Knock Out

by Sapper

  “All right,” she snapped. “Pick up the mail, and answer as usual.”

  It was better so, she reflected, snatching a pot of face cream from the dressing-table. It would have looked very curious for Corinne Moxton, the famous film star, to attend an inquest. Almost as if she was interested in it – in the dead man. And suddenly a look of gloating ecstasy came into her eyes: Number Four had not bungled that time. She saw again that deadly pen that was not a pen; she heard again that quick hiss, saw Sanderson crumple in his chair, his head crash forward – dead. If only they could have got him before he had rung up: it was that that had caused the trouble. But he was too wily. Number Four had no chance; she admitted that. And one thing at any rate was certain: Sanderson had said nothing incriminating over the telephone.

  Her thoughts automatically turned to Standish: where did he come in? She had never seen him: he meant nothing to her, but it was him that Sanderson had rung up. A sort of detective, so Sir Richard said; moreover, the man who had shot Number Four. But he could know no more than Drummond, and once again her mind went back to that large individual. What was he going to say at the inquest?

  She finished dressing, and went into the sitting-room, where Daphne Frensham was awaiting her with the answers to her letters. Twenty-past eleven: the thing was just going to begin.

  “Sign them for me,” she said. “I can’t be bothered.”

  “But I can’t sign the ones asking for your autograph,” protested the other.

  “Then throw them in the fire,” screamed Corinne Moxton.

  What a maddening girl! Couldn’t the fool understand that her nerves were all on edge? That she did not want to be worried signing trashy letters to idiots. And then she pulled herself together; Daphne Frensham was looking at her in a very strange way. She must be careful: never do to let her secretary suspect anything. Not that she would, of course: the only person who knew she had been present when Sanderson was murdered was Number Four, and his mouth was effectively shut. And Sir Richard, but he did not count.

  “I guess my nerves are a bit on the jag this morning, Miss Frensham,” she forced herself to say. “Give me the letters and I’ll do them now.”

  She scrawled her signature at the foot of each, not even bothering to read them through. The clock showed eleven-thirty: the inquest was starting.

  “I shan’t want you any more today, Miss Frensham,” she said. “You can have it to yourself.”

  “Thank you,” said the other. “But I’ve got two or three hours’ work filing your press cuttings which I’d like to do before I go.”

  Corinne Moxton, as she watched Daphne Frensham methodically gathering the letters together, checked a strong desire to tell her to clear out of the flat: she must be careful. Damn the fool woman: could the idiot not understand that she wanted to be alone – that unless she could know something definite soon she would scream? At last the secretary left the room, and Corinne Moxton began pacing up and down.

  A quarter to twelve: it had begun. At that very moment the words might have been spoken which would end her career, would brand her in the eyes of the world, would… Great God! she had not thought of that.

  “Miss Frensham,” she called loudly. “Miss Frensham.”

  The secretary appeared.

  “Say, Miss Frensham,” she cried, “what would happen in this country if – if, well, if say someone was murdered by someone and someone else was present at the time?”

  Daphne Frensham’s face was quite expressionless.

  “I suppose you mean, what would happen to the someone else,” she said with maddening deliberation, and Corinne Moxton felt she could hit her. Was the girl completely daft this morning? What else could she have meant? And what was that the fool was saying? The someone else would be hanged!

  “Even if she had nothing to do with it?” cried the film star shrilly.

  “She!” Daphne Frensham raised her eyebrows. “Your someone else is a woman, is it? It makes no difference, Miss Moxton: women are hanged in England just the same as men. And, you see,” she continued, “she must have had something to do with it, otherwise she’d have told the police at once, wouldn’t she?”

  Corinne Moxton bit her lip, and her nails cut into the palms of her hand. She must be careful what she said: there was no doubt whatever that her secretary was now looking at her most strangely.

  “Thank you, Miss Frensham,” she said. “The point comes up in a new film I’m thinking of. Don’t let me keep you any more.”

  Hanged! Great heavens, what a fool she had been to go! Why had not that miserable cur Pendleton told her that she would be hanged? It was not possible; it was not justice: she could not be hanged. She had not done it: you cannot hang a person merely for watching someone being killed.

  A frenzy of panic seized her, and rushing into her bedroom she began hurling things into her dressing-case. She must get away: leave the country while there was still time. Hanged! Taken out in the early morning with a rope round one’s neck and hanged.

  “Are you going away, Miss Moxton?”

  Daphne Frensham was standing in the door and with a superhuman effort Corinne Moxton pulled herself together. If only some occult force had struck her secretary dead on the spot she would have danced with joy on the body. But it did not: she continued standing by the door, watching her employer out of a pair of wondering blue eyes.

  “I thought you said you were filing press cuttings, Miss Frensham,” she cried furiously. “It seems to me, I guess, you’re spending most of the morning fooling around the passages.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Moxton,” said Daphne Frensham sweetly. “The filing is not urgent, and I thought perhaps I could help you pack. Does that come into the film, too?”

