He Dies and Makes no Sign: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

He was gone so long that Constantine followed him, to find him in low-voiced conversation with a man in the doorway. He turned at the sound of Constantine’s footsteps.

  “It’s for me,” he said. “I told them where to find me in case anything cropped up. Something has, with a vengeance!”

  “Not Bianchi?”

  “Lord knows! Our people were called up just after I left the yard by the local police. Case of suicide. Chap had thrown himself out of a third-floor window. They’ve just emptied his pockets preparatory to moving him to the mortuary and found a snuff-box that answers to the description of Anthony’s. Knowing I was interested, they took the opportunity of cheating me out my night’s rest.”

  Constantine looked sceptical.

  “There’s more than one tula-work box in London. It’s a pity they didn’t leave you in peace.”

  Arkwright gave him a queer glance.

  “I’d be inclined to agree with you,” he said, “if it wasn’t for one thing. Where do you suppose this fellow jumped from?”

  “Not one of the windows at the Trastevere?” demanded Constantine, his mind reverting to the Duchess’s insinuations.

  “Nearer home even than that,” answered Arkwright. “Civita’s flat.”

  CHAPTER XI

  THE two men started at each other.

  “Is this another link to our chain?” murmured Constantine softly. “Or just a side issue?”

  “Anyway, it’s good-bye to any sleep for me for another hour or two,” was Arkwright’s grim rejoinder.

  Constantine silently shrugged himself into a heavy overcoat, seized his hat, scribbled a few words on a pad lying on the hall table, and followed Arkwright on to the landing.

  “Manners is in bed,” he remarked, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “If he wakes up he will find that.”

  Closing the front door gently behind him, he followed Arkwright downstairs to the police car.

  A plain-clothes detective met them at the entrance to the block of flats which housed Civita.

  “We’ve moved the body into an empty flat on the ground floor, sir,” he informed Arkwright.

  “Doctor there?” demanded Arkwright.

  “Just leaving, sir.”

  The man led the way through an open door on the right of the main entrance, down a narrow passage and into a room, on the floor of which was the body of the unfortunate man. He was lying on his back, and an attempt had been made to straighten the limbs into a semblance of normality, but, though the face was peaceful enough and unmarked except for a slight smear of blood on the temple, the fantastic angles of the twisted arms and legs lent a strangely boneless aspect to the body, and Constantine, at his first horrified glance, was reminded of a marionette that had fallen from its wire on to the stage.

  He bent over the man and tried to reconstruct his appearance when alive. Judging from the dense blackness of the hair, his skin had been probably only a shade less sallow than it was at present. Not a pleasant face at the best of times, with its narrow forehead, thin, hooked nose, and overfull, fleshy lips.

  Macbane was speaking.

  “Went out head first, and must have turned over as he fell. Neck, both legs, and one arm broken, and Lord knows what injuries there may be internally. Probably the pelvis broken. Must have died at once. Pretty complete job, poor devil.”

  Arkwright turned to the station sergeant who had just joined them.

  “Anybody see it happen?” he asked.

  “Mr. Carroll, friend of the owner of the flat. He was just entering the room at the time and saw the deceased pitch out of the window. Says he ran forward, but was too late to do anything. We’ve detained him upstairs.”

  “Civita up there?”

  “Yes, sir. He was in the flat at the time, in another room. According to his account, the deceased had been drinking heavily all day. He’s of the opinion that he lost his balance and fell.”

  “What about this box?”

  The sergeant handed him a silver snuff-box, inlaid with strips of darker metal. Arkwright opened it and discovered that it was half full of snuff.

  “May as well have this analysed,” he said with a glance at Constantine, “as soon as Miss Anthony’s seen it.”

  “It was in the deceased’s trouser pocket,” the sergeant informed him. “According to Mr. Civita, he was not a snuff-taker, and he has never seen the box in his possession.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Nicholas Merger. His permanent address is in Brussels, and he was spending a couple of nights with Mr. Civita before returning there. Has no relatives in England, apparently.”

