Dancing Death

by Christopher Bush

  “Yes. ... I have.”

  “And was I right about the ewe lamb?”

  “The ewe lamb! I don’t follow.”

  Wharton told him the story of Uriah the Hittite—at least, he got out the first few words when Travers remembered the reference. Wharton put his question again.

  “Was I right?”

  “You were—though how the devil you guessed it, I can’t imagine.”

  “Think it out!” said Wharton. “You hinted that Braishe had killed Fewne. Very well, then, why? What was the motive? What did he want from Fewne? Not money—that was absurd. He wasn’t jealous of his reputation, because he had a bigger one himself. All that Fewne had which another man might envy him was—the one ewe lamb. That’s why I sent Norris to the Yard to make arrangements for an inquiry into that holiday Mrs. Fewne spent in Switzerland.”

  “Found anything yet?”

  “Oh, no!” said Wharton unconcernedly. “But there’s plenty of time. There’ll be what you’re now going to tell me, for instance.”

  “Then you’d a damn sight more faith in me than I had in myself,” said Travers with a wry smile. “However, here’s the story.” He pushed back the table with one hand and felt for his glasses with the other; then leaned forward confidentially.

  “The story begins with a certain Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard who had a sensitive soul. Were I a writer of fiction, I should call it—‘A Bow at a Venture.’”

  Wharton, knowing something of Travers’s methods, nodded resignedly.

  CHAPTER XXII

  FEWNE TRIES TO PAY

  TRAVERS was well on the way with his story.

  “Every time it comes back to me it makes me wince as if someone had struck me a blow. There’s Fewne, strolling into that office of Thring & Mabberley, looking round like a boy at a circus. Then he realized he’d have to give some definite excuse for his visit, and when Mabberley rushed him into it, he gave the name of the most nonsensical person one could possibly imagine—Martin Braishe! reliable old Martin; the chap who was like a brother; the steady-going, scientific-minded Martin; just off to the Colonial Office and then to a greybeards’ powwow at Oxford. Lord, how funny! Fancy a sleuth following him up! Taking down meticulously every movement—and wondering what the devil it was all about!

  “I want you to imagine the rest, because it shows what happened. Fewne left that office, probably chuckling to himself inside. He couldn’t find Braishe, to tell him the joke, but it would keep. All the week-end he’d be looking forward to getting that report and carrying on with the book. Then there’d be that trip to Folkestone, looking out a piece or two of furniture he and Brenda had thought of for the new flat. And there’d be the thought of Brenda’s coming down after six weeks and more away.

  “Then he went to the post office and got the report. He was so keen that he couldn’t wait till he got back to the hotel; he went into a little tea shop and read it while his tea was coming. I expect you’ve guessed what was in it?”

  “I have ... I think. But go on.”

  “I’ll tell you as much as I can remember. It ran something like this:

  “I picked up the suspect outside the Colonial Office and followed him to the Ravoli Restaurant in Minor Street, just off the Haymarket, where he lunched alone. He consulted his watch frequently. From there he went to the Isis Club, and from there to Victoria Station by taxi, and as he took no ticket I presumed he was meeting somebody, and therefore took the precaution of having a taxi ready myself. He inquired of a porter how the Continental train was running, and was told a quarter of an hour late. When it came in he proceeded straight from the barrier to a taxi, where he was joined by a lady, whose luggage, I heard her say, had been placed in the cloakroom. She carried a small bag only.

  “My taxi followed them to Golder’s Green and along the North Road as far as Finchley, where it drew in at a small detached villa standing back from the road: ‘Ivydale’ by name. There I dismissed my own taxi.”

  Travers paused for a moment. “This chap—Reid his name was—then appears to have hung about till it was dark without being able to do anything except make sure that nobody left the house. Then a light went on in a downstairs room, and he tried listening at the window. What he heard was—inter alia—something like this:

  “‘You’re sure Denis isn’t likely to run across the Fowlers? It might be pretty awkward if they happened to let out that you’d come back a day earlier.’

