and you will say that you have come to see Dr. Smallhorn. He will be in his study at that moment, and there will be someone with him. He will come out to meet you, and you will all meet in the hall.’

  The Dean nodded, and Mr. Scrimgeour made a methodical note.

  ‘You will explain that you have come to clear up a few points about young Brophy’s effects – Mr. Scrimgeour will be able to add the necessary legal touches there. Dr. Smallhorn will be standing in the door of the study so that anyone who is already inside will be unable to push his way out without rudeness and so will naturally be able to hear all that you say. Take your time, and make it sound natural, please.’

  The Dean thought of disastrous attempts at charades at deanery parties, and groaned in spirit.

  ‘You will particularly ask Dr. Smallhorn whether all of John’s effects have been gathered together and where they have been put. Dr. Smallhorn will probably appeal to Mrs. Meadows; she struck me as being a most competent woman, by the way. She will say something to the effect that they have all been collected and put in the linen-room, his trunk and handbag packed, and his few personal belongings parcelled up with the luggage.’

  His hearers nodded.

  ‘One of you – I think Mr. Scrimgeour – will then ask whether John had much in the way of personal belongings, and the matron will say “No, just one or two books and some old letters and papers,” and Dr. Smallhorn will say “Would you like to take charge of it at once?” You gag a bit, and then conclude that “Tomorrow morning will do.” Then change the subject and go on talking about anything you like. I think the third party will push off at this juncture – all correct?’

  ‘Don’t you think,’ said the Dean anxiously, ‘that we ought to rehearse it a bit?’

  ‘I had thought about that,’ said Hazlerigg, ‘and I should say it would be better not to. It’ll never sound quite so natural once it loses its first fresh bloom. We must go now and fix our end of it. Au revoir.’

  ‘At Philippi,’ said the Dean gravely.

  Half an hour had gone by.

  Hazlerigg and Pollock, having climbed two garden walls and slipped through the kitchen quarters of the choir school (happily empty at that time), were now ensconced in the stifling discomfort of the school linen-room. This was a large and functional apartment on the first floor, its shelves filled with best and second-best suits and heaps of well-darned vests and pants and poplin shirts.

  Near the door a green canvas trunk, strapped up, bore the initials J.B., with a handbag and a brown paper parcel on top of it.

  A ready-made hiding-place had been found behind a row of bath towels hanging from a crossbar.

  It was very hot.

  ‘Whilst we’re waiting,’ said Hazlerigg quietly, ‘I think I might improve the shining hour by telling you what we are waiting for. The only thing which prevented me from doing so before was an overdeveloped ego and a natural desire to surprise.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Five to four. Plenty of time yet. On second thoughts, Sergeant, supposing you tell me first how far you’ve got.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Pollock. The steamy atmosphere was combining with the heat of the day to make him feel terribly sleepy, and talking might serve perhaps to keep him awake.

  ‘The first questions came, I think, from the body. I remember thinking, “Clothes that were too wet and a hat that was too dry.” We soon got on to the fact that the clothes were so wet because a jackdaw’s nest had stopped the gutter and at some period there had been a regular overflow – probably an hour or two after the rain had started. But this only made the dryness of the hat odder still. The only conclusion was that it had been put there considerably after the rest of the outfit – perhaps as much as six hours later, when the rain had steadied to a drizzle and the gutter was no longer spouting. How I see it now – in view of what you’ve just told us – is this. The murderer needed to use the hat as part of his own disguise in walking the short distance to Appledown’s front door. He left it somewhere in Appledown’s house, and came back for it late that night. That was Mrs. Judd’s footsteps “later that night, much later” and the wicket that squeaked.’

  ‘Bull’s-eye there,’ said Hazlerigg.

  ‘One thing beats me,’ went on Pollock. ‘If he was as clever as all that, why didn’t he simply hold the hat under the scullery tap until it was as wet as hell, and then we shouldn’t have noticed anything?’

  ‘He didn’t know how wet the body was going to get,’ grunted Hazlerigg. ‘Keep your voice down – time’s going on. On the contrary, he had a good deal of data to show how very dry the buttress and the shed between them would keep anything lying between them on a wet night.’

  Pollock looked his query.

  ‘I think he’d rehearsed once or twice, before the great day. He took a bowler hat and a Burberry out on a number of wet and stormy nights and left them behind the shed to see how wet they’d get.’

  ‘Good God, of course! Mickie’s ghost.’

  ‘That’s it; he saw a coat and hat stretched out on the asphalt, possibly padded up a bit, and his imagination did the rest. Do you know, the fellow has my professional admiration there. Lots of people might do a murder if sufficiently provoked, but the number is much more limited who would get up on a beastly night beforehand to study the comparative wetness of hats and coats in a given position. Pity in a way that the jackdaw upset his plans.’

  ‘The fowls of the air shall make their habitation, and the wicked shall be confounded.’

  ‘Whssst.’

  They strained their ears.

