Ask For Ronald Standish

by Sapper

  “You see what I mean,” he cried. “Those bottles are very similar except for the labels.”

  To the left of the chair was the paper stamp, with a sheet of foolscap close to it. And there on the side of the paper – not even on the top, which showed it was a subconscious trick of the dead man – the address was stamped.

  The paper had slipped away from the machine and was lying near the blotter; and again Sinclair spoke: “I’ve seen the dear old chap use sheet after sheet stamping all the way round the margin.”

  “But,” said Ronald slowly, and then he paused. “By the way,” he continued casually, “where did you find the body?”

  And only I, accustomed to his ways as I was, knew that that was not what he had originally intended to say.

  “Over by the door,” said Sinclair. “He had evidently attempted to go for help, and had collapsed.”

  “I see,” answered Ronald. And then he shrugged his shoulders. “Well, Mr Sinclair, I fear all I can do is to tell you to hope for the best. I would stress, if I was you, his cheery outlook recently, and the fact that so far as you know there was no conceivable reason why he should have taken his life.”

  He was moving towards the door, and Sinclair and the lawyer took no pains to conceal their disappointment.

  “But is that all you can say?” cried the young man.

  “Honestly, I fear it is,” said Ronald; and at that moment I realised he was going without his stick. I was just picking it up when he flashed me a look from the door which said, “Put it down, you damned fool” as clearly as if he’d shouted it. Wondering greatly, I did so; he had spotted something quite obviously. But if he had, why not say? What could be the need for secrecy?

  He discovered his loss half-way across the lawn, and with a muttered exclamation of annoyance went back for the stick while we strolled on.

  “I confess I’m a little disappointed, Mr Miller,” said the lawyer. “He hasn’t wasted much time, has he?”

  I murmured some conventional reply just as Ronald rejoined us.

  “I wonder,” he remarked, “if I might see your uncle’s body, Mr Sinclair?”

  Sinclair raised his eyebrows.

  “Certainly – if you wish to,” he said. “I don’t suppose there would be any objection, Inspector, would there?”

  “None at all,” said the officer. “Though I don’t think you’ll learn much, Mr Standish. I will show you the way.”

  Mr Humber declined to come with us, and we followed the inspector up the broad flight of stairs to a big bedroom overlooking the lawn. The blinds were drawn, and on the bed, covered with a sheet, lay the body of the dead man. Reverently John Sinclair drew back the covering, revealing his uncle’s face quiet and peaceful in his last sleep. Ronald bent over it, and then straightened up.

  “I wonder, Mr Sinclair,” he said, “if I might trouble you to ask your butler to go to my car and get the small bag off the back seat.”

  “Certainly,” said Sinclair, going to the door. “I’ll tell him.”

  He left us, and the instant he had gone to our complete amazement Ronald whipped back the sheet and very gently raised the old man’s right hand.

  “Light,” he said urgently. “Switch on the light.”

  I did so, and from the bedside came an exclamation.

  “Do you see, Inspector?” he cried. “That deep prick in the palm?”

  “What of it?” answered the officer. “It looks as if he’d cut a thorn out.”

  “Yes,” said Ronald slowly. “Perhaps that would account for it. By the way, have you examined the glass with the whisky and soda in it for fingerprints?”

  “I can’t say that I have. It didn’t seem necessary.”

  “I wish you would. And if you could stretch a point and give me a little poison out of that phial on the desk I would be very much obliged. I would like to add it to my museum.”

  He strolled to the door as Sinclair returned.

  “There doesn’t seem to be a bag in your car, Mr Standish,” he said.

  “You don’t mean to say that fool of a man of mine forgot it? It doesn’t matter; I’m sorry to have troubled you. Well,” he continued, as he reached the top of the stairs, “I fear I can only say what I said before. Stress his cheerfulness at the inquest; bring out strongly his remarks about the annuity and I firmly believe they’ll dismiss the idea of suicide. Goodbye, Mr Sinclair; my deepest sympathies are with you.”