  Arkwright was watching Constantine, who was stooping over the corpse examining the front of the coat.

  “Seen anything, sir?” he asked.

  Constantine detached a couple of silky black threads from the second button of the coat, ran his eye over them and handed them to Arkwright.

  “Extraneous matter,” he said, “and probably of no importance. Silk where one would naturally expect to find thread. From the little bunch of fluff at the end I should say that it was velvet. The button must have caught on it.”

  Arkwright tucked it away in an envelope and thrust it into his pocket.

  “Exhibit number one,” he remarked with a smile, “and, as you say, probably of no importance. Still, we’ll keep it. What about a little chat with Mr. Civita?”

  They followed the sergeant to the lift, and were taken up to the fourth floor by the night porter.

  “Are you usually on duty after twelve?” asked Arkwright.

  “No, sir. I go off at eleven-thirty. After that the tenants have to let themselves in with their latch-keys and use the stairs. I was up when this happened, though. Got the fright of my life when the wife yelled out for me. Thought she was bein’ murdered, I did.”

  “The body landed in the well behind the house, just outside her bedroom window,” explained the sergeant. “Must have given her a bit of a shake-up.”

  “I’ll wager she won’t sleep to-night,” agreed the lift-man morosely. “And she’ll see to it that I don’t.”

  Civita himself met them on the threshold of the flat. His eyebrows rose at the sight of Constantine, who hastened to explain himself.

  “Inspector Arkwright was with me when the message came,” he said. “I hope this is not an instruction.”

  “But of course not,” Civita assured him. “You would like to see the room where the tragedy occurred, Inspector?”

  They followed him into a fair-sized room, furnished as a bedroom and looking out on to the back of the house.

  “This was originally intended for the dining-room.” he explained, “but it was inconvenient for the kitchen, and I use it as a spare bedroom. Poor Meger was sleeping here while he was with me.”

  The lower half of the window was pushed up to its full height, and Arkwright leaned out of it and looked down into the dark abyss below.

  “I understand that you were not in the room when the accident occurred, Mr. Civita?” he said.

  Civita shook his head.

  “I was in my sitting-room upstairs,” he answered.

  “Upstairs?”

  “The top floor here consists of two-story flats,” he explained. “As I have so few meals at home I did away with the big kitchen on this floor and remodelled the flat accordingly. The bedrooms are now on this floor and the living-rooms upstairs.”

  Arkwright nodded.

  “Your statement has already been taken, I believe,” he said, “but I should be obliged if you would tell me, from your own point of view, what happened.”

  Civita passed his hand over his forehead. His face was as inscrutable as ever, but the dark circles round his heavy-lidded eyes, and the unwonted lines on his smooth forehead, indicated that he had been more shocked than he cared to admit.

  “I will try to be as exact as possible,” he said wearily. “I had just made some coffee in my sitting-room, and I asked a friend who was with me, Mr. Carroll, to take a cup to Mr.
Meger, who was in his bedroom here. He left my room upstairs with the coffee and I heard him go downstairs. Very shortly afterwards I heard a sound, as of something falling, followed by a cry. It seemed to come from outside, and I got up to go to the window, but before I could reach it Mr. Carroll called to me from the bottom of the stairs. I cannot remember his exact words, but he asked me to come at once as something had happened. When I got to the top of the stairs he said: ‘He’s gone out of the window. I couldn’t stop him!’ We ran downstairs to the basement and out into the yard. The porter had already got there. There was nothing to be done. Poor Merger was dead.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Carroll was to call for me at ten-thirty, and I think he was a few minutes late. I made the coffee after he arrived and he went down at once with it, as soon as it was made. It must have been about a quarter or ten minutes to eleven.”

  “Had Mr. Meger ever threatened to do any such thing?”

  Civita hesitated.

