by Richard Hull
“Why, yes, but how do you know that?”
“Because no one else coming here would call my daughter Miss Wyndham.”
I can imagine the Inspector’s heavy tact and his apologies for the error. He would have ended by asking what her right name was. The reply must have startled him—“Mrs. Thomas.”
“Of 41 Bouverie Road?” looking at his notebook.
“Naturally. She is living with her husband.” (Rather tartly this.)
More apologies would have certainly followed, ending with an innocent remark that the caller was unaware that she was married since she used her maiden name. Rather overdoing an air of innocence, he ended: “Many ladies prefer to use their maiden names, I know, but I never quite know why.”
But Miss Wyndham’s mother, a guileless person, fell into the trap and threw out the remark which was to lead Inspector Hoopington so grievously astray. “It was all”, she said, “on account of that Spencer and the fresh remarks he made about married girls working.”
Upon that, a little judicious questioning easily induced the gossiping Mrs. Wyndham to give a highly dramatic version of Spencer’s foolish joke about the difficulty of concentrating on the baby and the typewriter. The remark, never very tactful, had apparently hurt Miss Wyndham considerably. She had retailed it, with additions, to her mother, who had added her own touches until Spencer was made out to have been in the habit of saying that he would certainly not continue to employ anyone who was even engaged and to have added a series of remarks about babies which were highly indelicate.
“I wouldn’t have let her stay—naturally I wouldn’t, she being a most respectable young lady—if Percy, that’s Mr. Thomas, hadn’t been there to look after her. And it does make a difference her being married, though that Spencer didn’t know that. And so, as Percy said, they wanted the money to pay the instalments on the furniture and there it was, and he thought it was best that she should stay whatever either of them might say.”
“Either of them?”
“Yes. There are three really. But Barraclough, he doesn’t matter.” (I need hardly say that I have inferred this comment rather than had it directly stated to me.) “But Latimer, he must be the rudest man there ever was. Well, only think the other day Percy was slack, he often is up at the office, and he was drawing a portrait of Maud—Mrs. Thomas I should say—oh, it was ever so lovely, he showed it to us afterwards. Percy’s going in for portraits one day, and it was the very image of her, and what must Latimer needs say but, ‘If we want pretty pictures for the outside of a chocolate box, we will go outside where we can find somebody that can draw them and get a model that looks pretty instead of Miss Wyndham!’ Well, what I mean to say is, poor Maud may be no great beauty—her front teeth do stick out just a little bit, though a nicer girl there never was—but why go and say things like that—made the poor girl cry it did.”
Now really Inspector Hoopington should have known better. In the first place he should not have taken advantage of the fact that the murders, having taken place at night, were not in the evening paper; secondly, I think he ought to have said who he was, though it was true that he had hardly had a chance to get a word in; and thirdly he ought to have known that the idle tattle of such a person as Mrs. Wyndham should not be taken as serious evidence, unless it were corroborated by some more reliable witness.
But I regret to say that he took a course exactly opposite to this. He encouraged her to go on talking and as she went on, finding a sympathetic listener, whereas most people, I imagine, flee when Mrs. Wyndham starts talking, indeed this may be the reason why Miss Wyndham married Thomas—I can think of no other—but my style is beginning to resemble that of the good lady, and I must leave the sentence hopelessly entangled and without a verb. Finding, as I say, a sympathetic listener, she allowed the story to grow. By the end of ten minutes Spencer was an immoral man prepared to dismiss from his employment any woman who had any matrimonial entanglement, for the most sinister reasons; dear Maud was a paragon of virtue, constantly resisting the most dazzling temptations that he hung before her; and Latimer was a brutal bully whom she loathed almost as much as she despised and detested, the profligate Spencer.
Really Inspector Hoopington should have recognized the phrases of the penny novelette; perhaps in a minute or two more he would have done so, if at that moment Miss Wyndham had not arrived and exclaimed: “Why, good gracious me, mother, whatever are you saying to the Inspector?”