  “Won’t you both stay to lunch? I have to go to London immediately afterwards, but I shall be delighted if you’ll stop for some food.”

  “Impossible, I fear,” said Ronald. “I have a very important case which I can’t leave. Can I give you a lift as far as Tenterden, Inspector?”

  He accepted, so we bade goodbye to Mr Humber and entered the car.

  “I think after all I shall stay here to lunch,” said Ronald, as we swung out of the drive. “What’s the best hotel in the place, Inspector?”

  “The Swan,” was the answer. “And if you like I’ll bring you the poison there.”

  “Thank you. And the fingerprint result. Don’t say anything about it; my request might seem callous.”

  We dropped him at the police station and turned into the yard at the “Swan.”

  “What did you go back to the laboratory for?” I demanded curiously as we entered the bar.

  He pulled an old bill out of his pocket and handed it to me. On the top it was stamped:

  ASHINGTON MANOR,

  TENTERDEN,

  KENT.

  “To see how nicely the paper stamp stamped paper,” he remarked. “A very curious fact, Bob, and one that I’ve often noticed, is how hard it is to spot an obvious thing when it is presented to you in an unusual setting.”

  “Well, it’s clear you’ve spotted something,” I said, “but what you’ve seen is beyond me.”

  His reply consisted of asking the lady behind the bar if it would be possible to obtain a live guinea-pig. She opined that it would; that, in fact, there were some next door. And I, completely dazed, had another gin and French. Then we went in and had lunch, during which meal Ronald refused to talk about anything except cricket.

  At three o’clock Inspector Durrant arrived and it was clear from the expression on his face that he was puzzled.

  “I would very much like to know, Mr Standish, why you raised that point about fingerprints.”

  “What have you found out?” asked Ronald.

  “A very amazing thing. There are none at all.”

  Ronald rubbed his hands together.

  “Excellent,” he cried. “I verily believe, Inspector, that we’re going to prove quite conclusively that Mr Sinclair did not commit suicide. Have you brought any of that poison with you?”

  The inspector laid a tiny test tube on the table.

  “Splendid,” said Ronald. “Bob, go and ask Amaryllis for the guinea-pig. Don’t harrow her feelings, but I fear there is going to be a casualty in the guinea-pig world.”

  I got the little animal, and when I returned with it I found Ronald had taken out his hypodermic syringe.

  “I’ll inject a mere drop,” he said, “and we’ll see the result.”

  It was the nearest thing to being absolutely instantaneous I have ever witnessed. One convulsive jerk and it was stone dead. And the inspector, who had watched in silence, gave a sudden exclamation.

  “By Jove! Mr Standish, I believe I see daylight. That mark on the old man’s hand! You think he may have pricked himself accidentally with something impregnated with the poison.”

  “That’s more or less the idea,” said Ronald gravely.

  “But how about the smell that lingered round his lips?”

  “How about the absence of finger marks on the glass?” was Ronald’s reply. “Has young Sinclair gone to London yet?”

  “Yes. He went while I was in the laboratory with Mr Humber.”

  “Did he see you there?”

  The inspector shook his head, and Ronald again rubbed hi
s hands as if he was pleased.

  “Well, Inspector, only one thing now remains to be done, though that, I fear, may prove the hardest. And as I think it will be easier if I do it alone, I will now go up to Ashington Manor. And then later on when Mr Sinclair returns from London I think I shall be able to show to nearly everybody’s satisfaction that it was not suicide.”

  “Why nearly?” I queried.

  “The Insurance Company, of course,” said Ronald with a faint smile. “They’ll have to pay up. Stand by, both of you, and when the time comes we will reconstruct the whole affair.”

  And with that he left us scratching our heads.

  It was not till seven o’clock that a message came through telling us to go to the Manor. The inspector had his own car outside, and when we arrived Ronald was talking to John Sinclair in the drive.

