Hell! said the Duchess

by Michael Arlen

  “I am not talking about a Frenchwoman, Icelin, but about the most gracious lady in England. And it is not credible that she can be a murderess. I say there is some­thing damned queer about this case, for you and I know in our hearts that such a woman could not be capable of these crimes.”

  Icelin said: “Look here, sir, I want to arrest the lady as little as you do.” He flicked a finger at the papers on the table. “But here is the evidence, and all we have to put against it is that this might be a Jekyll and Hyde case, and that is not evidence.”

  “But you agree that we can’t arrest her at this stage?”

  “Are you asking me as a policeman or a politician?”

  “Heavens above, Icelin, can’t we be just human for a change?”

  “Oh, as a human being I can see the Home Secretary’s point that it would be a highly disturbing factor in the present mood of the people to arrest the Duchess of Dove as Jane the Ripper.”

  “Exactly.” Prest-Olive picked up the tele­phone. “I am going to ask Wingless to lunch. You might come, too. He is a relation of hers and a chap with shrewd ideas.”

  “First-rate golfer,” Icelin commented.

  Prest-Olive left a message for Colonel Wingless at his club. Then Superintendent Crust came in.

  Icelin said: “You look worn out, Crust.”

  “I am that, sir.” He addressed the Com­missioner, who was running a comb through his charming iron-grey hair. “Her Grace is here, sir. With her companion. Perfectly ready to answer anything you like to ask her. I’ve had them shown into Mr. Icelin’s room.”

  Icelin was childishly relieved when his chief said that he would see her himself. He knew that the interview would be quite profitless and at the same time harrowing. It was only his irritation with Prest-Olive’s deference to social values that had made him emphasise the weight of the evidence against the Duchess. There was something inex­plicably queer about this case which made him positive that the solution would not be found through ordinary police methods. That was why he had welcomed the approaching interview with Victor Wing­less.

  Then he noticed that Crust had brought out something small and white from his pocket and was now looking down at it in a very despondent way. Prest-Olive was combing his iron-grey moustache.

  Icelin said: “Look.”

  Both men stared at poor Crust with a dis­taste which they knew was unfair. He had done no more than his duty. Both quite consciously tried to shut their sense of smell against the faint agreeable perfume that came from the soft white thing in Crust’s large hand.

  Then he very gently put the flimsy hand­kerchief on a corner of the large table. Neither Prest-Olive nor Icelin made any attempt to touch it. The tiny coronet with the strawberry leaves seemed to be as big as the room. As the handkerchief was now almost under their noses it was quite im­possible not to identify Jane the Ripper’s perfume.

  “She dropped it,” said the Superintendent sulkily, “while picking up her dog—a Sealyham.”

  Crust went out. Icelin thoughtfully folded the handkerchief and placed it in an enve­lope.

  Prest-Olive said: “My God, where’s this going to end? The next thing will be that we’ll find a mutilated corpse clutching a hair from a Sealyham.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Now the part played by Colonel Wing­less in the tragic affair of the Duchess of Dove has hitherto remained obscure to his­torians. No doubt he owes this neglect to his appearance, which was that of a two-bottle man and, therefore, not compatible with that of a psychologist of first-rate ability.

  Wingless was a tall and powerful-looking man with a heavy, handsome face notable for its high colour, which was de­scribed by those who disliked him as fruity and by his friends as ruddy. His eyes were of that cold blue sometimes approved by lady novelists and nautical enthusiasts as “frozen” or “chilled” blue, as of men inured to hardships on the seven seas, although the impression they give might be more accurately described as one of rugged and impenetrable vacancy. This impression Wingless had found to be an invaluable dis­guise for a man of average attainments in fields where looking silent and beefy wasn’t everything. Since leaving the army, in which he had always been known as “a soldier with a future,” whatever that may mean, he had won his way to the managing-directorship of one of the largest aircraft-building con­cerns in England.