  She left the room, leaving Corinne Moxton motionless. What did the girl mean? Did she suspect? Impossible: utterly impossible. No one could suspect – yet. No one could know anything about it at all. Unless… God! unless Drummond had said something at the inquest. But what could he have said – be saying now?

  A quarter-past twelve: was it over? Anyway, it was too late now to bolt: the police watched the boats, she had been told, in cases like that. Hanged! Hanged! Like that film of Mata Hari in which she had played a small part before she became a star. Only Mata Hari was shot. With snow on the ground.

  She bit her thumb to prevent herself shrieking. She had seen a play once – a Grand Guignol play – “Eight O’clock.” The last half-hour of a man’s life before he was hanged. He had prayed with the chaplain: the sole of one of his boots had had a patch in it – she remembered noticing that as he knelt by the bed. And then suddenly the whole cell had been full of people, and a thin-lipped man in a sort of uniform had come swiftly up to the murderer, and pinioned his arms, and half pushed, half carried him up some stairs behind the cell. Screaming; screaming. And then a dull thud, and silence.

  Hanged! That had been acting: in her case it would not be. It would be reality. She would be awakened in the morning, if she had ever gone to sleep. And men would come in and drag her out, and there would be that dull thud, and – silence. But she would not be there to realise there was silence. She would be dead.

  The front-door bell rang shrilly. And when a few moments later Sir Richard Pendleton entered he was met by Daphne Frensham.

  “I don’t think, Sir Richard,” she said, “that Miss Moxton is very well this morning. She has just fainted.”

  “Fainted,” he cried. “I’ll go to her at once. When did it happen?”

  “Just after the bell rang,” she said, and as he hurried into the bedroom a little smile twitched round her lips. “I don’t think she was expecting you.”

  And if there was a slight emphasis on the last word, Sir Richard did not notice it: was not the lovely Corinne Moxton unconscious on the bed and in need of professional attention?

  “My
dear,” he said solicitously when she opened her eyes, “what made you do that?”

  For a while she stared at him blankly: then she sat up and clutched his wrist.

  “Has he said anything?” she cried.

  Sir Richard frowned, putting a warning finger to his lips, and Corinne Moxton saw that her secretary was just behind him.

  “That will do, thank you, Miss Frensham,” she said. “Sorry to have given you the trouble: I suddenly felt queer. Now I want to talk to Sir Richard.”

  She waited till the door had shut; then she turned on him feverishly.

  “Well,” she cried, “what has happened?”

  “Absolutely nothing,” said the doctor gravely.

  “Drummond hasn’t split?”

  “Drummond wasn’t there.”

  “Is the inquest over?”

  Sir Richard nodded.

  “Yes. A purely formal affair with a formal verdict. And I don’t like it.”

  But Corinne Moxton was paying no attention. The inquest was over and Drummond had said nothing. All her fears were groundless, and she jumped up gaily.

  “And to think that I’ve been worrying myself sick,” she cried, “wondering if he was going to say something about you and me. That’s what made me faint: when the bell rang I thought it was the police.”

  “Don’t talk too loud, Corinne,” he said. “That girl of yours is in the next room. No; he said nothing, for the very good reason that he wasn’t there. Nor was Standish. And what I am wondering is, why they neither of them were there. I don’t like it, my dear: I don’t like it at all.”

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly.

  “What’s stung you now?” she cried. “You surely didn’t want him to say anything.”

  “Not about you and me naturally,” he answered. “But I can’t understand why no mention has been made of other things connected with the case. And I can’t understand why two of the principal witnesses have not been called. It looks very suspicious to me.”

  But Corinne Moxton was in no mood for gloom: the reaction after her previous fears was too wonderful.

  “Gee, Richard, your face would turn the butter rancid. Go and shake a cocktail, and then take me out to lunch.”

  He went into the next room obediently, but he was still looking worried when she joined him.

  “Number Nine was present,” he said, closing the door. “I’ve just seen him. And what you don’t seem to grasp, my dear, is that a formal verdict such as the coroner instructed the jury to bring in is only possible at the instigation of the police. It means they’ve got something up their sleeves.”

  “As long as they haven’t got me,” she cried. “I guess they can keep what they like there.”

  “It’s not quite so easy as that, Corinne,” he remarked, handing her a drink. “Why has no mention been made of the Old Hall? Why has nothing been said about the drugging of Standish and Drummond? They are lying low at the moment, and I should feel a great deal happier if we had a few more of their cards on the table. The fact that no mention was made of those things rather discounts the value to us that no mention was made of you and me.”

  She put down her glass.

  “You mean,” she said slowly, “that they still may know we were involved.”

  “Precisely,” he answered. “If some of those points had been alluded to, and nothing had been said about us, I should feel absolutely safe. As it is I don’t.”

  “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

  Her voice was shrill: all the old terrors were returning.

  “There is nothing to do about it,” he said. “All we can do is to hope for the best. It may be all my imagination: Drummond probably suspects nothing at all. But” – he shrugged his shoulders – “I wish I could be certain. Anyway,” he continued reassuringly, “I don’t think it possible that anyone can have an inkling of the fact that you were present when Sanderson was killed.”

  Her spirits revived: that was really all that mattered.

