'I was hypnotized?' said Ora dully. 'Oh no. No. Mr Woolfolk never hypnotized me. He couldn't do that against my will. Nobody can.'
'You walk in your sleep, duck,' said Banner. 'Somnambulism's the nearest thing to a hypnotic trance. Woolfolk would meet you and gently suggest—'
'He saw me—he saw me in my night clothes!' She was mortified. This was worse than being accused of murder.
Banner grinned and continued: 'Bug doctors call it post-hypnotic suggestion. You tell a person to do something the next day and to forget they've done it.'
'That's why she didn't remember being with me in town yesterday afternoon,' said Verl.
' Yass. At his suggestion, Ora, you put notations in your diary. He was experimenting with you, as I said. He was conditioning your mind for a pseudo murder. He wanted to see how far a gentle-natured woman, like yourself, would go. And he'd selected himself as the victim. Finally Woolfolk was ready for the experiment. He told you to come where you could hear him playing.'
'I remember that,' she said.
Caroline Spires, in the background, was drinking it all in greedily, not making a sound.
Banner said: 'Last night, Ora you woke up about 3.30, under post-hypnotic compulsion. The little black automatic, loaded with blanks, had been laid on your night table by your bed by Woolfolk himself. You couldn't help but see it when you woke. You took the gun in your hand and started downstairs. You could hear Woolfolk's arrangement of La Somnambula. But the music wasn't coming from outside the house. It came from right here in the library. Woolfolk had considered the cold and the snow and your scanty nightdress. So he duplicated the Music Box here in the library. All he needed was piano music and a piano. He built up this square table with books and threw the large Spanish shawl over all of it. You thought it was the piano, cuz the shawl always covered the piano. The music you heard was from one of Woolfolk's own recordings being played on the victrola.' He jabbed a dynamic forefinger at it. 'He turned it off when he heard you coming. He rose up, then goaded you till you fired the harmless automatic at him. That's how you murdered Woolfolk.'
She sobbed with relief.
'But somebody did kill Woolfolk in the Music Box!' cried Verl.
'I'm coming to that. After Ora fled back to her room, he put the record and books away—probably with mixed emotions over what'd just occurred—and threw the Spanish shawl over his arm. He went to the door. It was nearly four o'clock. It'd stopped snowing some time before. Carrying the shawl, he walked across the snow to the Music Box, leaving the only tracks.'
The others were breathlessly silent.
'The murderer was waiting in the little house—had been waiting there for hours. . .'
'Ah,' said Verl. It was as soft as a prayer.
Caroline cleared her throat raspingly. 'How did the murderer know that Caspar was going out there at all?'
'Cuz,' said Banner, 'the murderer overheard Woolfolk telling Ora to come where he would be playing. And where else would that be but the Music Box where the piano is?' There was a light dawning in Verl's eyes, but Banner went on evenly: 'Woolfolk came in and arranged the shawl and sheet music on the piano, putting everything back in its proper place, y'see. The murderer was hiding behind the grandfather's clock, the horse pistol cocked, the fingers that held it stiff from waiting. As Woolfolk sat down on the bench to run his fingers over the keys, the murderer stepped out into view and fired. Woolfolk, a bullet in his skull, fell forward onto the piano.'
'My God,' breathed Ora, her hand fluttering at her white throat.
Verl was excited. 'But now you've got the murderer trapped out there!'
'For the moment. To walk back across the snow would leave distinctive, incriminating footprints. There had to be another way.' Banner looked into Verl's luminous eyes. 'You told me the answer at the orphanage, in your first recital of your discovery of the crime. There's only one way out.'
'I?' said Verl incredulously. 'I know?'
Banner nodded grimly. 'You said that when you came into the little house the day was so gloomy that you had to switch on the light. Later I also called attention to the tipped-over table lamp. That means electricity!'
'No, I can't—' puzzled Verl.
'And electricity means wires!'
'Oh,' said Verl, like a deflated balloon.
'The insulated wire runs at a long slant up from under the eaves to the cross-armed pole thirty feet away. You can reach the wire from one of the windows. It ain't slippy. It hasn't been cold enough for ice. More poles carry the wire across the snow to the trampled road, where all footprints're lost.' Banner shrugged. 'That's all there is to know.'