  It was said of Wingless that the honour of having done the bravest action of the 1914-18 war must fall to him. In the autumn of ’15, miraculously unhurt after more than a year in the trenches, he was in London on short leave. Walking in mufti down Piccadilly one morning, he was handed a white feather by a large woman with the cold eyes of one who is kind to animals but to no one else. But Wingless was larger and, deftly grabbing her by the waist, he turned her over and gave her several resounding smacks on her behind. When charged with common assault at Marlborough Street he had explained that the lady had looked such a tough baby that he had wanted to find out if she had hair on her chest. Fined £5. Acclaimed as a hero by all his fellow-officers and men on his return to France, he had quickly showed himself at heart a slave to convention by winning the Victoria Cross.

  After luncheon he listened intently to Prest-Olive’s worried and far from precise summary of the facts collected by the police about the Jane the Ripper crimes. Then he turned to Icelin, whose thin intellectual face was something of a refreshment for the eyes against the background of bewildered near-Nordics in the club smoking-room.

  “Icelin, did you get anything at all from your interview with her this morning?”

  “The chief saw her alone.”

  Basil Icelin’s deep eyes twinkled just per­ceptibly as he said this, and Wingless smiled faintly in return. Prest-Olive was lighting a cigar. Both men knew the poor man’s weak­ness for a lady of title, and if the occasion had not been so tragic Wingless must have smiled outright at the vision of Prest-Olive’s deferential bedside manner at the examina­tion of a Duchess on a disagreeable matter of three atrocious murders.

  “Nothing,” said the iron-grey Commis­sioner. He spoke, when he thought of it, in clipped speech, though being a naturally garrulous man he did not always think of it. “Not one thing. I never saw—hope never to see again—such horror and bewilderment on a woman’s face. She knew nothing—could give no explanation.”

  “That,” said Icelin dryly, “was only to be expected. The person responsible for three senseless murders would naturally be hard put to it to give a reasonable explanation.”

  Prest-Olive became all profile and gave a snort. He disapproved of sarcasm, except about Jews and foreigners, and sometimes wondered how Icelin had ever managed to win the Amateur.

  “Icelin,” said Wingless, “do you believe she did it?”

  Slightly shaking his head, Icelin said: “But that’s neither here nor there. I’m only a policeman, and it’s not my job to have views but to collect facts and present them with the body of the accused to a judge and jury.”

  “And you think you have enough evi­dence?”

  “Unfortunately—yes.”

  “What about the gaps? For instance, this chap Fancy saw her go out on the two nights in question but didn’t see her return. But we know for a fact that she was in her bed early in the morning because Doris Nautigale spoke to her on the telephone. If it really was the Duchess who went out it’s impossible she could have returned without Fancy’s eagle eye spotting her. Therefore it was not the Duchess who went out. What about that?”

  “Not much,” said Icelin. “The important point is that Fancy saw her or her exact double go out. For all we care officially she might have got back on a broomstick.”

  “Another point is,” said Wingless slowly, “that Mary has never smoked a cigarette in her life.”

  Prest-Olive’s handsome profile brightened at this, but Icelin was less easily impressed.

  “No more than a few months ago,” he said, “the lady in question never went out to night clubs in queer company and never did a great ma
ny things which she—appar­ently—has been doing recently. Then why should it be so improbable that she has also taken to smoking cheap cigarettes? In fact, Wingless, it isn’t improbable—given the very peculiar atmosphere of this whole case.”

  “Look here,” Wingless said, “I don’t be­lieve that Mary Dove is a murderess, Prest-Olive doesn’t believe it, and you don’t be­lieve it either. But we all know that it’s only in books that people can be impersonated and disguised so perfectly. Icelin, do you believe in perfect disguises?”

  “Do I believe in sea serpents? Go on.”

  “I gather the Home Secretary agrees with Prest-Olive that it would be unwise at this stage to make any move against the Duchess or any statement to the Press. Now let me suggest a plan. I shall persuade Mary to go into a nursing-home to-day or to-morrow. Old Dr. Lapwing will have charge of her, and she will be under observation day and night. Then should any hint of your sus­picions against so prominent a person as the Duchess leak out, and should it be said that the police are conspiring to defeat the ends of justice by not arresting her, you will have a fairly good answer in the fact that she is in a nursing-home. And if there is another Jane the Ripper murder while she’s there, you will have a decisive answer. Now I suppose it has occurred to you two blokes that we shall only find a clue to the real criminal when we trace the owner of the male voice which hired the car on the night of the Charlotte Street Murder.”

