He Dies and Makes no Sign: A Golden Age Mystery

by Molly Thynne

  He caught Constantine’s eye and smiled ruefully.

  “As a matter of fact, it is not within our power to dictate to him in the matter of the lease. If I had had my wits about me I should have realized that he would hardly give in so easily, but I was so overwhelmed by the fellow’s impudence in daring to approach my wife, after what had happened, that I let my indignation get the better of me. This is literally the first time I have ever turned anyone out of my house, but I made it very plain to him that any communication in future must be made through my solicitors, and showed him the door myself. It seemed incredible that my wife should have communicated with him in the first instance, but I knew she felt very strongly on the subject of the Trastevere and might have acted on the impulse of the moment. In any case, as I said, I was too indignant at the man’s audacity to have my wits about me.”

  “Arkwright must have missed him by seconds only,” said Constantine.

  “I was still in the hall when the inspector arrived,” agreed the Duke. “My interview with Civita was shorter than it sounds in the telling. My one object was to get rid of the man, but I had only just succeeded when you arrived. I must admit he took it well. Just picked up his hat and coat and walked out.”

  Arkwright stared at him.

  “One moment,” he said.

  He went to the front door and opened it. Ferrars was standing on guard outside.

  “May as well give it up,” he said at the sight of Arkwright. “He’s got clean away.”

  “Look here, how was he dressed when you saw him making for the Palm Court?”

  Ferrars stared at him in amazement.

  “Same as he was when you last saw him, sir,” he said.

  “No hat or coat?”

  “Good lord, no! He hadn’t time to get at them.”

  Arkwright closed the door and went back to the library.

  “Would your Grace come into the hall for a moment?” he asked.

  The Duke followed him.

  “As regards the hat and coat . . .” began Arkwright.

  But the Duke’s eyes were already raking the polished surface of the hall table.

  “Well, I’m blessed!” was all he said, and then fell silent, his heart too full for words.

  Constantine, who had followed him, also contemplated the table, a slow smile spreading over his face.

  “Yours?” he murmured appreciatively.

  The Duke found his voice.

  “I was going out,” he said slowly, “and my hat and coat were on that table.”

  He stepped forward and picked up two limp white objects.

  “At any rate, he’s left me my gloves,” he remarked with a wan smile.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  INSTINCTIVELY Arkwright looked round for his own headgear, only to remember that it was still reposing, with his coat, in the cloakroom at the Trastevere.

  The Duke was staring at the gloves dangling from his hand, his wrath gradually giving way to reluctant amusement.

  “The fellow’s incredible,” he murmured with something like awe in his voice.

  Constantine stood laughing unashamedly in the background.

  Arkwright pulled himself together.

  “I must get along,” he said, his hand on the door. “I’m sorry for this, your Grace, and I’m afraid I’m in a way responsible. We’ll do our best to trace the things, of course.”

  “Trace Civita,” jerked out the Duke with surprising vehemence. “I’d like to see the fellow in the dock. Hate being made a fool of, even to amuse Doctor Constantine!”

  He was struggling with his own mirth as he spoke, and Arkwright let himself out of the front door to the sound of uncontrollable laughter.

  He stood for a moment on the step, the door open behind him. The dark form of Ferrars materialized from the street below and hovered, waiting for release. The Duke’s car, long, black and gleaming, blocked his view in front, but to right and left the street was empty, save for the plodding figure of a postman in the middle distance.

  Behind him the laughter rang out again. Arkwright grinned, but it was a half-hearted travesty of his usual expansive effort. The really supreme touch would have been for Civita to have taken the car as well, he reflected. Indeed, it was hardly like him to neglect so obvious a way of escape. He’d have had an even chance of reaching the outskirts of London and abandoning the car before a cordon could be formed.

  Obeying a sudden impulse, he ran down the steps and opened the door of the car.