Caroline whispered: 'Then the murderer is someone who would have no trouble climbing. Like a little monkey.'
'Yass,' said Banner gloomily. 'Someone who can climb things like radio aerials. That should've given you an idea. A tomboy—'
Ora had her hands up to her mouth in shocked horror.
Someone screamed in the hall and dashed in furiously to spit and tear at Banner.
'He was going to send me away!' Beryl screeched at him. 'I heard him tell Caroline! He wanted to marry her and send me away! And he liked Ora even better than me!'
Ora sat horrified listening to a child's confession of murder.
Later a psychiatrist said to Banner: 'So Woolfolk took up psychology to study his own child's case. His layman's diagnosis was correct. She is schizophrenic.'
Another psychiatrist interrupted: 'I think, in this particular case, that dementia praecox is the more precise term.'
Banner waggled his big speckled hand at both of them and grunted: 'Gentlemen, she was just plain nuts.'
Back to Table of Contents
9 - Stuffing by EDGAR WALLACE
PROWL through the Christmas issues of the English monthly popular fiction magazines of the third decade of this century and you'll find, far more often than not, Edgar Wallace (1875-1932). Come to think of it, prowl through any issue of the newspapers and periodicals from that period and chances are you'll stumble across something by him, even if it's only a quickie racing piece. He was, after all, immensely prolific and didn't mind a scrap what or who he wrote for, from the prestigious Strand Magazine down to its junkier, all-fiction stablemate the Grand, from Competitors' Journal (incorporating Everybody's Weekly) up to the lordly Morning Post.
But the Christmas issue was special. Once a year editors could cheerfully afford to be reckless with the office chequebook, the better to tempt star writers to pull out all the stops and help provide (as they used to say) a Big Bumper Budget Bursting With Festive Fun And Fiction. And during the 1920s Wallace certainly qualified as a star, whose name on a front cover, in bold upper-case, was guaranteed to cause a highly satisfactory leap in copies sold.
Wallace wasn't, as is still popularly supposed, the most prolific writer this century has seen; he wasn't even the most prolific mystery-writer. Even E. Phillips Oppenheim and William le Queux beat him in the matter of thrillers published; and as far as sheer wordage goes, any number of American pulp-writers were hundreds of thousands—some were millions—of words ahead. But for a good long while he was surely the most celebrated writer; certainly the best loved.
When he died in Hollywood, working on the script of King Kong (and it's now been established that he contributed far more to Kong than he's ever been given credit for), his body was shipped back in state on the Berengaria and in Southampton flags were at half-mast, ships' sirens boomed, and bare-headed crowds silently watched the coffin come ashore. In Fleet Street, his spiritual home, the bells tolled and the death itself was announced in front-page banner headlines. I can think of no other author—let alone a scribbler of hectically-paced thrillers—whose passing was so mourned. But then I can think of no other author whose books sold so prodigiously. During the 1920s, the peak of his fame, one in every four books sold in England was, astonishingly, an Edgar Wallace.
Typically, he loved Christmas. He loved all the sentimental paraphernalia of the very
British and very Dickensian Festive Season—the fairy lights, the family gathered together, mysterious packages wrapped in gaily-coloured paper and, especially, snow. Wallace was fond of snow. Which is why he usually spent Christmas in Switzerland, well away from the rigours and wretchedness of the English winter, when London in particular was more likely to be muggy, drizzly, and fog-sodden than snowbound.
Just as typically, these annual pilgrimages to Caux, overlooking Lake Lucerne, were in the nature of a royal progress, a minor Grand Tour, no expense spared. A boisterous party of family and friends, mainly subsidised by Wallace and equipped as though for a siege (even down to boxes of tea because Wallace swore you couldn't find a decent brew in Switzerland), would clump itself in his favourite hotel above the lake, there to spend three weeks skiing, skating, bobbing, and tobogganing, while Wallace himself dictated a stream of articles and short stories in his centrally-heated suite, watching the snow float down.