  “I think I can show beyond doubt, Mr Sinclair,” he was saying, “that your uncle did not commit suicide. And my suggestion is that we adjourn to the laboratory for my demonstration. Inspector Durrant must see it because he will be occupying an official position at the inquest, whereas I am merely an outsider. Now I want,” he continued, as we entered the room, “to try and visualise everything as it was. Your uncle was experimenting with the poison, and then I think we can assume that in an absent-minded way he sat down at his desk. Inspector, you stand by the door; Bob, you over there against the wall, and you, Mr Sinclair, will you just play the part of your uncle.”

  “Sit at the desk, you mean?”

  “That’s right,” said Ronald, as Sinclair sat down. “Now, let’s get this right.” He cocked his head on one side as he studied the effect, and we all watched him breathlessly. “The glass was there; the poison there: siphon and decanter. Good. Let’s continue. Feeling distrait he picked up a bit of foolscap and put it in the stamping machine. Just do that, will you, Mr Sinclair. Then he banged down the handle of the stamp.”

  John Sinclair did so; then with a shout of terror he sprang to his feet. His face was chalk-white, and he was staring hypnotised at a mark in his hand from which blood was already beginning to drip.

  “Am I right, John Sinclair?” said Ronald in a terrible voice. “Then staggering in his dying gasp your uncle went to the door and collapsed. Just as you will collapse…”

  “The antidote,” screamed Sinclair, and Ronald laughed.

  “It’s only plain water this time,” he said, “and a gramophone needle. But I think we have proved it was not suicide. Murder, Inspector – and there is the murderer.”

  Almost dazedly the inspector laid his hand on John Sinclair’s shoulder.

  “Warn you anything you say used evidence against you,” he mumbled.

  But I doubt if Sinclair heard; he was glaring vindictively at Ronald.

  “You devil,” he muttered. “You clever devil!”

  “What utterly beats me, Mr Standish,” said the inspector, “is what put you on the track in the first instance.”

  He had dined with us at the “Swan”; John Sinclair, realising he had given himself away hopelessly, had confessed and was lodged in a cell.

  “An obvious thing in an unusual setting, Inspector,” said Ronald. “It was very easy to miss, and you’d all missed it. So had John Sinclair. Otherwise he’d have pulled off a perfect crime. Will you cast your mind back to what will be one of the principal exhibits in the case – the piece of foolscap with the address stamped on the side. There is the unusual setting – an address on the side of a piece of paper. And so the obvious thing escaped attention; the address was upside down. The word “Kent” was nearest the edge instead of being farthest from it.”

  “Well, I’m damned,” muttered the inspector.

  “Go on, sir.”

  “I happened to spot it, and it at once struck me that it must be a very peculiar paper stamp. So I left my stick behind and went back and tried it. And I found the thing worked perfectly when I stamped a letter of my own. The address was the right way up. Thus at the very outset of the case one was confronted with a fact so bizarre and extraordinary that I felt there must be something vital in it.

  “Now those paper stamps have two detachable blocks, one with the address embossed, the other with it countersunk. And they are fastened to the machine by two screws. Either therefore old Mr Sinclair had unscrewed the blocks, turned ’em round, stamped the paper, and then again altered the blocks – an extremely improbable contention – or there was a second stamp. So at once the paper stamp, instead of being an ordinary article of desk furniture, became a very sinister feature of the case. And the mark on his hand confirmed my opinion.

  “There was still however a long way to go. If I was right and the poison had been injected through the hand the glass of whisky was a blind. So also was the smell round his lips. That is why I asked you about fingerprints. There were none, because the man who planted the blind used gloves. That glass was placed on the desk after the old man was dead. It was then, too, that the drop of poison was put between his lips. And when the guinea-pig showed that injecting was instantly fatal, I knew I was on the right track.

  “There still remained however the second stamp, and it was that that I went up to find. It wasn’t difficult; it was in the study. An identical machine with rubber round the handle; just like the one in the laboratory. And with my magnifying glass I could see the tiny hole in the rubber through which the needle had come. Then very carefully I tried it and found that it stamped upside down.