  As he did so the door on the opposite side swung silently on its hinges, a dark figure slipped from the interior of the car, and, before Arkwright had even realized its presence, was away and racing down the street in the direction of the turning leading to the Trastevere.

  There was a shout from Ferrars as he charged down the pavement and swerved into the road. Arkwright, his long legs working like pistons, passed him at his third stride.

  Civita had almost reached the side-street, and the two men checked instinctively, ready to take the corner should he turn up it.

  It was that moment that a woman, driving a two-seater, and carrying three extra passengers on the side running-board chose to shoot silently from the side-street and swing round the corner with the speedometer needle quivering at fifty.

  If Civita had been on suicide bent he could not have timed the thing better. He had just reached the corner, running with his head down and his body well forward, when the car caught him.

  One scream, shrill and horrible, came from the hatless, dishevelled woman at the wheel, followed, too late, by the screech of the brakes.

  The figures on the running-board shed themselves, at various angles, on to the ground, and Civita’s body, impelled by the force of the impact, rose, hurtled through the air and fell, with a smack like the crack of a whip, on the road ahead.

  The car skidded at right angles, teetered for a moment on two wheels and crashed on to its side.

  In a second Arkwright was at Civita’s side. He lay, huddled and motionless, his head bent at a curious and unmistakable angle to his body. As Arkwright lifted him it fell back as the head of no living man can do, and he lowered the body gently to the ground again and retraced his steps to the overturned car.

  Ferrars was already there, bent low over a silken heap that moaned as he touched it. A woman stood swaying on her feet beside the car. Three men were picking themselves up dazedly on either side of it.

  With one swift glance Arkwright took them in, realized that they were not badly injured, and joined Ferrars, who stared up at him with a question in his eyes.

  “Dead,” said Arkwright. “Neck broken. What about this?”

  Ferrars stood up.

  “Back, I’m afraid,” he murmured, his lips close to Arkwright’s ear. “I don’t dare move her.”

  Arkwright looked down at the woman at his feet. She neither moved nor uttered a sound now, but there was a terrible vitality in the face upturned to his. Her eyes were open and filled with a fear so stark that his throat ached suddenly in pity. He knew now why Ferrars had whispered. Her green dress, wrenched and twisted brutally round the inert body, shimmered in the uncertain light of the street lamp overhead, her glorious hair, elf-locked and bedraggled, crowned a face, grey and wet with anguish, like a halo.

  Instinctively his eyes went to Steynes House. The Duke and Constantine had descended the steps and were coming towards him.

  With a muttered exclamation he hurried to intercept them.

  “Is there anything we can do?” asked the Duke. “Civita much damaged?”

  “Dead,” answered Arkwright. “And I’m afraid the driver of the car’s in a bad way.”

  The Duke took a step forward, then his lips tightened.

  “A woman!” he exclaimed. “Do you know who it is?”

  Arkwright moved quickly between him and the figure on the ground.

  “Lady Malmsey,” he said.

  CHAPTER XIX

  CONSTANTINE was in Arkwright’s room at New Scotlan
d Yard, summoned there by an urgent telephone call. Arkwright, at the other end, had been apologetic. He was too busy to come round, but he had a document that might interest him if he could spare half an hour.

  He could. Arkwright’s message had caught him prowling restlessly round his room, engaged in contemplating a lengthening vista of spare half-hours, and conscious of a blank in his life that even chess, at the moment, seemed inadequate to fill. Arkwright did not have to wait for him long.

  The inspector was lying back in his chair, his pipe in his mouth, gazing with a look of infinite complacency at the ceiling. He sprang to his feet at the sight of Constantine.

  “If we could clear up all our cases like this,” he rejoiced, “life would be one long happy dream! It’s all there, thanks to this!”

  He burrowed in his pocket and threw a small key on to the table.

  Constantine regarded it with interest.

  “The safe deposit?” he enquired.

  Arkwright sank back into his chair and dragged an untidy pile of papers towards him.