To be sure, there's not much snow in 'Stuffing', but there is a rich old skinflint, two poverty-stricken newly-weds, a Christmas dinner that looks as though it'll consist of sausages—and a happy ending. What more could anyone want. . .?
THERE are several people concerned in this story whom it is impossible within a limited space to describe. If you are on friendly terms with the great men of Scotland Yard you may inspect the photographs and finger-prints of two—Harry the Valet and Joe the Runner.
Lord Carfane's picture you can see at intervals in the best of the illustrated weeklies. He was once plain Ferdie Gooberry, before he became a contractor and supplied the army with odds and ends and himself with a fortune and a barony.
In no newspaper, illustrated or otherwise, do the names of John and Angela Willett appear. Their marriage at a small registrar's office had excited no public comment, although he was a BA of Cambridge and she was the grand-niece of Peter Elmer, the shipping magnate, who had acknowledged his relationship by dictating to her a very polite letter wishing her every happiness.
They lived in one furnished room in Pimlico, this good-looking couple, and they had the use of the kitchen. He was confident that he would one day be a great engineer. She also believed in miracles.
Three days before Christmas they sat down calmly to consider the problem of the great annual festival and how it might best be spent. Jack Willett scratched his cheek and did a lightning calculation.
'Really, we ought not to spend an unnecessary penny,' he said dolefully. 'We may be a week in Montreal before I start work, and we shall need a little money for the voyage.'
They were leaving on Boxing Day for Canada; their berths had been taken. In Montreal a job was awaiting Jack in the office of an old college friend: and although twenty-five dollars per did not exactly represent luxury, it was a start.
Angela looked at him thoughtfully.
'I am quite sure Uncle Peter is going to do something awfully nice for us,' she said stoutly.
Jack's hollow laugh was not encouraging.
There was a tap at the door, and the unpleasant but smiling face of Joe the Runner appeared. He occupied an attic bedroom, and was a source of worry to his landlady. Once he had been in the newspaper business, running evening editions, and the name stuck to him. He had long ceased to be associated with the Press, save as a subject for its crime reporters, but this the Willetts did not know.
'Just thought I'd pop in and see you before I went, miss,' he said. 'I'm going off into the country to do a bit of work for a gentleman. About that dollar, miss, that you lent me last week.'
Angela looked uncomfortable.
'Oh, please don't mention it,' she said hastily.
'I haven't forgotten it,' said Joe, nodding solemnly. 'The minute I come back, I'll bring it to you.' And with a large and sinister grin he vanished.
'I lent him the money because he couldn't pay his rent,' said Angela penitently, but her husband waved her extravagance away.
'Let's talk about Christmas dinner. What about sausages. . .!'
'If Uncle Peter—' she began.
'Let's talk about sausages,' said Jack gently.
Foodstuffs were also the topic of conversation between Lord Carfane and Prince Riminoff as they sat at lunch at the Ritz-Carlton. Lord Carfane emphasized his remarks with a very long cigar.
'I always keep up the old English custom of distributing food to the poor,' he said. 'Every family on my estate on Christmas Eve has a turkey from my farm. All my workers,' he corrected himself carefully, 'except old Timmins. Old Timmins has been very rude to me, and I have had to sack him. All the tenants assemble in the great hall. . . But you'll see that for yourself, Prince.'
Prince Riminoff nodded gravely and tugged at his short beard. That beard had taken Harry the Valet five months to grow, and it was so creditable a production that he had passed Chief Inspector Mailing in the vestibule of the Ritz-Carlton and had not been recognised.
Very skilfully he switched the conversation into more profitable channels.
'I do hope, my dear Lord Carfane, that you have not betrayed my identity to your guests?'
Ferdie smiled.
'I am not quite a fool,' he said, and meant it.
'A great deal of the jewellery that I am disposing of, and of which you have seen specimens, is not mine. I think I have made that clear. I am acting for several of my unfortunate compatriots, and frankly it would be embarrassing for me if it leaked out that I was the vendor.'
Ferdie nodded. He suspected that a great deal of the property which he was to acquire had been secured by underhand means. He more than suspected that, for all his princely origin, his companion was not too honest.