  Icelin said: “Congratulations, Wingless. The use of a surgical knife and the male telephone voice are, in point of fact, the only items in the whole damn business at all favourable to the Duchess. We can’t hope to trace them, of course. But they do help us to form a point of view which isn’t—speak­ing impersonally—entirely hostile to her.” He turned to Prest-Olive. “What do you think of the nursing-home idea?”

  “Excellent,” said Prest-Olive, who had already decided he would call on the Duchess at the nursing-home and maybe be asked to stay for a cup of tea. Would it be correct to take his wife? He added: “What we have to fear, Icelin, is even the smallest leakage to the Press about what the police know or suspect.”

  “Believe me,” said Wingless grimly, “one little leak will cause a flood.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Now Wingless’s mind was an obstinate one, and it had fixed on two points: first, the male voice which had hired the car: second, that the murderess must be unusually familiar with the routine of poor Mary’s daily life.

  One could dismiss the possibility of Jane the Ripper being one of the domestic staff at the house in Grosvenor Square, for there was not a woman among them except Mary herself who could even remotely fit the bill as to face and figure. The dismissed maid was fair, plump, and a good head shorter. And if there was one certainty in the whole wretched business it was that the beautiful woman who had been seen and recognised by Mrs. Gosoda and others was not a man impersonating a woman.

  Then where, he asked Mrs. Nautigale later that afternoon, did the man’s voice come in? Not that the good lady was listening, for she was in the greatest state of rage imaginable. Only an hour or so before she had heard from Amy Gool of the visit to Scotland Yard that morning. From Miss Gool’s brief recital, marked by strong disapproval of police procedure as a whole, one could only imagine that Mary was lucky not to have been clapped into prison then and there. And Mrs. Nautigale’s horror at anyone even dar­ing to suspect any connection whatever between her gentle Mary and a murderess was for the time being submerged by her wrath with the Commissioner of Police for being such a fathead. The idiocy! The im­pudence! Why, only the day before she had invited the Prest-Olives to dine on Thursday week to meet the new German Ambassador, Count Musselsaroffsir.

  When exasperated, Mrs. Nautigale al­ways turned to the telephone. She rang up Lady Prest-Olive. She told her that she had just heard that her husband was a mental defective. And she regretted, she said, hav­ing to cancel her invitation for dinner on Thursday week owing to an unreasonable prejudice amongst her friends against dining with a man who might at any moment think he was the Emperor of Jerusalem. Doing this had given Mrs. Nautigale a small measure of satisfaction, for she could imagine the ripe dressing-down which that horse-faced creature of a ffox-Vermin snob would give her handsome nitwit of a husband that evening when he got home.

  “I hope,” she had said to Amy Gool, “you told them what you thought of them.”

  “I surprised them,” said Miss Gool.

  Thus it was a Mrs. Nautigale even more determined than usual whose collaboration Colonel Wingless was seeking. She offered it very gladly, expressing only the regret, as they drove to Mary’s house, that Basil Ice­lin was not married, as she would have liked to put a spoke in his wheel, too.

  “You might,” said Wingless, “steal his mashie-niblick. That would get him on the raw.”

  “Do be serious, Victor.”

  “Try it and see how serious Icelin will be.”

  They found Mary in her bedroom. She was reclining on a sofa by the window, and though the day was very warm a Cashmere shawl was thrown loosely over her. Miss Gool went out as they came in. Poor Mary looked very white after her ordeal. She tried to smile a greeting to her friends, but the smile was shattered by a sob. And she stared at them helplessly with eyes so horri­fied and haunted that Mrs. Nautigale’s own instantly filled with tears. Indeed, the thought of any connection between the gentle and lovely woman on the sofa and the fiend known as Jane the Ripper was so hideously insulting to the very dignity of human beings in general that Wingless him­self had all he could do to pretend he was suffering from nothing more than a little catarrh.