  “Meger was asking for it,” he said, “Civita being Civita! He blackmailed him, right enough; this stuff here proves it, but the poor fool never realized the risk he was running. He’d got Civita in the palm of his hand and had tucked away the evidence where, even after his death, Civita couldn’t lay hands on it. If it hadn’t been for that key we should never have got on to it. As it is . . .”

  He lifted a sheaf of papers from the top of the pile, crumpled, jagged-edged fragments, covered with neat, angular writing, and pushed them towards Constantine.

  “Anthony’s diary,” he said. “No wonder Civita wanted to get hold of it! The mistake he made was in sending Meger to pinch it. Meger, once he’d read it, knew better than to give it up, and, so long as he had it, Civita was helpless.”

  Constantine was already running through the pages. There was a tense silence while he skimmed them, then:

  “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “The whole story! We weren’t far wrong, either!”

  Arkwright, lying back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, beamed.

  “It’s all there,” he agreed, “from Anthony’s interview with his daughter, right down to the night before he paid his last visit to the Trastevere. As we thought, she told him how Bianchi had made his money and that he was operating under the name of Civita under cover of the Trastevere. Apparently he’d deserted her, left her high and dry two years before, and she’d only just got on his track through one of his agents in Paris.”

  “To do Anthony justice, he seems to have been actuated as much by his abhorrence of the drug traffic as by revenge. He had every intention of denouncing Civita to the police,” said Constantine, raising his eyes for a moment from the papers he was devouring.

  Arkwright nodded.

  “The pity is that he didn’t come to us straight away. It seems that he went to the Trastevere on his return from Brighton, only to find that Civita was in Italy. He did not discover he was back till early in March, and, when he did manage to see him, found that the job he had set himself was not so easy as he’d supposed. Civita retaliated by threatening to approach Miss Anthony, reveal the fact that he was her father, and not only tell her, but make public the story of her mother’s disgrace. Anthony seems to have been almost abnormally sensitive on the subject, besides which, he had kept all knowledge of her mother’s story from the girl and dreaded the effect on her of Civita’s revelations. For the moment he was evidently baffled, but he seems to have been a determined old gentleman, and on March the seventeenth he wrote to Civita warning him that he intended to go to the police. He no doubt hoped to frighten Civita into leaving the country and thus avoid the scandal he dreaded.”

  “It was then that he decided to see Lord Marlowe, I suppose, and tell him the truth about his granddaughter?” said Constantine.

  “Exactly. Only, unfortunately, in his letter to Civita he told him what he was doing, realizing that it would spike his guns should he try to molest his daughter. Civita met him on March the twenty-second outside the Parthenon and asked him to talk the matter over with him that night at the Trastevere. Anthony consented. And that’s where this comes in.”

  He stretched out a long arm and picked up a couple of sheets of flimsy notepaper, closely covered on both sides.

  “This,” he continued, “is Mr. Meger’s little contribution, and very interesting it is! He was one of Civita’s most useful agents in Belgium, just as he had been in the South of France. A word from Civita and he would have been in the hands of the Belgian police, who already suspected him of being concerned in drug traffic. After Anthony’s letter of March seventeenth Civita sent for Meger. They worked the Anthony murder together, Meger impersonating Anthony, while Civita, at his flat, administered the injection of morphia which killed him. Then he placed the body in his car and took it to the Parthenon, arriving there in the early hours of Wednesday morning.”

  Constantine looked up quickly.

  “You haven’t cleared up the mystery of the key, I suppose?” he demanded.

  “Anthony, in his diary, speaks of having met Civita just as he was going into the Parthenon. He was probably about to use his key when Civita spoke to him. Civita, seeing it, would be quite clever enough to put his knowledge to good use. Which of them dropped it in the stalls later, I don’t know, but there is mention of Binns in Meger’s statement, and I think we may take it that he had nothing to do with the crime.”