'That is why I have asked that the money you pay should be in American currency. By the way, have you made that provision?' Lord Carfane nodded. 'And, of course, I shall not ask you to pay a single dollar until you are satisfied that the property is worth what I ask. It is in fact worth three times as much.'
Lord Carfane was nothing if not frank.
'Now, I'm going to tell you, my dear chap,' he said, 'there will only be one person at Carfane Hall who will know anything whatever about this little transaction of ours. He's an expert jeweller. He is an authority, and he will examine every piece and price it before I part with a single bob!'
His Highness heartily, but gravely, approved of this act of precaution.
Lord Carfane had met his companion a few weeks before in a highly respectable night club, the introduction having been effected through the medium of a very beautiful lady who had accidentally spilt a glass of champagne over his lordship's dress trousers. She was so lovely a personage that Lord Carfane did no more than smile graciously, and a few minutes later was introduced to her sedate and imposing presence.
Harry the Valet invariably secured his introductions by this method. Usually he worked with Molly Kien, and paid her a hundred pounds for every introduction.
He spoke no more of jewels smuggled from Russia and offered at ridiculous prices, but talked sorrowfully of the misfortunes of his country; spoke easily of his estates in the Crimea and his mines in the Urals, now, alas! in Bolshevik hands. Lord Carfane was immensely entertained.
On the following evening, Harry drove down in Lord Carfane's limousine to Berkshire, and was introduced to the glories of Carfane Hall; to the great banqueting chamber with its high raftered roof; to the white-tiled larder where petrified turkeys hung in rows, each grisly corpse decorated with a gay rosette. . .
'My tenants come in on Christmas Eve,' explained Lord Carfane,' and my butler presents each one with a turkey and a small bag of groceries—'
'An old feudal custom?' suggested the Prince gravely.
Lord Carfane agreed with equal gravity.
The Prince had brought with him a large, heavily locked and strapped handbag, which had been deposited in the safe, which was the most conspicuous feature of Ferdie's library. The expert jeweller was arriving on the morrow, and his lordship looked forward, with a sense of pleasurable anticipation, to a day whi
ch would yield him 400 per cent profit on a considerable outlay.
'Yes,' said Ferdie at dinner that night, 'I prefer a combination safe. One can lose keys, but not if they're here'—he tapped his narrow forehead and smiled.
Harry the Valet agreed. One of his greatest charms was his complete agreement with anything anybody said or did or thought.
Whilst he dwelt in luxury in the halls of the great, his unhappy confederate had a more painful task. Joe the Runner had collected from a garage a small, light trolley. It was not beautiful to look upon, but it was fast, and under its covered tilt, beneath sacks and amidst baskets, a man making a swift getaway might lie concealed and be carried to London without exciting attention.
Joe made a leisurely way into Berkshire and came to the rendezvous at the precise minute he had been ordered. It was a narrow lane at the termination of a footpath leading across the Carfane estate to the house. It was a cold, blue-fingered, red-nosed job, and for three hours he sat and shivered. And then, coming across the field in the blue dusk, he saw an old man staggering, carrying a rush basket in one hand and an indescribable something in the other. He was evidently in a hurry, this ancient. From time to time he looked back over his shoulder as though he expected pursuit. Breathlessly, he mounted the stile and fell over rather than surmounted it.
Stumbling to his feet, he saw Joe sitting at the wheel of the van, and gaped at him toothlessly, his eyes wide with horror. Joe the Runner recognised the signs.
'What have you been doin'?' he demanded sternly.
For a few minutes the breathless old man could not speak; blinked fearfully at his interrogator; and then:
'He's fired me,' he croaked. 'Wouldn't give me no turkey or nothin', so I went up to the 'All and pinched one.'
'Oh!' said Joe judiciously.
It was not an unpleasant sensation, sitting in judgment on a fellow creature.
'There was such a bother and a fuss and shouting going on. . .what with the safe bein' found broke open, and that foreign man being caught, that nobody seed me,' whimpered the elderly Mr Timmins.
Crime at Christmas Page 12