  “It was very unwise of you to go, as I’ve told you before,” he went on, “and had I had the slightest idea that you proposed to I should have forbidden it. But it’s done and there is no more to be said about it. What we’ve got to do now is to concentrate on the future.”

  He paused and stood listening: then stepping swiftly across the room he flung open the door, almost colliding as he did so with Daphne Frensham, who was just outside.

  “Good gracious, Sir Richard,” she said calmly, “how you startled me. There’s one letter I forgot to give you, Miss Moxton: will you sign it now?”

  Sir Richard watched her closely as she crossed the room. Had she been listening outside? If so, it was a superb piece of acting. Not by the quiver of an eyelid had she given herself away.

  He waited until she had again left the room: then he swung round to Corinne Moxton.

  “Is that secretary of yours all right?” he said in a low voice. “I could have sworn I heard a sound outside just before I opened the door.”

  “I guess I was a little indiscreet this morning,” she answered, quite humbly for her. “I kind of got nervous, Richard: I kept on thinking over what you said yesterday about Drummond. And I suddenly began to wonder what would happen to me if they did find out I was there when Sanderson was killed.”

  “My God! Corinne, you didn’t say anything about it to her?” he cried, aghast.

  “No, honey, no. I just put a sort of hypothetical case.”

  “Well, if you take my advice, you won’t put any more. We’ve bitten off quite enough already, without adding anything else. And we don’t want that young woman butting into things. Now – I’ve got an appointment which I can’t get out of, but I’ll meet you at the Ritz for lunch at one-thirty. And don’t forget: no more hypothetical cases.”

  Corinne Moxton watched him go: then she mixed herself another cocktail. She had been indiscreet: she knew it. Especially that insane moment of panic when she had started to pack her dressing-case. Just blind, unreasoning fear had driven her, and now she cursed herself for a fool. But if only they could know for certain.

  Suddenly an idea struck her. It could do no harm, and it might settle matters once and for all. She picked up the telephone book and looked up Drummond’s number. She would ring up the house, and ask him round for a drink that night. If Paris was a blind; if he was either stopping quietly in his own house or was somewhere in England, she might be able to get at him.

  A man’s voice answered – Captain Drummond’s butler.

  “I am sorry, madam, but Captain Drummond is in Paris; I cannot say where. I do not know when he is returning. Can I give him any message from madam? To have a drink with you some evening after he returns. Very good, madam.”

  She replaced the receiver: whether it was the truth or not, the story was evidently being stuck to. And after a while, when a third cocktail had followed in the wake of its predecessors, life began to look a little better. It must have been Sir Richard’s imagination over his talk with Drummond: she was perfectly safe. And even if the doctor was suspected, there was no reason why she should be. Just because she had been about with him a good deal since she had been in London was no justification for the police to get at her. They might question her, but she was quite capable of dealing with questions. In fact, if she handled the thing properly it might prove a good advertisement.

  One thing, however, would be a good thing to do: get rid of Daphne Frensham. The girl must have suspected something that morning, even if she was not wise to the truth. And it would be as well to get her out of the flat before the night. The rehearsal did not matter, so if she gave her secretary a week’s notice it would just be right: she would be leaving on the Monday and it was booked for Tuesday. And it would seem more natural than giving her the sack on the spot.

  “Say,
Miss Frensham,” she said, stopping on the way to her bedroom, “I guess it’s customary in this country to give notice, the same as in mine. Wal, I’m quitting early next week, and going to Berlin. So I shan’t be requiring you after Monday next. I hope that is convenient to you.”

  “Quite, thank you, Miss Moxton,” said Daphne Frensham.

  “It will give you time to look around for another situation, and of course I’ll give you a first-class reference.”

  She went on into her room: that was all right. The girl had taken it quite normally and evinced no surprise, and as she repassed the room on her way to the front door she saw her with her head bent low over the table absorbed in her work.

  Daphne Frensham waited until she heard the front door close; then pushing back her chair she lit a cigarette. She was frowning a little; being given the sack was not going to help matters. Had she played her part badly that morning: was that the reason? She did not see how else she could have played it. To have remained quite unsurprised at such an exhibition of nerves would in itself have been suspicious. Or was the woman really going to Berlin?

  After a while she went into the other room and rang up Peter Darrell.

  “Would you like to give me a spot of lunch today?” she asked.

  “You bet I would,” he said. “Where and when would suit?”

  “As soon as you like,” she answered. “And somewhere quiet.”

  They fixed on a small place off Wardour Street, and a quarter of an hour later she found him there waiting for her.

  “I’ve been followed,” he said, as they shook hands, “but that is nothing new during the past few days. My attendant is that nasty-looking mess eating spaghetti in the corner. Well – what news?”

  “I’ve been sacked,” she answered as they took a table as far removed from the follower as possible. “Given a week’s notice this morning.”

  “The devil you have,” he remarked, staring at her. “However, I don’t think it matters: a week will be enough. I’ve been in communication with Hugh Drummond and a fellow called Standish this morning early, and they think that whatever is going to happen is coming shortly. But why did you get the boot?”