  An imprisoned bluebottle was bumbling resentfully round the inside of the dusty window, and in the slanting sunlight the dust-motes danced and swam. A board creaked.

  Quite suddenly the door opened and Vicar Choral Halliday walked in. He went over quickly but very quietly to Brophy’s pile of belongings and started to undo the string round the parcel – then to probe among the contents. Two or three books came out, followed by a packet of papers, through which Halliday glanced eagerly.

  Suddenly a little gasp burst from his lips, uncontrollably and as if in spite of himself. He picked out one of the envelopes and tore it open.

  ‘I wrote that,’ said Hazlerigg in his blandest voice. ‘Get to the door, Sergeant. It’s no good struggling. Come along.’

  Footnote

  1 Mr. Scrimgeour was referring to the Camden Town murder case of 1907 which was just before Hazlerigg went to London.

  16

  THE REAL WORK

  But he had not the supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of where to stop.

  CONAN DOYLE – The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

  ‘I feel,’ said the Dean, without levity, ‘that nothing will have power to surprise me further. Has Halliday confessed to both murders?’

  ‘Not him,’ said Hazlerigg. ‘By the rules of fiction, I know, he should have ma
de a full confession, neatly clearing up all the doubtful points, and then committed suicide. I’m afraid he’s done neither. We’re in for some real work before we can build a case that’ll stand up in court. And that’s why I’ve asked you gentlemen to give me your time this morning.’

  There were present in the Chapter House, besides the inspector and Pollock, nine people. The Dean, with Mr. Scrimgeour at his right hand; the four residentiary canons; Minor Canons Malthus and Prynne; and the Precentor. It was nine o’clock on the Sunday morning, the storm had finally broken during the night, and the world looked and felt fresh again.

  ‘As originally planned, you know, it was a very simple murder. Halliday was a young, strong fellow, quite an able chap, and the possessor of what I should describe as a good “chess” brain. Appledown himself recognised that he was a most dangerous subject for blackmail – quite in a class apart from poor little Parvin or old Canon Whyte, from whom the most he had to fear was that they might break down and make a clean breast of everything. And Appledown did, in fact, take very special precautions with regard to Halliday; he told him plainly that all the details of his crime or indiscretion, or whatever it was, were on paper, cached somewhere, and that if he as much as suspected that Halliday was planning to attack him, a letter would go to the Dean. In the first instance it would only be a warning letter, telling you, sir, that should anything unexpected happen to your head verger you were to go to such and such a place and recover a letter which would give you fuller details, but binding you to take no steps immediately. This would have been the first answer to a threatening move from Halliday, and a very unpleasant one too, as you can imagine.’

  ‘Is this deduction or induction?’ asked Bloss keenly.

  ‘Neither,’ said Hazlerigg. ‘I’ve seen the letter. Mrs. Meadows gave it to me yesterday. But to proceed. The scheme, in its conception, was simple. Halliday noticed that he was about the same size as Appledown, and his first step was to buy a blue Burberry – not an uncommon garment in the Close – similar to that worn by the head verger. He also cultivated the habit of himself going about bareheaded on every possible occasion. His idea was to wait for a suitably rainy, blustery night, when there wouldn’t be too many people hanging round the cathedral, and then get one of the choristers, in the vestry, just before Evensong, to tell Appledown that “the engine-shed door had been left open.”’

  ‘Immediately service was over, Halliday reckoned to slip quietly off in the darkness of the cathedral, out of the cloister door and then through the window, which, you remember, is a pivot type fastened by a latch on the inside. This would bring him out almost behind the engine shed, where I expect he would pick up the stick he had previously left there. A few minutes wait – arrival of Appledown – and pausing only to take his hat and his keys (which are all on one ring and clearly labelled), he walks back to Appledown’s house, imitating, for the benefit of Mrs. Judd and other possible witnesses, the head verger’s rather peculiar tottering gait. Immediately he is safely inside, he turns on the light in the living-room – again to deceive any possible watchers – goes through the house, out of the back door, across the intervening two lawns, and in through his own study window. The whole thing, from the striking of the blow to the moment he reaches his study, can be done inside five minutes without hurry. I’ve tried it.

  ‘I’m told that it is Halliday’s custom to attend to his private devotions for five or ten minutes after Evensong every night. It was a strict rule in that household that he must never be disturbed during those few minutes.’

  Canon Trumpington raised his voice for the first time.

  ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘how could a man – a man of his calling – say his prayers to God within five minutes of taking a life? I can accept all the rest if you tell us it is so, but this seems to me to be psychologically impossible. Let us say, he pretended to say his prayers.’

  His good-tempered face wore a positively comical look of indignation.

  ‘I think,’ said Canon Fox unexpectedly, ‘that you haven’t really understood his outlook on the matter, Trumpington. I have no doubt that he felt he was under a species of duty to rid the world of an evil man. It was a crusade that he was embarked on.’