  Mary said: “Doris—Victor—why didn’t you tell me months ago of the things that were being said about me?”

  “Dear,” cried Mrs Nautigale. “I knew, you see, they weren’t true. What was the use of hurting you? I thought they must come to an end by themselves. Dearest Mary, no one who knows you ever thought—or thinks—of them except as horrible lies. Victor?”

  “I agree,” said Wingless, again clearing his throat.

  Mary said: “They can’t be just lies.”

  She was so calm and reasonable that Mrs. Nautigale’s tears fell faster than ever.

  “A lie,” Mary said, “is a word. But this isn’t a word.”

  “Why, dear, of course they are lies.”

  “A lie is a word. But this is a body.”

  “Why, Mary, whatever do you mean?”

  “There is someone or something in this world who has my body and my face and my eyes and my voice. How can that be a ‘lie’?”

  “But, darling——”

  Mary said: “There is a spirit of more than human evil in a body which is the twin of mine. And this thing has my face and my eyes and my voice. O God, what shall I do? What can I do?”

  “Look here, Mary,” Wingless said, “the police think that——”

  Mary said: “The police? I’m afraid, Victor, that the police haven’t been trained to arrest spirits. And after all,” she said reasonably, “it’s in the Bible, isn’t it, that even God Himself couldn’t really arrest Satan, so what can we expect a poor police­man to do?”

  “He arrested him,” said Mrs. Nautigale severely, “and threw him into Hell.”

  “You could hardly call that solitary con­finement, could you, Doris? Do you know what I think, Victor? I think I am being punished for my pride and vanity. Yes, I do. And my twin has been sent to punish me. I have been vain of my good looks, but I’m not vain now. My dear kind twin has seen to that. And now I loathe myself with such a loathing that I am frightened to be left alone because I want to kill myself. Doris, dear, do you know that people talk a lot of nonsense about their ‘souls’? I think we can quite comfortably endure loathing our own souls, but if our bodies feel unclean we really do want to destroy them. Victor, you had better keep a very careful eye on me——”

  “Nonsense, Mary. You have too much sense.”

  “Oh, I have got a lot more than that—I’ve also a tw
in sister who is so much more seductive to men than I can ever hope to be that they will let her take them home and murder them. Do you know, Victor, I think I am going mad. I keep on looking at my face in the mirror and wondering how it looks when I’m just about to kill——”

  Wingless said: “Now listen to me, my duck. You are going to a nursing-home within the hour. And you will be in the charge of the finest doctor in the world, old Lapwing.”

  “And will he put me to sleep?”

  “Yes, dear. Now don’t you worry.”

  “And will he have me watched day and night, Victor, and have me kept in a locked room with iron shutters across the windows so that if I really am Jane the Ripper I shan’t be able to slip out but must cut my own throat instead, which would be a very good thing, wouldn’t it?”

  “Mary,” said Mrs. Nautigale, “stop that.”

  And, her eyes streaming with tears, she bent forward and kissed Mary and held her very close.

  Then Wingless said: “Now that we have all let down our hair and had a good cry, I want you to help me, Mary, by trying to answer one question.”

  “She is in no mood,” said Mrs. Nautigale, “to answer even one silly question.”

  “You shut up,” said Wingless, “and try to look as small as you might be, dear Doris, if you didn’t eat so much rich food. Now the question I want to ask you, Mary, is a rather peculiar one. Has there happened to you within the last year or so any little thing which has struck you as peculiar? Anything at all which has been outside your ordinary life? Or let me put it this way: have you met anyone at all, man or woman, or have you heard anything at all from a man or woman, which has struck you as being in any way odd?”

  Mary Dove, as he spoke, had half risen on one elbow and was now staring at him with distended eyes.

  “But it can’t,” she cried, “have anything to do with it. How can it?”

  Mrs. Nautigale, breathing heavily in her excitement, bent forward and wiped off with a handkerchief a smudge of lip rouge which her kiss had left at the corner of Mary’s mouth.