  “‘You silly boy! He wouldn’t think anything if he did know! Besides, what’s it matter?’ Then there was the sound of kissing, a ‘darling’ or two, and various endearments.

  “Next thing was when a light went on in the bedroom, and Reid was lucky enough to find a ladder. I needn’t repeat all the intimacies he heard; the exact words don’t matter. But Brenda Fewne was talking stars and romance and love, and Braishe was still a bit nervous. They discussed Fewne’s suspicions again; Mirabel Quest and her relations with Challis, and Ransome’s sharp eyes and tongue. They gloated over Braishe’s foresight in getting hold of that handy little place at Finchley and planned what they’d do when the Fewnes came to town. Then Braishe cut up nasty; said he wouldn’t have her coming to him straight from her husband’s arms. She said she’d make excuses—get medical advice, and so on. In any case, she’d never live with him again—unless things got too difficult, when they could talk it over together at some delicious moment like the present.

  “The rest of the report doesn’t matter. Braishe saw her back to town and was actually fool enough to see to getting the luggage out again. Mirabel didn’t meet her at the station—that’s all surmise, of course, though it must be near the truth—but I should say she sent Ransome along to help with luggage, and so on. Ransome must have seen the whole of the camouflaged arrival. The report ends with the departure of Braishe: to de-garage his car, I imagine, though it doesn’t say so.”

  “My God! Perfectly hellish!”

  “Wasn’t it! Put yourself in Fewne’s place. Now we know why he rushed out of the tea shop, along the road to Dover; and why he came back like a man who’s been stunned. The woman, mind you, he’d given up everything for—worried and sacrificed so that she could have a good time! And Braishe!”

  “You’d never have thought it!” said Wharton plaintively. “I guessed Braishe was coveting her, but I’d have sworn she was as chaste as an icicle!”

  “I know. That’s the terrible part of it. Fewne must have gone half mad over there in the pagoda that Monday night. Then he began to scheme things out. He made up his mind to kill her and make it appear as if Braishe had done it. By the following morning he had it all worked out. He took the dagger with him, bought the poker, arranged for the costume, and got the pliers. But, throughout the whole affair, he showed a curious naïveté. He was still, in some ways, the natural Fewne—remote from actualities. It would have taken a super-first-class crook to carry out what he planned.

  “Then we come to the actual night. Under his clothes he had on that harlequin costume. He took care to dance very little; as far as possible he sat apart watching, over on the settee by the door. I rather think he was afraid of the costume showing beneath his clothes. Also he kept his feet firmly on the floor—didn’t sit with his legs crossed—so that his pulled-up trousers mightn’t show the tights.

  “He flicked that note to Tommy Wildernesse; then went back to his seat by the door, where he was sitting, as I told you when we all sat round the fire with the lights out. I should say he left the room just before we did. He could judge that. The balloons he left with their string wedged between the settee and the wall. He went straight to the electric light recess, and when he heard his wife’s voice above him on the stairs, and he’d guessed we’d gone up, he cut the cord. Then he slipped up the stairs like a streak and into that recess by Tommy Wildernesse’s room.

  “Now you see the importance of that note. What Fewne hoped was that he’d remain out in the loggia long enough for his room to be empty. He needed that landing, jus
t as a protean artist needs a screen. He whipped off his outer clothes and nipped across the landing into what he imagined was his wife’s room. He saw the figure in white—and struck with the dagger. Then he laid down the body, locked the door, screwed on the handle of the dagger, taking care not to disturb the prints, and pushed the body under the bed. As he came out of the room again he may have heard voices, and that may have been why he paused for a moment to brush back his hair as if he were Braishe. Then he nipped across the landing again, got his clothes on, and went downstairs, where he escaped being seen. Then he got his balloons.