  “Here was proof; the stamps had been changed. But an inconvenient fact obtruded itself; what firm in the world would send out a stamp in such a condition? And in any event why had this idiosyncrasy not been discovered before? Still pondering, I stripped off the rubber handle – and then I understood. The metal part of the handle had been hollowed out, obviously to allow of the introduction of a little bag of poison. And since Mr John Sinclair could not do that himself, he’d got someone else to do it for him. What excuse he’d made for such an unusual request, I can’t tell you – you may be sure it was not done locally. But, realising it was very unusual, he had taken the precaution of removing the address blocks to avoid being traced. And when he replaced them he made his one incredible mistake; he replaced them so that they stamped upside down.

  “That, I think, is all; the rest is clear. He saw the possibility of a suicide verdict; therefore he left the paper as proof that his uncle was in one of his absent-minded moods. And the only thing he did after he found the old man dead, except to stage the whisky red herring, was to change the two stamps back again.”

  “I congratulate you, Mr Standish,” said the inspector. “The only remaining point seems to be motive.”

  “My dear Inspector,” cried Ronald, “that surely is obvious. Mr John Sinclair saw twenty-five thousand of the best vanishing into an annuity which would die with his uncle. And that, from his point of view, was not so funny. No: the whole thing is only one more proof of what astoundingly foolish mistakes a clever man can make.”

  5: The Mystery at Styles Court

  Of all the cases in which I have had the privilege of working with Ronald Standish, I think the most amazing was the one which had for its setting the historic old house of Styles Court. Much water has flowed under the bridge since the events I am about to relate took place: it is, in fact, only for that reason that it is permissible for me to commit them to paper. And even to-day some of the actors in the drama must be veiled under fictitious names, though to many the task of identifying them will not prove difficult.

  Styles Court is a charming Elizabethan manor situated in the gently undulating country which lies north of the South Downs between Pulborough and Petworth. Originally the home of an old Sussex yeoman family it had continued in their possession from father to son for over two centuries, until increasing taxation and decreasing revenue had enforced its sale. It had passed into the hands of a wealthy stockbroker named Cresswell who, fortunately, had excellent taste as well as a considerable bank balance. This gentleman, in addition to i
nstalling running water and other necessities of modern life, also added a large room which started life with the intention of being used for billiards and finished its career as a sitting cum dance cum general utility room. He spared no expense over it. On the outside it conformed exactly to the rest of the house in a way which did credit to the architect; inside it provided all that the most comfort-loving individual could demand. It was completely separate from the rest of the house, being connected with it by a short passage, and so possessed four outside walls. But an excellent system of central heating and a huge log fire made it perfectly habitable on even the coldest winter’s day. And if I seem to have devoted over much space to the details of a mere room, the time has not been wasted, since it was to prove the scene of the whole tragedy.

  It was on a morning in early September, 192–, that the telephone rang in Ronald’s flat. I was with him at the time and we were debating on the rival merits of our respective links for a day’s golf, when the interruption occurred. It was Cresswell himself who was on the line – we both knew him fairly well – and he wanted to know if he could come round immediately.

  “Moreover,” said Ronald as he put down the receiver, “I am inclined to think, Bob, that our golf is not likely to materialise. There was a note of urgency in Tom Cresswell’s voice that I fear means business.”

  He arrived in a quarter of an hour, and with him was another man whose face seemed vaguely familiar to me. Cresswell introduced him as Sir James Lillybrook, and then I remembered that I had seen him at a City dinner some months previously. He was the guest of honour: one of those Powers behind the throne in the Treasury of whom the public rarely hears. And it was easy to see at a glance that, on this occasion, the usual unemotional expression of the highly placed permanent official was only maintained with difficulty.

  “Can you chuck everything, Ronald,” said Cresswell, “and put yourself at the disposal of Sir James?”

  “Everything, at the moment,” said Ronald with a smile, “consists of where Bob and I were going to play golf today. So fire ahead, Sir James. I hope no miscreant has been tampering with the Income Tax.”