  “No,” he said at last; “and I am convinced that the thought of suicide was never in his mind. But he had been drinking heavily for a week and was hardly responsible for his actions. Myself, I am positive that he lost his balance and fell. Mr. Carroll will tell you that he was learning out of the window when he entered the room. His impression is that he fell. He could not have jumped, from the position he was in.”

  Arkwright frowned.

  “The case was reported to me as suicide,” he said. “Have you any idea why?”

  “The sergeant, who came in answer to my telephone call, took that view at first. This window looks on to the air-shaft, not on to the street, and he could see no reason why Meger should have been looking out of it. I think he has now come round to my opinion that he felt unwell and went to the window for air.”

  “Did he open it himself?”

  Civita shrugged his shoulders.

  “It was shut when I looked into my room on my return from the Trastevere at about nine o’ clock,” he said.

  “Was he drunk then?”

  “I am afraid he was. And not in a pleasant mood. I left him, hoping he would sleep it off, and as he did not join me upstairs I thought that was what was probably happening. Frankly, I did not want him to come to the Trastevere with me in that condition.”

  “And you sent down the coffee, hoping it would pull him round, I suppose?”

  Civita nodded.

  “That was my idea. He was a bad subject, I am afraid, and had reached a point at which he could not pull himself together. To-morrow he would have gone back to Belgium, and I am afraid I should not have been sorry,” he finished with a wry smile.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions about him later, when I’ve seen this Mr. Carroll,” said Arkwright. “Where is he?”

  “In my room upstairs. He went to pieces completely after it happened, and he is in a bad way still, but he will tell you more than I can.”

  Carroll turned out to be a tall, very slim young man, with what Arkwright was apt to stigmatize brutally as a “film face”. Under normal circumstances one felt he would have lounged and drawled to perfection, but at the present moment he was little more than a writhing mass of nerves. His affectations, if he had any, had fallen from him and left him a second-rate, ineffectual boy of about twenty, badly in need of the glass of brandy that he was trying to keep steady in his shaking hands.

  At Arkwright’s first question he shrank, almost whimpering, into the corner of the sofa on which he was lying.

  “Don’t ask me to go over it again!” he moaned. “I can’t! I can see him now, falling!”

  But Arkwright, though gentle, was inexorable, and, bit by bit, got the story out of him. It tallied with Civita’s, and by the time it was finished both he and Constantine were inclined to endorse his opinion that it was a case rather of accident than suicide. One feature in the halting narrative seemed to point specially towards this explanation. Carroll had found the room in darkness when he opened the door and had just switched on the light when the accident happened.

  “Looks as if he had been lying on the bed in the dark,” said Arkwright, “and, as Mr. Civita suggests, had felt ill and gone to the window. The crumpled condition of the bed bears out the assumption that he had been lying on it.”

  “He was leaning right out of the window when I saw him,” said Carroll, a shudder running through his whole body. “It was horrible!”

  He buried his face in his hands.

  “What was your own impression, Mr. Carroll?” pursued Arkwright insistently. “Did he appear to assist himself in any way or did he just lose his balance.”

  Carroll stared at him with haggard eyes.

  “I hardly saw him. When I first put the light on I looked for him on the bed. It seemed the natural place. It was a minute before I saw him. Then it seemed as if his feet slipped and he was gone in a second.”

  “That’s probably what happened. The best thing you can do is to go to bed, Mr. Carroll. If you’ll leave your address, there’s nothing to prevent your getting off now. After a good night’s sleep you’ll forget this.”

  He left his victim murmuring “Sleep!” shudderingly to himself.

  Outside in the passage the two men’s eyes met.

  “He’ll sleep all right,” said Arkwright significantly.

  Constantine nodded.

  “Yes, poor boy. We may be doing him an injustice, but it looks like a case of dope to me. Curious how we run up against it in this affair!”

  “I wish I’d an excuse to let Macbane run his hands over him. Now for another word with Mr. Civita.”