It was then that Mrs. Wyndham apparently excelled herself to Miss Wyndham’s lasting confusion. Indeed, she ascribes Hoopington’s subsequent attempt to fasten the crime on to her to be merely a petty desire to revenge himself for it. But low though my opinion of that officer is, I do not think so poorly of him as that.
Anyhow, Mrs. Wyndham apparently exclaimed: “The Inspector? The Police? Why, I thought I was talking to a gentleman!”
“Oh, but, Mother, Inspector Hoopington is a gentleman, although he is in Scotland Yard.”
It was a good attempt at a recovery, but Mrs. Wyndham was quite unable to see any necessity for it. Indeed when she found out that he had induced her to talk freely about two people who were murdered, her attitude to the Inspector fell to below freezing point. It was one of her cardinal principles that she should never in any circumstances say anything derogatory of the dead, and the fact that Spencer and Latimer had met a violent and sudden end made it, to her mind, all the more essential to be laudatory. Personally I can never see any sense in the attitude—indeed I have been very fully and impartially considering the characters of both my late colleagues—but, given her premises, Inspector Hoopington had certainly put her in a false position. Perhaps she suffered, too, from a twinge of conscience on account of the exaggerations in which she had permitted herself to indulge.
Apparently she objected so much that she tried to prevent him from questioning her daughter at all. But here the Inspector was too skilful. He induced Miss Wyndham, or rather Mrs. Thomas, to return to her husband and interviewed them both in their own house, free from the torrent of the parental eloquence. But what he found out there I do not know—nothing I should imagine.
But I am anticipating events. At the time when it first occurred to me that Hoopington was attempting to throw the blame on to the Thomases, I was unaware of all this, unaware, even that they were married—a subject on which as a matter of fact I, too, had strong views, but I never express my opinion on that class of matter until the necessity arises. But that is in the future. At the time I had merely to contemplate what I should do as a result of Hoopington’s suspicions.
I was convinced that he was wrong. In fact I knew he was, since I had solved the problem entirely to my own satisfaction.
The question was whether I should attempt to stop him going on with it. Supposing that he actually accused them? It would no doubt be unpleasant for them, but that was no concern of mine. Supposing they were actually tried? Again my first thought was that it did not interest me. It was entirely their affair, and since they were innocent, they would presumably not be hanged. Even if they were, it was nothing to do with me.
But on further consideration I saw that there was a flaw in this argument.
The disturbance which would be caused would be a very considerable inconvenience. Incompetent though both of them were, or at least, to be fair, not more than passably competent though they were, they were temporarily necessary to me. I could easily replace them in time, if it was imperative or desirable, but I did not wish to do so until the Galatz-si campaign was entirely ready to be launched. That was only a question of days, but until it was, I wished to play for time. The removal of Latimer and Spencer had made things easier rather than harder. The removal of Thomas would be a nuisance.
Accordingly I made up my mind to devote still more of my precious hours to listening to Inspector Hoopington. I would express my strong feelings that Thomas and Miss Wyndham were not concerned, and that I hoped he would at least hold his hand and not take any active steps for
a few days. I ought to be able to convince him; at any rate I must delay him, and meanwhile I had got Tonescu’s personal guarantee and a bank reference from Rumania; also a deposit on the advertising. It would be safe to go ahead with that and I could get started if Thomas had even only forty-eight hours more to complete his work.
After that I should be indifferent as to what the Inspector did.
Chapter Seven
But unfortunately it was not so easy to convince the Inspector as it should have been. Indeed so firmly were his ideas fixed, that I had to use at last the argument which I hoped would be unnecessary. Also, I must freely admit, the course of the interview was frequently decided by him. I have no doubt that I could have prevented this, but I was hampered by the fact that I wished to be persuasive and therefore had to fall in with his desires to a larger extent than I should normally consider necessary.