  ‘It was,’ agreed Hazlerigg, ‘and of course it made him ten times as dangerous. Well, now, the strength of the scheme was its simplicity. It could hardly go wrong. If Appledown didn’t come round to see about the door, then the whole business could be put off – no one was committed. If he had left it just like that, then I think that he must have got away with it. But he couldn’t leave well alone. He started to elaborate on two or three of the points. I’ve already told you how careful he was about the wetness of the mackintosh and the hat, and how that very piece of carefulness gave us a line on him. Well, he decided to tighten up in two other respects, both equally fatal.

  ‘First of all he worked out the additional eight o’clock alibi, with the choir and the note pinned to the doorpost. This was in itself a very brilliant idea, to make the whole choir a witness to his innocence, and we’ll go into the mechanics of it in a moment. But observe one evil result at once. Instead of being able to do the business on any night when Artful was away – and that happened every other Tuesday – he had also to fit in a choir practice and the invitation to the Foxes to play cards, with the addition of dirty weather if he could get it.

  ‘This meant that he had to be pretty certain that once he had started the ball rolling the thing would go through. That when Appledown had once been told about the engine-shed door he would come round after the service to look at it, and that was precisely what he was not able to be certain about. Appledown was a confoundedly lazy old man and would be more than likely to forget about the whole thing or leave it until the next morning – particularly on a rainy night.

  ‘That was why he started the anonymous letters. Most of them, you will remember, harped on the theme that Appledown was getting inefficient, old, past his job. One of them, I don’t know with what truth, accused him of having left the cloister doors unlocked one night. The immediate effect of all this was naturally to make Appledown seek to disprove the allegations by being twice as punctilious in the performance of his duties. Morgan noticed it at once. He told me he had “never seen the old man work so hard” as during that week.

  ‘Rather a cumbersome device, you might think. But effective, and in point of fact quite safe. Even now I don’t think it’s going to be possible to prove that he had anything to do with this part. He prepared it all before he went away for his holiday. Hid the flag, put the anthems in the cupboard, and made his arrangements with his more or less innocent accomplice at Starminster to send on the letters. Then he went off and let the fun begin.’

  The Dean had obviously been boiling up for a protest for some time.

  ‘But what about my wall?’ he said, as Hazlerigg paused. That must have been done on Sunday night, and Halliday was still down in Devonshire. You checked up on it yourself. Don’t tell me he came sneaking back that night—’

  ‘Ho. Certainly not. The whole point of the anonymous attacks was that they should be conducted with perfect safety to Halliday. They were designed to lead suspicion away from him, not towards him. And they weren’t important enough to be worth taking any serious risks over.’

  ‘Then if he didn’t come back until Monday, and the writing was done on Sunday night – you’re being a little obscure. Inspector.’

  ‘Who says that the writing was done on Sunday night?’

  The Dean looked slightly dazed.

  ‘Myself – and Hubbard, my gardener – and all the domestics in my house. Surely you don’t fancy we’re in some conspiracy to—’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Hazlerigg. ‘I put the matter very clumsily. What I should have said was, “How do you know the writing wasn’t there before Sunday?” I know that you didn’t actually see it. I don’t think you were meant to. No – wait a second, please. Tell me this. Was Halliday in your garden at any time wit
hin a few days before going on his vacation?’

  The Dean, who was still looking as if he thought that the strain had been too much for Hazlerigg, made a strong effort at detachment and remembered that Halliday had visited his garden on the afternoon before he left. He couldn’t remember why. People used each other’s gardens very freely in the Close.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Hazlerigg. ‘Well, I expect that was when he wrote his message on your wall. He wrote it with a crayon of grease, mixed with some substance like rhodamine, which reacts to water – the same principle as most of our invisible inks and paints. He reckoned that the first shower after he had left would “develop” his message, but actually, as you remember, the weather kept exceptionally clear and dry for the whole of that week – right up until the evening before he returned, then the thunderstorm did the job with a vengeance.

  ‘You probably remember remarking that though the wall was wet the writing was set and dry, which would be the case with this particular substance; the water runs off the grease, printing the letters scarlet. You remember I said that all this elaboration was fatal; well, this is one point where it may prove so. Rhodamine is by no means a common substance, and it’s not unlikely that we can trace the purchase.

  ‘His second elaboration was the one which actually gave the game away. He decided that he needed an additional alibi for eight o’clock, and he also wanted to mislead us by suggesting that Appledown had gone out at about that time – on his way, as we should be expected to presume, to the fatal rendezvous. And this was how he worked it out.

  ‘His sister always liked to change for these little social evenings and would hurry upstairs after she had tidied the room and set the card-table. Halliday retires to his study, possibly saying to his sister, “I’ve got a little work I’d like to finish before the Foxes come, so don’t disturb me.” The time is about ten to eight. It’s the work of a minute to get back into Appledown’s house and dispose of the cold supper in a convincing looking way by tipping it down the lavatory! Then he takes his stand inside the front door. Out of the porch window he can see both approaches. If you’—he turned to Canon Fox—’and your good wife had been early he would have had to leg it back pretty fast, but again, no harm done.’