  “What induced Anthony to go to Civita’s flat? I can imagine his being willing to meet Civita at the Trastevere, but I admit I’m surprised to hear that he consented to accept his hospitality, apart from the fact that he must have realized that the man was dangerous.”

  Arkwright turned back to the last page of Meger’s statement.

  “That’s one of the cleverest things Civita did,” he said. “You were right in your assumption that Anthony was misled. The card Civita sent him at the Trastevere was not, as you guessed, the one we found. Meger’s got the whole thing down here in black and white, in the form of a letter to us. I’ve no doubt he threatened to clear out of the country and post it to the Yard if Civita did not give in to his demands. The card, making an appointment for ten forty-five at Civita’s flat, was signed ‘Marlowe’, and Anthony was certainly under the impression that he would find Lord Marlowe waiting for him when he got there. You must remember that he was expecting to hear from him and had told Civita so, and that he did not know Civita’s private address. Meger had orders to wait for him outside the Trastevere, introduce himself as a friend of Marlowe’s, accompany him to the flat, and, if possible, induce him to take the coffee with the knock-out drops in it. He carried out his part of the scheme successfully, and states that Anthony was already asleep when Civita arrived. He then went off and spent part of the night in establishing Anthony’s presence on the Embankment and elsewhere.”

  “Civita then went back to the restaurant, I suppose? He was seen there up to nearly two in the morning.”

  “He went back about half past eleven, leaving Anthony’s body in his flat. He seems to have gone straight to the Parthenon on his return to the flat at two. Having disposed of the body, he abandoned the car where it was found next day, walked home and went to bed. At a quarter past six he rang up the police with his story of the stolen car. Meger had it all pat, so that it looks as if Civita had given him quite a frank account of his movements. As a matter of fact, Meger already knew so much that it was hardly worth while to keep him in ignorance. It must have given Civita shock of his life when he realized that had turned nasty and did not intend to return those pages of the diary.”

  “That was the one really bad mistake Civita made,” agreed Constantine, “but he was in a difficult predicament. He had to get at the diary at all costs, but he was too well known, both to Marlowe and Betty, to risk going to the house. Whoever let him in could not fail to remember and describe him. Did Anthony tell him about the diary, by the way?”

 
; “According to Meger he knew already that the old man had always kept one. Margaret Anthony probably told him in the days when they were living together in France. He may even have gone so far as to ask him point blank whether he still kept up the habit. In any case, he was clever enough to realize his danger if such a thing existed. Meger states that he had orders to tear out the pages and bring them straight to Civita. He was then to leave England for Belgium, and Civita would send him the five hundred pounds he had promised him. Instead, Meger took himself off and wrote to Civita saying that everything had gone according to schedule, but that he proposed to keep the papers until he knew what Civita was prepared to offer for them. He then seems to have embarked on a prolonged drinking bout, during which Civita must have been raking London for him. When he did find him, he was not in a condition to exercise caution. This is only surmise, of course, but I think we may take it that he would never have gone to Civita’s flat if he had had his wits about him. Fortunately for us, he wrote this statement and placed it, with the pages from the diary, in the safe deposit before he started on his spree.”

  Constantine threw the papers he was holding on the table.

  “I’d like to read these properly some time,” he said.

  “Of course. But you’ve got the gist of the whole thing now. Anything I haven’t told you?”

  Constantine shook his head.

  “It’s pretty clear,” he answered. “How much of this are you going to give the public? The Duke’s naturally anxious.”

  “I don’t think he need worry. There’ll be the inquest, of course. Civita was killed in trying to evade arrest for Meger’s murder. Anthony’s name need not be mentioned. The drug traffic will be a sufficient peg to hang the whole thing on, and Miss Anthony need know only so much as you choose to tell her.”

  “In fact, it’s all very neat and tidy and there’s nothing now to prevent at least one young couple from living happily ever after. By the way, I’ve one piece of news for you. There’s rejoicing in the House of Steynes!”