“One of my difficulties, sir, in this matter,” he said in reply to my reasoned request that he should abandon his theory of Miss Wyndham, “is that the account she gives me of the important afternoon is not entirely borne out by the very accurate statement which I have had the pleasure of taking down from you.”
“The inaccuracy of the feminine mind, you know–––” I suggested.
“Possibly, sir. Nevertheless I should like to check up with you the points where her statement differs.”
With that, out came the inevitable notebook which I had come to look upon with some alarm as presaging a long and dreary interview. “In the first place she confirms Mr. Latimer’s request that she should fetch the schedule of insertions in the Daily Mail. Also that such a request was usual at that time of day. Like you, sir, she considers that Mr. Latimer liked to be a nuisance. She ascribes it partly to a desire to show that he was important and partly to the general principle of desiring to cause inconvenience and friction.”
“Then Miss Wyndham is a sounder psychologist than I thought. But you see how this bears out what I told you.”
“Precisely. But she goes on to say that subsequently she heard no signs of any quarrel between the deceased.”
“I think that I previously mentioned that conversation in any of the directors’ rooms is not audible in the outer office. Besides she may have been typing herself, and the noise of that would drown any other sound.”
“She says she was not doing so but was herself enjoying a short rest while taking her tea. She is very sure of that as she says it is her invariable custom to take a few minutes’ break then. She says it is the only time in what she regards as an onerous day, that she does so.''
“It is immaterial, but I hope Miss Wyndham will not induce you to believe she is hard worked. She is seldom asked to work overtime, for instance, or unduly hurried. But please go on.”
Immaterial though it was, the Inspector thought it necessary to write it down. In future I should let such minor misapprehensions pass. “That would tend to confirm the statement that she was taking a short rest. Now I have carried out a few experiments, and while I agree that normal conversation in Mr. Latimer’s room cannot be heard from where Miss Wyndham sits, raised voices can, if there is quiet outside.”
“But was there quiet outside? Even if Miss Wyndham was not typing, she would certainly be chattering. Besides if Latimer was in his chair, Spencer would be standing with his back to the door, so that his voice would be going away from Miss Wyndham.”
“Which, sir, brings me to the next point. It seems that Mr. Latimer allowed himself to be struck in the face extremely easily. Why should there have been no noise? Was there no struggle?”
“Very little,” I answered.
Apparently the Inspector thought that he had induced me to make an answer without thinking. “And how do you know that?”
“Because this room is within earshot.”
“Precisely, sir”—a pet adverb of the Inspector’s—“but I want to know more about what you heard and why you did not interfere.”
Quite why he did it I do not know, but obviously Hoopington had been leading up to this point and hoping that he would catch me unawares and get me to make some admission, which, I suppose, he hoped would help his case. As a matter of fact it was I who had been leading up to this point and I was delighted that apparently it had come from him. I had decided, in order to convince him that Spencer had been prepared to use violence against Latimer, to tell him the contents of what Spencer had written.
That it was actually written I thought it best to conceal, but I would inform him of the substance in a different way.
Accordingly I gave him quite a lengthy description of Spencer’s fury over the Greyfields Canners and I said that he had spoken to me of his intention of telling Latimer exactly what he thought of him on that subject and on many others, and I ended by saying that Spencer had actually said that he intended to use force if necessary, but that anyhow Latimer should listen. “Return the black eye” were the actual words that he used to me. So that when I heard some slight disturbance I knew exactly what was happening and I saw no reason to interfere. “You see it had not then entered my head that Spencer would lose his temper to such an extent that he would in a fit of fury commit murder. Still less had it occurred to me that Latimer had worked himself up to such a state of hatred that he was intending to poison Spencer.”
The Inspector looked at me rather coldly. “You should have mentioned this before.”
It was time for me to turn the tables. “I think that that is hardly fair. I have now had the pleasure of several long interviews with you—very long if you will excuse my saying so—and I think you will admit that I have answered everything that you have asked me.”