  Civita was chatting urbanely with the sergeant the hall.

  “Just a few questions about this Mr. Meger,” said Arkwright cheerfully, “and then we’ll leave you in peace. Do I take it that he’s an old friend of yours?”

  Civita shook his head vigorously.

  “He was an employee of mine in Cannes,” he answered. “For some years I had seen nothing of him, then, when I was in Brussels on some business four or five months ago, he called on me and asked me if I could not give him work. It was enough to look at him to know why he had fallen on bad times, but he had been first-rate at his job when I employed him before, and there was, as a matter of fact, a way in which I could use him, so I gave him the chance.”

  “What was his job?” asked Arkwright quickly.

  “It is difficult to specify. An agent, I suppose one would call him. In Cannes he used to attend the big sales of wine, for instance, and buy for me. He had a real knowledge of vintages. One of the reasons I was in Brussels was to attend the Chavier sale. Doctor Constantine here will remember it,” he finished with a smile.

  “I do,” agreed Constantine. “In fact, I was fortunate enough to get some of the pickings myself! Chavier was a gouty old gentleman of fabulous age, whose one regret, when he did at last die, must have been that he could not take his cellar with him. The first act of his heirs was to dispose of it, and I wonder he didn’t turn in his grave!”

  “As you may imagine,” went on Civita, “I was only too glad to make use of Meger. I was in that way able to come home and leave the matter in his hands. And I must confess he carried it through admirably. After that I lost sight of him again until he came to the Trastevere the night before last.”

  Civita paused.

  “His story to me,” he continued slowly, “was that he had come to London a week ago, hoping to get commissions from the restaurant proprietors here, and that he had purposely kept away from me as he did not wish to take advantage of my kindness. I should like to believe that it was true, but my own impression is that he began to drink again as soon as he arrived and had been incapable of taking any steps until his money ran out and he could no longer afford to drink. He was penniless when he came to me. Could not even settle the bill for his lodging. As it turned out, I found I could again use him. There were certain firms in Belgium I wished to keep in touch with, and we arranged that he was to return there to-morrow,
and in the meanwhile, I promised to try to get him other commissions. I had an idea that the man might pull himself together if he had work, and, with that in view, I told him that he could come here for his last two nights in London. As it turned out, it was a disaster from the beginning.”

  “You advanced him money, I suppose?”

  Civita threw out his hands in an expressive gesture.

  “It was a stupidity! But the man was penniless, and I believed that for two days he would go straight. He began to drink again this morning while I was away at the Trastevere, and by this evening he was almost helpless and in no mood to listen to anything I could say.”

  “Do you know anything of his family?”

  “Nothing. From something he once said I do not believe he was a Belgian, but I have no idea what country he belonged to. His passport should be here with his things. No doubt that will tell you. Meanwhile, his permanent address was in Brussels. That I can give you.”

  “Once we’ve got that, it’s up to the Belgian police to find his relations if he’s got any. One other thing. This young fellow Carroll. What about him?”

  Civita looked at him. There was a slight tightening of the corners of his thin, mobile lips, a hardly perceptible movement of his nostrils, otherwise his face remained impassive, but his opinion of Carroll was as clearly indicated as if he had spoken.

  “Not a very nice piece of work?” queried Arkwright.

  “You have seen him,” said Civita. “Unfortunately, where there is dancing there are gigolos, and he is a very good gigolo. I cannot afford to let him go. I rang him up to ask him here to-night to talk business before going on to the restaurant. After this, he will be ill for a week.”

  “His account of the affair can be depended on, I suppose?”

  “He has not the brains to invent. I do not want to seem heartless, but these types, they are hardly human. I do not like them.”

  Arkwright thrust his notebook into his pocket.

  “That’s about all, I think,” he said. “Just one thing more, though. Have you ever seen this before?”

  He held out Anthony’s snuff-box. Civita bent over it.

  “Never,” he declared emphatically.