  “We can discuss his probable state of mind with the medical people, but I would suggest that after he got those balloons he was in a highly nervous condition—to put it mildly. It was when he was coming back from the dance room that he saw his wife! He may have run into her in the semidarkness or have seen her closely by the light of a candle. That was the final shock. He rushed out of the front door and made for the pagoda like a madman. When he got there, his brain was on fire. He prowled up and down like a lunatic. Then he sobered down a bit; took off his clothes and burnt that harlequin costume, poking it about till nothing was left but the metal tabs of the lace. Then he got into his pajamas and tried to think again. All that would keep coming to his mind was the damnable irony of everything. He’d killed the wrong woman. All his scheming had been for nothing. His wife and Braishe could still carry on their intrigue, and he’d have to shut his eyes to it or else give her her freedom and so play into her hands. And all because a man had written a letter to The Times! I repeat—the hellish, damnable irony! That’s what struck his poor befuddled brain. He was a creative artist, and his mind kept urging him—in spite of his body—to write down what he felt; a letter, we’ll say, to the editor of The Times, something like this:

  “To the Editor of The Times.

  “DEAR SIR:

  “You printed in your issue of Friday last, a letter which had consequences so tragically ironical that . . .

  “and so on. Naturally, he never intended the letter to be sent. He was putting down his thoughts on paper; giving an outlet to a devastating emotion. But his hand shook so much that he couldn’t write. He tried over and over again—and his hand failed him. Then that, or something else, infuriated him. He snatched up the pen and cut and slashed those balloons—with their ghastly associations—and ripped them about the room. After that I should say he threw himself on the bed in a frenzy, clutching his hair, his face puckered up with an incomprehensible sort of agony. . . . Then he died.”

  Travers shook his head, then slowly rubbed his glasses. Wharton grunted, nodded once or twice, then jerked out:

  “How?”

  “I’ll come to that later,” said Travers. “Shall we go on to the following morning—and Ransome in particular?”

  “The blackmail business?”

  “That’s it. We can fit that in now like a glove. Overnight Ransome had decided to throw in her lot with her mistress, instead of doing a little quiet blackmail on the sly from Brenda Fewne. Mirabel was extraordinarily amused! To think that the virtuous Brenda had been having an affair! Brenda—the paragon of chastity, the ever present Lucrece, the perpetual proclaimer of virtue—oh, my God! it was too funny! No wonder she laughed! And no wonder she turned round and spat! And she let the other see how it felt, by a little threatening of exposure.”

  Travers shook his head again. “Now I come to look back, George, I can think of a dozen innuendoes Mirabel let out that night—perfectly venomous remarks and hints I couldn’t understand at the time. However, Ransome got her reward straightaway, by the ring; then, next morning, after the murder, she put the thumbscrews on Brenda Fewne. Brenda borrowed from Celia Paradine and stopped her mouth with twenty pounds as a beginning. But Palmer had been talking to Ransome before that bit of blackmail was done—when Ransome had really decided to tell some yarn to explain away that ring. After the blackmail the two women had to put their heads together—and they invented that story about the debt. If Ransome hadn’t been killed, you’d have had the whole yarn out of them in five minutes.”

  Wharton shook his head. “I shouldn’t have been here!”

  “Hm! Perhaps you wouldn’t. . . . However, something else arose out of that interview I had with Ransome. Like the usual inexperienced amateur in anything, I tried to do too much. I didn’t keep to bare essentials. I hinted at Challis—who happened to have the wind up pretty badly himself. Thereupon Ransome saw another source of income and proceeded to put the screw on Challis. Unfortunately for her, Braishe had seen Brenda Fewne. He spent best part of half an hour with her while Celia was having tea downstairs—and by a really delicious irony, I was the one who sent him upstairs! Braishe’d be in the devil of a hole when that disaster loomed up. All he probably did then was to reassure her. After all, she wouldn’t see the seriousness of it, as he did. She thought her husband died from—well, what George Paradine had told her. Then Braishe made up his mind to handle Ransome himself.”

  Wharton looked up suddenly. “Know what happened?”

  “I don’t. If it came to guesswork, I’d say he watched her leave the room after I’d finished with her. Perhaps she’d arranged with Brenda to make a report to her about what happened with me—that’s what I expected at the time. If Brenda told Braishe that—then he’d have been waiting somewhere upstairs for her. He got her with his hands as she was going up the side stairs—say, after they’d passed one another. Still, that’s all too vague.”