“But you have not before mentioned to me that you heard what must have been the actual struggle or that you had any reason to expect such a thing to happen. Come, sir, you ought not to have suppressed that!”
“On at least two occasions—if I may continue, Inspector—it has been on the tip of my tongue to tell you. But on both of those, as well as on others, you have seen fit to end the interview at a peculiar point. At least so it seemed to me.”
“And those occasions were?”
“The first night. You dismissed the staff and said you wanted me to stay. Then, without assigning any reason for your action, you locked the door of my own room on me. Again, the other day you asked me some questions about my attitude to Miss Wyndham’s marriage. Again it was on the tip of my tongue to tell you about this, but just as I was going to do so, you left.”
Whatever other complaint I have to make about Inspector Hoopington, I must admit that he was perfectly fair. He was prepared at once to accept that as an adequate excuse. I must own I was surprised at how easily he was convinced, but then I suffered from the disadvantage that I knew that it was not entirely true. I had not in fact made up my mind until quite recently to describe what Spencer had written because I was afraid of in some way calling attention to the fact that it was not said, but was written. I am not an accomplished conspirator and I might say something stupid, might appear to know too much.
By now, too, I was convinced that I had made a mistake in keeping Spencer’s notes away from the Inspector. They would have clinched the matter once and for all. I ought to have risked his being led astray by Spencer’s foolish opinion of myself. If only Latimer had really written his diary in full, I think that I would have been glad to give Hoopington both!
Even as it was the Inspector was impressed. I think that something must be attributed to his pleasure in getting an account at all. It was, of course, very valuable evidence and, to my mind, quite conclusive. I had only kept it back partly for the reason that I have already given, partly because I hoped to prove my case without it, and partly because I was not sure whether it would merely be regarded as hearsay.
But now that it did come, the very fact that it had been apparently to some extent forced from me, made it doubly convincing. I was made to describe in great detail exactly what had been in theory said to me, which as I had read
it through again quite recently, I was able to do quite easily.
Still, it took a long while, and when, halfway through, the Inspector came to the last page of his notebook, I conceived the childish hope that with the end of the book would come the end of taking notes. But the Inspector merely produced another book and went straight on. I believe if the end of the world were to come, he would appear before the Recording Angel with all the facts as to its dissolution neatly and unimaginatively tabulated.
However, at last the record was concluded, and I felt that I was going to be allowed to get on with my work. As it was, the advertisement for Flukil would have to remain unchanged, and though Fletcher, its owner, was a reasonable man who was prepared to make allowances for my difficulties, I was anxious to do everything that I could for him, but it was impossible to get Inspector Hoopington to see that work was more important than the solution of crime.
Perhaps though, it was merely that the solution of crime being work to him, he considered it important. At any rate he still desired to prolong the conversation.
“And that is all, sir? You have mentioned all Mr. Spencer’s causes of complaint? Was there not something more in this street accident than the mere question of the ridicule attaching to a black eye and a rather infantile desire to inflict a similar pain?”
“Oh that,” I answered readily enough. “I think there was really nothing in it, though at the time Spencer did seem to blame Latimer for carelessness in not warning him at once. Still, as I say, I think he really forgot all that and only remembered the eye. By the way, I suppose it was only a few minutes before he died that Latimer was hit?”
“We can of course tell that from the amount of discoloration. But as to Mr. Latimer’s alleged carelessness over the car and Mr. Spencer’s feelings of revenge–––”
“Do you really want me to describe that?” I asked.
Apparently the Inspector did. More valuable minutes went by while many pages of the Inspector’s new notebook were covered with his copy-book handwriting. I could not help noticing what a very uneconomic pattern of notebook it was. If I were allowed to reorganize the C.I.D., I am sure I could save the tax-payer a considerable sum under the heading of stationery alone. But then I am sure that if I were allowed to go through all the trifling extravagances of every Government Department and cut them down ruthlessly, it would reduce the income tax by at least sixpence in the pound. Look at the way they will telegraph instead of writing, for instance!