  “Who else could have killed her?”

  “Exactly! He was the man with a motive.” He said nothing for a moment or two, then went off at a tangent. “That footman Charles? Was he perfectly genuine?”

  “Absolutely. Clean sheet where he came from—and Pollock speaks well of him.”

  “Then he had nothing to do with that doped drink?”

  Wharton snorted. “You never imagined he had—did you?”

  “Well ... I did flirt with the idea.”

  “Hm! It was he or Braishe—I grant you that. Braishe wouldn’t have dared to bribe Charles to do it. And didn’t it strike you as unusual that Braishe should have handed out that drink himself? Shouldn’t the footman have done that?”

  “Not necessarily!” said Travers. “You see it was a special drink—and all very informal. Got that coat analysis yet?”

  “Not yet. When we do get it, it won’t be conclusive. Braishe mightn’t have troubled to dope Fewne. Over in the pagoda he’d have been quite safe.”

  Travers’s eyes opened. “Safe! How?”

  “Well—out of the way!”

  “I don’t follow,” said Travers. “What’s your idea of the reason why Braishe doped that drink?”

  Wharton smiled. “Different from yours—which is that he wanted a quiet house while he faked the burglary—gas from the safe, and so on. You and Franklin and Charles interfered with that; then next morning the genuine burglary turned up like a fifth ace. Wasn’t that your idea? ... I thought so! Mine is that he intended as well to spend some part of that night with Brenda Fewne.”

  Travers hopped up. “George, you’ve told me the very thing I wanted to know.” He smiled. “Hell of a thing to suffer from purity of mind, as I do. No wonder Crashaw smiled when I hinted that it was Mirabel who’d spoken to Braishe!”

  Wharton slewed round in his chair.

  “I say, what is all this?”

  Travers squinted round. “Have a look outside to see the coast’s clear; then I’ll tell you.”

  Ten minutes later, Wharton was nodding his head as if satisfied; against his better judgment, perhaps, but still satisfied.

  “What do you suggest?”

  “This, I think,” said Travers. “Get hold of Tommy Wildernesse at once and make sure he doesn’t see Braishe again except in your presence. He’ll go with us to Levington station and be packed off to town—to a perfectly quiet hotel like the Melton. Fix an appointment there for to-morrow evening—we two, he and George Paradine. Get that ev
idence absolutely officially.”

  “But no jury’d convict!”

  Travers glared at him. “Jury! Who’s worrying about juries? Get the evidence while the going’s good! You can do your window dressing later.”

  Wharton looked at him—and said nothing.

  “Tell Braishe you’ve finished here altogether. Be discreetly effusive. Thank him for his help, and so on. Tell him to go his way in peace. Then you and I and Palmer leave at once—but only for Levington, where we see Wildernesse off, then have a heart-to-heart talk with Crashaw. You got his record?”

  Wharton tapped his pocket.

  “Good! All that suit you?”

  “It’ll do,” said Wharton laconically.

  Travers pushed the bell, then remembered something else.

  “What was that you were mentioning on the phone —about the evidence we’d got, to show Crashaw, to make him talk?”

  Wharton nodded complacently.

  “Do you know, I was so interested in hearing you discuss the intelligence of juries that I forgot to ask you that!” He heaved himself out of the chair as William entered the room. “I’ll tell you that on the way down.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  CRASHAW TALKS

  WHARTON hung up the receiver.

  “It’s all right! The chief constable’s quite agreeable. Is he in the charge room yet?”

  “Just gone in,” said Travers.

  Wharton rubbed his hands. “Right! We’ll see what he’s got to say.”

  Crashaw didn’t look any the better for his three days’ incarceration. There was some attempt on his part at jauntiness, but its only effect was one of pathetic tawdriness. He was none too robust at any time; now he looked distinctly fragile—a wisp of a man who was biting the bullet but feeling most damnably uncomfortable inside. The room, too, was none too cheery; with its scarcely discernible fire, the cold linoleum on the floor, the rigid chairs, and the admonitory uniform hanging from a peg.